Abstract
There are two ways of understanding the concept of mastering history. In not attempting to understand why things happened you fail to learn from them, writes leading academic
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Vladimir Putin’s view of the Soviet past may be classified as an example of this sense of mastery. Under Putin, new monuments of Stalin are being erected across the country. It’s just one measure that seeks to highlight the military and technological advances that happened under the Soviet leader’s rule, and which whitewash his repression and terror. It feeds the narrative of a great Russian past. You master history to your own advantage and exploit it selectively for contemporary political purposes.
The other interpretation of the concept of mastery is to “confront yourself with history”, to look history honestly in the face, warts and all.
Concretely, this involves a moral reckoning. Coming to terms with history. In Germany’s case this has meant an open discussion about National Socialism (Nazism), fully recognising its criminal nature and its popular support, with no attempt to historicise this period of German history. It also means seeing history as a warning for the future.
In contemporary Poland, as well as in Hungary, this Vergangenheitsbewältigung, in both senses of the word, has been going on for a while. Since gaining power in 2015 the Law and Justice (PiS) in Poland has stacked the courts with its own people, sought to control the media, purged and politicised the civil service and intimidated intellectuals.
True to form, in regimes of this kind the populist and nationalist government in Warsaw is trying to forge a uniform interpretation of Polish history. In a recent law Warsaw has made it illegal to write the words, “Polish concentration camps” (see p35).
This is quite unnecessary. Every thinking person knows that the concentration camps were a Nazi invention set up on Polish-occupied territory. Any discussion of this kind must be fought with words and facts, not threats of imprisonment.
More importantly, the same laws make it illegal to allege that Poles assisted the Nazis. The laws make exceptions for Holocaust witnesses and academics, but it is clear that this provision may easily create an atmosphere of intimidation among journalists and scholars who want an honest confrontation with Poland’s past, including Polish collaboration with Nazis.
A case in point is recorded by the Polish sociologist Jan Gross in his book Neighbours (2001). In 1941 local people in the village of Jedwabne locked hundreds of Jews in a barn and set it on fire. People who tried to flee through the windows were shot. Gross has been hounded by the Polish authorities and threatened with all kinds of sanctions and smear campaigns for his honesty.
In a later work, Fear, Gross recorded instances of anti-Semitism and pogroms after the war. In Golden Harvest (2012), he documented how Polish citizens excavated valuables from the graves of Jews killed in the camps and exhibited their bones as badges of victory, much like football teams display their soccer balls in photos.
The interpretation the government seems to be spreading is an amalgam of hero worship and attacks on victimhood, casting sceptics in the role of traitor. The government wants to portray itself as the only guarantor of the honour of the Polish nation. Instead its law-making has led to deep rifts with the EU and the laughter and disbelief of other nations.
This is such an unnecessary struggle. Poland was one of the worst victims of Nazi barbarism, with about six million dead (including more than three million Polish Jews). Polish history is full of stories about Poles helping Jews under the most awful conditions. The country has countless tales of extreme heroism in assisting Jews, such as Jan Karski who went into the Warsaw ghetto to see with his own eyes how the Nazis killed the Jews. He found his way to London and Washington to alert the Allies of the horrors.
Trying to cleanse history like this is simply dumb. When governments try to cement one interpretation of historical truths to serve political purposes, it tends to be counterproductive.
The Polish government does not understand that acting like a policeman of interpretations will have unexpected effects and produce resistance, which will undercut its intentions and hopes. This is rather elementary. The PiS has performed political and intellectual striptease.
Now the government is ostracised abroad. Its attempt to cleanse history in the first sense of Vergangenheitsbewältigung has backfired.
At home support has surged. But in failing to master history fully it is depriving its citizens of a proper understanding and ability to learn from Poland’s past.