Subtitle:

Poland without Jews : studies on the history of anti-Semitic ideas, phantasms, and practices in the Polish lands of the early twentieth century (1905-1914)

Publisher:

Instytut Historii PAN

Place of publishing:

Warszawa

Description:

559 s. : il. ; 24 cm ; Bibliogr. s. [495]-543. Indeks ; Streszczenie angielskie.

Abstract:

The time range of the book spans the period from the beginning of the 1905 Russian Revolution to the outbreak of the Great War, set within the context of ideological and political breakthrough of the turn of the twentieth century in the Polish territories. One of the key components of the study is also an analysis of cultural environment in which a modern anti-Jewish discourse emerged. Here the lands of the Polish Kingdom were identified as a sensitive area. It is therefore pivotal for the presented argument to recognise political anti-Semitism not only as a constant of the socio-cultural landscape of the Polish lands at the beginning of the 20th century, but also as its key element which determined the whole public life. The first part of the book analyses thoroughly a socio-political crisis of the revolution time. And it were fears and traumas caused by the revolution that brought the first violent invasion of political anti-Semitism to the political culture of the Polish Kingdom, and then the rest of the partitioned Polish territories. With selected representative examples the mechanisms of receptions and reproduction of a modern racist discourse within the National Democracy, the biggest political force at that time, were illustrated, together with a rapid revitalisation of traditional anti-Judaism accompanying the emergence of a “Catholic” public space. Fundamental is an assumption that these two dominant discourses were undergoing constant, dynamic convergence. This part testifies to activation values of the anti-Semitic discourse. In the second part of the book the main point of reference was the phenomenon of Jews’ inflow from the territory of the Russian Empire (the so-called Litvaks), and its cultural and political consequences for both the Polish and Jewish communities. Next waves of immigrants, activating a local Jewish community on impact with the atmosphere of general post-revolution depression and trauma, electrified initially the world of journalists, then the native political class, and finally almost all conscious members of the public life. An important background of those events was a process of social empowerment of the Polish Jews that was progressing after the Revolution of 1905. Great stress was laid on a phantasmic substratum of hostility to otherness, with which all Jews were rapidly associated. One of the purposes of this part of the book is to demonstrate how local events in the lands of the Polish Kingdom began to determine and define the imaginarium of the Polish political life in the first decades of the twentieth century. Following chapters illustrate the way in which individual elements of the anti-Semitic discourse were adapted, and then internalised by the popular culture of that time. Special attention was paid to the problem of “ethnicization” of attitudes among accultural Poles of Jewish origin, and to their participation in successive waves of moral panics which began to sweep over the lands at the end of the 1910s. Equally important is to indicate the limits of the “anti-Jewish” discourse: its limitations and barriers, and in consequence a gradual cultural homogenisation among the Polish cultural elites. The elections to the Fourth Duma in Warsaw in 1912 are regarded as the height of the anti-Litvaks campaign - they turned out to be a culminating point of several waves of moral panics, and also a peculiar apogee of a “politics of fear” pursued by the National Democracy. Those events seem to be a key reference point for determining the cultural frames of public discourse in the Polish lands of the first half of the 20th century. Part three presents the courses of ideologizing process of the native anti-Semitic movement. One of the fundamental premises of this part of the study is to demonstrate how anti-Semitism was becoming a key element of superiority mythologies of the contemporary cultural elites and establishment, as well as a binding agent for modern political divisions.

Detailed Resource Type:

Książka

Resource Identifier:

oai:rcin.org.pl:238962 ; 978-83-63352-93-6

Source:

IH PAN, sygn. II.14182 ; IH PAN, sygn. II.14181 Podr. ; click here to follow the link

Language:

pol

Language of abstract:

eng

Rights:

Licencja Creative Commons Uznanie autorstwa-Bez utworów zależnych 4.0

Terms of use:

Zasób chroniony prawem autorskim. [CC BY-ND 4.0 Międzynarodowe] Korzystanie dozwolone zgodnie z licencją Creative Commons Uznanie autorstwa-Bez utworów zależnych 4.0, której pełne postanowienia dostępne są pod adresem: ; -

Digitizing institution:

Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk

Original in:

Biblioteka Instytutu Historii PAN

Access:

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