Poland, 1918-1945
Poland, 1918-1945

Author: Peter Stachura

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-06-17

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 1134289480

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Based on extensive range of Polish, British, German, Jewish and Ukranian primary and secondary sources, this work provides an objective appraisal of the inter-war period. Peter Stachura demonstrates how the Republic overcame giant obstacles at home and abroad to achieve consolidation as an independent state in the early 1920s, made relative economic progress, created a coherent social order, produced an outstanding cultural scene, advanced educational opportunity, and adopted constructive and even-handed policies towards its ethnic minorities. Without denying the defeats suffered by the Republic, Peter Stachura demonstrates that the fate of Poland after 1945, with the imposition of an unwanted, Soviet-dominated Communist system, was thoroughly undeserved.

Poland, 1918-1945
Poland, 1918-1945

Author: Peter D. Stachura

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 9780415343589

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Poland, 1918-1945 is a challenging, revisionist analysis and interpretation, supported by documentary evidence, of a crucial and controversial period in Poland's recent history

The Communist Quest for National Legitimacy in Europe, 1918-1989
The Communist Quest for National Legitimacy in Europe, 1918-1989

Author: Martin Mevius

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-09-13

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 1317986407

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There are two popular myths concerning the relationship between communism and nationalism. The first is that nationalism and communism are wholly antagonistic and mutually exclusive. The second is the assertion that in communist Eastern Europe nationalism was oppressed before 1989, to emerge triumphant after the Berlin Wall came down. Reality was different. Certainly from 1945 onwards, communist parties presented themselves as heirs to national traditions and guardians of national interests. The communist states of Central and Eastern Europe constructed "socialist patriotism," a form of loyalty to their own state of workers and peasants. Up to 1989, communists in Eastern Europe sang the national anthem, and waved the national flag next to the red banner. The use of national images was not the exception, but the rule. From Cuba to Korea, all communist parties attempted to gain national legitimacy. This was not incidental or a deviation from Marxist orthodoxy, but ingrained in the theory and practice of the communist movement since its inception. The study of communist national legitimacy is an exciting new field. This book presents examples of communist attempts to co-opt nationalism from both sides of the iron curtain and lays bare the striking similarities between such diverse cases as the socialist patriotism of the Bulgarian Communist Party and the national line of the Portuguese communists, between Romanian communist nation building and the national ideology of the Spanish Communist Party. This book was published as a special issue of Nationalities Papers.

The Russian Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921
The Russian Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921

Author: Jonathan Smele

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2006-04-15

Total Pages: 656

ISBN-13: 1441119922

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The Russian Revolution and Civil War in the years 1917 to 1921 is one of the most widely studied periods in history. It is also somewhat inevitably one that has generated a huge flow of literature in the decades that have passed since the events themselves. However, until now, historians of the revolution have had no dedicated bibliography of the period and little claim to bibliographical control over the literature. The Russian Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921offers for the first time a comprehensive bibliographical guide to this crucial and fascinating period of history. The Bibliography focuses on the key years of 1917 to 1921, starting with the February Revolution of 1917 and concluding with the 10th Party Congress of March 1921, and covers all the key events of the intervening years. As such it identifies these crucial years as something more than simply the creation of a communist state.

Poland in the Twentieth Century
Poland in the Twentieth Century

Author: P. Stachura

Publisher: Springer

Published: 1999-04-26

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1403915903

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Comprising mostly original essays, this book offers challenging reassessments of some of the most important and controversial themes in Polish history from 1900 until the present. In analysing Poland's triumphs and tribulations with an informed and searching eye, the author achieves a high level of intellectual coherence and nuanced historical perspectives. The overall result is a major contribution to a field of study which has gained even more significance and scholarly impetus since the collapse of Communism in Poland in 1989/90.

Poland's Threatening Other
Poland's Threatening Other

Author: Joanna B. Michlic

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2006-12-01

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 080325637X

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In this provocative and insightful book, Joanna Beata Michlic interrogates the myth of the Jew as Poland's foremost internal "threatening other," harmful to Poland, its people, and to all aspects of its national life. This is the first attempt to chart new theoretical directions in the study of Polish-Jewish relations in the wake of the controversy over Jan Gross's book Neighbors. Michlic analyzes the nature and impact of anti-Jewish prejudices on modern Polish society and culture, tracing the history of the concept of the Jew as the threatening other and its role in the formation and development of modern Polish national identity based on the matrix of exclusivist ethnic nationalism.

Enemies Within the Gates?
Enemies Within the Gates?

Author: William J. Chase

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2001-01-01

Total Pages: 539

ISBN-13: 0300133197

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This compelling work of documentary history tells a story of idealism betrayed, a story of how the Comintern (Communist International), an organization established by Lenin in 1919 to direct and assist revolutionary movements throughout the world, participated in, and was ultimately destroyed, by the Stalinist repression in the late 1930s. Presenting and drawing on recently declassified archival documents, William J. Chase analyses the Comintern's roles as agent, instrument, and victim of terror. In both principle and practice, the Comintern was an international organization, with a staff that consisted primarily of Communist emigres who had fled dictatorial regimes in Europe and Asia. It was, however, headquartered in Moscow and controlled by Soviet leaders. This book examines the rise of suspicions and xenophobia among Soviet and Comintern leaders and cadres for whom many foreigners were no longer the heroes of the class struggle but rather possible enemy agents. Some Comintern members internalised and acted on Stalin's theories about the infiltration of foreign spies into Soviet society, supplying the Soviet police with information that led to the exile or execution of emigres. Thousands of other emigres also became victims of the purges. Together the text and documents of this book convey graphically the essential roles played by the Comintern, providing a unique perspective on the era of Stalinist repression and terror.

The Soviet-Polish War and its Legacy
The Soviet-Polish War and its Legacy

Author: Peter Whitewood

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2023-09-21

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 1350238961

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This detailed study traces the history of the Soviet-Polish War (1919-20), the first major international clash between the forces of communism and anti-communism, and the impact this had on Soviet Russia in the years that followed. It reflects upon how the Bolsheviks fought not only to defend the fledgling Soviet state, but also to bring the revolution to Europe. Peter Whitewood shows that while the Red Army's rapid drive to the gates of Warsaw in summer 1920 raised great hopes for world revolution, the subsequent collapse of the offensive had a more striking result. The Soviet military and political leadership drew the mistaken conclusion that they had not been defeated by the Polish Army, but by the forces of the capitalist world – Britain and France – who were perceived as having directed the war behind-the-scenes. They were taken aback by the strength of the forces of counterrevolution and convinced they had been overcome by the capitalist powers. The Soviet-Polish War and its Legacy reveals that – in the aftermath of the catastrophe at Warsaw –Lenin, Stalin and other senior Bolsheviks were convinced that another war against Poland and its capitalist backers was inevitable with this perpetual fear of war shaping the evolution of the early Soviet state. It also further encouraged the creation of a centralised and repressive one-party state and provided a powerful rationale for the breakneck industrialisation of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1920s. The Soviet leadership's central preoccupation in the 1930s was Nazi Germany; this book convincingly argues that Bolshevik perceptions of Poland and the capitalist world in the decade before were given as much significance and were ultimately crucial to the rise of Stalinism.

Hurrah Revolutionaries
Hurrah Revolutionaries

Author: Patryk Polec

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2015-04-01

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0773582088

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Polish Canadians typically identify themselves as stringent anti-Communists, a label solidified by the legacies of the 1980s Solidarity movement, its founder Lech Walesa, and the widespread anti-Communist riots that helped topple the Communist regime in 1989. Hurrah Revolutionaries challenges this common perception by examining the Polish immigrant community in Canada and the development of radical and traditionally "deviant" ideologies during the interwar period until the end of the Second World War. Patryk Polec unveils a versatile, well-funded, and influential Polish pro-Communist movement with a talented leadership that worked tirelessly to persuade traditionally conservative and religious immigrants to adopt an ideology that was anti-nationalist and atheist. He traces the roots of socialist support in Poland, its transplantation to Canada where the movement enjoyed its greatest support, the challenges the movement faced within an ethnic community influenced by Catholicism, and the complications caused by its links to the Communist International. Polec offers a deeper understanding of the ways in which the Communist Party was able to appeal to certain ethnic groups through cultural outreach as well as its complicated and often counter-productive relationship with the Soviet Union. Grounded in recently declassified Polish consular documents and RCMP surveillance reports, Hurrah Revolutionaries is the first full-length study of Polish Communists in Canada, a group that constituted a substantial portion of the country’s socialist left in the twentieth century.