From Public History to an Identity History for Poland

In 1882, the French historian Ernest Renan gave a succinct answer to the question of what determines the essence of a nation: “A nation has two foundations: a legacy of shared memories and a desire to live together.”1 Today we could add that the desire to live together with a modicum of trust creates the national community,2 whereas the self-determined political community at its base has evolved toward the nation state. Thus, we have the bottom up and top-down aspects of nations with all their diverse and dynamic interconnections. The memories are based on the nation's history, which is kept alive at one end by its national institutions and at the other by the actions of its civil society. The historian has among other matters the task of moderating between the two poles,3 together with working upon what Donald Bloxham calls identity history, a self-explanatory term, but rich in significance and a highly moral task4—to say the least. Especially in East Central Europe, one might note, which, as decades ago Milan Kundera poignantly noted, is made up of “small nations” in light of their tentative existence,5 that has now been all too dramatically proven as still true.Two fairly recent books that explore these aspects of history, both published in 2021, are Public History in Poland, edited by Joanna Wojdon, and Andrzej Nowak's The History of Poland, vol. 5, The Commonwealth Empire. The first book looks at the relatively recent field in the country's academic community of public history from the perspective of a rather comprehensive overview of the field, covering its top-down institutional aspects along with its bottom-up activities. The second is part of a project by a historian renowned in Poland to write a projected eleven volume overview of the country's history: as the fifth volume it demonstrates the determination and steady progress of the author in carrying out this monumental undertaking. There is also a clear connection between the project and public history at a number of points that can already be examined at this juncture in time.Public History in Poland is divided into three parts, each with several chapters. The first part, “Public History and Politics,” is concerned with top-down institutional aspects, that is historical museums and memorial sites, alongside Polish historical politics. The second part, “Public History and Research,” deals with oral history, public archives, and book publishers, that is, the publishing of historical books and periodicals. The final part, “Public History and Leisure,” is more purely concerned with bottom-up ventures, such as historical films, as well as historical computer games. Historical reenactment movements, also included in this part, are quite active in Poland: in 2016 there were reportedly 536 reconstruction groups, obviously of varying sizes (p. 218). A number of highly regarded scholars contributed to the book, such as Piotr Zwierzchowski who studies historical films. Since the topic of public history as such invites quite differing perspectives on developments, it is quite appropriate the editor promotes a diversity of views; Wojdon writes that she aimed at “allowing readers to form their own opinions or, what is more important, to recognize and understand divergent viewpoints and place them in broader contexts” (p. 4). She also indicates some of the important areas that have yet to be sufficiently researched by scholars in the country.These divergent viewpoints not infrequently arise from developments within the country. Social psychologist Janusz Czapiński compared the two major phases that he distinguished in the development of Polish society after accession to the European Union to those famously described by Abraham Maslow in his hierarchy of needs for individuals. Czapiński observed Poles had spent their early years in the EU dealing with their more basic needs, that is on advancing their sense of material wellbeing. Once these needs had been met to a substantial degree they turned to higher ones, such as augmenting their sense of identity and self-worth. And the political party who recognized this turn was rewarded by the voters.6 This political consequence is behind the division of the two chapters concerning national historical policy in the book in the first part, that is, before and after 2015, although the authors themselves seem little aware of the changes at this social level.Among those more discernible differing viewpoints are the ones from the two scholars writing about historical museums in Poland. Despite the opportunity to present history without censorship history museums were not a priority in the country after 1989 because of the drastic nature of the transition on a number of fronts.7 Once matters stabilized this changed with the turning point the completion of the Warsaw Uprising Museum in 2004. Both Paweł Ukielski and Anna Ziębińska-Witek discuss this museum as well as several of the same museums in their separate chapters on the topic. Although a scholar in his own right, Ukielski has also been the vice director of the museum for a number of years, which in part explains his differing view from Ziębińska-Witek. The Warsaw Uprising Museum is a contemporary narrative museum, which is criticized by the latter scholar as not providing visitors enough possibility to come to arrive at their own conclusions regarding the history presented as do museums primarily displaying relevant objects. Both authors present some of the political elements and controversies pertaining to the museums they discuss, these problems overlap at points in their discussions, but their interpretations differ somewhat.It is worth adding that Ukielski is also a coeditor of the report authored by the Platform of European Memory and Conscience, The House of European History: Report on the Permanent Exhibition from 2017 that criticizes the shortcomings of the effort to come up with a public history for the European Union which takes into account the horrific experiences of East Central Europe under Soviet domination.8 This relates him to Nowak, who has also taken part in debates on European memory from a scholarly perspective and offered an alternative to prevailing thinking on European memory, one that takes national communities and their narratives more seriously.9Right from the beginning of The History of Poland enterprise Nowak draws upon the resources of public history. Since there are few records or remains of the earliest Polish history, in his first volume the author uses photographs of the activities of reenactment groups interested in that period as illustrations, praising the research the groups conducted. This indicates that the most direct relationship of Nowak's project to public history is through the role of publishers in presenting history books to the public. Currently this also occurs in digital form, but this is not the case with Nowak's work, published in an impressive hard copy. Here the relationship between identity history and public history in book publishing should also be stressed. Professional historians are not always capable of writing in a manner that comes across to the public, and thus even when they attempt to do so their books are less in demand by the public than those who might be called journalist historians. There are of course exceptions, like Nowak who is both a professional historian and a communicative writer. For instance, in The Commonwealth Empire volume, before explaining the historical circumstances in which the Confederation of Warsaw of 1573 came into being, he notes the document—with its especially notable at the time declaration of religious tolerance—is now on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register, signifying that Polish memory is part of world memory (pp. 40–41). He easily relates to his public, and thus it is possible for him to carry out his identity history project with public support through a publisher that does not publish books with the aid of government subsidies: no small feat in itself in the case a project like Nowak's.A less direct but nonetheless significant relationship between his monumental project and public history is what constitutes the relation between identity history and public history at a more profound level. This can be determined at the moral and ethical level. But it is worth first giving some information on Nowak as a historian as such and what this signifies for the task he set for himself. No historian in Poland primarily looks at the country's history in its entirety, since most are attached to their expertise in specific areas or periods. Thus, historical overviews of the country's lengthy history often enough come from abroad, most famously Norman Davies's God's Playground: A History of Poland from 1979.10 Nowak's expertise is actually in Russian and Soviet history, concentrating on the problem of imperialism and ideology. One of his books in English in this area earned endorsements from Richard Pipes and Timothy Snyder.11 Yet it is possible that it is this distance of sorts from Poland's history that helps in providing him the ability to look at it in its entirety and endeavor to create an extensive and full narrative. And the fact that the first volume was published in 2014 when the turnabout in Polish feeling of self-worth Czapiński referred to took place, possibly signifies that Poles were also readier for an ambitious identity history that would contribute to a deeper national self-understanding, which was an implicit factor to the necessity of the undertaking.In Public History Nowak has been criticized as a historian who takes a moral stance in his writing (pp. 36, 34). Yet in History and Morality, Bloxham insists historians are entitled to a moral stance in their work, since it is often present there whether they acknowledge it or not, and thus it is better for it to be in the open. What is the moral or ethical stance inherent in The History of Poland project? Fittingly for identity history in the most general of terms it can be put down to patriotism.What then is the ethical nature of patriotism? Few have expressed it better than moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre,who argues that being born into a particular community is essential to our moral being. Virtues do not develop in a social vacuum, and so: If first of all it is the case that I can only apprehend the rules of morality in the version in which they are incarnated in some specific community; and if secondly it is the case that the justification of morality must be in terms of particular goods enjoyed within the life of particular communities; and if thirdly it is the case that I am characteristically brought into being and maintained as a moral agent through the particular kinds of moral sustenance afforded by my community, then it is clear that deprived of this community, I am unlikely to flourish as a moral agent.12This moral grounding involves a number of forms of civic virtue, among them those that are at the foundation of genuine relationships, such as loyalty. MacIntyre stresses, “So patriotism and those loyalties cognate to it are not just virtues but central virtues.” Few have demonstrated these virtues more heroically at present than Volodymyr Zelensky, the leader of Ukraine during the Russian invasion.Of course, the need for a responsible approach to such an, at times, emotional moral issue in identity history is fairly essential.13 In the first volume of his enterprise where Nowak explores the origins of the Polish people, he acknowledges the role of the first historian born in the country in directing the emergence of a national consciousness. American historian Paul Knoll likewise acknowledges the role of Wincenty Kadłubek's twelfth-century chronicle in developing Polish national consciousness through its importance in the teaching of Polish history in the first centuries of the existence of the Jagiellonian University in the Middle Ages.14In The Commonwealth Empire volume of his history Nowak confronts the new commonwealth at its territorial and republican height before the devastating wars of the seventeenth century break its economy with drastic consequences for the monarchic republic. The political geography of Europe had changed dramatically in the region. As he states: In the political system in which after centuries we vaguely discern Central Europe [. . .], two powerful pillars collapse: the sovereign Hungarian kingdom and Czech. The Kingdom of Poland remains, united now with Lithuania, and through the latter tilted more toward the east of the continent. This was now East Central Europe, as it will be called by the great historian of the Jagiellonian union, Oskar Halecki. (p. 20)There are elements of revisionist history in the volume in which some historical figures are knocked off their pedestals. And so, his history is not lacking in criticisms of the actors of the period that in the popular narrative are praised. As he puts it in an interview when the volume was published, “One of the advantages of writing history anew is that you draw upon the newest research.”15 The book is deeply researched—as its rich bibliography proves—and the historian also presents his own perspective, in this and the previous volumes.In the above interview he informed his interlocutor that he welcomes different interpretations of Polish history as long as they are placed in the broadest possible historical perspective, which he claims is lacking in some more ideological interpretations. Such an approach is present within the current research into peasant oppression, which he argues can be quite biased. His own family is rooted in a peasant background and became Polish patriots when Poland regained its independence in the twentieth century. He adds the Solidarity movement was a workers’ revolt against the Communist regime, and the workers often came from the countryside. From these responses one can expect the next volumes to be quite stimulating and not rarely controversial in places from a number of perspectives.Sociologist Frank Furedi claims a pervasive culture of fear in the West marks this century that includes various forms of competitive scaremongering and has a powerful effect on how the past is interpreted: “The mentality it cultivates is one that regards the past as a scary and ignoble succession of events, where humanity lacks not only direction but any redeemable qualities.”16And often enough historians perpetuate this perspective. As a result, “The shift of focus from the historical hero to the survivor of history mirrors the trend towards the emergence of the fragile and vulnerable subject as the central character in the culture of fear.”17Although Furedi is British, and for good reasons survivors are important in Polish history, heroes could certainly gain more attention in the mainstream of the discipline.Needless to say, Polish society, as well as most others, needs its heroes, especially as it is quite obvious now that history has not come to an end. Based on what he has written to date in the successive volumes of The History of Poland, although he has not eschewed presenting criticism where he notes it is necessary,18 Andrzej Nowak is not likely to abandon his public to such a culture of fear. This is especially important when there are currently deeper causes for fear in the “small nations” of the region than those that permeate fairly well off and secure societies, and which require a more courageous response to the present and different spirit of thinking about the past

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