Where the violence happened matters. Geopolitical framing and assessments of collective responsibility for historical violence.

Mass violence always takes place in a particular geopolitical context, and how that context is understood influences perceptions of collective responsibility. As international borders shift, often in the wake of war, events that occurred within one geopolitical entity can be understood has having taken place in another. The influence of such geopolitical framing on judgments of collective responsibility remains understudied. Two studies examine how geopolitical frames lead to shifting assessments of collective responsibility for historical mass violence. By depicting historical violence within a particular geopolitical entity (e.g., a country), that entity was perceived as being more responsible for the violence. The studies are set within the contexts of German-occupied Poland and the British occupation of the Indian subcontinent. The ramifications of these findings are discussed for the teaching of history, the commemoration of historical victimhood, and for our understanding of assessments of collective responsibility and geopolitical framing more broadly.     

Indifferent but Mobilized: Rural Politics during the Interwar Period in Eastern and Western Europe

What did peasants discuss at party meetings? Were they mobilized by ethnic politics or indifferent to them altogether? The end of the First World War brought about universal male suffrage in much of Europe, and with it the process of mass politics began. The concept of national indifference is important in understanding interwar politics, because this period is often studied teleologically with attention focused on extremism and nationalism as the primary mobilizing issue

Agrarian movements have been under-researched, and when Agrarians have been studied, it has been through the prism of elite politics. This comparative paper seeks to redress this omission by looking at grassroots rural politics. The interwar countryside was marked by profound political, economic and social transformation but also in terms of what Robert Paxton has described as the ‘triple crisis of the countryside’ – worsening economic conditions, the declining status of the countryside and inadequate political representation. The paper will explore how reform and crisis impacted how agrarian politics functioned at a local level by asymmetrically comparing cases from Romania, Poland and Ireland, with the final case helping to contextualize Eastern Europe within the wider European experience This paper argues that the rural population was mobilized, but primarily in the context of local issues rather than national ethno-political questions. Local party organization was, to paraphrase James C Scott, the site ‘of an exchange of small arms fire’ in rural class conflict, as questions regarding the control of public space, generational conflict and power within the village mobilized peasants. Thus, I argue that it was the underlying socio-economic issues that mobilized the rural population, not nationalism. The dynamics of these conflicts were shaped by local economic, political and social power dynamics, and by using indifference as a concept, we can look more deeply at interwar politics from a grassroots perspective and develop a more nuanced understanding of local, national and European politics.     

Space,time and history in the Polish People’s Republic: the trilogy Sami swoi,Nie ma mocnych,Kochaj albo rzuć

Abstract

The article discusses the meanings of popular culture, authenticity and history in People’s Republic of Poland. As an example it uses a popular film trilogy. The trilogy Sami swoi, Nie ma mocnych and Kochaj albo rzu? (‘All friends here’, ‘Take it easy’ and ‘Love or leave me’) was shown in Polish cinemas between 1967 and 1977. The reviews were written just after the premières. The article uses the concepts of time and space elaborated by Mikhail Bakhtin and Doreen Massey to analyze the different chronotopes of the films. It analyses both the films and the reviews as strategies of creating authenticity and creating cultural meanings: the meaning of history and the meanings of rurality. I will show how history and present, memory and society are interwoven in the light of popular production. In addition, I will emphasize the diverse interpretation possibilities resulting from this micro-historical view and the transnational critique of modernism highlighting the small and local which emerged throughout Europe in the 1970s.     

When Epistemic Communities Fail: Exploring the Mechanism of Policy Influence

Epistemic communities are an established concept in the study of international relations but can also explain policy change at the domestic level. This article asks why some epistemic communities manage to convince decision makers of their preferred policies while others do not. It suggests that the reason lies in the causal mechanism of epistemic communities' influence on decision makers, mediated by decision makers' demand for expert input. Most epistemic communities scholarship focuses on single case studies where the communities' influence on policy was strong and clear, leading to an overestimation of the groups' influence. To help correct this probable bias, this article compares a successful case of epistemic community influence (health technology assessment in Poland) with an unsuccessful example of the same policy (in the Czech Republic). The juxtaposition allows for unpacking of the necessary parts of the causal mechanism (emergence of an epistemic community, its activity, access to decision makers, and successful suasion) and separating them from the crucial scope condition. Decision makers' uncertainty about the policy issue at hand has traditionally been the key scope condition for epistemic communities but the successful Polish case demonstrates that epistemic communities can be influential even in highly certain areas of routine policymaking, leading to a reconceptualization of uncertainty as policymakers' demand for expert input. Demand can originate from various sources, but any change of it affects individual parts of the causal mechanism, leading to a success or failure of epistemic communities' policy enterprise.     

Changing the national past: re‐creating the democratic Polish nation after 1989

ABSTRACT. Poland provides a critical example for studying how national identity is transformed to fit new domestic and global circumstances. While Poles must re‐identify themselves as a democratic nation, they have a choice of whether to incorporate aspects of the communist experience or to ignore it and draw solely from other historical sources. A comparison of holiday newspaper articles from before and after 1989 provides an opportunity to observe this process through the lens of national commemoration. This review shows that themes of national identity are influenced by political context and their potential to unify without contestation. In addition, while the communist period remained a salient unifying historical experience for Poles, democratic values did not act as a unifying theme during the first ten years of Polish democracy.     

Seeking labour's aristocracy? The ‘Westphalian incident’ and Polish nationality policy in the immediate aftermath of war*

ABSTRACT. In the immediate aftermath of World War II the Polish state placed a high value on national homogeneity. The Polish Committee of National Liberation signed population exchange agreements with its socialist neighbours in September 1944 and expelled the German population who remained within the new Polish borders. Far less frequently discussed are the Polish state's efforts to persuade ‘Poles’ in Western Europe to move to Poland. This paper analyses how Polish policy towards ‘Westphalian Poles’ and the British reaction to Polish claims offer insight into both Polish and British nationality and citizenship policy in the immediate post‐war period. I argue that the quality of potential labour played an important role in both British and Polish thinking. The paper also contends that the ‘Westphalian incident’ gives useful insights into the emergence of the Cold War.     

Between east and west: Glass beads from the eighth to third centuries bce from Poland

The study analyses the chemical composition of 57 glass samples from 40 beads discovered at 20 archaeological sites in Poland. The beads are dated to Hallstatt C–Early La Tène periods (c.800/750–260/250 bce ). Analyses were carried out using laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS). Two groups were distinguished among the glasses based on the MgO/K₂O ratio: high-magnesium glass (HMG), five samples; and low-magnesium glass (LMG), 52 samples. The former were melted with halophyte plant ash, the second with mineral soda. These glasses were produced in the Eastern Mediterranean (more likely in Mesopotamia or Syro-Palestine than in Egypt) and transported in the form of semi-products to secondary glass workshops in Europe. Some of the white opaque glass was coloured and opacified in Europe.     

Modeling the state of agritourism in the Malopolska region of Poland

ABSTRACT

The Malopolska region of Poland is highly representative of the current state of agritourism in Poland. The level of agritourism services in this region is very high relative to the national average, the result of environmental and cultural values being incorporated into social and economic development practices. Based on evidence from 1259 agritourism-oriented farms collected from municipal and regional government bureaus, web-published data, and survey data from 575 farm owners in the Malopolska, this paper analyzes the spatial distribution of such farms and the relationship between agritourism and ‘regular’ rural tourism. The Malopolska Voivodeship is strongly diversified in terms of agritourism development. The largest number of agritourism farms is in mountain, piedmont, and upland areas. Research has shown that agritourism is pursued by farmers who own small farms and produce food only for their own use. However, 60% of agritourism farms were found not to engage in any agricultural production. The research also identified basic tendencies of agritourism development in the region. The following basic trends were observed – a shift from agritourism to rural tourism, an increase in the number of agritourist farms offering 10 or more beds, and an expanded service offering – yielding a targeted offering for a specific customer and an increase in the quality of services. This indicates that agritourism owners engaging in this form of business are investing to create more usable space for tourists. The authors’ findings and conclusions also cover the concept of a functional model of agritourism in the Malopolska region. This model shows the relationship between environmental value and the nature of agricultural production and type of tourism in rural areas as well as the diversity of tourist offerings. The model also shows the transition from agriculture and its close relative, agritourism, to regular tourism in rural areas.     

Geopolitics of the Kaliningrad Exclave and Enclave: Russian and EU Perspectives

Two U.S. political geographers examine a range of geopolitical issues associated with the shifting sovereignty of Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast (a part of the former German province of East Prussia) during the 20th century, as well as the region's evolving geopolitical status as a consequence of the European Union's enlargement to embrace Poland and Lithuania. They argue that Kaliningrad today can be considered a "double" borderland, situated simultaneously on the European Union's border with Russia as well as physically separated from Russia, its home country, by the surrounding land boundaries of EU states. Although technically neither an exclave nor an enclave, they posit that in many ways it resembles both, and as such presents a unique set of problems for economic development and interstate relations.     

Going It Alone: Belarus as the Non-European European State

In the second paper of a symposium devoted to the contemporary status of Belarus, a noted American specialist on the electoral geography of the states of the former Soviet Union challenges assertions in the preceding article (Ioffe and Yarashevich, 2011) that only Russia and Ukraine are valid comparators against which to gauge the success of the Lukashenka model. Expanding the scope of comparison to include the three other countries neighboring Belarus (Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland), he demonstrates that a broader range of policy changes can be considered by its leadership in efforts to limit damage from the economic crisis in Belarus and position the country for renewed growth within a global economic frame-work. Examination of a wide range of social and economic indicators and government policies reveals, however, that in many ways an unreformed Belarus is poorly positioned for competition in an increasingly interconnected world, in which the elements for successful development are quite different from those providing economic stability in the past. A closing section of the paper revisits the debate on whether most Belarusian citizens actually aspire to a more "European" way of life or instead prefer the "Eastern" alignment and reliance on a Russian benefactor whose own economic future looks increasingly uncertain.