Nation-State Reframed: The Memory Struggle over the Genealogy of the Third Polish Republic (1997–1998)

Abstract

The article discusses the memory struggle over the genealogy of the Third Polish Republic which took place in the Polish parliament in the late 1990s. This struggle ensued around the National Independence Day and was decisive in establishing the symbolic definition of Polish post-1989 statehood as anti-communist. The article demonstrates how post-Solidarity mnemonic “warriors,” who promoted an anti-communist definition of statehood aimed at full criminalization of postwar state socialism, overruled the alternative definition that was developed by post-communist “pluralists” and based on the partial approval of state socialism. Thus, the post-Solidarity “warriors” reframed nation-state by establishing their own definition of statehood as the only legitimate one.