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Eastern Europe in Western Civilization Textbooks: The Example of Poland*
John J. Kulczycki
University of Illinois-Chicago, Emeritus
| OVER A DECADE AGO the newsletter of the American Historical Association Perspectives carried a long lead article entitled "Teaching 'Eastern Europe' without the Iron Curtain."1 Referring to the challenge posed by the revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe to the teaching of European history, the author, Larry Wolff, saw it as "an opportunity to think critically about the ways in which the Cold War has shaped the way we teach the history of Eastern Europe."2 He argued that the very notion of Eastern Europe was historically dubious, invented in the age of the Enlightenment "as a politically charged, cultural construction."3 The Cold War and the Iron Curtain gave this division of Europe "an air of geopolitical inevitability, encouraging historians to interpret earlier periods in terms of the same distinction between Western and Eastern Europe."4 |
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"The idea of Eastern Europe...has become a pedagogical convenience in our history curriculum, creating a category for quick generalizations to serve as a fig leaf for our scant attention to that historical terrain."5 |
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Wolff goes on to cite examples of the abuse of the term "Eastern Europe" in Western Civilization textbooks. But there is more to the history of the place of Eastern Europe in Western Civilization courses than just the constructs of the Enlightenment and the Cold War. The Western Civilization course is "a characteristically American invention."6 It dates back to the early twentieth century, when educators perceived a need for a general education course to overcome fragmentation in the study of history and to give students a sense of a common identity and common past, a sense which would overcome deficits in their knowledge of European history. These reasons retain their validity today. For historians in America the "roots" of this common identity and common past lay in Europe, in a heritage shared particularly with the democratic countries of Western Europe. The two world wars, when these countries were America's allies, confirmed this belief in a common western tradition.7 |
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However, the Cold War brought a massive expansion of Russian and Soviet studies in the United States.8 Thanks to Soviet dominance of Eastern Europe, new resources went into the study of that region as well. More financial support came after the Soviet success in launching Sputnik in 1957. Government-funded fellowships paid for most of my doctoral studies because I was studying a then "strategic" language, Polish. But seventy percent of doctoral dissertations in Russian and East European studies from 1965 to 1987 were in Russian studies and only thirty percent in East European studies, a plurality of them in language and literature rather than history.9 Moreover, one result was to identify Eastern Europe closely with the Soviet Union. For example, a study in 1984 of curriculum materials used in the secondary schools of the state of New Jersey found that what limited attention was given to the countries of Eastern Europe came "invariably under the form of a subunit exclusively devoted to U.S.S.R."10 Moreover, Wolff notes that under "Eastern Europe" the index of one Western Civilization textbook simply stated "See Soviet Union."11 |
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The Cold War also reinforced an identification of Western Civilization with Western Europe. Western Civilization was equated with the Western military alliance.12 By now Western Civilization courses included the history of Russia. A decade after the start of the Cold War, a specialist in East European history found a preoccupation with Russia in history textbooks.13 At the same time he observed that "American students in general history courses tend to learn little about the history of European nations east of Germany and Italy." He quotes what one student wrote about Eastern Europe following World War I: "A number of countries emerged, no one has ever heard anything about them, except for Poland which has appeared from time to time in history."14 |
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The birth of the Solidarity movement in Poland did indeed draw enormous interest in the United States because of the inherent drama of the events, but primarily because of the challenge the movement posed to the Soviet Union. More English-language books about Poland were published in the 1980s than in any other decade. Yet a commission that in the second half of the 1980s evaluated seventeen textbooks used in the secondary schools of the state of New Jersey found the coverage given to the history and culture of Eastern Europe "inadequate and inaccurate" and mainly focused Russia.15 |
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A year after the publication of Wolff's article in Perspectives and four and a half years after the dramatic fall of communism in Poland, a paper surveying the treatment of Poland in historical texts, presented at the American Historical Association's annual meeting in January 1994, still found numerous omissions and distortions.16 In 1997 the author of the survey of textbooks who forty years earlier had found their treatment of East Central Europe inadequate concluded that his criticism was "still largely valid."17 An article published in 1998 surveying the work of American historians on twentieth-century Europe recognizes the need after 1989 to reexamine the division between western and eastern Europe, but provides little evidence of this in the recent trends in the American historiography of Europe that it identifies.18 With eight countries of Eastern Europe now in the European Union, and five years after three of them joined NATO, what do recently published Western Civilization textbooks say about Eastern Europe? Using modern Polish history (the Enlightenment to the present) as a test case, this article seeks to answer that question by surveying six representative textbooks.19 |
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According to the coauthor of one of these textbooks, there was a deliberate attempt to include more about eastern European countries "at every opportunity" in order to distinguish the textbook from the competition.20 In fact, this textbook does include more references to Poland than the others, identifying individuals, events, and developments that can be related to the historical narrative, but the narrative nevertheless remains centered on the countries of western Europe. Thus, in connection with the Enlightenment, this textbook merely identifies King Stanislaw August Poniatowski and Princess Zofia Czartoryska in a sentence or two.21 Another textbook, while observing that "the Enlightenment was limited in Eastern Europe" and that "only a total of 280 books were published in Poland...in 1740," does mention the founding of scientific societies in Warsaw, Cracow, and Danzig, a national library in Warsaw in 1747, and the "Ukrainian University of Lvov" in 1784 (an entity that I have been unable to identify).22 Four other textbooks make no reference to the Enlightenment in Poland at all, though a map in one indicates that Warsaw had more subscriptions to the Encyclopedia than any other city east of the Rhine.23 Several of the textbooks refer to educational reforms in connection with the disbanding of the Jesuits, but none mention the creation of the Commission for National Education in Poland in 1773, though it was Europe's first national school authority.24 |
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The first partition of Poland, giving parts to Prussia, Austria, and Russia, is presented in three textbooks mainly as an object lesson in eighteenth-century power politics.25 In one of them Poland even makes a rare appearance in a review question, which asks, "What does the partition of Poland indicate about the spirit of enlightened absolutism?"26 The textbooks blame Poland's weakness, which facilitated the partition, on "internal conflicts" or a "fractious nobility," which claimed "traditional rights, called the five eternal principles" that are not explained.27 Few of the textbooks that note Poland's internal weakness as a cause of the first partition, note that the event eventually led to major internal reforms in Poland and that the final partitions grew out of a desire of Poland's neighbors to crush the reform movement rather than to a lack of Polish reform.28 One textbook instead suggests that a refusal to reform resulted in Poland's annihilation; it also prints a map of Europe in 1795 that wrongly places Warsaw within the territory of the Austrian Empire rather than in Prussia.29 |
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The most extensive account of the final partitions of Poland follows the approach of the American historian R.R. Palmer, who forty years ago placed events in Poland in the context of a wider democratic revolution in the western world.30 Thus, the second and third partitions, related as they were to this wave of democratic revolutions, are counted among the important European events of the period. The text states, "From Philadelphia to Warsaw, the new public steeped in Enlightenment ideas now demand to be heard." Like Palmer, the text accurately identifies the reform party, the Patriots; the role of King Poniatowski; the opposition of "most of the aristocrats and [the role of] the formidable Catherine the Great." The Polish constitution of 3 May 1791 is briefly described as is the uprising in 1794 led by Tadeusz Kosciuszko in response to the second partition of Poland. It notes his "immediate, insoluble dilemma" of needing to win over the peasantry without alienating the nobles supporting the uprising, and his attempt at compromise. With the defeat of the uprising there remained "the unsolved problem of Polish serfdom, which isolated the nation's gentry and townspeople from the rural masses."31 The only textbook to mention Kosciuszko, it notes his participation in the American War of Independence but does not elaborate on how his eight years of experience in America contributed to his belief that a small insurrectionary army could neutralize a much larger conventional force.32 |
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Although Palmer's work is listed in the suggested readings of two other texts, one only mentions that the "democratic revolution...included liberal Polish nobles," and the other refers only to "minor attempts at reform by the Polish nobles."33 No other textbook mentions reforms or the constitution of May 3, though it was only the second modern constitution in the western world after the American constitution and the first on the European continent, preceding the French constitution by several months. A discussion of all three constitutions could illustrate for students how the ideas of the Enlightenment played out in different political, social, and economic contexts.34 Indeed, Edmund Burke in Britain launched his attack on the French Revolution in the name of the Polish constitution, whose moderation he admired.35 Although the Polish constitution confirmed the privileges of the landed nobility, it made full political rights dependent on property instead of birth and created a government responsible to a representative body. Thus, while it maintained the estate system, townspeople gained numerous civil and political rights. A compromise between republicanism and a constitutional monarchy, the constitution established a hereditary throne along with parliamentary sovereignty. It was the culmination of a reform movement in Poland that had symbolic value for nationally conscious Poles who honored it in the nineteenth century by observing its anniversary, which in contemporary Poland is a national holiday.36 The memory of the insurrection led by Kosciuszko also continued to dominate the Polish imagination. He may have been the first to use the term "little war," and the uprising provided an example for others.37 In 1794 the Catechism of the Secret Society of Reformers in Hungary, an organization influenced by Jacobin ideology and practice, urged that "Like the Poles, [the Hungarians] should raise up a holy insurrection."38 |
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None of the textbooks have anything to say about Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw, all but one of them mistakenly referring to it as the Grand Duchy of Warsaw—an error so prevalent that one suspects it is copied from one textbook to another.39 But Napoleon's creation was crucial in demonstrating that "Poland is not yet lost" as the Polish national anthem states, an anthem that traces its origins to a song of the Polish legions formed in 1798 as part of Napoleon's forces in Italy. One historian links Poland's dominance in the revolutionary tradition of early nineteenth-century Europe along with France and Italy to the strength of the cult of Napoleon in all three countries.40 |
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Only one textbook discusses the dispute over Poland at the Congress of Vienna at some length and it is the only one to mention the Republic of Cracow, a separate entity created at the Congress.41 Yet, Russia's insistence on adding most of the Duchy of Warsaw to its territorial gains from the partitioning of Poland and creating out of it a Kingdom of Poland with the Russian tsar as its monarch brought the Great Powers to the brink of war.42 |
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The Polish uprising of November 1830 appears in all of the textbooks, with accounts ranging in length from two sentences in one textbook to two paragraphs along with an excerpt of the Organic Statute and an illustration of Polish rebels in uniform in another textbook.43 The Organic Statute, issued by Tsar Nicholas I following the uprising which was to replace the constitution he abolished, was never put into effect, yet it is presented to students as an example of governmental repression of nationalism.44 This textbook also discusses the revolt in Poland in connection with Russian history and before a discussion of the 1830 revolts in France and Belgium, which triggered the revolt in Poland. Even prior to the Iron Curtain, Poland is considered in connection with Russia rather than Western Europe. |
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Only two textbooks allude indirectly to events known to Poles as the Great Emigration, in which 5-7,000 of them fled from Russian repression to western Europe following the revolt of 1830, and to Adam Mickiewicz's role among the émigrés.45 Considered the Polish national poet, Mickiewicz was a fountainhead for nineteenth-century European romantic messianism and "perhaps the greatest of all poetic prophets of revolutionary nationalism."46 As one textbook explains, his "mystical writings portrayed the Polish exiles as martyrs of a crucified nation with an international Christian mission."47 The same textbook notes Mickiewicz's influence on Mazzini.48 Another textbook sums up this period in two sentences: "Polish nationalists, far from accepting their suppression in 1831, were among the most eloquent of nationalists. They saw theirs as a nation of martyrs to the cause of national self-determination, a people who would one day yet be free."49 Only one other textbook mentions Mickiewicz, merely identifying him as a founder of a "nationalist society at the University of Vilna in 1817," hardly his most significant achievement.50 More textbooks mention Chopin than Mickiewicz.51 None of the textbooks discuss other intellectual developments within the Great Emigration, such as Polish agrarian socialism, which preceded the better-known Russian populist movement by several decades.52 Nor do any refer to the leadership Poles assumed in internationalizing revolutionary nationalism.53 Only one textbook mentions the attempt to put these ideas into practice in 1846: "when Polish exiles...tried to launch...[an] insurrection for Polish independence [and]...in Galicia...peasants instead revolted against their noble Polish masters,...[s]laughtering some two thousand aristocrats."54 Besides illustrating that "Class interests and national identity were not always the same," events in Galicia had a profound effect on Polish political developments as many landed interests turned to conservative political ideas and radicals realized the necessity of solving the social question before addressing the national question, but this is nowhere explained.55 The uprising also inspired the British working class and provided the first hint of the national uprisings of 1848.56 |
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Accounts of the events of 1848 give no details of Polish activities. Yet, one has only to consult a classic study of those events to learn that Poles played a role in Prussian and German events of that year, including an armed conflict with Prussian forces.57 Maps indicating where revolutionary activity occurred suggest Polish participation, but without explanation. One indicates revolutions in Posen [Poznan], Kraków [Cracow], Lemberg [Lwów], and Warsaw, this last perhaps a reference to the insurrection of 1863 since no revolutionary activity occurred in Warsaw in 1848.58 Another also places revolutions in Warsaw and in Cracow and in eastern Prussia and eastern Galicia, without identifying Poznan and Lwów.59 Another map indicates Cracow along with the region east of Cracow, clearly a reference to the events of 1846 but not identified as such.60 Only half of the textbooks mention the Polish uprising of 1863 and this only within the context of Russian history.61 There is nothing concerning how the 1863 uprising differed from the one in 1830, though the earlier uprising involved the Kingdom of Poland and its army in a war against the Russian tsar and his army, whereas in 1863 the rebels formed a secret underground government and fought an extensive guerrilla war.62 The crucial impact of the later uprising on Polish developments is not discussed, yet some scholars see the development of the modern Polish nation as originating in the defeat of the 1863 rebellion.63 It also had repercussions beyond Poland: a meeting of British and French workers in London in July 1863 to support the Polish struggle gave birth to the idea of organizing an international organization of workers, the future International.64 |
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Polish developments in the following decades leading to the recreation of a Polish state receive virtually no attention, There is nothing about the evolution of Polish national thought as typified by the clashing views of Roman Dmowski and Józef Pilsudski, the foremost Polish political figures of the era. Whereas Dmowski advocated an integral nationalism based on the ethnically Polish population, hostile to the national minorities of the region, particularly Jews, and whereas he saw Germany as the main obstacle to the survival of the Polish nation, Pilsudski harkened back to the tradition of a multi-ethnic Polish state and sought to regain its independence from Russia by proposing a federalist approach to the minorities in the territories where they dominated.65 The dichotomy of their views concerning the nation and the state continues to exist in contemporary Polish political thought. But none of the books even identify Dmowski. The only mention of Polish political parties comes when Rosa Luxemburg is identified as "a founder of the Polish socialist party."66 The reference is to the internationalist wing of Polish socialism, Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, which did not support Polish independence, for which it was criticized by Vladimir Lenin. The more influential and larger Polish Socialist Party, which predated Luxemburg's party, is ignored.67 The sole reference to a Polish labor movement comes when, "At Lodz...forty-six workers were killed in a clash in 1892."68 One textbook mentions Polish migration to the Ruhr region, but not to the United States, which is much more relevant for American students.69 Only one book refers to Polish migration to the United States indirectly by including excepts from the letters of the wife of a Polish immigrant lamenting her husband's decision not to return to Poland.70 In a section on "The Jewish Question," one textbook reproduces the painting "After the Pogrom" by Maurycy Minkowski, who is identified as a painter of Jewish life in Poland but without any reference to events in Poland.71 (The vast majority of the Jews of the old Polish state, then the largest concentration of Jews in the world, came under Russian rule as a result of the partitioning of Poland in the eighteenth century.) The only person of Polish origin that almost all books identify in this period is the "Polish-born French scientist" Marie Curie, who according to one textbook was born "Manya [her nickname rather than her proper name, Maria] Sklodowska," whereas another one does not mention her Polish origins.72 None give any attention to the prominent role of women in Polish society of the period, the milieu Curie grew up in.73 |
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Only two textbooks refer to the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1921, in which the Poles were successful in thwarting the Russian attempt to spread communism to Poland. According to one, "French military advisors came to the aid of the Poles and turned the Russians back," and according to the other, the Poles "drove the Red Army back..., while the Allied powers rushed supplies and advisers to Warsaw."74 In fact, General Maxime Weygand, who headed the French military delegation to Poland, "cannot be considered to have played a decisive role in the campaign."75 Nor did the British provide Poland with any military assistance. It seems the West must take credit for Polish military successes! One textbook claims that Poland sought "to reclaim the Ukraine," whereas others list "Polish invaders" among those expelled from "Russian soil" or display Polish attacks on maps without noting Bolshevik advances into Poland.76 Although Poles claimed eastern Galicia as did Ukrainians, Pilsudski at the head of a Polish military force that reached Kiev sought to support Ukrainian efforts to create an independent eastern Ukraine in opposition to Soviet Russia. As for "Russian soil," Polish forces never entered regions where ethnic Russians dominated. |
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Under the heading of "Anti-Semitism at the Peacetable," one textbook prints a statement by an unidentified "Polish leader" at the Paris Peace Conference that begins with the sentence, "We have too many Jews, and those who will be allowed to remain with us must change their habits...." According to the explanation of the document, the speaker "lobbied the Allies to exercise a police power in the newly independent Poland, where major problems would be rural crowding and the inability to make ends meet on the land."77 This example of antisemitism is typical of the views of Dmowski, who led the Polish delegation to the peace conference and antithetical to the views of Pilsudski, who, during the peace conference, headed the government of Poland. Not noting this, the textbook presents this document without its proper context. |
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A reader of these texts can also easily get the impression that the Versailles Treaty unfairly favored Polish over German claims because East Prussia was "cut off" from the rest of Germany by the Polish "corridor," terminology used by all of the textbooks.78 Only one notes that this was territory Prussia gained in the partitioning of Poland.79 None refer to the ethnicity of the population that inhabited the territory, although two books elsewhere include maps that indicate the predominately Polish character of the population.80 Yet ethnicity is an issue: one textbook notes that one-third of Poland's population was ethnically non-Polish, and another that it "contained unhappy German and Ukrainian minorities."81 (Based on the census of 1931, an estimated sixteen percent was Ukrainian, ten percent was Jewish, six percent was Belarusian, and two percent was German). By referring to a Polish "corridor" without noting that the majority of the population of the "corridor" was ethnically Polish, the texts appear to strengthen the German side in the Polish-German dispute over the Treaty of Versailles.82 |
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Western Civilization textbooks generally take a negative view of interwar Poland.83 As one textbook puts it,
The nation whose postwar fortunes probably most disappointed liberal Europeans was Poland...[N]ationalism proved an insufficient bond to overcome political disagreements stemming from class differences, diverse economic interests, and regionalism....In 1926 Marshal Josef Pilsudski (1857 [instead of 1867]–1935) carried out a military coup. Thereafter, he ruled, in effect, personally until his death, when the government passed into the hands of a group of his military followers.84
Poland is the only country discussed in one textbook as an example of political developments in eastern Europe, where
Nationalism was increasingly defined in ethnic terms.... [Many of Poland's] ethnic minorities...had grievances against the dominant Poles. Moreover, varying religious [they were overwhelmingly Roman Catholic], dynastic [there were no dynastic claims], and cultural traditions divided the Poles. ...[T]he inability of coalition parliaments to effect economic prosperity led to a coup in 1926 by strongman Jozef Pilsudski. Ultimately, Pilsudski made it possible for a country choked by the endless debates of dozens of political parties and impaired by ethnic strife and anti-Semitism to function. Economic hardship and strong-arm solutions went hand in hand in east-central Europe. It was only with incredible difficulty that a reunified Poland survived the postwar years.85
According to another textbook, "General [instead of Marshal] Jozef Pilsudski used the Polish army to hold dictatorial power for nearly fifteen years. ...Pilsudski became the first president of Poland in 1922. ...His military coup d'état of 1926 created a limited military dictatorship, which tolerated a degree of opposition but did not hesitate to arrest and torture opposition leaders in 1930."86 |
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In fact, Pilsudski never held the office of president, but served as Head or Chief of State from 1918 to 1922 and then left politics until his coup d'état in 1926, which was motivated more by concerns for Poland's security than by its economic crisis.87 No textbook links the strength of ethnic nationalism in Eastern Europe to the peace process that sought to draw borders based on ethnic criteria, or the instability of the region to the abandonment of Eastern Europe both economically and politically by the western democracies that won the war.88 |
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Two textbooks claim to see similarities between Poland and fascist Italy, and two others list Poland among countries where fascism appealed or had authoritarian governments resembling fascism.89 Definitions of fascism are notoriously slippery. Describing Poland under Pilsudski and his successors as a military dictatorship or an authoritarian government is closer to the mark. The accusation of fascism might rest on Poland's annexation of part of Czechoslovakia in 1938: two of the three textbooks that mention it associate Poland with Hitler, though one notes that there was a "strong presence of Poles" in the annexed territory.90 None give any historical background of the territorial dispute or note that the government in Prague had rejected a local agreement to divide the region along ethnic lines and had taken the region by military force in 1919. One textbook makes no reference to Pilsudski or interwar Poland at all.91 But the role of Pilsudski in interwar Poland and the popular support he enjoyed cannot be understood without reference to his role in the struggle for independence prior to 1918 and particularly in the Polish-Soviet War, which none of these textbooks discuss. A Polish journalist writing an account of interwar Poland's history suggested it could be entitled "Dmowski and Pilsudski."92 The absence of Dmowski in these textbooks adds to the difficulty of conveying a meaningful understanding of this period of Polish history. |
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In connection with World War II, only one textbook makes reference to that notorious myth of Polish romantic fatalism, Polish cavalry battling German tanks: "Polish cavalry on horseback, with sword and lance, fighting in the same campaign that introduced German Panzer tanks." [In fact, all of the western democracies, including the United States, had cavalry divisions among their armed forces at that time.] The same textbook speaks of "one of the most hellish aspects of total war—the attack upon civilian populations." It notes that in Warsaw "the Luftwaffe leveled 15 percent of all buildings . . and killed forty thousand civilians. After two weeks,...Stalin sent the Red Army into eastern Poland. ...Sixty thousand Polish dead and 200,000 Polish wounded were just the beginning of Polish suffering ."93 One textbook refers to "a savage occupation", the killing of "about 3 million Poles," "an inferior race, according to Nazi ideology,...reduced to a docile, illiterate serfdom"; whereas another reports, "Hitler established colonies of Germans in parts of Poland, driving the local people from their land and employing them as cheap labor."94 |
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Just one textbook says anything specific about the Soviet occupation, noting only that "industrialists, union members, professionals, and thousands of others were sent to the Gulag, if not murdered outright." Just two textbooks mention Katyn, where the Soviets massacred over 4,000 Polish prisoners-of-war, mostly reserve officers, in 1940, one saying the killing occurred in 1941.95 Yet, an understanding of Polish history during and after the war is impossible without consideration of the brutality of the Soviet occupation of 1939–1941 and its anti-Polish policy, of which the Katyn massacre, an attempt to eliminate the leadership of a potential Polish opposition, was the most important symbolic event.96 About this event, until nearly the end of its control of Poland, the communist regime officially toed the Soviet line that the Katyn massacre had been the work of Germans in 1941, not of the Soviets in 1940, a propaganda lie that contributed to the undermining of the credibility and legitimacy of the government in the eyes of the Polish population |
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One textbook states "Stalin moved rapidly to recover czarist Russian lands lost in World War I and to push the frontiers of the Soviet Union as far west as possible."97 There is no mention that these "czarist Russian lands" were not inhabited by Russians or that the territory Stalin occupied had been part of the Polish state prior to its partitioning in the eighteenth century. |
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The resistance movements in France, Greece, or Yugoslavia but not in Poland are mentioned in two textbooks, whereas another only characterizes the Polish resistance as united, unlike the movement in Yugoslavia.98 The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 receives a sentence or two in four of the textbooks.99 Only one textbook reports, "Polish exiles broke the German cipher early in the war.100 Yet Polish allied armies fought on all fronts against Nazi Germany, created a remarkable underground state in occupied Poland, and organized resistance to the occupation, resistance which culminated in the Warsaw Uprising that lasted for sixty-three days, the most extensive revolt against Nazi rule anywhere in Europe.101 |
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One textbook puts Polish losses at 123,000–600,000 killed in combat; 530,000 wounded; more than five million civilians killed; about six million total killed. Another textbook prints a color-coded map, which indicates that over ten percent of the population was killed with the total Polish military dead at "850,000 (169,822 as Allies)" and 5,778,000 civilian dead.102 The parenthetical distinction "as Allies" is nowhere explained and remains a mystery, as if the others fell fighting in the enemy's forces. The most striking image of Polish losses is a half-page photograph in one textbook of a devastated street in Warsaw in 1946 accompanied by a long account about Warsaw "as a stark example of extreme destruction and of startling renewal." Prewar Warsaw is characterized "as a metropolitan center of charm and culture, known for its artists and intellectuals and vibrant urban life." An account of the city's destruction closes with the statement that "By the end of 1944, Warsaw was no more than a heap of rubble with almost 90 percent of its buildings destroyed...Warsaw became known as 'the vanished city.'" The author then describes the rebuilding of the city: "The achievement of historical preservation was astounding. By 1951 a large part of the city had been rebuilt, perhaps one of the best examples of how Europeans met the postwar challenge of urban reconstruction and economic revival."103 |
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All of the textbooks have a separate section on the Holocaust and include non-Jewish Poles or Slavs among its victims.104 One text specifically states that "In Poland, the SS murdered nobility, clergy, and intellectuals and relocated hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens to forced labor camps."105 In a discussion of "Museums and Memory," this textbook also reports that the "museum at Auschwitz creates a Polish memory of the Holocaust by emphasizing the millions of Poles who died."106 It might have noted that the communist regime in Poland fostered this nationalist propaganda line as part of the legitimization of its authority and that since 1989 the character of the museum at Auschwitz has changed.107 According to one textbook, Poles served as concentration camp guards along with Germans and Ukrainians, and yet the textbook includes "members of the Polish...leadership" among the victims.108 Although individual Poles may have served as guards, particularly those who claimed to be Volksdeutsche, the Nazis did not actively recruit Poles for this work. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, the largest act of Jewish resistance under Nazi occupation, is noted by four of the textbooks, one citing the wrong year.109 |
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Italy, Denmark, France, Raoul Wallenberg and, even Oscar Schindler are mentioned as having concealed or protected Jews, but not Poland.110 Yet according to the Israeli Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority Yad Vashem, Poland has the highest number of individuals recognized as Righteous Among Nations for their efforts to save Jews from the Holocaust, fully twenty-nine percent of the total as of January 1, 2003.111 In addition, non-Jewish Poles formed an organization unique in Nazi-occupied Europe specifically to aid Jews, Zegota, a cryptonym for the Council for Aid to Jews, which is commemorated at both Yad Vashem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.112 In Warsaw alone, over 10,000 Jews survived the German occupation by hiding outside the confines of the ghetto.113 This could hardly have been accomplished without the assistance of a large number of non-Jewish Poles. |
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One textbook differs significantly from the others and even from its own earlier editions in its treatment of the Holocaust. It precedes a discussion of the destruction of the Jews with a survey of the history of the Jews of Poland before 1939.114 According to the author, this was done "in recognition that the Holocaust had become a unit in many Western Civilization courses in which the book is assigned."115 The section begins by stating, "A large Jewish community had dwelled within Polish lands for centuries, often in a climate of religious and cultural anti-Semitism."116 Concerning the interwar period, it asserts, "Discrimination against Jews, if not outright persecution, persisted.... The new Polish government defined the nation in terms of Polish ethnic nationalism, [which]...defined Jews as outside the Polish nation."117 A section entitled "Polish AntiSemitism Between the Wars," begins with the assertion that "the Polish government, supported by spokesmen for the Polish Roman Catholic Church, pursued policies that were anti-Semitic."118 Following examples of discriminatory laws and practices, the textbook states, "The path of assimilation into the larger culture...hit a dead end in Poland because Poles generally refused to regard even secular, assimilated Jews as fellow Poles."119 After the Holocaust, "The tiny minority of Polish Jews who had survived faced bitter anti-Semitism under the postwar Soviet-dominated government. Many immigrated to Israel.... The largest Jewish community in Europe had virtually ceased to exist."120 In attempting to explain the Holocaust, the textbook cites Jedwabne, where "local Poles themselves turned against their Jewish neighbors in outbursts of localized anti-Semitic violence...[that] killed approximately 1,600 Jewish inhabitants of the town. This horrendous incident clearly suggests that although most of the atrocities against the Jews were carried out by Nazis, there existed a climate of either indifference or outright support in part of Poland as well as in other parts of Nazi-occupied Europe."121 |
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Here again interwar Poland, including Polish-Jewish relations, cannot be understood without reference to the conflicting conceptions of the nation and the state of the followers of Pilsudski and of Dmowski, though no doubt in the 1930s and especially after Pilsudski's death in 1935, Dmowski's anti-Semitism came to dominate. Nevertheless, the placement of a discussion of the history of the Polish Jewish community prior to 1939 in a chapter on World War II and in a section on the Holocaust, with the section on "Polish Anti-Semitism between the Wars" immediately preceding the section on "The Nazi Assault on the Jews of Poland" seems likely to suggest to students a cause and effect relationship. Meanwhile, a discussion of Nazi policies toward the Jews in Germany prior to 1939 is placed more than forty pages earlier. The impression conveyed is that the Holocaust followed more logically from Polish antiSemitism than from that of Hitler and the Nazis.122 Finally, the account of Polish anti-Semitism, and of the case of Jedwabne as an example of support for the atrocities against the Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland, would be enriched by the counter example of Zegota. It should also be noted that the scholarship on which the account of events in Jedwabne is based is disputed and has provoked a wide debate in Polish intellectual circles, both pro and con.123 |
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The textbooks say little about Poland and the conferences during World War II of the Big Three, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin.124 Two of the textbooks note that the territory the Soviet Union gained from Poland once belonged to Russia or was vital for its security.125 This implicit justification of Soviet imperialism is not matched by any discussion of the dispute over Poland's independence as a factor in the start of the Cold War.126 The records of the conferences at Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdam clearly indicate that disputes over Poland played a large role, disputes over its future government and over its postwar borders.127 Yalta in particular came to symbolize the West's betrayal of the independence of Poland and other countries of Eastern Europe. |
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Decisions made by the Big Three, recognizing the annexation of Polish territory by the Soviet Union and the administration of German territory up to the Oder and Neisse Rivers by Poland, resulted in the forced resettlement of millions, causing untold suffering and death for many innocent victims: for Poles expelled from the territory lost to the Soviet Union, for Ukrainians sent from Poland to Soviet Ukraine, and for Germans moved from the territory Poland gained from Germany. Concerning these expulsions and migrations that followed the war, several textbooks note that from hundreds of thousands to 1.5 million Poles fled or were forced to leave the Soviet Union, that Germans and Ukrainians were expelled from Poland, and that 3 to 3.5 million Poles migrated to the new (formerly German) western and northern territories.128 One textbook also reports,
Many surviving Jews often had no home to return to, as property had been confiscated and entire communities destroyed. Moreover, anti-Semitism had become official policy under the [Nazi occupation just ended]. In the summer of 1946, a vicious crowd in Kielce, Poland, rioted against returning Jewish survivors, killing at least 40 of the 250. Elsewhere in eastern Europe, such violence was common.129
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According to one textbook, "In Poland the Communists fixed the election results of 1945 and 1946 to create the illusion of approval for communism. Nevertheless, the Communists had to share power between 1945 and 1947 with the popular Peasant Party of Stanislaw Mikolajczyk."130 In another textbook we learn, "The Communist-led provisional government did not hold elections until 1947, when its coalition received 80.1 percent of the vote and Western protests arose that the elections had not been fair."131 Other textbooks also state that "there was an outcry by the western Allies" or that for Americans "Soviet power in eastern Europe proved to be a bitter disappointment."132 In fact, there were no elections in 1945 or 1946, though the "Communist-led provisional government" held a referendum in 1946 to satisfy western demands for early elections and to test its ability to falsify the results. The election that was finally held in January 1947 was accompanied by a campaign of violence and repression directed against the noncommunist opposition, and the communist claim to 80.1 percent of the vote was fraudulent.133 |
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Although all the textbooks mention the events of 1956 in Poland and one notes that they inspired the Hungarian rebellion, only one textbook gives a more detailed account of the events in Poland.134 Yet, these events marked a turning point in the history of communist Poland and set an example for the other satellites within the Soviet orbit. Although the hopes for democratization in Poland faded, full-blown Stalinism never returned.135 There is also no reference to the student and intellectual revolt in Poland in 1968 or the power struggle within the party that found expression in an anti-Semitic campaign, although these developments, together with the crushing of the Prague Spring, were crucial to the final disillusionment with communist ideology among leading intellectuals in Poland.136 The workers' protests of 1970 and 1976 are mentioned in a sentence in three of the textbooks.137 Other forms of resistance are mentioned in only two textbooks: in the late 1960s "Polish high school and university students created Michnik Clubs...to study Western political theory, science, and economics"; and in 1980 intellectuals formed the Workers' Defense Committee (KOR) and joined with workers in demanding reforms.138 In fact, KOR originated in 1976 in response to the regime's repression following the workers' protests of that year. The remarkable development of a civil society in eastern Europe, particularly in Poland, so unlike voter apathy and alienation common in the democracies of the western world, deserves some attention.139 Reference to the intellectual ferment of this period, to the political and philosophical theories of Leszek Kolakowski (who recently won the first John W. Kluge Prize awarded by the Library of Congress), Jacek Kuron, and Adam Michnik could stimulate discussion among students and raise questions about their own society.140 |
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One textbook gives more attention than the others to the role of Pope John Paul II in the birth of Solidarity and the defeat of communism. Only two other textbooks mention the Pope in connection with Solidarity, though one seems to mix the chronology as if Solidarity preceded Karol Wojtyla's election as Pope, and one other mentions the support of the Catholic Church for Solidarity.141 Certainly, the role of the Catholic Church, and in particular that of the Polish Pope, in the coming of Solidarity deserves more attention.142 The birth of Solidarity gets relatively extensive coverage in four of the textbooks, and all of them note the leadership of Lech Walesa, only one adding the name of Anna Walentynowicz, a free trade union activist whose dismissal triggered the initial strike at the Gdansk shipyard in August 1980.143 One textbook gives an account of other changes in 1980–1981, including attempts at reform within the Polish Communist party.144 One textbook prints fifteen (out of twenty-one) of the "Demands of the Solidarity Workers."145 Four of the textbooks cite as reasons for the imposition of martial law a desire to prevent Soviet intervention, to save the Polish Communist party, and to preserve the position of the military.146 One textbook states only that Solidarity was "banned but continued underground," whereas another makes no reference at all to the imposition of martial law.147 Credit for limiting the government's repression during martial law, according to two textbooks, must go to the government's need for "new loans from the U.S.-led bloc" or the threat of NATO to end détente.148 However, the strength of the opposition of Polish society and the unsuccessful efforts of the government to divide that opposition are not discussed, though they better explain the limited nature of the government's repression. |
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All of the textbooks mention Poland first among the countries where revolutions occurred in 1989, though two textbooks give no details, mentioning only that Solidarity negotiated reforms.149 Only two textbooks refer to the strikes of 1988 that convinced many in the government to come to terms with the leaders of Solidarity.150 Whereas three textbooks misleadingly speak of free elections to parliament, one notes correctly that only the Senate was freely elected but wrongly refers to the lower house, in which a majority of seats were designated for the Communist party and its allies, as "nonelected."151 Despite the huge number of books in English published on Solidarity, none of the textbooks includes a book specifically on Poland in the 1980s and only one on the post-1989 period in its lists of suggested readings at the end of the chapter.152 |
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References to postwar cultural and social developments in Poland are rare in these textbooks. One textbook, however, includes a photograph of "Zbigniew Cybulski, the Polish James Dean," places Andrzej Wajda among those "existentialist philosophers and other cinema directors...[who] captured the debate over human values and the interest in young heroes of the postwar era," mentions Stanislaw Lem's novel Solaris as an example of science fiction in Eastern Europe, and reprints a photograph of "bloki" in Poland as an example of "slapdash, cheap buildings with far less than one room per person [that] went up from England to Eastern Europe."153 The only other cultural reference to Poland in any of these textbooks is to a play staged by Jerzy Grotowsky [instead of Grotowski].154 As for social developments, one textbook cites Poland as an example of how things got worse for women after the fall of communism, where "the reinvigorated Roman Catholic Church has reaffirmed its uncompromising stand against birth control and abortion."155 This same textbook notes in its epilogue that "The Polish-born Pope John Paul II, a trained philosopher and former anti-Communist,...periodically reminds his vast audience of the needs of the poor in a world bent on becoming rich."156 |
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Conclusion | |
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The tragedy of September 11, 2001, called attention to the importance for the United States of the non-Western world. A little over a year later, the president of the American Historical Association (AHA) wondered if the time for the study of European history had passed as more institutions required students to take world history than the history of Western Civilization.157 As the coauthor of a leading Western Civilization text-book, she admitted that "European history was in fact hardly ever European" because most specialists in modern European history "focus on just one of the major nation-states." The European history curriculum was "still dominated by American concerns that date to World War I and II," and as a result European history was being taught as "French, German, British, and more rarely Spanish or Italian history."158 The fact is that the authors of Western Civilization textbooks are most often specialists in French, German, or British history.159 Few have any interest in the history of Eastern Europe or pay any attention to the works increasingly available in English on the area, as indicated in the unsystematic citations in this essay. Perhaps the inadequate presentation of Western Civilization has something to do with its decline as a subject. |
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My survey of the place of Eastern Europe in recently published Western Civilization textbooks using Poland as a test case has shown that the rise of the Solidarity Trade Union and the fall of communism did not bring about a radical change in the situation. What references there are to Poland are often misleading or inaccurate and certainly incomplete. None of the textbooks provide a sustained narrative of Polish history, none attempt to connect the infrequent and miniscule dots they allot to Polish history. Instead, Poland continues to appear in history "from time to time," as a student observed decades ago. More than a half-century after the start of the Cold War and fifteen years after the fall of communism in eastern Europe, the emphasis in Western Civilization textbooks on Western Europe plus Russia remains at best merely "a pedagogical convenience." It fails to present the full panoply of the history of Western Civilization in all its variety. |
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It might be argued that it is not the mission of Western Civilization textbooks to explore national histories and that one has only so many pages to devote to the subject, not enough to cover the history of Poland and the other marginalized countries of Eastern Europe. But the textbooks reviewed here do in fact, as the AHA president observed, focus on the national histories of selected western European countries, narrating events that often had little influence on the development of Western Civilization in general. They may illustrate how Western Civilization manifested itself in practice, but so do events in Poland. The notion that the history of Britain, France, and Germany somehow are more representative of Western Civilization merely reflects a history of identifying Western Civilization with these countries. Poland is part and parcel of Western Civilization, and its history obviously reflects the impact of Western Civilization in a way worth noting. The way in which Western Civilization developed in Poland had an impact at times in neighboring countries, with Polish nationalism in the nineteenth century and Poland's role in the Soviet bloc as prime examples of this impact. |
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What is to be done? The solution lies in moving away from the practice of writing the history of Western Civilization in terms of a select circle of countries to a more thematic approach. Over forty years ago Palmer showed how to integrate events in Eastern Europe, including Poland, into a history of the revolutionary era at the end of the eighteenth century. A quarter of a century ago James H. Billington did the same for the revolutionary movements of the nineteenth century. It is certainly worth exploring in a Western Civilization textbook how the ideas of the Enlightenment work out in different ways in different places during the revolutionary period 1776–1815. Is it not worth asking in what ways did the manifestations of nationalism differ in national states and empires, in nations with states and in nations, like the Polish nation, without a state? What are the effects of the application of the Western idea of national self-determination in an ethnically mixed region such as eastern Europe following World War I? How does the role that Poland played in the Soviet Bloc and in the fall of communism illustrate some core values of Western Civilization? Such questions pose a great challenge for the writers of textbooks who seem little interested in the history of Poland or the rest of Eastern Europe. They would better serve students of Western Civilization and their instructors if they rose to this challenge than if they continued their current approach. |
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Notes
* Editor's Note: The author's use of proper Polish characters in this article unfortunately could not be replicated in the software program used for typesetting The History Teacher; therefore the closest equivalent has been used in each place. Author's Note: I wish to thank Professor Richard H. Wilde and an anonymous referee for their comments and suggestions in response to an earlier draft of this article.
1. Larry Wolff, "Teaching 'Eastern Europe' without the Iron Curtain," Perspectives, 31, No. 1 (January 1993), 1, 8, 10–13.
2. Ibid., 1.
3. Ibid. See Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994).
4. Wolff, "Teaching 'Eastern Europe,'" 8.
5. Ibid., 1.
6. Gilbert Allardyce, "The Rise and Fall of the Western Civilization Course," American Historical Review, 87, No. 3 (June 1982), 699.
7. Eugen Weber, "Western Civilization," in Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpret the Past, ed. Anthony Molho and Gordon S. Wood (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1998), 206–8, 214; Allardyce, "Rise and Fall," 695, 699, 702, 706, 708, 716. I wish to thank Stephen E. Wiberley for bringing Imagined Histories to my attention.
8. Martin Malia, "Clio in Tauris: American Historiography on Russia," in Molho and Wood, 419.
9. Dorothy Atkinson, "Soviet and East European Studies in the United States," Slavic Review, 47, No. 3 (Fall, 1988), 406, 411, 412.
10. Quoted in Thaddeus V. Gromada, Report of the New Jersey Governor's Commission on Eastern European and Captive Nation History to Governor Thomas H. Kean and Dr. Saul Cooperman, Commissioner of Education (n.p., 1989), 6. I wish to thank the author for bringing this publication to my attention and furnishing me with a copy.
11. Wolff, "Teaching 'Eastern Europe,'" 10.
12. Allardyce, "Rise and Fall," 717.
13. Piotr S. Wandycz, "The Treatment of East Central Europe in History Textbooks," American Slavic and East European Review, 16, No. 4 (December 1957), 518, 522.
14. Ibid., 515.
15. Gromada, Report, 28.
16. Anna M. Cienciala, "Old and New Views on Modern Poland in Anglo-American History Texts and Scholarly Books," unpublished paper. I wish to thank the author for bringing this paper to my attention and furnishing me with a copy as well as for her other suggestions for this essay.
17. Piotr S. Wandycz, "Teaching Polish History," NewsNet, 37, No. 5 (November 1997), 7. I wish to thank the author for bringing this article to my attention.
18. Volker Berghahn and Charles Maier, "Modern Europe in American Historical Writing," in Molho and Wood, 393–414.
19. Lynn Hunt, Thomas R. Martin, Barbara H. Rosenwein, R. Pochia Hsia, Bonnie G. Smith, The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures, Vol. II: Since 1560 (Boston, New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001); Steven Hause and William Maltby, Western Civilization: A History of European Society (Belmont, California: West/Wadsworth, 1999); Margaret L. King, Western Civilization: A Social and Cultural History, Vol. 2: 1500-The Present (2nd ed.; Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc., 2003); Donald Kagan, Steven Ozment, Frank M. Turner, The Western Heritage, Vol. 2: Since 1648 (8th ed.; Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2003); Mark Kishlansky, Patrick Geary, Patricia O'Brien, Civilization in the West (5th ed.; New York: Longman, 2003); Anthony Esler, The Western World: A Narrative History, Vol. 2: 1600s to the Present (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1997).
20. Lynn Hunt, personal correspondence, December 16, 2002.
21. Hunt, The Making of the West, 688, 700, 712.
22. Hause, 552, 559, 560. The quotes are on 560 and 559, respectively
23. King, 497.
24. Kamilla Mrozowska, "Educational Reform in Poland during the Enlightenment," in Constitution and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Poland: The Constitution of 3 May 1791, ed. Samuel Fiszman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 125; see also Ambroise Jobert, La Commission d'Éducation Nationale en Pologne 1773–1794). Son oeuvre d'instruction civique (Paris: Libraire Droz, 1941).
25. Kagan, 617–18; See also the 7th edition, 2001. All references are to the 8th edition unless otherwise indicated; Kishlansky, 581, 594–596; Esler, 392.
26. Kagan, 622.
27. Hunt, The Making of the West, 641; King, 425; Hause, 509
28. See Józef Andrzej Gierowski, The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the XVIIIth Century: From Anarchy to Well-Organized State (Cracow: Nakladem Akademii Umiejetnosci, 1996).
29. King, 579, 429.
30. R.R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution, 1760–1800: A Political History of Europe and America, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959–64).
31. Hunt, The Making of the West, 724, 726, 729–30, 754–55.
32. James H. Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith (New York: Basic Books, 1980), 167.
33. Hause, 582, 601; Kagan, 617–18, 662. A description of the reforms of 1791, referred to as "too little too late" that appeared in the 7th edition, 2001, of Kagan, 652, was dropped in the 8th edition.
34. Rett R. Ludwikowski, "The Main Principles of the First American, Polish, and French Constitutions Compared," in Fiszman, 309–27.
35. Jörg K. Hoensch, "Citizen, Nation, Constitution: The Realization and Failure of the Constitution of 3 May 1791 in Light of Mutual Polish-French Influence," in Fiszman, 439.
36. Gierowski, 255–59; Jerzy Michalski, "The Meaning of the Constitution of 3 May," in Fiszman, 251–86; Zbigniew Szczaska, "The Fundamental Principles Concerning the Political System of the 3 May 1791 Government Statute," in ibid., 287–328.
37. Billington, 167.
38. Reprinted in Stephen Fischer-Galati, ed., Man, State, and Society in East European History (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970), 151.
39. Hause, 599; Esler, 457; King, 604; Kagan, 682; Kishlansky, 662, 715.
40. Billington, 129.
41. Kishlansky, 714–16.
42. The classic study by Harold Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna: A Study in Allied Unity: 1812–1822 (New York: Viking Press, 1946), 164–81, devotes a chapter to "The Polish Negotiations."
43. Esler, 509; Kagan, 707, 725–28.
44. Kagan, 725, 727.
45. Hunt, The Making of the West, 825–26; Kishlansky, 731.
46. Billington, 161; see also Andrzej Walicki, Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism: The Case of Poland (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 247–76.
47. Hunt, The Making of the West, 825.
48. Ibid., 825–26; see also Kishlansky, 731.
49. Esler, 511.
50. Hause, 686. Mickiewicz should be mentioned in all textbooks according to Wandycz, "The Treatment of East Central Europe," 520.
51. Hunt, The Making of the West, 831; Esler, 552; King, 723, 741; Hause, 643; Kishlansky, 723
52. Peter Brock, Polish Revolutionary Populism: A Study in Agrarian Socialist Thought from the 1830s to the 1850s (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), 4.
53. Billington, 162.
54. Hunt, The Making of the West, 825.
55. The quote is ibid., 825.
56. Billington, 163.
57. Lewis Namier, 1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1964).
58. Kagan, 765.
59. Hunt, The Making of the West, 832.
60. King, 672.
61. Hause, 725; Hunt, The Making of the West, 855–56; Kagan, 602.
62. Wandycz, "The Treatment of East Central Europe," 521, made this same criticism.
63. R.F. Leslie, ed., The History of Poland since 1863 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).
64. Walicki, 367.
65. Piotr S. Wandycz, The Lands of Partitioned Poland, 1795–1918 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974), 275–307; Norman Davies, God's Playground: A History of Poland, Vol. 2: 1795 to the Present (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 52–57.
66. King, 756.
67. Billington, 497–500.
68. Hause, 758, which also mentions the "Herne riots," but does not identify its participants as Polish and gives the wrong date; see John J. Kulczycki, The Foreign Worker and the German Labor Movement: Xenophobia and Solidarity in the Coal Fields of the Ruhr, 1871–1914 (Oxford: Berg, 1994), 117–53.
69. King, 716.
70. Hunt, The Making of the West, 914.
71. Kishlansky, 794.
72. King, 726–27; Kagan, 865; Hunt, The Making of the West, 947; Kishlansky, 796; Esler, 560, 732.
73. Rudolf Jaworski and Bianka Pieterow-Ennker, eds., Women in Polish Society (Boulder, Colorado: East European Monographs, 1992).
74. Kishlansky, 880.; Hunt, The Making of the West, 996. See also, Anna M. Cienciala, "Józef Pilsudski w anglo-amerykanskich informatorach i podrecznikach historycznych po drugiej wojnie swiatowej: Zagadnienie mitu-stereotypu negatywnego," in Polskie mity polityczne XIX i XX wieku, ed. Wojciech Wrzesinski (Wroclaw: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wroclawskiego, 1994), 167, 169, 171, 172, 179 for similar examples.
75. Piotr S. Wandycz, "General Weygand and the Battle of Warsaw of 1920," Journal of Central European Affairs, 19, No. 4 (1960), 362; see also Davies, God's Playground, II, 397, 401.
76. Kishlansky, 880; Esler, 609; Hause, 804; Hunt, The Making of the West, 993. See also Anna M. Cienciala, "Historiografia anglosaska o wojnie polsko-sowieckiej i zwyciestwie polskim nad Armia Czerwona w 1920 r.," in Anna M. Cienciala and Piotr S. Wandycz, Wojna Polsko-Bolszewicka 1919–1920 w ocenach histoyków (Warsaw: Instytut Józefa Pilsudskiego w Nowym Yorku, 2003), 41–54, which the author kindly brought to my attention.
77. Hunt, The Making of the West, 999.
78. Kagan, 920; King, 766, speaks of German "territorial concessions"; see also Hunt, The Making of the West, 1000; Esler, 613; Kishlansky, 880, 917.
79. Hause, 811.
80. Hunt, The Making of the West, 1004; Esler, 484.
81. Kagan, 921; Esler, 635; without noting the minorities in other countries.
82. Jerzy Tomaszewski, "The National Question in Poland in the Twentieth Century," in The National Question in Europe in Historical Context, ed. Mikulás Teich and Roy Porter (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 306.
83. For more examples, see Cienciala, "Józef Pilsudski," 167–194.
84. Kagan, 952
85. Hunt, The Making of the West, 1004.
86. Hause, 820.
87. Joseph Rothschild, Pilsudski's Coup d'état (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), 42–44.
88. Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974), 3–25.
89. Esler, 635; King, 809; Hunt, The Making of the West, 1042; Hause, 838.
90. King, 818; Esler, 649; Kagan, 1002.
91. Kishlansky.
92. Leslie, 149.
93. Hause, 845–46..
94. King, 820; Kagan, 1008–9; see also Kagan, 998.
95. Hunt, The Making of the West, 1058; King, 821; Hause, 846.
96. Jan T. Gross, Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia (2nd ed.; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002); J.K. Zawodny, Death in the Forest: The Story of the Katyn Forest Massacre (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1962).
97. Esler, 651.
98. Hause, 854; Kishlansky, 921; Hunt, The Making of the West, 1058.
99. Hause, 858; Hunt, The Making of the West, 1061; King, 823; Kagan, 1030.
100. King, 821.
101. Stanislaw Okecki, ed., Polish Resistance Movement in Poland and Abroad 1939–1945 (Warsaw: PWN—Polish Scientific Publishers, 1987); Stefan Korbonski, The Polish Underground State: A Guide to the Underground, 1939–1945 (Boulder, Colorado: East European Quarterly, 1978); Joanna K.M. Hanson, The Civilian Population and the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). In conjunction with the sixtieth anniversary of the uprising CNN broadcast a documentary, "Warsaw Rising: The Forgotten Soldiers of World War II" in June 2004.
102. Hause, 859; Hunt, The Making of the West, 1065.
103. Kishlansky, 954–55.
104. Hause, 862; King 824; Kishlansky, 924; Esler, 664–65
105. Hunt, The Making of the West, 1052–53.
106. Ibid., 1056–57.
107. Jonathan Huener, Auschwitz, Poland, and the Politics of Commemoration, 1945–1979 (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2003).
108. Kishlansky, 925.
109. Hunt, The Making of the West, 1052–54; Esler, 664–65; Kishlansky, 926; Hause, 863, gives the wrong year, 1942.
110. Hause, 862; Esler, 665; King, 826; Hunt, The Making of the West, 1059.
111. See <http://www.yad-vashem.org.il>.
112. Ibid.; Irene Tomaszewski and Teckla Werbowski, Zegota: the Council for Aid to Jews in Occupied Poland, 1942–45 (Montreal: Price-Patterson, 1999); Teresa Prekerowa, Zegota: Commission d'aide aux Juifs (Monaco: Rocher, 1999); Sy Rotter and Eli Wallach, Zegota: Council for Aid to Jews in Occupied Poland, 1942–1945 (Washington, D.C.: Documentaries International Film & Video Foundation, 1998), videorecording.
113. Gunnar S. Paulsson, Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940–1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002).
114. Kagan, 1018–20. The topic first appeared in the 7th edition, 1042–44: see xxvii of the 7th edition.
115. Frank M. Turner, personal correspondence, October 28, 2003.
116. Kagan, 1018.
117. Ibid., 1018–19.
118. Ibid., 1020.
119. Ibid., 1020.
120. Ibid., 1020.
121. Ibid., 1022.
122. Ibid., 975–77, 1020.
123. Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Antony Polonsky and Joanna B. Michlic, eds., The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
124. See also, Anna M. Cienciala, "The Polish Government's Policy on the Polish-Soviet Frontier in World War II as Viewed by American, British and Canadian Historians," Polish Review, 46, No. 1 (2001), 3–26.
125. Esler, 671–673; Kishlansky, 939, 943–44.
126. Lynn Etheridge Davis, The Cold War Begins: Soviet-American Conflict over Eastern Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974).
127. See the relevant volumes of Foreign Relations of the United States published by the United States Government Printing Office.
128. Hause, 896–97; Kagan, 1086; Hunt, The Making of the West 1072; Kishlansky, 957.
129. Hunt, The Making of the West, 1073.
130. Ibid., 1075.
131. Hause, 900.
132. Esler, 673; Kishlansky, 942.
133. John Micgiel, "'Bandits and Reactionaries': The Suppression of the Opposition in Poland, 1944–1946," in The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Eruope, 1944–1949 (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), 93–110; Andrzej Paczkowski, The Spring Will be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003).
134. Esler 678; Kishlansky, 947; King, 875; Hause, 937; Hunt, The Making of the West, 1090; Kagan, 1049–50.
135. Flora Lewis, A Case History of Hope: The Story of Poland's Peaceful Revolutions (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1958); Hansjakob Stehle, The Independent Satellite: Society and Politics in Poland since 1945 (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965).
136. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, 321–35.
137. Hause, 937; Hunt, The Making of the West, 1167; Kishlansky, 992.
138. Hunt, The Making of the West, 1135, 1167; Kishlansky, 993.
139. David Ost, Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-Politics: Opposition and Reform in Poland since 1968 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990).
140. Adam Michnik, Letters from Prison and Other Essays (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1985); Barbara J. Falk, The Dilemmas of Dissidence in East-Central Europe: Citizen Intellectuals and Philosopher Kings (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2003).
141. Kagan, 1064, 1103–4; Hunt, The Making of the West, 1167; Hause, 937; Kishlansky, 993.
142. Adam Michnik, The Church and the Left (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
143. Hunt, The Making of the West, 1166–67 Kagan, 1064–65; Hause, 937–38; Kishlansky, 992–93; King, 876, gives fewer details; Esler, 683, still fewer; on Walentynowicz, see Hunt, The Making of the West, 1166.
144. Kagan, 1064–65. See George Sanford, Polish Communism in Crisis (London: Croom Helm, 1983).
145. Hause, 938.
146. Hunt, The Making of the West, 1166–67; Kishlansky, 993; Kagan, 1065; Hause, 937.
147. Esler, 683; King.
148. Hunt, The Making of the West, 1166–67; Hause, 937.
149. Esler, 685, 713; King, 877.
150. Kagan, 1069; Kishlansky, 993.
151. Kagan, 1069; Hunt, The Making of the West, 1169; Kishlansky, 993, 995; Hause, 942.
152. Kishlansky, 1013.
153. Hunt, The Making of the West, 1100, 1116, 1087l
154. Esler, 744.
155. King, 886.
156. Ibid., 903.
157. Lynn Hunt, "Is European History Passé?" Perspectives, 40, No. 8 (November 2002), 5.
158. Ibid., 6.
159. The authors of the sections on the modern history of Western Civilization surveyed here include four specialists in French history, two in British history, and one in Renaissance Italy.
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