Relativization of the History by the Austrian Socialists in Polish Comments
Relativization of the History by the Austrian Socialists in Polish Comments

Summary/Abstract: Austrian socialists and their attitude to the past, or neglect that took place in the 1970s and 1980s, were gradually appearing in the Polish public sphere due to reprints from foreign press services. The aim of the study was to determine whether and to what extent the topic of Austrian denazification occurred in communist Poland, whether the Poles were interested in the problem of settlements and how they commented on them. Research questions focus on: the quality of comments on the group of Austrian socialists in the Polish public sphere; perpetuating the images of post-war Austria in the Polish public discourse; circumstances in which denazification affairs were described, as well as the historical and political background of this process. The research method adopted was content analysis in the qualitative dimension. The population (data corpus) is press, journals, serial and archival documents. The subject of the study were Polish comments on the denazification process in Austria, and in particular the socialist influence on its course. With reference to the times of the Second World War in Austria, for a few decades, one rhetoric vision prevailed, but from time to time an alternative vision was formulated. In the Polish public discourse, references to this alternative vision do not occur. The applied “metaphorical scenarios” referred to by Polish publicists speak about situations of “healing” the state by the first generation of politicians involved in the creation of the Second Republic. Austrians were defined as victims in the great community of victims, without the need to explain the Holocaust.

• Details
• Contents