Toward the Idea of Polishness: Implications of 1918 for the Former Eastern Galicia, 1918–1939
Toward the Idea of Polishness: Implications of 1918 for the Former Eastern Galicia, 1918–1939

Summary/Abstract: The paper analyzes the Polish literary discourse on the former Habsburg province ofGalicia, developing after the restoration of Poland’s independence (1918) and the Polishvictory in the Polish-Ukrainian War of Eastern Galicia (1918–1919). Before WWI, especiallybefore the epoch of Galician autonomy (1867–1914), the prevailing discourse on the provincewas imbued by the idea of multi- and transnationalism grounded upon the Habsburg politicalculture. After the war, when Galicia became a part of the reborn Poland, the discoursepertaining to the region underwent a fundamental change. In the interwar Polish literature,the idea of multi- and transnational Galicia was a subject of specific transfers: sometimes ina continuative, usually, however, in a deconstructive version. Namely, it was disassembledand its components, referring to a revised political context, were ideologically used tostrengthen the representation of reality from the exclusive, Polish point of view. The paperfocuses on literary representations of the Polish-Ukrainian War of Eastern Galicia. It discussesthe stages of the aforementioned disassemblement, from the idea of Polish-Ruthenian“brotherhood” to the vision of Polish-Polish brotherhood, i.e. the homogenous Polishnation, from which the Others (Ukrainians, Jews and Austrians), depicted as enemies, wereexcluded with no exception. Such a vision prevailed in the Polish literature up until 1939;it has also had its continuations nowadays.

• Details
• Contents