THE SARMATIAN REVIEW Vol. XXXV, No. 2 ______April 2015
Zbigniew Romaszewski: RIP
Zbigniew Romaszewski (1940–2014) at home in Warsaw. Courtesy of Trzecia Strona Publishers (www.trzeciastrona.pl).
April 2015 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW
2014): A Life in Human Rights ...... 1911 The Sarmatian Review (ISSN 1059- Dariusz Skórczewski, Between clichés and erasure: 5872) is a triannual publication of the Polish Institute of Eastern and Central non-Germanic Europe as an Houston. The journal deals with Polish, Central, and Eastern European affairs, and it explores their implications empty syntagm in contemporary public for the United States. We specialize in the translation of discourse...... 1919 documents. Sarmatian Review is indexed in the American MORE BOOKS : Piotr Skwieciński’s Romaszewscy Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies, EBSCO, and Maja Trochimczyk’s Slicing the Bread . . . . 1931 and P.A.I.S. International Database. From January 1998 on, Joseph A. Kotarba, The Long Way Home: An files in PDF format are available at the Central and Eastern American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War European Online Library (www.ceeol.com). Subscription (review)...... 1932 price is $21.00 per year for individuals, $28.00 for John Guzlowski, In Paradise (review) ...... 1933 institutions and libraries ($28.00 for individuals, $35.00 for Letter to the Editor ...... 1934 libraries overseas, air mail). The views expressed by authors of articles do not necessarily represent those of the THANK YOU NOTE ...... 1934 Editors or of the Polish Institute of Houston. Articles are subject to editing. Unsolicited manuscripts and other materials are not returned unless accompanied by a self- addressed and stamped envelope. Please submit your contribution electronically and, if requested, send a printout Worth remembering: by air mail. Submissions and Letters to the Editor can be emailed to
In this issue: SR Data ...... 1909 Eric Chenoweth, Zbigniew Romaszewski (1940–
1908 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2015
Sarmatian Review Data
Quote of the year “If Crimea is Russian, then Russia itself is Mongolian . . . and should return most of its territory to Mongolia and Kazakhstan.” Source: Belarus president Aleksandr Lukashenko, as quoted by Belarus Digest, 15 October 2014
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prison, protestors mowed down by water cannon and beaten by riot police. A long black night had Zbigniew Romaszewski fallen on Poland after sixteen months of unheard-of freedom in a communist country, (1940-2014) freedom brought about by a unique movement A Life in Human Rights allying workers, students, intellectuals, farmers, and artists. It was a movement born from years Eric Chenoweth of human rights work by, among others, Zbigniew Romaszewski and his wife and partner, Zofia. first came to know about Zbigniew I Romaszewski while working for the –––––– Committee in Support of Solidarity, based in In August 1980 in Poland, millions of New York. The Committee was established by workers joined together in the largest and Polish opposition veterans Irena Lasota, Jakub most consequential national strike in the Karpinski and several others who were in the annals of international trade unionism. United States, either as exiles or by circumstance, on December 13, 1981. In the –––––– early morning hours of that day General The Committee’s other job was to shine light not Wojciech Jaruzelski imposed a martial law just on the regime’s repression but also on regime on Poland. In fact, Jaruzelski invoked the Solidarity’s organized resistance to martial law. constitution’s provision for stan wojenny, a state The Romaszewskis were among hundreds of of war, a provision intended to rebuff external activists and leaders who had escaped arrest and invasion. At the time, however, the provision were busy putting into place the plans the was employed to destroy the threat to Solidarity movement had made for such a communist rule posed by Solidarność (or circumstance. Workers and others were actively Solidarity), which had arisen in August 1980 to resisting martial law through strikes, unite Polish society in an independent trade demonstrations, wearing outward manifestations union and social movement. Not having any of support for Solidarity such as pins––an act clear constitutional justification, Jaruzelski subject to three years’ imprisonment, recreating effectively declared war on the Polish people, underground union structures at all levels, unleashing tanks, soldiers, truncheon-wielding distributing clandestine publications, and riot police, water cannons, and all other weapons organizing other acts of opposition to the in the police state’s arsenal to destroy Solidarity. regime. Zbigniew Romaszewski was an initial Unlike Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in member of the Regional Coordinating 1968, where the Soviet Union had to invade to Commission of the Mazowsze (greater Warsaw) brutally quell rebellions, in Poland Jaruzelski region, one of the temporary underground acted as a Soviet satrap, using Poland’s own structures of Solidarity organized according to military and police forces to reimpose firm its territorial structure. communist rule. Zbigniew and Zofia Romaszewski were also The Committee in Support of Solidarity was behind one of the more daring acts of early created the next day and I, a young American- opposition to martial law, Radio Solidarność, a born trade union activist and lone non-Pole, series of renegade broadcasts that used became the director. One key part of the temporary transmitters set up on rooftops to Committee’s mission was to chronicle the vast override the main state broadcasts with fifteen to human rights violations being perpetrated by the thirty-minute programs that included government of Poland: tens of thousands announcements by national and regional rounded up in internment camps, tanks rolling Solidarity leaders in hiding, information about over resisting workers (we documented more worker resistance and the fate of those arrested than 100 killed), soldiers occupying factories, and detained in internment camps, and other police closing universities, students taken to
1911 April 2015 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW independent news in a period when state of the trial proceedings. What struck me most at propaganda was trying to convince the Polish the time were the statements of the two main nation that it had been utterly defeated and that it defendants and their colleagues. They all was hopeless to resist. Radio Solidarność, displayed an easy defiance and assurance. They broadcast in every major region of Poland, were not backing down in the face of impending offered tangible proof of the lie that martial law imprisonment. In his speech, Zbigniew had destroyed the workers’ movement. Indeed, Romaszewski told the court of the moral the broadcasts helped to organize important bankruptcy of communism, asserted that the national protests (such as lighting candles in judges lacked legitimacy, and promised further windows at a specified time on the thirteenth of resistance by a society “that had taken a step each month, Italian strikes and work slowdowns, forward in August 1980 and [was] not stepping and other actions that helped reinforce for Poles back.” The Radio Solidarność trial added to the the social bonds they had recreated through Romaszewskis’ growing legend. years of political opposition had survived. The –––––– Committee in Support of Solidarity’s busy documenters, translators, and editors who Today, we view everything as inevitable: published reports of all the dramatic events Solidarity, 1989, the fall of the Soviet Union. taking place in Poland discovered that even In August 1980, nothing was inevitable. Each more than demonstrations and clandestine union worker acted without knowing what the structures, Radio Solidarność was one of the consequences would be. more important proofs for American politicians –––––– and opinion leaders that the union movement was not destroyed. After a life engaged in struggles for human and worker rights, including twenty-two years as the Aside from the technical challenge of acquiring longest- serving elected senator in Polish transmitter equipment and recording the history, Zbigniew Romaszewski died programs, the broadcasts required semiguerilla unexpectedly of a stroke in February 2014 at the tactics, with close calculations for the activists age of seventy-four. His life spanned the twin who set up the transmitters on rooftops in order totalitarian occupations of Poland of the to escape the immediate police dragnet deployed twentieth century and Poland’s reemergence as to find and disarm them. Unfortunately, the an independent, democratic country after 1989. police grew increasingly adept not only in He and his wife Zofia, who survives him, did catching the activists who set up the transmitters much to make that happen and their efforts are but also in closing in on the organizers. Zofia worth recounting as a major contribution to Romaszewski and several activists were arrested anticommunist opposition and democratic in early July 1982, and Zbigniew Romaszewski activism. later that month. They were charged with “continuing union activities after December 13, Both were born in 1940 and survived the Nazi 1981, and disseminating false information occupation: Zbigniew in a concentration camp through the broadcast of Radio Solidarność where his father was killed; Zofia in hiding as about the political situation in Poland that could her parents, one Jewish, participated in the incite unrest and riot.” At the conclusion of their Home Army resistance. They grew up during the famous trial held in February 1983, Zofia dark postwar Stalinist era in which Polish received a sentence of three years’ imprisonment communists, backed by their Soviet overlords, and Zbigniew a term of four and a half years, entrenched totalitarian rule in the newly created while eight other defendants received sentences Polish People’s Republic. At the time, of one to three years. Despite this setback, Radio communism appeared unchangeable and, as Solidarność continued to broadcast, although recounted by Czesław Miłosz in The Captive with less frequency, and an even-more Mind, most intellectuals succumbed to its audacious TV Solidarność was launched. The dictates. Zbigniew and Zofia never did. They Committee in Support of Solidarity reported all both grew up with a deep understanding of
1912 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2015 human rights and of the heritage of Polish that you yourself would go to prison for another— freedom, learned in the privacy of their homes that is very important. from families who had lived in independent The June strikes and repressive aftermath Poland between the world wars and who had sparked the creation of a unique group, the survived the terrible conflagration of World War Workers Defense Committee or KOR, that II. would help end the pattern of failed worker In the mid-1960s they both chose to study rebellions in communist Poland and other physics at Warsaw University—science was one communist bloc countries by helping to bring way to escape and transcend political ideology. together intellectuals and workers in united There they fell in love and formed a lifelong opposition to communist rule. Initially partnership to advance human rights and composed of thirteen veteran opposition freedom—a love story and partnership that intellectuals, KOR openly set out to overcome mirrors those of Andrei Sakharov and Yelena the regime’s (up to then successful) ruling Bonner in the Soviet Union, and Vaclav and strategy of atomizing society and keeping Olga Havel in Czechoslovakia. different groups not only apart but at odds. It was this strategy that had set workers against By the summer of 1976 they had already been students and intellectuals during the 1968 active for several years in Poland’s opposition student protests and that had kept intellectuals movement, taking part in the 1968 student and students from joining workers in the 1970 protests, signing letters and the petition to strikes on the Baltic coast that were brutally change the constitution of the Polish People’s suppressed by police. KOR, which grew to Republic, forming opposition study circles and thirty-three members including the publishing samizdat. It was in 1976, however, Romaszewskis, became a key instrument for that they began to make a distinctive mark by building the future Solidarity movement. organizing support for workers brutally repressed for spontaneous strikes in Radom and –––––– Ursus. The Romaszewskis traveled forty-three During the heady events of 1989 to 1991, times to Radom that summer to get legal what was clear was that the fall of assistance for arrested workers, monitor the communism was the result of millions of court proceedings of those charged, and raise people rising up to determine their fates. material aid for the repressed workers and their families. Zofia described the thinking behind –––––– their actions in an interview for the Bush Some in KOR were elder statesmen of Polish Center’s “Freedom Collection:” opposition whose role was to craft and endorse These were mostly people who never had any run- proclamations, denounce the government for ins with the courts, with any criminal past, they violating the Helsinki Accords, or develop knew nothing about these things, and they were manifestos and resistance strategy. Others completely helpless in the face of the machinery of organized underground publishing houses that coercion in Poland. So, they did not know such aimed at putting out banned literary and things, as what is a defense attorney, where you get scholarly books. Others, like the Romaszewskis one, how do you apply for a food parcel, for mail and Jacek Kuron, joined by his wife, Danuta, to [privileges of prisoners to send and receive mail], name a few, undertook the organizing and active for a jailhouse visit—they were entirely helpless in this whole context. . . . defense of workers who were fed up with government-imposed price increases and wage You know, any movement can become organized controls, the tyranny of enterprise directors, and and be effective when it has some form of the social and workplace manipulation protection. What I mean is, when people are able to engineered by communist-controlled trade organize in such a way, where there is a component of empathetic solidarity, protection, and where unions. people know that it is one for all and all for one— The experiences in Radom led the Romaszewskis to create the Intervention Bureau
1913 April 2015 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW of KOR, a not legal but more formal means for experience, they knew the possible risks: prison, defending citizens’ rights. In taking on this large dismissal from work, police harassment, task, the Romaszewskis and others built a broad retribution against family members, or, worse, network of helpers who educated workers in targeted violence or “liquidation.” Polish international labor rights, documented human workers stood up to demand basic rights and rights violations, found lawyers to defend freedoms knowing the real possibility of the workers arrested or fired from their jobs, ultimate retribution: a Soviet invasion. They did traveled around the country to monitor judicial so because they had taken what Romaszewski proceedings and bring assistance to families of called “that major first step towards freedom”–– imprisoned workers, advised families on how to the belief that it “was one for all, and all for ensure that prison authorities honored the rules one.” for family visits, and generally made sure that –––––– workers knew they were not alone in their struggle against the communist Leviathan. In the end, Polish society used the 1989 Based on the Intervention Bureau’s elections to register an overwhelming documentation, Zbigniew and Zofia launched referendum against communism, electing the Polish Helsinki Commission, which Solidarity candidates by 90 percent of votes produced a famous comprehensive report to the in all but one of the contested elections and 1980 Madrid Review Conference of the Helsinki refusing to vote for most communist party Final Act. candidates. The work of the Romaszewskis, KOR, and other –––––– colleagues was history in the making. Their During the first period of Solidarity’s legal or efforts helped convince more and more people aboveground existence (August 1980 to that they were not alone and that they possibly December 1981), most of the intellectuals in had power by joining together. This sense was KOR were key advisors helping to devise made even more palpable by John Paul II, the strategy. Zbigniew Romaszewski had earned first Polish Pope, who during his inaugural trip enough of the workers’ trust to be elected to the to Poland in 1979 told the millions of people union’s National Commission and its acting who gathered to hear him “to live in truth” and body, the presidium. The Romaszewskis also “not to fear.” The true impact was seen soon organized Solidarity’s “Intervention and thereafter, in August 1980 when millions of Lawfulness Commission,” a way of workers joined together in the largest and most institutionalizing their human rights protection consequential national strike in the annals of mechanism within the trade union. The sixteen- international trade unionism. As the nationwide month period of Solidarity’s first legal existence strikes grew in strength and gained international was often called “the carnival.” The term support, the Polish authorities were forced to reflected the Poles’ joyfulness about their sign the Gdańsk Accords, whose first provision newfound ability to express themselves and recognized the right of workers to create and organize in a relatively free atmosphere. In fact, join independent trade unions of their own however, this period was fraught with constant choosing—a fundamental admission that the tension. The communist hierarchy, still fully in communist government did not represent the control of the state, tried at all points to protect working class. as much of its power as possible and constantly Suddenly, all of Polish society had achieved a tested Solidarity’s and Polish society’s mettle fundamental understanding of social solidarity through police attacks, harassment, dismissals, and willingly took on the power of the targeted enterprise closures, engineered food communist state. Today we view everything as shortages, and military and police maneuvers. inevitable: Solidarity, 1989, the fall of the Soviet The Romaszewskis documented everything Union. In August 1980 nothing was inevitable. and organized a defense system for all acts of Each worker acted without knowing what the repression—legal help, a public spotlight, consequences would be. From previous
1914 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2015 financial aid, material assistance—all while The authorities released Zofia and Zbigniew building a network that could survive a major Romaszewski early, about a year apart in 1984 crackdown. Behind all of the Romaszewskis’ and 1985, as part of “amnesties”—an annual efforts was an understanding that opposing ritual in which the authorities would release dictatorship was not an abstract idea: everything some political prisoners in order to get relief taking place in Poland involved real people, from sanctions imposed by the United States whose lives were often harmed by the risks they and, to a lesser extent, Western Europe. The took to speak up and act on their beliefs. Every Romaszewskis were in no way broken; indeed, day they encountered the true impact that the they remained resolute. But like other released communist system, in all of its repressive and political prisoners, they found themselves in an bureaucratic apparatus, had on ordinary people. odd situation. They were no longer in prison, but They made sure that Solidarity lived up to its they could not go back into hiding or reenter name as a moral creed and never forgot those clandestine Solidarity structures—this would be who took risks and suffered the consequences. too dangerous for their still-underground colleagues. They now had to figure out how to –––––– continue organizing resistance for Solidarity. The transitions in Eastern Europe and the Upon their release, the Romaszewskis did what former Soviet Union have turned out to be came naturally. They recreated the Intervention much less than what human rights activists and Lawfulness Commission in 1985 so as to and leaders hoped for. The revolutionary organize protection and material assistance for chorus of “one for all, all for one” changed to repressed Solidarity members and their families. a cackle of political ambitions and self- The structure was neither legal nor underground, interest, not the least of which were the and its activities were both public and functionaries from the old regime protecting clandestine. Despite the informal nature of the themselves and their associates. structure, the Romaszewskis retained their initial –––––– authority to act from Solidarity’s legal existence. This authority was reinforced by statements by Internally, within the leadership of the union, indeed within all of Polish society, there was a Solidarity’s underground structures and the constant debate over how far to go and what union’s chairman, Lech Wałęsa, who was also outside prison. Despite the formal lifting of would provoke the authorities beyond a breaking point that would result in a crackdown or Soviet martial law and the supposed general nature of invasion. The historical evidence shows that the the amnesties, the scale was now even greater, regime began preparing a crackdown even as it involving thousands of repressed workers who were still frequently detained, sentenced by signed the Gdańsk Accords in August 1980 and that General Jaruzelski carefully directed the administration to large fines, sentenced to plans as they evolved. The Soviet leadership was imprisonment by penal courts, constantly under police surveillance, dismissed from work and regularly informed of these plans, and Soviet threats to invade were meant to prod Jaruzelski unemployable, their children harassed and to take action earlier. In the end, the crackdown prevented from studying at university, and otherwise repressed by the regime. engineered by Jaruzelski was thorough and complete, but ultimately, as Romaszewski Surprisingly, the Polish authorities allowed predicted, it failed to break Solidarity and the Zofia to travel to the United States as part of the Polish people’s resistance. Most Poles had effort to show “liberalization” in exchange for indeed taken “the first major step toward sanctions relief. It was then that the Committee freedom.” As the Romaszewskis proved after in Support of Solidarity’s president, Irena martial law, with enough preparation to resist a Lasota, herself a prison veteran from the 1968 crackdown, Polish society would not take a step student protests, met Zofia for the first time. The back. two women were of a similar age and had similar orientations: they were people of both action and compassion, with common strategies
1915 April 2015 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW for opposing communism through peaceful June 1989. From the evidence, it appears that the means and with similar understandings of the Polish authorities believed they could neuter necessity for helping people who suffered the Solidarity by forcing the movement in a consequences of standing up for human rights. subordinate position in parliament. In the end, Lasota and the Committee had raised money for Polish society used the elections to register an underground Solidarity and directed some of this overwhelming referendum against communism, money to support the Romaszewskis’ network, electing Solidarity candidates by 90 percent first in the broadcasting of Radio Solidarność votes in all but one of the contested elections but also for human rights documentation and and refusing to vote for most communist party social assistance. candidates, denying many a quorum to be elected (required by the regime’s own electoral What was needed now, Zofia argued, was social law) and thereby denying the regime legitimacy protection on a vast scale. Tens of thousands of to rule. Ultimately, as satellite parties defected, workers had been dismissed from their jobs for the communist government was too weakened to union activities. Hundreds were still in prison. survive. The first noncommunist government They and their families needed assistance, which was formed in September 1989. The “springtime the underground Solidarity structures had of nations” revolt by Eastern European countries difficulty organizing. Without such assistance soon followed. there was a danger that the extended period of repression by the communist state would again –––––– break the social bonds of solidarity that had been Before 1989, nearly everyone thought that so important to the union’s existence. The getting rid of communism and bringing Romaszewskis argued that the recreated democracy to Eastern Europe was impossible. Intervention Bureau could act more effectively Afterwards, the same “experts” who had while operating semiopenly since they and their thought such a change impossible declared it network of human rights workers were now able “inevitable”: communism fell because the to travel within Poland with relative ease, no system failed. longer fearing being caught and, given the delicate diplomatic dance of the Polish –––––– authorities with Western governments, unlikely In the June elections Zbigniew Romaszewski ran to be arrested again. The Committee raised a as a candidate in a working-class district of substantial amount of money in the next several Warsaw for a seat in the Senate, a newly created years for this purpose. Other organizations, like upper chamber of parliament that initially had Joan Baez’s Aurora Foundation, also provided limited powers with 100 contested seats. With grants totaling more than $100,000 over three his wife running the campaign, Romaszewski years. Irena Lasota organized channels for the won one of the largest percentages of any delivery of this assistance and the Solidarity candidate. In the years that followed, Romaszewskis developed means for receiving he won re-election six times, serving a total of and distributing the assistance with none of it twenty-two years, the longest-serving member being seized. of parliament after June 1989. Rebuilding these networks of social solidarity During the spring of 1988 the Romaszewskis helped bolster worker resistance. When workers launched another, perhaps even more significant in Nowa Huta, Silesia, and the Baltic Coast initiative. They had long built networks not just again organized well-targeted strikes in summer in Poland but throughout Eastern Europe, 1988, demanding the legal reinstatement of understanding the struggle in Poland to be part Solidarity, the Polish authorities, fearing that the of a broader struggle against Soviet-imposed strikes would again spread nationwide, agreed to communist regimes throughout the region. new negotiations that resulted in the Roundtable Although there were still constant acts of Accords six months later. Not only did the harassment and arrests of activists in their government agree to Solidarity’s legal network, by this time they had been acting for reinstatement, it agreed to semifree elections in
1916 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2015 several years without arrest or serious got under way, the first strikes in Silesia began. retribution. They believed it was now possible to Vandervecken left immediately after his speech be even more bold: to hold an international to join the miners. It is hard to know the direct conference involving human rights activists impact the first International Human Rights from throughout the communist bloc countries Conference in Nowa Huta had in spurring events as well as others, with the aim of fostering a in Eastern Europe, nor the direct impact of the regionwide human rights movement. They second conference the Romaszewskis organized invited hundreds of people from throughout the in Leningrad in 1990 in spurring the downfall of Soviet bloc, Western Europe, and the United the Soviet Union. Certainly many of the States to come to Nowa Huta, a communist- participants went on to become created city built around a steelworks outside parliamentarians, civil society leaders, and even Kraków, to discuss how to bring about prime ministers and presidents of newly free fundamental change with respect to human countries. What we do know, however, is that rights in the region. While there had been cross- this may have been the first time that many border meetings of KOR and Charter 77 of human rights and democracy activists, all with a Czechoslovakia, among others, this was the first similar purpose, had had an opportunity to meet, time that anyone had attempted to organize an talk, craft strategy, and declare for their open forum for human rights activists from countries a common future dedicated to the communist countries. respect of human and worker rights. The Romaszewskis got approval from local –––––– Catholic Church officials to hold the conference The outmigration of more than 5 percent of in a newly built church in Nowa Huta created at the total population––nearly a quarter of the behest of and dedicated to John Paul II, who Poles aged eighteen to forty––is a unique had been bishop and cardinal of the Kraków phenomenon in a developed democratic diocese and had long sought to build a church in country and likely to create enormous what the communists originally conceived as a burdens on future governments. centerpiece to the atheist regime. (The director Andrzej Wajda depicts the creation and socialist –––––– culture of Nowa Huta in the film “Man of Before 1989 nearly everyone thought that Marble.”) The Romaszewskis believed that the getting rid of communism and bringing Polish authorities would not directly intervene to democracy to Eastern Europe was impossible. prevent the conference from being held in this Afterward the same “experts” who had thought church building, called Mistrzejewice; despite such a change impossible declared it the presence of battalions of black-coated secret “inevitable”: communism fell because the policemen outside, they were correct. In the end, system failed. During the heady events of 1989 several hundred activists walked right past the to 1991, however, what was clear was that the battalions to attend the conference. They fall of communism was the result of millions of represented the by-now significant democratic people rising up to determine their fates. They opposition movements in Czechoslovakia, chose to bring about an end to communist Hungary, and the Baltic states; human rights dictatorship and to craft a democratic future, activists from Russia, Romania, and Bulgaria; oriented to Europe and the West, for their and an array of representatives from other countries. Those who organized internal repressed nations and ethnic groups within the opposition to communist regimes knew that any Soviet Union. The general secretary of the change, any transformation, depended on International Confederation of Free Trade individuals standing up to and resisting the Unions, John Vandervecken, and a state’s power and challenging communist representative of the AFL-CIO, teacher and ideology. Without anyone to challenge the union leader Albert Shanker, attended along system, it could have continued much longer. with human rights activists from Western There were many heroes who stood up and Europe and the United States. As the conference resisted. Some are well known internationally,
1917 April 2015 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW like Andrei Sakharov and Vaclav Havel; others, social crises, with political establishments like Zbigniew and Zofia Romaszewski, are unable to present satisfactory solutions to the known in their own countries and even electorate. In Poland, which supposedly has the regionally, but not more widely. Then there are strongest economy of all post-Soviet bloc those who are wholly unknown but, as the countries, 2 million mostly young people have Romaszewskis could attest, whose actions were left their homeland in the last ten years, most the basis of the remarkable change and never to return. The outmigration of more than 5 transformation that took place. These were the percent of the total population––nearly a quarter ordinary workers and members of society who of Poles aged eighteen to forty––is a unique finally decided to stand up and be counted, to phenomenon in a developed democratic country create a new nation based on social solidarity, and likely to create enormous burdens on future joining in the chorus “one for all and all for governments. one.” Many revolutionaries from 1989–91 were either While many Eastern European countries are now incapable of confronting the new challenges of in the EU and NATO, and tied to the West, democratic politics or, worse, were seduced by nevertheless the transitions in Eastern Europe power and money and simply forsook their and the former Soviet Union have turned out to principles and the people they once led. There be much less than what human rights activists were a few, however, who never stopped trying and leaders had hoped for. The revolutionary to fulfill the hopes of 1989. As a senator, chorus of “one for all, all for one” changed to a Zbigniew Romaszewski was among those few. cackle of political ambitions and self-interest, He set about trying to institutionalize human especially regarding the functionaries from the rights into legislation, called for accountability old regime protecting themselves and their for the human rights violations of the communist associates. In the former Soviet Union, most regime, and challenged the new economic countries simply switched from communist orthodoxy of free markets, which seemed to dictatorship to authoritarian rule by KGB benefit mostly old communist officials. Many veterans—Putinism and its variations, rule Solidarity leaders cashed in on the new free protected by a new oligarchic elite of former market in Poland and some became antiunion communists that controlled most of the zealots, but Romaszewski stayed true to his economic assets. In Eastern European countries roots, defending workers against forced closings, there was more development of basic democratic massive unemployment, and lack of social institutions, but in fact a great deal of political services. He sponsored legislation to support life has been stunted and warped by the Solidarity activists who had permanently lost continuing influence of former communist elites jobs and ended up in dire poverty as a result of in public and economic life. their courage under communism. Twenty-five years after World War II most Romaszewski also stayed true to his Western European countries were well internationalism and his belief in the universal developed democracies with stable politics and struggle for human rights and dignity. He economies. Twenty-five years after 1989, remained a champion for freedom throughout Eastern European countries are facing different the former Soviet bloc and worldwide. In 1998 degrees of political turmoil and economic he and Zofia organized a third International distress. No country, not even the most Human Rights Conference, this time hosted in successful Baltic States, has stable political the Polish Sejm, or parliament, building to parties that reflect basic historical and social highlight the unfinished business of human interests in the manner of the Netherlands, rights implementation in postcommunist and France, the United Kingdom, or even post-Nazi still-communist countries including the People’s West Germany in 1970, twenty-five years after Republics of China and Korea and the last the cataclysmic World War II. Today, the Czech unchanged Soviet satellite country, Cuba. Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland Among many other actions, he led international and Romania all face serious economic and efforts to defend helpless Chechens from
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Russian invasion, including organizing a special makers of history. The Romaszewskis’ Senate investigative commission on Chechnya contributions to the struggle for Poland’s and that took him to the war-torn region; advocated Eastern Europe’s freedom are immense, but for Crimean Tatars who were fighting Russian what struck me most about both of them was chauvinism in their homeland in Ukraine after how their sympathy for and commitment to returning from Soviet exile after forty-five others mirrored their personal devotion to and years; carried out human rights investigations of love for each other. It is rare to know individuals crimes in former Yugoslavia; stood up to the whose private and public actions are a consistent new authoritarian regimes in the Caucasus and reflection of principled values and human Central Asia; joined with his human rights morals. The Romaszewskis were such brethren in Russia against the rise of Putinism individuals. and Putin’s reassertion of Russian domination of In 2014 Zofia Romaszewska lost her partner of the former Soviet empire; sponsored and more than forty-five years; their daughter supported the creation of Belsat to offer Agnieszka, who continued in her parents’ Belarusans independent news under the footsteps and currently directs Belsat, has lost a dictatorship of Aleksander Lukashenka; and devoted father and teacher. Poland has lost a traveled with Zofia to Cuba in 2006 to share great hero. I, along with many others in dozens with dissidents the experience of Solidarity. In of countries, have lost a true friend, someone retirement from the Senate, he and Zofia whose values and commitment helped guide us undertook new human rights campaigns, among for thirty years. Zbigniew Romaszewski never them helping the Institute for Democracy in viewed any issue as complicated and was never Eastern Europe, the successor organization to tied up by any ideology. He always stood on the the Committee in Support of Solidarity, to right side, the side of human rights and freedom, monitor elections in Georgia in 2012 that led to wherever and whenever it was needed. I hope the first peaceful and democratic transfer of his legacy continues to guide me and others as power in that country. A month before his death, well. he traveled to Ukraine to register his personal support for the civic Euromaidan movement. Editor’s Note: In 2014, Zofia Romaszewska was awarded the Lech Kaczyński Medal for her lifetime I first came to know the Romaszewskis by work on behalf of human rights. editing accounts of Radio Solidarność and informing the American public of their daring resistance to martial law. After their arrest, I reported on Zbigniew Romaszewski’s calm and certain declaration of future victory in court— even as he, Zofia, and his colleagues faced Between clichés and several years’ imprisonment. Despite not sharing erasure a common language––I never learned Polish well enough to converse––I came to know both Eastern and Central non-Germanic Zosia and Zbyszek closely after their release Europe as an “empty syntagm” in from prison. After Zofia’s trip to the United contemporary public discourse States I raised funds from trade unions, human rights groups, individuals, and the NED to support their campaigns of social solidarity and Dariusz Skórczewski lawfulness. I also assisted their organization of the Nowa Huta and Leningrad International ABSTRACT Drawing on the ancient rhetoric tradition, this paper Human Rights Conferences and several of their employs the notions of “figure of thought’” and post-1989 efforts, including the third conference “figure of speech” to address the issue of the in Warsaw to keep the spirit of Solidarity and ambivalent “soft” status of Eastern and Central non- human and worker rights alive in the region. Germanic Europe in various contemporary public Throughout, I knew I was in the presence of true discourses in the Western world, such as discourses
1919 April 2015 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW in the humanities, political discourse, journalism, knowledge, extending into popular perceptions media, and popular culture. While special attention is of whole nations and ethnicities, and thus given to post-2004 discourses (after the acceptance of contributing to the (re)production and ten East Central and Southern European countries dissemination of national and ethnic, usually into the European Union), earlier discourses are not negative, stereotypes. Once we enter the field of left out since it is in them that major patterns of articulations concerning East Central Europe have stereotypes, we realize how dreadful they can be been established. While the figures of thought, vis-à-vis real lives of real peoples, who may among them “figurae ad docendum” (figures of have real psychological wounds inflicted simply instruction) and “figurae ad delectandum” (figures of through the circulation of scholarship-generated delight) supplemented with “figurae ad taedium” and/or scholarship-upheld stereotypes. (figures of contempt) can be deemed as general As a departure point, I take the following categories delineating the major attitudes of the thought from Clifford Geertz: “Not only ideas, “Western” public towards Eastern and Central but emotions too, are cultural artifacts in man.”2 European non-Germanic countries, societies, and Emotions spoken of in this paper are the cultures, the figures of speech (e.g. ellipsis, emotions of Eastern and Central Europeans who hyperbole, aprosdoketon, and others) play the role of rhetorical agents – amounting to ideological clichés – continue to find themselves troubled and to fulfill the goals defined by the former. Drawing disappointed, or even exasperated, with the from the theoretical and conceptual framework of “dual framing of East-Central Europe as Saidean Orientalism, the analysis of submitted simultaneously in Europe and not yet examples suggests that East Central Europe as a European,”3 even now, ten years after the tangible and vulnerable geographical and acceptance of their countries into the European sociohistorical reality has been erased from the Union. These emotions are products of culture discourse of the West. It has been effectively and, more precisely, of various cultural replaced, by means of rhetoric measures, with a large discourses, the discourse of Western scholarship collection of its discursive substitutes, thus turning in general and Slavic studies in particular not the toponym “Eastern and Central non-Germanic Europe” and its synonyms into that which can be excluded. The disappointment and exasperation termed “empty syntagm,” a ready-made structure for of Eastern Europeans grows even larger when achieving whatever goals are defined and pronounced they encounter in Western (American and/or outside East Central Europe. West European) writing the discourse of Motto: omission, silencing, and patronizing. Eastern Europeans, particularly those who take the West Language is savage flesh, which grows in a wound, as the primary point of cultural orientation as is in the open wound of the mouth, the case with Poles and other Central European nurtured on deceptive truth1 non-Germanic countries, find the attitudes fueling such discourse difficult to come to terms s is generally known at least since with.4 In this paper I draw on examples of such Hayden White, history is a narrative discourses related primarily to Poland and the A rather than a sequence of fixed, Poles; however, I do my best to render my objective, and interrelated events. The way we formulations applicable to the majority of speak about things affects them greatly. postcommunist societies of East Central and According to the constructivist view, things are Eastern Europe. In the typology offered in the produced by discourse. Although I do not fully following parts of the article, I arrange these subscribe to this view, believing in that things examples so as to demonstrate how, by means of do exist independently from discourse, I do some distinctive rhetorical figures, East believe that our opinions about things are, to European subjects are cogently rendered as not- large extent, determined by rhetorical practices yet-mature and converted into vulnerable objects engaged in discourses that concern those things. of silencing (mis)representation, thus suffering The implications of rhetoric in historiography from discursive appropriation and from being and in the humanities in general can be powerful deprived of their own agency. In order to in the shaping of the image(s) of whole achieve my goal, I take as a departure point the populations and go far beyond mere academic traditional ancient distinction of rhetorical
1920 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2015 figures into the “figures of thought” and the North America, and in Eastern Europe. This “figures of speech,” considering the former as framework engages relevant rhetoric since it is, the major patterns of reasoning to provide among other reasons, due to the power of grounds for rhetorical operations performed by rhetoric that the duality of the continent is means of the latter. The survey that follows maintained. This rhetoric employs three major demonstrates that the more philologically alert types of figures of thought distinguished by the era in which we now live offers productive ancients: figures of instruction (figurae ad insights into the complex author-text-context- docendum), figures of contempt (figurae ad readership relationship with regard to taedium), and figures of delight (figurae ad contemporary discourses on East and Central delectandum). Each of these types opens room non-Germanic Europe. Drawing conclusions by for a pertinent rhetoric strategy and, by all parties whom these discourses concern from implication, points to a relevant attitude or the analysis of these discourses seems essential approach of the “Western’” subject to the for the subjectivity, cultural visibility, and “Eastern” object. I briefly discuss these types, political agency of East and Central European supplying examples for each. I subsequently societies. These conclusions are also offer a concise presentation of the main figures fundamental for those engaged in studying such of speech deployed in Western discourses on discourses, given the purpose of the humanities Eastern and Central non-Germanic Europe, understood as a concern for the historically followed by a conclusion. grounded and historically embraceable, or intelligible, “truth.” FIGURES OF INSTRUCTION (FIGURAE AD DOCENDUM) “FIGURES OF THOUGHT” IN WESTERN Figures of instruction imply the notion of CULTURAL DISCOURSES ON EASTERN AND Eastern Europe as immature and not yet ready to CENTRAL NON-GERMANIC EUROPE be treated as a full-fledged political and cultural Ernest Gellner spoke of the “major bifurcation” partner of the West. They translate into a of the European continent.5 Many repeat this number of rhetorical strategies used as a concept and rehearse the notion of some alleged camouflage or alibi for the following notions: fundamental divide between the two halves of 1. “Keeping up” or “making up,” based on the the continent. Such a position can be considered philosophy of “admittance into the global a post-cold-war residue, although its origin can capitalistic system of Western liberal be traced back to as early as the Enlightenment democracy.”8 whose role in engineering Europe’s division was As cultural critic of Slovenian origin Boris so convincingly demonstrated by Larry Wolff.6 Buden pointed out in his book Zone of Interestingly, even those among social and Transition: On the End of Post-Communism, the cultural critics who hold constructivist views “concept of transition has almost exclusively stick to this essentializing concept, as if the been applied to the so-called post-communist “Otherness” of Eastern and Central non- societies and refers to their transition to Germanic Europe was a given and democracy.” Accordingly, Eastern Europe in unquestionable axiom. As a result, Edward itself is perceived as incomplete, living in a Said’s comment on the logic of British transient condition, and never fully mature, and epistemological domination over Egypt Eastern European societies are all rendered in (“England knows Egypt; Egypt is what England discourse as victimized, as if Eastern Europe knows”7) when applied to Eastern and Central exists only to highlight the West as the object of non-Germanic Europe under the epistemological the East’s desire. domination of the West still obtains. 2. The need of advice from (Western) Europe or, Despite the process of enlargement of in yet another version, the imperative of coming European political structures, the framework in under Western tutelage. which Western Europe is being contrasted, or Eastern Europe is portrayed as a pupil and the clashed, with Eastern Europe still pervades in West as the educator. Western discourses public discourses both in the West, including abound in more-or-less overt accusations that
1921 April 2015 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW the unruly Eastern Europe does not comply with joy to announce to you: you represent the lost European standards and norms. Such case.” indictments take for granted the assumption of a single-directional adjustment that should be Thus Streep placed herself in the discourse in carried out by East Europeans, and their alleged the position of a “wise woman,” a contemporary inferiority: “Diplomats do not hold back in civilized sage endowed with the highest harshly criticizing Eastern European states that, authority that allowed her to compare Polish in their opinion, do not know how to adjust to parliament and Polish males to the Taliban. the culture and norms that are commonly Meryl Streep’s comment laid bare some acknowledged as the right ones.”9 elements of Western discourse on Eastern 3. The expectation in Western discourse(s) that Europe, but even more interesting is to see the Eastern Europe follow (or emulate) the West. interaction between a representative of Western This expectation is usually accompanied by or opinionated cultural circles and East European juxtaposed with the threat that Eastern Europe receptive journalist circles, the latter assuming will be judged for failing to comply with the the position of the power-wielding delegate of imperative implied in this expectation. The the uninformed local indigenous people. The patronizing and condescending tone of Jacques journalist Magdalena Żakowska of Gazeta Chiraq, who in 2003 with a burst of outrage Wyborcza informs the American actress in an criticized then-candidate countries of Eastern ostensibly unbiased way: “Currently in Poland, a Europe for their independent stance concerning crusade is being waged by the Catholic church the war in Iraq, will forever remain in the annals and the right-wing milieu against gender. Even a of west European Orientalism: parliamentary group was created ‘Stop gender ideology.” Streep responds: “What? I thought Concerning, after all, the candidate countries. . . I that after communism you had already caught up honestly think that they have behaved with a with the West in the social and cultural sense.” certain lightness. Because entering the European The last sentence explicitly demonstrates the Union still requires a minimum of consideration patronizing attitude of a Western subject who for others, a minimum of consultation. If, on the points to yet another rhetorical approach to first difficult subject, you begin to express your Eastern and Central non-Germanic Europe in point of view independently of any consultation with the body that you incidentally want to join, cultural discourses of the West, expressed then it is not very responsible behavior. In any through figures of contempt. case, it is not well brought-up behavior. So I believe that they [Eastern European countries – FIGURES OF CONTEMPT (FIGURAE AD TAEDIUM) D.S.] missed a good opportunity to keep quiet.10 Various attitudes of Western subject toward East Central Europe are expressed through figures of 4. Seeking the authority, looking up for approval. contempt, from erasure and omission to overt During her visit to Poland in January 2014, the disapproval, derision, or disdain. A classic American actress Meryl Streep thus contributed example of such a mindset has been quoted by to the discussion on gender ideology as a threat Hugh Seton Watson who years ago pointed to to social relations in Poland, addressing Polish the popular image of East Europeans in Western deputies via Poland’s liberal daily Gazeta discourse since Voltaire: “They have Wyborcza: “Gentlemen, you are about to lose unpronounceable names, and live in plains and power. . . . I thought you had already caught up forests, on mountains and rivers which might be with the West.”11 She continued her address, in another world.”12 teaching her Polish audiences by pretending to 1. Homogenization, unification, and conflation. speak to the deputies: “Gentlemen, you are Under a Western gaze all East and Central fooling yourselves in the same way as talibs do. European non-Germanic countries and peoples . . Look at the world and the direction it takes to are represented or discussed as a coherent unity evolve. Do you really think you can stop it? The falling under the same category, and are thus past is dying in pains, but the old order will not homogenized, unified, and conflated. Such give up without fight. I understand, but it is my homogenization, unification, and conflation in
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Western discourses have taken place primarily Europe since the Enlightenment. A domain of due to the abused usage of the term “Soviet exciting exoticism––this is how Europe’s eastern bloc” since the early 1950s to describe the lands have been perceived for two centuries by diverse countries and nations that found travelers, writers, and even crowned heads. themselves on the eastern side of the European Figures of delight are also characteristic of a divide. However, there are other reasons as well, new overtone that can be heard in recent among them the dominance of Russia/Soviet scholarship and public discourses, one that Union as the imperial center in public discourse, eschews the simplifications and overshadowing all other non-Russian Slavic overgeneralizations concerning Eastern Europe and/or post-Soviet states. that were so commonplace in Western 2. Blame for allegedly inferior quality. scholarship and culture even ten years ago. This A contemptuous attitude is not spared in new overtone reverberates in utterances that scholarly discourse; rather, it subtly penetrates admit that “while Central and Eastern European this discourse, demonstrating the troubling countries tend to get lumped together, they vary discrepancy between the work ethic of considerably.”16 And indeed, they do vary, and scholarship and the practice of some Western noting differences is becoming common practice scholars in the humanities. For example, more often than not in the British, French, and according to British anthropologist Chris Hann, German media. In this respect too a rhetoric is the domination of Western scholarship results engaged that at times makes the apparent from its allegedly superior quality: “If. . . ‘local “delight” in East Central Europe equivocal and scholars’ wish to be as widely read as some of problematic. A recent example in the New York the outsiders who write about Central and Times demonstrates how Poland is placed Eastern Europe, then they need to put in the field against the backdrop of other East Central time and write monographs of equivalent depth European countries: “To the east, Russian and sophistication.”13 Hann’s opinion clearly aggression has paralyzed Ukraine’s hope for demonstrates a patronizing attitude toward East faster economic development. To the south, Central European scholars who are advised to Hungary flirts with authoritarianism and still “arrange for [English language] editing by a struggles to climb out of the last recession. To native speaker”14 or “take advantage of the north, Lithuania and the other Baltic States postsocialist freedoms to embark on are being squeezed by the cycle of escalating anthropological projects outside their home trade sanctions between Moscow and the countries.”15 The British anthropologist refuses European Union.”17 to acknowledge that in the humanities Eastern Against such a dark background containing European scholarship is in fact of equivalent diverse images of the unpredictable and unstable depth and sophistication as its Western Eastern Europe all of which restage the ancient counterpart. Regrettably, and contrary to the topoi of locus horridus, Poland happens to be facts, the fault of provincialism or even portrayed as its opposite, locus amoenus, the parochialism of Eastern European scholarship idyllic place of economic safety and political still holds in Western academia, as the above comfort. As the quoted example demonstrates, example demonstrates. the figure of delight is selective, never allowing the whole of Eastern and Central non-Germanic FIGURES OF DELIGHT (FIGURAE AD Europe to become a valuable object of delight, DELECTANDUM) comparable with the values and Figures of contempt applied as rhetorical attainments/achievements shared by the West. strategies to discursively label East Central Eastern and Central non-Germanic Europe thus Europe neither preclude nor contradict figures of remains dubious and problematic, a place where delight. The latter have been traditionally even if good things occur they are inevitably affiliated with Orientalizing discourses on accompanied by things going bad. Eastern and Central non-Germanic Europe that A similar strategy laid the groundwork for have proliferated in philosophy, literature, Vice President Joseph Biden’s pushing forward political writings, and scholarship in Western Eastern European countries as examples to
1923 April 2015 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW follow: “In Eastern Europe, countries still Western discourses on Eastern and Central non- struggle to fulfill the promise of a strong Germanic Europe. Since particular political democracy, or a vibrant market economy. Who goals can be accomplished by means of rhetoric, to look to better than you? Who to look to better it is necessary to realize that when dealing with than Central European countries that 20 years language we are dealing with sensitive realities ago acted with such courage and resolve, and of actual groups of peoples. over the last 20 years, have made such sustainable progress? You can help guide 1. ANTITHESIS Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine along the path of Antithesis has traditionally been the elementary lasting stability and prosperity. It's your time to rhetorical operation at the very foundation of lead. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus can benefit Western discourse on Eastern and Central non- from your personal experiences.”18 Germanic Europe. At least since the cold war it has become commonplace that “Western Europe The three types of figures of thought described and Eastern Europe are portrayed as opposing above may or may not exist separately in single spaces, which together embody a series of texts. Interestingly, they not infrequently dichotomous relationships.”19 Consequently, coincide. For instance, figures of instruction knowledge production and other discourses on may surface next to figures of contempt. It all the East developed by the West have become depends on the complexity and the modality of dominated by the rather simplistic formula of discourses engaged in a given text. Second and “us” (signifying Western populations) versus more importantly, these figures of thought have “them” (standing for peoples inhabiting the potential to employ various figures of Europe’s eastern part). speech. Thus the same figure of speech may be Among the spectacular examples are Hans deployed to render different meanings that serve Kohn’s theory of Eastern versus Western different purposes overtly expressed by or nationalisms and its numerous applications and implicit in a given figure of thought. The next mutations, such as Peter F. Sugar’s Roots of part of the paper covers ten of the figures of Central European Nationalism (1969) or, more speech concerning Eastern and Central non- recently, Brian Porter-Szücs’ When Nationalism Germanic Europe that are likely to be Began to Hate (2000). The rhetoric of antithesis encountered most frequently across various in these and other books in the same or similar discourses in the English-speaking world. vein points to the major problem of the discursive location of East Central Europe. They FIGURES OF SPEECH IN WESTERN CULTURAL take for granted and essentialize the difference DISCOURSES ON EASTERN AND CENTRAL NON- between the West and East European paths for GERMANIC EUROPE social and economical development, taking the The figures of speech discussed below refer to Western way as a default or yardstick with formal patterns of word arrangement for the which to measure any and all other populations purpose of a transformation of meaning, as and places. For example, when quoting from defined by Greek and Latin rhetoric. While Kohn, Sugar speaks of him with much originally denoting “local” transformative reverence, elevating him to the position of operations, usually within syntax, these patterns absolute authority while at the same time using a can also be attributed with a broader generic patronizing tone regarding the countries and meaning: they can be understood as logical nations of Eastern Europe: principles of organizing the discourse and whole bodies of texts belonging to that discourse. The Professor Hans Kohn recognized the basic problem following discussion briefly analyzes the way of of Eastern European nationalism when he stated: advancing the argument in each figure in order “So strong was the influence of ideas that, while to identify the semiotic strategy behind these the new nationalism in Western Europe figures. Particular attention is paid to corresponded to changing social, economic, and conceivable ethical and epistemological political realities, it spread to Central and Eastern Europe long before a corresponding social and implications of the use of these figures in
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economic transformation…. Nationalism in the viewers unaware that World War II was started West arose in an effort to build a nation in the by Hitler’s attack on Poland. In a similar vein, it political reality and struggle of the present without is a commonplace practice that popular too much sentimental regard for the past; audiovisual documentaries on World War II do nationalists in Central and Eastern Europe created, not inform viewers of the number of Poles who often out of myths of the past and the dreams of the future, an ideal fatherland, closely linked with the perished between 1939 and 1945 while, for past, devoid of any immediate connection with the example, the film on German history screened in present, and expected to become sometime a the Deutsche Historische Museum in Berlin does political reality.20 not spare the audiences details concerning the number of Sinti, Roma, and Jews murdered by Here we can recognize other rhetorical devices some de-ethnicized “Nazis.” Countless examples as well: we find out that East Central European of this practice can be easily furnished. To avoid space is “devoid” (pointing to a lack, deficiency, a wrong impression, the erasure is not merely figura per detractio) of reality, based on unreal related to the problem of the legitimacy of myths, legends, and fables. With such claiming the status of a victim of the totalitarian assumptions, Sugar concludes––again quoting regimes before, during, and after World War II. Kohn––that it is “no wonder that eastern Rather, the existence of “white spots” in the European nationalism did not tend towards a discourse(s) on Eastern and Central non- ‘consummation in a democratic world society,’ Germanic Europe makes it clear that the but was ‘tending toward exclusiveness.’”21 knowledge production concerning that part of According to Kohn’s and his adherents’ ideas the world has been effectively appropriated, the structure of antithesis is subservient to arranged, and distributed according to a set of figures of contempt and instruction, while in undeclared premises, most of which were set up other cases it is the dominant instrument of without consulting with those whom these figures of delight. For instance, it is antithesis premises directly concern. This points to the that has given rise to the title of the Penguin long-lasting absence of East Europeans in the series “Writers of the Other Europe.” construction of Western discourses on Eastern Europe. 2. ELLIPSIS b. The rhetoric of lack, or deficiency, attributed Among the most frequent rhetorical modes of to the region. This rhetoric is dominant in the presence of East Central Europe in Western theorizing about Central and Eastern European discourse(s) is that of East Central Europe’s nationalism. One hears that the Central absence, that is, omission, oversight, silencing, European variant of nationhood bore the marks or erasure. The figure of ellipsis renders Eastern of the incomplete journey to modernity made by and Central non-Germanic Europe discursively these nations.22 “Whereas many individual nonexistent, as if that part of the world were a researchers do not view East-Central Europe as void on the cultural or scholarly map(s) of the irrational or un-European, discussing political world. complexities in East-Central Europe in terms of This ellipsis takes on various forms depending Europeanness still fuels the othering of East- on the context. In the discourse on Central Europe. The more Europe is eulogized modernization and nationalism, this ellipsis may as a site of values, the more Eastern Europe is be made manifest by the following: tacitly marked as lacking these values.”23 Thus a. The rhetoric of discursive erasure, consisting Jacques Rupnik maintains that “the populist of neglecting Eastern and Central non-Germanic backlash in Central and Eastern Europe reveals, Europe by passing it over in the texts where the first and foremost, the absence in the new mention of East Central European countries democracies of corps intermédiaires, of checks seems by all means justified. For example, in the and balances, of truly independent media to twenty-three-minute documentary film on the serve as a counterweight to creeping December 7, 1941 attack of the Japanese army, authoritarianism.”24 The concept of East Central screened in the Museum in Pearl Harbor Europe’s deficiency is conducive to the feeling Memorial Theater, the narrative leaves the of East Central European resentment, so well
1925 April 2015 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW known to East Europeans and so well described traditionally been reserved for the Jewish by the Hungarian scholar and politician György uprising in the Warsaw ghetto from April Schöpflin. According to him, “the region is through May 1943, leaving the general uprising haunted by its own sense of indeterminacy and out of historical discourse. This peculiar shift in incompleteness, of not having a voice, of being terminology has created a great deal of disregarded and that completeness, and with misunderstanding among users of the term, who completeness the good life, is elsewhere.”25 remain unaware of its ambiguity. Through the c. The rhetoric of désinteressement, decades of Soviet rule and henceforth for other demonstrated, for example, by “the absence of reasons, knowledge production in the countries any curiosity in Western states about the other of Eastern and Central non-Germanic Europe, half of Europe. Only a few scholars believe that such as Poland, has not been powerful enough to the other part of Europe could be useful in the persuade American and West European debate about the role of the state in the audiences about the need to revise some Western globalized world and about social redistribution concepts and terms by means of which the in a new economic context.”26 experience of Eastern and Central Europeans has been described. This experience has been bent to 3. ANTONOMASIA fit the dominating grand narrative on Eastern Substitution with a usually degrading epithet is and Central non-Germanic Europe promoted in yet another form of rhetorical existence of East American history and political science Central Europe in Western discourses. Under textbooks. this category falls the antonomasia-type of term “balkanization” whose critical discussion went 5. HYPERBOLE into the agenda of Maria Todorova’s book Hyperbole is frequently deployed as an Imagining the Balkans. Here also belong the instrument of rhetorical downgrading. The infamous names used, auspiciously less and less images of East Central Europe delivered through frequently these days, by uninformed journalists cultural discourses of the West appear to be in the Western press to describe German intentional caricatures of East Central Europe, concentration camps on Polish lands, such as full of grotesque exaggerations and inaccuracies. “Polish death camps” and other similar practices Such images have proliferated since the that no amount of individual corrections seems Enlightenment both in literature (as able to change. demonstrated by Larry Wolff) and in other cultural practices, including jokes and motion 4. AMPHIBOLIA pictures. Concerning the latter, it was a Ambiguity and the lack of clarity in using terms hyperbole that constituted the main creative related to East Central Europe, particularly to device in Steven Spielberg’s acclaimed The East Central European history, may result from Terminal, in which some features of an ordinary placing them in a wrong “syntagmatic” context. citizen of an Eastern European state have been Such ambiguity, constitutive of amphibolia, is grotesquely distorted.27 not merely a coincidence or a linguistic error; instead, it is the outcome of East Central 6. GRADATION Europe’s long absence as the speaking agent in Whenever judgments are formulated in Western the discourse of humanities. One of the most discourses concerning the “Europeanness” of common rhetorical ambiguities related to Eastern and Central non-Germanic Europe Poland’s history is the confusing use of the term versus the par excellence “European” West “Warsaw uprising.” While in the native Polish Europe, gradation is applied as the instrument of historical discourse this term has been reserved value attribution, according to “the for the general uprising from August through representational pattern that privileges the fully October 1944 during the German occupation European ‘Europe’ over the not-yet-fully with over two hundred thousand Polish civilians European 'Eastern Europe.’”28 Consequently, the and Home Army soldiers killed, in the English- decolonized populations of the East European language circulation of knowledge it has subcontinent are relegated to a secondary role,
1926 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2015 and their claims to Europeanness are presented following: “The states of Eastern Europe either as naïve and ludicrous. Tony Judt, that great did not exist until recently, or else had to be supplier of distorted perspectives on Eastern reconstructed in the modern era following their Europe, has opined that “whatever we would obliteration by greater powers in earlier times. say concerning the former splendor of Prague or From a Western perspective (though not Vilnius, these cities were never capitals in necessarily in the eyes of the locals), Czechs, European sense, such as Florence, Madrid, Slovaks, Croats, and Bosnians — to cite only the London, or Vienna.”29 In a similar vein: best known — are all invented nations. Poland, “Warsaw is not, and for most of European Serbia, Ukraine, the Baltic states, even Greece, history never was, the center of very much at whatever the real or imagined glories of their all.”30 Or: “The developments in Poland were a distant past, have all been constituted and stirring prologue to the narrative of reconstituted out of lands and peoples whose Communism's collapse, but they remained a history was once submerged in someone else’s sideshow. The real story was elsewhere.”31 This story.”33 The problem with such discourse is not is how, in the subtly distorting perspective of the merely the absence of reciprocity but the late Tony Judt, a smoothened and coherent scantiness of spaces for the possibility of such version of history written from the top down to reciprocity and for the reassertion by East the bottom emerges, privileging the narrative Europeans themselves of “the epistemological developed and authorized by the Western value and agency of the non-[West-]European metropolis. The monophonic structure of that world.”34 Thus the East European indigenous narrative would be easily disrupted by the “subalterns” (locals) remain speechless, as if uncontrolled polyphony of voices from the local silenced by the rhetorically powerful and populations of East Central Europe, were these speaking Western center. The writing of the populations allowed to speak for themselves. hegemonic West thus becomes the “textual The true history of these populations – as can be standard that enforces the marginality and inferred from Judt’s writings – lies in somebody inferiority of colonised cultures and their else’s hands, outside the reach of East books.”35 Europeans. 8. SYNECDOCHE 7. ENUMERATION In various fields of scholarship and public Innocent as it may seem, enumeration as discourses on East Central Europe, a part of the deployed in Western cultural discourses on East region, e.g.. a single country or people, is used Central Europe often discloses a powerful yet to represent the whole of the post-Soviet sphere. concealed premise. According to that premise, This strategy of synecdoche functions in two East Central European political entities are ways, both of which are standard discursive presented as deprived of agency and practices in Western media and elsewhere. First, ontologically frail, whereby the position of the referring to geographical distinctions, a single epistemologically as well as politically entity is taken as illustrative of the whole region. dominating Western subject is reinforced. Second, a single occurrence of social behavior Enumeration not only conflates and or attitude is interpreted as commonplace and homogenizes the diverse East Central European standard in postcommunist societies. “As is peoples and cultures but at the same time denies often true, Poland can be seen either as an their right to be rendered in their own terms, exception to, or a magnifier of, trends present either as proposed by them or coined by paying elsewhere in the region”36 – such statements are close attention to their historical experience. representative of this strategy. Even in scholarly publications assertions such as the following can be encountered in which, by 9. RHETORICAL QUESTION means of enumeration, “the cultural hegemony Rhetorical questions serve the purpose of of [West] European knowledges”32 over the amplifying or even enforcing the anticipated territories and peoples subject to scholarly response of the audience without their explicit descriptions is being maintained. Consider the answer. In the context of things East Central
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European, rhetorical questions posed in Western space and time in the texture of Frankel’s cultural discourses usually undermine, subvert, review, in its very discursive tissue, the former or demean the significance of East Central being in power, while the latter is Europe. For instance, referring to her said-to-be disempowered. In fact, Frankel’s question “peripheral status” as a writer, Dubravka reverberates with the tone known to the readers Ugrešić mentions: “After my novel had been of Edward Said’s Orientalism whose last chapter published in England in 1991, the critic finished “Orientalism Now” concludes with this poignant his review with the question: ‘Anyway, is it this, remark: “I consider Orientalism’s failure to have what we need?’”37 As with the other figures been a human as much as an intellectual one; for listed above, rhetorical questions like the one in having to take up a position of irreducible just quoted reinforce the perspective of the more opposition to a region of the world it considered powerful and authoritative Western alien to its own, Orientalism failed to identify epistemological center where the framework of with human experience, failed also to see it as a discourse on East Central Europe is defined and human experience.”39 where this discourse is originally pushed into motion. CONCLUSION Conclusions can be drawn on three levels. First, 10. APROSDOKETON as the cited examples clearly demonstrate, it is The nature of this figure consists of introducing impossible to speak on any topic without a word or idea that has not been anticipated, engaging rhetorical devices. East Central Europe given the syntax and the expected semantic is one such topic. Second, the above analysis is effect. I consider this figure to be the most part of the return to philology in literary studies. sophisticated strategy of dismissal and textual It posits that studies of the discourse on Eastern appropriation of Eastern and Central non- and Central Europe can easily be accommodated Germanic Europe in Western cultural within the studies of contemporary rhetoric. discourses. Third, this analysis demonstrates that Eastern In his review of Anne Applebaum’s Iron and Central non-Germanic Europe continues to Courtain, Max Frankel states the following occupy an uncertain position in contemporary about Ms. Applebaum’s meticulous study of discourse, just as it has done over decades. It is Stalin’s tyranny in East Central Europe: “Along extremely rare that politicians, scholars or other the way, millions of Germans, Poles, Ukrainians authors who speak or write about that part of and Hungarians were ruthlessly driven from Europe admit the need for a self-critical attitude their historic homes to satisfy Soviet territorial in their approach, such as the one expressed in ambitions. Millions more were deemed this passage: “The authors of this report, opponents and beaten, imprisoned or hauled off although coming from the Western periphery of to hard labor in Siberia. . . . It is good to be these regions, nevertheless share in many ways reminded of these sordid events, now that more the traditional hegemonic Western discourse on archives are accessible and some witnesses East Central and to a greater extent, Eastern remain alive to recall the horror. Still, why Europe. The vision of a united Europe is also should we be consuming such a mass of detail very often a di-Vision of Europe.”40 more than half a century later?”38 Instead, Eastern and Central non-Germanic European societies continue to be patronizingly The question posed is a rhetorical one, and it maneuvered into a position subordinate to the can be counted as an example of the preceding Western hegemon, looking up to the West for figure. There is more to it, however. It appears approval, and thus turning the West into their unexpectedly, according to the logic of “surrogate hegemon,” as Ewa Thompson once aprosdoketon. The way it is asked demonstrates proposed.41 While such historians as Timothy the gap between the disengaged attitude of the Garton Ash and György Schöpflin describe East Western author and the impossible-to-disengage Central Europe as the Sleeping Beauty, coming attitude of the East Central European participant to life after decades of silence,42 based on the in the events. These two subjects meet across preceding analyses I believe that more often
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Eastern and Central non-Germanic Europe is first flattered that his region has become a viewed as an empty syntagm waiting to be filled valuable object of study for Western writers and with content provided by Western Europeans. journalists, only to later become disillusioned as This situates Eastern and Central non-Germanic he discovers yet again that the Western subject Europe in a position where it is tossed between appears to be organically incapable of discursive non-existence (being appropriated by expressing solidarity with his Eastern others) and hardcore existence painfully counterpart, thus reinforcing the ever-existing perceived, experienced, and realized by East chasm between the Western world and Eastern Europeans themselves, yet not shared––and and Central non-Germanic Europe, still perhaps frequently misunderstood––by others. As the most Orientalized part of the world. Gottfried Schramm notes, “East Central Europe is in no way just. . . a mere construct of This paper was presented at the annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian historians and cultural morphologists but. . . a 43 Studies, held in San Antonio, Texas Nov. 20–23, 2014. ‘reality.’” Given the above analysis of rhetoric used in NOTES Western discourses on East Central Europe, 1 Język to dzikie mięso, które rośnie w ranie, / w Czesław Miłosz’s comment on the divided otwartej ranie ust, żywiących się skłamaną prawdą. Europe remains valid: “Undoubtedly I could call From “Language,” a poem by Ryszard Krynicki Europe my home, but it was a home that refused translated from the Polish by Kevin Hannan. Dariusz to acknowledge itself as a whole. . . it classified Suska, “Bicie mojego serca,” Gazeta Wyborcza, 30 June, 2003:15. its population into two categories: members of 2 the family (quarrelsome but respectable) and Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: poor relations.”44 It remains valid in a way Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 81. 3 Merje Kuus, “Europe's Eastern Expansion and the similar to that highlighted by Said’s notion of Reinscription of Otherness in East-Central Europe,” Orientalism expressed in his illustrious book Progress in Human Geography 28 (2004) 4:473. from which, paradoxically, Eastern and Central 4 Lonnie R. Johnson, Central Europe Enemies, non-Germanic Europe is absent yet seems Neighbors, Friends (New York and Oxford: Oxford relevant in its conclusions to Eastern Europeans University Press, 1996), 4. as well. 5 Ernest Gellner, “Introduction” in Socialism: Ideals, Why then do I consider aprosdoketon the most Ideologies and Local Practice, edited by C. Hann (London: Routledge ,1993), x. sophisticated figure on the list of rhetorical 6 figures deployed to describe Eastern and Central Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment non-Germanic Europe? Not only so, but even (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994). the most perverse among all the figures 7 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, employed in Western cultural discourse in order 1994), 34. to depict that part of Europe? Because it implies 8 Boris Buden, Zone des Übergangs. Vom Ende des disappointment on the part of the reader, as if Postkommunismus (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, yet again restaging East Central Europe’s 2009); qtd. after Polish translation Strefa przejścia. O uninvited and involuntary subservience. This końcu postkomunizmu, trans. by M. Sutowski disappointment is caused by the unfulfilled (Warszawa: Krytyka Polityczna, 2012), 35. 9 promise contained in the early part of the figure. Grzegorz Lewicki, ‘The image of Poland abroad In this sense, aprosdoketon can be deemed a from the constructivist perspective of international relations’ in Dominik Skorupa et al. (eds.) Solidarni metaphor of the majority, if not of totality, of wczoraj i dziś, edited by Dominik Skorupa et al. Western discourse on Eastern and Central non- (2007), 89. Cf.: Mark Mardell, “Polish Spirit”, Mark Germanic Europe. Even if not disregarded or Mardell’s Euroblog, online: silenced, that part of Europe in the
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européenne, cela suppose tout de même un minimum 22 George Schöpflin, “Central Europe: Defining A de considération pour les autres, un minimum de Thought-Style,” Acta Collegii Humaniorum concertation. Si, sur le premier sujet difficile, on se Estoniensis 4 (2004):26. met à donner son point de vue indépendamment de 23 Kuus, “Europe's Eastern Expansion,” 484. toute concertation avec l'ensemble dans lequel, par 24 Jacques Rupnik, “From Democracy Fatigue to ailleurs, on veut entrer, alors, ce n'est pas un Populist Backlash”, Journal of Democracy, 18 (2007) comportement bien responsable. En tous les cas, ce 4:24. n'est pas très bien élevé. Donc, je crois qu'ils ont 25 Schöpflin, “Central Europe,” 31. manqué une bonne occasion de se taire” (Jacques 26 Nadège Ragaru, “Démocratisation et démocraties Chirac at a press conference in Brussels on 17 est-européennes: le miroir brisé,” Révue February 2003, following a European Council internationale et stratégique, 41 (2001):146. Qtd emergency summit on Iraq). after Karen Denni, “Central Europe As a Transition 11 Magdalena Żakowska, “Ja sexy?! Nigdy!,” Zone,” 67. interview with Meryl Streep, Gazeta Wyborcza, 22 27 In Spielberg’s movie an alien arrives in the United January 2014 States from the fictitious country named “Krakosia”
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(2006) [pdf], 13. for their fellow citizens are enormous, yet they 38 Max Frankel, “Stalin’s Shadow,” Sunday Book have not sought recognition or remuneration. Review, November 25, 2012:16. Emphasis mine. D.S. Unlike a large number of the present political 39 Said, Orientalism, 328. 40 class in Poland, the Romaszewskis did it Ellmeier and Rásky, Differing Diversities, 13. because it was the right thing to do. In this book, 41 “Whose Discourse? Telling the Story in Post- Communist Poland,” The Other Shore: Slavic and they narrate their childhood and youth, and the East European Cultures Abroad, Past and Present, growth of understanding that Soviet-occupied vol. 1, no. 1 (2010), 1–15. Poland was not Poland at all but rather a 42 Attila Melegh, On the East–West Slope: territory where brutality of the rulers was Globalization, Nationalism, Racism and Discourses covered up by diplomatic and media deceit. on Eastern Europe (Budapest: CEU Press, 2006) 41. Accessed through “Transformation of Self-Identity in Just as Aleksander Kaminski’s Kamienie na Central Europe Under State Socialism and After,” szaniec is a symbol of the generation preceding
44 Czesław Miłosz, Native Realm: A Search for Self- Definition, trans. Catherine Leach (London: Slicing the Bread: Children’s Survival Manual Sidgwick, 1981), 2. in 25 Poems, by Maja Trochimczyk. Georgetown, KY: Finishing Line Press (www.finishinglinepress.com), 2014. 30 pages. MORE BOOKS ISBN 978-1-62229-687-3. $14.00 from the Romaszewscy: Autobiografia. Ze Zbigniewem, publisher. Zofią i Agnieszką Romaszewskimi rozmawia In a recent interview, historian Andrzej Nowak Piotr Skwieciński. Warsaw: Trzecia Strona described the situation in East Central Europe as (trzeciastrona.pl), 2014. 512 pages. Numerous follows: its people live between two huge photographs. ISBN 978-83-64526-04-6. 49.90 zl millstones, Germany and Russia, that constantly from the publisher. Hardcover. In Polish. grind against each other and repeatedly threaten One of Poland’s top journalists talks to the the existence of the people in between. Poles Romaszewski family and constructs their have to exert an extraordinary amount of energy autobiography thereby. Zbigniew and Zofia in order to not be ground to dust by these Romaszewski are model Polish citizens––active neighbors. Maja Trochimczyk’s twenty-five in the Solidarity and post-Solidarity movements, powerful poems describe the pain, hunger, and not as armchair theorizers but as people who humiliation to which the surviving children and actively helped hundreds, perhaps thousands, of adults were subjected by these millstones––the their fellow Poles who had neither the education German one in particular. The time of action is nor the material resources to win in their self- World War II and its aftermath. The first poem sacrificial opposition to the communist state. sets the tone: there was no bread to slice, just The Romaszewskis were not part of the soup made of weeds and a tablespoon of flour, lunch for twenty people squeezed into a two- “licenced” opposition that often hailed from the homes of Party members whose connections room house (this reminds me of Soweto in South provided shelter from police brutality and Africa where huge families were housed in confiscation of livelihood. The Romaszewskis similarly small houses––but, unlike in East and those they helped gambled with their own Central Europe, not as a result of the neighbor’s survival and well being. The sacrifices they bore aggression). Then come poems about hiding the
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food from the Germans and from so-called partisans (yes, the Bielski partisans had their Those of us who are second- and third- criminal side glossed over in the movie generation Americans of Polish ancestry can Defiance), and finally from Soviet soldiers. probably remember our grandparents’ stories Then death, death, and more death––but not the about the great migration at the turn of the anonymous death of millions, rather the loss of twentieth century. Key terms such as Ellis fathers, mothers, uncles, and aunts––sometimes Island, Cossacks, Bolsheviks, Hamtramck, and in twenty-four hours, as when the incoming turnips were the stuff of stories thick in old- Soviets shot the narrator’s uncle in the street and country substance but never quite as important shipped his wife and two sons to Siberia––all in as the new lives forged in the United States. twenty-four hours. Less memorable were the very few stories about the Great War against Germany we entered in Poet John Guzlowski described similar things 1917. It seemed like starting a family, working a happening to Polish Christians under German regular if difficult job, buying a bungalow on the occupation, but unlike Guzlowski, Trochimczyk south side, and nurturing a parish where only manages to insert a ray of hope. I cannot exactly Polish and Latin were spoken marked the describe how––I do not know how she does it. beginning of time. We heard heroic and Perhaps the delicacy with which she approaches sometimes gruesome stories of World War II those who did not survive, whom the Holocaust from our uncles and fathers, but the Great War commemorations discount because they were rarely came up. not Jewish––perhaps that delicacy and In his intricately assembled history, David gentleness is the answer. In any case, these Laskin illuminates this period of American life poems leave one reflecting on the beast that is by weaving two identities together into the hidden in some men and women. It is clear that portrait of an immigrant seeking a better life the author does not believe, as some who becomes an American patriot fighting for psychologists do, that anyone can become a his newly adopted country. As the author points beast under certain circumstances. I share her out, when the United States entered the war in conviction in this regard. 1917 fully one-third of its people had either been This little book is quite different from many a born overseas or were the children of volume of poetry that saw the printing press immigrants. In light of significant discrimination because the author wanted to see her work in America against immigrants from Eastern published. It has no authorial vanity. It is Europe, many turned to service in the armed excellent and deserving republication by a major forces during World War I in order to become publishing house. The author is a poet who full citizens. Other immigrants served simply makes a living in a profession far removed from because they were told to do so and they felt it poetry, and who is also the author of scholarly was their duty. As Laskin notes, “some fought works in literature and music. Order it from the not for an idea, but because the sergeant told publisher and you will not be disappointed. (SB) them to fight, because their buddy was fighting, because they were part of a platoon. But in the end, they also fought because they were War and Immigration Americans.” Army draftees and volunteers Becoming an American found themselves heading back to a Europe they thought they had left behind forever. Joseph A. Kotarba One really creative feature of this book is the sociological way Laskin traces and compares the biographies of twelve men––four Italians, three The Long Way Home: An American Journey Jews, two Poles, an Irishman, a Norwegian, and from Ellis Island to the Great War, by David a Slovak––from their homes in Europe, to the Laskin. New York: Harper, 2010. xxiv + 386 promised land of America, to their return to pages. Sources, index. ISBN 978006123333-3. Europe as part of the American Expeditionary
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Force. Nine of them survived the war. Laskin two brothers and other Poles living in America conducted dozens of interviews including with confused. Whose side should they take? What two surviving veterans, 106 and 110 years old, outcome is best for Poland? As Laskin put it, and collected family and regimental histories, “Of all the newly arrived immigrants, the Poles military records, and historical archives. He has were the first to grasp that the war in Europe a taste for detail, both military and personal, and was their war too.” In 1917 Joe Chmielewski is particularly good at drawing parallels and was young and restless, and his work in the contrasts between the polyglot AEF in which mines and steel mills in Pennsylvania provided familiarity broke down barriers between people, little satisfaction. He enlisted in the U.S. Army and war-ravaged Europe where it seemed to and was assigned to the 16th Machine Gun have the opposite effect. Further, this group of Battalion in Georgia. Joe saw no action with twelve allows Laskin to explore different facets that battalion, but served two years in the army of the immigrant experience without relying on until his honorable discharge in 1919. Unlike stereotypes: the Jewish junk dealer, the his older brother, Frank, and other Polish Norwegian bachelor farmer, and the Italian immigrants who had deep roots in and peasant boy had very different lives, both in commitment to their Polish and Catholic world their home countries and in this one. and their families, Joe became a drifter. He Apart from all the death and destruction the worked at various jobs in Michigan, Minnesota, war caused––described here in great detail–– and Illinois. The message seems to be that Laskin's main point is that the war very whether Polish, Jewish, Irish, or American, we successfully helped the immigrants who served get our meaning for life from the communities to to integrate into American society. That was not which we belong. an easy task. The men in one New York division The Long Way Home is a good read, spoke forty-three languages, and officers especially since it instructs us about foreign- sometimes had to mime what they were trying to born soldiers whose service to America shines. get the men to do. As one native-born soldier wrote in a letter home, “I think it is about the finest thing in the world for anyone, who like In Paradise myself, has always suffered with race prejudice, to be mixed up in an outfit like this. The last six By Peter Matthiessen. New York: Riverhead Books months of my life in the army, living and (riverheadbooks.com), 2014. 256 pages. suffering with these fellows, has done more for ISBN: 1594633177. me to get rid of race prejudice than anything else John Guzlowski could have done." The two Polish soldiers provide very interesting biographies. I briefly mention one. For a book that hopes to be a serious novel Joe Chmielewski’s brother, Frank, migrated about the Holocaust by a very serious and much from the Russian Partition, otherwise known as admired and awarded writer (three time National Congress Poland, to South Fork, Pennsylvania in Book Award winner), this is a surprisingly silly 1907. Frank worked at the Argyle Coal book. The novel follows Clements Olin, a Company and quickly became a leader of the respected Polish-American scholar of Holocaust Polish community and the Catholic parish, St. literature as he goes to Auschwitz to do research Anthony’s. His younger brother, Joe, arrived in on Tadeusz Borowski, the author of one of the 1912 and quickly found work in the mine, but great memoirs about this German death camp, unlike Frank, he did not find it very rewarding. and to consider his own roots as a Pole and an Frank and Joe learned of the war in 1914 American. Set in Kraków, Auschwitz, and through their local Polish language newspaper, Oświęcim and ranging in time between Poland’s Naród Polski: “Battle on Polish Lands” read the World War II history and its postcommunist headline of the September 2 issue. The years, this is the kind of novel that should be of complicated political situation in Poland left the interest to Central Europe specialists. In
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Paradise, however, quickly loses direction as novel about the issues he wants to take up. And Clements Olin joins a retreat at Auschwitz with then I read the New York Times review of the 140 other retreatants: Zen enthusiasts, rabbis, book, and it appears that Matthiessen was not priests, nuns, writers, tourists, artists, and only tired, he was also apparently dying as he survivors. worked on In Paradise. As a result, it belongs to What comes next reads like a Facebook that genre of final novels by great writers who discussion of the Holocaust and World War II should have buried their final pages before they Poland. The retreat participants throw around were no longer capable of doing so, writers like sound-bite statements about the Holocaust, Vladimir Nabokov, David Foster Wallace, Ralph about who was guilty and how they were guilty Ellison, and of course Ernest Hemingway. and what should have been done and who is still ______responsible and why we should care and why we shouldn’t care, and on and on. And then these Letter to the Editor characters disappear and other characters come The review of Polish Hero Roman Rodziewicz: on to make and unmake their own sound-bite Fate of a Hubal Soldier in Auschwitz, points. I kept feeling that I should be taking Buchenwald and Postwar England (SR, January frequent and extensive notes, and then I realized 2015) mistakenly states that the books’ Preface that it would not do me much good because was written by the late Marcus Leuchter. Mr. probably that is how Peter Matthiessen got into Leuchter has only been quoted in a short this mess of a novel, by taking too many notes statement, while the entire book including the during his own three Zen retreats at Auschwitz. Preface was written by myself. But that’s not all that is going on in the novel. Aleksandra Ziolkowska-Boehm, Wilmington, DE There is also an absurd love plot between Olin and a woman preparing to become a nun, and a mysterious birth plot regarding Olin’s origins straight out of Dickens. What begins as a Thank You Note thoughtful discussion of what it means to be Sarmatian Review and the Polish Institute of Polish and American quickly dissolves into Houston are grateful to those readers who melodrama. Threaded through all this are support the journal over and above the price of ridiculous statements about Poles––the women subscription. Without them it would be difficult have hairy armpits, all Poles drink too much and to continue publication. Donations to Sarmatian are snooty and pretentious, they and other Review and its publisher, the Polish Institute of Christians are responsible for the Holocaust. Houston, are tax deductible. Here is the list of Nothing can save this novel, certainly not the recent donors: main character. He is moody, cranky, sexist, Professor Joseph A. Kotarba; Professor Michael shallow, and lost. As a scholar, he seems J. Mikoś and Mrs. Susan G. Mikoś; Ms. Irena completely unfocused. As a Polish American, Szewiola. he lacks any cultural identity. What he does and where he goes matters not at all. A reader would be better off reading one of the Polish writers who the main character says he has read in order to understand Poland, Auschwitz, and the Sarmatian Review is now on Facebook! Holocaust: Czesław Miłosz, Wisława Szymborska, or Tadeusz Borowski. There one Please visit us at will learn a little bit about the Holocaust and so www.facebook.com/sarmatianreview much more. Not in Peter Matthiessen’s sketchy book. While reading the book I kept thinking that this is a clumsy novel, all in all, written by someone who appears too tired to write a serious
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