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Polish Shi'ite Showbiz (Installation View), 2011 Friendship oF nations Polish Shi’ite Showbiz slavs and tatars Book Works / sharjah art Foundation Friendship oF nations Polish Shi’ite Showbiz slavs and tatars Book Works / sharjah art Foundation, 2013 introduction 5 – 23 slavs and tatars the sarmatian phantom 25 – 43 agata araszkieWicz a conversation BetWeen ramin jahanBegloo and adam michnik 45 – 53 draFting the Bear: a story oF persian- polish hospitality 55 – 67 mara goldWyn 3 79.89.09 69 – 113 slavs and tatars INTRODUCTION SLAVS AND TATARS polish taziyeh shiva Balaghi 115 – 127 and michael d. kennedy craFt as citizen diplomacy 129 – 153 slavs and tatars our interest in the improbable affinities of dear 1979, meet 1989 poland and iran began rather innocently, if 155 – 173 slavs and tatars cryptically, some four years ago. in a missive from Berlin, the periodical 032c asked us to think about two key dates – 1979 and 1989 – in anticipation of the planned celebrations marking the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. so, in true bibliophile form, we took the two calendar years as bookends to the two major geopolitical narratives of the 4 5 twentieth and twenty-first centuries: namely, proves marx’s old adage that history repeats communism and political islam. itself first as tragedy then as farce. While the former Warsaw pact countries – As we researched these two modern from the GDR to the czech republic, hungary moments, the contested 2009 presidential to poland – had belatedly ripped a page from elections in iran exposed the limits of political reagan’s playbook, each trying to take credit islam, just as the rest of the muslim world began for the downfall of communism in europe’s own to test-drive its own version. after months backyard, the fireworks marking the thirtieth of popular protest that led to a government anniversary of the iranian revolution were more crackdown, many in the reform movement, in muddied. like a homeopathic supplement, the particular the green movement, began to look islamic republic of iran’s impending crisis of to eastern europe, and especially to poland’s direction was released with a considerable delay. solidarność during the 1980s, as a successful the revolution’s startling speed – not to mention precedent for non-violent civil disobedience. unprecedented religious and ideological scope polish authors and thinkers hitherto unavailable in the modern era – was swiftly hardened by in persian, from czesław miłosz to zygmunt a near decade-long war of attrition with iraq, Bauman, Wisława szymborska to leszek backed and spurred on by Western powers and kołakowski, were being translated with an gulf nations eager to see the power of the first urgency unique to those determined in iran to islamic theocracy in a millennium checked. after find a historical precedent in the slippery stakes a period of relative thaw, the current regime’s of self-determination. attempt to reinvigorate the original promises of ‘it’s too soon to say’, to paraphrase zhou the revolution through demagogy only further enlai’s response when asked by nixon about 6 7 the French revolution. if the same could be written. While 1989 spelt the end of the cold said about the 1979 iranian revolution, our War and communism’s ostensible challenge to decision to focus primarily on the case study Western liberal democracy, 1979 marked the of poland in 1989 seemed less polemical. beginning of the next – conceivable successor – poland’s non-confrontational, slow-burn strike historical narrative in the shape of political islam. movement solidarność maintained momentum the approximation of these two narratives, throughout the 1980s without the blood-letting though perhaps at first glance counter-intuitive, witnessed in Budapest, 1956 or in prague, is not only a fixation ofs lavs and tatars, but also 1968. Whether it’s the political stagnation that of uighurs, talysh and kurds among others. in slinks forwards today in iran, or the baby steps fact, the list of scholars trying to bridge these in civil society across certain countries of the two ideologies is a storied one. ali shariati’s arab spring, the polish mix of methodical, deft mix of marxism and shi’a islam through the behind-the-scenes non-violent disobedience, figure of abu dharr, the first islamic socialist and the instrumentalisation of faith as a progressive companion of the prophet, provided intellectual force, and a deft use of compromise, remains force in the early days of the iranian revolution. as relevant today as at any point in the past meanwhile the late norman o. Brown, professor half-century. at the university of california, santa cruz and As bona fide contrarians, our bookends scholar of Blake and joyce, considered islam face outwards, though. they push not against and marxism, ‘two kinds of social criticism an existing series of volumes or particular body alive in the world today’. in europe, the French of knowledge but rather point towards an empty professor of political science olivier roy draws shelf, towards a collection of tomes still to be a convincing correspondence between the 8 9 increasing attraction today of political islam on linear approach better left to scholars of history. the one hand, and the collapse of traditional left- the entangled story of poland and iran dates wing ideologies and labour movements in the last back to the very beginning of the seventeenth two decades on the other.1 century, when a polish envoy of armenian origin, In a historiographic version of Whac-a- sefer muratowicz, was sent to persia under the mole, our comparative look at the iranian premise of purchasing carpets for the polish revolution and solidarność led us to seek out court of king sigismund. if both countries had a additional episodes of common heritage and shared rival in the ottoman empire, this enmity cultural affinities between the two peoples. wasn’t entirely reciprocated in the late-eighteenth the contributors’ essays in this book aim to fill century when persia and the ottomans were the in some of the gaps in the common histories of only two countries not to recognise the partition poland and iran. We hope readers will forgive of poland.2 regardless of the speculation that what may seem like a hopscotch across history; muratowicz’s true brief was to gather intelligence the very nature of our task – exploring a shared in advance of a papal envoy visit, persia had heritage between two countries with distinctly already influenced poland in ways it could never different cultures, religions, economies and have imagined, via the peculiar lifestyle and geopolitical challenges – belies the exhaustive, ideology known as sarmatism. 1. 'And so I end with it would be a mistake The Challenge of 2. Despite Safavid Persian Relations. a vision of two kinds to take any comfort Islam: The Prophetic Persia’s various Tehran: Ketab Sara of social criticism from their failure. Tradition. Santa entreaties, Poland Company, 2009. alive in the world The human race is Cruz: New Pacific showed little appetite today: Marxism at stake. And they Press, 2009. for military attacks and Islam. Two both, Marxism and on the Ottomans. still-revolutionary Islam, agree on one See Embassy of the forces. Two tired old proposition: There Republic of Poland revolutionary horses. will be one world or in Iran, Poland and Neither of them there will be none.’ Persia: Pages from 10 doing very well but Norman O. Brown, 11 the History of Polish during a relatively enlightened polish-lithuanian and namely its spectre in recent attempts, post- commonwealth, the polish nobility ascribed to cold War, to draft a coherent polish identity. a myth of origins where their ancestors had been Nearly a decade ago, iranian-canadian a long-lost iranic tribe from the Black sea. First philosopher ramin jahanbegloo was invited popularised by polish renaissance geographer to guest-edit an issue of Pol-e Firuzeh (The maciej miechowita (1457–1523) in his Tractatus Turquoise Bridge), a quarterly periodical that de duabus Sarmatiis (Treatise on the Two has suffered the fate of so much of iran’s Sarmatias), sarmatism provided the perfect reformist press, and has since closed down. premise for the polish szlachta to out-macho in a farsighted gesture, jahanbegloo devoted what they considered their more effetely-dressed his issue to poland, whose transformation Western european colleagues by riding horses, from a country at the mercy of rival geopolitical carrying swords, and getting haircuts worthy narratives to a model of self-determination of a persian, tatar, chinese, apache, or any clearly resonates with the iranian philosopher, other other. the phenomenon merits further but presents him and us with as many questions investigation by scholars, researchers, and as it does answers. jahanbegloo’s foresight cultural figures alike, as does much ofs lavic in dedicating the issue to poland has only orientalism, especially russian and soviet, grown more acute in recent years as a critical whose cultural and geographic proximity to the model to understand such complex notions of subject of study complicates the often reductivist compromise, historical justice, and civil society.3 discourse surrounding Western orientalism. in this volume, agata araszkiewicz’s essay 3. This past, government in Programme) or what however, has also initiatives either it considers spirits sheds some much-needed light on sarmatism been mined and within its own in kind, such as leveraged as an vicinity, such Georgia. official policy of as Belarus and soft-diplomacy by Ukraine (see Eastern 12 13 the current Polish Partnership Cultural jahanbegloo’s interview with adam michnik, two countries’ peoples today, five decades one of the leading figures of the solidarność on, stems from this defining moment. mara movement and current editor-in-chief of Gazeta goldwyn visits this moment in the two Wyborcza – available here for the first time in countries’ collective history through the story english – puts the advantage of twenty years of an endearing hamedani bear adopted worth of hindsight to hone in on the wrinkles and by polish soldiers in general anders’ army setbacks of solidarność’s initial goals.
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