VOL. 63, BOOK 1, PART C, 2025, pp. 79 – 93 Full text (Pl)
Author: Violetta Wejs-Milewska
Affiliation: University of Bialystok
Abstract
Polish historical and cultural memory–understood as its ethos–was forged over centuries in a dramatic tension between periods of sovereignty (for example, the long existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth) and experiences of political subjugation, beginning with the First Partition of Poland in 1772. In the narrow spaces of restricted freedom, efforts were undertaken to preserve cultural imponderabilia, providing a sense of relative cultural stability to a community deprived of statehood and political autonomy. This identity-forming experience, originating with the Christianisation of Poland in 966 and reinforced by both the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the interwar period of state sovereignty (1918–1939), shaped a distinctive modus operandi of Polish culture and produced a specific form of cultural activity resulting from an “interruptedˮ political and existential continuity–an activity marked by an inherent paradox. The Polish émigré diaspora of the twentieth century, active in major centres of Western Europe and the United States, not only preserved the legacy of the past but also significantly expanded it by introducing new forms, contents rooted in lived experience, and intellectual ideas. A paradigmatic example of such a culture- and memory-forming stance is provided by the biographical case of Tymon Terlecki (1905–2000)–a publicist, theatre scholar, socio-political writer, and an eminent figure acutely aware of the creative responsibility of the individual towards the national and cultural community, a community that, as a result of post-1945 decisions by the great powers, became divided into émigré and domestic spheres.
Key words: Tradition, heritage, culture, emigration, censorship, memory
