1.

2Forgetting and reminiscing seem to be two aspects of a single process; a process of unifying memory, of rearranging it in such a way that it becomes a convenient tool in the construction of a certain collective identity. The dynamics between these two phenomena resembles the swing of a pendulum, which sways to one side just to return to the other in an instance. The events and problems indicated and commented upon by the authors seem to match quite strictly the aforementioned simple blueprint – either collective memory refuses to cooperate, when it comes to remembering events that are too complicated, damning, or inconvenient (The Holocaust heads this list, followed by the convoluted memory of the Polish People’s Republic, and, finally, by the memory of regime change), or it reproduces subsequent memory clichés, when it touches upon events that carry identity building potential for a certain community.

4Polish memory, especially that pertaining to the traumatic and still affective events of the twentieth century, is therefore not dynamic but rather unbalanced. However, constant returns to events that have not yet been properly assimilated into memory do not bring forth any promise of resolution. Even though, it seems, these were initially attempted in the hope of demystifying the past, of telling what really happened, and how it happened – which always seems like a rather illusory endeavor – it, nevertheless, always fairly quickly turned out that what was really at stake was not the return to some unexpressed or uncomfortable events, but rather an attempt to construct some different, possibly coherent, version of the past. And this is possible only through persistent omissions and compulsive repetitions.

2.

8The specific character of this challenge is well described by the dialectics of pride and shame, which is used with success by various memory discourses. Its workings – in this case, on the example of Polish culture – are very compellingly analyzed by Przemysław Czapliński in an article tellingly titled “War of Shames.” This passage cuts to the core of the problem under discussion:

• 8 Przemysław Czapliński, “Wojna wstydów” [A war of shames], Teksty Drugie 4 (2016), 44.

Polish culture currently partakes in the war of two legitimate shames. The first, fragmented, internally incoherent and conflicted, grows from the ethical concern for minority rights; the second, rather narrow and combative towards any difference, refers to the ethics of majority rights, the first was not capable of satisfying the longing for respect felt by the masses, the second is generous in bestowing accolades, but only upon “comrades.” The first lives by the Christian principle “Be proud, for you know how to feel ashamed!” The second champions the tribal maxim “Shame on you, if you do not know how to be proud!”⁸

9Two types of shame, described by Czapliński, are responsible for the two utterly different attitudes guiding the approach of individuals and societies towards the future. The first, demands taking responsibility also for those events that do not contribute to the positive image of a given community; it treats memory not as a simple reservoir of events and behaviors that can be positively appraised from the present point of view and that can be the object of identification, but as a task and challenge that requires a great deal of work. The second attitude requires retaining the memory mostly – if not exclusively – of what is a source of pride, of what can serve as the building block of a favorably assessed identity.

10It is evident that the first of the maxims mentioned by Czapliński is not representative of the Polish approach to memory. This was also noted by Andrzej Leder, who points out that:

• 9 Andrzej Leder, “Pole symboliczne. Przemieszczanie, niewczesność. Humanistka jako wybór między pamię (...)

The capability of feeling such shame, the shame for atrocities that were committed by our ancestors – by the bearers of the same tradition, who have nevertheless neglected their duty to account for them themselves – had become the measure of a new sort of pride. A pride, which from a position of the future, a common future of free and equal people, bestowed judgement upon the terrible past that was hiding in the present.⁹

11Analyzing the mutual relations of shame and pride and the role they play in contemporary societies, Leder recognizes that their functioning is fundamentally different among weak and strong societies. Pride arising from the ability to experience shame is characteristic of those societies which were once strong enough to force their will, through coercion and violence, upon other societies, and at the present time are self-conscious and disciplined enough to take responsibility for their past wrongdoings; thus protecting their own identity and agency that is associated with it:

• 10 Leder, “Pole symboliczne,” 248.

The process of confronting the faults of the preceding generations was – and still is – most tumultuous in those societies which quite recently – that is, in the nineteenth century – were historically strong enough to be able to severely harm whole communities, nations, civilizations…. Ultimately, these societies had to possess a particular kind of sovereignty, one that dictates saying: it was us! Taking responsibility also for the difficult and bad circumstances. The experience of agency of these societies all but barred the soothing words: it was someone else. Words that are typical for weak societies.¹⁰

12In contrast with strong societies, which build their pride on the acceptance of shame, weak societies – according to Leder – want the pride, but without the shame; in essence, they strive for the recognition of pride that is rooted in their own impotence. This deepens even further the divide between weak and strong societies, between the influential that are ready to take responsibility for their deeds and the passive that avoid the consequences of their actions at all cost.

13To a certain extent, the dialectics of pride and shame aptly describes the aforementioned phenomenon of both forgetting and reminiscing about the past. That Polish society chooses pride without shame over pride that finds strength in acceptance of guilt, is clearly noticeable at present. Nonetheless, it seems worthwhile to broaden or even restate the question about the aversion towards pride that comes from acknowledging shame, to investigate the reasons behind its fervent repression. In my opinion, this is associated not only and not as much with the desire to transfer the guilt onto others, but is mostly associated with the growing difficulty with determining national identity, with recognizing who “we” really are?

3.

14The division into weak and strong societies, as it was proposed by Andrzej Leder, rests not only upon the ability – or the lack thereof – to find pride in shame. It also depends on – the scholar states this clearly – the specific use of the simple distinction into us and them, us and others. The ability to admit guilt and accept shame requires, as Leder writes, a clear declaration of how things are, that is saying: it was us who did it. What, however, happens in the case when this straightforward and fundamental distinction in the construction of communal, national, and social identity is not as simple? What if the whole difficulty comes down to the simple fact that it is very hard to find a perspective that would give a clear view of who stands on which side? The history of colonial powers is easier to grasp in this regard, as it is difficult to confuse the colonizer with the colonized or to contradict the responsibility for starting the Second World War of a country that clearly pursued it. The position of strong societies, namely those which have a centuries-long history of domination and expansion, is in this respect straightforward in comparison with that of societies characterized by Leder as weak. The past, for which responsibility should – or even must – be taken, one that is shameful, can form a much more solid base for national self-identity than a past that must be constantly explained and retold, as, in that case, it is impossible to claim complete agency or to shed all responsibility – at least not if that past is not to become corrupted by falsehoods. Clearly, the past of weak societies is not only marked by the experience of violence, but also – to a greater or smaller extent – by its application, by being on the side of the weak at one time, and on the side of the strong at another.

16If we concede – as Leder does – that Polish society is weak, it will become clear that certain incendiary elements of Polish memory, the points of overlooking or reminiscing, are mostly concerned with those moments in history when the functioning of the Polish state was hampered to a larger or smaller extent. And this means that they burden the society itself and cannot be transferred onto some more or less abstract nation-like entity.

18All of this fundamentally changes the perception of shame and pride. Pride arising from the actions of a handful of individuals easily achieves collective or national dimensions in the eyes of the general public. In turn, shame is either completely erased, becoming something experienced individually, at the most, or turns into something much more sensitive – if it becomes a part of the collective consciousness. Such shame and such pride make the already unbalanced process of constructing national self-identification even harder. For shame to grow into a source of national pride it needs to be experienced as part and within the boundaries of a defined identity – one which is not subverted by it, but, on the contrary, which it itself supports through the affirmation of its centuries-long duration. Though, if that continuity is broken at any time, then things get much more complicated.

4.

19In my opinion, it is worth considering contemporary processes occurring within Polish memory, especially that which refers to the twentieth century, as an attempt to reconstruct such an identity which would be rooted in the belonging to a particular nation state rather than to a certain society or nationality. What is at stake in this game is the image of “Poland” as a national entity even in those periods when Poland could not be considered an independent state. It is therefore an attempt to rewrite history and its memory in such a way, as to be able to maintain the continuity of Poland and, consequently, a connection with a particular country and collective identity. In terms proposed by Leder, this would be an attempt to create a coherent “we,” even though – and maybe for the very reason that – it was very unclear in certain periods of history, who “we” are and if there even is a “we” of any kind to speak of.

20The construction of a particular community, of this supreme “we,” which is moreover legitimized through belonging to a concrete nation, is currently underway with the aid of a rather simple mechanism, one which was mentioned at the beginning of this paper. What I have in mind is the incessant repetition, the returning to events that can easily be classified in an unambiguous way. This one-sidedness entails, on the one hand, the need for a clear and firm delineation of the difference between “us” and “them,” and, on the other, an equally strong need to feel proud of what “we” have managed to achieve. For this reason, the most important role in the memory of the Second World War is played by those events which were initiated by “us” and which – and I view this as equally important – can be associated with the workings of the state.

21The growing stature of the Warsaw Uprising as a particularly important event for the building of Polish memory is a direct result of the two aforementioned factors. This was one of the handful of moments in the Second World War when “we” were potent, and “we” made the decisions. Although opinions on those decisions – not to mention their consequences – are varied, the Uprising itself occupies a special point in memory, connecting the phantasy of agency and potency of Polish society with the illusion of the functioning of a Polish state during the occupation. This Uprising is contemporaneously interpreted as a form of military action, and therefore as a manifestation of the nation state, while also being an embodiment of the societal, grassroots, striving for action, arising from the spontaneous need to resist the oppression.

22The memory of the cursed soldiers – which recently became prominent in the public discourse – is similar in character, though it is smaller in scale. The very notion of “cursed soldiers” points to a certain meticulously hidden paradox of memory. A soldier is always a member of an army of a particular state, he is a part of the armed forces, and not – as in this case – a partisan, someone who opposes the power of the state. The fact that we are currently talking about cursed soldiers and not, for example, about the members of the anti-communist guerilla, is also telling. According to the logic of this designation, the post-war underground – not supported, at least officially, by the government-in-exile – constituted a “state” to a greater extent than communist Poland ever did. Therefore, the creation of the mythology of the cursed soldiers, as well as that of the Warsaw Uprising, evidently serves the construction of a strong, easy to grasp, and potent Polish “we,” which endures despite political turmoil.

23This way of constructing identity and collective memory has, nevertheless, some quite clear downsides. The most important among them is its extreme selectivity. History of societies which I would define not so much as weak but as unstable – partly borrowing from Andrzej Leder’s terminology – does not mainly consist of acts of power, dominance, or even agency. Resignation and attempts to deal with domination are much more prevalent here, there are also more numerous and nuanced responses to subservience and therefore the scope of the relationship with the “other” is infinitesimally more complicated. Nevertheless, not much is left, when the memory of the past is cut down in order to conform to some pre-defined blueprint.

24The selectivity of such a memory results, on the one hand, in the inhibition of all that does not fit the model of the potent and active Polish “we” and, on the other, in a stubborn repetition of the invariable cognitive schemata, returning to certain clichés and truisms that can be useful in filling the empty places in memory deprived of non-acceptable memories. Even the introduction of subsequent memories is oftentimes done not in order to fill in holes and gaps, not to bring nuance to oversimplified versions of memory, but to substitute one cliché for another, which is constructed in a similar manner. This mechanism guarantees that even if an event that was previously absent in public discourse becomes part of collective consciousness, then it is swiftly made to conform to already existing memory clichés. This is what happened, for example, in the case of the Volhynian massacre that has been swiftly incorporated into a rather simple narrative of the subsequent misfortunes of the Polish people, instead of becoming a basis for a deeper examination of the problems of national identity and conflicts resulting from ill-conceived nationalism.

25Collective memory constructed in this manner and the identity which is based upon it is – despite intense attempts at its unification – extremely fragile. A narrow, rigorous pattern of memory necessitates treating anything that goes beyond it as endangering the delicate balance. In such a vision of history each new event, which does not fit neatly with the already established memory clichés, might force a reconstruction of the whole, still unstable, social and national identity; it is not so much treated as a challenge, but simply as a threat. This kind of memory is the opposite of dialogical or multidirectional memory, it is a specific kind of paradigmatic memory, which constructs an identity around a specific event and its interpretation, subjecting visions of the past to its requirements, and not a memory that is a nexus of various events and which can be a source of diverse models of identity. This is why Polish memory reacts in such a nervous way to other than paradigmatic versions of memory. For example, the memory of the Holocaust is not considered as a parallel memory or a memory that fills the obvious gaps in the ways of remembering war during the time of the Polish People’s Republic; rather, it is seen as a conflicting memory which substitutes the memory of the Second World War as a destructive event for the Polish nation and statehood with a version of memory which burdens, to a higher or lower extent, Polish society with an unwanted and incomprehensible shame.

26The only way to overcome this specific stalemate, where both the collective and individual memory are held hostage to the need of producing a coherent identity, is through the acceptance of the fact that diversity and multidirectionality of memory need not lead to chaos and instability, and that diverging versions of the past must not necessarily be contradictory. Nonetheless, this requires – paradoxically – undertaking work not so much on the past and its memory but on the present and the future, which should become a more prominent point of reference for the construction of collective identity.