The Eastern Borderland in Polish Collective Memory

Abstract

The eastern frontier of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is referred to in the Polish language as the Kresy. The geographical extent of this area changed with the shifting borders of the Polish-Lithuanian state and, after 1918, of Poland alone. At the time when modern Polish national consciousness was being shaped, it denoted the Russian territory known as the “western provinces” (gubernias).” Beginning with the mid-19th century, the Kresy were primarily a concept of the Polish political vocabulary that referred to an axiological space. The dispute over the area took the shape of a cultural and civilizational confrontation between two projects, those of imperial Russia and Poland. This article presents the Polish perception of the Kresy mostly as an imagined, not a real area. In the author’s view, in order to explain it one has to employ categories of memory studies. The conflict over the Kresy took place when Polish national consciousness was being formed under the influence of Romanticism. This led to the permanent inclusion of Kresy mythology and to the conviction about the existential nature of the conflict with Russia in the Polish memory. The existence of the Kresy as a historical phenomenon ceased with the end of the Second World War. The area, however, continues to play an important role in memory and imagination. The author notes the most important threads of discussions on the Kresy heritage in public life. Attention is also paid to the renewed interest that the discourse on the Eastern Borderland has enjoyed in official Polish politics of memory in recent years.