Poland Archives - Page 5 of 9

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A Geopolitical Catastrophe for Ukraine: 1918

Experimenting with counterfactual history allows us to reconsider simple questions and search for more precise answers

January 12, 2019 • by Yaroslav Hrytsak

What could have happened had a local war for Lviv not drawn forces away from the Ukrainian revolution in 1918? Experimenting with counterfactual history allows us to reconsider simple questions and search for more precise answers. When we recall 1918, within the context of Polish-Ukrainian relations, the first thing that springs ...

A Geopolitical Catastrophe for Ukraine: 1918

Feature

My Arrest in Poland

Reflections on the significance of an apparently trivial event

December 21, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

“At the time the circumstances of my arrest in Poland seemed trivial. I hardly thought about them afterward. But now, when I consider the fall of 1989, and the fall of communism, my little run in with the Polish authorities seems highly suggestive of how things were then and what ...

Feature

European Union Strikes Back at Populism

By renouncing the Law and Justice party, Poland could return to the EU fold

November 28, 2018 • by Sławomir Sierakowski

Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has finally taken steps to comply with a European Court of Justice (ECJ) decree ordering it to reverse some of the judicial “reforms” that took effect in July. Under the offending legislation, the PiS had tried to force out disfavored Supreme Court justices ...

Feature

Jews and Poles

Together for 800 Years But Not Together

September 13, 2018 • by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Why is this? – Alienation rather than hatred. – A time when Jews were virtually the only intellectuals in Poland. – Why assimilation was impossible. – The modern Jew and the modern Pole. Several weeks ago, Stanisław Mikołajczyk – Prime Minister of the Polish government-in-exile – stated that there were still ...

Feature

How Jewish Was Polish History?

David Stromberg Interviews Magda Teter About I.B. Singer, Jews, and Poland.

September 3, 2018 • by David Stromberg and Magda Teter

Magda Teter [MT]: Soon after Isaac Bashevis Singer won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Literatura na świecie, a literary monthly predominantly interested in world literature, devoted a portion of its April 1979 issue to Isaac Bashevis Singer. This marked a turning point for a discussion about Polish Jewish history and culture, ...

Feature

Ágnes Heller: Orbán is a Tyrant

From the time he became the prime minister of Hungary, Orban was always interested in concentrating all the power in his hands.

August 26, 2018 • by Jan Smoleński

Jan Smoleński: Is Viktor Orban a populist? Agnes Heller*: I do not like the term populist as it is used in the context of Viktor Orban, because it does not say anything. Populists rely typically on poor people. Orban uses nationalistic vocabulary and rhetoric, he mobilizes hatred against the stranger and ...

Feature

A New Committee with Lech Walesa, 2018

Reflections on the limitations of the continuing struggle for democracy in Poland

July 12, 2018 • by Leszek Budrewicz

In opposition to the threat to democracy in Poland today, Lech Walesa is calling for a united front against the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS), reviving a citizens committee he led thirty years ago in the democratic struggle against Communist dictatorship. Here the first of two pieces responding to ...

Democracy

Revolution, Democracy, and Restoration Revisited

In Poland and beyond

July 11, 2018 • by Elzbieta Matynia

To be sure, the time is out of joint, and we feel as lost as Hamlet does when he bursts out: Oh, that ever I was born to set it right! Indeed, things appear not as they ought to, and one wonders how to set them right. Although this is a view from afar, painted ...

Revolution, Democracy, and Restoration Revisited

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On the Etiquette of Opposing Donald Trump and His Enablers

An up close view of the problem of civility, at home, looking abroad

July 6, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I am not in Wroclaw, Poland today, but back home in New York. This banal observation may not surprise you, but it is a notable event in my life. Over the past 27 years, in the summer, I have gone to Poland to teach in The New School’s Democracy and Diversity ...

On the Etiquette of Opposing Donald Trump and His Enablers

Feature

Anti-Semitism Was Not Just a Smokescreen

The Jewish part of Poland’s 1968

May 21, 2018 • by David Ost

This piece is being simultaneously published in Polish by Kultura Liberalna. At its recent commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the 1968 protests at Warsaw University, the Law and Justice (PiS, in Polish abbreviation) government of Poland presented its official line: that 1968 was a “Polish national social movement against communism,” ...

Anti-Semitism Was Not Just a Smokescreen

Feature

From Velvet Revolution to Velvet Dictatorship

Reflections on Democratic Regression

May 3, 2018 • by Adam Michnik

Let me start by describing how communism died. The first thing to perish was the communist faith. And this faith had two dimensions. It was a faith in the project of a just world, a world of solidarity and freedom. And it was a conviction that people had finally deciphered ...

Feature

Using Memes to Extinguish Sexism in Poland

A look at Marta Frej’s feminist artwork

April 12, 2018 • by Aneta Stępień

The feminist memes by Polish artist, Marta Frej, feature women of all ages including school girls, grannies, athletes, and mothers engaging in ordinary tasks. But don’t be fooled, the messages included in the memes are powerful and revolutionary. Sleeping Beauty hangs a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign, female firefighters ‘extinguish sexism for ...