The Un-Polish Poland, 1989 and the Illusion of Regained Historical Continuity, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2017

This book discusses historical continuities and discontinuities between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, interwar Poland, the Polish People?s Republic, and contemporary Poland. The year 1989 is seen as a clear point-break that allowed the Poles and their country to regain a ?natural historical continuity? with the ?Second Republic,? as interwar Poland is commonly referred to in the current Polish national master narrative. In this pattern of thinking about the past, Poland-Lithuania (nowadays roughly coterminous with Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia?s Kaliningrad Region and Ukraine) is seen as the ?First Republic.? However, in spite of this ?politics of memory? (Geschichtspolitik) ? regarding its borders, institutions, law, language, or ethnic and social makeup ? present-day Poland, in reality, is the direct successor to and the continuation of communist Poland. Ironically, today?s Poland is very different, in all the aforementioned aspects, from the First and Second Republics. Hence, contemporary Poland is quite un-Polish, indeed, from the perspective of Polishness defined as a historical (that is, legal, social, cultural, ethnic and political) continuity of Poland-Lithuania and interwar Poland.

Tomasz Kamusella is Reader at University of St Andrews, UK, and specializes in language politics and nationalism. His recent publications are Creating Languages in Central Europe During the Last Millennium (2014) and the cooedited volumes: The Palgrave Handbook of Slavic Languages, Identities and Borders (2016), and Creating Nationality in Central Europe, 1880-1950 (2016).

Analyses in depth the Polish national myth of historical continuity between Poland-Lithuania and today’s Polish nation-state

Develops further the criticism of the overemphasis on the idea of continuity in Polish history

Explores the idea of Polish identity as a historical continuity across this period, using the year 1989 as a clear point break

Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras