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Tag: history

Gdańsk’s heritage and reconstruction after the war

After the Second World War, Gdańsk was fully integrated into Poland. Subsequently, the population dynamic of the city changed – many German residents fled or were expelled, and were replaced by Poles, who came especially from areas lost to the Soviets in the former eastern lands. With new rulers and a new populace in place, a question arose – what to do about the ruined city?

September 26, 2025 - Błażej Kowacz

The end of the “Big Brother” myth in Armenia

The image of Russians as “protectors” and “saviours” has been deeply embedded in Armenian political mythology throughout the past two centuries. This mythology has been largely based on events connected to the rule of the Ottoman Empire, where Russia often positioned itself as the defender of the region’s Christian population. Armenia’s experience of the last 200 years shows that Russian imperial domination has been surprisingly resilient, having been able to reinvent itself in many ways.

May 5, 2025 - Mikayel Zolyan

Twenty-five years on, the Yeltsin Centre shows Russia’s danger

Although I have been to the Yeltsin Centre in Yekaterinburg many times for research, about half way through my last visit, I began to feel uneasy. Videos of the coup and parliament bombings touched a nerve. How quickly the situation changed then. Images of buildings around Pushkin Square in Moscow, near where I used to work, being smashed by vandals and cars alike. Such events feel unthinkable in Moscow today. In the Yeltsin Centre, I realized just how likely they could be.

Twenty-five years ago, as Boris Yeltsin resigned from his position as president of the Russian Federation, his wife and daughter were utterly relieved. The job had taken its toll in just about every way and the Yeltsins were excited to get their family life back. But Russia and the world were stunned. It came out of the blue. What next for Russia after the chaos? Nobody knew.

May 5, 2025 - James C. Pearce

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was far from being just “Poland”

A conversation with Tomas Venclova, Lithuanian philosopher and writer. Interviewer: Nikodem Szczyglowski

February 28, 2025 - Nikodem Szczygłowski Tomas Venclova

Oriental or local? Poland’s Tatar community

The Tatars of Poland remain one of the country’s most enduring ethnic minorities. Arriving in the area as early as the 14th century, this group has maintained its own distinctiveness while adapting to many wider Polish customs. This process has involved as much positive as negative developments.

Had you, 30 or 40 years ago, visited Kruszyniany, a village near the Belarusian border that is home to one of the two traditional Tatar settlements in Poland, you would have encountered the tranquil rhythm of community life centred around bayrams (a Turkic word for festivals or celebrations). In Muslim tradition, religious holidays are moments for families to gather in prayer at a mosque or a cemetery (mizar). To join their relatives in these celebrations, descendants of Tatars from all around Poland would flock to Kruszyniany. However, once the festivities were over, only a few Tatar families stayed in the village, enjoying its tranquillity and the slow pace of life.

February 28, 2025 - Michał Łyszczarz

Polish language and nation: a rather recent pairing

Standing fast by Poland’s national “master narrative”, the country’s schools teach that the Polish nation, defined as all the speakers of the Polish language, is a millennium old. Yet, this pairing of the Polish nation and language dates back only to the late 19th century.

In Polish popular opinion, the view that the Polish nation consists of all the speakers of the Polish language is not controversial. Hence, the Polish speech community is unreflectively equated with the Polish nation. In turn, all the territories where speakers of Polish reside compactly are deemed to rightfully constitute the Polish nation-state. 

February 28, 2025 - Tomasz Kamusella

Seeing the present in the past: Byzantium and the Balkans

The legacy of the Byzantine Empire in the Balkans stretches back for centuries. Today’s politics should remember that the idea of Balkan states as homogenous entities is not natural. This is a relatively new idea that was realized through violence, population exchanges and expulsion at the turn of the 20th century. This process then continued well into the 1990s with the Yugoslav Wars.

The Byzantine Empire is the medieval successor to the ancient Roman Empire. Its origins are traditionally traced back to the time when the Roman Empire began to re-position its centre of power towards the Eastern Mediterranean, adopted Constantinople as its capital, adopted Greek (rather than Latin) as its primary language, and Christianity as its official religion. This all roughly happened in the period between the years 300 and 400.  

February 28, 2025 - Mirela Ivanova

The controversy about Tajikistan’s history textbooks

Among its Central Asian neighbours, Tajikistan’s history textbooks still most closely resemble official accounts from the Soviet era. They stress the evils of the Russian Empire’s expansion to the region. At the same time, they also remain fairly positive about Tajikistan’s Soviet experience, underlining the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic’s contribution to the Soviet state. Perhaps as a result, they have been caught in Russia’s crosshairs.

School textbooks are telling examples of official interpretations of history. They exemplify the narratives that are taught to children as part of their civic socialization controlled by governments. In countries that gained independence after the Soviet collapse, the shifts in historical narratives have been intrinsically linked to the reimagining of these countries’ Soviet past by attributing them with new meanings through the prism of post-Soviet nation-building processes. With Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the debates about history textbooks gained a new momentum, and a new meaning.

February 28, 2025 - Karolina Kluczewska

Memory politics in Ukraine and Russia as a component of modern warfare

As Ukrainians took their first steps in exploring their own history, they began uncovering a wealth of previously forbidden topics and figures. Following the country’s independence, the exchange of academic research between Ukrainian and western historians became possible. This significantly contributed to shaping Ukraine’s historical policy, which was also in many cases in direct opposition to the Kremlin’s interpretation of history. Unsurprisingly, history and memory are key components of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

History and memory regarding the events of the past have always been, and still are, powerful tools in relations between Ukraine and Russia. While Russia has tried to shape its historical policy since the late Middle Ages, when Moscow declared itself the “third Rome” and pursued “the gathering of Russian lands”, modern Ukraine, which was without statehood for a long time, began to develop and restore its true history after independence in 1991. It would also develop its own historical policy. 

February 28, 2025 - Oleksii Lionchuk

On fascism

This text is a reprint of Egelbert Besednjak’s 1922 analysis of fascism after its rise to power in Italy. The text is not only a solid analysis of the process of the rise of fascism over 100 years ago, but also a reminder how the reins of power can swiftly shift in a dangerous direction, even in a democracy.

February 28, 2025 - Engelbert Besednjak

The forgotten beginnings of US-China diplomatic relations

In the shadow of Cold War tensions, covert diplomatic talks took place in Warsaw from 1958 to 1970 between the United States and the People's Republic of China. These talks, today largely forgotten, laid the foundation for a rapprochement that would change the course of global politics in the 1970s.

The 1950s were an immensely complex decade for global geopolitics. Numerous African and Asian nations started to regain their independence, redefining the old colonial world order and thus weakening past colonial superpowers, such as the United Kingdom or France. Above all, however, the new world order was emerging, dominated by the duopoly of the United States and Soviet Union and a visible division of spheres of influence between them.

November 21, 2024 - Konrad Szatters

A bottom-up approach to the history of the region

An interview with Jacob Mikanowski, author of Goodbye Eastern Europe. An intimate history of a divided land. Interviewers: Adam Reichardt and Nina Pániková

September 16, 2024 - Adam Reichardt Jacob Mikanowski Nina Pániková

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