Chauvinism, Polish Style

The book presents the genesis of the Polish integral nationalism with the special role of its co-founder, Roman Dmowski. It offers a new interpretation of the phenomenon and confronts it with European, namely East Central European context of the epoch.

The book addresses the genesis of Polish integral nationalism and the role of Roman Dmowski as a co-founder of this phenomenon in the development of Polish political thought at the fin-de-siècle. Based on extensive documentary research, it attempts to show a broader picture of modern Polish political and social thinking in context of the late 19th and early 20th East Central Europe. The author reflects on the significance of racial thinking and Social Darwinism of the new nationalist imagination, arguing that its intellectual foundations came from anti-positivist and anti-Enlightenment tradition. He challenges the widespread assumption that Polish nationalism in its early version cherished somehow mild attitudes toward minorities, especially the Jews, claiming instead that enmity toward «Otherness» constitutes its ideological core. A major feature of the book is the contextualization of Polish nationalism against the backdrop of the fin-de-siècle European political thought.

Autorentext

Grzegorz Krzywiec is Assistant Professor at the Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences. He is Coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Seminar on Problems of Anti-Semitism at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and was a research fellow at, among others, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and Tel Aviv University.

Zusammenfassung
«One of the most important studies written on antisemitism in Poland, this brilliant, well-researched biography of Roman Dmowski, the leading figure in Polish national and antisemitic thought, spares no punches.» (Scott Ury, Tel Aviv University, Israel)
«Engagingly written and convincingly structured, this is a extremely valuable, deeply researched and fascinating study of Polish ethnonationalism in making.» (Joanna Beata Michlic, University of Bristol, United Kingdom)
«An energetic new interpretation of a crucial and controversial figure in Polish history and politics.» (Theodore R. Weeks, Southern Illinois University, USA)

Inhalt

Contents: Fin-de-siècle mass politics - Integral nationalism - Modern Polish politics - Polish-Jewish relations - Polish lands - Political anti-Semitism - Racial thinking - Political Social Darwinism - Student politics - Russian Poland.