National Myths in the New Czech Liberalism 133 NATIONAL MYTHS IN THE NEW CZECH LIBERALISM Kieran Williams It is well known that events since 1989 have allowed a reassertion and exploration of Slovak national identity. They have also, however, permitted a rethinking of Czechness in which myth plays a central part. New liberals (or 'liberal-conservatives') in the two main successor parties to Civil Forum, while usually associated primarily with economic transformation strategies, have taken part in this attempt at nation-shaping; indeed, a mythopoeic vision of the Czech nation is an essential component of the liberal revolution. Nationalist mythopoeia may seem incompatible with the intentions of this liberal revolution, which is usually portrayed as rationalist, critical and self-critical, with an aversion to Romantic revolution's reliance on the emotional impulses of national culture.1 In those rare instances that contemporary liberal theorists have tried to accommodate ideas of nationhood and nationality, they stress that nations are 'evolutive social realities' that emerge spontaneously through undirected interactions. Given the organic, evolutionary nature of the nation, they argue, it would be futile to try to impose a 'guided behaviour' on it2 Guided behaviour, however, is exactly what new Czech liberals, especially Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus (on whom I will focus), hope to achieve through the use of myth in contemporary political discourse. The apparent paradox arising here is similar to that obtaining in the economic transition: new liberals are using precisely the constructivist devices so loathed in much liberal theory, in the belief that they will deliver the country to a purported condition of spontaneous, undirected order. Motives The reasons for this outwardly constructivist undertaking are several and various. The Czech liberal tradition, like those in many countries of Central Europe, always included concern for the fate of the nation as 1. Bruce Ackerman, The Future of Liberal Revolution, New Haven, CT. 1992 pp. 7-«. ™ Z Jesus Huerta de Sow, 'A Theory of Liberal Nationalism" in // Politico, 60, 1995, pp. 583-98. 132 well as for individual freedom; in the nineteenth century the idea of a single, unified community of nationally conscious individuals was embraced as the vehicle for progress.3 The Czech school of liberal political economy that flourished between 1890 and 1925, represented by Albín Bráf, Jozef Kaizl, Alois RaSin and Karel EngliS, combined principles of free trade, careful spending and restrained (but heartfelt) nationalism.4 The young RaSin, whom Klaus has often cited as an inspiration, was so radical in his demands for recognition of the historical rights of the Bohemian state in the 1890s that he was imprisoned for two years, and during the First World War was sentenced to death for treason, a sentence commuted by the last Habsburg emperor.3 A second source of sensitivity to nationhood is the activity of a circle of independent intellectuals that originally assembled around the periodical Tvá? in the mid-1960s and covertly re-convened in 1978. The group included Klaus (writing on economics under the pseudonyms Zdenek Dvořák and Jan Řehák), TomáS Ježek, Bohumil Doležal, Emanuel Mandler and Jan Strásky. Unlike the better-known group around Charter 77, this circle, which developed in the 1980s into the Democratic Initiative, connected a liberal concern for human rights to questions of nationhood and the national condition. In 1985 they devoted a whole collection of samiidat articles ta the issue of Czech identity; Klaus did not participate, but Doležal and Ježek, who would serve as close advisers to Klaus after 1989, did.6 It can be stated, therefore, that from an early point the core of the Czech liberal community linked issues of nationhood to those of individual emancipation. Finally, a reason can be found in the very goal of the liberal revolution: to eliminate institutions and practices that distort the spontaneous ordering abilities of the market. It is deemed necessary that the individuals who will interact in pursuit of their ends do so with minds cleared of certain expectations and instilled with certain values. New Czech liberals assume that, just as a market of sorts always existed even under central planning, so certain values and inclinations have survived in Czech society which, with encouragement, can facilitate the transition to an open economy. So, as Václav Klaus has admitted: 4. 5. 6. Otto Urban, 'český liberalismus v 19. století' in Milan Znoj. Jan Havránek and Manin Sekera (eds), Ceskj liberalismus: Texty a osobnosti, Prague, 1995, pp. 16, 20. For excerpts of their writings, see ibid., pp. 460-95. František Vcncovsky, Alois Raiin: livot a dOo, Prague, 1992. Hledáni nadije 1978-1987: Vyber z ineditnlch sborníků, Prague, 1993. 134 Kieran Williams National Myths in the New Czech Liberalism 135 I believe in Adam Smith's invisible hand and in Hayek's spontaneously arising system of human interactions. At the same time, I am aware that it is necessary, especially in the initial construction of this system, to maintain certain, not insignificant, regularities and certain sequential rules, and that it is therefore necessary in this phase to grant a large 'constructing' role to the economic centre, to the institution whose role in a time of normal conduct of this conceived system must otherwise be minimal.7 In other words, Klaus has admitted that, during the transition to the free market, the state must help create the necessary conditions. This means not only the creation of certain institutions, intervention in market processes (wage, price and rent controls), and the illusion of private ownership (via investment funds and banks in which the state retains a controlling share), but also the formation of identity, appetites and aversions. New Czech liberals enlist myth to present a vision of the Czech nation as Europeans naturally inclined to democracy, hard work, commerce and self-reliance. A mythologized reading of Czech history serves to erase awkward facts, such as the times when Czechs were inclined to pan-Slavism and looked away from Western Europe,8 or acquiesced to authoritarian rule, either by foreigners or compatriots. Liberals also seek to establish a profile and programme distinct from that of President Havel and of the original Civil Forum. Above all, they must confront the fact that socialism and Communism, including Stalinism, had genuine support in the Czech working class and intelligentsia before 1948,' and that the Left still commands a following. Choice of Myths Roughly seven common myths are relevant that can be found in Czech literature, political discourse and popular imagination, as identified by Robert Pynsent,10 Jiří Rak,11 Vladimír Macura12 and Ladislav Holy." 7. Václav Klaus, česká cesta, Prague, 1994, p. 74. 8. Jiří Rak, Bývali Čechové: české historické mýty a stereotypy, Jinočany, 1994 (hereafter Bývali Čechové), pp. 99-126. 9. Jacques Rupnik, 'The Roots of Czech Stalinism' in Raphael Samuel and Gareth Stedman-Jones (eds), Culture, Ideology and Politics: Essays for Eric Hobsbawm, London, 198Z 10. Robert B. Pynsent, Questions of Identity: Czech and Slovak Ideas of Nationality and Personality, London, 1994 (hereafter Questions of Identity), especially pp. 148-210. 11. Rak, Bývali Čechovi. 12. Vladimír Macura, Masarykovy boty a jiné send (o) fejetony, Prague, 1993. 13. Ladislav Holy.TAí Little Czech and the Great Czech Nation: National Identity and the Post-Communist Social Transformation, Cambridge, 1996. The list is not exhaustive and these myths are not necessarily compatible; nor do they feature in every mythopoeic scheme. 1. The foundation myth of the Czech nation, when it entered the Bohemian lands led by Forefather Cech, who looked down from the Rip hill (just north of today's Prague), and viewed the Promised Land. 2. The myth of the natural democratic spirit of the Czechs. This myth is fuelled by legend or by readings of the medieval Bohemian kingdom, and leads to further assumptions that the Czechs are naturally individualist, love freedom and peace, and incline to civic virtue and to liberalism itself. 3. The myth of Slav reciprocity, especially of fraternity with Slovaks, which is portrayed as a time-honoured way to avoid or escape from ethnic, cultural and political isolation. There is a competing myth, however, of Slavs as prone to disunity and petty squabbling, rendering themselves vulnerable to foreign domination. 4. The myth of the special Czech mission, the great contribution to the spiritual liberation of Europe and all humanity, be it Charles IV's Gothic Arcadia, a Hussite purification of Christianity, 'socialism with a human face', or Bohemia as a bridge spanning the divide between East and West. This myth quietly supports arguments of Czech distinctness from (even superiority over) its neighbours, and of having different needs, aims and talents to theirs. 5. The myth of long-running conflict with certain neighbours, especially Germans, and of the unreliability or duplicity of the mightier nations of Western Europe. 6. The myth of a dark age (temno) of national dormition, especially after the skirmish of the White Mountain in 1620, which ties into the preceding myth of threats to identity from foreign domination. 7. The myth of realism, centrism (and being at the centre of Europe) and pragmatism as national virtues, the accepting of certain constraints and making the best of them. It can also be seen as a myth of mythlessness, of being a rational nation (again, unlike Poles, Slovaks and Hungarians) that is too honest and self-deprecating to sustain precisely the sorts of myths listed above. Myths in Action First, Klaus justifies his own rethinking of Czechness as a part of democratization and economic transformation by equating it to the original national revival that took place in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.14 Just as that time has come to be presented as the rebirth (rather than invention) of Czech identity, so too Klaus masks 14. Klaus, česká cesta, p. 26. 136 Kieran Williams National Myths in the New Czech Liberalism 137 his revolution as the return to what is natural. The Communist period is portrayed as an age of darkness like that following the White Mountain, in that the nation and all of its members were degraded: In the period of Communism we were oppressed individually [...] but we were equally oppressed as a nation. Under the banner of proletarian internationalism, we lost our national (and state) identity and now we are in the process of its repeated definition, in the process of the new formulation of our state and national interests.15 Klaus's most histrionic use of myth came in September 1993, when he delivered a speech from the summit of Rip. This is the hill in northern Bohemia from which the nation's mythical forefather, Cech, like Moses from Mount Nebo, looked over the lands below, then descended to tell his people, 'See, this is the land which you have sought. I have often spoken to you of it and promised that I will lead you into it. This is the Promised Land, full of beasts and birds, flowing with honey. You will have abundance in everything and it will be a good defence against enemies.'16 In his speech Klaus referred to this tale simply as a legend, yet invoked what he considered truly resonant associations with Rip as the vantage point for foreseeing a happy future. He praised the hill as a symbol of 'the traditions of our ancestors', of their 'devotion to the ideas of national and civic freedom'. He reminded his audience that it was on Rip that a Czech prince built a chapel in the twelfth century to celebrate the Bohemian victory over the (German) Holy Roman Emperor Lothar, a battle — claimed Klaus — that affirmed the Czech state's distinct identity. (It should be noted, however, that the name Rip is probably Celtic or Germanic in origin.) Klaus then looked over the landscape below Rip and reminded his audience of all that the Czechs had accomplished since 1989, assuring them that 'we are not threatened by the events which we have seen in recent days in Russia', since the Czech Republic, alone among post-Communist states, had made the transition to a market economy without social upheaval. Thanks to the 'practical, active patriotism' of every Czech today, he predicted, future generations would praise their achievements and would recall the poet Jaroslav Seifert's line, 'How nice it is here at home.*17 In the course of this short speech, Klaus combined myths of origin and destiny, interwove allusions to Czech feelings of superiority over other nations, presented a patriotism of constructive, non-conflictual civic work, and suggested that he was the new Forefather Cech, 15. Václav Klaus, Dopočítávání do jedné, Prague, 1995, p. 122. 16. As recounted by Alois Jirásek, Staré pověsti české, Prague, n.d., p. 11. 17. Klaus, česká cesta, pp. 9-11. surveying the glittering Promised Land of a successfully transformed society. Though he is usually less histrionic, Klaus frequendy employs mythical or mythologized characters from Czech history to reinforce a message about contemporary policy. For example, although it was decided not to make St Vaclav's (Wenceslas) Day (28 September) a state holiday, Klaus gave an address in September 1992 in which he attempted to rehabilitate his namesake as a forgotten national figure who symbolized the values that the new state should endorse. Though Klaus admitted that little is known of the historical Václav, apparently assassinated in 935, traditions tell of: a prince basically more humane and educated than were his still semi-barbarian surroundings; a prince who, in the spirit of the faith that he took literally and seriously, to the letter, strove to elevate and cultivate these surroundings; who felt that from the West come not only attackers and conquerors but also, perhaps primarily, bearers and communicators of values in which the life of the individual and the existence of the state can be reliably anchored [...]. It is a tradition of Czech statehood — I emphasize Czech and I emphasize statehood. It is a Christian tradition that pushes certain values to the fore, such as humaneness and culture. It is a tradition linked with Europe.18 Klaus noted that Vaclav's apparent willingness to make an alliance with the Germans was misused by the Nazi Protectorate to encourage collaboration, and that this turned Czechs away from the values of Václav into the clutches of 'Communist Russia'. Now, when Czech statehood had been renewed, he proposed a return to the values represented by the Václav cult to provide a 'common language' to facilitate 'a basic and deep consensus in everyday life'. This return to course can include a modus vivendi with Germany, and to justify this relationship Klaus offered a Bavarian audience a benign, mythologized account of medieval Bohemia's suction into Germano-Roman Christianity, away from Byzantine Orthodoxy, a story he felt had to be told today since forty years of Communist rule had obscured the Czechs' 'natural* belonging to Europe.19 Klaus has displayed indifference to Jan Hus and, without directly attacking the Hussite movement, he has noted that religious conflicts in the early modern age were marked by violence and intolerance on all sides.20 When accepting the Conrad Peutinger prize in 1993, he observed that Peutinger had travelled in Bohemia in the sixteenth century and had criticized Hussitism for allegedly endorsing common 18. Klaus, Rok — málo či mnoho v dejinách zemi, Prague, 1993 (hereafter Rok), p. 68. 19. Klaus, česká cesta, p. 131. 20. lbid.,p. 110. 138 Kieran Williams National Myths in the New Czech Liberalism 139 ownership, and Klaus added that he himself views 'Hussite utopianism' as simply another third-way illusion, 'which in this regard differs little from Communism'.21 Instead, Klaus offered some thoughts in 1993 on the Counter-Reformation cult of Jan Nepomucký (St John of Nepomucene) on the 600th anniversary of his murder. Klaus did not attempt to explode the myth of Nepomucký, a German-speaking ecclesiastical functionary who was killed for asserting the jurisdiction of the Church against the State. A Nepomucene cult was then fostered by the Bohemian clergy in the eighteenth century to dispel the Czechs' international reputation as heretics and ease their return into the Catholic fold, and thereby restore national self-confidence and respect.22 Instead, Klaus chose to present Nepomucký as the victim of 'the long battle between spiritual and secular powers. This battle is not only the framework within which were born the basic values of European civilization and thus of the Czech nation. It is also the basic feature of European democracy.' Klaus claimed that the resistance of the Church to State domination prevented the complete absorption of the spiritual realm into the political, and thus prevented the rise of something like Byzantine caesaropapism, which, he pointed out, had suffered prolonged decline, and had produced successor states (much of Eastern Europe) which remain backward and corrupt. Having again found a chance to distance the Czech Republic from most of the post-Communist world, Klaus reflected on the divisive effect of the Nepomucene cult in Czech society as yet another example of an alleged Slav tendency to in-fighting, which he claimed only facilitates foreign domination and inhibits social integration. Klaus warned that today, 'at the moment of the advent of the new Czech state', the emergence of sharp cleavages in society 'would be something very dangerous'. He claimed that the Nepomucene cult has much in common with that of Hus, and that together they could offer a package of values around which Czech society should unite: justice and truth, public right and freedom of individual conscience. 'In the months and years ahead', he warned: when we must put our devastated economy in order, renew basic moral and political values, and place our newly arisen independent state on a firm foundation, let us proceed aware of that division of which I have spoken, and which is still so prominently embodied in the dispute over Jan Nepomucký. We stand before a basic task: to search and find what binds all of us, all citizens of this state, regardless of nationality, religious or 21. Ibid., p. 131. 22. Pynsent, Questions of Identity, pp. 201-2. political persuasion. This means searching for a common Czech patriotism.23 In this way, a fourteenth-century clergyman can be enlisted to serve a twentieth-century politician keen to inhibit the emergence of social cleavages. Myths of Czech uniqueness combine with myths of Czech realism in discussion of European integration. When asked whether he is a Eurosceptic, Klaus replied that he prefers to subscribe to 'Euro-realism', which he explains as a position 'that accepts reality, attempts to live in it and, at the same time, maximizes the effect that we can have from it'. This rules out what he dubs 'a priori scepticism and any blocking of reasonable activities'.24 Such characteristic realism, Klaus explains, should also direct Czechs to remain modest in their self-perception: he told one interviewer that Czechs should have no illusions that they are in a position to make some great contribution to Europe, that they are somehow the navel of the world.25 Yet, in almost the same breath, Klaus makes pronouncements that conform perfectly to myths of national mission. He tells his countrymen that they can make a great contribution to Europe just by being a free people.26 What this means is that Czechs, located (he claims) equidistant to Maastricht and Sarajevo, can use their experience of Communism to warn the world against the constructivist conceit. In particular, Czechs can warn Europe against the dangers of the trend that Klaus claims to see in the West of pursuing vaguely left-wing, interventionist policies, both nationally and supranationally in Brussels: The Czech Republic has the chance — in the historical period of which we are speaking — to warn against this danger. We have behind us the experience of Communism and this makes us very sensitive to certain things which the West does not feel so keenly.27 It is thus the Czech mission to save Europe from its own unhealthy inclinations, those deep-rooted leanings of which Hayek warned, towards socialism, planning and constructivism. In the service of this liberating mission, Klaus castigates Brussels for maintaining protectionist barriers to trade with East-Central Europe, which he scorns as 'a clear example that neither the idea of the free market nor the idea of Europeanism as such have yet triumphed'.28 It is the Czech 23. Klaus, ÄoJt, p. 70. 24. Vladimír Mlynár, 'Rozhovor s Václavem Klausem' in Respekt, 1994,21. 25. Antonín Přidal, Z očí do očí, Brno, 1994, p. 161. 26. Ibid. 27. Mlynář, 'Rozhovor s Václavem Klausem*. See also Klaus, Česká cesta, pp. 148, 164. 28. Klaus, ibid., p. 136. See also Klaus, Dopočítávání do jedni, pp. 141-5. 140 Kieran Williams lot today, he suggests, to teach Europe the true meaning of both, to be a bearer of freedom. In arguing this point, he has no qualms about comparing himself to Konrad Adenauer, who simultaneously acted as head of government, head of the main German right-wing political party, and as a driving force for European integration.59 At the same time, Klaus has rebuked Adenauer for rejecting the possibility of positive national sentiments and for espousing a Europe of blurred national boundaries. It is part of the Czech mission to promote a vision of Europe in which national identity, especially the newly rediscovered identity of the Czechs themselves, would not be submerged. Lest Czechs forget the dangers that can accompany dealings with larger nations, such as the British, French and Germans, Klaus periodically reminds them of the ways these peoples have failed the Czechs at crucial moments in the past.30 Impact To date, Klaus's use of myth in guiding Czech behaviour has had limited results. As noted earlier, a key motive for the use of myth is to deter voters from registering their sympathy with parties of the Left Despite such efforts, in the 1996 elections to the lower house of parliament, the Social Democrats received 26.4 per cent, and the relatively orthodox Communists 10.3 per cent. Another 8 per cent of the vote went to the Republican Party, whose ultranationalism has little in common with the liberal view of Czechness. Although Klaus was able to assemble a minority government, the vote tally showed that a very large share of the participating electorate did not want to conform to the Czech stereotype promoted by the coalition. Looking ahead, however, liberals may find a more willing audience as new school textbooks engrain in children a nation-centred (rather than class-centred) approach to Czech history. David CanSk concludes a recent analysis of textbooks with the claim that a clear mythicization of the nation and the national movement can now be detected. The history of the nineteenth century in Bohemia and Moravia is taught exclusively as the history of the Czech national movement, with non-Czech groups (Roma, Jews, Germans) either completely omitted from school history or vilified.31 Imbued with a view of history in which Czech national assertion plays a central part, the next generation of voters may prove more receptive to the political power of myth. 29. Klaus, česká cesta, p. 149. 30. See his musings on Munich, for example, in ibid., pp. 20-2. 31. David Canřk, Národ, národnost, menšiny a rasismus, Prague, 1996. POLISH NATIONAL MYTHOLOGIES Norman Davies Everyone needs myths. Individuals need myths. Nations need myths. Myths are the sets of simplified beliefs, which may or may not approximate to reality, but which give us a sense of our origins, our identity, and our purposes. They are patently subjective, but are often more powerful than the objective truth — for the truth can be painful. Some nations have more need of their myths than do others. Imperial nations invent myths in order to justify their rule over other peoples. Defeated nations invent myths to explain their misfortune and to assist their survival. Poland may well have belonged to this latter category, as political adversity over many generations seems to have created the sort of imaginative climate in which myths can flourish. Polish culture, and in particular literature, art and historiography, is full of instances where the national imagination triumphs over realism. A facetious piece of evidence to support this point of view may lie in the fact that the Polish word for 'myth' is mit — pronounced like the English 'meat'. In the days of food shortages in the 1970s and 1980s, when Poles would stand in line for hours on end for the most basic of supplies, they used to pass the time telling jokes. One hoary teaser asked: 'What word has the same sound and meaning in both English and Polish?' The answer was, of course, 'mit'. More seriously, it is important to remember that, in modem times, the Poles have had to compete with the mythology of other stronger nations who have often given a pejorative twist to Poland's image. In the national mythology of Russia, for example, the Poles are usually cast in the role of the eternal Western enemy, the traitor to Slavdom, the religious foe of the Orthodox Church, the main resoit of scheming foreigners, who constantly conspire to invade Russia and to undermine her traditional values. Russians love to remember the one occasion, irr 1612, when a Polish army occupied the Moscow Kremlin. They conveniently forget the far more numerous occasions when Russian armies have trampled over Poland. It so happened that Russia's national identity was crystallizing in the mid-nineteenth century, in the very era when the two great Polish Risings of 1830-1 and 1863-4 shook the tsarist empire to its core. The opposition between noble Russian and ignoble Poland was fixed for the duration. One has only to watch one of the wonderful Russian operas of that era, such as Another version of this paper was presented in February 1996 as the Milewski Lecture at New Britain, CT. 141 142 Norman Davies Polish National Mythologies 143 Glinka's A Life for the Tsar or Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, to see how deeply Russians are imbued with a negative stereotype of Poland. It was no accident that Dostoevsky gave Polish names to many of his criminal characters (notwithstanding that his own name was of Polish origin). The Zionist myth, too, casts Poland in a negative role. It has gained widespread publicity due to the unparalleled tragedy of the Jewish Holocaust and to powerful American support for the state of Israel. In essence, it holds that the stateless condition of the Jewish people in pre-war Europe left them so vulnerable to persecution that the creation of a separate Jewish state in Palestine was the only viable solution. Unfortunately, since Poland was the European country where most European Jews had setded and where the German Nazis chose to perpetrate the Holocaust, an exclusively hostile image of Poland has become a central feature of the Zionist programme. Germans have looked on their eastern neighbours much as the English once looked on the Irish. Just as Ireland proved to be the only obviously discontented part of the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century, so the Poles stood out as the most substantial and troublesome minority in the German empire. What is more, Poland provided the most accessible pool of cheap labour for German industries, and millions of poor migrants flocked westwards into the rapidly expanding cities. As a result, the widespread sympathy for Poland, which had been manifested in the era of the Polenlieder of the 1830s, faded away; and for at least a century German and Polish nationalism were irreconcilable. According to the hostile German stereotypes, 'Polack' summoned up images of hopeless romantics, feckless workers, undesirable tramps, and anti-German conspirators. Polnische Wirtschaft (literally 'Polish economies') became a standard German idiom for 'aright old mess'. So-called 'Polish Jokes', which type-cast all Poles as primitive and stupid, were a close parallel to the 'Irish Jokes' retailed in England. The long tradition of disdain for everything Polish provided a ready-made ingredient for the later Nazi policies of German racial supremacy, where Poles were officially included in the class of Untermenschen—'sub-humans'. There is no way that the riches of Poland's national mythology can be reduced to the space of one short chapter. They can be illustrated, however, from a number of different examples drawn from a variety of historical periods. In the expose" which follows, seven separate myths will be examined. 1587 In 1587, the memorable Annates sive de origine et rebus gestis Polonorum et Lithuanorum was published in Cracow by the Calvinist nobleman, Stanislaw Samicki. This treatise on "The Origins and Deeds of the Poles and Lithuanians' was by no means the first of its kind. Samicki had several prominent rivals in the historical profession of his day, including the Bishop of Warmia, Marcin Kromer (1512-89), whose famous chronicle, De origine et rebus gestis Polonorum, had been printed more than thirty years earlier. Samicki is remembered for giving a new twist to an old tale. Ever since the Jagiellonian court historian, Canon Jan Dlugosz, writing in the previous century, most Polish writers had held to the theory that the Polish nation could trace its roots to the ancient Sarmatians, a nomadic Indo-Iranian people who had settled the plains of Eastern Europe before the Christian Era. The classical division of the Eurasian steppes into Sarmatia europea and Sarmatia asiatica with the boundary on the River Tanais or Don was still current in Renaissance Europe. Samicki's contribution was to claim that the Sarmatians were ancestors not of the Poles as a whole, but only of the Polish nobility. Henceforth, it was the szlachta alone who claimed Sarmatian descent. Very soon, nobilis-Polonus-Sarmata became synonyms for members of a 'Sarmatian race*. Non-nobles, burghers, Jews and peasants were not even counted as Poles. The 'Polish nation' was seen to consist exclusively of nobles. Such was the haughty arrogance of this noble racism that it may be compared to the notorious limpiexa de sangre, the belief in the purity of noble blood which flourished in Spain in the same period. Polish nobles were taught to believe that they were biologically different from the rest of the population, and that their privileges depended on 'the defence of their blood*. Miscegenation with the lower estates was treated as a crime. Walerian Nekanda Trepka, author of the Liber chamorum or 'Book of Hams' (1620), spent much of his life rooting out thousands of families of ignoble origin who, having fraudulently wormed their way into the szlachta, were busily diluting the race. For him, and his like, it was impossible to think without distaste of nobles and non-nobles marrying or breeding: Balsam, when added to tar, ceases to be balsam but turns to tar; and weeds, when sown in the finest Melds, will not become wheat [...] so, if a noblewoman marries a peasant, she will certainly give birth to an ignoble 144 Norman Davies Polish National Mythologies 145 child. For what purity can come from such impurity, what perfume from such a stench! It is a wise proverb: Nightingales are not born from owls.1 Poland's 'Sarmatian Myth' has many parallels in other European countries. It has much in common, for example, with the Normanist Theory in Russia, which held that the founders of 'Kievan Rus" and their kin in the modern Russian aristocracy were the descendants not of Slavs but of Vikings. What is more, like the Normanist Theory, it evolved over time. In the seventeenth century, in the era of Poland's closest contacts with the Ottomans, it helped to bolster the Oriental style of dress and armour which the Polish nobility adopted. In the eighteenth century, it underlay the conservative philosophy of 'Sarmatism' which favoured the complacent view that everything in Poland, including the 'Golden Freedom' of the szlachta, was unique and superior. By that time, on the eve of the Commonwealth's demise, the racial overtones of the ancestral myth had mellowed; and large numbers of Jews, for example, were able to buy their ennoblement without difficulty. The question remains whether Poland's 'Sarmatian Myth' contains any grain of historical fact. Most historians have treated it as a colourful fantasy, a genealogical invention as eccentric as that of Polish nobles who claimed to be descended from Noah or from Julius Caesar. The evidence is certainly thin. But that does not stop scholars from trying. One intriguing curiosity lies in the passable resemblance which exists between the emblems of Poland's unusual system of heraldry and the tamgas or 'pictorial charges' of the ancient Sarmatians. Given that a tribe of Sarmatian Alans was said to have disappeared into the backwoods of Eastern Europe in the fourth century, it is nice to think that there might have been some sort of ancestral link between the most efficient cavalrymen of the Roman Army and the most distinguished cavalrymen of early modern Europe. Sobieski's 'Winged Hussars' were still carrying the same enormous lances, and riding the same oversize chargers, that had made the Alans famous more than a thousand years before.2 1620 On 11 March 1620, the Crown Chancellor of Poland, George Ossoliriski, paid a visit to London, and read a Latin peroration before King James I in Whitehall Palace. He brought news of the latest 1. From W.N. Trepka, Liber Generationis vel PUbeanorum (liber Chamorum), ed. W. Dworaczck, Wroclaw, 1963; 'Proemium' quoted by Norman Daviej, God's Playground, 2 vols, Oxford. 1981, vol. 1. p. 233. 2. See Tadeusz Sulimirski, The Sarmatians, London, 1970, discussed by Ncal Ascherson, Black Sea, London, 1995, pp. 230-43. invasion of Poland's eastern borders by the Ottoman Turks, and appealed to the English King for aid against the infidel. After all, as he explained, Poland was 'the most trusty rampart of the Christian world*: Tandem erupit ottomanorum ism diu celatum pectore virus [...] et publico barbarorum furore, validissimum christiani orbis antemurale, petitur Polonia. [At last, the poisonous and hidden plan of the Ottomans has been revealed, and Poland, the most trusty rampart of the Christian world, has been assailed by the vulgar fury of the barbarians.]3 The myth of Poland's role as the 'Bulwark of Christendom', the antemurale christianitatis, had a very long career. Initially inspired by the wars against Turks and Tartars, it was later employed to justify Poland's defence of Catholic Europe against the Orthodox Muscovites, and later against Communism and Fascism. It was still very much alive in the twentieth century, in the Polish-Soviet War of 1920, for instance, or in the spiritual sense, in Solidarity's stand against the decaying Communist regime of the 1980s. Not surprisingly, it inspired the name of a very distinguished academic journal, published in Rome.4 The myth of the antemurale does indeed encapsulate many splendid sentiments, but it can hardly be taken at face value as a perfect reflection of historical reality. For one thing, the Poles were not alone in seeing themselves as the watchmen of the Catholic world. Hungarians and Croats boasted very similar views, and used the same terminology. For another, it is not realistic to think of Poland's strategic role over half a millennium exclusively in terms of static defensive emplacements. On many occasions, the Poles did man the ramparts. On other occasions, they sallied forth and stormed other people's ramparts. It may have been something of an exception to the general rule, but the sight of Polish soldiers manning the walls of the Moscow Kremlin in 1612, or marching with Napoleon into Russia exactly 200 years later, is not what the antemurale was meant to signify. It is a sad fact that different European nations remember different historical dates. 3 A True Copy of the Latin Oration of the excellent Lord George Ossolinski.[...] as it was pronounced to his Majestic at White-hall by the said Embassador (...) (London, 1621); printed in W. Chalewik (ed.), Anglo-Polish Renaissance Texts, Warsaw, 1968, pp. 247-62. 4. Antemurale, Journal of the Polish Historical Institute in Rome (1954- ). 146 Norman Davies Polish National Mythologies 147 1655 In 1655, the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania had been overrun from all sides. The Russians had taken Minsk and Wilno, and were marching on Kiev. The Swedish armies of Charles X had advanced on two fronts, from Pomerania in the West and from the Baltic provinces in the East They captured Warsaw and Cracow. The Pauline monastery of Jasna Gora near Czestochowa was one of the very few fortified positions in the country to hold firm. Protected by its holy icon of the 'Black Madonna', the Matka Boska Czestochowska, it resisted all attempts to seize it. As the monks intoned their prayers to the Blessed Virgin, and the Prior stood on the battlements hurling defiance, the Swedish cannonballs bounced harmlessly off the roof, and Swedish muskets backfired into the musketeers' faces. The monastery proved impregnable. After months of futile siege, the Swedish King sounded the retreat. Poland was saved. Indeed, she recovered so quickly that, within two years, the Polish armies of Hetman Stefan Czamecki were advancing across the Baltic into Sweden. In recognition of the country's deliverance, the Polish King, John Casimir, vowed to dedicate his whole kingdom to the Virgin Mary. At the moving ceremony held in the cathedral of Lw6w, the Sluby Iwowskie, in 1656, the Virgin Mary was solemnly crowned as the 'Queen of Poland'. Henceforth, Catholic Poles were taught not just to revere the Mother of God as their patron, but increasingly to regard Catholicity as the touchstone of their national identity. Here was a key moment in the growth of myth of the Polak-Katolik, 'the Catholic Pole' — the belief that if you weren't a Roman Catholic, you somehow didn't qualify to be a true Pole. Given that anything between one third and one half of Poland's population consisted of non-Catholics — Protestants, Orthodox, Uniates, Jews and Muslims — the growing association of Polishness and Catholicity was to prove extremely divisive. The divisions became most intense in the era of nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when each of Poland's numerous minorities developed strong national and ethnic identities of their own. It was no accident that the journal of Poland's most nationalistic political movement, the Stronnictwo narodowe or 'National Democracy' of Roman Dmowski (1870-1939), took the name of Polakatolik. It would have been news to Polish nationalists of that persuasion to learn that the Teutonic Knights, and the Kingdom of France, had both adopted the patronage of the Virgin Mary long before Poland did. Even so, for generations of Poles, the serene and sorrowful face of the Matka Boska has been the source of great solace. The power of the Black Madonna of Cze_stochowa, and her counterpart in Lithuania, the Matka Boska Ostrobramska, is celebrated in liturgy and literature alike. Best loved, perhaps, is the invocation which occurs in the opening lines of the national epic, Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz: Panno swieta, co Jasnej bronisz Czestochowy I w Ostrej šwiecisz Bramie! Ty, co gród zamkowy Nowogródzki ochraniasz z jego wiernym ludem! Jak mnie dziecko do zdrowia powrócilaá čudem (Gdy od placzacej matki pod Twoj% opieke^ Ofiarowany, martwa. podnioslem powieke. I zaraz mog}em pieszo do Twych swiatyri progu Iáó za wrócone žycie podziekowač Bogu), Tak nas powrócisz čudem na Ojczyny lono. [O Holy Virgin, who guards the Bright Mount of Cze_stochowa / and shines in the Pointed" Gate of Wilno! You, who / shield the castle wall of Novogrddek and its faithful folk! / Just as you miraculously returned me to health as a child / (When, surrendered to your care by my weeping mother, / I raised a dead eyelid / And could walk straightaway to the door of your temple / To give thanks to God for a life redeemed), / So by a miracle you will return us to the bosom of our homeland.]5 Personally, I would add the magnificent words of a later poet, Leszek Serafinowicz, who took the pen name of Jan Lechori (1859-1956), one of the founders of the Skamander Group: Matka Boska Czestochowska, ubraná perlami Cate. w zfocie i brylantach modli sie. za nami... 0 Ty, której obraz widaó w kazdej polskiej chacie, 1 w kosciele, i w sklepiku, i w pysznej komnacie, W reku tego co umiera, nad kotyszka. dzieci, I przed ktora. dniem i noca. wciaž sie. swiatlo swieci. Ktora perry masz od królów, zloto od rycerzy W która^ wierzy nawet taki który w nic nic wierzy, Ktora widzisz z nas kazdego cudnými oczami, Matko Boska Czestochowska, zmihij sie. nad nami. [Oh, Holy Mother of Czestochowa, dressed in pearls, / Covered in gold and diamonds, pray for us all... / You, whose image one sees in every Polish cottage, / In every church, in every humble shop, in every proud hall, / You are there in the hand of the dying and in the baby's cradle; / Night and day, the light burns constantly before you. / You have jewels from kings, and the golden gifts of noble knights. / Yet they believe in you, even those who believe in nothing. / You watch over each of us through miraculous eyes. / Oh Mother of God of Czestochowa, have mercy on our souls.]6 5. Adam Mickiewicz, Pan Tadeusz, 1,11. 5-13, translated by Norman Davies. 6. Ian Lechori, "Matka Boska Czestochowska' in Poeija Polska: Antológia w ukladzie S. Grochowiaka i J. Maciejewskiego, Warsaw, 1973, vol. 2, p. 188. 148 Norman Davies I take the key line here to be: 'Yet they believe in you, even those who believe in nothing.' Lechori could see, as many did not, that Poland's supremely mystical Catholic symbol can give strength to Christians and to non-Christians alike. 1768 Umari, or Human', is a little town near the Dnieper, deep in Ukraine and close to the easternmost border of the old Polish Commonwealth. In 1768, it was the scene of a series of terrible massacres. A fearful peasant rising, the Koliszczyzna, had sent bands of serfs on the rampage; and in those parts, the peasants were Orthodox. In the mayhem, Catholics and Jews were butchered together in their thousands, or herded into their churches and synagogues and burned alive. A Russian army appeared to restore order by methods little different from those of the rebels. It is in the setting of that Peasant Rising that one of the great prophetic figures of Polish (and Ukrainian) history and literature most usually makes his appearance. Little of certainty is known about the Cossack seer Mojsej Wernyhora. It is not even certain that he really existed, although one source suggests that he was born in Dymitr6wka in left-bank Ukraine and that he fled to Poland after killing his brother. His prophecies first circulated by word of mouth, and were only later written down. In the nineteenth century, when the Commonwealth had already been destroyed, he became a symbol of hope and resurrection. He spoke of a 'Golden Age' before the age of disasters, when all the peoples of the former Commonwealth, especially Poles and Ukrainians, had lived in unity. And he foretold the day when honour, harmony and happiness would return. He was celebrated in many different poetic versions from Goszczyrtski to Wyspiariski. The Romantics were specially susceptible to Wernyhora's spell, not least the sublime Slowacki: Czy znasz prorockj dum? Wernyhory? Czy wiesz, co bedzie w jarze Janczarychy. Gdzie teraz goiab lub jelonek cichy, Ze przeczysuj w szafirowym oku, Gdzics w ksiefcycowym sic. przeglada stoku? Czy wiesz, ze wszystkie te sie_ sprawdza. snicia W jednej godzinie rycerskiego zycia? Ze zemscisz syna, ojca, matke., brata, W tej btyskawicy, co na szabli lata? [Do you know the prophetic tale of Wernyhora? / Do you know what there will be in the Canyon of Yancharykha / Where now the dove or the silent young stag, / Through crystal tear in sapphire eye, / Watches his reflection somewhere in the falling moon? / Do you know that all those dreams will Polish National Mythologies 149 all come true / In a single hour of this noble life? / That you will avenge father and son, mother and brother, / In the flash which flies from a swirl of the sabre?]7 In the twentieth century, ideals similar to those of Wernyhora came to be associated with the Independence Movement of J6zef Pilsudski, whose aspiration was to restore a modern version of the old multinational Commonwealth. In the work of historians, they were part and parcel of the so-called ' Jagiellonian Concept' — the idea that Poland's past should be shared by all the peoples who had once lived together in the Rzeczpospolita. They were abhorred — by Polish nationalists of the Dmowski persuasion who were looking to a 'Poland for the Poles'; by Ukrainian nationalists, who had a similar vision of 'Ukraine for the Ukrainians'; by the advocates of Russian and Soviet imperialism, who sought to divide and rule; and most bitterly by the post-war Communist regime. In a world of nationalisms and power politics, they may have been impractical; and they certainly lost out. But they were no less respectable for that. They had their moments — as during Pilsudski's ill-starred campaign in 1919-21 for a Federation of the Border Nations. In the spring of 1920, when Pilsudski and his Ukrainian allies liberated Kiev from the Bolsheviks in the name of an independent Ukraine, they seemed to be on the brink of realization. But a world misled by Bolshevik slogans shouted incongruously 'Hands Off Russia!', and the opportunity passed.8 Yet their day may come again. After all, even today, a conscious policy of confraternity is the only barrier which stands between the sovereignty of the nations of Eastern Europe and the triumph of brute force. 1831 It is one of the ironies of Polish history that the national bard, Adam Mickiewicz, never saw Warsaw or Cracow. Born at Nowogrodek in Lithuania, he spent most of his life in exile, first in Russia and later in France. In 1831, at the height of the Russo-Polish War that followed the November Rising, he was in Dresden, composing his mystical patriotic drama Dziady (Forefathers' Eve). Whilst his peers were fighting in vain for the survival of a constitutional Polish Kingdom, he was forging the allegories and metaphors which gave sense to their struggle. Most powerful of all for a Catholic nation was the idea first launched in the scene in Father Peter's Cell, where Mickiewicz Juliusz Slowacki, Waclaw, 11. 28-36, quoted by W. Subryla, Wernyhora w LiteraturzePolskUj (1933), Cracow, 1996, p. 62. „,„.,, ~. Sec Norman Davies, "The Kiev Campaign' in idem. While Eagle, Red Star: I he Polish-Soviet War, 1919-20, London and New York. 1972, pp. 105-29. 150 Norman Davies Polish National Mythologies 151 imagined Poland's suffering to be a necessary evil for the eventual salvation of all the world. Poland, it was clearly implied, was 'the Christ of Nations'. As had first been mooted during Kosciuszko's National Rising forty years before, the Poles were fighting for 'Our Freedom and Yours': 'The Saviour Nation will arise, and united, will heal the whole of Europe.' Mickiewicz's contemporary, Kazimierz Brodzinski (1791-1835) put it most succinctly: Hail, O Christ, Thou Lord of Men, Poland in Thy footsteps treading, Suffers humbly at Thy bidding. Like Thee, too, shall rise again!9 Elsewhere, in his Books of the Polish Nation, Mickiewicz repeated the formula in truly biblical tones: But the Kings when they heard were frightened in their hearts, and said [...] 'Come let us slay this nation'. And they conspired together [...]. And they crucified the Polish Nation and laid it in its grave, and cried out 'We have slain and buried Freedom'. But they cried out foolishly [...]. For the Polish Nation did not die. Its body lieth in the grave; but its spirit has descended into the abyss, that is, into the private lives of people who suffer slavery in their own country [...]. But on the Third Day the soul shall return again to the body, and the Nation shall arise, and free all the peoples of Europe from slavery.10 Notwithstanding its great emotive power, the myth of the Chrystus naroddw had several major drawbacks. In the first place, it borders on blasphemy. Whatever the injustices involved, no rigorous Catholic can accept that the political fate of a people may be compared even metaphorically to the crucifixion of Christ. There was, in fact, a profound conflict between the patriotism of Catholic Poles and their loyalty to the faith. Those who were more patriotic than Catholic felt that the Church had betrayed them. Those who were more Catholic than patriotic felt that the insurrectionaries had created an impossible dilemma. Even today, many Poles choose to forget that Mickiewicz was not a conventional believer, or that the Pope in Rome actively condemned the Rising which inspired Mickiewicz's near-blasphemous metaphor.11 In the second place, the Christ of Nations concept reinforced the divisions already opened up by the older idea of Polak-Katolik. By 9. K. Brodziriski. 'Na dzieri zmarchwystania polskiego w 1831 r*. Poezje, Wroclaw, 1959, vol. 1. pp. 239-40; translated by Noiman Davies. 10. A. Mickiewicz, Ksi^gi narodu polskiego i pielgrzymstwa polskiego, ed. S. Pigori, Cracow, 1927, pp. 55ff., quoted by Davies, God's Playground, vol. 2, p. 9. 11. See Noiman Davies, "The Religion of Patriotism' and "The Divided Conscience' in idem. Heart of Europe: A Short History of Poland, Oxford, 1984, pp. 268-78. strengthening Poland's mystical Catholicity, it weakened the bonds of a multinational society. It was more poetic than practical. Lastly, there is the vexed question of altruism. 'Christ died for the sins of others.' Therefore, Poland fights for the freedom of all. What a wonderful political spin! Of course, there was a sense in which Poland, by opposing the three great empires of Eastern Europe, was ipso facto supporting the cause of other oppressed nations. There were many individual cases of generous exiled Poles who gave their lives in the service of far-flung causes. They belonged to an ancient and honourable tradition. The Republic of Haiti has never forgotten the Polish legionaries who helped throw off the rule of France in 1802-3. There is no Hungarian who has not heard of General Jozef Bern, hero of the war of 1848-9. And there was Mickiewicz himself, who went to fight for the Roman Republic (that is, against the Pope) in 1849, and who died in Constantinople in 1855, whilst trying to organize auxiliaries to fight against Russia in the Crimean War. Yet that is not the whole story. When it came to matters closer to home, the Poles were not always so generous. In the politics of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, there was little Polish sympathy for the cause of the Czechs or the Slovaks. In Russia, the task of the tsarist authorities in the western gubernias was greatly assisted by the growing animosities between Poles and Lithuanians, Poles and Jews, Poles and Ruthenians. 1892 The last decade of the nineteenth century saw the birth of Poland's modern political parties. The Polish Socialist Party (PPS) came into being, in exile in Paris, in 1892. The Polish Peasant Movement (PSL) held its first gathering at Rzeszow in Galicia in July of the same year. The National League, forerunner of Dmowski's National Democrats, emerged in Warsaw a year later. So too did the Polish Communist group, the SDKP, and its sister circle in Lithuania, the SDWKL. The Polish Christian Democracy or Chadecja, which was mainly based in the Prussian Partition, in Silesia, appeared a bit later, in 1902. Of these, the two parties with the strongest mass support were undoubtedly the Peasants (known as the ludowcy) and the Nationalists, the narodowcy. The two groups appealed to very different social constituencies, but they both shared a belief in perhaps the most powerful ideological construct of early twentieth-century European politics — what political scientists sometimes call 'integral nationalism'. The central aspect of this construct, most eloquently expounded in this same period in France by the founders of Action Frangaise, lay in the mystical union of the nation and the national 152 Norman Davies Polish National Mythologies 153 territory. Germans invented the slogan 'Blut und Boden' (Blood and Soil). In the Polish case, similar ideas were rooted in the notion which came to be known as the koncepcja piastowska, 'The Piast Concept'. One of its early propagators was Boleslaw Wyslouch (1855-1937), the founding father of the PSL. The other was Jan Poplawski (1854-1908), a leading ideologist of the nationalists. Reduced to its essentials, the Piast Concept rested on a simple and persuasive historical myth. A thousand years ago and more, the Polish nation had supposedly lived on its ancestral land in unity and harmony, ruled by the benevolent hand of its first legendary ruler, a peasant son called Piast. Over the centuries, however, the Poles lost their unity, and lost control of their native land. All manner of aliens and intruders — Germans, Jews, Ukrainians and Russians — abused Poland's natural hospitality and took large parts of Poland's towns and countryside for themselves. Foreign kings were seated on the Polish throne, to the point when the throne itself was abolished. Poland was robbed of her inheritance. So the message was clear. All patriotic Poles had a duty to unite and drive all foreigners from their native soil: 'Poland for the Poles!' The Piast Concept was the natural ally of the Polak-Katolik. It was diametrically opposed to the multinational Jagiellonian Concept which was preferred by the PPS and by Pilsudski's Independence Movement, and which gained the upper hand in the ruling circles of the inter-war period.12 One should perhaps recall that modern party politicians were by no means the only ones to have used the Piast legend for their own purposes. In the days of royal elections it had been used as an argument to oppose the rule of foreign kings. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it became the custom to give the name of 'Piast' to all Polish-born candidates for the throne. In the Romantic era, Piast was used as a symbol of Poland's distant pagan past, full of mystery, simplicity and bounty: Kmiec Piast, przed chat4, dobrego wieczora Uzywal, stary kmiec pdny dobroci; A wtem skrzypneia domora zapora I weszli do wr6t Anioiowie zloci. Wnet przed niemi st