Poland: Some Recent Revaluations

Abstract

The deep attachment of the Polish people to their literature and history is probably due to their cultural tradition, dating back to the Middle Ages when the Polish state, barely united after two centuries of feudal division, was forced to defend its national integrity, its very existence, against expansion by the Teutonic Order. It is commonly held by Polish historians that the beginnings of Polish national identity, which was something more than the awareness of belonging to a separate cultural or religious group, have their origins in that period. On the other hand, just as in other countries of Europe, Polish awareness of itself as a modem nation developed in the course of the nineteenth century. What made the process different in Poland from what it was in the rest of Europe was that it spread throughout Polish society in the course of a struggle for independence which, except for short intervals, lasted an entire century. Literature played an important part in this process, both belles lettres and historiography, as seen in the work of Joachim Lelewel (I786-I86I), the father of history as a science in Poland. A contemporary, more or less, of Ranke and Niebuhr, Lelewel was the first to apply the critical method to source material, as shown in his work in the field of the sciences which aid history. Unlike Ranke, however, Lelewel understood the didactic role of history, its significance for people oppressed by foreign rule. This did not mean that history was to be prepared 'ad usum delphini'. To select as themes those subjects and ideas which represented Poland's remarkable past was one way of instilling hope into the hearts of Poles and reinforced their opposition to attempts by the partitioning powers to destroy their morale. The historical sciences actually took shape in the second half of the nineteenth century. They owe their development to the so-