Abstract
Despite a growing number of novel approaches to the far right and new explanatory models, one feature appears to persist in the scholarship: namely, a tendency to discuss the developments in Western Europe and in postsocialist countries separately. Bucking this trend, this article investigates the similarities between the activism of Italian and Polish far-right movements, focusing on the field of historical politics. More specifically, it investigates the ways in which the memories of World War II and accounts of victims of communism are mobilized in the two countries, as well as the question of “censorship” and “mainstreaming” of far-right historical narratives. Apart from comparing the developments in these countries, the article discusses various forms of cooperation between Polish and Italian far-right movements, which reveal their mutual influences but also the limits of transnational networking.
Highlights
At the ASEEES [Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies] conference in 2013, a question raised at one of the many panels discussing developments in the region was how to define Eastern Europe
One of the panelists stated that to him, Eastern Europe comprises “all those countries which are deeply preoccupied with history.”
I have highlighted the problematic aspects of the comparative approaches which aim toestablish dichotomies (East–West, pastand future-oriented) instead of trying to engage the very categories used for the purpose of comparison, such as the “relevance of history.”
Summary
At the ASEEES [Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies] conference in 2013, a question raised at one of the many panels discussing developments in the region was how to define Eastern Europe. The Italian far right emphasizes first and foremost the so-called foibe, the ethnic cleansing of Istria which occurred between 1943 and 1945.19 The Polish far-right narrative focuses on the ethnic cleansing and repressions of ethnic Poles inhabiting the Eastern borderlands in the course of and after the Second World War, especially the bloody conflict in Volhynia,[20] and the persecution of Poles by the Soviet authorities and their collaborators, who tend to be presented in the nationalist key: as Jewish, Belarusian, Russian communists In both cases, the political and/or national identification is strongly marked by Orientalizing language: Yugoslavian communists and Ukrainians murdering Polish villagers are presented as barbarian, primitive, and brutal, which at the same time foregrounds the civilizational hierarchies that characterized Italian and Polish borderlands and the nobility of the Italian/Polish “people.” Because of space constraints, I cannot discuss in detail the complex backgrounds and dynamics of the events the far-right actors refer to.[21]. The Italian and the Polish phenomena illuminate each other, as well as other similar situations, as the following section suggests
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