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Polish identity 149
the feeling of ‘being the same’. But by its very nature this answer also implicitly
contains the answer to the question, ‘Who am I not?’, pointing to the distinction
between ingroup and outgroup, between ‘us’ and ‘them’ (Jacobson-Widding 1983).
Anita Jacobson-Widding calls these two aspects of identity, correspondingly, the
‘sameness’ and ‘distinctiveness’. In the case of national identity, the ‘sameness’ is
shaped by the totality of national history, by unique experiences of the nation,
transmitted from one generation to another. The sense of ‘distinctiveness’, on the
other hand, can be analysed as a complex product of contacts and interactions,
cooperation and conflicts with the representatives of other nations.
As Zbigniew Bokszański (1999) points out, an important characteristic of Polish
national identity in the pre-transformation times was its focus on the aspect of ‘sameness’
with a relative neglect of the ‘distinctiveness’ aspect. It can be explained
by pointing to the fact that for a long period of its history, the Polish nation was
deprived of the organisational frames of its own state and divided into three parts,
existing under foreign regimes. Under such circumstances, the concentration
on finding constant elements of ‘being a Pole’, even if not living in a ‘Polish’ institutional
environment, was quite natural. However, the same factors which help
us to understand the focus on the continuity aspects, on ‘being the same’ issue, have
also influenced the content of this ‘sameness’. I would like to stress here two of its
specific features.
First, there is the relative unimportance of institutional and group symbols of
identity. Not having their own national institutions for a long time, Polish people
attach more significance to moral and spiritual characteristics of ‘being a Pole’. This
could explain the distribution of answers within Table 8.5 – on one hand, readiness
to accept EU passports, currency and emblems, and on the other, a resistance to
labels which would, perhaps, hide national inventiveness and skilfulness. Jasińska-
Kania (1996) has showed that even in the 1970s and the 1980s, irrespective of
whether the self-image constructed by Poles was more positive or more negative
(which was closely related to the actual political and economic situation in the
country), it always contained an element of moral superiority and exceptionality.
Even our faults were exceptional.
Second, focus on the ‘sameness’ aspect of identity has also resulted in a transference
of the possible divisions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ into the boundaries of the
Polish nation. One can say without much exaggeration that for the last 200 years
Poles have been occupied with attempts to refine the concept of a ‘true Pole’. There
are a lot of descriptions in Polish phraseology – starting with a ‘Pole-catholic’,
through ‘Commies’, to one of the most recent inventions: ‘newspaper using the
Polish language’ that is used instead of the title of the leading Polish daily ‘Gazeta
Wyborcza’ – whose main function is to stress the difference between a ‘genuine
Pole’ and somebody who only pretends being a Pole or even disguises his real
identity.
There were of course also some demarcation lines between ‘us’ and ‘them’ which
included a division between the Polish nation and some other nations. Traditionally,
‘them’ referred to the Germans, who in Polish history have been the personification
of an ‘Alien’ and always played the role of the main enemy of Poland. For many