Expanding the boundaries of national belonging: The institutional and discursive politics of nationalisation of the Polish National Democrats before 1926

This dissertation analyses the ideology and discourse of National Democracy. It reveals how, through discourse and institutions, National Democracy carried out a large-scale process of nationalisation aimed particularly at rural communities, the largest social group in Poland at the beginning of the twentieth century. It focuses on the ethnically mixed territory of Galicia before and immediately after the establishment of the independent Polish state in 1918. The National Democrats emerged in Poland as a political movement at the end of the nineteenth century, and their ideological understanding of what the Polish nation is and who belongs to it have been an essential part of Polish political discourse ever since. Using a few ideological axioms, they set themselves the task of changing the understanding of the term “Polishness” – hitherto associated by the broad masses of society with the class exclusivism of the nobility – to encompass the peasantry who formed the vast majority of the Polish population. Using Schmittian distinctions between 'enemy' and 'friend' (Schmitt, 2010), this work analyses the nationalisation process of the social groups co-opted into the forming Polish nation by focusing on how the representatives of the National Democracy articulated the question of the nation's place in time and space, its ethics, interests and structure. This work outlines the fundamental theoretical assumptions of National Democracy, as defined by its founders, including egoism, Darwinism, and realism in international relations, and the subsequent political and discursive practices applied within the newly formed democratic Polish state. Drawing on and developing the concept of the grounding of nationalism proposed by Sinisa Malesevic (2019). This work analyses the role of non-state and supra-state elements in grounding Polish nationalism, specifically non-governmental organisations, newspapers, and opinion journalism, i.e., civil society. By utilising the concept of nationalisation (Hutchinson, 2006) parallel to the concept of grounding, this dissertation provides evidence of the processual and fluid nature of nationalism. Adapting to their political and social environment’s circumstances, nationalists co-opt various elements of political traditions, histories, identities, and interests that increase their pragmatic utility in consolidating their influence. This thesis assesses the practical manifestation of the multi-vectorial process of nationalisation of society, particularly outside the state's activities. This dissertation critically examines in a historical context the National Democratic newspaper, the Wieniec-Pszczółka. It demonstrates how, in practice, nationalists sought to shape the opinions of the electorate in accordance with the fundamental principles of their political ideology. Wieniec-Pszczółka was a newspaper mainly for the Galician peasants. It was founded in 1875 on the initiative of Stanisław Stojałowski and was one of the first and most widely read peasant newspapers. Taken over by the National Democrats in 1912, it became a powerful tool of influence, simultaneously lending credibility to the mainly urban Endek movement among the peasantry. Using political propaganda, a benevolent interpretation of history, a nationalist-centred concept of education or patriotic art, they sought to shape the worldview of their readers based on the evolving dogmas of modern nationalism. This dissertation also situates that period, the newspaper, and the entire movement within the historical context of the intellectual, social, and political longue durée of Polish nationalism's development. It compares Wieniec-Pszczółka with other similar newspapers and with a host of other primary and secondary sources, including political memoirs and pamphlets. Carl Schmitt's proposed understanding of the political as the antagonism between friends and enemies enables a deeper understanding of the scheme by which the National Democrats disseminated their ideology and how the basic assumptions of their ideology aligned with the political character of nationalisation. Focusing on the Polish provinces of former Austro-Hungarian Galicia, where the National Democrats' political message reached their audience through a network of newspapers and social organisations, this work offers new insights into the amalgamative nature of National Democrats' nationalist ideology and how and why conservative and Catholic populism permeated modern Polish nationalism.

Publisher

University of Galway

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CC BY-NC-ND

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University of Galway Theses (PhD Theses)