This thesis provides a new account of the strikes in Poland between July and August 1980 that led to the formation of Solidarność (Solidarity), the first ‘independent, self-governing trade union’ to exist under Communism. Although primarily focussed on the role of civil resistance in Poland, as the first stand-alone account of the strikes to appear in English since the mid-1980s, this thesis has a number of innovations. Firstly, it provides a day-by-day account of the August strikes which seeks to emphasise the immediacy, uncertainty and complexity of events from the perspective of both domestic and international actors. Secondly, with the existing literature dominated by the superpower responses, it integrates Eastern Bloc and West European responses into events. Thirdly, the previously unexplored role of Poland’s negotiations with Western commercial banks during the summer is also discussed. These along with Poland’s economic ‘crisis’ are seen as being of equal importance to the non-violent ‘breakthrough’ achieved by Polish workers in shaping the outcome of events.

1989 was the year when Polish history textbooks were freed from the control of the communist state. It was also the time when Pandora’s Box was opened and diverse but often conflicting memories and narratives were released into the public sphere. They were promoted not only by domestic but also transnational actors and international organisations. So far the relationship between textbook narratives and networks of actors who influenced textbook production in postcommunist Poland has not been studied. Hence, this thesis investigates how textbook narratives evolved between 1989 and 2015 and which institutions and individuals influenced the process of narrative production, and how. While chapter one presents the methodology used, chapter two sketches textbook development in the context of the politics of history, changing procedural arrangements for textbook production and the evolving textbook publishing market. Textbook narrative analysis, presented in chapter three, illuminates how the representation of the Second World War - especially the images of Poles, Germans, Jews and Soviets - transformed. Chapter four analyses the actors that influenced history textbook narratives. It shows how Solidarity members, who had opposed communist narratives of history in the 1980s, took over key positions within state institutions in 1989 and created their own narratives about the war. In the following years, textbook narrative polyphony rather than one united narrative existed, especially in textbooks produced after a 1999 education reform. Yet this narrative polyphony did not last long. When another reform was implemented in 2009, nationalist-conservatives were in conflict with liberal conservatives, aligned with the then governing Civic Platform party. Only narratives of liberal-conservatives found their way into textbooks.

This thesis addresses the traumata associated with Poland’s frontier changes in 1945, within a collective memory paradigm. These events include expulsions from German territories incorporated into Poland, and population transfers between Poland and the USSR. The thesis addresses two components: a central trauma complex, and the resulting collective memory discourse. Being a matter of historical record, the statistical details and chronology of these events are seldom contested, although they have often been instrumentalised by various stakeholders. Instead, the relevant collective memory discourse has focused on the production of broad, often exculpatory, narrative frameworks designed to explain a set of largely accepted facts. Accordingly, my thesis is primarily focused on this collective memory discourse. As an active phase, dominated by stakeholders with a high level of emotional investment in the narration and memorialisation of the relevant events, this collective memory discourse is currently undergoing a transition to the domain of History as a scholarly pursuit. This transition is best symbolised by the fact that, as of 2016, for the first time since 1945, all restrictions on the acquisition of agricultural land and forests in Poland’s former German territories, by Germans, will be lifted. Thus, for surviving expellees, the right of return, in conjunction with the potential to purchase any formerly held real estate and landholdings, will become a de jure reality, marking the end of the region’s long postwar period. Arguably, therefore, one can now engage, at a retrospective, analytical level, with the relevant collective memory discourse without being drawn into it. In order to navigate this complex discourse, I have developed a number of analytical and conceptual tools, which I hope may prove useful beyond this project. In this sense, this thesis can be viewed as a proof of concept. Chief among these tools are a novel working definition of collective memory as a discrete phase in the historification and mythologizing of traumatic events, and a three-level model designed for the consistent analysis of narrative texts, artefacts and cultural productions. By tracing the relevant collective memory discourse through a number of 4 disparate fields, including political myth-making, historiography, toponymic practice, cartography and literature, I have been able to test these analytical and conceptual tools to breaking point, often benefiting from the resulting heuristic gain wherever lived complexity defies simplistic analytic idealisation. To ensure a focused exposition of the theoretical framework and the sources analysed, this thesis is primarily centred upon Lower Silesia and the following broad research questions: what geo-socio-political power dynamics resulted in Poland’s postwar frontier changes and the associated traumata, and how were they justified at the time? How have historians reacted over time to Poland’s postwar frontier changes, and the humanitarian consequences, as well as to contemporary framework narratives relating to these events? How has the toponymic re-inscription of Poland’s former German territories influenced the relevant collective memory discourse, and to what extent have cartographic representations of postwar Poland been influenced by changing geo-political configurations? How have the prevailing socio-political conditions in postwar Germany and Poland constrained literary contributions to the relevant collective memory discourse? And, finally, in what ways, has literature contributed in turn, to the relevant collective memory discourse and the establishment of hegemonic historical narratives? This thesis presents a number of specific findings, the most significant of which is that political contingencies can result in a surprising deflection of collective memory discourse into seemingly unrelated fields, and can trigger a ripple effect, which has the ability to globalise collective memory discourse under certain circumstances. Similarly, my analysis of shared topoi in the works of German and Polish historians and literary authors demonstrates that, far from generating its own framework of reference based on specific traumatic events, collective memory discourse is exquisitely sensitive to broader socio-political narratives. In addition, I contend that mainstream historical narratives tend to simplify, for example, through the imposition of a chronology on multidirectional memories, and by focusing on homogenizing accounts of the collective at the expense of 5 individual narratives. In contrast, literature and local cultural performances often resist such simplification, thus preserving complexity. Viewed in this light, the pursuit of Cultural and Literary Studies addresses a clear problem within, and usefully augments, traditional historical scholarship. By carefully analysing a subset of Polish and German literature, historiography and cultural artefacts produced in response to the traumatic events in question, my thesis seeks to trace the transition from highly localised stakeholder-led collective memory discourses to hegemonic historical narratives developed and maintained in the service of broader geo-political agendas.

This thesis examines the development of the internal political situation in Poland from the formation of the Polish Committee of National Liberation in mid-l944 to the consolidation of communist power at the turn of 1946/47. It concentrates in particular on the way the organisations and political strategies of the Polish Workers' Party and the main non-communist forces: the Polish Peasant Party, the Polish Socialist Party , the Catholic political movement and the anti-communist underground evolved during these years. Chapter .One describes the re-establishment of the Polish communist movement from 1941 and the shaping of its strategy of the national front during the period until the Soviet liberation of eastern Poland in 1944. Chapter Two examines the relationship between the communist-led 'Lublin Committee' and the underground movement loyal to the Government-in-Exile in London. It identifies the hardening of the Polish communists' stance towards the underground from October 1944. Chapter Three looks at the political and economic situation in Poland following the liberation of the country in early 1945. It examines the factors which caused the communists to moderate their line in May 1945. Chapter Four considers the impact of the legal opposition movement which arose around the Polish Peasant Party following the formation of the Provisional Government of National Unity in June 1945. Chapter Five describes the increasing polarisation between the communists and the opposition in the first half of 1946 and examines the unsuccessful efforts of the Polish Socialist Party to restore national unity. The political offensive launched by the Polish Workers' Party and its allies against the opposition at the time of the elections in late 1946 and early 1947, and the consolidation of the communists ' hold on power are described in Chapter Six. The thesis argues that the national front strategy which the communists followed between 1942 and 1948 underwent a series of major modifications. These modifications were in response not only to external pressures, but to a very considerable degree to developments in the internal situation in Poland. Ultimately the communists were able to achieve the objectives of the national front strategy only to a very limited extent. In particular, they were unable to achieve a broad base of popular support for their vision of Poland's future and had instead to rest it on force and the state-Party apparatus.

La 1e Guerre mondiale fut le catalyseur de mutations sociales et techniques, qui suscitent de nouveaux besoins d’administration, matérialisés par l’émergence d’un nouveau groupe social: celui des experts. Dans les États modernes allemands et polonais, un groupe particulier d’experts se détache, qui se spécialisent dans une thématique aux profondes racines culturelles : l’Est européen.Les changements de régime et de territoire entre 1918 et 1972 déstabilisent le cadre de référence des sociétés allemandes et polonaises, particulièrement entre 1939 et 1945. Cependant, l’historiographie des sciences de l’Est allemandes (Ostforschung) souligne les continuités personnelles, institutionnelles et conceptuelles fortes dans l’expertise de l’Est du « IIIe Reich » à l’Allemagne de l’Ouest. En Allemagne de l’Est et en Pologne, au contraire, le changement de régime après 1945 rend impossible toute continuité, mais la question de l’évolution de la pensée sur l’Est dans les cercles de l’expertise, qui eux se maintiennent, reste posée.En dépassant l’analyse de l’expertise en termes de subordination aux différents régimes politiques auxquels elle s’adresse, nous mettons en valeur les spécificités de l’expertise de l’Est. Elle se caractérise par un double ancrage dans l’imaginaire collectif et dans les pratiques scientifiques contemporaines, pour exprimer un but politique. Cet ancrage explique l’inertie dans les conceptions allemandes et polonaises de l’Est. L’approche comparatiste souligne tant la diversité des conceptions de l’Est, que les fonctions sociales comparables de l’Est, notamment celle d’ennemi et d’espace de projection nationale, passée et à venir / The First World War was the catalyst for social and technical changes, which gave rise to new administrative needs, materialized by the emergence of a new social group: that of the experts. In modern German and Polish states, a particular group of experts stands out, specializing in a theme with deep cultural roots: eastern Europe.The changes of regime and territory between 1918 and 1972 destabilize the frame of reference of the German and Polish societies, particularly between 1939 and 1945. However, the historiography of Eastern German sciences (Ostforschung) emphasizes the personal, institutional and conceptual continuity in the expertise of the East from the "Third Reich" to West Germany. In East Germany and Poland, on the contrary, the change of regime after 1945 renders any continuity impossible, but the question of the evolution of the thought on the East in the circles of the expertise, which maintained, remains asked.By going beyond the analysis of expertise in terms of subordination to the various political regimes to which it is addressed, we highlight the specificities of Eastern expertise. It is characterized by a double anchoring in the collective imagination and in contemporary scientific practices, to express a political goal. This anchorage explains the inertia in the German and Polish conceptions of the East. The comparatist approach emphasizes both the diversity of Eastern conceptions and the comparable social functions of the East, particularly that of the enemy and the space of national projection, past and future