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Poland view interwar precedents, and particularly the rise of virulent anti-Semitism, with horror.
But how do we, as historians, look at this twenty-year window? Should we view it as the precursor of

today’s right-wing political shifts? Or should we instead look at the heroic figures who tried in vain

to stem the tide of nationalism?

Here, I have proposed something between these two approaches. By tracing second-tier

actors who operated in the grey zone between villains and heroes, the book has highlighted the

important role of men and women whose actions both shaped and were shaped by sets of global

norms. At its simplest, then, thinking globally about Poland means showing how our protagonists

were doing the same things as their counterparts across the world. Right from the beginning of the

Second Republic, elite Poles of various political stripes tapped into the idea that some populations

were more “civilized” than others, using it as a way to claim their rights to an area in which Poles did

not constitute a majority. Taking note of such comparisons helps to normalize Polish history and

moves us away from the narratives of tragedy or heroism that have tended to form dominant genres.

More important than simply making our own comparisons from the privileged position of the

historian, however, is the act of tracing how interwar actors themselves made comparisons during the

1920s and 1930s—and exploring what comparisons allowed them to do politically.

In particular, highlighting the Polish obsession with making civilizational comparisons

between different parts of the post-imperial state’s territories invites an engagement with several

overlooked perspectives on the Second Republic and the east European successor states more

generally. For one, it allows to us blur the analytical boundaries between two political systems that

33 For a recent reflection on the use of interwar history among members of the contemporary far-right in Poland, see
Agnieszka Pasieka, “Taking Far-Right Claims Seriously and Literally: Anthropology and the Study of Right-Wing
Radicalism,” Slavic Review 76, S1 (2017): S19-S29. After the march, the Chief Rabbi of Poland spoke with the
leader of the ruling Law and Justice Party, Jarosław Kaczyński, expressing his concern about the apparent explosion
in anti-Semitism. See “Naczelny rabin Polski rozmawiał z Jarosławem Kaczyńskim o antysemityzmie. Prezes PiS
"był zszokowany"” Gazeta Wyborcza, November 20 2017, accessed online:
http://wyborcza.pl/7,75398,22672695,kaczynski-uslyszal-o-rasizmie.html.

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