Polish Intelligentsia Totems in Elites’ Struggles for Legitimization: The Case of Jerzy Giedroyc and Poland’s Eastern Policy

Introduction

Jerzy Giedroyc—the founder and editor of the influential émigré journal Kultura—is without a doubt one of the main authorities of the Polish elite, probably standing among figures as revered as Marshal Józef Piłsudski or Pope John Paul II. Particularly after the fall of communism, public declarations about “having been brought up on Kultura” became a ritual. Giedroyc was visited in Paris by the highest-ranking Polish politicians, including presidents and ministers. Perhaps the most striking example of how broadly was Giedroyc’s authority recognized in post-communist Poland is a letter sent to Kultura from the former communist leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski, where he praised Giedroyc’s services to Poland and regretted that he could not follow the journal more closely. ¹

The legacy of Giedroyc and Kultura is perhaps most often mentioned in relation to Poland’s eastern policy after 1989, which is often seen as being based on “Giedroyc’s line,” “Kultura’s line,” or alternatively, with recognition of the role played by the most important of Kultura’s writers Juliusz Mieroszewski ² —“Giedroyc-Mieroszewski’s line.” ³ This influence of Giedroyc and Kultura is commonly acknowledged by scholars. For example, Timothy Snyder argues that the eastern policy “reflected a new Polish grand strategy” prepared by Jerzy Giedroyc and Juliusz Mieroszewski. ⁴ For his part, Ilya Prizel claims that the “works of intellectuals such as Mieroszewski . . . laid a solid foundation upon which Poland could build a post-communist structure” and “when communism finally collapsed Poland, . . . thus had a well-defined paradigm in place, one that has generally been competently executed by Foreign Affairs Minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski.” ⁵ Tellingly, when the Polish elite was celebrating then president Aleksander Kwasniewski’s role in the so-called Orange Revolution in Ukraine—commonly seen as one of the most important accomplishments in the eastern policy realm—Gazeta Wyborcza published one of the seminal articles by Mieroszewski, outlining a strategy for Poland concerning relations with its Eastern neighbors. ⁶

At the same time, other prominent scholars present different assessments of the influence of Giedroyc’s line on Poland’s foreign policy. For example, Sławomir Dębski argues that with the break-up of the Soviet Union “it soon became anachronistic.” ⁷ Others cast doubts as to whether “Kultura’s line” influenced Poland’s eastern policy after 1989 at all. ⁸ Moreover, Giedroyc, who witnessed 11 years of post-communist Poland, was himself highly skeptical about the shape of foreign policy after the transformation, ⁹ as well as about his real influence on the situation in his homeland. ¹⁰

In this article, I attempt to explain these diverging assessments regarding the influence of Giedroyc’s line on post-communist Poland’s foreign policy, especially until the so-called reset of its policy with Russia, conducted by the Civic Platform government of Donald Tusk. Inspired by Tomasz Smoczyński’s and Tomasz Zarycki’s reading of Émile Durkheim’s concept of totemism, I argue that in order to understand this puzzle, it is necessary to grasp the extraordinary role Giedroyc has played for Polish elites, which I interpret as an intelligentsia totem. In line with Durkheim’s understanding of totems, as symbolic representations of society to its members, serving the function of creating social cohesion and a group identity, ¹¹ I argue that the figure of Giedroyc has strengthened the hegemony of the intelligentsia and served as a source of its legitimization. At the same time, he was used by different factions within the elite in their struggles to legitimize certain political actions and stances. In the first part of the article I explain Giedroyc’s ascent to a totemic status by the fact that he fitted into and supported the long march of the intelligentsia to power, which started after 1968 and ended with partially free elections of June 1989.

In the second part, keeping in mind Giedroyc’s totemic status, I critically evaluate the extent to which Kultura’s line has been reflected in post-communist Poland’s foreign policy. For this reason the dominant interpretations of Kultura’s line are compared against the changing shape of the Polish field of power ¹² after 1989. The latter was followed by the evolution of foreign policy stances of the dominant camps on the Polish political scene.

As to the extent of Giedroyc’s influence on foreign policy, I argue that the democratic opposition, which took power in 1989, adopted only some postulates that could be seen as representing Kultura’s vision of the role of Poland in Central and Eastern Europe. Moreover, after the 1989 transformation, these postulates were fitted into the strategic goals of the state’s foreign policy (which were often summarized as a “return to Europe”), whose priorities were in stark contrast with those formulated by Giedroyc (which could be summarized as the “pivotal actor between the West and East”). At the same time, the fact that some important elements of his program were indeed adopted, as well as his special role as a source of legitimization, hampered open repudiation of Giedroyc’s line. Later on, the reconfiguration of the Polish field of power brought both an end to this foreign policy consensus and the emergence of competing interpretations of Kultura’s line as a part of the struggles over the (de)legitimization of foreign policy.

Overall, this article delivers a more nuanced and critical interpretation of the role that Jerzy Giedroyc and Kultura have played for post-communist Poland’s elites, thus explaining his criticism directed toward post-communist Poland’s foreign policy. More broadly, it also sheds light on mechanisms of legitimization of the authoritative figures among the Polish intelligentsia elites.

Part I: Giedroyc’s Role as a Totemic Figure in the Polish Intelligentsia’s March to Power

Interpretations of the extraordinary position that Jerzy Giedroyc occupies among the contemporary authorities of the Polish elite are best understood when viewed in the context of one of the most important characteristics of Polish society—that is, the hegemony of the intelligentsia. The process of the emergence of the Polish intelligentsia—which consisted mainly of an impoverished gentry—as an influential social group occurred between the second half of the nineteenth century and the end of the First World War, and culminated in the establishment of the Second Polish Republic as the “intelligentsia republic.” ¹³

Although during the initial phase of communism in Poland (especially during Stalinism when the state apparatus’s strength was at its peak), the influence of the intelligentsia was diminished, its values and way of thinking continued to attract newly advanced members of the elite. Thus, the symbolic hegemony of intelligentsia, as instituted in 1918, remained mostly intact. At the turn of the 1950s and 1960s in particular, intelligentsia groups began to regain significant autonomy from formal institutions and after 1968 one could observe a broader revival of the intelligentsia ethos. ¹⁴ The end of communism only reinforced the intelligentsia’s central position—as during the late communist period, its circles almost entirely aligned with the anti-communist opposition and supported the Solidarity movement. ¹⁵

An important aspect of the hegemony of intelligentsia, in particular in the context of the reproduction of social structures and legitimization of group identities, is a usage of totemic figures. Rafał Smoczyński and Tomasz Zarycki have argued that the Polish intelligentsia uses totems—in particular aristocratic circles—to legitimize the continuity of its historical leadership (including by serving as a “link” with the First and the Second Polish Republics) as well as its “Europeanness.” ¹⁶ Building on their arguments, I would propose that the totemic role has also been assigned to a number of great representatives of the intelligentsia, among them to Jerzy Giedroyc.

Jerzy Giedroyc’s biography may serve as a model of a prominent intelligentsia member’s life trajectory. As I will show, throughout his career Giedroyc and Kultura served several important roles—as patrons for the group of émigré intellectuals, on the one side, and as a “hole in the censorship wall” and supporter for the homeland intelligentsia, on the other. These roles of Giedroyc and Kultura allow me to interpret them in terms of “intelligentsia totems.”

Giedroyc was born in 1906 into a family of impoverished nobles. As with many other members of the intelligentsia, starting with his father, Giedroyc’s family moved to an urban area, where his father acquired a formal education and worked as a professional. ¹⁷ Nevertheless, the aristocratic background was not entirely forgotten—among postwar homeland intellectuals, he was often referred to half-jokingly as “the Prince.” In the Second Polish Republic, Giedroyc had already achieved considerable success in his professional career. Despite the fact that he did not hold any major political office, Giedroyc, as an editor of prestigious journals and aide to a government minister, formed the Second Polish Republic’s elite, ¹⁸ which Czesław Miłosz characterized as the “bureaucratic intelligentsia.” ¹⁹

Giedroyc’s achievements and personal networks built in the Second Polish Republic played an important role in the process of “totemization.” In particular, it allowed future generations of the intelligentsia to treat Giedroyc and the journal he published, Kultura, as a “link” with the interwar period. Giedroyc and Kultura’s role can be exemplified in the words of Adam Michnik:

In short, it is largely through Kultura that the Polish intelligentsia has been exposed to a certain continuity of political thought and a nonconforming model of national culture, and independent standard against which to judge our values and attitudes. ²⁰

Even more important though, was his post-war activity, including his role as a “custodian” of the national and European culture that was forbidden in communist Poland, and as a prominent supporter from abroad of the Polish opposition movement. During World War II, Giedroyc served in various state and military structures, including in the propaganda and cultural section of the Polish Army under General Władysław Anders. Like many other Poles serving in the Polish Armed Forces in the West, Giedroyc decided not to return to communist-ruled Poland, and in 1946 was tasked by the London-based Government of the Republic of Poland in exile to create a publishing house, “Instytut Literacki” (Literary Institute), in Rome. Relatively quickly, Giedroyc began to act independently from the government-in-exile, moving the institute to Paris in 1947. The most important activities of this institution included publishing the review Kultura (Culture), ²¹ the book series Biblioteka Kultury (Kultura’s Library), and Zeszyty Historyczne (Historical Notebooks). ²² In the frame of the series Biblioteka Kultury—which started in 1953—Giedroyc and his collaborators released books that were officially censored in Poland, authored both by prominent émigrés (including Witold Gombrowicz and the Nobel prize laureate Czesław Miłosz) and Poland-based writers, as well as the works of Polish and European historians, philosophers, or political commentators.

Reprints of publications issued by Instytut Literacki were smuggled into post-war Poland by many channels, ²³ particularly after the “Polish October” in 1956—when more Poles were receiving passports. The second half of the 1970s with the emergence of the “second circulation” saw publications of Instytut Literacki circulating in the homeland on an even larger scale. ²⁴ The significance of Giedroyc as “the custodian” of Polish culture may be exemplified by the fact that one of the first publications issued by Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza NOWA (the first and most important independent publishing house in communist Poland) in the 1970s was a collection of essays from Kultura. ²⁵

Another dimension in which Jerzy Giedroyc related to the homeland elite was the support he showed to opposition-minded dissidents, which should be seen in the context of the overarching aim of gaining political influence in his home country. The interpretation that Giedroyc treated his journal as a tool for political action aimed at changing the political situation in Poland is frequently cited in the literature. ²⁶ That was the case especially after 1956, when the expectation of the outbreak of the next world war was abandoned by Giedroyc and the American elite ceased to be the main “target audience” of the review. ²⁷

Given his scarce material or political resources, in order to be able to exert influence on the homeland elites, Giedroyc gradually adopted a relatively accommodating attitude toward post-war Poland and the Yalta Order. Thus, Kultura’s stance evolved in a direction opposite to the other anti-communist émigré center in London (the government-in-exile), which stood on the position of non-recognition of the Polish People’s Republic, or the eastern border change. ²⁸ Consequently, while the government-in-exile sought to restrict contacts with communist Poland until the second half of the 1970s, Kultura tried to maintain viable relations with the homeland. ²⁹

Thus, I find it important to point out that Giedroyc’s relations with émigré and homeland intellectuals were not limited to the already mentioned fact that Instytut Literacki published their works (which for many of them, living in harsh material conditions, itself represented a significant contribution). These encompassed various forms of support: from sending packages to hosting them in Maisons-Laffitte or mobilizing his network to grant scholarships. ³⁰ One of the most famous cases was the support Kultura showed to Czesław Miłosz after his decision to remain in exile. ³¹ As Konstanty Jeleński suggests, the Kultura circle was part of the personal (and often family) networks within the Polish elite, linking émigrés with their homeland—which, although strained during Stalinism, were reestablished after 1956. ³² Particularly important from the point of view of Giedroyc’s political activities was the cooperation developed with the post-1968 emigrants, because of their good relations with the homeland dissidents. ³³

Evidence that Giedroyc’s support for intellectuals had more than purely altruistic intentions can be found, for example, in Małgorzata Ptasińska-Wójcik’s research, in which she inserted an account of tensions between Kultura’s editor and Witold Gombrowicz. When the latter began negotiations with the Poland-based publishing houses (during the Polish thaw) without Giedroyc’s mediation, the former wrote to him, irritated, “Works published by Kultura . . . cannot be published without my permission as the copyright holder. . . . I do not need to assure you that I will always accommodate myself with your desires, but if one wants to play any game with respect to the country, then things must be carried out uniformly.” ³⁴ Needless to say, Giedroyc saw himself as the coordinator of “the game.”

The first major attempt to use Kultura’s network for political action in the homeland was the development, with the cooperation of a group of students, of a smuggling channel for illegal publications between Poland and the West via the Tatra Mountains. ³⁵ Much more successful was the Kultura circle’s cooperation with the Swedish-based post-1968 emigrants, which resulted in establishing one of the most important clandestine smuggling networks across the Iron Curtain. It was particularly important for the development of underground publishing activities—the so-called second circulation in Poland. ³⁶

Additionally, Kultura served as one of the most important hubs of financial support for the opposition movements. Jessie Labov has documented how the growing political role of Kultura was reflected in dedications attached to financial donations from the journal’s vast network of subscribers—from support to sustain the journal to implicit funding of opposition circles. ³⁷ Giedroyc and Kultura were also involved in the distribution of financial support from the US government. ³⁸ Additionally, as Janusz Korek has described, Kultura in the second half of the 1970s served as the main, multifunctional communications platform for the opposition movements. ³⁹

Finally, Giedroyc and Kultura, at different stages of its history, served as patrons for the group of émigré intellectuals and an intermediary with the homeland, on the one side, and as a “hole in the censorship wall,” the “window to the West,” and patron for the homeland intelligentsia,on the other. These roles of Giedroyc and Kultura allow us to interpret them in terms of “intelligentsia totems.”

Part II: Giedroyc’s Line after the Transformation: From the “Lowest Common Denominator” to New, Competing Interpretations

In the second part of the article, I show that interpretations of Giedroyc’s line were contingent on both the foreign policy stance of the dominant fractions of the Polish elite and the totemic status of Giedroyc as Kultura’s editor. On the one hand, immediately after the transformation, the “federalist element,” related to Giedroyc’s skepticism toward the West, was not supported by any influential camp on the political scene. ⁶⁵ On the other—Giedroyc’s totemic status made it hard for the Polish intellectuals to openly repudiate the Kultura editor’s political ideas. Instead they interpreted Giedroyc’s line as entailing only those elements that fitted the unequivocally pro-Western foreign policy course.

Only when the political scene had transformed—as a result of a reconfiguration of the field of power—and a more skeptical view of the West gained political support from the conservative fraction of the post-Solidarity camp did the “federalist element” of Kultura’s line begin to be voiced. In response, the most euro-enthusiast part of the elite also began to stress the presence of the “federalist element” in Giedroyc’s line, but presented it as its flaw. In order to explain the logic of the changing interpretations of Giedroyc’s line, I will relate them to the evolution of Poland’s field of power (as well as the political field) after 1989, which in turn influenced the foreign policy stances of the major factions within the Polish elite. For the sake of clarity, I will limit the time frame of my analysis to the Civic Platform government and its reset policy toward Russia. ⁶⁶

As Tomasz Zarycki has argued, the field of power in Poland has evolved from being structured by the cleavage defined by attitudes toward the legacy of Soviet domination, to being structured by the cleavage defined by attitudes toward Western hegemony. ⁶⁷ From this point of view, one could talk about two stages of post-communist Poland’s history, contingent on the shape of the dominant cleavage. In the first stage, the Polish political scene was divided into post-communist and post-Solidarity camps. In the foreign policy realm, this structure was reflected in the division between forces supporting cutting off links with Moscow and pursuing an unequivocally Western-oriented foreign policy, and post-communist forces, which in the initial period after 1989 argued for sustaining close ties with Moscow. However, although in relation to internal issues (such as lustration) the post-communist camp maintained its stance for several years after 1989, in the foreign policy realm, the Euro-Atlantic policy of the post-Solidarity camp was accepted much sooner.

Since then, the consensus of both post-Solidarity and post-communist forces on the basic outlines of Poland’s foreign policy was established. It also included an understanding that Poland’s policy toward the East was to be complementary to its Western one. ⁶⁸ This process was accompanied by discourses questioning traditional geopolitical readings of Poland’s location “between Germany and Russia” and instead stressing a Polish–German “community of interests.” ⁶⁹

The differences between Giedroyc’s and the dominating line on foreign policy are visible when we compare the attitude of the first foreign minister (1989–1993) of post-communist Poland, Krzysztof Skubiszewski, and that of the editor of Kultura. Apart from securing Poland’s newly regained independence, Skubiszewski’s priority was rapprochement and then integration with Western Europe, which was generally seen as a “return to Europe.” ⁷⁰ Thus, with regard to the East, Skubiszewski’s main interest was to ensure “that problems with eastern neighbors [do] not hinder Poland’s integration with the West.” ⁷¹ In terms of diplomatic actions, his priorities included the signing of state treaties (thus confirming mutual borders) as well as regulating the legal status of minorities according to “European standards.” ⁷² As Skubiszewski said, “Essentially the so-called eastern policy is an important part of our [Western] European orientation.” ⁷³ He also allegedly stated that “the chances of the Polish eastern policy are a function of the Polish policy towards the West.” ⁷⁴ Consequently, Polish diplomacy did not support Ukraine’s efforts to join the Visegrad Triangle nor President Kravchuk’s plan of a “security and stability zone” in Central and Eastern Europe, fearing that it could have negative consequences on Poland’s integration with Western institutions, including NATO. ⁷⁵

As already stated, Giedroyc was critical of post-communist Poland’s foreign policy. He criticized in particular the alleged disregard for the Eastern neighborhood, and what he saw as too much attention given to the Western vector of foreign policy. Giedroyc saw the development of good relations with Ukraine and support for its independence as more important for Poland’s security than accession to NATO. ⁷⁶ Also, at least in the first half of the 1990s, he advocated for close regional cooperation within Central and Eastern Europe, arguing for Ukraine’s admission to the Visegrad Group, in which Poland could play the role of a “spokesperson.” ⁷⁷ This position was in line with his belief that Poland’s position in Europe, including in relations with the West, was contingent on its position in Eastern Europe:

It is often stressed that our desire is to unite with Europe. However, Poland is in Europe. Our position in Europe will be strong, if we become the representative of the East. Whereas, sitting in the waiting rooms of various Western institutions as a petitioner or a beggar, does not make sense. ⁷⁸

Despite such serious discrepancies between Giedroyc’s ideas and the foreign policy course, the consensus that Poland’s eastern policy was based on Kultura’s line was seldom questioned. ⁷⁹ Instead, one could argue, the interpretation of Kultura’s line was adjusted to the “lowest common denominator” between the two visions. It most commonly entailed a recognition and strengthening of the eastern neighbors’ independence and borders, as well as developing good neighborly relations with these countries, and later also on supporting their integration with Western institutions. ⁸⁰ This interpretation was often summarized by the motto attributed, among others, to Giedroyc—“there can be no free Poland without free Ukraine”—which Presidents Lech Wałęsa and Aleksander Kwaśniewski declared to be their foreign policy motto. It is important to note that in some of these interpretations one would also find an open acknowledgment that adherence to Giedroyc’s line facilitated Poland’s integration with the West. ⁸¹

Thus, when President Kwaśniewski engaged in developing close relations with Ukrainian leader Leonid Kuchma, it was widely perceived as following Giedroyc’s line. One can risk a claim that President Kwaśniewski was in fact able to fit part of Kultura’s line (recognition and support for the independence of the Eastern neighbors) to the dominant foreign policy aim of the “return to Europe.” To a high degree, this was possible because just before Kwaśniewski took up his office, Ukraine withdrew its previous reservations concerning Poland’s NATO membership. ⁸² Some authors even saw this rapprochement in Polish–Ukrainian relations as the result of a “Western emphasis on the need for sub-regional cooperation as a supplement and precondition for European integration.” ⁸³

Conclusion

Jerzy Giedroyc has played an important role in Polish and European culture and politics in the twentieth century, and he should be seen as one of the leading representatives of the “dissident intellectuals” from Eastern Europe who, with limited material capacities, struggled for a new geopolitical order in Europe throughout the Cold War. ¹⁰⁹ In this article, I have shown that the diverging assessments of Giedroyc’s influence on post-communist Poland’s foreign policy can be best understood when seen through the prism of his role as an “intelligentsia totem”—an important source of legitimization—for which elite members from different sectors of the Polish field of power compete.

By integrating this interpretation with an analysis of the changing shape of the Polish field of power and changing interpretations of Giedroyc’s line, I showed that after the transformation only some of the postulates in the foreign policy realm that Kultura’s editor promoted were actually implemented, but due to his totemic status, his role as “an architect” of eastern policy was seldom questioned. Only when the reconfiguration of the Polish field of power brought an end to the consensus in the foreign policy realm did new diverging interpretations of Kultura’s line emerge, legitimizing competing visions for Polish foreign policy.

In relation to these findings, I was also able to shed some new light on the formation of the structural foundations of post-communist Poland’s foreign policy up to the Polish-Russian reset during Civic Platform’s rule. The analysis revealed that the Eastern dimension of Poland’s foreign policy has been generally subordinated to the Western vector, that is, to the strategic goals of integration with Euro-Atlantic institutions. By deconstructing the popular belief that post-communist Poland’s foreign policy was based on Giedroyc’s political ideas, I also explained his criticism directed toward post-communist Poland’s foreign policy, including the first foreign affairs minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski.

The article also makes a wider contribution to understanding the mechanisms of legitimization among Polish elites. In particular, it shows that the legacies of great authorities, such as Jerzy Giedroyc, play an important role in their symbolic struggles and so by studying the attitudes toward these figures one can get a valuable insight into the structural divisions within the elites and the society at large. The totemic interpretation also underlines the fact that the process of legitimization within the intelligentsia elite is a two-way street. This phenomenon is most visible in the example of then president Aleksander Kwaśniewski’s visit to Paris, which should be seen not only in the context of his efforts to became a full-fledged political actor (with help from Kultura’s editor) but also as a development strengthening Giedroyc’s prestige and authority—as it was he whom the newly elected president praised and chose to meet during one of his first visits abroad. Overall, the totemic interpretation seems to be a promising path of research into intelligentsia elites both in terms of developing the concept of “intelligentsia totem” and applying it to other important figures.