Tri-Marium as the ‘emancipation’ of East-Central Europe: framing European counter-narratives in Poland

ABSTRACT

The historical notion of Inter-Marium captured Poland’s centuries-old concept of integrating, in a form of confederation, the new states that appeared on the map between the Baltic and Black Seas after 1918. Reincarnated as the contemporary narrative of Tri-Marium, this notion is gaining new momentum and has been most visible in Poland, the largest state of the European Union’s Eastern semi-periphery. This article examines Inter-Marium as one of the most clearly articulated counter-narratives to the mainstream European integration project. Drawing on original research rooted primarily in critical discourse analysis, the article uses framing as an interpretative tool. It analyses the narrative entrepreneurs who are constructing the political message, as well as the resulting narrative itself and how it is employed in contemporary discourse. Unpacking this emancipatory framing, the paper makes three inter-connected arguments. First, it shows that the Inter-Marium concept narratively challenges Western domination (framed as post-colonial constellation) and re-constructs the connected emancipation narratives. Second, the article highlights that the Inter-Marium concept acts as acounter-narrative to the mainstream European integration. Third, it explores the ways in which the Inter-Marium narrative serves the ambitions of the Polish ruling party which aims to regain Poland’s historical status as aregional power.

KEYWORDS:

• Poland
• ECE
• inter-Marium
• Tri-Marium
• emancipation
• framing
• counter-narratives

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the NCN (Narodowe Centrum Nauki / National Center of Science) grant entitled “Determinants and Dynamics of Differentiated Integration in (Post)Brexit Europe” (2020/37/B/HS5/00230)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The Latin term Inter-Marium, or Miedzymorze in Polish (both of which translate to ‘between the seas’) was directly derived from the tradition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1796). It quite often serves as the reconceptualization of Zwischeneuropa (or in-between Europe – the 19th century concept of organizing the territories of Central Europe, at that time under the domination of Berlin, Moscow and Vienna). Diverse concepts of Inter-Marium delineated its borders in many varied ways, but most frequently as the space between the Baltic and Black Seas, from the estuary of the Vistula, the Nieman Delta, and the Gulf of Finland to the Danube Delta. Besides Poland and Lithuania, this would also include Latvia, (large parts of) Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia and Moldova (Chodakiewicz 2012).

2. The analysis does not include the extreme far right Konfederacja which does not participate in the governmental coalition. And as a marginal political party it does not act as narrative entrepreneur.

3. That problem is well illustrated by relations between Poland and Czechoslovakia, which sought conflict with Moscow more vigorously than cooperation with each other (. After the downfall of USSR and the end of its domination of ECE, all the old, unsolved problems were revived and they again negatively affected the realization of the Inter-Marium concept. Additionally, most of the political-elites turned towards Western Europe, which was very attractive after forty years of Soviet rule. States which could have created Inter-Marium instead focused on finding their individual way to prosperity via better relations with the EU.