The Memory of Katyn in Polish Political Discourse: A Quantitative Study

Abstract

This study uses quantitative methods to explore how the memory of Katyn is mobilised in political discourse. The scholarly literature on memory conflict tends to see international memory disputes as an expression of a state's interests as a whole; this study analyses when hostile rhetoric is mobilised and finds that in Poland Katyn is invoked as part of an opposition strategy that criticises the incumbent regime for undermining the national interest. Periods of accelerated debate about the significance of Katyn have occurred as political elites sought to achieve specific domestic rather than foreign political goals.

Notes

¹ This narrative is generally accepted in Poland. The Gazeta Wyborcza, normally critical of Lech Kaczyński, espouses the same interpretation; see for instance Radziwinowicz (2009).

² In 2009 Katyn was mentioned 43 times in The Guardian, compared to an average of three times per year in the period 2000–2008. At the time of the initial revelations in the early 1990s Katyn also figured in the English-language press: in 1990–1995 The Guardian wrote about Katyn on average four times per year. This may seem small, but asymmetry in the digital archives may account for the apparently much greater interest in the late 2000s.

³ Although precedents exist; see for instance Nikiporets-Takigawa (2013).

⁴ Foucault sees discourse as a set of rules and practices that give a text meaning within a particular context. Discourse is about how knowledge is produced through language (McHoul 1993).

⁵ This is not to suggest that no one in Russia knew about Katyn prior to April 2010, merely to point out that any public debate was limited to liberal opposition newspapers. This is well exemplified by the reporting on Wajda's Katyn in Russia: the film was screened only twice prior to 2010, and mentions of the film in pro-Kremlin publications labelled the film as dealing with World War II tragedies, rather than a massacre conducted by the NKVD. Until 2010 there were only few mentions of who actually was killed at Katyn as ambiguity with the Belorussian village Khatyn, burnt by the Nazis and a Soviet memorial site of Nazi aggression, was rarely avoided if not actively encouraged.

⁶ See for instance De Bruyn (2010), and the chapter ‘Coda: “Katyn-2”’ in Etkind et al. (2012).

⁷ See for example Markowski (2006).

⁸ ‘IV Rzeczpospolita’, Rzeczpospolita, 15 December 2005, available at: http://wiadomosci.wp.pl/kat,43834,title,IV-Rzeczpospolita,wid,8118743,wiadomosc.html?ticaid = 112a7b, accessed 10 April 2011.

⁹ ‘“Chcemy odwołania Niesiołowskiego”’, Rzeczpospolita, 10 September 2009, available at: http://www.rp.pl/artykul/361166.html, accessed 29 March 2011.