Table of Contents

List of Figures vi

Acknowledgments ix

Pronunciation Guide x

Introduction 1

1 Poles without Poland, 1795–1918 6

2 The Political Landscape at the Start of the 20th Century 43

3 Nation and/or Revolution, 1914–22 65

4 The Ambivalence of Democracy and Authority, 1922–39 90

5 Hyperinflation and Depression: The Interwar Period 105

6 Jews, Ukrainians, and Other Poles in the Interwar Period 126

7 World War II, 1939–45 144

8 Conquest or Revolution? 1945–56 186

9 The Year 1956 and the Rise of National Communism 231

10 Communism and Consumerism 258

11 The End of the PRL, 1976–89 285

12 Shock Therapy 328

13 Politics in the Third Republic 348

Index 367

About the Author

Brian Porter-Szucs is Professor of History at theUniversity of Michigan, where he has taught since 1994. He is theauthor of Faith and Fatherland: Catholicism, Modernity, andPoland (2011) and When Nationalism Began to Hate: ImaginingModern Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland (2000). He is alsothe co-editor, with Bruce Berglund, of Christianity andModernity in Eastern Europe (2010).

Reviews

Poland in the Modern World is a valuable contribution to central and eastern European historiography and the study of Communist and post-Communist societies. In presenting sophisticated insights from a variety of disciplines and from a comparative perspective, the author characterizes Poland's history of the last two centuries as a history of neither winners nor losers. In doing so, he gets beyond stereotypes and cliches about the country, particularly the "national martyrology" that informs much of Polish historiography. (H-SAE, February 2015) Well researched, engagingly written, and full of striking anecdotes, Brian Porter-Szucs s Poland in the Modern World deserves a wide readership. (Slavic Review, 1 October 2014)