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After the Fall: Attitudes Towards Jews in Post-1989 Poland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs  and
Annamaria Orla-Bukowska
Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs
Affiliation:
Jagiellonian University, Poland
Annamaria Orla-Bukowska
Affiliation:
Jagiellonian University, Poland
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Extract

The Enlightenment instilled European and European-rooted societies with certain fundamental principles which are generally taken for granted; among the most important are democracy, education, and human equality. Not all of mankind experienced this period of cultural history, but in those areas that the Enlightenment touched, a tautology functions in the collective subconscious that where there is democracy and where there is an educated people, there will be equality. Western nations—their politicians, scholars, and common folk alike—believe that a preordained consequence of the system of democratic rule in a developed country is open-mindedness and tolerance; in contrast, it is generally maintained that non-democratic governments where knowledge is evidently censored and controlled, such as those of the former Soviet Bloc, produce narrow-mindedness and intolerance.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , June 1998 , pp. 265 - 282
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

Notes

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