Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Hearts and Minds and Land: Ethnic Cleansing and the Stabilization of Postwar Poland
- 1 How the East Was Lost: Germany's Struggle for the Polish-German Borderlands, 1870–1945
- 2 Who Won the West: The Colonists and Ethnic Cleansers of Poznań and Eastern Brandenburg in 1945
- 3 Acts of Sacrifice: Poland's Ethnic Cleansing and the End of Political Pluralism, 1945–47
- 4 Counterrevolution from Above and Abroad: The Delocalization of Politics and the Beginning of Polish Stalinism's Antinational Counterrevolution, 1947–49
- 5 Waging Counterrevolution: The Party-State's Struggle for Hearts, Minds, and Land in Wielkopolska, 1949–53
- 6 Revolutions before the Revolution: National Solidarity and the Long Retreat of Stalinism in Wielkopolska, 1953–56
- 7 The Revolutions Betrayed? The Poznań Revolt and the Polish Road to Nationalist Socialism, 1956–60
- Conclusion: A Near Run Thing From National Solidarity to Solidarity
- Abbreviations
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Acts of Sacrifice: Poland's Ethnic Cleansing and the End of Political Pluralism, 1945–47
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Hearts and Minds and Land: Ethnic Cleansing and the Stabilization of Postwar Poland
- 1 How the East Was Lost: Germany's Struggle for the Polish-German Borderlands, 1870–1945
- 2 Who Won the West: The Colonists and Ethnic Cleansers of Poznań and Eastern Brandenburg in 1945
- 3 Acts of Sacrifice: Poland's Ethnic Cleansing and the End of Political Pluralism, 1945–47
- 4 Counterrevolution from Above and Abroad: The Delocalization of Politics and the Beginning of Polish Stalinism's Antinational Counterrevolution, 1947–49
- 5 Waging Counterrevolution: The Party-State's Struggle for Hearts, Minds, and Land in Wielkopolska, 1949–53
- 6 Revolutions before the Revolution: National Solidarity and the Long Retreat of Stalinism in Wielkopolska, 1953–56
- 7 The Revolutions Betrayed? The Poznań Revolt and the Polish Road to Nationalist Socialism, 1956–60
- Conclusion: A Near Run Thing From National Solidarity to Solidarity
- Abbreviations
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
We in the Recovered Territories cannot afford the luxury of party conflict. Our obligation here is to maintain national unity … even at the price of certain sacrifices of personal views. Tell the people that they have to sacrifice.
—At a preelection conference in Ziemia Lubuska.In western Poland, the party-state confronted a society whose social structure, politics, and culture represented much that its most committed adherents desired to eliminate. In particular, the power of the Roman Catholic Church soon became a cause of ongoing concern for the authorities. Yet in Poznań, the need to stabilize the party-state's control of the country's prewar provinces and to sustain settlement further west into an East Brandenburg that slowly was being reshaped into Ziemia Lubuska saw Poland's Communist regime drawn into a conflicted, yet important, grassroots partnership with the Catholic Church in 1945.
The increasing influence of Catholicism throughout society was among the many unintended consequences for the regime in seeking to create a nationally homogenous polity. In Poznań, the mutually reinforcing relationship between Polishness and Catholicism (which had long predated the war) took on a deeper meaning in the context of both the wartime Nazi religious persecution and the postwar cooperation of state and society to ethnically cleanse western Poland. Local society and the authorities not only seized German shops and farms, but also worked together to convert Protestant churches into Catholic places of worship and ensure a Catholic religious presence for Polish colonists in Ziemia Lubuska.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Clean Sweep?The Politics of Ethnic Cleansing in Western Poland, 1945–1960, pp. 55 - 79Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2006