When Will Post-Communism End? History Policy, Historians, and Polish Democracy

Abstract

This article contributes to the discussion about the developments and transformations of the post-communist Polish historiography by offering a perspective derived from the sociology of knowledge. Adopting analytical lenses inspired by Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology, it focuses on the social and institutional conditions of historical research. Struggles in the Polish field of history cannot be explained solely by the politicization of historians and/or their work, nor by purely scholarly controversies. These two dimensions are closely intertwined and determined by an institutional framework that has dramatically changed as a result of both history policy and broader reforms of academia in the post-communist context. In fifteen years (2000–2015), history policy has radically transformed the conditions of production and dissemination of contemporary history. The illiberal period (2015–2023) and its effects in the field of history thus appear as the product of a longer-term process of reconfiguration of the relationship between the political and bureaucratic fields, on the one hand, and the field of history, on the other. Crucially, historians have themselves contributed to limiting the autonomy of history, as the relationships between fields are shaped by efficient actors, historians-bureaucrats who contribute to history policy-making.