The theme of this thesis is the preconditions for Polish European policies. The Polish Communist regime pmoterod a foreign policy that was defined by “fraternal neighborly Polish-Soviet relations”. It represented the West (Western Europe and the USA) as an antagonist to the idea of a socialist Europe and maintained that by counterworking socialism the West attempted to “push our country into the abyss of chaos and anarchy”. Only a socialist Poland could “remain on the map of Europe as an independent and sovereign state” (Gomułka quoted in Bromke 1967: 120).

While the Communist regime produced such statements, the opposition made...

All statements are implicitly depending on history and on the discourses that precede the contemporary one. The language used in the present is always affected by the language of the past. A good discourse analysis can therefore not ignore the pre-history of the discourse in question. Another methodical argument for dedicating a whole chapter to history is that I have decided to take a combined approach of subjugated knowledges and genealogy, and genealogy is exactly the investigation into how the power of a certain discourse depends on how it conserves a certain unity with the past. There is also an...

At the outset I asked: What kind of Europe do Poles promote? I decided to approach the question through a discourse analysis that will reveal how Polish identity, defined as representations of state and nation, is constructed in relation to Polish representations of Europe. The more precise formulation of the questions is: What are the Polish European policy positions and how is the discourse of which they are constitutive parts structured? This section will establish the identity layer, show how it connects to representations of Europe, and what changes this relation causes in the state–nation constellation. It will refer...

This study investigates the preconditions for Polish European policies. In order to do this it locates different representations of state, nation, and Europe in Polish discourse, looks into the ways in which these concepts relate to each other, and how they condition the sets of possible foreign policies that Poland may pursue in relation to Europe, or, more specifically, in relation to the EU. Chapter two offered a cut into the pre-history of the discourse and located different representations of state, nation, and Europe, throughout Polish history. Chapter three provided a categorization of the first two layers, the layer of...

This thesis has analyzed the precognitions of Polish European policies from the perspective that discourses condition what can be meaningfully said and done. It has revealed how we may derive Polish European policy positions from the ways in which the concepts of state, nation, and Europe, are and have been represented in Polish discourse. The purpose of the analysis has been to provide an overview of European policies in Poland, to explain these policies, and to make some tentative predictions on the basis of the findings. I think such an analysis is important because most analyses on the relations between...