Democratizing Poland with Hannah Arendt

Article

Abstract

[In English]

In communist Poland, uprisings against the ruling regime broke out time and again. For this reason, Poland was regarded as a «focus of revolution» within the Eastern bloc. Striving for freedom and independence was always a marked interest in the country, which was fuelled by the endeavours of many Polish intellectuals who kept in touch with Western Europe and the United States. Mainly in the 1960s, intellectual life in Poland formed a barrier of resistance against communism. Already before the political upheaval in the year 1989, the works of Western philosophers were read and received in select circles of Polish intellectuals. Neither was Hannah Arendt an unknown person. Despite problems with censorship, three of her books, Eichmann in Jerusalem (A Report on the Banality of Evil), The Life of the Mind, and The Origins of Totalitarianism, were published in 1988. After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989 Hannah Arendt’s works ceased being something forbidden and mysterious. In this paper, Hannah Arendt’s literary reception in Poland before and after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc will be analyzed and evaluated. Afterwards the question will be discussed, how much influence Hannah Arendt’s ideas had on the consolidation of democracy in Poland.