“Post-traumatic Sovereignty” and Central Eastern Europe’s Response to Ukraine

Описание: The election of populist far-right party Law and Justice in 2015 marked a shocking break in Polish politics. A period of stability was brutally interrupted as Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his allies took over public media and launched a controversial ‘reform’ of the judiciary.

How was this illiberal turn possible after years of democratic development? Jaroslaw Kuisz, one of Poland’s leading liberal thinkers, digs deep into Polish history to propose an original analysis of the crisis. He reveals how centuries of statelessness have left Poles with a ‘post-traumatic’ attitude to sovereignty, making them wary of powerful foreign blocks, be it the EU, the Soviet Union or present-day Russia. This is a phenomenon populists have proved adept at exploiting.

Providing a brilliant account of Europe’s largest illiberal democracy, The new politics of Poland shines a light on the broader situation in East and Central Europe, offering valuable lessons for other countries experiencing the rise of populist right-wing movements.

Speakers:

Dr. Jaroslaw Kuisz – CEO Kultura Liberalna Foundation; Editor-in-Chief, Kultura Liberalna weekly; Assistant Professor, University of Warsaw (Poland); Chercheur associe, Institut d’Histoire du Temps Present, CNRS (Paris); Co-Director, Poland-Britain-Europe Programme, St. Anthony’s College at Oxford (2016-2018); Visiting Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, 2019; Policy Fellow, Centre for Science and Policy, University of Cambridge; Senior Fellow, Zentrum Liberale Moderne, Berlin

Prof. Stanley Bill – Professor of Polish Studies and Director of Slavonic Studies Section at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Czesław Miłosz’s Faith in the Flesh: Body, Belief, and Human Identity (Oxford University Press, 2021) and co-editor of Multicultural Commonwealth: Poland-Lithuania and Its Afterlives (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023). His forthcoming book, co-authored with Ben Stanley, is Good Change: The Rise and Fall of Poland’s Illiberal Revolution (Stanford University Press, 2025).

Chair:

Dr. Donatas Kupciunas – Baltic Fellow at Centre for Geopolitics, University of Cambridge