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The Regime of Violence in Socialist and Postsocialist

Poland
a
Michael Fleming
a
Department of Politics, Academy of Humanities and Economics, Poland

Available online: 09 Nov 2011

To cite this article: Michael Fleming (2011): The Regime of Violence in Socialist and Postsocialist Poland, Annals of the
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 The Regime of Violence in Socialist and
Postsocialist Poland
Michael Fleming
Department of Politics, Academy of Humanities and Economics, Poland

This article seeks to contribute to the geographical debate about the nature of violence in socialist and postsocialist
Poland. It responds to Bradshaw and Stenning’s (2004) call to account for the uniqueness of postsocialism. By
comparing “regimes of violence,” which characterize particular socioeconomic formations, a clearer conception
of postsocialism can emerge, showing how different configurations of violence have dominated the socialist and
postsocialist periods, respectively, and how violence has been directed toward non-Polish ethnocultural groups.
The article indicates the important role that representational violence is playing in making postsocialism, where
class-for-itself subjectivities are specific targets of marginalization. Key Words: class, Poland, politics, postsocialism,
violence.
Downloaded by [Michael Fleming] at 11:13 09 November 2011

Este artı́culo pretende contribuir al debate geográfico relacionado con la naturaleza de la violencia en la Polonia
socialista y postsocialista. El artı́culo responde al llamado de Bradshaw y Stenning (2004) de tomar en cuenta
el carácter único del postsocialismo. Al comparar los “regı́menes de violencia”, caracterı́sticos de formaciones
socioeconómicas particulares, puede emerger una más clara concepción del postsocialismo, mostrando la manera
como diferentes configuraciones de violencia han dominado los perı́odos socialistas y postsocialistas, respecti-
vamente, y cómo la violencia ha sido enfocada hacia grupos etnoculturales no polacos. El artı́culo indica el
importante papel que está jugando la violencia representacional en la construcción del postsocialismo, donde las
subjetividades asociadas con clase en sı́ misma son blancos especı́ficos de marginalización. Palabras clave: clase,
Polonia, polı́tica, postsocialismo, violencia.

T
his article focuses on the ways different forms of
violence have been manifested in Poland in the
period since World War II. The main argument
is that a particular configuration of violence played a
key role in maintaining socialism and a different con-
figuration sustains postsocialism. The broader intention
of the article is to clarify the notion of postsocialism.
Recent scholarship on postsocialism has sought to
move beyond linear transition models of social change
in East Central Europe, to problematize the reemer-
gence of forms of modernization theory in the early
1990s and to theorize the shift from socialist social rela-
tions to capitalism within the wider context of postcolo-
nialism.1 It has been recognized that early contributions
on “transition” were highly inflected by the hegemony
of neoliberal doctrines and a globalization grand narra-
tive. Kalb (2002, 321) identified five key elements of
this linear transition theory:
1. Commodities freely exchanged between places
and groups would
2. Allow people to learn individual self-interest and
abandon their collective passions, which would
3. Help them form into civic communities of inde-
pendent middle-class citizens
4. Who would demand further civil rights from their
states and vote against inefficiencies
5. Which would facilitate more trade, prosperity,
freedom, and growth.
The limits of the teleological, “one-size-fits-all” ap-
proach was revealed by the different experiences of the
various postsocialist states over the course of the 1990s.
Two key deficiencies have been identified by Bradshaw
and Stenning (2004). First, the teleological approach
failed to recognize the multiplicity of capitalist forms
of economy—that is, the relation between the core

Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 102(X) 2012, pp. 1–17
C 2012 by Association of American Geographers
Initial submission, July 2009; revised submissions, December 2009 and July2010; final acceptance, September 2010
Published by Taylor & Francis, LLC.
 2 Fleming
labor–capital relationship and the ways that relation-
ship is actually regulated and embedded within a wider
set of social practices.2 Second, it ignored the manner in
which the ascendency of capitalism evolved over time–
space at different rates, meeting points of contestation
and resistance that have culturally and socially inflected
really existing capitalisms.
Since the mid-1990s, scholarship has increasingly
challenged these linear accounts and has questioned
the usefulness of the notion of “transition” itself, as “the
nature of transition [was understood as being] actively
contested and constructed” (F. Smith 1997, 357). More
recently, there have been calls to explore the parallels
and connections between postcolonialism and postso-
cialism (Verdery 2002, 17; Carey and Raciborski 2004;
Kuus 2004). Scholars such as Verdery (2002) and Kuus
Downloaded by [Michael Fleming] at 11:13 09 November 2011
(2004) view the engagement with postcolonialism as
an invitation to explore “current ongoing practices of
constituting Eastern Europe as not yet European” (Kuus
2004, 477). Issues such as power and representation are
at the center of this agenda.
The notion of postsocialism has been reformulated
from an essentially “negative concept, defining the
present in terms of its past” (Sakwa 1999, 3) to a more
nuanced perspective, which claims that postsocialism
“is not simply rooted in the historical development of
socialism” (Stenning 2005b, 124), while acknowledg-
ing that “the socialist past [continues] to shape the re-
gion’s (East Central Europe’s) future” (Bradshaw and
Stenning 2004, 254). But the question posed by writers
such as Humphrey (2002), Hann (2002), and Brad-
shaw and Stenning (2004) as to how long postsocialism
will remain relevant has been only partially answered.
Hann (2002, 11) contended that it will have traction as
long as “the ideals, ideologies and practices of socialism
are perceived to provide a meaningful (albeit increas-
ingly mythical) reference point for understanding peo-
ple’s present condition” (italics added), and Humphrey
(2002, 13) suggested that “sooner or later, as the gen-
erations brought up under socialist regimes disappear
from the political scene, the category of postsocialist is
likely to break apart and disappear.”
An aim of this article is to suggest that one way to
evaluate the conceptual usefulness of postsocialism is to
supplement the subjective criteria advocated by Hann
(2002) with an analysis of the change in the regime
of violence across postsocialist areas. A regime of vio-
lence describes the configuration of the various forms
of violence under different dominant social relations.
Such an approach is therefore consistent with Sten-
ning’s (2005a, 551) point that “postsocialism rests on an
understanding that it is still worth studying the states of
the former Soviet bloc together because their common
socialist histories fundamentally structure contempo-
rary economic, political, social and cultural processes;
it therefore implies a knowledge and understanding of
actually-existing socialism is important.”
In what follows I acknowledge the postcolonial turn
in the study of postsocialism by viewing postsocialism
through the optic of violence. I argue that the notion
of regimes of violence can help clarify what is unique
about the postsocialist conjuncture and can assist in
linking social changes in postsocialist regions to par-
allel developments across the globe. One of the main
assertions that I seek to defend is that a theorization of
violence can assist in understanding postsocialism. It is
contended that a particular configuration of different
types of violence not only maintains postsocialism but
also contributes to the specificity of postsocialism. I ar-
gue that the shift from socialism to postsocialism has
witnessed the nonintentional structural violence of the
market replace the intentional structural violence of the
state as the dominant form of violence. The argument
refers to socialist and postsocialist Poland.
Empirically, the article draws upon two recent re-
search projects. One analyzes the ascendency of the
Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) in Poland following World
War II and the other considers social inclusion and ex-
clusion in postsocialist Poland. By placing the two stud-
ies in dialogue, the different configurations of violence
that have characterized the socialist and postsocialist
periods in Poland and, arguably, throughout East Cen-
tral Europe can be highlighted. The article makes use
of material derived from state and regional archives in
Poland and from the National Archives in London to
demonstrate how the PPR, and later the Polish United
Workers’ Party (PZPR), shaped the regime of violence.
Access to the various archives in Poland was unprob-
lematic, requiring little more than a description of the
scholarly project in hand and proof of identity, although
access to the archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
in Warsaw did require a letter of introduction from
the head of my host institution in Poland. The article
also draws on interviews I conducted with policymakers,
politicians, and nongovernmental organization activists
in Poland over several years while exploring political
participation within various communities. The broad
aim of these interviews was to inform readings of the
rich Polish secondary literature on socialism and post-
socialism and to explore how key actors interpret the
present in terms of narratives about the past. Intervie-
wees were generally contacted by telephone or e-mail
 The Regime of Violence in Socialist and Postsocialist Poland
and a meeting was arranged. Interviews were mainly
conducted in Polish, although some were in English,
and were recorded, transcribed, and then analyzed using
a qualitative software package. In some cases, follow-up
meetings were organized to clarify certain issues.
Theorizing Violence
Mainstream discussions of violence in the media and
among large sections of the scholarly community have
focused on those acts that have an identifiable author.
Arendt (1970), for example, contended that violence
is consciously chosen by individuals or groups, whereas
Horowitz (2001, 34–43) provided a summary of the
main explanatory frameworks used to understand such
Downloaded by [Michael Fleming] at 11:13 09 November 2011
authored violence at the group level. These include
models that highlight grievances due to the relative
deprivation of some social groups vis-à-vis others and
theories that emphasize frustration and aggression.
What is missing from these contributions is an ac-
count of the violence that inheres within the so-
cial structure. This absence is particularly noticeable
in Arendt’s (1970) On Violence, where she misreads
Sartre’s position on violence (Gordon 2001).3 Without
a notion of structural violence, the “counter-violence”
that Sartre (2001) accepted in his preface to Franz
Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and elsewhere be-
comes, for Arendt, the initial violence, when in fact
the opposite is true. Discarding structural accounts of
violence has to be seen as a political act, as it natural-
izes exploitative social relations. Excluding structural
violence from consideration also serves to mystify the
social sources of poverty and ecological catastrophe,
as attention focuses on those acts of violence that have
identifiable authors rather than those that inhere within
the dominant social relations.
Žižek (2008) has attempted to focus attention on
the systemic violence that characterizes contemporary
Western societies.4 Žižek differentiated among subjec-
tive violence, which he defined as that violence that
has an identifiable author; symbolic violence, which,
echoing Bourdieu’s (2000) definition, he viewed as in-
hering in language and dominating the construction of
meaning—including the production of discourses that
misrecognize people and processes;5 and objective vi-
olence, which describes violence “that is no longer
attributable to concrete individuals and their ‘evil’ in-
tentions, but is purely ‘objective,’ systemic, anonymous”
(Žižek 2008, 10–11). Žižek’s (2008) aim, like mine here,
is to shift focus from the most visible form of violence
3
(subjective violence) to understand the relationships
between the different types.
Recent geographic scholarship has explored aspects
of structural violence, including work by Blomley
(2003), Farmer (2004), and Springer (2008, 2009a,
2009b, 2009c). Much of this work brings into focus the
neoliberal context of contemporary structural violence.
Although I do not agree with Barnett’s (2005, 9) state-
ment that “there is no such thing as neo-liberalism,”
any precise definition of neoliberalism remains prob-
lematic. Peck and Tickell’s (2003, 163) observation
that “there is no ‘pure’ form of neo-liberalism, only
a range of historically and geographically specific man-
ifestations of neo-liberalisation-as-process,” and their
definition of neoliberalization as the “mobilisation of
state power in the contradictory extension and repro-
duction of market(-like) rule” (168) is sufficient for
the argument advanced here. It is important to remain
sensitive to the historical and geographical specificity
of “actually existing neoliberalisms” (N. Brenner and
Theodore (2007, 152).6
Springer (2009a, 309) argued that we should be
“more attentive to the idea that neo-liberalism is not
necessarily conducive to peace and may actually re-
inscribe violence,” and that we should “open ourselves
to the possibility that neo-liberalism may foster condi-
tions that are conducive to the further manifestation of
violence.” He thereby linked neoliberalizing processes
with the violence in the everyday lives of the Cam-
bodians of his study. Structural violence, in this view,
frames subjective violence (see later), although subjec-
tive violence is not simply the result of neoliberalism.7
The implication is that acts of subjective violence do
not have clear, unambiguous authors, even when perpe-
trating agents are identified. But rather than completely
negating the culpability of agents of subjective violence,
the inability to ascribe unambiguous authorship in such
acts merely highlights the fact that these acts are often
only fully comprehendible in the context of ongoing
structural violence.
In addition, the essays collected by Gregory and
Pred (2006) make clear that geographers are increas-
ingly problematizing the geographical imaginations that
ground or legitimate various forms of violence. These
geographical imaginations are more “than popular prej-
udices. They spiral through the state apparatus, the mil-
itary, the market, and even the academy” (Gregory and
Pred 2006, 3) and not only function to establish or
perpetuate social, cultural, and geographic hierarchies
and exceptions but configure how violence itself is un-
derstood and rationalized. Geographers have been well
 4 Fleming
placed to chart those “spaces of exception” and to high-
light the production of “what Agamben calls ‘bare life’
[and draw attention to those] deprived of language and
the political life that language makes possible” (Gre-
gory, 2004, 63).
The decentering of understandings of violence,
which include notions of structural violence, has been
an ongoing (liberal) project in the West.8 More recently
this has been linked to the neoliberal agenda of un-
dermining class-for-itself subjectivities of the laboring
people; that is, the self-conscious class identity of the
working classes (Ost 2005).9 In addition to exporting
the “four pillars” of reform (privatization, liberalization,
stabilization, and internationalization) that extended
the neoliberal revolution eastward into the “heart” of
Europe, and allegedly assured successful transformation
Downloaded by [Michael Fleming] at 11:13 09 November 2011
of states from socialism to capitalism, Western policy
advisors also exported liberal and class-biased notions
of what constituted violence, although indigenous non-
communist elites often already shared these views.
Conceptualizing violence as having structural and
subjective elements not only facilitates criticism of
capitalist social relations but can shed light on both
socialism and postsocialism. Concern with structural
violence was expressed with its new configurations as
capitalist social relations became hegemonic. During
the nineteenth century, attention was drawn to the
wild speculative bubbles, commodity fetishism, the in-
stitutionalization of wage slavery, and the consequences
of capitalism’s inherent violence. Engels (1993, 107),
for example, highlighted the differential life expectan-
cies of different classes concomitant to the inequities of
the capital–labor relationship and described it as social
murder. This inequity persists, as recent work by Hat-
tersley (2005), among others, has shown.
Before exploring the various forms of violence in
more detail, however, it is necessary to clarify what
I mean by violence. Any definition needs to be broad
enough to overcome the fetishization of subjective vi-
olence but tight enough to remain conceptually use-
ful, bearing in mind, as Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois
(2004, 1) reminded us, that “violence is a slippery con-
cept.” To date, efforts to articulate a conception of vi-
olence that incorporates both subjective and structural
violence while maintaining internal coherence have
not been entirely successful. Work by Benjamin (1997)
and Sartre (1992) both highlight part of the difficulty.
Benjamin differentiated between mythical violence (vi-
olence that is instrumental along a means–end contin-
uum) and divine violence (which breaks with the past
and augurs new social relations). Mythical violence up-
holds legal violence so far as it preserves the law (e.g.,
police violence; i.e., intentional structural violence; see
later), whereas divine violence seeks the abolition of
the contemporary regime of violence (e.g., the coun-
terviolence of revolutionaries). Similarly, Sartre (1992,
561), in Notebooks for an Ethics, distinguished between
force, which acts in accordance with law (human or
natural), and violence, which “cannot be defined apart
from some relation to the laws that it violates (human
or natural).” Both Sartre and Benjamin distinguished
between those acts that preserve the law and those
that transgress it. But there is tension in conceptual-
izing violence in this way. Benjamin’s differentiation
between mythic and divine violence, although distin-
guishing between violence sustaining the status quo and
violence that challenges it, does not offer a clear defi-
nition of violence in itself. And as Santoni (2003, 29)
has recently pointed out, Sartre, in Notebooks, positions
“oppression as a form of violence.” Yet oppression (say,
e.g., the oppression meted out to the colonized, or the
working class in capitalist societies) is in accordance
with the (existing) law (i.e., force) but is framed by
Sartre as a form of violence. Sartre is not suggesting
that oppression violates natural law; such a position is
counter to the existential ontology that permeates his
work through the late 1940s. Rather, oppression (which
can be described as a form of structural violence) sits
very uncomfortably within Sartre’s force–violence di-
chotomy. This tension was later recognized by Sartre
himself. By 1960 Sartre had largely abandoned describ-
ing violence as a violation of laws and instead viewed
it as breaking bonds of reciprocity in the context of
material scarcity, as Santoni (2003, 40) noted.
Recent geographic work on this issue is also prob-
lematic. Springer (2009b, 45), for example, argued that
“violence is a disavowal of freedom” (a view that Sartre
in the 1940s would agree with but would qualify in the
1960s with reference to material scarcity) as “all vio-
lence involves a form of hierarchy, authority, or system
of rule over other individuals.” I am sympathetic to this
proposition, but if Sartre’s (2004) later argument from
1960 that some form of coercion is necessary to sustain
a group is true, and I am inclined to think it is, some
qualification to Springer’s definition is required. Sartre
(2004, 736) maintained that
the only conceivable violence is that of freedom against
freedom through the mediation of inorganic matter. . . . It
can take on two aspects: free praxis may directly destroy
the freedom of the Other, or place it in parentheses (mys-
tification, stratagem) through the material instrument, or
 The Regime of Violence in Socialist and Postsocialist Poland
else it may act against necessity (the necessity of alien-
ation), that is to say against freedom as the possibility of
becoming Other (of relapsing into seriality), and this is
Fraternity–Terror.10
Because groups and other forms of social solidarity are
an important part of human existence and are necessary
to transform dominant social relations, the rejection of
all violence does not seem to be possible, even if the aim
is to create a livable and more just world. Indeed, ruling
out counterviolence a priori implies that nonviolence
is the highest value and assumes that nonviolence is a
real option in the context of ongoing structural violence
that does not simply perpetuate the status quo.
Defining violence as a “disavowal of freedom” high-
lights the fundamental ambiguity of violence. Violence
Downloaded by [Michael Fleming] at 11:13 09 November 2011
is both destructive of the world and a component
of remaking it (assuming social solidarity and social
groups are valued and necessary) in the context of (fre-
quently artificial) scarcity. The effort to overcome exist-
ing structural violence might require the perpetration
of subjective violence. Thus, on the one hand, vio-
lence is a “thingifying enterprise” (Santoni 2003, 26),
and, on the other, it might serve to break “up a cer-
tain state of enslavement that was making it impossible
for people to become human beings” (Sartre, in Sartre
and Levy 1996, 92).11 It is important to recognize the
internal contradictions and ambiguity of violence: It
is noncoexistential and dehumanizing but might offer
routes to new forms of social relations, challenge ex-
isting structural violence, and preserve the unity and
thereby the potency of social groups, although the re-
sult might simply be the reconfiguration of violence.
Subjective and structural forms of violence relate to
each other in various ways. Indeed, subjective violence
might not challenge structural violence at all. Rather,
the two forms could be aligned so that subjective vio-
lence aids in the achievement of systemic goals, either
directly or indirectly, by fostering fear and inhibiting
protest, for example.12
Consequently, violence in this article is understood
as individual, group, or institutional actions, or a con-
sequence of the dominant social relations, that in-
hibit self-development and the self-expression of in-
dividuals or communities.13 A possible concern with
this definition of violence is that it could be read as
idealizing “self-development and self-expression” in an
ahistoric fashion;14 however, such a definition imme-
diately highlights the pervasiveness of violence in all
societies, without prematurely excluding some forms
that might warrant scrutiny, such as the various types
5
of structural violence. It also has the benefit of not priv-
ileging any particular form of violence.15
Žižek (2008, 11) highlighted the fact that “the fate of
whole strata of the population and sometimes of whole
countries can be decided by the ‘solipsistic’ speculative
dance of capital, which pursues its goal of profitability
in blessed indifference to how its movement will af-
fect social reality.” This truth has been brought home
to millions through the credit crunch, and taxpayer
funds being used to insulate those financial institutions
“too big to fail”; however, Žižek’s categorization of vi-
olence is in some respects too blunt a tool to explore
the way in which violence is constituted in socialist and
postsocialist settings, and even contemporary capitalist
societies.
Violence can be conceived as being of one of two
broad types: subjective or structural. Subjective vio-
lence has identifiable authors and is superfluous, gra-
tuitous, and excessive, as it is not strictly necessary to
sustain a particular set of social relations. This defini-
tion overcomes some of the problems of Žižek’s (2008)
notion of subjective violence, which conflates acts such
as rape, robbery, and murder with those acts that help
sustain the dominant social relations (and their class-
based oppressions), such as blacklisting, antiunion leg-
islation, and the prohibition of a general strike, among
others. Those acts that help to support the dominant
social relations, although having an identifiable author,
are qualitatively different from acts that have no direct
bearing on insulating the hegemonic social relations
from contestation.
Subjective violence can be aligned with other forms
of violence so that the cumulative effect is to support
structural violence. There is a continuum of subjective
violence, along which particular repeated acts are more
or less important in buttressing the dominant social
relations.16 In addition, subjective violence can also be
a form of “counterviolence.” In other words, it can be
a response to structural violence, as Fanon (2001) and
Sartre (2001) suggested.
In contrast, structural violence is in some way neces-
sary for the wider goals of society or state to be achieved.
Structural violence has three aspects. First, there is the
violence that inheres within the dominant social rela-
tions, and its precise form is determined by those social
relations. This aspect is described here as nonintentional
structural violence and broadly corresponds to Žižek’s
(2008) notion of objective violence. The creation of a
reserve army of labor (unemployment) is an example of
this form in a capitalist society, as it seems to be a neces-
sity for the continuation of profitable accumulation.17
 6 Fleming
Second, there is the violence that inheres within lan-
guage and in the hegemony of particular notions of com-
mon sense. It includes pervasive stereotypes and fixed
ideas about gender roles, homophobia, and racism. This
form is described as representational violence and echoes
the concept of symbolic violence as used by Žižek and
Bourdieu.18 It is structural in two senses. First, idées fixes
form part of the collective social knowledge and are re-
sistant to change even in the face of determined action
to transform them. Second, stereotypes are often use-
ful to the imperatives of capitalist accumulation insofar
as they expose individuals and groups to varying levels
of exploitation. As Marx and Engels (1992, 10) noted,
“all are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to
use, according to their age and sex.” There are plenty
of examples—different pay levels for the same job per-
Downloaded by [Michael Fleming] at 11:13 09 November 2011
formed depending on the gender of the worker, the
classification of some forms of labor as “women’s work”
(Martynowicz 2000; Toynbee 2003), and the ethnic
segregation of labor markets.
The third aspect of structural violence is directed
and serves to ensure the continuation of the dominant
social relations. This form is usually operationalized by
the state and its allies to ensure the continuation of the
set of social relations and its class hierarchy in which the
state is embedded. This aspect is described as intentional
structural violence. Its intensity can be eased, although
not eliminated, within the context of a specific set of
social relations, by the state.19 This form of violence is
particularly visible during periods when one set of social
relations is replaced by another or when the hegemonic
social relations are threatened, as in a general strike
under capitalism.
Separating subjective from structural forms of vio-
lence allows a more nuanced analysis of violence in
general. Only subjective violence can be effectively
combated within the framework of a particular set of
social relations, whereas intentional structural violence
and representational violence can at best be eased or
reconfigured.20 Structural violence can be moderated
by policy, as the history of capitalism in different states
indicates, but can only be overcome through a radical
reframing of social relations—with the risk of new forms
of structural violence emerging. And it remains open
whether the moderation of violence is actually what
happens. The extent to which the shift from direct co-
ercion to Foucauldian self-discipline (in other words,
the manner in which social control produced by discur-
sive and ideological means in contemporary society is
internalized) represents liberation remains moot. The
task now is to assess how the various forms of violence
relate to each other under the hegemony of different
social relations.
The Establishment of Socialism and the
Regime of Violence in the Polish People’s
Republic
The ascendency of socialism in East Central Eu-
rope was marked by varying degrees of repression of
the political opposition, the mobilization of nationalist
rhetoric as a strategy of legitimization (Zaremba 2001;
Mevius 2005), and population transfers and expulsions
(Ther and Siljak 2001). The immediate postwar pe-
riod in Poland has been described as one of civil war
(Prażmowska 2004). In this section I argue, with ref-
erence to Poland, that under socialism the “regime of
violence,” that is, the relationship between the various
forms of violence discussed earlier, was different from
the regime of violence typical of liberal capitalist soci-
eties. The socialist regime of violence has left significant
traces in the postsocialist (as in after socialism) context.
These traces are being reshaped in the new conditions
and constitute a fundamental part of postsocialism (as
in a concept).
The beginning of socialist rule in Poland has been
a subject of debate since the Moscow-backed commu-
nists took control in the mid-1940s. Most of these con-
tributions have focused on the diplomatic and political
level or have highlighted how the security forces and
the Soviet Army coerced the population (Dudek and
Paczkowski 2005). This coercion was indeed substan-
tial, with an extensive prison camp system operating
from 1944 until the 1950s (Kopka 2002). But a key way
in which the communists achieved hegemony and sus-
tained it was through their efforts to manage and direct
social anger and thereby regulate the regime of vio-
lence. Social anger refers to the negative emotions that
are created by every social system (Ost 2005, 21). The
orchestrating of passion and emotion was a key mech-
anism by which sufficient acquiescence was secured for
the socialist experiment.
The transparency of political power is a distinctive
feature of socialist societies—everyone “knows” who is
responsible for decisions—that contrasts with liberal
capitalist societies and postsocialist societies, in which
power is opaque (Ost 2005). The Communist Party is
therefore the natural recipient for negative emotions
produced in society. As a consequence of power trans-
parency and the relatively automatic organizing of so-
cial anger against the Party, it is absolutely essential
 The Regime of Violence in Socialist and Postsocialist Poland
that the Party finds or creates alternative targets for the
expression of negative emotions and passions to inhibit
direct challenges to its rule.21 In socialist Poland these
targets were often minority communities.
At the very beginning of communist rule in Poland
the broad architecture of the regime of violence was
established, designed to redirect negative sentiment
away from the PPR and its Soviet allies. Although it
is important to recognize the role played by the USSR
and Stalin’s geopolitical interests in securing a rim of
friendly and allied states around the Soviet Union in
the aftermath of World War II, it is also necessary to
highlight how the various communist parties attempted
to gain support in their particular states. The PPR’s
ethno-nationalist rhetoric and practice sought to create
a nationally homogeneous nation-state and to demon-
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strate to the Polish population that the Party sought to
promote the national interest. These objectives, from
1944 to 1947, were widely seen as being identical. Pol-
ish society’s tolerance of national diversity had largely
collapsed during the brutal war years. For example, Ro-
man Knoll of the Government Delegation in Poland
sent a “secret” letter to the Polish Government in Ex-
ile’s Foreign Minister Tadeusz Romer in 1943, in which
he noted that “the prevalent mood amongst the peasant
population is that a post-war Poland has to be purely
ethnically Polish.”22 Nationality policy helped secure a
workable level of acquiescence to the PPR’s ascendancy
and provided “legitimate” targets for the expression of
social frustration. The PPR therefore tirelessly publi-
cized the merits of national homogeneity and the ben-
efits of the “Recovered Territories”—those areas that
were formerly part of Germany.
The state’s intentional structural violence of pop-
ulation transfer and expulsion and the repression of
resistance groups was complemented by negative stereo-
types and discourses that circulated about minority
groups (representational violence) and the subjective
violence of segments of the wider population and state
functionaries against those same population groups.
Władysław Gomułka (Secretary-General of the PPR)
argued that “the Germans must be expelled and those
who stay get the kind of treatment that will not en-
courage them to stay” (quoted in Polonsky and Drukier
1980, 441). Even after the Potsdam conference of July
and August 1945 conditions remained difficult for Ger-
mans. British officials based in Poland as liaison officers
for “Operation Swallow”—the transfer program remov-
ing 1.5 million Germans from Poland to the British
Zone of occupation in Germany—during 1946 were of
the view that confiscation of German property at the
7
border was illegitimate and that Polish guards on the
transport trains “winked” at incidents of varying seri-
ousness against German expellees.23
In the east, as early as autumn 1944, population
transfers were underway, which helped to make the
“Curzon line” the ethnographic and political border
of Poland. On 7 October 1944 the State Repatriation
Office (PUR) was established with the key role of or-
ganizing “repatriation.” Although resettlement was in
theory voluntary, coercion was frequently used by Pol-
ish and Soviet soldiers to remove members of minor-
ity communities from Poland. The response of those
forced to leave northeast Poland was reported by a rep-
resentative of PUR in December 1945. He noted that
“houses and farm buildings are partly or totally devas-
tated by the evacuating Belarusians and the local pop-
ulace” (quoted in Mironowicz 1993, 183). In southeast
Poland the cycle of violence only ended when the re-
maining Ukrainian population was forcibly dispersed
under “Action Vistula” in 1947. Gomułka’s view that
“countries are built on national lines and not on multi-
national ones” was repeated throughout the early post-
war years and to a large extent endorsed by the wider
population (see Polonsky and Drukier 1980, 425). This
“endorsement” manifested itself in several ways. It was
often expressed in the form of subjective violence: beat-
ings, theft, murder, and so on. The Jewish population
was the only minority group that was allowed to re-
turn to Poland following World War II. Nevertheless,
the PPR’s policy toward them was ambiguous. On the
one hand it sought to help Jews rebuild workplaces in
Poland, and on the other hand it allowed the emigra-
tion of Jews who wished to move to Palestine. When
Prime Minister Edward Osóbka-Morawski made the mi-
gration policy clear at a meeting of the Homeland Na-
tional Council (KRN) on 21 July 1945, a member of
the Jewish section of the PPR and member of the Cen-
tral Committee of Jews in Poland (CKŻP) described
it as “anti-Jewish,” indicating that, “the government,
instead of providing assistance and work, wanted to of-
fer the Jews open borders” (Gross 2006, 218–19). In
addition, although the PPR condemned anti-Semitism
and chauvinism, it only weakly tackled the widespread
representational and subjective violence that harmed
Jews. In the period from 1944 to 1946 between 500 and
600 Jews were murdered (Engel 2005, 425).
Like other minorities, Belarusians fell victim to sub-
jective violence. In total, 422 Belarusians are thought
to have been killed in the mid- to late 1940s in
the Białystok Voivodship (Iwaniuk 2005, 101). The
right-wing sections of the Polish underground were
 8 Fleming
responsible for some of these killings (Mironowicz 2000,
45).24
The alignment of representational, subjective, and
intentional structural violence achieved in the project
of creating a nationally homogeneous nation-state
played a fundamental role in the PPR’s ascendency.
PPR nationality policy and practice also educated the
population that dissent could be articulated in terms
of nationality.25 Those who continued to contend that
the PPR and its Soviet allies were the main problem
were incarcerated in the expansive prison camp system,
executed, or deported to the depths of Soviet Russia
(Kopka 2002).26
By late 1947 the PPR’s tolerance of subjective vio-
lence was much reduced as the Party had now secured
control over the state apparatus, and national homo-
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geneity had more or less been achieved. The founda-
tions of the regime of violence that was to characterize
socialist Poland had been laid. The structure of an-
tipathy toward minorities was well established and re-
mained a potent resource that the Party and factions
within it could and did mobilize repeatedly, notwith-
standing the official position condemning chauvinism.
Unlike in liberal capitalist societies, nonintentional
structural violence did not play a dominating role in
structuring society. Instead, intentional structural violence
(repression) and representational violence (propaganda)
were highly developed, as the Party controlled virtu-
ally all aspects of public life. To compensate for the
inevitable negative reaction due to the transparency of
political, social, and economic power, the Party guided
representational violence through the course of the Pol-
ish People’s Republic (PRL) to both internal and exter-
nal enemies, such as reactionary cliques, nationalists,
imperialists, and, as in 1968, to “Zionists.”27
Several minority communities remained in Poland
after the period of expulsions and transfers came to
an end, constituting around 3 percent of the popula-
tion, compared with around 35 percent in 1931 and 14
percent in 1946.28 These minorities were encouraged
to assimilate, although often assimilation was seen as
a simulation. Minorities were incompletely incorpo-
rated into the PRL and remained at risk of being
targeted by the intentional structural violence of the
state as representational violence continued to dif-
ferentiate them negatively from the wider population
(Mironowicz 2000). Berlińska (1999) has charted how
autochthonic populations in Silesia were marginalized
in socialist Poland and how negative stereotypes about
them being German “justified” discrimination against
them. Jews were targeted by an anti-Semitic campaign
in 1956 and again in 1968, in which between 15,000
and 20,000 people were coerced to leave the country.
The commonality of the various antiminority actions
in socialist Poland is that they helped to redirect so-
cial tensions from the state and Party to other groups.
An important legacy of this practice has been the phe-
nomenon of anti-Semitism without Jews, which man-
ifested itself in the early years of postsocialism, as well
as the more general upsurge in antiminority sentiment
(Ambrosewicz-Jacobs and Orla-Bukowska 1998).
The Invisible Fist of the Market
In the postsocialist period nonintentional structural
violence has made a dramatic appearance through mar-
ket mechanisms and allocations. Initially, savings were
often wiped out, groups with fixed incomes penalized
through inflation, and unemployment generated on a
mass scale, resulting in the growth of absolute as well as
relative poverty.29 Intentional structural violence has
been reset to target the former leading class, and repre-
sentational violence has been mobilized to marginalize
labor as a self-conscious class. Postsocialist represen-
tational violence also has significant elements derived
from the previous socialist period and is, in compari-
son with such violence in established liberal capitalist
societies, overdeveloped.30 The old cliché “old habits
die hard” has considerable merit in this context. In
addition, representational violence functions to direct
anger away from liberalization in two different ways.
First, there has been a strong tendency to blame es-
sentialized groups for the hardships that accompanied
shock therapy in the 1990s and current difficulties (a
continuation of socialist practice) and, second, a ten-
dency to denigrate cultures of labor and working-class
solidarities. This has been the flip side of the promotion
of discourses of individualism and responsibilization.
Hayden’s (2002, 174) point made in reference to
the Balkans, that “while the worker has no nation
but labour, politically the workers are mobilised as
members of nations, at least as long as the supposedly
threatening minorities are to be scapegoated,” could
well describe Poland in the first decade or so of post-
socialism, although the effects were significantly less
bloody. Lech Wałȩsa’s populism stoked anticapitalist
anger, but prevented the emergence of anticapital-
ist discourse (Ost 2005, 67). The deleterious effects
of shock therapy—unemployment, cuts in public ex-
penditure, and growing inequality—were explained by
the notion that identifiable authors prevented “real”
 The Regime of Violence in Socialist and Postsocialist Poland
capitalism (defined as that which supports working peo-
ple) from taking root.
Wałȩsa’s “war at the top,” against the Mazowiecki
government therefore sought to shift anger emerging
due to material regression and hardship from being
expressed in an economic register to a purely politi-
cal register, in which the decline in living conditions
could be apportioned to symbolic and mythical figures.
And although it would be a mistake to suggest Wałȩsa
was an anti-Semite, his brief dabbling into anti-Semitic
rhetoric in 1990 contributed to the representational vi-
olence that depicted assorted “aliens” as responsible for
the economic problems that the country faced.
Under socialism both the PZPR and the wider so-
ciety used ethnonationalist arguments to justify polit-
ical positions.31 Large sections of society viewed the
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PZPR as a foreign imposition staffed by Jews and, in the
Białystok Voivodship, by Belarusians.32 Although this
has been shown to be untrue by historians Paczkowski
(2001) and Mironowicz (2000), the myth of Poles be-
ing dominated by minorities continued to have sway
in the thinking of some influential politicians. Indeed,
one senior politician in Białystok, as a way of account-
ing for the poor state of majority–minority relations in
northeast Poland at the turn of the twentieth century,
advised me in 2000 that “one should remember certain
incidents from the 1940s and 1950s—the Authorities
here were mostly made up of Belarusians, and amongst
the older Poles there is a fear of domination by national
minorities.”
The narrative that Poles were the victims of assorted
national others in the socialist period has been reused
to account for difficulties after 1989; however, the pro-
mulgation of ethnonationalist discourses is increasingly
challenged by liberal civil society organizations such
as Otwarta Rzeczpospolita (Open Republic, founded in
1999), magazines such as Nigdy Wiȩcej (Never Again),
“Days of Tolerance” (events at which offensive graf-
fiti in various cities is painted over by volunteers, and
seminars for young people on cultural and racial tol-
erance are held), tighter laws prohibiting xenophobic
statements, and Poland’s subscription to the European
New Minority Rights Regime—which includes ratify-
ing the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for
the Protection of National Minorities (1995)—while
antilabor discourses circulate fairly freely.33
Postsocialist Regime of Violence
Over the course of the 1980s, PZPR repression of Sol-
idarity forced the mass movement to rely more heavily
9
on its intellectual elite. The close relationship between
labor and intellectuals first expressed by the Workers’
Defense Committee (KOR) in the 1970s gave way to
a more complicated relationship in the mid-1980s, in
which labor’s material interests were seen as secondary
to the objective of building a postsocialist capitalist so-
ciety. Representational violence has played a key role
in realizing the elite vision.
In the postsocialist period there have been repeated
attempts to inhibit the expression of class-for-itself aspi-
rations. Class-for-itself denotes self-conscious class sub-
jectivities that pursue activities that attempt to improve
the conditions of the class, whereas class-in-itself de-
fines objective class positions. As Kowalik (2001) has
pointed out, the political decisions made to restructure
the economy during the 1990s did not coincide with the
desires of most of the working population. One strategy
used by the political elite has been to stigmatize the Pol-
ish working class. For example, even Adam Michnik,
the editor-in-chief of the liberal Gazeta Wyborcza, the
celebrated defender of workers’ rights in the 1970s and
early 1980s, who was imprisoned on several occasions
for his political activity during the socialist period, is
on record as dismissing manual workers as only being
able to make statues of Lenin (Kalb 2002, 320). The
implication is that Polish workers both lack the nec-
essary skills to be engaged in the market economy and
that they belong to the past. Furthermore, the ongoing
process of disciplining labor through representational
violence, which depicts the working classes as “aggres-
sive,” “pathological,” and “violent” (Podgórska 2004;
Tarkowska 2009), and the widespread bourgeois notion
that working classness is a “condition in need of al-
leviation” (Haylett 2003, 56), are key mechanisms by
which the real socioeconomic and cultural concerns of
the working classes are marginalized. Given that “both
opposition and former state-socialist social forces have
been co-opted into reproducing neoliberalism” (Shields
2007, 161), there has been limited political space to
challenge the representational violence that has af-
fected the working classes in particular.
The European Union (EU)-sponsored celebration of
multiculturalism illustrates part of the difficulty. The
multicultural agenda is expressed through, for exam-
ple, the law, the European city of culture program, and
regional funding mechanisms and has played an im-
portant role in retrieving the suppressed past of several
groups; however, this multiculturalism also provides the
rhetorical tools to marginalize those who (counterpro-
ductively) express class conflicts in the register of na-
tionality, or other essentializing ways, from the debate
 10 Fleming
about their future. The manner in which radical socio-
economic change in Poland has been advanced by the
transference of social anger is ignored, despite the chal-
lenge it poses for the specific multicultural agenda pro-
moted.34 The contradiction is that a restricted notion
of multiculturalism that celebrates Poland’s historic mi-
norities and multinational past confronts the systemic
need that social anger about economic liberalization
be transferred elsewhere, and it is onto those same mi-
norities (and others) that anger is often transferred.
The result has been that any expressed working-class
antipathy to the restricted multicultural project (it is
restricted in the sense that living working-class cultures
are negatively apprehended, not celebrated) becomes
evidence of the working classes’ inherent “pathology,”
rather than a response to a particular socioeconomic or
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sociocultural configuration. Representational violence
against the working classes is thereby “legitimated,” in
part, by the working classes’ real and imagined repre-
sentational violence against assorted others, even as
the wider neoliberalizing processes (including the casu-
alization of the workforce and decreases in the state’s
provision of social welfare) that produce and structure
these particular phenomena remain unrecognized.
The tension between a multicultural agenda and the
need to transfer social anger is played out (although
not resolved) between different political parties. On
one hand, the Law and Justice (PiS) party, created
by the Kaczyński brothers, mobilizes representational
violence to marginalize national and cultural minori-
ties (although the intensity of representational violence
has its own geography) and former communists and re-
asserts traditional gender roles. The representation of
minority groups frequently draws on tropes circulating
during the socialist and presocialist periods. PiS is also
a key sponsor of lustracja (lustration), which seeks to
cleanse public life by excluding those associated with
the socialist regime (among others). On the other hand,
Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform (PO) defends and cele-
brates cultural and lifestyle pluralism, but has sought
to undermine class-for-itself subjectivities through ne-
oliberal policies and representational violence. Both
major parties inhibit the expression of class-for-itself
subjectivities, PiS by valorizing a restrictive notion of
Polishness and diverting frustrations to assorted others,
and PO by dismissing the living cultures of labor and
working-class identities.
The current production of empowered and disem-
powered subjectivities through representational vio-
lence indicates that further dialogue with postcolonial-
ism has merit. As Kuus (2004, 477) has argued, “East
Europeans are framed as victims of the ‘father state,’
naı̈ve, immature, in need of overcoming the ‘mental
straightjacket’ of communist society” by the West. Kuus
highlights the representations about East-Central Eu-
rope that establish and legitimate structures of empow-
erment and disempowerment. But it should be noted
that the quote from Kuus (2004) just cited could just as
easily read “the working class are framed as victims of
the ‘father state,’ naı̈ve, immature . . .”, suggesting that
the architecture of empowerment and disempowerment
of which Kuus speaks not only has resonance on a so-
cietal as well as regional scale but is an important fea-
ture of processes of neoliberalizations in East–Central
Europe.
The marginalizing narrative about the Polish work-
ing class, for instance, was so widespread and acceptable
that a storyline in the Polish television soap Klan elab-
orated on it in the spring of 2008. In the context of
accession to the EU and the migration of several hun-
dred thousand people west to find work, the myths of
working-class dependency and fecklessness had to be re-
worked to take into account the success of migrants in
the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The story now dif-
ferentiates between those hard-working, individualis-
tic, initiative-taking people who have taken advantage
of opportunities elsewhere and the “lazy,” collective-
thinking mass that remains in Poland. In Klan the story
told depicted a migrant returned home who finds his
old buddies in prolonged negotiations over a decorat-
ing contract. The migrant undercuts his old pals and
does the job. He manages to earn a tidy sum by doing
the work of three men and thereby is presented as a
valuable member of the new society. The same narra-
tive, with local variations, is likely to be promulgated in
East–Central Europe’s particular Easts as labor migrates
west.
Framing the working class as inadequate to new con-
ditions is not a new strategy to inculcate the ideology
of individualism and responsibilization; that was one
of the key objectives of Thatcher’s efforts to change
the psychology of the British economy in the 1980s.
But what is striking is how it has been playing out in
postsocialist contexts. Intentional structural violence
and representational violence have been aligned inso-
far as they have aimed to inhibit the expression and
formation of class-for-itself subjectivities and have at-
tempted to create new forms of identity more amenable
to the new strategies of accumulation. Trade unions in
postsocialist Europe have also played a role, frequently
being “unsure about whether they should be defending
the workers against capitalism or helping to bring it
 The Regime of Violence in Socialist and Postsocialist Poland
about” (Crowley 2004, 421).35 During “shock therapy,”
the Polish elite were claiming that “there is no alterna-
tive.” This view was shared by some redundant workers
but in a radically different sense. For instance, in the
1990s the geography of suicide reflected the massive
disinvestment from one-enterprise towns and villages;
the typical suicide victim was a married male in his for-
ties living in such places. The closure of factories, with
the consequent mass unemployment and shattering of
previous certainties and status, induced deep existential
crises (Jarosz 1998, 2003).36
The reconfiguration of structural violence by the
market also has a significant gendered dimension. Pine
(2002, 102) maintained that “many of the structures
and mechanisms associated with building the priva-
tized market economy favor what are established male
Downloaded by [Michael Fleming] at 11:13 09 November 2011
practices and prerogatives and limit those of women.”
This nonintentional structural violence has been dis-
cursively supported by representational violence, which
frames women as primarily homemakers. For example,
the debate about abortion, which rumbled on through-
out the 1990s and into this decade, has been as much
about gender roles as about reproductive rights. And,
in 2000, the Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS) gov-
ernment responded to the United Nations question-
naire Women 2000: Gender, Equality, Development and
Peace for the Twenty-First Century by stating that “in
Poland, many discriminatory situations don’t happen
due to . . . the very special belief in the exceptional role
of a woman as a mother and family supporter” (Mar-
tynowicz 2000, 2). In addition, the contraction of the
labor market and the rapid increase in unemployment
over the course of the 1990s and early 2000s, together
with the reductions in social services such as kinder-
garten, child care, and housing allowances, left many
women with little choice but to assume and renegotiate
domestic roles. Cutbacks and policy decisions that dis-
proportionately affect women have been recorded else-
where. Harvey (2005, 202) noted “the neoconservative
assault on women’s and reproductive rights . . . when
neoliberalism first came to prominence” in the United
States, whereas Toynbee (2003) highlighted the femi-
nization of poverty in the United Kingdom. And like
in the United States and United Kingdom, women in
Poland have pursued multiple strategies aimed at sus-
taining agency in the context of neoliberalization, in-
cluding both contestation of, and collusion with, the
various forms of representational violence; however, in
Poland and elsewhere in East–Central Europe, forced
flexibility in, and marginalization from, formal labor
markets has also meant that women have played a dis-
11
proportionately large role in organizing activity in the
alternative economy, such as subsistence food produc-
tion, and in sustaining social networks (A. Smith and
Stenning 2006). These tasks constitute an extra burden
for many women, but other women assess such activities
more positively. The structural violence of the market
has had a significant effect on the way gender roles have
been articulated in postsocialist Poland.
Conclusion
This article has contended that viewing postsocial-
ism through the optic of violence has considerable
merit. The intentional structural violence of the state
operative in the socialist period has been largely re-
placed by the nonintentional structural violence of the
market. The legacy of socialist usages of representa-
tional violence to redirect social anger from the Party
to various social groups, frequently minority popula-
tions, has been appropriated in the new circumstances
to direct anger resulting from liberalization to assorted
groups, frequently minority populations. During the so-
cialist period, the dominant social relations were sus-
tained by state intervention in the form of propaganda,
censorship, the suppression and imprisonment of polit-
ical opponents, and other acts of intentional structural
violence. In the postsocialist period, market mecha-
nisms have disciplined the populace to acquiescence
with the dominant social relations. The state no longer
plays a direct role but shapes and embeds the market
through law. If the state in the socialist period was the
face of violence, in the postsocialist period violence is
frequently not recognized as such but rather is seen as
the natural order of things.
Representational violence in postsocialist Poland
and elsewhere in postsocialist Europe is overdeveloped,
and this differentiates the postsocialist regime of vio-
lence from that in established liberal capitalist soci-
eties. A key feature of contemporary representational
violence in Poland is the way in which it negatively
portrays the working classes. Ost (2005, 20) has a point
in claiming that “postcommunism is a period in which
the new elites seek to bring labor down.” Political (and
even academic) discussion of the continued relevance
of class in general, and of working-class experience and
identities in particular, has been inhibited by their as-
sociation with the ideology of the previous socialist
regime. But the inability to articulate economic cleav-
ages and frustrations in a class-informed register has
meant that many of these cleavages and frustrations
are diverted to registers that essentialize identities and
 12 Fleming
foster and sustain resentment. As Ost (2005) has per-
suasively argued, this has resulted in a (structural) il-
liberality in the political culture. In recent years, Civic
Platform and Law and Justice have used representational
violence to marginalize the working class and redirect
social tensions to various others, respectively.
And although it is true that major parties in
other countries such as the United States and United
Kingdom also mobilize representational violence to
marginalize specific groups, representational violence
against the working classes in Poland is particularly in-
tense and widespread. Arguably this is because so much
has been at stake: That is, re-creating capitalist social
relations after a several-decade hiatus has demanded
levels of representational violence beyond that required
to reconfigure socioeconomic hierarchies in established
Downloaded by [Michael Fleming] at 11:13 09 November 2011
capitalist societies.37
The engagement with postcolonialism, advocated by
Verdery (2002) and Kuus (2004), among others, in the
theorization of postsocialism is to be welcomed. In-
creased attention needs to be paid to the construction of
empowered and disempowered subjectivities, not only
aligned on a West–East axis as argued by Kuus (2004)
but also within countries along class axes. I have sug-
gested that there is a powerful discourse within Poland
that frames the working classes as objects of disdain
and contempt. Harvey (2005, 202) highlighted possi-
ble responses to this situation: “The mass of the pop-
ulation has either to resign itself to the historical and
geographical trajectory defined by overwhelming and
ever-increasing upper-class power, or respond to it in
class terms.” There is resistance, with resilient working-
class cultures in Łódź, Praga (Warsaw), Silesia, and else-
where adapting in various ways to new circumstances.
Furthermore, the potential broadening of the elite-
sponsored program of multiculturalism presents oppor-
tunities to challenge the mechanisms of anger transfer
that have been so important to actually existing neolib-
eralism in Poland.
Although this article has focused exclusively on the
experience of Poland, it would seem highly probable
that the kind of analysis presented here could be usefully
extended to other postsocialist states, as the dominant
forms of violence developed in similar ways; however,
such analysis would have to be sensitive to the varying
histories of postsocialist states, their specific experience
of socialism, and the different ways neoliberalism is be-
ing manifested in different countries.38 Begg and Pick-
les’s (2000) work on Bulgaria, for example, provides a
useful departure point to analyze violence in that coun-
try as it shifted from socialism to postsocialism.
In addition, the recent call by Hörschelmann and
Stenning (2008, 326) to recognize multiple post-
socialisms (as in after socialism) and the need to
“acknowledge and theorize the uneven development
of socialism and postsocialism” is accompanied by a
concern that conceptualizing postsocialism in a partial,
open, and plural manner as they suggest might result
in theorizing postsocialism out of existence (Hörschel-
mann and Stenning 2008, 331); however, engaging
with the notions of violence discussed here might offer
a solution. The evidence from Poland certainly suggests
so.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Professor Audrey Kobayashi and
the anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions and
criticisms.
Notes
1. The terminology to describe the system that existed in
East–Central Europe after World War II—socialism, re-
ally existing socialism, communism—is problematic. So-
cialism and postsocialism are the common terms used in
Britain, whereas communism and postcommunism dom-
inate in Poland. Both describe the same phenomena.
Here I follow contemporary British practice without
prejudice.
2. Stark and Bruszt’s (1998, 3) call that “capitalisms must
be compared vis-à-vis each other” was therefore an im-
portant intervention. It is justified to speak of capitalisms
in the plural to reflect the different articulations of var-
ious regulation frameworks and cultural practices with
the fundamental free labor–free capital relation, but it is
also fair to speak of capitalism in the singular to empha-
size the key social relations. Clarity on this point helps
overcome the problems, identified by R. Brenner in the
mid-1970s, with Smithian definitions of capitalism. See
R. Brenner (1977).
3. Interestingly, Arendt’s (1948) work on totalitarian-
ism, on the other hand, implies a notion of structural
violence.
4. Structural violence has been explored by Galtung (1969)
and Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois (2004), among
others.
5. As Bourdieu and Wacquant (2004, 273) pointed out,
symbolic violence “is not a logic of ‘communicative in-
teraction’ where some make propaganda aimed at others.
. . . It is much more powerful and insidious than that: be-
ing born in a social world, we accept a whole range of
postulates, axioms, which go without saying and require
no inculcating.” Also see Bourdieu (2000).
6. Bohle and Neunhöffer (2006, 97), for example, chart
how neoliberalism in Poland was promoted and ar-
gue that neoliberalism was “facilitated through long-
standing transnational networks . . . [and] . . . emerged as
a separate opposition trend, shifting anti-communist rad-
 The Regime of Violence in Socialist and Postsocialist Poland
icalism from political to economic views and attacking
democratic socialist ideas for their egalitarian and col-
lectivist values.” This process involved the mobilization
of representational violence against particular groups, as
I show. The normalization of economics in its neoliberal
guise has been particularly pernicious. Peet (2007, 81)
highlighted the class bias of neoliberal theory: “the ne-
oliberals . . . by the free individual [mean] . . . the boss.”
7. Indeed, processes of neoliberalization are likely to pro-
duce differential configurations of violence as lega-
cies and geographies of uneven development are
encountered.
8. See, for example, the way in which Laitin (2007) ex-
plores violence, and how Lawrence and Karim (2007)
frame violence in their introduction to their edited
collection of essays on violence. In their discussion of
neoliberalization and globalization, Peck and Tickell
(2003, 163) pointed out that “what [neo-liberal] politi-
cians are trying to depoliticize, [opponents and critics]
seek to repoliticize—and the use of the label ‘neolib-
Downloaded by [Michael Fleming] at 11:13 09 November 2011
eral’ suits [opponents and critics] because it is they who
wish to underline the political origins and character of
the program.” Violence needs to be recognized as one
of those key issues that are subjected to processes of
depoliticization.
9. The constitution of class and class transformation in
postsocialist Poland has been explored by Stenning
(2005b), Ost (2005), and others. Stenning, in partic-
ular, has explored the everyday lives of working-class
communities, and it is important to recognize the chang-
ing complexion of various socioeconomic groups both
through the socialist and postsocialist periods. A. Smith
and Stenning (2006) drew attention to diverse economic
practices under postsocialism and in doing so highlighted
some of the ways in which class is being rearticulated.
10. Also see Sartre (2004, 596–97: “[Terror] always arises in
opposition to seriality, rather than to freedom. In fact,
both in its origins and in its manifestation, it is freedom
liquidating the indefinite flight of the Other, that is to
say, impotence, through violence.”
11. Sartre’s views on violence display a consistency over the
course of his career despite the varying ethical emphases.
Arguably, the tension between, for example, Being and
Nothingness (1990) and The Critique of Dialectical Reason
(2004), which prompted Aron (1976, 160) to declare
that Sartre had transformed “a philosophy of human
liberation into a philosophy of violence” was due, in
part, to the expansion of Sartre’s scale of analysis from
the individual to a deeper focus on the dynamics of the
social and of history.
12. This categorization of the various forms of violence can
help highlight the extent to which a particular set of
social relations is dependent on directed coercion and
could provide the basis for an ethical and normative
critique. Some systems seem to rely more heavily on
intentional structural violence of varying intensities,
whereas in others nonintentional structural violence
dominates.
13. It should also be noted that some forms of
“self-expression” within society are deemed to be
illegitimate, for example, murder, rape, and robbery.
Illegitimate forms of self-expression tend not only to
challenge the legal basis of society but transgress the
13
ethical boundaries of what specific societies deem to
be acceptable conduct (itself subject to contestation).
The sanction against illegitimate activities varies across
time and space. This might be due to, on the one hand,
the limited ability of law enforcement agencies to cur-
tail them, and on the other, it might be the result of
some actors seeking to benefit from the concomitant
widespread social dislocation and apprehension. But, as
Blomley (2003) reminded us, the law also defends cer-
tain types of violence for example, the property system.
Thus, any assessment of violence needs to be historically
and geographically grounded and acknowledge the am-
biguity of violence itself. It should be clear that I agree
with Galtung’s (1969, 168) view that “violence is present
when human beings are influenced so that their actual
somatic and mental realisations are below their potential
realisations.”
14. In his Rome Lecture of 1964, Sartre charted out criteria
for judging the acceptability of counterviolence, which
offers a way to differentiate between legitimate and ille-
gitimate self-development and self-expression. Violence
can be accepted if it does not produce an exploitative
system that re-creates subhumanity; it does not produce
ideologies that function to preserve or re-create subhu-
manity; it must not alienate the end (producing human-
ity). The synthetic unity of means–ends (i.e., the end
infuses the means; ends and means should not be judged
in relation to each other, but rather against the struc-
tures that the unity of means–ends seeks to overcome)
demands that violence is limited; it must have popular
support, but violence must be recognized as problem-
atic by leaders of the popular movement and continually
critiqued. See Bowman and Stone (1997, 305).
15. Our response to various forms of violence and pos-
sible endorsement of counterviolence are intimately
connected with our projects. For instance, Mahatma
Gandhi, frequently and correctly cited as a pacifist, also
advised violence “where there is only a choice between
cowardice and violence” and argued that forgiveness
(which he endorsed) for a wrong committed only makes
sense when there is power to punish (Gandhi 1961, 132).
Arguably, pacifism is as much a strategic choice as a point
of principle, and Nojeim’s (2004, 9) point that violence
and nonviolence “exist along a single continuum of po-
litical action,” and that the boundary between violence
and nonviolence is not sharp, is timely.
16. This includes domestic violence. Giles and Hyndman
(2004, 4) rightly noted that, “violence perpetrated at
home is increasingly understood as part of broader, so-
cial, political, and economic processes that are embed-
ded in state policies, public institutions, and the global
economy,” but it is also important to understand acts
of domestic violence in their individuality if personal
agency is to be recognized. In short, it is necessary to
hold in tension the simultaneous vacuity and wider so-
cial significance of such acts and to acknowledge that
many acts of subjective violence are dialectically related
to structural violence.
17. See Harvey (1999, 32, 159–60), for example.
18. The notion of representational violence, however, un-
like Bourdieu’s idea of symbolic violence, also describes a
“logic of ‘communicative interaction’ where some make
propaganda aimed at others.”
 14 Fleming
19. Benjamin (1997, 239–40) discussed the general permis-
sibility of the individual strike, and the impermissibility
of the general strike, which challenges the legal system
that permits individual strikes. During a general strike,
unless the state is prepared for a reconfiguration of so-
cial relations, intentional structural violence is highly
probable.
20. The particular manner in which structural and subjective
violence relate to each other often militates against the
eradication of subjective violence, however.
21. Worker discontent was particularly dangerous to the
Party. Intentional structural violence was frequently
used to bring it under control, as in Poznań in 1956,
Gdańsk in 1970, and again in 1981 throughout the coun-
try. It is also worth noting that peaks in representational
violence, such as in 1968, often coincided with peaks in
intentional structural violence.
22. Sikorski Institute. A9.Ie/15 doc 55. “Uwagi o naszej poli-
tyce miedzynarodowej”

[Comments regarding our inter-
national politics].
Downloaded by [Michael Fleming] at 11:13 09 November 2011
23. National Archives FO 1052 /323 /36I, FO 1052 /323/
41B.
24. Although there was armed resistance to the communist
takeover of Poland, the targeting of members of minority
communities by some groups was predicated on the idée
fixe that members of national minorities were, or at least
were sympathetic to, communists and that by attacking
them “Poland” was being defended.
25. There is considerable merit, therefore, in considering
that minorities were positioned as homines sacri in the
aftermath of World War II in Poland. See Agamben
(1998, 73) for a discussion of homo sacer.
26. The number of those imprisoned is difficult to ascertain
with accuracy. A report by the Ministry of Internal Af-
fairs from 1979 states that in 1944, 11,063 were arrested,
45,148 in 1945, 44,411 in 1946, 30,521 in 1947, 24,443
in 1948, 22,848 in 1949, and 20,727 in 1950. These
figures do not include the 80,000 to 100,000 who were
detained prior to the “fixed” election of January 1947,
which confirmed the PPR’s leading position. See Dudek
and Paczkowski (2005, 272).
27. See Głuchowski and Polonsky (2008) for an extensive
discussion of the 1968 events in Poland.
28. The 1950 census indicated that there were 50,000
Jews, 160,000 Belarusians, 170,000 Germans, 150,000
Ukrainians, and around 30,000 people from other minor-
ity groups including Lithuanians. These figures should be
treated with caution, given the nationality policy of the
PZPR. See Eberhardt (2000, 76).
29. For a discussion of Poland’s experience of marketization
in the 1990s see Kowalik (2001). “Shock therapy” was
possible, in part, due to what Balcerowicz (1995, 161–63)
has described as a period of “extraordinary politics” fol-
lowing the Solidarity victory of 1989. Klein (2008) has
shown how rapid commodification of previously pub-
lic goods can take place in the aftermath of a crisis or
disaster.
30. By describing representational violence as overdevel-
oped in Poland, I wish to highlight that elements
of the previous regime of representational violence
(including idées fixes about the other), although fre-
quently reworked, coexist with the more subtle con-
structions of neoliberal discourse, which “actively man-
ufactures the misrecognition of its violences” (Springer,
2009b, 47). This is not to argue that representational
violence is any more, or less, “violent” than in es-
tablished capitalist societies, although its often more
visible.
31. In December 1948 the Polish Socialist Party (PPS)
merged with the Polish Workers’ Party, forming the
PZPR.
32. The PPR and PZPR were not the only organizations
attempting to guide representational violence. The Ro-
man Catholic Church’s ethno-religious policy also iso-
lated minority populations and, despite its hostility to the
communist government and contrary to much contem-
porary Polish scholarship, provided important support
for the PPR’s notion that some groups of people had no
place in Poland.
33. For a discussion of the new minority rights regime in
Poland, see Fleming (2002).
34. And the reverse is true: The multicultural agenda chal-
lenges the transfer of social anger. Disabling the mecha-
nism of anger transfer or, more precisely, enabling class
conflicts to be expressed in a class register, would bring
into question wider neoliberalizing processes, and clearly
this is not what is sought by neoliberalizing elites. The
multicultural agenda as it is presently constituted has
clear limits and is frequently connected with particular
towns and cities attempting to “regenerate” themselves
through heritage tourism; however, some local efforts
at retrieving the past and promoting cultural plurality
are encouraging and are transforming the elite-driven
multicultural agenda to one that resonates with living
working-class cultures.
35. It should be noted that the role of trade unions funda-
mentally changed from socialism to postsocialism, and
that understandings of the relationship of labor to cap-
ital were warped by the official socialist ideology of the
state.
36. Hörschelmann (2004, 237) noted that in 1995, 55 per-
cent of the population were living below the social mini-
mum as benchmarked by the World Bank, and the effort
to maintain an adequate income often required longer
working hours (Stenning 2005b, 121).
37. The intensity of representational violence directed to-
ward the working classes also relates to the antidemo-
cratic way in which “shock therapy” was instituted in the
period of “extraordinary politics” since market socialism
(an important trend within Solidarity) had to be thor-
oughly delegitimated if neoliberalization was to proceed.
This has implications for how representational violence
is differentially constituted in the wake of disaster capi-
talism (Klein 2008) around the globe.
38. Neoliberalism should not be treated as a monolithic force
but varies across space with a number of distinct contra-
dictions as the different experiences of Eastern European
economies over the last two decades indicate. During the
socialist period, as Mevius (2005) reminded us, “patri-
otic socialism” was promoted throughout East–Central
Europe, which privileged the ethnic majority (at the
expense of minorities).
 The Regime of Violence in Socialist and Postsocialist Poland
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