Poland's Threatening Other: The Image of the Jews from 1880 to the Present (review)

Michlic offers a reading of the history of modern Polish antisemitism that is impressive in its scope. Covering roughly 140 years (1864–2005), Michlic's book provides a new synthesis of the development, nature, and significance of modern anti-Jewish representations in Poland and their impact on Polish society and culture. Specifically, the book focuses on the concept of the Jew as the "threatening other." She explores the structure and dynamic of this myth, as well as its social and political functions in particular historical moments. By tracing development of the myth throughout a lengthy period, Michlic attempts to "demonstrate [the myth's] power, persistence, and consequences while detailing their modifications, transformations, and discontinuities" (8).

At the heart of Michlic's analysis rests an assumption that ethno-nationalism—understood in terms of an ideology and movement according to which national membership lies in genealogy and in a common vernacular culture and history—"gained the upper hand over modern Polish civic nationalism" at the turn of the twentieth century (3).¹ Consequently, the formation and development of modern Polish national identity was primarily based on "the matrix of exclusivist ethnic nationalism" (x). Although this thesis is not new in the literature about Polish nationalism, Michlic successfully expands its conceptual ramifications by bringing attention to the role of the anti-Jewish myth of the "threatening other" in the process of nation building.

Michlic's discussion suggests that the idea of "the threatening other/harmful alien" was, and still is, one of the most influential forces in a grand project of the "ethno-nationalization of the state" (a term borrowed from Brubaker).² Throughout her narrative, Michlic successfully reveals the project's inner workings by investigating the beliefs and ideas of its agents—intellectuals, politicians, and the clergy. Michlic makes the insightful theoretical claim that an exclusive focus on "historical agent's beliefs and ideas" can better illuminate "the persistence and coherence of ideas, traditions, social beliefs, and national mythologies and their impact on societies" (8). Such an approach reaches beyond the analysis of modern Polish antisemitism and can be employed in any study of nationalism and nation building, and the role of "the other" in this process.

Overall, Michlic's book is a successful and erudite attempt to synthesize and contextualize the theme of modern antisemitism in Poland. Michlic is at her best when she places origins and transformation of antisemitic ideas and representations in particular political and social settings (51). She is also skillful in revealing the political and social functions of antisemitic mythology. One problem that Michlic fails to address sufficiently concerns the mechanisms by which ideas are transferred from elite circles into public circulation. In Michlic's defense, rarely does intellectual history explain how ideas become "popular" in society at large. Unfortunately, throughout the book, Michlic seldom leaves the circles of intellectuals and politicians, paying little attention to average people (with the exception of Chapter 5, 181–195). This omission, however, is not a genuine shortcoming of the book, since Michlic's study is not a social-history project. Instead, it is a fine example of interdisciplinary work informed by the intellectual history of ideas and sociology—in her own words, "a holistic sociohistorical analysis" (15).