Abstract
In this case study of a current artist-led initiative, Ośrodek Pogranicze, in the town of Sejny, Poland, Janine Holc excavates the cultural meanings that denizens are carving out of the realities of borderland pluralities of the region known as the Suwałki Triangle. Such excavation incorporates physical structures such as religious meeting houses, unused and deteriorating across the communist era. Meeting one another across diverse ethnic, religious, and language backgrounds, these artists confront nationalisms through educational and performative exchanges. Through thick descriptions of the Ośrodek Pogranicze activities and aspirations, this chapter reflects on the productive possibilities of such efforts, as well as the potential undersides if certain histories are not addressed. The backdrop to the rich displays of cultural particularities is one of segregation, inequality, and political opportunism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
The group is organized as a foundation (Fundacja Pogranicze, or Borderland Foundation) and a community center with staff, called Ośrodek “Pogranicze—sztuk, kultur, narodów,” or the Borderland: Arts, Culture, Nations Center. For the purposes of this paper I call it the Borderland Center, or Ośrodek Pogranicze. In the 1990s, the organization called itself “Pogranicze Sejny.”
- 2.
The term for the region that is “Suwałki” in Polish is “Suvalk” in Yiddish and “Suvalki” in Russian.
References
Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/la frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.
Arpad, Y. (2004). The murder of the Jews in German-occupied Lithuania (1941–1944). In A. Nikžentaitis, S. Schreiner, & D. Staliūnas (Eds.), The vanished world of Lithuanian Jews (pp. 175–204). Amsterdam: Rodopi Press.
Ashoka Foundation. (2017). Profile of Fellow Krzysztof Czyżewski. Retrieved from http://ashoka-cee.org/slovakia/fellow/krzysztof-czyzewski.
Berelson, Y. (1989). The destruction of Suwalk. In Y. Elroi & Y. Chrust (Eds.), Jewish community book Suwalk and vicinity. Retrieved from https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/suwalki/suwalki.html.
Bilenky, S. (2012). Romantic nationalism in Eastern Europe: Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian political imaginations. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
Buttar, P. (2017). The splintered empires: The Eastern Front 1917–21. Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing.
Cobel-Tokarska, M. (2010). Powracając do siebie. Idea podmiotowości w działaniach narzecz odrodzenia tożsamości Europy Środkowej na przykładzie Ośrodka Pogranicze Sejny. Unpublished manuscript. Retrieved from https://depot.ceon.pl.
Cohen-Cruz, J. (2015). Remapping performance: Common ground, uncommon partners. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Czyżewski, K. (2001). Ścieżka pogranicza. Sitka/Sejny, Poland: Borderland Publishing House.
Czyżewski, K. (2002a). Personal interview.
Czyżewski, K. (2002b). The path of the borderland. Irish Pages, 1(1), 12–24.
Czyżewski, K. (2007). Line of return: Practicing “the borderland” in dialogue with Czesław Miłosz. Michigan Quarterly Review, 46 (4), n.p. Retrieved from http://www.michiganquarterlyreview.com.
Czyżewski, K., & Kicińska, M. (2016). Krasnogrudzki most: Niezbędnik budowniczego. Sejny, Poland: Fundacja Pogranicze.
Dolbilov, M. (2005). The stereotype of the Pole in imperial policy: The “depolonization” of the northwestern region in the 1860s. Russian Studies in History, 44(2), 44–88.
Donskis, L. (2013). Searching for the Europe of Czesław Miłosz. Retrieved from www.bernardinai.lt.
Fink, C. (2006). Defending the rights of others: The great powers, the Jews, and international minority protection, 1878–1938. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fuller, W. C. (2006). The foe within: Fantasies of treason and the end of imperial Russia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Gorenburg, D. P. (2003). Minority ethnic mobilization in the Russian Federation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hauser, E. (2000). Reconstruction of national identity: Poles and Ukrainians among others in Jerzy Hoffman’s Film, “With Fire and Sword”. The Polish Review, 45(3), 305–317.
Hilbrenner, A. (2003). Simon Dubnov’s master narrative: And the construction of Jewish Collective Memory in the Russian Empire. Ab Imperio, 2003(4), 143–164.
Hundert, D. G. (2004). Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the eighteenth century: A genealogy of modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kamusella, T. (2013). Germanization, Polonization, and Russification in the partitioned lands of Poland-Lithuania. Nationalities Papers, 41(5), 815–38.
Kappeler, A. (2001 [trans. 2003]). The Russian empire: A multiethnic history. Harlow, UK: Longman.
Kroniki Sejneńskie. (2017). Retrieved from https://kronikisejnenskie.wordpress.com/bozena-szroeder/.
Lato w Pograniczu. (2016). Brochure available from the author.
Lehrer, E. T. (2013). Jewish Poland revisited: Heritage tourism in unquiet places. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Levin, D. (2000). The Litvaks: A short history of the Jews in Lithuania. Berghahn Books.
Lindner, R. (1999). New directions in Belarusian studies besieged past: National and court historians in Lukashenka’s Belarus. Nationalities Papers, 27(4), 631–647.
Liphshiz, C. (2016, February 18). Lithuania book prompts soul-searching about Holocaust Complicity. The Forward. Retrieved from https://forward.com/schmooze/333744/lithuania-book-sparks-soul-searching-about-holocaust-complicity/.
Łossowski, P. (1997). Stosunki polsko-litewskie 1921–1939. Warsaw: Instytut Historii PAN.
Lukowski, J. (2010). Disorderly liberty: The political culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the eighteenth century. London: Continuum UK.
McGrattan, C., & Hopkins, S. (2017). Memory in post-conflict societies: From contention to integration? Ethnopolitics, 16(5), 488–99.
Meng, M. (2011). Shattered spaces. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Michlic, J. (2006). Poland’s threatening other: The image of the Jew from 1880 to the present. Omaha: University of Nebraska Press.
Michlic, J. (2017). “At the crossroads”: Jedwabne and Polish historiography of the Holocaust. Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust, 31(3), 296–306.
Miłosz, C. (1968). Native Realm. New York: Doubleday.
Muzeum Ziemi Sejneńskiej. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.museum.sejny.pl.
Pelenski, J. (1998). The contest for the legacy of Kievan Rus. Boulder: East European Monographs.
Plokhy, S. (2006). The origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern identities in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pogranicze Sejny/Krasnogruda. (2017). Website. Retrieved from http://pogranicze.sejny.pl/krasnogruda,48.html.
Pollin-Galay, H. (2016). Naming the criminal: Lithuanian Jews remember perpetrators. Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 30(3), 506–31.
Popescu, D. I. (2017). The aesthetics and ethics of performative Holocaust memory in Poland. Nordisk Judaistik/Scandinavian Jewish Studies, 28(1), 22–37.
Porter, B. (2000). When nationalism began to hate: Imagining modern politics in nineteenth century Poland. New York: Oxford University Press.
Porter, B. (2001). The Catholic nation: Religion, identity, and the narratives of Polish history. The Slavic and East European Journal, 45(2), 289–299.
Richter, K. (2015). “Go with the hare’s ticket:” Mobility and territorial policies in Ober Ost (1915–1918). First World War Studies, 6(2), 151–70.
Sen, A. (2006). Identity and violence: The illusion of destiny. New York: W.W. Norton.
Sieroń-Galisek, D. (2016). Animacja jako sztuka pamiętania. Doświadczenie Ośrodek ‘Pogranicze—sztuk, kultur, narodów’ w Sejnach. Zarzadzenie w Kulturze, 17 (2), 159–165.
Sinkoff, N. (2004). Out of the shtetl: Making Jews modern in the Polish borderlands. Providence: Brown University Press.
Skłodowski, K. (2000). Dzisiaj ziemia wasza jest wolną: o niepodległość Suwalszczyzny. Suwałki: Muzeum Okręgowe w Suwałkach.
Staliūnas, D. (2011). Territorializing ethnicity in the Russian Empire? The case of Augustav/Suvalki Province. Ab Imperio, 2011(3), 145–56.
Staliūnas, D. (2014). Making a national capital out of a Multiethnic City: Lithuanians and Vilnius in late Imperial Russia. Ab Imperio, 2014(1), 157–175.
Taube Foundation. (2015). Taube Philanthropies’ 2015 Irena Sendler Memorial Award Presented to Krzysztof Czyżewski. Retrieved from http://www.taubephilanthropies.org/sendler-memorial-award-to-krzysztof-czyzewski.
Tomaszewski, J. (1985). Rzeczpospolita wielu narodów. Warsaw: Czytelnik.
Vermeersch, P. (2003). EU Enlargement and minority rights policies in Central Europe: Explaining Policy Shifts in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. JEMIE: Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe, 1, n.p. Retrieved from http://www.ecmi.de/publications/detail/issue-42015-347/.
Vilkelis, G. (2006). Lietuvos ir Lenkijos santykiai tautų sąjungoje. Vilnius: Versus Aureus.
Webster, A. (2008, April 17). Yes, borders everywhere, but nary a barrier in sight. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/theater/reviews/17sejn.html.
Weeks, T. J. (2008). Nation and state in late Imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russificiation on the Western Frontier, 1863–1914. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.
Wójcikowska, K. (2014). Walka o miejsca pamięci w przestrzeni dwunarodowej gminy Sejny. Studia Społeczne 23. Retrieved from http://yadda.icm.edu.pl/.
Zubrzycki, G. (2017). The Politics of Jewish absence in contemporary Poland. Journal of Contemporary History, 52(2), 250–277.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Holc, J. (2021). The Dynamics of Cultural Change in Northeastern Poland: The Role of Ethnicity in Local Activism. In: Pearce, S.C., Sojka, E. (eds) Cultural Change in East-Central European and Eurasian Spaces. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63197-0_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63197-0_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-63196-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-63197-0
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)