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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 September 2024
This article explores how three popular crime novels from the 2000s articulate postsocialist Poland’s most prevalent conspiracy narrative: that of a hidden network (układ) of communist-era secret service agents that have allegedly penetrated the structures and economy of the post-1989 state, thus “stealing” the transition to democracy and capitalism, and making it impossible for the new system to thrive. Whereas previous research has dealt mainly with the political content of this narrative and the way it has been employed in political discourse, this article focuses on its cultural significance and the multiple anxieties from which it stems, including a growing sense of diminished human autonomy and a generalized suspicion of social systems. The paper contributes to a growing body of work on postsocialist conspiracy narratives that takes an increasingly transnational and comparative approach. The novels analyzed in the paper are Zygmunt Miłoszewski’s Uwikłanie (Entanglement, 2007), Marcin Wolski’s Noblista (Nobel Prize Winner, 2008) and Szczepan Twardoch’s Przemienienie (Transfiguration, 2008).
The article is part of the project “Translating Memories: The Eastern European Past in the Global Arena” that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant agreement No 853385).
1 The suspicion emerged, Krasowski posits, from the notion that 1989 was “too good to be true”: something had to lie beneath. Krasowski, Robert, Czas Kaczyńskiego. Polityka jako wieczny konflikt (Warsaw, 2016)Google Scholar, chapter 4, section “Czy Kaczyński popadł w paranoję?” All translations are mine, unless indicated otherwise.
2 Mark Fenster proposes the term “conspiracy narrative” to cover both fictional and discursive texts. Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture (Minneapolis, 2008), 133−35. Such narratives are based on a “conviction that a secret, omnipotent individual or group covertly controls the political and social order or some part thereof,” Conspiracy Theories, 1.
3 The term “stolen transition” has been used by Péter Krekó, “‘The Stolen Transition’—Conspiracy Theories in Post-Communist and Post-Democratic Hungary,” Social Psychological Bulletin 14, no. 4 (2019), doi.org/10.32872/spb.v14i4.2323. I use this term to describe the narratives covered by układ (a secret deal between elites; “deep state;” ongoing mass manipulation). For this narrative’s origins, see Franciszek Czech, “Mit Magdalenki i media społecznościowe. O popularności narracji spiskowych, zanim stały się modne w internecie,” Czas Kultury 3 (2020), 87–94. For “staged transition,” see Haluzík, Radan, “‘It Was All a Big Theatre’: Velvet Revolutions, Ethnic Conflicts, and Conspiracy Theories in Eastern Europe,” Diogenes 62, no. 3–4 (2015), 89–100Google Scholar. For a “believer’s” view, see Łoś, Maria and Zybertowicz, Andrzej, Privatizing the Police-State: The Case of Poland (New York, 2000)Google Scholar.
4 Anastasiya Astapova, Onoriu Colăcel, Corneliu Pintilescu, and Scheibner, Tamás, “Introduction: Eastern Europe in the Global Traffic of Conspiracy Theories,” in Conspiracy Theories in Eastern Europe: Tropes and Trends, ed. Astapova, et al. (London, 2021), 5–6Google Scholar; Szczerbiak, Aleks, Politicising the Communist Past: The Politics of Truth Revelation in Post-Communist Poland (London, 2018), esp. 182–83Google Scholar.
5 Krasowski attributes only limited importance to the conspiracy discourses initiated by the 2010 Smolensk plane crash. By then, he asserts, the political scene had already been emptied of common sense.
6 Krasowski, Czas Kaczyńskiego, chap. 4. Krasowski’s interpretation recalls Edward Shils’ The Torment of Secrecy (Glencoe, IL, 1956) as accounted for by Nicolas Guilhot, “Conspiracies and the Liberal Imagination,” Social Research: An International Quarterly 89, no. 3 (Fall 2022), 640.
7 Krasowski, Czas Kaczyńskiego, chap. 4.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Krekó, “The Stolen Transition”; Mirosław Kofta and Wiktor Soral, “Belief in the Round Table Conspiracy and Political Division in Poland,” Social Psychological Bulletin 14, no. 4 (2019), doi.org/10.32872/spb.v14i4.2435; Krzysztof Korzeniowski, Polska paranoja polityczna. Źródła, mechanizmy i konsekwencje spiskowego myślenia o polityce (Warsaw, 2010); Christian Davies, “The Conspiracy Theorists Who Have Taken Over Poland,” Guardian, February 16, 2016, at www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/16/conspiracy-theorists-who-have-taken-over-poland (last accessed April 15, 2024); Piotr Osęka, “The Bolek Affair: Or, Kiszczak’s Cupboard and the Meaning of History,” Cultures of History Forum, May 24, 2016, doi:10.25626/0051. See also Zdybel, Lech, “‘Teorie spiskowe’ jako fenomen globalny: Analiza krytyczna i metakrytyczna,” Kultura–Historia–Globalizacja 14 (2013), 314–39Google Scholar.
11 Michał Piepiórka has traced the rise of the secret network trope in films such as the seminal thriller Psy (Pigs), directed by Władysław Pasikowski, 1992; Gry uliczne (Street Games), directed by Krzysztof Krauze, 1996; or Układ zamknięty (Closed Circuit), directed by Ryszard Bugajski, 2013. Piepiórka, Michał, Rockefellerowie i Marks nad Warszawą: Polskie filmy fabularne wobec transformacji gospodarczej (Wrocław, 2019)Google Scholar; “Układ zamknięty jako kinowy performatyw,” tzs 11, no. 1 (2014): 46–68.
12 Recent publications on east European conspiracism that consider the cultural context include Astapova et al., Conspiracy Theories in Eastern Europe, and Peter Deutschmann, Jens Herlth, and Alois Woldan, eds.,“Truth” and Fiction: Conspiracy Theories in Eastern European Culture and Literature (Bielefeld, 2020).
13 Knight, Peter, Conspiracy Culture: from Kennedy to the X Files (London, 2000)Google Scholar; Melley, Timothy, The Covert Sphere: Secrecy, Fiction, and the National Security State (Ithaca, 2012)Google Scholar.
14 Melley, Timothy, “The Conspiracy Imaginary,” Social Research: An International Quarterly 89, no. 3 (Fall 2022): 772–73Google Scholar.
15 Melley, The Covert Sphere, 6.
16 Melley, “The Conspiracy Imaginary,” 760.
17 Zygmunt Miłoszewski, Uwikłanie (Warsaw, 2007), English: Entanglement, transl. Antonia Lloyd-Jones (London, 2010); Marcin Wolski, Noblista (Poznań, 2008); Szczepan Twardoch, Przemienienie (Dąbrówki, 2008), French: Transfiguration, transl. Ewa Rawicz-Władyka (Fontainebleau-Avon/Paris, 2010). All three could be classified as detective novels or political thrillers.
18 Fenster, Conspiracy Theories, 123.
19 On postsocialist crime fiction’s societal relevance, see Joanna Chłosta-Zielonka, “Zamiast powieści obyczajowej. Cechy współczesnej polskiej powieści sensacyjnej,” Media–Kultura–Komunikacja Społeczna 9 (2013): 87–98.
20 Michael Butter and Peter Knight, “Conspiracy Theory in Historical, Cultural and Literary Studies,” in Michael Butter and Peter Knight, eds., Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories (London, 2021), 39. See also, Eliot Borenstein, Plots against Russia: Conspiracy and Fantasy after Socialism (Ithaca, 2019), 125–27.
21 Timothy Melley, Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America (Ithaca, 2000).
22 Ibid., viii.
23 Frida Beckman, The Paranoid Chronotope: Power, Truth, Identity (Stanford, 2022). See also Wendy Lard, “Neoliberalism?” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 21 (2003), 509–12; or Thomas Biebricher, Wendy Brown, “Critical Dialogue,” Perspectives on Politics 18, no. 2 (2020), 539–44.
24 Astapova et al., “Introduction”; Borenstein, Plots against Russia, 73–75; Keith A. Livers, Conspiracy Culture: Post-Soviet Paranoia and the Russian Imagination (Toronto, 2020), 8–10.
25 Including food safety, the risks of vaccinations, or genomic technologies; Astapova et al., “Introduction,” 14.
26 Przemysław Czapliński, Świat podrobiony. Krytyka i literatura wobec nowej rzeczywistości (Kraków, 2003); Przemysław Czapliński, Polska do wymiany: Późna nowoczesność i nasze wielkie narracje (Warsaw, 2009); and Magda Szcześniak, Normy widzialności: Tożsamość w czasach transformacji (Warsaw, 2016).
27 Katarzyna Taras, Frustraci: Bohaterowie filmowi i literaccy wobec polskiej rzeczywistości po 1989 roku (Warsaw, 2012).
28 Piepiórka, Rockefellerowie i Marks; Taras, Frustraci. See also Borenstein, Plots against Russia, 180–201.
29 Examples include the stringent abortion law of 1993 and, more broadly, the influence of the Catholic Church on Polish politics. Anna Grzymała-Busse, Nations under God: How Churches Use Moral Authority to Influence Policy (Princeton, 2015).
30 James Mark, Unfinished Revolution: Making Sense of the Communist Past in Central-Eastern Europe (New Haven, 2010); Laure Neumayer, The Criminalization of Communism in the European Political Space After the Cold War (London, 2019).
31 Dariusz Stola, “Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance: A Ministry of Memory?” in The Convolutions of Historical Politics, ed. Alexei Miller and Maria Lipman (Budapest, 2012): 45–58; Barbara Klich-Kluczewska, “Goodbye Communism, Hello Remembrance: Historical Paradigms and the Institute of National Remembrance in Poland,” in Secret Agents and the Memory of Everyday Collaboration in Communist Eastern Europe, ed. Péter Apor, Sándor Horváth, and James Mark (London, 2017).
32 Michał Piepiórka, “Życie w czasach prekariatu. Filmowe interpretacje bezrobocia wśród młodego pokolenia,” Media-Kultura-Komunikacja 13, no. 2 (2017): 37–54.
33 Piepiórka, “Życie w czasach prekariatu”; Melley, Empire of Conspiracy, viii.
34 Piepiórka, “Życie w czasach prekariatu”; Jakub Majmurek, “Nadwiślański realizm kapitalistyczny (i nie tylko),” Widok. Teorie i Praktyki Kultury Wizualnej 24 (2019). doi.org/10.36854/widok/2019.24.1960.
35 Melley, Empire of Conspiracy, 37–42, 63.
36 Mark Lawson’s dramatization for BBC Radio 4 first aired on October 11, 2015.
37 Uwikłanie is the first in a series of three novels featuring Szacki. The other two are Ziarno prawdy (Warsaw, 2011), English: A Grain of Truth (London, 2013) and Gniew (Warsaw, 2014), English: Rage, (Seattle, 2016), trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones.
38 This is, according to Krasowski, how Jarosław Kaczyński and Antoni Macierewicz envisioned the postcommunist conspiracy. Czas Kaczyńskiego, chap. 4.
39 Miłoszewski, Entanglement, 189–90; all quotes from the English translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.
40 Ibid., 252.
41 Fenster, Conspiracy Theories; Melley, Empire of Conspiracy; Birte Christ, “‘What kind of man are you?’: The Gendered Foundations of U.S. Conspiracism and of Recent Conspiracy Theory Scholarship,” in Conspiracy Theories in the United States and the Middle East: A Comparative Approach, ed. Michael Butter and Marc Reinkowski (Berlin, 2014), 311–32.
42 Szcześniak, Normy widzialności.
43 Miłoszewski, Entanglement, 190.
44 For instance, through popular comedies like Miś (Teddy Bear), directed by Stanisław Bareja, 1980. This film, often considered the epitome of anticommunism, is deemed dangerous in Entanglement because it portrays socialism as an object of laughter and keeps any notion of “evil” vague, 275.
45 Fenster, Conspiracy Theories, 144. See also Todd Sanders and Harry G. West, eds., Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order (Durham, 2003).
46 Noblista is a loose continuation of Nieprawe łoże (Warsaw, 2006). The series was completed by Kaprys historii (Poznań, 2009).
47 Wolski’s early work can also be interpreted as anticommunist. See Andrzej Sławomir Kowalczyk, “Through the Ironic Eye: Science and Scientific Experiments in Marcin Wolski’s Satirical Dystopia Laboratory No. 8,” in Márcia Lemos and Miguel Ramalhete Gomes, eds., Exchanges between Literature and Science from the 1800s to the 2000s: Converging Realms (Newcastle, 2017), 46–61.
48 Janusz Anderman, “Wolski na Nobla,” Gazeta Wyborcza, July 24, 2008, 17; Krzysztof Masłoń, “Na tropie pieszczocha salonu,” Rzeczpospolita, May 26, 2008, at www.rp.pl/literatura/art16206631-na-tropie-pieszczocha-salonu (last accessed April 11, 2024).
49 Mentioned as potential inspiration were the scandals surrounding Andrzej Szczypiorski and Ryszard Kapuściński, two authors accused of having been SB informants. Wolski, meanwhile, insisted that Barski was a “synthesis of many real-life characters.” “Tajemnice kuchni Marcina Wolskiego,” onet.pl, July 15, 2008, at www.kultura.onet.pl/wiadomosci/tajemnice-kuchni-marcina-wolskiego/n9c06v1 (last accessed April 11, 2024).
50 NPW is replete with reference to the work of Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846–1916), the author of the original “Trilogy” (1884–88) on evil plots against the First Republic, as well as a Nobel prize laureate (1905) and a favorite of contemporary national conservatives.
51 Beckman, The Paranoid Chronotope, esp. 19–20 and 111–12.
52 For gossip and conspiracy theories, see Clare Birchall, Knowledge Goes Pop: From Conspiracy Theory to Gossip (Oxford, 2006).
53 The plan is to infect, during a ceremony in Warsaw’s Presidential Palace, Angela Merkel and the Kaczyński twins with a deadly virus. Before the plot can be executed, Barski is found dead, apparently because of a sudden heart attack.
54 On a similar need in the post-Soviet context, see Borenstein, Plots against Russia, chapter 2; and Livers, Conspiracy Culture, 21.
55 Szczepan Twardoch, “Pusty stryczek. O ‘Wieszaniu’ Rymkiewicza’” in Tomasz Rowiński, ed., Spór o Rymkiewicza (Warsaw, 2012), 22−35. See also Piotr Kulas, “Antyelitarna narracja współczesnej polskiej prawicy,” Przegląd Socjologii Jakościowej, 4 (2018), 26. Before the publication of Transfiguration, Twardoch devoted two other works to the topic of collaboration among Catholic clergy: the novel Epifania wikarego Trzaski (Wrocław, 2007) and the short story “Żywot i śmierć św. Felicjana” from the volume Prawem wilka (Warsaw, 2008). For Twardoch’s career, see Dariusz Nowacki, “Mistrz Szczepan z Pilchowic,” Tygodnik Powszechny 28 (2013), dodatek Conrad no 2, or Anna Michalik, “Pisarz, celebryta, influencer? Szczepana Twardocha droga do sławy,” Kultura Popularna 01 (2019): 56−73.
56 Transfiguration draws on the study Księża wobec bezpieki na przykładzie archidiecezji krakowskiej (Kraków, 2007), authored by controversial cleric Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski (1956–2024).
57 On the role of violence in Transfiguration, see Jan Zając, “Tożsamość, męskość i etyka przemocy: O twórczości Szczepana Twardocha,” in Agnieszka Nęcka, Dariusz Nowacki, and Jolanta Pasterska, eds., Skład osobowy: szkice o prozaikach współczesnych. Cz. 2 (Katowice, 2016), 437–63.
58 Knight, Conspiracy Culture, 44. For a consideration of Knight’s work in Polish context, see Franciszek Czech, “Podejrzliwi obywatele. Narracje spiskowe jako element krytycznej kultury politycznej w Polsce,” Władza Sądzenia 10 (2016).
59 This is also evident in the novel’s preoccupation with “flawed copies” and with popular culture as a framework for human behavior: before going out to wage his own war on society, Antek binge-watches bootlegged VCR copies of James Bond and other action films.
60 Jaron Harambam reaches a similar conclusion with regard to contemporary Dutch conspiracy narratives, Contemporary Conspiracy Culture: Truth and Knowledge in an Era of Epistemic Instability (London, 2020), 87.
61 The antisemitic tropes of Polish conspiracy fiction, especially the combination of anticommunism and racism, merit a separate investigation. For a discussion of antisemitism in Marcin Wolski’s slightly later alternate history novels, see Natalia Lemann, Historie alternatywne i steampunk w literaturze. Archipelagi badawczo-interpretacyjne (Łódź, 2019), chapter 4. In 2017 and 2018, Wolski became embroiled in internationally resonant accusations of Islamophobia and antisemitism; see for instance, “Polish TV host mocks Jewish critics of new law by suggesting use of term ‘Jewish death camps,’” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 31, 2018, at www.jta.org/2018/01/31/global/polish-television-hosts-suggests-use-of-term-jewish-death-camps (last accessed May 8, 2024). For antisemitism in post-Soviet conspiracy fiction, see Borenstein, Plots against Russia, esp. 116–17.
62 The relationship between ideas of “freedom without society,” the ambiguous traditions of Polish republicanism and the legacies of the First Republic, and their impact on contemporary conspiracy narratives, should be investigated further.
63 Michael Barkun, “Conspiracy Theories as Stigmatized Knowledge,” Diogenes 249–50, nos. 1–2 (2015), 168−76.
64 Borenstein, Plots against Russia, 28; Clare Birchall, “The Paranoid Style for Sale: Conspiracy Entrepreneurs, Marketplace Bots, and Surveillance Capitalism,” symploke 29, nos. 1–2 (2021): 98−121.