Sexuality and the 1990s Transformation

Did sex exist under socialism? While at first sight this question sounds absurd, the assumption that Poland (and other Eastern European countries) did not experience a sexual revolution under socialism had been until quite recently firmly rooted in both scholarly literature and popular memory.Footnote ³ Such a simplified way of looking at state-socialist sexualities has been productively questioned by current literature, which uncovered forgotten genealogies of sex education, sexology, queer activism and erotic art under the previous regime.Footnote ⁴

The narrative that portrays the 1989 Eastern European sexual landscape as just passively waiting to be filled in with Western concepts of sexual emancipation and progress has, however, remained largely unchallenged. In the mainstream discussions of post-socialism, scholars often subscribe to unidirectional narratives of progress, in the field of sexuality and beyond. The years of post-socialist transformation are portrayed as a time of ‘rejoining Europe’, ‘catching up’ with the overdue modernisation processes and normalisation of social relations after the decades of socialist ‘demoralisation’. Such an approach to the history of the 1990s, however, overlooks a significant portion of the story.

The ambiguous impact of post-socialist transformation on social relations and gender order in Eastern Europe is perhaps most strikingly evident when focusing on developments in the field of sexuality.Footnote ⁵ For some (heterosexual men in particular), 1989 brought about new opportunities for exploring and performing their sexual identities, for instance, through the consumption of erotic images and films.Footnote ⁶ Newly gained political freedoms and financial support from abroad laid the groundwork for feminist and queer activism to develop in the early 1990s. However, simultaneously, the early years of post-socialist transformation witnessed a notable backlash against the prescriptions of gender equality inscribed into the state-socialist project. Most notably, in 1993, the Polish Parliament passed anti-abortion legislation that reversed almost four decades of state-socialist policies that had allowed for termination of pregnancy on so-called social grounds.Footnote ⁷ Despite calls for a national debate and a referendum on the issue, the bill passed through the Parliament under strong pressure from the Catholic Church.Footnote ⁸ Abortion was effectively de-legalised, excluding three very narrowly defined exceptions. In post-socialist Poland, despite the promises of freedom and emancipation, women’s social role was increasingly reduced to that of a homemaker and a mother.

Sexuality – Annika Keinz has argued – became one of the key measures for negotiating normalcy in post-socialist Poland.Footnote ⁹ While the voices of conservative social forces had been heard loud and clear in that debate, we still understand very little about the reactions of more liberally minded stakeholders to these new developments. As the Polish post-socialist landscape appears essentially dominated by a conservative reaction and by a complete moral bankruptcy of socialist ideals, the resulting conflicts surrounding sexuality play themselves out in the binary opposition between conservatives and Western-oriented liberals. Socialist visions of sexual modernity, if they ever existed, seem to have disappeared long before 1989.

However, as this article argues, the history of nude activism in 1980s and 1990s Poland reveals noteworthy continuities between the visions of socialist sexual modernity developed in the 1970s and the activists’ reactions to the post-1989 developments. In many ways, Polish naturists actively abetted the process of increased commercialisation of sexuality under late socialism, paving the way for the growing acceptance of (heterosexual) erotic consumption, which culminated in the erotic boom of the 1990s. At the same time, the leaders of the Polish naturist movement were, perhaps unexpectedly, among the last defenders of the principles of socialist humanism, arguing that naked leisure facilitated noble interactions with the natural environment and other human beings; a response to both the widespread crisis of social relations and the increasingly deteriorating state of the environment after decades of strenuous industrialisation.Footnote ¹⁰

Drawing on archival documents, press articles, video recordings and oral history interviews, this article analyses the rise and demise of organised nudist activism in Poland. The article builds upon the archival sources and oral history research I conducted for my two recent booksFootnote ¹¹ but advances new arguments about the plurality of voices in the debates on sexuality in 1980s and 1990s Poland. By explicitly focusing on the ways in which activists renegotiated socialist and post-socialist morality, this article highlights their role in shaping new visions of sexual modernity and responses to the political and economic crisis of the 1980s. Far from following one-dimensional narratives portraying the 1990s as the time when Eastern Europe could finally catch up with the sexual revolution, this article sheds light on the aspects of sexual liberalism that came under attack as the communist regime crumbled. The article contributes to the historiography that challenges the importance of 1989 as the ‘year zero’ for social and cultural developments in Eastern Europe. As the case of nude activism demonstrates, the state-socialist past remained one of the crucial reference points for actors negotiating their sexual subjectivity in the new, neoliberal reality. Viewed through these lenses, the post-socialist transformation emerges as a long process that began long before 1989 and continued well into the late 1990s.

Gendered Activism

This article highlights at least three levels of naturist activism in 1980s and 1990s Poland. First, it explores the role played by leaders of naturist organisations who pushed for their official recognition by the state. The Polish Naturist Association (never formally registered) was led by Sylwester Marczak, elected to this role by activists gathered in Chałupy in summer 1983. While the association initially sought official administrative recognition, over the years it transformed into a loose federation of naturist clubs under Marczak’s self-proclaimed and increasingly controversial leadership.Footnote ¹² In contrast, the Association of Polish Naturists (headed by Józef Kubicki) was officially registered in 1988 and operated as an NGO until it disbanded due to personal conflicts in 1991. Second, the article sheds light on forms of media activism and ways in which naturism could function in the public sphere thanks to the support of sympathetic media outlets such as the consumer’s weekly Veto. In their quest for more publicity, the editors and some activists such as Marczak embraced increasingly open associations between naturism and commercial erotica. While these two layers of activism play a prominent role in the analysis, this article also alludes to the third, less tangible form of activism, seeking to include perspectives of ordinary naturists through the inclusion of oral history testimonies. These grassroots perspectives are invaluable as they nuance and complicate the claims made by the movement’s leaders and shed light on how these negotiations of (post-)socialist sexuality are remembered today.

Naturism emerged within the context of the state-socialist public sphere, where the spaces for citizen activism were limited and highly curated by the state. This then led to their critical reception and/or dismissal in historiography, as was the case with state-controlled women’s organisations.Footnote ¹³ As the recent historiography of women’s, family planning and queer activism in the regions has highlighted, to fully grasp the multitude of activist strategies under socialism we need to abandon easy oppositions between dissidents and the state, and instead focus on various localised strategies of campaigning and knowledge production, intersections with other movements and ideologies and the impact transnational contacts had on activist trajectories.Footnote ¹⁴ Drawing on these approaches, the article purposefully understands activism broadly, as various forms of public activity, campaigning, knowledge and cultural production, but also grassroots community building. While some naturists campaigned for official recognition and I analyse their interactions with the state, others were perfectly content with just participating in seasonal nude leisure. They did not necessarily identify as members of a social movement, yet still engaged in notable renegotiations of late socialist moral frameworks. Such a strategy allows me to account for a multitude of (often contradictory) ways in which naturists engaged with each other, the media, state institutions and the public, as well as for the ways in which they reimagined (post-)socialist morality.

A crucial area of contestation that emerges when confronting the narratives of the movement’s leaders and ordinary activism is the question of gender relations. While the official ideological declarations proclaimed a commitment to the principles of socialist gender equality, the movement’s media presence and public activities complicate these interpretations. Despite the immense popularity of Miss Natura naked beauty pageants, our interviewees remembered them as controversial initiatives. The evaluation of the leaders’ actions provoked conflicts and divisions with the naturist community.Footnote ¹⁵ What emerged in the 1980s as one of the rare areas for performing sexual progressiveness, with time evolved into an increasingly masculinised space, and the movement’s media presence was clearly dominated by the male, heteronormative gaze.

Women’s role within organised activism was limited, and their portrayal in the media was intensely sexist.Footnote ¹⁶ But, as our interviews with female naturists evidenced, many women remained active in naturist communities and social circles despite the movement’s increasingly heteropatriarchal public image.Footnote ¹⁷ Beyond the media spotlight, women remembered their time at naturist beaches as offering a sense of community and belonging, set against the backdrop of late socialist fragmentation of social and economic life. Acknowledging this multitude of perspectives and experiences, this article explicitly focuses on how the male gaze and heteronormative gender hierarchies were employed to legitimise naturist visions of sexual modernity in the late 1980s and the early 1990s.

For all its complicated and ambiguous legacies, late socialist nude activism truly did create unique opportunities for discussing sexuality and experiencing one’s own body outside of the conservative frameworks and against the increasingly Catholicised public discourse. While gender relations within the movement as well as its public image were marked by profound sexism and inequality, these attempts at reimagining Polish sexualities deserve critical attention, as they showcase the possibility of imagining a different future and an area of unexpected engagements with socialist ideology at the end of the Cold War and beyond.

Nude Socialist Morality

The beginnings of nude activism in state-socialist Poland were very much private. Isolated groups of naked vacationers sunbathed on the Baltic Sea beaches and in secluded locations near bigger cities. It was not until the 1970s that this leisure activity began to transform. On the wave of the global tourist boom, new transnational patterns of leisure emerged across the socialist bloc in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. For countries such as Yugoslavia and Romania, tourism industry offered a way of strengthening the local economy and supplied much needed hard currency.Footnote ¹⁸ For party leaders in other countries of the bloc, the support for organised tourism signalled their commitment to the newly reimagined projects of socialist consumerism.Footnote ¹⁹ As travel regulations within the socialist bloc relaxed, new holiday destinations in south-eastern Europe became increasingly available to middle-class vacationers, which in turn facilitated transfers of knowledge about nudist ideology and practice.Footnote ²⁰

In 1971, a so-called Border of Friendship opened between Poland and East Germany, allowing for relatively easy travel and trade across the Polish–German border.Footnote ²¹ The arrival of tourists from East Germany famously sparked the first nudist confrontations with local police forces on the Baltic coast.Footnote ²² The connection with the German FKK traditions was, however, not the only source of inspiration for the enthusiasts of nude leisure in Poland. In our interview, Bożena (b. 1956, journalist) reminisced about her first encounter with nudists, which occurred during a holiday trip she took with her mother to Bulgaria.

From the very onset, the history of nude activism in state-socialist Poland, just like in other places in Europe, was shaped by transnational transfers of lifestyles and leisure patterns.Footnote ²⁴ And, as this article explores, these transnational frameworks would remain influential in naturist ideological declarations over the coming decades, shaping the leaders’ aspirations to actively participate in regional and global communities of nude activism.

In contrast with these private beginnings of nude activism, its sudden surge in popularity in the early 1980s had a much more public character. In 1983, Veto, a consumer weekly, launched its naturist rubric, announcing the editors’ support for the nude cause. This also marked the moment when the term ‘nudism’, used since the inter-war period, was replaced with ‘naturism’ to signify nude activists’ close relationship with the natural environment and their lofty ideological aspirations. The naturist column in Veto, published in the summer months, included useful advice for audiences eager to experiment with this new form of leisure. The early issues advised readers on the rules of conduct on naked beaches, advertised addresses of nudist meeting spots in Poland and abroad and discussed social taboos surrounding nudity in Polish culture.Footnote ²⁵ Later, the rubric transformed into more of a gossip column, reporting about naturist events, especially the most controversial ones, such as naked carnival parties and beauty pageants.Footnote ²⁶ The visual programme of the column capitalised on the erotic capital of naked female bodies, with photos from nude beaches and reprints from Western press featuring prominently in the rubric.

In the following years, the upsurge in naturism’s popularity attracted the attention of other local and national media outlets. Most notably, nude activists took part in the controversial TV show Sexcesy (1985), which discussed naturism alongside other cultural practices symbolising the relaxation of sexual mores in Poland, namely striptease, sexology and pornography.Footnote ²⁷ As part of that show, TV audiences could see excerpts from the 1984 documentary movie Naturyści [Naturists] produced by the Łódź Educational Film Studio in cooperation with Sylwester Marczak.Footnote ²⁸ In the full version of the documentary, the narrator read out excerpts from the Polish Naturist Association’s ideological declaration.

Images of happy and relaxed people (including families with small children) enjoying a moment of naked leisure on a beach accompanied quotations from naturist writings. Naturist beaches – both activists and filmmakers seemed to argue – could become an oasis of peace and tranquillity in the world troubled by environmental and political crisis.

Naturist activists, under the charismatic if morally ambiguous leadership of Sylwester Marczak, a high school teacher from Otwock near Warsaw, soon took steps to have their association recognised by the state. Between 1983 and 1986, they attempted registration in several major Polish cities, including Wrocław, Gdańsk, Poznań and Warsaw.Footnote ³⁰ This included both applications submitted to local state authorities and to other civic associations, such as the League for Nature Protection (Liga Ochrony Przyrody) and the Polish Tourism and Sightseeing Society (PTTK).Footnote ³¹ While all these attempts remained unsuccessful, the letters activists exchanged with authorities reveal how nude leisure formed part of wider attempts of negotiating the boundaries of socialist morality towards the end of the Cold War.

‘We recognize the leading role played by the Polish United Workers’ Party and the constitutional directions of People’s Poland’s foreign policy’, underscored nude activists in the letter they sent to General Czesław Kiszczak, the minister of the interior, in September 1983.Footnote ³² Their goal, the letter signatories emphasised, was to organise spaces of physical and mental leisure, as well as to promote ‘interpersonal culture, respect, tolerance and socialist morality that stands in no contradiction to naturist values’.Footnote ³³ The activists rejected the commodification of naked bodies promoted in the West. Rather, they emphasised that naturism embraced frameworks of asexual nudity, promoting equality and partnership between the sexes instead of the objectification of female bodies. In their ideological declaration, the leaders of the movement highlighted the benefits of nude leisure for public health and the protection of the natural environment. Instead of portraying their cause as a project of reforming Polish morality, which contradicted the state’s goals, these activists attempted to draw a connection between officially promoted principles of socialist humanism and naturism. This way, they argued for the incorporation of nude leisure into the state-socialist ideology, just as was the case in East Germany at the time.Footnote ³⁴

The vision of socialist morality embraced by these nude activists rested on the central role secular ideology played in shaping social relations. While it did not mean that all nude activists were atheists (and, as our conversations with activists revealed, some even organised Catholic masses as part of the holiday programme), they distanced themselves from the Church’s institutional structures. In 1983, some activists from Gdańsk even complained in their letter to the authorities in Warsaw that the local bishop intervened to prevent their association’s official recognition.

As such letters suggest, the activists were very much aware of the political struggle for power that was underway in 1980s Poland between the Church and the communist party. Greatly empowered by John Paul II’s papal election in 1978 and his subsequent trips to Poland, the local Catholic Church became an increasingly influential political actor. Bishops demanded concessions in several areas, such as access to the media, state censorship and changes to the abortion law.Footnote ³⁶ While the Church was also an important ally for the democratic opposition, especially after martial law of 1981 crushed the nascent Solidarity movement, this support came at its cost.Footnote ³⁷ And, as the naturist leaders were increasingly more aware, the price for the Church’s growing role in the public sphere could soon be paid in the limitation of certain sexual freedoms.

When reading the naturist ideological declarations from the early 1980s, the firm conviction that socialist ideology offered an alternative to capitalist commodification of sexuality appears somewhat puzzling. At a time when even members of the state apparatus rarely believed in the principles of socialist morality, the naturists’ firm stance in support of the values of socialist humanism encourages further reflection. Complicating our vision of the 1980s as a time of a black-and-white struggle between the monolithic party-state and society, glimpses into naturist ideological declarations from that time suggest that some groups of reformers did not necessarily see socialist ideology as an obstacle in achieving their vision of modernisation. On the contrary, as such letters reveal, nude activists expected the state to actively shield them from the growing social power of conservative forces, namely the Catholic Church. Rather than a story of dissidence against the authoritarian state, the history of nude organising suggests a more nuanced attempt at reforming socialist morality from within.

‘The Smile Is Still Tax-Free’

The naturist visions of remodelling socialist morality were, however, far from monolithic. As the crisis of the state-socialist economy gained momentum in the second half of the 1980s, several nude activists saw it as an opportunity to promote nude leisure as a form of social escapism and a response to the economic shortages. In doing so, they found some allies in state-controlled media outlets, in particular the aforementioned Veto weekly, but also two new men’s magazines that entered the media scene in 1987. Both Pan [The Gentleman] and Playtboy (sic!) closely copied foreign magazines for men, for example, in their choice of discussed topics, as well as in the soft-pornographic centrefold printed in every issue of the magazine. In all these media titles, the popularity of naturism was soon appropriated to provide entertainment for readers, especially in the form of ubiquitous ‘naturist’ female nudes.

Some groups of nude activists remained openly critical of commercialisation of female nudity, but others quickly saw a chance to make a neat profit. While in the summer, naturists crowded Baltic beaches, in the winter months, the opportunities for naked leisure grew scarce. To maintain the community in the cold season, Sylwester Marczak began organising naturist carnival balls. The first such event took place in February 1984 and was so popular among both the activists and the media that other similar parties soon followed.Footnote ³⁸ What they all had in common was the fact that naturists met indoors, in restaurants and clubs, and – at some point during the night – lost their clothes. Apart from dancing and a lot of alcohol, these parties usually featured a naked beauty pageant. Despite official proclamations of gender equality within the movement, only female contestants entered the competition. Similar pageants also took place at the beaches under the title Miss Natura [Miss Nature],Footnote ³⁹ but the fact that this time a naked beauty contest took place indoors caused a lot of controversy. Even more controversial were the tasks candidates had to perform, which included naked dancing and striptease performances. In late socialist Poland, the boundary between naturist leisure and commercial erotica grew increasingly blurred.

‘When high prices/Leave me naked/The only solution is/To become a naturist’ summed up a short poem published in Veto in 1988.Footnote ⁴⁰ A journalistic report from a naturist ball echoed similar sentiments:

The notion that female naked bodies could be enjoyed as a form of ersatz consumption reverberated in the already mentioned TV show Sexcesy, where ‘naked girls’ were portrayed as a distraction from ‘bare shelves’. In another episode of the show its host, Tadeusz Drozda, claimed that state-owned restaurants had to lure customers in with striptease shows, because there was little else on the menu.Footnote ⁴² In the context of an accelerating economic crisis, consumption of female nudes became an increasingly attractive form of everyday escapism in late socialist Poland.

Both Pan and Playtboy skilfully built on these associations between naturism and erotica, further blurring the distinction between asexual leisure and sexual commerce. In both magazines images of naked women in a ‘naturist’ setup regularly decorated the magazine’s centrefold.Footnote ⁴³ Apart from their decorative value, these pictures endorsed certain visions of gender roles, deeply rooted in patriarchal assumptions about women’s sexual agency. In September 1988, a photo on the cover of Playtboy depicted Agata, one of the runners-up to the title of Miss Natura. The editors warned that any men who would like to have their picture taken with Agata needed first to secure her husband’s permission.Footnote ⁴⁴ There was little room for women’s emancipation within such a patriarchal framework, which granted men the ultimate right to assess and control female bodies in the public sphere.

The letters readers sent to the editors of those magazines further illustrate the role naturist female nudity played in coping with the sense of crisis and disorientation of late socialism. In early 1989, an anonymous reader pleaded with the editors to publish more ‘coloured’ reports from naturist beaches, making sure that the most important parts of the body (‘what titillates the reader’, he helpfully explained) remained uncovered. Most importantly, the author of the letter underscored that the magazine should remain affordable. ‘Of course I don’t have much money, but, instead of paying 2,000 zloty for vodka or cigarettes – and these are the things that damage one’s health – I would prefer to buy something titillating, for the sake of wellbeing’, he underscored.Footnote ⁴⁵ Biologically essentialising visions of heterosexual desire as something ‘natural’ and ‘healthy’ that enabled increasingly open discussion of naturism in the public also shaped the expectations readers had when interacting with the new press titles. In the late socialist context, many men viewed naturism as a means of escaping the troubles of everyday life; a form of ersatz erotic consumption. While all these factors contributed to the popularity of naturism in the late socialist period, they also accelerated its demise after 1989.

Naturism Under Threat

The collapse of the socialist system profoundly reconfigured the landscape for discussing and performing sexuality. 1989 witnessed a relaxation of the regulations on private entrepreneurship and the dissolution of the Censorship Office. As a result, opportunities for making a profit from nude leisure grew significantly. In 1989, the newly registered Association of Polish Naturists (Stowarzyszenie Naturystów Polskich) published the first issue of their new magazine, titled Natura-Naturyzm. The president of the Association, Józef Kubicki, assumed the role of the magazine’s editor-in-chief. In an interview we conducted with him in February 2023, Józef (b. 1947, a teacher) explained that it was mostly economic calculation that stood behind the idea to publish a magazine, as the new Association needed money to develop. ‘Moreover, we wanted to have a magazine that would be generally accessible and at the same time would flout our backward morality’, he added.Footnote ⁴⁶ These conflicting goals soon led to several debatable editorial decisions and tensions within the Association, which eventually disbanded in 1991.Footnote ⁴⁷

In the first issue, the editors of Natura-Naturyzm explained that their goal was to promote the Association’s ideological aims, in particular, ‘to foster tolerance, kindness and tactfulness in interpersonal relations, to support social actions for the protection of the natural environment’.Footnote ⁴⁸ While the principles endorsed by the editorial board closely echoed the early naturist ideological declarations, the layout of the magazine referred to the legacy of the late socialist men’s magazines, namely the key place occupied by a nude centrefold. The magazine’s visual programme revealed a fateful fascination with the aesthetics of soft-pornographic publishing, anticipating the new frameworks for consuming commercial erotica in post-socialist Poland.

Their entry into an increasingly competitive publishing market was however not as easy as the activists had previously imagined. In particular, the editors struggled in achieving the right balance between publishing news targeted at the narrowly defined naturist community and erotic images of nude models, appealing to a wider, not necessarily naturist audience. As a result, they had to close the magazine after just three years of operation, having published only twelve issues. ‘We lost the battle against porn magazines, peepshows, and others – and our magazine simply did not sell that well anymore’, remarked Józef in our interview.

While joyful images of nude people enjoying their leisurely time on the beach and in naturist saunas populated the magazine’s pages, the articles and commentaries published alongside projected a much grimmer picture of the new, post-socialist reality. The editors warned of the destruction of the natural environment, toxic pollution of air and water and the intensifying problems with waste disposal.Footnote ⁴⁹ In the heavily industrialised region of Upper Silesia, the devastation of nature went hand in hand with other challenges – social isolation, lack of community, civilisational anxieties.Footnote ⁵⁰ The problems with declining levels of social capital and social fragmentation were also observable in other parts of the country. ‘I am worried about the consumerist mindset of much of our society. I observe a devaluation of concepts such as social activism, working for the public good’, wrote Kubicki in one of the last issues of the magazine.Footnote ⁵¹ The transition to post-socialist democracy proved to be much more challenging than many had anticipated.

The new conflicts over the questions of sexuality and reproduction contributed to this grim picture. Already in the first issue, a satirical column commented on the new political landscape following the first partially free elections of June 1989. Advising the readers on how to find sexual fulfilment, the author of the piece remarked that those who supported the parties of the former democratic opposition ‘could attempt to conceive a new life with one’s own wife’, but only if they did not fear their priest’s reaction to the ‘sin of naturism’.Footnote ⁵² By setting the question of relieving sexual tension in the context of one’s political sympathies, the author of the piece alluded to the central role sexual morality played in the discussions over the visions of post-socialist society. As this article suggested, the prominent political position occupied by the Catholic Church endangered the foundations of sexual liberalism, which the editors associated with naturist ideology. The ability to freely enjoy one’s sexual life, maintain ‘tolerant’ social relations and cultivate a relaxed relationship with one’s body all belonged to the set of values that came under attack as the Catholic Church strengthened its influences in 1990s Poland.

The anxieties surrounding the secular character of the state came to the fore in the later issues of the magazine. In the context of the ongoing parliamentary debates on post-socialist moral reconstruction, the editors remarked:

In the eyes of the activists, naked leisure was one of the main areas of social and cultural diversity that came under attack from the conservative forces. Sexual liberalisation (in the form of nudist beaches but also erotic magazines) was, in their view, a ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ reaction to democracy, offering a sense of freedom after decades of moral censorship imposed from above. Not everyone, however, embraced the same definition of freedom and tolerance. ‘Parish Poland [parafiańska Polska] becomes louder and louder’, warned Józef Kubicki. ‘It cannot be normal with us. Different religions, cultures, and subcultures cannot coexist in our country. [. . .] We love extreme views and dual morality’, Kubicki emphasised, underscoring the hypocrisy of moral censorship in visual culture, which allowed for scenes of violence but prohibited nudity and love on the screen.Footnote ⁵⁴ Centuries ago, he continued, in the years of the Inquisition, religious dissidents found a safe haven in Poland. But who knew – Kubicki wondered – if soon the history would not repeat itself the other way round, and ‘Polish naturists will have to seek refuge in France or Spain’.Footnote ⁵⁵

What worried the editors most was the newly proposed anti-abortion legislation. Reproductive rights became one of the key contentious issues in the public debate of the early 1990s, and the attempts at restricting the law met with protests from many women’s and human rights organisations. In 1991, Kubicki remarked:

For naturists, access to abortion further symbolised the tenets of sexual liberalism that came under attack once the Catholic Church consolidated its political power in post-socialist Poland. Together with limited access to sexual education, the spread of pornography and compulsory religious education in schools, all these new developments signified a profound challenge to the visions of social modernisation promoted by the naturist movement, in which the secular state and the open ‘culture of sexuality’ occupied a crucial position.

‘Where will it lead us?’ asked another article commenting on the new anti-abortion legislation. ‘Some speak about the “Islamization of Poland”. One remains certain: many people wonder, if next day they are going to wake up in their own country’, concluded the author, comparing the Church’s political expansion to the re-traditionalisation experienced by Iranian society following the conservative revolution of 1979.Footnote ⁵⁷ Apart from mobilising islamophobia to criticise the Church’s political ambitions, the article asked important questions about the meanings of post-socialist citizenship and national belonging. Was it only Catholics who should feel welcome in the new, post-socialist society? What was the place of sexual freedoms in newly redrafted frameworks of civil rights? And how could Poland modernise if it followed in the footsteps of ‘backward’ societies governed by overzealous religious leaders?

In this context, naturists believed that the right response to civilisational anxieties and the uncertainty of life in post-socialist Poland was the return to the core of the naturist ideology, that is, the close relationship between humans and the natural environment embodied by naked leisure. ‘This is a movement that is very much needed in Poland’, explained one of the magazine’s interviewees. ‘Our country is experiencing a period of transition, some necessary changes, but also a backward turn in many spheres connected with religion. There is nothing worse than a crossover between communism and Catholicism’, he underlined, emphasising that naturism as an organised movement could prove instrumental in opposing such harmful social tendencies.Footnote ⁵⁸ But to be able to promote their agenda effectively, naturists needed a political platform. Hence, the idea of the Polish Erotic Party was born.

From Beach Party to Erotic Party

The early 1990s were a time of far-reaching economic and political transformation. Following the parliamentary elections of June 1989, the Polish political landscape underwent seismic shifts. As the authoritarian party-state disappeared, new political formations emerged amid uncertainty over the rules of democratic governance.Footnote ⁵⁹ The desire for pluralism and freedom of political activity led to a radical liberalisation of requirements for registering a political entity. As a result, over a hundred parties operated in Poland on the eve of the 1991 parliamentary elections. Among them was the Polish Friends of Beer Party [Polska Partia Przyjaciół Piwa], which was not only an officially registered political platform but also managed to win sixteen seats in the 1991 elections. This success could in part be explained by the attractive programme in which the party promised to campaign for clean and welcoming pubs. Their entry into the Parliament was also made possible by the relaxed electoral law, which did not impose any electoral threshold. As a result, the party of beer enthusiasts entered the lower house of the Polish Parliament with only 3.67 per cent of the popular vote.Footnote ⁶⁰

Sylwester Marczak had been searching for ways of popularising naked leisure since at least the late 1970s. In the final decade of state socialism, he organised a naturist Lonely-Hearts-Club, beauty pageants and beach events, exhibitions of nude photography, naked parties in restaurants and clubs and many other events aimed at promoting naturism as a form of entertainment for the masses. It is therefore hardly surprising that after the regime collapsed, he sought new ways of leaving his mark in the post-socialist political reality. While his main rival, Józef Kubicki, embarked on a publishing career and developed the naturist association in Łódź, Marczak reimagined himself as a political leader. In 1991, he announced the establishment of the Polish Erotic Party [Polska Partia Erotyczna] to represent the ideals of naturism in the political debate, as well as to counteract the conservative turn in Polish politics.

A closer look at the PEP’s ideological declaration, published by Natura-Naturyzm in 1991, suggests that Marczak viewed this new political initiative as a way of merging old and new forms of activism.

The focus on environmental activism and the ‘culture of sexual relationships’ was a clear reference to naturist declarations of the previous political era, shaped by the ideals of socialist humanism. But the influences of the changing political landscape could also be observed in the declaration. Expressing the PEP’s support for both market economy and privatisation, Marczak pledged his allegiance to the new, neoliberal economic paradigms. While he still believed ‘prudishness’ and traditional approaches to sexuality needed to be counteracted, centrally planned economy no longer offered frameworks for promoting naturist values within the broader society. In contrast to the earlier naturist declarations, in which activists expressed their support for the principles of socialist morality and criticised capitalist objectification of women’s bodies, in the early 1990s, Marczak came to fully embrace the rules of neoliberal market economy.

The PEP’s ideological declaration ended with a call to action. ‘We are joining the Erotic International. Happy people of the world – unite’, announced Marczak.Footnote ⁶² This excerpt signalled another notable merger between the old and new political slogans. Both the reference to the Communist International and to the reformulation of the formerly omnipresent Marxist slogan ‘Workers of the world, unite!’ alluded to the nude activists’ changing political allegiances. Abandoning their commitment to the values of socialist humanism, they now attempted to find a new place in the fast-changing geopolitical reality. The values of international workers’ solidarity were to be replaced by liberal sexual internationalism. Erotica – Marczak emphasised in an interview published alongside the political declaration – offered a promise of a truly transnational community. ‘Regardless of whether someone lives in the Arctic circle or somewhere in Africa, we will find a common language. Eroticism is the shortest road to join Europe and the world’, he underscored.Footnote ⁶³ Viewing sexual desire as a universal force uniting people all around the globe, Marczak expressed his belief that sexual modernisation was one of the prerequisites for Poland to (re)join Europe and assert agency in the new geopolitical landscape.

The Polish Erotic Party, like other Marczak’s initiatives, remained a largely ephemeral project. There is no archival evidence suggesting that he made any formal attempts at registering the formation, and the party did not put forward any candidates in the 1991 elections. The naturist activists we interviewed also either did not remember that such a political initiative existed or distanced themselves from the idea. Yet, despite its relative insignificance for the political life in 1990s Poland, a closer look at the Polish Erotic Party’s ideological declaration provides a worthwhile glimpse into the ambiguous character of political discussions of the early post-socialist period. The party’s brief history invites us to complicate our vision of Polish post-1989 politics as essentially conservative and defined in opposition to the state-socialist past. As the example of PEP suggests, some actors attempted to build upon forms of activism and a repertoire of demands that had their roots in the pre-1989 social and political landscape. Rather than rejecting the state-socialist past altogether as not productive in their quest for sexual liberation of Polish society, they built upon the elements of communist doctrine and political language, merging them with new, democratic and neoliberal influences.