Exporting Socialism or Searching for the “Third Way”?

Polish-Indian Relations in the Lens of Polish Socialist-era Reporters (1950s-1970s)

Authors

  • Agnieszka Sadecka Jagiellonian University in Kraków

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.12797/Politeja.18.2021.73.04

Keywords:

Poland, India, Cold War, Socialism, Post-colonialism

Abstract

The article explores the perception of India in socialist-era Polish travel reportage, focusing in particular on the political debates inscribed in the Cold War divisions. Four books of reportage from India, by Jerzy Ros, Wiesław Górnicki, Janusz Gołębiowski, and Jerzy Putrament, serve as primary material for this research. The reporters, visiting India on official assignments, discuss the relations between the so-called Second and Third World and India’s take on socialism. While the analyzed texts do not present a uniform vision, the reporters’ narratives reveal an interesting relation of ambivalence: Indians are seen at times as socialist brothers, but at other times a rather patronizing attitude prevails.

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Author Biography

Agnieszka Sadecka, Jagiellonian University in Kraków

Ph.D. is an assistant professor and lecturer at the Institute of European Studies of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow in the area of cultural and literary studies. She has obtained her doctoral degree from Eberhard Karls Universitaet Tuebingen in Tuebingen, Germany and the Jawaharlal Nehru University ( JNU) in New Delhi, India. She is currently a researcher in the Horizon2020 research project “POPREBEL – Populist rebellion against modernity in 21st-century Eastern Europe: neo-traditionalism and neofeudalism” (2019-2021). Her academic interests revolve around 20th- and 21st-century Polish culture, literature, and heritage, post-socialist cultures of Central and Eastern Europe, postcolonial/post-dependency studies, identity, as well as socio-cultural dimensions of populism and nationalism.

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Published

2021-11-29

How to Cite

Sadecka, Agnieszka. 2021. “Exporting Socialism or Searching for the ‘Third Way’? Polish-Indian Relations in the Lens of Polish Socialist-Era Reporters (1950s-1970s)”. Politeja 18 (4(73):67-84. https://doi.org/10.12797/Politeja.18.2021.73.04.

Issue

Vol. 18 No. 4(73) (2021): Europe and Asia ‒ Political, Cultural and Economic Relations in Focus

Section

Articles

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