Seminarium Moczar`s “Partisans”: Nationalism, Anti-Semitism, Historical Myths

25 February 2026

Prof. Paweł Machcewicz, (Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw)

“The Partisans” were in the 1960s a very influential political group within the communist party and state apparatus in Poland. Led by Mieczysław Moczar, the minister of interior and leader of the veterans` associations (during the WW II he was a famous commander of the communist resistance), they founded a dynamic political movement which strongly influenced not only politics, but also mass-media and  culture. Their ideology based on nationalism, anti-Semitism and exploitation of Polish history – especially its non-communist aspects which helped attract followers from outside the ruling party. “The Partisans” undertook the most far-reaching attempt to shape the Polish model of national communism and were often compared by contemporary observers and analysts with parallel developments in Romania.

Paweł Machcewicz is a historian, professor at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. From 2008 to 2017, he was the founding director of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk.  He has taught at the Warsaw University and the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and was director of research and education at  the Institute of National Remembrance  in 2000-2006.

His main areas of research are the Second World War, the Cold War and communist regimes in East-Central Europe. His many books include: Rebellious Satellite. Poland 1956 (Woodrow Wilson Center-Stanford University Press, Washington DC-Stanford, 2009); Poland`s War on Radio Free Europe 1950-1989 (Woodrow Wilson Center-Stanford University Press, Washington DC-Stanford, 2014);  The War That Never Ends. The Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk (De Gruyter, Berlin-Boston 2019); Wina, kara, polityka. Rozliczenia ze zbrodniami II wojny światowej (with Andrzej Paczkowski; Znak, Kraków 2021); Narodowy komunizm po polsku. „Partyzanci” Moczara (Krytyka Polityczna, Warszawa 2025).