Abstract

From the beginning of its members’ stay in exile, the political life of the émigré National Party (Polish acronym ‘SN’) was subordinated to the concept of Polish policy, its main objective regaining the country’s full sovereignty. The realisation of this goal depended on the harmonisation of three elements of this concept: awakening of the ‘nation’s own forces’ based on fighting the communist regime, anchoring the émigré-led policy as one of the goals of the American liberation policy (the ‘American leverage’ for the Polish cause), and the onset of a favourable international situation for the Polish cause. Over time, which can be seen most clearly in the period of the post-October 1956 ‘thaw’, the idea of self-liberation emerged in the political reflection of the nationalists on the basis of domestic events. Their putting this idea into practice depended on the mobilisation of the nation for political struggle motivated by the notion of the democratisation of political life, which was to ultimately lead to Poland’s regaining its full political independence. Due to the limited possibilities of conducting the ‘policy for the country’ – as contacts with former members of inter-war national organisations were blocked, and couriers and organisers of political life scarce in conditions forcing them to operate clandestinely – the nationalists counted on the involvement of the Catholic Church, in which they saw the guardian of national culture threatened under the pressure of Sovietisation. With the emergence of the first organisational forms of anti-communist opposition (the Movement for Defence of Human and Civic Rights and the Workers’ Defence Committee), they refused to support the choice of a revolutionary, confrontational strategy of political struggle promoted by the leaders of these organisations, considering it to be contrary to the spirit of forgiveness characteristic of the Polish national tradition. They made no secret, however, of their resentment of the attitude of the Polish episcopate, which, they claimed, had handed over the leadership of the struggle against the regime to ‘foreign factors’ and thus squandered the opportunity to participate in the battle to restore the national character of political life. The research objective of this article is to show the place of the Catholic Church in the concept of the Polish policy pursued by the émigré SN – the role that nationalists attributed to the Church in awakening the ‘nation’s own forces’, mobilising society to fight for the democratisation of the political system and freedoms as a stage in putting the notion of self-liberation into practice.