Remembering Martial Law and Victimhood in Polish Legislative Discourse

This dissertation is a longitudinal study of legislative debates in the parliament of the Republic of Poland concerning commemorative resolutions for martial law as well as rehabilitation and compensation laws for victims of political repression from 1956 to 1989. Unlike research into the determinants and effects of transitional justice, this dissertation explores its meaning. It shows how legislators constructed an official public memory of martial law in the context of a fractured memory regime. It also shows how legislators attributed various political identities to victims and conceptualized justice according to four distinct discourse systems: the international discourse of transitional justice and human rights, the discourse of ordinary justice, the discourse of Polish Romanticism, and the discourse of The Fourth Republic. Finally, it explores the social antagonisms that reinforce the boundary conditions for victimhood and, by extension, the polity. It extends our understanding of the purposes of commemorative resolutions by demonstrating that they generate discursive power to achieve other political goals. It also extends theories of reparations by examining them in light of nation-building. This research contributes to the literature on transitional justice and the politics of memory in Poland.