Letters connect people and people? The Communist ‘Polonia’ Society and Polish Immigrants in Belgium, 1956-90. Transnationalism avant la lettre?

Abstract

Substantial research effort has been devoted to various cross-border practices of immigrants, including correspondence activities with their home countries. However, little attention has been paid to the correspondence arisen in the difficult geopolitical context of the Cold War. In the second half of the twentieth century many Slavic immigrants living in the Atlantic World, like the about 40,000 Polish immigrants in Belgium, could not freely visit or correspond with people from behind the Iron Curtain. Nevertheless, a special Polish organisation, the Communist ‘Polonia’ Society, encouraged them to keep contact with their home country by writing letters. ‘Listy zbliżają ludzi i narody’, it proclaimed . The sentence has two possible translations: it means either ‘Letters connect people and nations’, or ‘Letters connect people and people’. The double meaning of the Polish word naród perfectly indicates how the Communist ‘Polonia’ Society worked. The organisation was a political tool set up by the Polish Authorities to counterbalance the paramount anti-communist tendencies in the Atlantic World by means of infiltration and mobilization. The sentence invited Polish immigrants to correspond with the Communist nation, the Polish People’s Republic. However, because of the unpopularity of the communist ideology in Western countries, the ‘Polonia’ Society presented itself as a grassroots’ non-governmental organization, led by people for people. Letters, so says the sentence, are a good way to bring exiles closer to their compatriots at home.