Abstract
Given instances of widespread citizen cooperation with political regimes widely perceived as illegitimate, why are some individuals subsequently branded as collaborators who had engaged in “treasonous cooperation” with the enemy whereas others who had been involved in similar or identical forms of cooperation were not? Using the branding and punishment of Nazi collaborators in the postwar Polish criminal court system as a case study, this article excavates how the perceived betrayals undergirding the social construction of collaboration are shaped by the interaction of macro- and micro-level bonds associated with membership in national and local communities. This analysis highlights how highly localized perceptions of betrayal, manifested as individual grievances, became intertwined with larger understandings of loyalty to the nation, thereby selecting who was eligible for membership in the postwar political and social order. In addition to laying the groundwork for a sociological theory of collaboration, this study also contributes to a growing body of scholarship dedicated to “everyday nationhood.”
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Notes
This letter and other materials pertaining to the investigation and prosecution of Mieczysław J. are currently housed in the archives of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance under the reference number (LU 915/286, p. 186). All future references pertaining to the files of suspected Nazi collaborators will be cited using its unique reference number as well as the page number.
The development of the modern territorial state and the transfer of sovereignty from an individual to an abstract political authority transformed treason from a private act between individuals to a public act that threatened broader macro-social political identities (Kelly and Thiranagama 2010; Turnaturi 2007).
It can be that those who belong less feel a greater emotional attachment to the nation than those who belong more because the former desire to achieve greater national cultural capital.
According to the 1921 census, this consisted in 3.9% of a population of 27 million (Strachura 1998).
The archives of these courts are now housed at the Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw, Poland.
For example, in France women who were suspected of “horizontal collaboration” had their hair shorn in public shaming rituals.
Interestingly, the category of membership is only recorded in the file if the suspect himself mentioned it during questioning, indicating that witnesses had not attached significance to the rank and that prosecutors and judges were similarly disinterested in this. From what I can tell, we are mostly dealing here with individuals in the II and III categories—those who were neither the most German or the most Polish.
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The author would like to thank Elisabeth Clemens, Michael Geyer, and the Theory and Society reviewers for their suggestions and feedback.
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McClintock, L.M. With us or against us?: Nazi collaboration and the dialectics of loyalty and betrayal in postwar Poland, 1944–1946. Theor Soc 48, 589–610 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-019-09353-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-019-09353-5