ABSTRACT
The chapter analyzes the mechanisms of constructing the history of the Left in the memoirs of Polish communist women in the 1960s. The author notes that most of the memoirs ended abruptly with the description of the outbreak of the Second World War, or its end in 1945, which means that the entire postwar period, when the new, socialist order was established, was left out. She argues that in the post-Stalinist period, the remembrance of Stalinism was uncomfortable not only because of the reminiscence of violence used by the authorities of that time but also because of the reminiscence of values and attitudes they sought to bring to life: internationalist, egalitarian (including the field of gender policy) and materialistic. In the post-Stalinist period, marked by the slogan of “building the Polish road to socialism” and by the return to the traditional gender roles, memoirs of female communists, ex-dignitaries of the Communist Party, “smuggled” the contents admittedly inconsistent with the party line, but still present on the horizon of memory of “old communists,” being part of their pre-war ethos. The author considers the memoirs of female communists as a sort of palimpsest in which under a layer of meanings compatible with the official discourse (on gender) there lurked deeply hidden contents that contested the official discourse.
