ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the sense of exile in relation to nationalism and the maintenance of national identity, and the relationship to an image of the nation that may contrast with the particular situation of the state at any particular time. The experience of three generations of the Polish intelligentsia suggests that as a result of exile and dispersal this population, more than most, had to develop the 'imagined community' of the lost Polish nation and homeland. It draws on transcripts from a set of interviews that took place with members of the Polish intelligentsia in December 1993. Those interviewed included a former political leader, a doctor, two engineers, two former ambassadors, a teacher of languages, a journalist and an editor. All the people in the sample had suffered some form of dislocation in relation to their homeland as the result of the two World Wars.
