ABSTRACT
The aim of the chapter is to discuss the organisation and evolution of sport in Poland from 1945 to the present day. It will focus on the links between sport and politics, especially in the context of class and the nation. Although it presents a broad and inclusive picture of the institutionalisation of sport in Poland, it will focus primarily on football culture, a context which is used for an illumination of its wider significance. The chapter serves as one of the first comprehensive English-language outlines of the evolution of sport in modern Poland and its links with politics. Moreover, the authors examine and critique popular accounts of Polish sport which juxtaposes mass socialist sport with elite or middle social class capitalist sport after 1989. This chapter accounts for the complexity which is often misrepresented in relation to the history of sport after 1945 in terms of its institutional structure, social base and politics. Thus, for example, on the one hand, one can trace the processes of professionalisation and marketisation of sport back to communist times. On the other hand, one can observe the legacy of centralisation and state interventionism after 1989. In contrast to the conventional wisdom the authors argue that there is no clear-cut break between socialist and post-socialist period in Polish sport.
