ABSTRACT
The ideology of "Kresy" is criticized in the left-liberal discourse as a case of Polish post-imperial discourse. It is depicted as a typical post-colonial nostalgic and idealized image of a former colony. In short, the Kresy discourse has been declared by its critics a classic form of Polish orientalism. Boleslaw Hadaczek criticizes the liberal discourse on Kresy in a very similar way. According to him, postmodernists, relaying on axiological relativism would like to debate Kresy without the national perspective, which they consider as stereotypical and unoriginal. They would like to free the Kresy problem from the historical context and from the national memory, which they like to replace with 'cultural memory', a universe of signs without any reference and a space of unrestricted creations. In a similar fashion, Jan Sowa argues that Russians were not guilty for their policy of Russification as they were only reacting to the nationalistic discourse of the Polish uprisings.
