ABSTRACT
For decades, fascism as a socio-political and cultural phenomenon was, in Poland as in Central and Eastern Europe, the subject of numerous culture wars. Fascism as a mass social movement disappeared from public life after the Second World War, but very quickly its adherents and active followers became part of the public order, often becoming a permanent feature of the Communist political scene. Even if anti-fascism was becoming the basis for the legitimacy of the new post-war regimes, fascist ideas, visions, and projects remained almost untouched. The history of fascists in post-war Poland shows that imaginaries that have not been completely challenged and confronted return and often even begin to define the rules of socio-political life. The undigested past returns with redoubled force through cultural codes and is reborn in new contexts.
