@ARTICLE{Sadowski_Andrzej_Poland_2024,
 author={Sadowski, Andrzej},
 number={No 3 (384)},
 journal={Ruch Literacki},
 pages={353-369},
 howpublished={online},
 year={2024},
 publisher={Polska Akademia Nauk Oddział w Krakowie Komisja Historycznoliteracka},
 publisher={Uniwersytet Jagielloński Wydział Polonistyki},
 abstract={This article is a study of the memoirs, letters and articles written by Ryszard Berwiński after he moved to Constantinople to join Michał Czajkowski’s Cossack regiment of the Ottoman army fighting Russia in the Crimean War (1853–1856) until his death in 1879. Its primary aim is the reconstruction and a critical appraisal of Berwiński’s notion of histor-ical relations and affinities between Poland and Turkey. With its manifest partiality and propagandistic agenda (he presents the Ottoman Empire as a friend and ally that could help Poland in its struggle for independence), Berwiński’s narrative is an exemplary case of Romantic history-writing. He tries wholeheartedly to level off the all too obvious differences between the political life and institutions of the two countries. Nor does not shy away from the clash-of-civilizations problem that would make sustainable co- operation between Poland and Turkey illusory. His argument is two-pronged. First, he pieces together a sound historical argument to deconstruct the myth of Poland as the bulwark of Christianity in the East, and, secondly, he builds up a myth of 'righteous Turkey' which, like Poland, has been the victim of the predatory West (with modernizing Russia presumably the new member of the club). In effect, the old differences and animosities are trumped by a new myth – with a strong emotional and moral appeal – according to which Poland and Turkey are partners because they share the same fate. Berwiński’s eye-opening mission made hardly any ripple, it remains an intriguing, if largely forgotten, contribution to the 19th-century Polish political thought. This article brings it back from obscurity with the suggestion that relations with Turkey – the only neighbour of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that neither participated in nor re-cognized the partitions – still remain an insufficiently researched subject.},
 type={Artykuł},
 title={Poland between the West, Russia and… Turkey: Ryszard Berwiński’s romanticised version of Polish-Turkish history produced in exile in the Ottoman Empire},
 URL={http://czasopisma.pan.pl/Content/134019/2024-03-RL-04.pdf},
 keywords={Polish-Turkish relations in the 19th century, Romantic historiography, Historical myths, Orientalism, Michał Czajkowski (1804–1886), Ryszard Berwiński (1819–1879)},
}