20 MILLENIUM
modest. Of course, there was a rush of books, films, and memoirs on everything
that the Communist censorship had suppressed. There were a number of
thoughtful, reflective essays on the lessons and purposes of History in the new
conditions.^28 And there were several attempts to revamp the old style team his-
tories in new clothes.^29 But no major historiographical event sprang from the
changed conditions. It transpired that no native star had been hiding its light
under a bushel only to blaze forth as soon as the political restrictions were lifted.
If one were unkind one might say that there were too many old dogs trying to
learn the new tricks. Faute de mieux, the demand for a fresh approach to Polish
History had to be met in large part by outsiders.
In retrospect, it is possible to see that three main inhibitions were at work. In
the first place, the entire infrastructure of the historical profession had to be
reconstructed. Textbooks had to be rewritten. Schoolteachers and university lec-
turers had to be re-trained, or least re-orientated. Syllabuses, lecture lists, teach-
ing methods, and journals had all to be adjusted. The archive system had to be
completely re-organized. The State Archives had now to embrace the important
Party and Security collections which had hitherto been kept separate and secret.
New institutions, both private and public, came into being to carry out functions
hitherto neglected. The Karta Centre, for example, which had been founded ille-
gally in 1980s to collect documentation about the Solidarity Underground, spread
its wings to launch an Eastern Archive (AW) dealing with the history of Poland's
former eastern provinces and to publish a distinguished journal. The Institute of
National Memory (IPN) which contained a prosecutor's department as well as an
archival network, began to operate in 1999 with a view to investigating and
recording all the 'non-events' which the Communist regime had sought to erase
from accounts of the past. In the second place, Poland's ranks of trained histor-
ians were held back by habits and attitudes instilled by pressures which no longer
applied. As an astute observer had commented in an article published before the
fall of Communism, the ingrained routines of internalized self-censorship, which
the People's Republic had encouraged among all but its most resistant citizens,
were more insidious than the censorship itself.^30 In the third place, the inter-
national context had moved on. "When the barriers came tumbling down, Poland
found itself in the company of several other newly liberated countries jostling for
a place in a rapidly changing Europe. The Iron Curtain had evaporated. The
artificial separation of Western and Eastern Europe had disappeared.
Globalization was reducing the significance of nation states and increasing the
significance of various international groupings, including the European Union.
The sense of writing old-fashioned national histories of the sort that dominated
Polish historiography throughout the twentieth century appeared to be fading.
For this reason, the author of the present volume, who had specialised in Polish
History for years, decided to make a break and to enter the risky business of writ-
ing 'a total history of all parts of Europe in every period.'^31
Twenty years earlier, when the first edition of God's Playground had been
under preparation, it was reasonable to predict that the efforts of the official