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This article addresses the problem of the present-day historical discourse in Poland by taking under scrutiny one specific event: the historical re-enactment of the ethnic cleansing of Polish villagers by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, staged in a small town in southeastern Poland, Radymno, in the summer of 2013. It is based on research, carried out by the author and a group of students in Radymno and its surroundings in the period preceding and following the performance, as well as on content analysis of the press. The comparison of the top-down political and mass media discourse with local responses to the idea of re-enactment and, more broadly, local understandings of Polish–Ukrainian relations, reveal many contradictions. In attempting to understand them, the article discusses broader ramifications of the ‘democratization of history’: the political contestation, class rhetoric and societal tensions that are tangled up in historical debates.
