Month: December 2013

by József Böröcz

[ the text was originally published in the authors’s blog Global Social Change, dedicated to his book The European Union and Global Social Change: A Critical Geopolitical-Economic Analysis, Routhledge 2009 , and was reprinted on Lefteast with the kind agreement of the author]

The main provisions of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement are available online. (I find it amusing that, in the big hullabaloo about the drama of the refusal to sign and the protests, it does not seem to have occurred to anybody to actually look at it–at least I haven’t found any analysis on the internet.)  

The facts. A few weeks into the rehearsal period – and three weeks before the opening, scheduled on December 7th –, a new production of the renowned Narodowy (National) Stary Teatr (NST) in Krakow was attacked by Polish nationalists. The show, called the Undivine Comedy. Remains, explicitly addressed the anti-Semitism of a piece by Zygmunt Krasiński, a Romantic writer considered one of the Three National Bards of Poland.

The nationalists’ intervention began on November 14th, with members of the audience interrupting a performance of Road to Damascus (directed by Jan Klata, the general manager of NST), continued with threatening messages sent to the actors, and culminated with “expose” articles published by the local Dziennik Polski, one of which offered a detailed description of the show not yet open to the public and another one about the National Stary Teatre failing its mission to serve the national Polish culture.