Deconstructing self-creation. Mieczysław Rakowski and his political biography
Deconstructing self-creation. Mieczysław Rakowski and his political biography

Summary/Abstract: As historiography tends to claim that journalist, and communist politician Mieczysław F. Rakowski (1926–2008) was a “distinct figure” in the People’s Republic of Poland. It is mostly so because of his unique ability to self‑create his own story and his own political image. Such a discourse was mainly shaped by his Dzienniki polityczne (Political Diaries), an extensive, complex text combining elements of a diaristic source and memoirs written after many years, quite often close to pamphlets. The deconstruction of message created by Rakowski turns out to be an indispensable introduction to building a biographical narration that can be woven around the categories of exceptionality and typicality. Thereby, Rakowski’s exceptionality finds its confirmation, but at the same time it gains a meaning different from the one the hero himself would prefer. The very deconstruction of Rakowski’s retrospective self‑creation makes it possible to universalize his experience and to treat it like a point of departure into the wider history of Central European communism.

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