Staging the ‘stolen transition’: conspiracy and collusion in postsocialist crime fiction

CBEES Advanced Seminar with Anita Pluwak, Postdoctoral Researcher, Tallinn University, and Project-Specific Researcher, CBEES, Södertörn University

Speaker: Anita Pluwak, Postdoctoral Researcher, Tallinn University, and Project-Specific Researcher, CBEES, Södertörn University
Discussant: Tora Lane, Associate Professor in Comparative Literature, and Research Leader, CBEES, Södertörn University

Abstract: Recent scholarship has focused on the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories in postsocialist societies mainly within the rise of populism in the region. Meanwhile, cultural articulations of prominent conspiracy theories in popular novels or films remain understudied. This article focuses on crime novels that represent a central conspiracy theory in postsocialist Poland: that of a hidden network of former secret police informants and agents (układ) that has ‘stolen’ or manipulated the transition to democracy and free market so that the transition serves their egotistic interests rather than society. The three novels analyzed: Zygmunt Miłoszewski’s Uwikłanie (2007), Marcin Wolski’s Noblista (2008) and Szczepan Twardoch’s Przemienienie (2008), stem from the first decade of the 21st century during which a conservative shift takes place in Polish society and suspicion of conspiracist subversion achieves prominent visibility.The article analyzes the dominant tropes and figures of the novels’ conspiracy scenarios and shows how conspiracy and collusion are embedded in broader histories of the socialist and postsocialist periods.

Key words: postsocialist conspiracy; Poland; crime fiction; stolen transition; anticommunism.

Biographical statement: Anita Pluwak holds a Ph.D. from Lund University and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the European Research Council-funded project Translating Memories: Eastern European Past in the Global Arena at Tallinn University.

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