„Odkrywamy powtórnie Bieszczady”. Idealizacja gór w PRL-u i jej oddźwięk

Abstrakt

The change of Poland’s borders after the Second World War meant that the Eastern Carpathians, beloved by Polish tourists, became inaccessible for the citizens of the new Polish People’s Republic. The mountain range’s place in the imagination of Poles was soon taken by the western Bieszczady Mountains. Although already in the 1950s there was interest in these mountains, which had been left practically uninhabited after Operation Vistula and thus reverted to a state of wild nature, only as of the 1970s were concrete — and ambitious — plans formulated for the development of this beautiful mountainous terrain. The present article presents, among other things, that period’s “dispute over the Bieszczady”, with a proposal coming forth from university circles and a response to it by the socialist authorities. I intend to show that the true idealisation of the Bieszczady was closely connected to the “renewed discovery” of these mountains.