Until recently, sports history has largely neglected Eastern Europe. Yet new research has shown that historians need to embrace a perspective from the periphery towards the centre, and reach beyond the paradigms of modernization, Sovietization, and the nation-state if Europe's sporting culture is to be fully understood. Focusing primarily on Poland, this article outlines three features peculiar to the region. First, it stresses the importance of trans-national spaces and networks as well as European sub-regions. Missing out on the initial phase of sport's internationalization due to lack of independence, the development of Polish sport was regionally distinct. Sports flourished in Habsburg-ruled Galicia (in Cracow and Lodz especially) under relatively liberal political authorities, but developed more slowly and under different influences elsewhere. Second, the prominence of rural Galicia, inhabited by traditional groups such as Ukrainian peasants or Chassidic Jews, shows that Polish sport did not evolve in line with modernization and industrialization. The relatively slow diffusion of sport in industrial centres such as Warsaw or Silesia contradicts the paradigm of modernization and the notion of East European backwardness. Third, sport history sheds light on phenomena such as multi-ethnicity, migration, integration or disintegration.
The development of sport in Poland has been shaped by historical circumstances and the particular conditions they created: the period of the partitions, the process of integration after regaining independence, the destruction of the Second World War, and the subsequent Communist rule. Sport took on special meanings, and sports historiography, too, served to maintain national sentiments or ideological hegemony. Since 1989 research on sports history has entered a process of transformation characterized by new approaches, a free choice of subjects, access to new sources, and a more open academic exchange. Still, there are many blind spots in the social and cultural history of sport in Poland. Polish sports history has great potential to illuminate our understanding of inclusion, exclusion, and identity formation. It would be fruitful to leave the national focus aside, this article concludes, and to engage in comparative and transnational approaches within a Central (East) European framework.
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