Poland: What Does it Take For a Nation to Survive, w/ Norman Davies

What does it take for a nation to survive after the state is gone?

For 123 years, from 1795 to 1918, Poland did not exist on the map. It had been partitioned three times, divided among Russia, Prussia, and Austria, and written off as a finished chapter of European history. And yet the nation outlasted the states that had swallowed it.

In this conversation, historian Norman Davies — author of God's Playground, Rising '44, and Vanished Kingdoms — takes up that question. What actually held Poles together when there was no Polish state: language, the Church, Romantic poetry, political habit, or the pressure of the empires trying to erase them?

🎙️ History Shorts is a daily history podcast hosted by historian, author, and Smithsonian Magazine contributor Peter Zablocki. New episodes every day.

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