Pearce
2
Abstract
Based upon primary research in Poland, this paper investigates the situation of private-life violence as
it is both experienced and publicly confronted in a post-communist society. The paper analyzes the issue as a
site of ethical contestation in the complexity of a radically new political, economic, religious, and cultural
environment, and within the larger task of reconstructing “civil” society in an emerging democracy.
Introduction
The Republic of Poland is in the process of re-democratizing and re-entering the global community
after 45 years of communist rule and relative world isolation. In some ways, this process can be described as
“going public,” both globally and internally. Information control is no longer the norm, and uncensored
learning is now available to and demanded by the Polish citizenry. Poland has now become one of the first
members of the European Union from the former Eastern Bloc. A key development in the process of
uncensored learning is the breaking of silence about sensitive and even dangerous matters. This collective
learning experience is not without its difficulties and contentions.
In a pre-1989 Central and Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet Republics of Central Asia, a
conspiracy of silence about the violent acts of the communist regimes was common and necessary. Individuals
shared a private “local knowledge” of such acts, which could not be articulated publicly for fear of
retributions. In the years since 1989, the exposure of former state secrets—of large massacres and single
martyred dissidents—through such measures as public “lustrations,” is the order of the day. Yet in Central and
Eastern Europe (as well as elsewhere in the world), a conspiracy of silence has also existed, and continues to
exist, over another crime: the reality and extent of intimate-relationship violence.
This article problematizes the social projects of post-communist societal reconstruction in relation to a
continued form of social control in these societies: violence against women in the home. Public silence about
such behavior is more than an omission; it acts as a veritable roadblock to the development of a broad societal
ethic to address the problem. In Central and Eastern Europe, the new existence of legal social movements,
freedom of assembly, independent media, religious involvement, and free electoral politics—which are in
varying stages of development and success—raise the possibility of open, unfettered public discourse to a new
level. Yet within Poland, as in other post-communist societies, intimate-relationship violence has yet to
receive the depth of publicity of other crimes. At stake is a deep and profound cultural change. How is the
issue of intimate-relationship violence currently moving into public awareness?
The International Context
The reasons for this nascent state of publicity, in Poland as elsewhere, are varied and complex. A
likely initial argument is that “these are not ‘national’ crimes.” Yet this continued absence of a sustained
Convention