This essay is based on two propositions. The first holds that in Polish culture, since the mid-twentieth century, there have been fewer contradictions between Sarmatism and modernity. The second is that Sarmatism remains a powerful cultural foundation for a political movement. Both these points might be met with indifference by someone who regards Sarmatism as a bygone (i.e., departed and nonviable) element of Polish cultural heritage. Such a view maintains that Sarmatism was no opponent of modernity even during the modernization of a reborn Poland after World War I or, even less so, in the case of the socialist Polish state. For this reason, it could certainly not be contradictory to today’s phase of capitalist acceleration. It is precisely the holders of such views that I would like to convince. The situation was—and still is—quite different indeed.

Let me begin by discussing obstacles that Sarmatism posed for modernization. Conflicts between the Sarmatian tradition and late modernity form crystal-clear pairs of opposites. Sarmatism was a class-based, colonial, xenophobic, antidemocratic, and conservative ideology. It held that the nobil ity was the only true “nation” living in the Commonwealth and that Sarmatian origin entitled nobles to superior status—confirmed by political and economic privileges—over other classes (bourgeoisie and peasantry). As it developed through history, it increasingly identified Polishness with Catholicism, limiting the access of other denominations and national groups to privileges. It also validated the nobility's eastward expansion, effected through colonial conquest and exploitation of the territories of Belarus, Ukraine, and, since the eighteenth century, Lithuania. Finally, it led to the establishment of regulations that blocked bourgeoisie and peasant development, assigning to the lower classes the status of serfdom or half-serfdom.

The meeting between Sarmatism—again, a class-based, colonial, xenophobic, antidemocratic, and conservative ideology—and late modernity appears as a clash of radical opposites since late modernity in Poland was a process powered by ideas of equality, internationalism, cooperation, antidiscrimination, and progress. The stronger side (i.e., modernity) is regarded as a challenge to Sarmatism and its derivatives. Within the framework of such a dictate, any form of heritage must be tested, so to speak, to prove its compliance with the rules imposed by modernity.