The Soft Power of a Not-So-Soft Regime?: The Making of Industrial Exhibitions in Socialist Poland

• In Event: Cultural Bureaucracy during the Cold War: Institutions, Networks, and Practices

Abstract

Industrial exhibitions are well-known tools of cultural diplomacy, but less known are the professionals behind these projects – state bureaucrats, lawmakers, trade representatives, and the cultural elite. This paper takes a close look at the unusual milieux of the exhibition makers that formed in Poland between the mid-1940s and the 1950s. By reconstructing their collective portrait, the paper intends to reexamine the political, economic, and cultural rationale behind the presentations of national products that Poland used to regularly send abroad.

Author

• Katarzyna Jezowska, U of New South Wales (Australia)