“Send back Olga’s books”: backlash against Tokarczuk for mentioning Poland alongside Belarus

Polish Nobel laureate Olga Tokarzuk has prompted a backlash from conservatives in her home country after giving an interview in which she mentioned Poland alongside Belarus as countries that are taking advantage of the pandemic to suppress protests.

A social media campaign has emerged under the hashtag #OdeślijOldzeKsiążkę (#SendABookBackToOlga) and the author has faced criticism from prominent figures, including a deputy foreign minister.

The controversy began earlier this week when Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera published an interview with Tokarczuk titled “Belarus like Poland: they pay for Europe’s slowness”.

She said that “the [corona]virus has helped the [Polish] government” suppress protests against a “barbaric” near-total ban on abortion. She then added immediately that “Belarus is an example that regimes feel safer in the new global pandemic situation: a society that is afraid submits more easily to orders and prohibitions”.

In the interview, Tokarczuk, a prominent liberal voice and critic of the current conservative Polish government, also condemned the “attack on the LGBT movement” in Poland and criticised the “slow” response of the EU to it.

Her remarks immediately drew condemnation from conservatives in Poland. “Yesterday a Belarusian political prisoner tried to commit suicide during a trial [and] Ms Tokarczuk has the audacity not only to spit on Poland, but also to ignore suffering Belarusians,” tweeted Wojciech Mucha, the recently appointed editor of a newspaper purchased by state oil giant Orlen.

Soon a hashtag emerged on Twitter encouraging Poles to send any of Tokarczuk’s books that they own back to the author, who was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. Tokarczuk has long been criticised by Polish nationalists and conservatives, who accuse her of promoting “anti-Polish” views.

Agnieszka Romaszewska-Guzy, the director of Belsat, a Poland-based TV station aimed at Belarus and funded by the Polish government, said that Tokuarczuk “must have no shame to comment like that…What is happening in Belarus has nothing in common with what is [happening] in Poland”.

Others, however, have come to the author’s defence this week, arguing that her words had been taken out of context and that Corriere della Sera’s headline was misleading as she had not directly likened Poland to Belarus.

Left-wing MP Joanna Scheuring-Wielgus told Radio Zet that she “agreed with the words of Olga Tokarczuk that the situation is bad” in Poland. “It is not like in Belarus yet…However, I am afraid that this may be ahead of us and we should talk about it.”

Among those to endorse criticism of the author was deputy foreign minister Paweł Jabłoński. Petros Tovmasyan, a businessman and conservative activist, had criticised “unwise celebrities who compare Poland to Belarus [but] do not understand that they are causing the greatest harm to the Belarusian opposition and are giving ammunition to Lukashenko”.

Jabłoński retweeted Tovmasyan’s remarks, adding: “Exactly. Words have consequences.”

Tokarczuk herself has not yet publicly commented on the criticism of her interview.

Note: Olga Tokarczuk is a member of Notes from Poland’s advisory board.

Main image credit: Harald Krichel/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY-SA 4.0)

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.