The different deployments of the cross in Polish history suggest one commonality. Political actors reach for the cross when they demand radical change or need to legitimize a new political project. Whereas in the 1860s the cross was used to mobilize the general public for the idea of freeing the serfs and incorporating the peasants into the national collective, after Poland regained its independence in 1918, it wasemployed to legitimize the new and volatile state border, which ran through a contested multi-ethnic territory. Whereas in early socialist Poland the cross served to rally anti-Communist dissent, during the Solidarity decade it became a unifying symbol of a politically eclectic social movement and a synecdoche for its various demands to reform the system. Finally, whereas after 1989 the cross was employed to solidify the new post-transformation political order, in 2010 it was used to mobilize populist voters as a symbol of “the real Poles” pitched against “the elites.” In each of these political articulations, the symbol of the cross embodied novel, rebellious, and revolutionary ideas, rather than the desire to conserve the old order and defend the status quo.

The Introduction reconstructs the historical trajectory of the symbol of the cross, looking at its different political employments across the world and throughout different epochs. It also discusses the Turnerian cycle of “structure” and “antistructure” and its relevance for understanding how religious symbols work to bolster national discourses and become powerful tools to mobilize political action.