| Summary: | In postcommunist countries such as Russia and Poland and, more specifically, in postcolonially inspired Russian- and Polish-language debates over communism as a (quasi)colonial rule, we can observe features of postcolonial nationalism. The thesis which this article seeks to defend is that some contenders in the debates hijack postcolonial theory with their overt or hidden nationalist agendas, which can themselves be diagnosed as postcolonial when they challenge the postcolonial heuristics from a position inside a postcolonial and postcommunist situation. I therefore endeavor to conceptualize postcolonial theory itself, or rather certain modes of appropriation of it, as either programmatic promotion or subcutaneous practice of postcolonial nationalism. My research focus is comparative, bringing together the Russian and the Polish appropriation of postcolonial studies.
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