‘An oasis of freedom’ in communist Poland: The horse racetrack in Warsaw in the memory of its regular visitors

Introduction

In Poland, there is ongoing debate, mirrored by similar debates in other Central and Eastern European countries, over how the period under communism should be interpreted, how this period continues to influence the current political, social and economic climate and what methods may be utilized to conceptualize the processes that drove the post-1989 political transition (Bernhard and Kubik, 2014; Mithander et al., 2013; Pakier and Wawrzyniak, 2016; Tismaneanu, 2014). Attempts to characterize the social memory of communism in Poland usually single out two main schemata. The first of these not only highlights the heroic and martyrologic nature of memory relating to protesting against the communist regime, but also attempts to preserve aspects of this memory that the communist authorities were trying to erase from the official narratives (Bernhard and Kubik, 2014; Kwiatkowski, 2008; Śpiewak, 2005). The second schema, which relates to the memory of everyday life in the People’s Republic of Poland, is often filled either with nostalgia or irony (Bartmanski, 2011). This type of memory includes narratives on ‘oases of freedom’ under communism. The oases were usually created by ‘ethos groups’ (Szawiel, 1982) comprising people who shared a common purpose, similar worldview or set of values and beliefs. These included pastoral groups within the Catholic Church, scouting organizations, dissident groups, artist collectives and counterculture youth groups.

This article focuses on nostalgia in the memory narratives of people who continue to regularly visit the Służewiec Racetrack, a space that was most certainly regarded as such an ‘oasis of freedom’ in communist times. Our analysis of these narratives, which forms the basis for a discussion of the dilemmas inherent in remembering communism in post-communist Poland, is set within the context of a broader discussion on the phenomenon of post-communist (post-socialist) nostalgia ¹ and its functions (Reifová, 2017; Todorova and Gille, 2010; Velikonja, 2009). Memory of the social enclave created in Warsaw by the horseracing milieu challenges dominant memory narratives of the communist period because – as we shall demonstrate – not only is it composed of different axiological and socio-political dimensions, it also serves as a vehicle for criticizing the contemporary situation. This memory in fact incorporates intertwining references to various types of what is remembered as ‘freedom’, be it social, economic, ideological or personal. The narratives of regular visitors do not positively assess the period of communism itself. On the contrary, their interpretations of the horseracing world in the People’s Republic of Poland as a ‘paradise lost’ are implicitly critical of that period precisely because they make these racegoers recall the contrast between what was occurring at the track and what was taking place outside its walls. Nevertheless, these memories are still useful because they juxtapose the past reconstructed within processes of remembrance with interpretations of the present situation.

Regular racegoers create a distinctive social world sustained by a primary activity (Shibutani, 1955; Strauss, 1978), in this case ritualized betting. Under communism, horseracing was a remarkably popular sport in Warsaw, not only because of the exciting spectacle that was on show or the various refreshments on offer at the Służewiec Racetrack, but most importantly, thanks to the sense of community generated by pari-mutuel bets, which were the only legal type of gambling in the country at the time. The racetrack served as a meeting place for tens of thousands of people who created a world of their own – far removed from the everyday reality of a communist country and the prescriptions of official socialist ideology. Presently, a quarter of a century after the political transformation, horseracing in Warsaw attracts far smaller audiences and operates at a deficit, relying on state subsidies. The predominant group among racegoers is elderly men, most of whom are retired. The low turnout makes for a low betting pool and limited winnings. As a result, even the most accomplished horseracing bettors cannot regard the sport as a significant source of income. Consequently, the motivations behind their activities should not be interpreted from an economic perspective (Rosecrance, 1990: 348–349). ²

Researchers from countries where horseracing and horseracing studies are well established draw attention to the subcultural characteristics of the racing milieux (Cassidy, 2007; Filby, 1983; Fox, 1999; Rosecrance, 1990; Scott, 1968). However, even in Anglo-Saxon countries, research on the social memory of such racing audiences has been negligible. This begs the question of why this phenomenon should be studied in Poland, where there has never been a strong flat racing tradition. In fact, researching the memories of Służewiec Racetrack racegoers can facilitate comprehension of why, despite social interest in horseracing falling in Poland after the political transformation, the social world created by horseracing regulars continues to endure. According to the interactionist-based theory of place attachment (Milligan, 1998), the fact that memory of racing in the communist era as a multifaceted ‘oasis of freedom’ continues to endure is a key factor determining the continuance of the regular meetings among bettors at the races. Their attachment to horseracing and its unique setting at Służewiec Racetrack has arisen from two interrelated components: first, interactive memories associated with pari-mutuel bets and second, the expectation that they may relive past emotions, regardless of the results of the races themselves.

We use the term ‘oasis of freedom’ to show how – almost three decades after the political transformation – the notion of taking a stand against the communist reality (by seeking out enclaves of freedom) is being transformed through a process of memorialization into a tool for critiquing today’s situation that is contributing to the creation of a sense of continuity within the racegoers’ social world.

This case study also helps to elucidate the role of emotions, both in the process whereby the past is socially reconstructed using narratives (White, 1999) and the process whereby memories are used to justify persistent engagement in ritualized actions even though the social conditions in which those actions take place have changed. Such notions of freedom dating from a period of political enslavement fail to lose their relevance once the regime that deprived its subjects of their liberty has fallen. On the contrary, for those who recall such times, their memory becomes a tool for maintaining the existence of their own social world while also providing a connection with a specific place and type of activity that may even have undergone substantial (and negatively perceived) change.

Nostalgia in the memory of the Służewiec Racetrack’s regular visitors

In the ‘Introduction’, we characterized the two primary ways in which the communist past is remembered as a martyrologic-heroic and a nostalgic approach. Our studies focus on the latter. This primarily relates to memory of everyday life, which more often than not incorporates nostalgia evoking the phenomenon of warm recollections of ‘bygone days’. Such a memory trait is exhibited by people who cannot fully identify with martyrologic-heroic narratives. Irena Reifová references Czech society to explain this phenomenon:

many people were suddenly deprived of any history at all: ‘the old past’ as it was lived and experienced before 1989 was ‘outdated’ and the new interpretation of socialism did not accommodate ordinary people who were outside the victim–villain dichotomy. (Reifová, 2017: 7)

This description also applies to Polish society, which had barely any opportunity within the public sphere to come into contact with any other interpretations of the communist era other than its depiction as a period of fighting for freedom and democracy with the regime (which was, in turn, under the strong influence of a foreign power – in this case, the Soviet Union).

Reifová accounts for the appearance of post-communist nostalgia by drawing attention to a sense of broken continuity between the reality of the 1980s and that of the 1990s. It was at the beginning of the 1990s that a break with the erstwhile socialist reality occurred, both at a declarative and symbolic level. It was not a complete transformation – many institutions continued to function, transforming gradually. The repercussions for some, however, were extremely abrupt, in some cases leading to their complete dissolution. The sense that the continuity of the world of horseracing in Warsaw was interrupted at this point is the principal narrative thread in all the interviews we managed to conduct. Following Reifová’s line of reasoning, it might be said that it was this lack of continuity experienced between the ‘communist’ and ‘post-communist’ manifestations of the Służewiec Racetrack that provoked the development of nostalgia among its regular customers. Thus, this nostalgia, rather than expressing yearning for the political system itself, was in fact a reaction to the shrinking of the social world to which these racegoers used to belong. In addition, this decline in the racetrack’s fortunes appeared to be counterintuitive: what had appeared to be an oasis of economic freedom in the eyes of our interviewees fell into decline on multiple levels with the advent of the free market. As a result, the abrupt breakdown of this world associated with the beginning of the political transformation is now perceived negatively, while modern horseracing is seen as nothing more than a poor semblance of what it used to be in the Polish People’s Republic.

This is associated with another aspect of post-communist nostalgia – its evident critical function. Mitja Velikonja shows in her research that post-communist nostalgia can be also understood as ‘a resistance strategy of preserving one’s personal history and group’s identity against the new ideological narratives, historical revisionisms, and imposed amnesia’ (Velikonja, 2009: 547). Thus interpreted, nostalgia becomes a discourse tool for reflecting on the faults of contemporary reality. As we will show in our analyses, memory of the ‘race of old’ has both a nostalgic and a critical component while also serving to justify personal choices and protect personal life histories from being cast in a negative light.

Although communism determined the context within which the Służewiec Racetrack operated, the races are not regarded as a ‘communist’ institution by regular visitors. Betting on horses and gambling in general were at odds with official ‘socialist morality’ and bore the stigma of ‘bourgeois’ entertainment. ³ Although the horses and racetrack were nationalized, the regulations and tote system were rooted in the racing traditions of old. Many frequent racegoers regarded the races’ mode of organization as a throwback from the world before the war. However, the social world of horse races that existed before the war – in particular, its social diversity and the atmosphere created, on one hand, by members of the aristocracy and military officers and on the other, by the lower classes of pre-war Warsaw and its environs – failed to survive. Evocations of this world constitute a second type of nostalgia present in the narratives of our interviewees, notably nostalgia for the inter-war period. This is a feeling based on readings of literature and eyewitness tales of this period and not, as is the case with post-communist nostalgia, on experiences from the personal lives of those experiencing the nostalgia. Both emotions evoke an image of a ‘wonderful world’ that has already departed yet continues to be symbolically resurrected during racing meetings by regular gatherings of racegoers.

The Służewiec Racetrack within the urban organism of Warsaw – then and now

Warsaw is the only Polish city where horseraces have been organized without substantial interruption from 1841 until the present day. Despite Poland’s rich equine traditions, flat racing in the English style was never popular in Poland. In the nineteenth century, when Poland was partitioned between the Kingdom of Prussia, Habsburg Monarchy and Russian Empire, the aristocracy preferred to devote their time to husbandry and ‘oriental’ horse breeds, though horseracing was usually organized for a few days a year in several of the largest cities and some private estates. Not until the turn of the twentieth century was a mass audience for horseracing reached in Warsaw. At this point, the size of betting pots rose to such a level that the first professional horse owners appeared (Pruski, 1970).

After the First World War, when Poland regained its independence, Warsaw’s Pole Mokotowskie, which had previously served as a training ground for the Tsar’s army (though it also contained stands for spectators and a racetrack) was meant to become one of the capital’s more elegant districts. The Society for the Encouragement of Horse Breeding (Towarzystwo Zachęty do Hodowli Koni), which had over 130 wealthy members, bought a property on what was then the outskirts of Warsaw and created a modernistic, multifunctional complex – a ‘horseracing village’. This unique area, which is now surrounded by thriving districts, consists of two parts. The first is a racing track with three stands, which was designed as a recreational centre and park area for inhabitants of the southern part of Warsaw. The second part contains an all-weather equestrian training facility consisting of a training track, stabling for 700 horses, permanent accommodation for stable staff and a farm to cater for their needs. The Służewiec Racetrack was officially opened 3 months before the Second World War broke out in Poland.

After the Second World War, the Służewiec Racetrack was transformed into a single state-controlled company – the State Horse Racetrack (Państwowe Tory Wyścigów Konnych) – which was responsible for training horses, organizing races and the betting system. The company also took control over several racetracks in other cities, of which only two – in Sopot and Wrocław – were opened for business, usually for a few days a year. The remaining racetracks were variously repurposed. Many staff employed before the war at the private stables at Służewiec lived at a staff housing project within the ‘horseracing village’, which functioned for the next half a century as an almost self-sufficient, state-owned farm and was only opened to the public on weekends (as well as Wednesdays until the 1990s). Consequently, during the Polish People’s Republic, only the capital offered opportunities for the development of a horseracing audience that could attend races from every April until November.

After the Second World War, the largest stand, a grandstand catering for very large attendances, remained closed. Plans, developed before the war, to open a dance hall and winery never saw the light of day. Instead, the remaining two stands, which were able to accommodate ca. 7000 spectators, were each fitted out with restaurants and large, comfortable spaces. The pre-war ticket zones were adapted to accommodate the new communist reality. The smaller, Honorary Stand, was frequented by political figures, renowned actors and specially invited sportsmen. The private boxes initially intended for private horse owners were transformed into lounges for the new elites. Thousands of spectators gathered in the second, ticketed grandstand. Although plans to provide public transport services that would stop just outside the stands were never implemented in communist Warsaw, the press reported that around 15,000 spectators regularly visited the racetrack for the entire duration of the People’s Republic. The number doubled on days when there were important races. The communist era also saw the development of industrial and residential districts around the racetrack, which also attracted many new spectators. ⁴

After the political transformation in 1989, the company lost financial liquidity. At the end of 1993, before a bill set to liquidate the company along with all the other unrestructured state-owned agricultural enterprises came into effect, the racetrack’s management had the entire facility and the function it performed registered on the national heritage list. This saved the racetrack from being repurposed and prevented the land from being divided up when the Służewiec Racetrack began to be administered as a company of the Treasury. After 1993, the racetrack trainers faced the challenge of creating private stables and locating the first private horse owners in half a century. Over the years that followed, a complex institutional conflict was waged over the future of the racetrack and the legal-ownership status of the Służewiec Racetrack’s grounds. Years of administrative deadlock during which no new mechanisms for organizing and financing races and pari-mutuel bets were created led to a period of decline affecting the whole facility. The low rewards on offer discouraged bettors and potential racehorse buyers. The Służewiec racetrack also struggled to cope with the competition when other leisure activities became available to the residents of Warsaw.

At the beginning of 2001, the Polish Parliament passed a law that declared the state to have inalienable ownership rights over the Służewiec Racetrack’s grounds. However, the insufficient budget available to the Polish Jockey Club (Polski Klub Wyścigów Konnych), an organ of the Polish government that actually functioned as a jockey club, combined with the mismanagement of the state company renting the Służewiec Racetrack, contributed to continuously falling attendances and a dip in interest from potential investors in the equine industry. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Służewiec Racetrack disappeared from the media. To this day, the financial rewards paid out to the horses’ owners are too low to make the horses’ maintenance profitable and many of the several dozen trainers struggle to break even. Meanwhile, racegoers spending season after season in the stands have to tolerate a low quality of service. ⁵

In the United States or Great Britain, the annual economic impact of the equine industry is significant (American Horse Publications (AHA), 2015; British Horseracing Authority (BHA), 2013). The same holds true in much of Europe, including the Scandinavian countries (Raento, 2011). In Western European countries, 2%–4% of citizens ride horses, whereas in Poland this number is lower than 0.25% (Grzybowski, 2006: 8). Racing regained its place as Britain’s second-best attended sport after nearly 6 million spectators made the trip to the track in 2016 (Sportsmail Reporter, 2017). By contrast, none of the races held in Poland are currently listed by the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities. Participation in pari-mutuel betting on horseraces is such a minor phenomenon in Poland’s gambling market that it remains outside the scope of research (TNS OBOP, 2009). Bets cannot be placed online, which means that most Polish gamblers bet on foreign races. It might be said that, just as the railway and telegraph once contributed to the international popularization of horseracing in many countries (Schwartz and Raento, 2011), today’s digital exclusion has a part to play in the indigenization of Poland’s horseracing scene.

The Służewiec Racetrack is awash with spectators three times a year (at the start of the season, the Derby and the Wielka Warszawska race), but for the majority of racing days, if horse owners, their families and staff are discounted, it is visited by fewer than 1000 racegoers. Over the past 25 years, the regular audience has shrunk to a group of a few hundred people who have become increasingly homogeneous in terms of age and sex – the majority of racegoers are men past the retirement age of 65 who have been frequenting Służewiec for decades. ⁶

The research methodology and data

The history of horseracing has attracted the attention of sociologists and historians in Anglo-Saxon countries to a far greater degree than it has in Poland (Cassidy, 2002, 2007; Filby, 1983; Fox, 1999; Herman, 1967, 1976; Riess, 2011; Rosecrance, 1990; Scott, 1968). The main area of interest is usually the racegoers and gambling. In Poland, the only author to describe the history of horseracing, especially from the perspective of horse breeders and horse owners, was Witold Pruski (1970, 1980), who was employed before the war by the Society for the Encouragement of Horse Breeding. Polish racing audiences have never been thoroughly studied, though portrayals of them can be found in what are now historical reportage pieces published in various editions of local Warsaw journals. However, this changed from the beginning of the 1990s, when the races began to steadily decrease in popularity. There have been a few books on Polish horseracing published over recent decades, but these were based on the reminiscences of the riders and racegoers, and were focused on the successes of the most remarkable horses, jockeys and coaches (Bukat and Halski, 2009; Trojanowski, 1966; Zieliński, 2011).

The idea to conduct ethnographic research on the Służewiec Racetrack was inspired by the social conflict that arose around new development plans (Miejscowy Plan Zagospodarowania Przestrzennego, MPZP) for this part of the city. These plans sought to implement radical changes to the racetrack’s appearance and function. A draft of these plans disregarded the racetrack’s status as a registered object of national heritage by envisaging the introduction of new buildings onto the racetrack’s grounds that would effectively change the venue’s function. ⁷ In the eyes of many people associated with the racing community, this was nothing less than a direct threat to the continued existence of horseracing in Warsaw. These developments provided us with a context to frame our project’s central research question, which relates to how the venue’s social functions are perceived by and reflected in the practices of its various users, including racegoers.

This article is based on observations conducted at the racetrack in 2015 and 2016 on racing days as well as interviews conducted with regular racegoers. Conducting the interviews was not an easy task for several reasons. First, regular racegoers form a hermetic milieu. The small number of bettors today means that none of them are anonymous, or at least anonymous when it comes to the roles they play at the racetrack. For this reason, any newcomers are immediately visible, as are the people talking to them. By searching for interviewees by the track or conducting interviews we were in effect informing everyone else who had been talking to us. Initially, our motivations were also unclear to them, since this was the regular racegoers’ first meeting with researchers studying the races. In addition, Polish public discourse tends to present gambling as a morally dubious activity or addiction, and that is how it is usually perceived by society (Public Opinion Research Center (CBOS), 2011). As a result, punters avoid talking about it with strangers. Undoubtedly, our social traits also had a part to play in this: as relatively young women we stood out among a group of predominantly older men and were sometimes treated with disparagement. However, our social traits also had their upsides – we were not perceived as ‘dangerous’, and our ignorance of the past was justified by our age, which in turn fostered a desire to ‘explain’ to us how the races used to look. Such conditions led us to approach the process of gathering materials by searching for interviewees in two ways. The first of these was acquiring introductions to potential interviewees from persons who were able to do this, such as journalists who used to write about the races and those we had already managed to interview. Our second method of locating interviewees was asking around the spectators on race days. The majority of regulars have clear social and territorial habits, so over time we began to recognize frequent racegoers. This made it possible to select interviewees in a manner that ensured they came from a variety of social circles. Although our requests were often rejected, we managed in 2016 to conduct 25 deepened, unstructured interviews. Our interviewees consisted of 20 men past retirement age, as well as 3 men and 2 women in middle age.

When studying specific social groups and conducting qualitative research of social memory, quantitative representativeness is extremely difficult to attain. Our interviewees came from various social circles – ranging from the intelligentsia (including, for example, engineers, academic teachers and journalists) to the working class. Some of them lived nearby and used to work in the factories surrounding the racetrack. During the People’s Republic of Poland and the transition, several of our interviewees worked in the grey market (legal but unofficial trade and currency exchange). Science graduates predominated among persons with higher education. Apart from attending the same horseracing events, our interviewees had little in common. Many people declared that they did not see their Służewiec friends outside the track, which is encapsulated in the saying ‘what happens at the racetrack, stays at the racetrack’. Only one interviewee spoke about a group of friends with whom he used to watch the races, and discuss the past season and plan for the next one in the winter. Conducting interviews during a racing day was frequently not an option since potential interviewees were occupied with placing bets (and all that entails: talking with others, analysing and reading). On other days, they lived a ‘different’ life and were not interested in meeting anyone who knew them from the track or discussing the races.

Our pre-interview observations made us realize that the amount of time that regular racegoers spent there each season over many years meant that each one of them had to participate, if only as a witness, in spontaneous discussions about the present condition of horseracing in Poland and recollections of how things used to be in the past. Such regular interactions in a relatively unchanging group of individuals have, over the decades, shaped the discursive devices they use to describe the reality of the racing track (in both the present and the past). This results in similar narratives about various periods in the past being evaluated in a similar way despite the racegoers’ differing biographical experiences, which date from both the People’s Republic of Poland and the political transformation. For this reason, after a dozen or so interviews, we noticed that each one provided new details and expressed experiences with varying degrees of emotional engagement, yet descriptions and assessments of the individual stages of the racetrack’s history were relatively consistent with each other.

During our observations, we found that the racegoers’ routinely repeated actions, language, mannerisms and outfits bore traces of the past. Furthermore, while interviewing racegoers, we were struck by the fact that almost all of them regularly shifted towards recollecting the past. We asked two kinds of question about the past during the interviews: the first kind related to the interviewees’ biographical ties to the racetrack, and the second aimed to compare various aspects of the racetrack’s functioning today with how things were in ‘the past’, without specifying any particular historical period. However, our interviewees usually made comparisons themselves from the very beginning, specifying the time before the 1990s as a reference point. Recollections turned out to be essential for discussing contemporary experiences – no thought or story about the races could manage without them. One important aspect of these reminiscences was the presence of a time barrier in each and every interview – the interviewees without exception divided the history of horseracing in Warsaw into the communist times and those after the political transformation. Interestingly, the communist era is homogeneous in their narratives. Although individual decades of the existence of the communist state were each slightly different in character, these differences were not reflected in the speakers’ narratives. The People’s Republic period is presented in uniform fashion in their stories. Rather than socio-political events, it is experiences from their private lives or the life of the racetrack (like spectacular races and winnings) that act as time markers.

All the narratives were recorded and transcribed. For the purposes of our study, we applied a method called reconstructive cross-analysis (Thompson, 2000). When this method is applied, interviewees’ narratives become the basis for a search for patterns of discussing the past and interpreting it. In this particular case, what were of most interest to us were images of the life of regular racetrack visitors during communist times and the way racegoers remember and narrate this life today.

The racetrack as a site for maintaining pre-war traditions

The oldest interviewees began frequenting the track in the mid-1950s. Thus, not one of the interviewees could remember the track’s earlier history from their own experiences. However, every interviewee had someone who acted as an ‘introducer’, showing them how the racetrack functioned and describing its past to them. For this reason, our interviewees’ narratives include references to pre-war times.

According to communist propaganda, the inter-war period was a time of great social discrepancies and injustice (Skibiński et al., 2009). Although the racetrack was nationalized and it still lacks any traces commemorating its pre-war founders and designers, it is regarded as a space that preserves features of the pre-war social life. The myth of the inter-war period as the ‘golden age’ – a brief two decades of independence – was maintained in the narratives of Służewiec’s frequent visitors. For some, it was this world of pre-war elites that attracted them to the track:

I’ve always felt a sense of yearning for the interwar period, and always associated the races with this better Poland – the Poland from before World War II. Obviously, under communism the track’s appearance was more modest than before the war, but it was very beautiful, just as it is today. Among the people who showed up were those who remembered the interwar period, regular – you could say – old racegoers, Polish military officers, the old intelligentsia – people who loved and bred horses before the war…. (Jan, man, 72 years old)

This type of nostalgia is symbolic and imaginary in character. Our interviewee refers to two social categories that connect him with the past: pre-war military officers and the intelligentsia. Under communism, representatives of these two groups shared the Honorary Stand with members of the communist establishment, something infrequently seen outside the racing context. Characteristically, this man does not mention the aristocracy, to which many horse owners belonged. In his narrative the racing world is imagined as a direct continuation of pre-war traditions:

It turned out that someone from my family could arrange me an entrance ticket for the best seats, and so from the second season onwards, I had a ticket that could bring me into contact with the people who were gambling there, people from the establishment, but not only. Thanks to the people who made the track what it was, ties with the pre-war traditions were not cut off. I mean jockeys come from the families of old jockeys, trainers come from the families of old trainers and equerries….You could observe that, primarily through the established conventions and racing rules. These could not be called ‘socialist’ for they operate all around the world, wherever horse races are organized. (Jan, man, 72 years old)

This continuation of pre-war traditions has at least three dimensions, notably, the continuation of membership of this social world, the continuation of the races themselves, and the continuation of the operating rules for organizing races and betting. Although the interviewee frequented the track under communism, this time is seen as a relic of a previous period in his recollections. The man does not openly criticize communism, yet his descriptions of pre-war Poland, which he describes as ‘this better Poland’, betray his opinions. In addition, when referring to the restoration of the right to own horses, he comments, ‘the good old days are back’. He also contrasts the ‘normal’ rules for organizing the races with the ‘socialist’ reality. The speaker is therefore suggesting that the socialist world is neither ‘normal’ nor ‘good’. In his view, the racetrack constituted what Foucault (1971) would describe as a ‘heterotypic’ social enclave containing remains of a long gone, better world.

For another interviewee, his most important memories of visiting the racetrack in communist times are clustered around the possibility of encountering people who remembered the previous ‘epoch’. The social world of racing offered a unique possibility to access the social memory of the Poland, once socially diverse, which was later rejected by the communist authorities:

Anyway, for me this milieu was extraordinary. It was a mixture of different influences. Those people who remembered the races from before the war were still alive, and it was possible to encounter elderly gentlemen, former cavalrymen, former equerries from the Lubomirskis’ stud farm in Widzów, some racing clans which went on from generation to generation….[describing one visitor] His grandfather was a rider in the Russian Empire when Leopold Kronenberg had his stud here, some Krasiński and Lubomirski counts, and so on, or some Russian oil magnates. (Tomasz, man, 47 years old)

The combination of two factors – the elitist aspect of horse breeding in pre-war Poland and the hermetic world of the professionals working at the track – created ‘a special blend’, as this man expressed it. Generally, these narratives would appear to suggest that the racetrack is first and foremost a social phenomenon – a discrete social world created and sustained by those who participate in it. As these participants die, the specificity of the whole institution is slowly erased.

The narratives describing the pre-war racing world do not suggest that its traditions should be re-cultivated. Nonetheless, it should be taken into account that a few of our interviewees learnt about the pre-war horse industry from their elderly family members. Some racegoers’ families were associated with the horse breeding or cavalry worlds or they visited the track before the Second World War. Moreover, it is important to emphasize that recollections of racing are rarely bound up with general popular sentiment toward pre-war Warsaw and its traditions. However, attempts to directly connect with pre-war traditions are made by the Sport Totalizator, a state-owned company which has organized races since 2008. The company runs a competition awarding costumes as prizes of the kind that used to be worn by pre-war Warsaw residents on the historical Wielka Warszawska race day. Regular racegoers never enter the competition, but it continues to be an attraction for infrequent visitors.

When talking about the races’ past, some interviewees, rather than referring to a specific period of time, reflected on the transformation in cultural and social attitudes toward horses and horseracing that took place at the beginning of twenty-first century:

Of course, we don’t need horses anymore because we drive cars, etc. But this is a huge chapter in the history of humankind. The whole of humankind. We wouldn’t be where we are now if it hadn’t been for horses. Wars, everything, development, everything – horses. Across the entire civilized world. horses are treated with respect and are invested in, so this would not perish, so this would last, so this entertainment would continue to delight us. (Maciej, around 65 years old)

In these types of narrative, references to the past – in general terms – are used to convince the interlocutor that racing, as an institution, should be preserved. Two intertwining themes can be identified. The first one relates to the status of horses both within and outside Polish culture, while the second one concentrates on horseracing’s role in the history of human development. Referencing the past creates a sense that the races are extremely valuable because of their long history. However, the races’ presence in these speakers’ lives may also signify how difficult it is for them to evoke patterns, norms and pursuits that are meaningful to the contemporary world. The former role of horses, including racehorses, in Polish culture seems to have been mythologized by contemporary racegoers in an attempt to distance themselves from the general apathy shown toward horseracing in today’s Poland. ⁸

The racetrack as a space of freedom in communist Poland

All the interviewees started their adventure with the racing world in communism times, so they often refer to that period while making generalizations about the past. They compare the past with the present, and by doing so, negotiate the state of the former. The juxtaposition of the sense of enslavement felt under communism with the freedom experienced at the track is especially prominent in the narratives of people with university degrees:

After the war, you know, life under communism was very gloomy. You were barely allowed to do anything. And then, I guess with the authorities’ permission and by virtue of their good reasoning, all of a sudden, you would find yourself in a space where you could do anything. The freedom at Służewiec was indeed total. Total. You could shout there, drink there and many people gladly took the opportunity – in the fall, on every racing day there were three or four people lying under each tree…. So, there was freedom, but there was also something else, you could take your life into your own hands…. In those days it did not cross anybody’s mind that one day, Big Brother would be gone and we would be part of Europe again. So, it was a great opportunity to feel genuinely free and, at the same time, make some extra cash…. (Wiktor, man, 69 years old)

In this narrative, the racetrack appears to be a unique and autonomous sphere of freedom with two dimensions. First, it is a place where visitors could express their emotions freely and do things that were otherwise not socially acceptable. Becoming intoxicated at the hippodrome did not have any negative consequences – either legal or social. It might seem that getting intoxicated in a public place is not the most eloquent expression of freedom. However, for the interviewee, this example served as ultimate proof that the rules operating at the track differed from the ones operating anywhere else in the People’s Republic of Poland. In his view, such a state of affairs was the outcome of a deliberate decision taken by the communist authorities. An enclave where people did not feel watched and controlled was like a safety valve. Several interviewees claimed that the racetrack had a functioning black-market currency exchange. However, no one mentioned any intervention at the racetrack by the public security guards. According to one of our interviewees – a former racing journalist – the track might have been within the area of operations of special forces combating economic crimes and criminal offences, but it primarily served the function of a controlled safety valve against social unrest. Some remember that although the police were present at the track, they turned a blind eye to the illicit exchange of currency and illegal betting. ⁹ However, according to the interviewees, the hippodrome was as much an oasis of freedom, as it was an oasis of peace and safety:

But what I want to emphasize is that the track, though it was not guarded by the police, was absolutely a safe place…. Simply, people knew and respected each other, they didn’t steal or fight with each other. It was an oasis of peace. (Julian, man, around 70 years old)

Our interviewee here draws attention to the second component of the sense of freedom – a feeling that the fate of individuals lies in their own hands. In a country where almost every aspect of everyone’s lives was subjected to state planning and control, this way of thinking was rare. The areas of life in which an individual’s success solely depended on his or her skills and hard work were limited. Although everybody at the hippodrome knew that ‘you could win, but you had to lose’. In fact, the gamblers who had good analytical skills and were well informed enough to correctly predict the race results would, at least from time to time, gain significant financial gratification and social recognition. Some racegoers compared betting with gambling on the stock exchange.

Researchers point out that the socio-economic system of the People’s Republic of Poland lacked a consistent rule of legitimation. Two mutually opposing rules were in effect. The first of these emphasized the crucial role played by the central authorities while the second permitted the mechanisms of the free market and democracy. The latter rule, which met with social acceptance, was derived from the previous political system and sometimes became the focus of exaggerated and mythologized hopes (Rychard, 1995: 53). Both of these rules were embodied in the State Horse Racetrack (PTWK). While the central authorities imposed their will through the director of the PTWK, who controlled training, organizing the races and the tote, the need to embrace the free market and democracy was epitomized by the presence of rival trainers and jockeys as well as the spectators, who exchanged money while participating in pari-mutuel betting. According to some scholars, money only started playing a progressively larger role in everyday Polish life at the beginning of the 1990s (Marody, 1991: 39–40). Within such a context, the races and their audiences constituted an exceptional enclave throughout the communist era in which the exchange of money was the key activity. It bears mentioning that following the dissolution of private property in the People’s Republic of Poland, horses no longer embodied the social and prestigious aspect of rivalry between their owners. In a way, the animals belonged to ‘nobody’ and thus, paradoxically, the state-owned incarnation of horseracing emphasized the purely material character of rivalry between bettors.

This at least partially meritocratic system of earning money was constitutive of the gamblers’ sense of freedom, conceived as a sense of agency and a ‘character contest’ (Goffman, 1967: 272–273). ¹⁰ This equates to an interactionist perspective in which the instrumental/economic dimensions of gambling are favoured over its expressive aspects (Goffman, 1967). The interviewee quoted above emphasizes the social diversity of the racing audience and the presence of ‘original’ and ‘remarkable’ spectators. From his perspective, the ‘freedom’ he experienced at the racetrack attracted ‘remarkable’ and ‘original’ people who were permitted to ‘spread their wings’. Here, it is worth noting that bettors recollecting how emancipating it was to participate in horseracing in the People’s Republic of Poland failed to criticize the fact that the races were nationalized. The state’s appropriation of the racetrack and horses from their private owners following the war was mentioned by a few people whose families had been involved with horse breeding before the war, yet this had no impact on the manner in which they evaluated the races in communist times. In addition, none of our interviewees mentioned the rigging of races in the People’s Republic of Poland. This stands in marked contrast to the character of some of the contemporary press analysis from that period. In fact, journalists from state-owned newspapers regularly criticized the employees of the company controlling the racetrack, accusing them of ‘fixing’ races.

In communist times, the hippodrome was a special site which attracted visitors not only because of the races, but also on account of its unique atmosphere, which differed from that prevailing in the world beyond the track. Although both the racing scene and the ‘outside world’ have greatly changed since the days before the transition, the memory of the freedom they experienced in those days is still maintained by racegoers, connecting them with the track. Such a connection was openly acknowledged by our interviewees. Below is an extract from an interview with a speaker for whom the racetrack was the site of a biographical turn:

It was 1968. After 1967. I got thrown into jail. In fact, it was a detention ward in Białołęka. On March 15^th I got randomly hauled off the street…. My parents bailed me out. They never told me how much they had paid, but there had to be some price. Two months later, around May 11^th, I get out. It’s probably Saturday. I go home with my father and in the afternoon, I go to the racetrack, and it’s the opening of the season. This event attracts loads of people. Such is the tradition…. It’s simply amazing. In the morning, I was still locked up and in the afternoon, I found myself in the open air. I was released…. I think from that moment on, I became a regular at the races, to all intents and purposes a regular. I kept coming to the track, never missed a race. It was this contrast between the limited space, the confined room – that jail in Białołęka – and the beautiful open space in Służewiec that attracted me so much. And I think, after all those fifty years, I think, if I had wasted my life because of the races, this is all my parents’ fault because they pulled me out of jail. (Stefan, man, 70 years old)

This autobiographical narrative describing an ex-prisoner relishing his freedom at a racetrack has been mythologized by its narrator. In his story, imprisonment and repression are contrasted with freedom and the liberty to make decisions about his life. The interviewee does not explain why he decided to visit the racetrack on the same day he was released from prison. We might assume it was not his first visit to the track. This, however, does not seem to matter. The man describes one particular, symbolically rich and significant moment in time that provoked a connection with the track that was to last over 50 years. Racegoers emphasize today that as young people they were searching for a world that was different from, and more interesting than, the day-to-day reality:

You know, as a young man, when I first encountered this colorful and distinct world, the world of freedom – and by the way, I’ve always been crazy about freedom, this world of movie stars and literature celebrities – I just knew that was a place for me. (Wojciech, man, around 75 years old)

To sum up, when the speakers recall the first months and years spent at the track, this brings back old impressions and evokes strong emotions in them. They emphasize the combination of enchantment and fascination they experienced toward the newly discovered social reality. Only a few talked about the horses’ beauty and various types of betting systems, because the very core of their adventure with the races continues to be social in character. It was the people and the atmosphere that attracted the racegoers and made them attend the races regularly, even if there were other important factors. ‘The old races’ during the communist times regarded as their heyday are contrasted with the era of political transition after 1989, which, in their opinion, marked the beginning of the races’ decline.

Discussions on the memory of communism acknowledge that post-communist nostalgia may be associated with a longing for ‘private worlds’ that offered an escape from the communist reality (Nadkarni, 2010). According to Nadkarni, nostalgic memories of communist times do not imply positive assessment of the communist regime. The emotions evoked by recollecting the past are tied to behaviours and feelings negating the system. These originated in milieux whose membership was able to discuss and – at least symbolically – cut itself off from official behavioural norms, as well as the modes of thinking typical of a communist country. Therefore, the narratives being analysed here present memories of a kind of freedom experienced in times of enslavement that paradoxically disappeared in times of political freedom. What is distinctive in this case is that the social world of the racetrack was neither part of the so-called private sphere nor a component of the half-closed social worlds of socially interconnected people. The Służewiec Racetrack was a widely accessible public sphere which attracted people from various milieux. It was legitimated by the state authorities, yet offered visitors the opportunity to assume the unique identity of a horseracing gambler acting independently of any other social roles or individual identities. Moreover, the races were not part of the ‘everyday reality’. On the contrary, in the words of our interviewees, the horseraces are portrayed as a chance to escape from mundane reality. Paradoxically, this was an ‘oasis of freedom’ organized and maintained by the communist authorities yet devoid of socialist ideology. Regular racegoers are aware of this fact, but to them the most important aspect of the experience were the emotions and social milieu created in ad hoc fashion by the people who frequented the track, remembered today for their passion and personalities.

The racing audience in the memory of regular visitors to the track

In communist Poland, the racing audience was part of the spectacle. All interviewees nostalgically recollected the crowds that were coming to the Warsaw hippodrome:

At that time, hundreds of people, thousands of people were visiting the racetrack. I don’t know, perhaps tens of thousands. Three stands were filled with people…. It was very impressive – what was going on there and the number of people that were coming there. It was a spectacle in itself. These days, not much is left of that spectacle. These days, not many people come to the track. (Katarzyna, 40 years old, lives close to the racetrack)

The theme of a large and diverse audience is present in almost all the narratives. The Warsaw racetrack was regarded as a public space that was pluralistic and enabled a genuine encounter to be had with the ‘other’. An elderly interviewee described this phenomenon in the following way:

The spectators represented a cross-section of society. The racetrack attracted many famous people: actors, singers and artists, but poor people were also present there. You could spot them at the box office trying to scrape together the money for a ticket or two. This was a cross-section of society. There were families with children as well as tenacious racegoers. (Joanna, woman, around 65 years old)

The description above addresses two issues. The racetrack provided attractive entertainment for everybody regardless of their social or material status, profession, age or family situation. Second, the racetrack appeared to be a social space of egalitarianism. A less wealthy blue-collar worker could – and still can – become a more successful player than an affluent and well-educated member of the elite. Paradoxically, this ideal of equal opportunity was being realized at a social enclave whose architecture, dating from before the war, signaled a departure from the standard.

In the narratives, generalizations about the racing world are very rarely juxtaposed with generalizations about Polish culture and history. Although the recollections relate to a particular social milieu, they are predominantly personal and biographical in character. Interviewees primarily talk about their friends and heroes from the racing world, attaching great value to the names of jockeys and trainers, as well as those of horses and the dates of specific events at the track. The personalities and original character of the others participating in the racing world are of particular importance in these recollections when they had an impact on the style of the betting. The community of racegoers is presented as purely ‘meritocratic’. Age, profession and social background did not matter; only analytical skills were important:

It was the mid 80s – a really wretched time, right after martial law ended. An apathetic, disheartening time with no prospects, or so it seemed at that time. Służewiec was an oasis of freedom. If anybody had any business streak, they would come here and if they had any opinions, they would place their money behind them. …. By chance, in an English class, I met a guy who was one of Służewiec’s legends…. He introduced me to a small group of quite extraordinary people who laid the foundations of informatics – they were these bridge players. And we were equal. For me – as with any very young person – that was an amazing experience. It didn’t matter how old you were or where you came from. All that counted was what you were betting on and whether you were winning. Anybody could discuss anything with anybody. There was a free exchange of ideas and everything was immediately verified by the racing results. (Marcin, man, 57 years old)

When the focus of the narratives shifts from a general description of impressions and the atmosphere at the racetrack to the details about how the race functioned as a space and how people navigated it, it becomes apparent that the sense of community was, and perhaps still is, an idealistic projection of the past rather than an accurate description of the real state of affairs. The majority of the racegoers reminiscing about the ‘races in communist times’ either ignore or diminish the significance of the fact that the racetrack had two separate stands: a ticketed one, and one which required an invitation. Instead, some interviewees emphasized the spontaneous meetings taking place in one space for which anyone could buy a ticket, referring to it using the old-fashioned expression ‘the lounges’. In the narratives, what united the members of these groups was not their shared status but rather the common activities which, over time, contributed to the development of internal, binding action and communication patterns, or even rituals:

Very quickly we worked out our own customs, we shared information, we were getting along well with each other. We were, you could say, a pack of wolves. Everybody was collaborating, there was no internal rivalry. It was a loosely integrated group, but we didn’t treat each other as rivals….We didn’t need to read press reports as we reported to each other. Today, no one calls to check the race results with you, to ask what you saw, how it went for you, etc. But in those days, it was common practice. (Adam, man, 69 years old)

In the narratives, the Służewiec racetrack is described in terms of a paradise lost – an inclusive meeting space where people were united by a common passion and ongoing competition. Although the emotions expressed in the narratives are of varying intensity, they are always positive in tone. Sometimes, the speakers depict a fascinating, magical world:

Well, it looked fascinating, to say the least. It was like a fairy tale. Can you imagine that? There are those two huge stands. The third is closed, but it used to be open, with twenty or thirty thousand people squashed in like sardines, the place was packed You know, the atmosphere was phenomenal. It was tremendous. It was beyond description. As a kid I was carried away by those emotions and impressions…. It all comes back to me when I close my eyes. You know, it was something incredible. (Karol, man 75 years old)

As we can see, the emotions felt by the speaker as a child visiting the track with his father still affect his memory. This narrative can be interpreted as a description of a ‘big world’ seen from the perspective of a child, but also as a conviction, anchored in the experience of sharing strong emotions with a large group of people, that this world was unique.

It should be noted that due to the social stigma surrounding gambling in Poland and the horseraces’ lack of popularity, racegoers wish to create in their interlocutors a sense of understanding that accounts for their fascination with the races. Their narratives focus almost exclusively on emotions – a sphere that evades judgement. It is remarkably difficult to objectively analyse, and perhaps also critically assess, one’s emotions towards a world which does not exist anymore. The fact that the hippodrome went through its heyday a few decades ago makes it difficult for newcomers to become part of this social world, despite the superficial openness of regular visitors.

Conclusion

Regular racegoers to the hippodrome do not think of races in terms of them being the ‘essence’ of communism in Poland, but rather as a social enclave where it was possible to forget about the communist reality for some time. This constitutes a paradox of sorts if one considers the fact that the races took place under the auspices of a state-owned monopoly. But racegoers draw attention to the other levels of freedom which they experienced at the track. As researchers from different Eastern European countries emphasize, the phenomenon of post-communist nostalgia, rather than expressing a willingness to restore the previous system, is actually a discursive mode for expressing disappointment with the present situation (Bartmanski, 2011: 227; Klumbytė, 2008). The post-communist nostalgia present in the narratives of frequent visitors to the Warsaw racetrack does not express a longing for communist political and social systems, but rather for what was happening on their margins. The interviewees do not focus on themes supported by the communist authorities, but rather on themes and experiences that were not suited to official communist ideology yet tolerated nonetheless. This confirms Velikonja’s thesis that post-communist nostalgia, rather than being an ideological recollection of the past, is actually ‘an undetermined, undefined, amorphous wish to transcend the present’ (Velikonja, 2009, 548).

Memory narratives emphasize the disparity between the rules operating at the Służewiec Racetrack and those governing social and economic life in communist Poland. Inspired by the racegoers’ narratives, we have called this phenomenon an ‘oasis of freedom’. This memory differs from the dominant narratives on remembering communism. The distinctness of this memory from other narratives concerning the communist past is strengthened by the interviewees’ present biographical situations. In the first two decades of the political transformation, the vast majority of them had to leave the labour market and retire. Thus, paradoxically, for many of them, the Służewiec hippodrome continues to be the only place where they can retrieve their sense of economic agency. Not, on this occasion, because of a scarcity of opportunities to take financial challenges, or a dearth of alternative forms of gambling, but rather due to their ritualized attachment to the place and cherished memories of the ‘good old days’. Today, however, the effort invested in betting and commuting to the track for all-day events often provokes general disappointment, which further strengthens racegoers’ positive assessment of the communist era racetrack as a place where economic freedom could be realized.

A distinguishing feature of memory of the racing world is the absence of any infrastructure (Irwin-Zarecka, 2009). Apart from a few cultural texts, there are practically no lieux de memoire related to the history of the track. For example, there are no monuments, plaques, books or movies to document and promote its history. Since the subject of the racetrack is almost absent from public discourse, no modes of discussion for relating its past have been developed apart from the ones present in the conversations of its regular visitors. Memory narratives about the glory days of flat racing circulate almost exclusively among older regular racegoers. We failed to note or hear of any form of transmission of this legacy to younger generations. Our interviewees even state that they do not talk about the races with anyone outside their closed circle of friends, even with members of their own families. They also express the opinion that young people are uninterested in horseracing or its history, or that they are ‘unable to understand’ the regulars’ attachment to the track at Służewiec.

It is the space itself that constitutes a framework of memory for the regular racegoers. Despite the fact that it was designed to be anonymous and intended for mass events, it still managed to become a type of moral region (Park, 1925: 43) for people who share a love of flat racing. Today, new technologies mean that demand for public space is falling (Lofland, 1999: 247). Even so, regular racegoers spend their Saturdays and Sundays at Służewiec despite the numerous inconveniences involved and the alternative option of betting on foreign racetracks via the Internet.

Although all racegoers are gamblers, they never reduce their participation in the races to a game of chance. On the contrary, they situate it within a broad circle encompassing the history and tradition of their social world. In this article, we have attempted to show that memory of horseracing from the communist times currently functions as a key factor in maintaining the frequency of meetings between racegoers who regularly visit the track. The racegoers’ attachment to Służewiec is derived from two intertwined components – interactive memories associated with pari-mutuel bets and the expectation of reliving these emotions (Milligan, 1998), regardless of the results obtained from the betting itself. By betting at the Służewiec Racetrack, they are not only reproducing an activity that was once exciting, but also re-enacting social rituals from the past. Once these rituals accompanied their passage through the communist-era racing world, but now they mainly serve as a means of self-expression and winning recognition. The racetrack is a public realm and, as such, it not only has a geography, but also a history, culture and complex web of internal relationships (Lofland, 1999: 15). When discussing attitudes towards the Służewiec Racetrack, we discovered that a place that was viewed as an oasis of capitalism, freedom and equality during communist times has today become a mere remnant of a world that has lost its uniqueness and failed to acquire any new significance. However, the rituals associated with betting at the Służewiec Racetrack restore to those enacting these rituals the sense of being in contact with a world that is presumably better.