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Hundreds of thousands of Poles were forcibly transported to the interior of the USSR after the Red Army invaded eastern Poland in 1939. These individuals, male and female, ended up in Soviet prisons, labour camps or special deportation settlements. This article examines how women interpreted and coped with this traumatic experience of exile, arguing that this entailed the articulation of a traditional, homogenous identity for Polish females. One component of this self-definition was differentiation from ‘others’, isolated on the basis of nationality. On the whole, the exiled Polish women did not feel solidarity with women of other nationalities, regardless of the fact that they too were victims of the Stalinist regime. Polish women continually linked the configuration of gender roles which they regarded as proper, civilised and even natural, to their own national group. In this way, they affirmed that they did not belong in this new world and maintained a connection to home, to what they understood to be Polish, European and civilised.

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