Watergate in the shadow of the détente policy: Discourses on Nixon’s impeachment and resignation in the Polish Communist press

This article offers a discourse analysis of the themes the Polish Communist propaganda press developed around the Watergate scandal and the figure of US President Richard Nixon. When, in 1976, political scientist Leon Hurwitz examined the reports on the Watergate affair by Communist newspapers in western democratic countries and Soviet newspapers, he noticed they differed both in the level of interest in the scandal and in the evaluation of Nixon’s status. The critical reading of the Watergate-related articles in three Polish periodicals – Przekrój, Polityka and Trybuna Ludu – between 1972 and 1974 confirms Hurwitz’s findings: the policy of détente resulted in the Watergate scandal being interpreted as a ‘domestic’ affair of the United States, failing to generate much interest in the Polish media. Nixon’s impeachment and resignation were treated with the greatest caution and discretion to make sure these events would not disturb the prevailing good bilateral relations between the United States and the USSR. In other words, Communist propaganda shaped and framed the discourse of the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s resignation, adapting it to the concurrent political interests of the Kremlin.