The Memoirs of Peasants, or the First Polish Folk Epic

Abstract

In the 1930s, Ludwik Krzywicki, one of the founding fathers of Polish sociology and a continuator of scientific research based on the biographical method, led to the organization of three groundbreaking memoir competitions. These were competitions for memoirs aimed at the unemployed, emigrants and peasants. The last one, announced in 1933, was so popular among the peasant communities that it was decided to publish the memoirs in two volumes in 1935 and 1936. A year after the publication, the jury of the editorial office of Wiadomości Literackie decided to recognize it as a book of the year. This article aims to analyze the memoirs published in the collection as examples of the first emancipation statement of the peasant class made on such a large scale. Memoirs of Peasants are the only testimonials written down from the heart of the peasant class experience by the generation born in the second half of the 19th century, who often remembered the times of serfdom, years of partitions, fought on the fronts of World War I and suffered from the economic collapse of the Great Depression. The article demonstrates that the popularity of this competition contributed to the development of the phenomenon of Polish competition memoirs, which are estimated today at as many as 1500 organized competitions and about a million submitted memoirs.