Walka o kapitał moralny w polu polskiej inteligencji. Wojciech Roszkowski jako aktor historii i teraźniejszości

Abstract

The fight for moral capital among the Polish intelligentsia. Wojciech Roszkowski as an actor of history and the present The publication of Wojciech Roszkowski’s textbook for high schools, Historia i teraźniejszość. 1945–1979 [History and the Present. 1945–1979], has led to the fiercest controversy over the place of history in Poland’s public life since Jan Tomasz Gross’ Neighbours. The aim of the article is to examine the debate surrounding the textbook, particularly taking into account Wojciech Roszkowski’s trajectory and position among the Polish intelligentsia. Firstly, I demonstrate that the textbook crowns the author’s journey from solitary activity as a writer in the opposition movement and solitary work in the underground, through the mainstream of the elites of the Third Polish Republic to the heterodoxy of the conservative counter-elites. Secondly, I place the textbook in the tension between the Polish intelligentsia and the world of politics. Thirdly, I reconstruct the romantic, highly polemical, lofty and doom-laden structure controlling the historical narrative of the textbook, which strikes at the dominant, orthodox, progressive beliefs of the Polish intelligentsia. In conclusion I argue that the debate surrounding the textbook has stemmed from the author’s exceptional position and trajectory, the fight within the Polish intelligentsia as well as the unique, “hot”, monumental and explosive narrative of the textbook.