State In Poland Research Articles

Rola Agencji Nieruchomości Rolnych w przemianach struktury agrarnej w Polsce

The restructuring and privatisation in Poland's state sector of agriculture was (in 1991) entrusted to the Agricultural Property Agency of the State Treasury (hereafter Agricultural Property Agency). The agency was expected to play an important role in the state agricultural policy as far as structural and ownership transformation of the Polish agriculture is concerned. Almost 80% of land in the Treasury Agricultural Property Stock was taken over from former state-owned farms, asymmetrically concentrated in northern and western provinces. The purpose of liquidation of state farms was intended to strengthen the model of family farms chosen by the Government, mainly through privatisation of state land. In fact, till present the agency has sold merely one third of the land in its stock. The lease remains the dominant form applied in management of land, comprising approximately 2 million ha in permanent use among individual farmers and companies. This paper empirically explores the impacts of AP A on agrarian structure in Poland. The study results show statistically significant strong correlation between regionally distributed property in the form of land sale/land lease and the average area of individual farms.

Church and State in Poland in 2003

Church and State in Poland in 2003

‘Intermarium’ and ‘Wedding to the Sea’: Politics of History and Mental Mapping in East Central Europe

In the perception of the outside world, i.e. of politicians, media representatives and the public as well as historians applying a comparative approach, East Central Europe appears as a historical region framed by the Baltic, the Adriatic and the Black Seas. The perception of the inhabitants, however, does not correspond with this outside view—neither historically nor with regard to the present. Their ‘continental’ and decidedly national, not regional, self-perception has not been changed despite explicitly ‘maritime’ rhetorics and geopolitical arguments by governments and political parties in the region. The article exemplifies the tension between elite-driven ‘maritime’ identity management on the one hand and the ‘landlocked’ world-view and oceanophobia of the majority in the case of society and state in Poland from the early modern period to the threshold of the twenty-first century. Whereas the nobility of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth ‘turned its back to the sea’ and the non-nobles shared this attitude, ‘maritime politics’ and ‘maritime identity’ became the pillars of the project of a restoration of Poland as a state after the partitions of the eighteenth century. The most prominent phenomena in this regard were the subregional programme of an ‘Intermarium’, i.e. Poland, a Polish federation or a confederation of states dominated by Poland reaching ‘from the Baltic to the Black Sea’, as well as the political ritual of Poland's ‘wedding to the sea’, a national ‘tradition’ which was ‘invented’ in 1920, adopted by communism, passed on to Solidarnos´c´ and finally taken up by the Third—democratic—Polish Republic in 1990.

Another Europe: remembering Habsburg Galicja

The past ten years have brought about a profound reordering of the spatial imaginary of Europe. It is a reordering, however, that continues to this day, and the tracing (symbolic as well as institutional) of the future ‘Eastern’ confine of the common European space remains a highly contested - and politically salient - issue. This paper examines one alternative geographical imaginary seeking to narrate and negate this emergent confine and its binary division of the European space by drawing upon the memory of the multinational Austro-Hungarian empire. In particular, I look to the ways in which the Habsburg myth is being adopted and articulated within the context of the erstwhile Austrian province of Galicja - now torn between the states of Poland and the Ukraine and straddling the probable future border of the European Union. Through an analysis of the spatial imaginary of the imperial Galicja felix, the paper attempts to trace the ways in which the Habsburg ideal of a liminal space of multinational coexistence is being resurrected in the present day in order to subvert the (national and soon supranational) borderlines cutting through these territories’ heart - and to argue for their reconceptualization as a wholly European border-space.

The City in Central Europe: Culture and Society from 1800 to the Present by Malcolm s> Gee Tim Kirk , Jill Steward (review)

352 SEER, 79, 2, 2001 each chapter. There are, however, no referencesto such worksas S. Bednarski 's Upadek i odrodzenie szk61'jezuickich w Polsce(Cracow, I933); John Lind's Letters Concerning thePresent State ofPoland (London, I773);or StefanKieniewicz's writings on the Polish predicament in the second half of the nineteenth century. London J.J. TOMIAK Gee, Malcolm; Kirk, Tim and Steward,Jill (eds). 7TheCityin Central Europe. Cultureand Society from i8oo to the Present.Ashgate, Aldershot and Brookfield,VT, 1999. Xii+ 276 pp. Notes. Tables. Plates. Bibliography. Index. ?49.50? THISis a collection of thirteenessayswith an editorialintroductiondevoted to differentaspectsof the culturaland socialhistoryof citiesand towns in central Europe. Despite the title, most of the essays concern the years between the I86os and the I930S.And despite the editors'determinationto point out that Germany and the Habsburg empire formed a 'culturalcommunity' during the period, some of the essaysstraybeyond the bounds of thiscommunityinto Poland,Ukraineand the Balticstates. The fact that this book had its origins in a conference on European urban cultureheld in I994 probably explains its rathereclectic character.Unfortunately , while the editors do quite a good job in suggesting some of the processes and issueswhich affectedthe region's cities duringthe period, they miss the opportunity of providing an overall perspective on the changing urban geography and the way that this was tied into the dynamic economic, political and social forces which were at work not only in central Europe but over a much wider area. The reader is thus left to deduce this background from a study of the essays themselves. Geographically, the coverage is quite uneven, with no less than five essays focusing on Vienna and three on Berlin. One suspects that this reflects the bias of (predominantly) British scholarship on the region, with a strong orientation towards the German speaking countries. If the collection has a central focus, it is the question of modernity and the way that this was reflected, and wrestled with, in the region's cities. Although urbanization and other facets of modernization proceeded unevenly, with the western parts of the region experiencing greater dynamism than those to the east, few cities and towns escaped the problems posed by industrialization. migration, the ineed to cope with rapidly rising populations, social inequalityT. cultural and educational change, and the strident forces of nationalism. The topics addressed within this overall theme of modernity range from architecture and city planning, the rise of cultural institutions in cities, the world of art, and urban tourism, to the more socio-cultural issues ofJewish assimilationi in Vienna, the politics of popular culture, female poverty and prostitution, and the effects of the economic crisis of I929-33 on 'Red Vienna'. Essays onl the political use of cartoons and concepts of Polishness, Wim Wenders' film portrayal of Berlin, and how traffic-mindedness affected inter-war attitudes towards the city and German destinies, illustrate how modernity posed REVIEWS 353 problems of representationfor cities as much as those of attitude, economics and policy. It is difficultto draw any overall conclusions from this collection, which is presumablywhy the editorsmakeno attemptto do so. The scholarlyqualityis generally high, though the essays vary in their breadth and also, for this reviewerat least, in theirinherentinterest.There are many insights.Thus the fascination exercised on the minds of some artists by the big city, with its strikingcontrasts between affluence and poverty, filth and gentility, is well describedby Robin Lenman as is the global characterof the artmarketwhich was alreadybecoming apparentby 1914. Also by 1914 artistswere beginning to invade parts of the countryside,founding their artists'colonies andjoined by touristsand commuters in what, later in the century and especiallyin the West,was to become a much more far-reachingtransformationof rurality.In another insightful essay, that by Anthony McElligott, the idea of trafficmindedness is shown to have played a significantrole in inter-warnotions of German identityand attitudestowardsmodernity.It is salutaryto remember, in a world where improving communications are often regarded as the basis of globalization and a threat to national identity, that German nationalists onicecommonly regardedthem as a principalmeans of binding the disparate German people together into a single nation and of spreading German influence and domination abroad. Finally, the significantrole played by the Jewish 6lite in...

Państwo w polskiej gospodarce w latach 90

Państwo w polskiej gospodarce w latach 90

The Reform of Public Administration and the Decentralization of the State in Poland

The Reform of Public Administration and the Decentralization of the State in Poland

The deportation of the polish population to the USSR, 1939–41

The deportation of the Polish population from the territories annexed in September 1939 by the Soviet Union was an integral part of Stalin's policy of destroying Poland's state system and sovietizing the western areas of the Belorussian and Ukrainian republics. The deportations occurred in three major waves involving about 250,000 persons; they included 139,000 settlers and their families sent to Siberia, 66,000 to the arid steppes of Kazakhstan, and 78,000 to the remote Far Eastern and northern regions. The property confiscated from the deportees was redistributed to state and collective farms and resettled Soviet Communist Party members and officials. The deportees underwent a period of extreme deprivation and suffering until the Soviet‐Polish agreement of 30 July 1941 allowed most of them to return from exile.

Poland: The Environment in Transition

of the textile industry. Stalinist industrialization brought an acid-making plant, TZPN Polchem, to the western outskirts. As in much of urban Poland, workers were housed in large apartment blocks. In Torun's case an entire new suburb, Rubinkowo, was built. Today it is still home to half the city's 200 000 population. With the failure of Poland's 1 970s 'dash for growth' (which ended as the foreign debt burden of the country became unbearable), there was a brief flowering of democracy in Poland. The Solidarity Trade Union organization was able to wring certain concessions from the Government, including the right of citizens to form organizations. One such organization was the Ecology Club which was established in Krakow in 1980. Following the growth of the Green Movement in Western Europe, the Club sought to make public some of the environmental problems and abuses in Poland. While direct criticism of the Soviet Union was dangerous, some of the blame for the state of Poland's rivers and air quality was placed on 'our friends in the East'. The authorities soon clamped down. Martial law was declared in December 1981, and all opposition groups, including the Ecology Club, had their activities curtailed. However, the Ecology Club did have one success. The antiquated Skawina aluminium plant, near Krakow, produced about half of Poland's aluminium, and also over 2000 tonnes of toxic fluorides annually. The Ecology Club, through a local

The adjustment of international rail passenger services to new state boundaries – the Eastern Marchlands of Europe 1918–39

This paper considers the problems which confronted governments in restoring international railway services after the Peace Treaties of 1918–20 in the Eastern Marchlands of Europe, namely the states of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, Romania and Yugoslavia. The states which emerged from the old Austro-Hungarian Empire inherited railway networks which did not meet their needs, necessitating new construction for which funds were scarce. The railway infrastructure had been damaged by war and lack of maintenance again requiring substantial investment. The service patterns are compared by means of a city pairs analysis which examines minimum frequencies/journey times between five capital cities – Warsaw, Prague, Vienna, Budapest and Belgrade between 1925 and 1935. An examination of border delays is also undertaken for the same period. © 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

De la nation ethnique à la nation civique: enjeux pour l'Eglise catholique polonaise

With the advent of a legitimate, democratic state in Poland it is necessary not only to reconsider the traditional role and the predominant place of the Catholic Church in Polish society, but also — and more significantly —to redefine the bases of national identity. The author's thesis is that the national and political legitimacy of the state is leading to a transition from a primarily cultural and religious definition of the nation and of Polish national identity (ethnic nation), to one that is more political and civic in character (civic nation). This gradual identity shift is characterized by tensions between two opposed visions of the nation, indicating a slow move away from an essentialist conception of the nation to a more pluralist one. It is in that broader perspective of national redefinition that we can best understand the debate over the place of the Catholic Church in post-communist Poland, since the Church has much to lose from such an identity transition.

Making her into a “woman”: The creation of citizen-entrepreneur in capitalist Poland

Abstract Through reviewing recent textual representations of citizenship, I argue that the creation of new discursive forms is necessary for the project of developing a capitalist state in Poland. Specifically, I argue that a new model of citizenship is being discursively produced, one that rigidifies the public/private split, entrenching women within the “private.” This model of citizen as entrepreneur legitimizes patriarchal capitalist social relations, in which women and other groups are disadvantaged. The discussion relates the discourses of citizenship and womanhood to actual socio-economic conditions in contemporary Poland. I conclude by pointing to union and feminist actions of resistance against the state agenda.

Jesuit Philosophy of the State in Poland, 1564-1668

Jesuit Philosophy of the State in Poland, 1564-1668

The Immigration and Integration of Polish Jews in Brazil, 1924-1934

The end of World War I marked the beginning of a new era in European migration to Brazil. The immigrants that had poured into the “país do futuro” (country of the future) now came at only a trickle and the number of entries fell by over fifty percent between 1913 and 1914 and by another sixty percent the year after. In 1918 fewer than 20,000 immigrants entered Brazil, a low that would not again be approached until 1936. Even so, between 1918 and 1919 the number of arrivals to Brazil's ports almost doubled, and in 1920 almost doubled again, reaching 69,000.Post-war immigrants to Brazil differed in many ways from the pre-war group, both in national origin and in their views of success and opportunity. Although Portuguese, Italians, Spanish, and German immigrants continued to predominate, between 1924 and 1934 East European immigration to Brazil increased almost ten times to more than 93,000, representing about 8.5 percent of the total. Most of the East Europeans who migrated to Brazil in the quarter century after World War I were those fleeing the upheavals created by the establishment of the state of Poland. At the same time quotas and other forms of restriction in the U.S., Argentina, and Canada increasingly led potential migrants to look towards Brazil. The frequently destitute East Europeans rarely enjoyed the support of their often powerless governments, a factor that made such immigrants attractive to Brazil's large landowners. In 1927, a contract between the Polish Government and Brazil's Secretary of Agriculture for the transportation of 2,000 Polish families was partially based on the belief that the mixing of “docile” East Europeans with more “volatile” Southern Europeans would “go a long way to obviate any labor trouble that might otherwise occur.” Whatever positive attributes the East Europeans might have presented to Brazilian elites in terms of “dividing and conquering,” the Lithuanian government complained that the condition of its 20,000 immigrants was “so pitiable … that (we) might be forced to repatriate them.”

Render Unto Ceasar: Church and State in Poland

Cast your mind back to August 1980—to the media images that flowed from the Gdansk shipyard: a priest kneeling, hearing confessions, Walesa at an open-air mass, pictures of the Polish Pope pinned to the shipyard gates, Walesa's huge biro with the pictures of the Pope and the Vatican—yes, it was a very pious affair. For most Poles, and indeed for most observers from the West, it seems that from a long and troubled Polish history the Church has emerged to represent the Polish people and the national interest in ways that the government and the Communist Party cannot. It is a general belief that the Catholic Church is the sole remaining avenue of free thought and expression in Poland. The total identification of the Polish nation with the Catholic Church is at once a mysterious and satisfying image: Catholicism and Polishness are somehow wrapped up together and the temptation is to shrug and say: "Well, that's Poland for you. Always has been, always will be."This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Poland after Solidarity: Social Movements versus the State.

The unexpected emergence of the Solidarity movement in Poland has focused Western attention on conflicts within socialist states. The rapid truncation of Solidarity and the rise of a new image of the state as a militarized, relatively autonomous, repressive apparatus has left several theoretical questions unresolved and raised some new ones. This volume draws from historical and political accounts of the events that haunted Poland between 1980 and 1984, providing a complex sociological explanation of the major processes that occur within the state-society sphere of relationships. In part one, the authors examine the conflict between social movements and the state in Poland: the history of Solidarity, the nature of the political conflict between Solidarity and the Communist state, the institutionaliza-tion of the means of control by the party over society, the functioning of civil society, and the mediating role of the Catholic Church. In part two, the authors treat issues that go beyond Solidarity: the scope of state autonomy, legitimacy conflicts within socialist and capitalist states, other social movements in Poland, and the philosophical symbolism of Solidarity.

An Open Issue of Legitimacy: The State and the Church in Poland

Since the founding of the Communist state in Poland, the growth of the institutionalized basis of Catholicism there has accelerated. This trend obviously reflects a continuing growth in the social base of support for Catholicism. This article presents church-state relations in terms of confrontation between the church and Communist rule, and it postulates that the Polish Roman Catholic Church has been transformed in the course of its coexistence with Communist rule and resembles very little the Catholic Church of the prewar period. The Roman Catholic Church serves as an alternative legitimate system within Communist Poland. It is an authority system that is not constitutionally recognized, but in real terms it functions as if it were and coexists with the Communist authorities. Moreover, in the eyes of the general public, the role of the Polish church is conditional upon the performance of the Communist regime. The church's authority extends beyond the spiritual and moral domain and directly enters politics and, more recently, the social and cultural life of local communities.

Towards Partition: Polish Magnates and Russian Intervention in Poland During the Early Reign of Stanisław August Poniatowski

In a report on the state of Poland in 1766 the papal nuncio, A. E. Visconti, observed that the new king, Stanisław August Poniatowski, possessed ‘a burning desire to reform the whole country in one day – if only he could – and the entire nation, in order to bring it up to the level of other, more advanced nations’. The interregnum after the death of Augustus III in October 1763 and Poniatowski's election in September 1764 had inaugurated the most determined campaign for reform within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth since the Union of Lublin of 1569. By 1763–4 there was little that did not need to be reformed. The accumulation of privilege by the szlachta, the nobility, had attained such dimensions that both the monarchy and the Sejm, the parliament, were almost powerless to govern. The most obvious expression of the impotence of the state and of the refusal of the nobility to submit to the discipline of any centralized authority was, of course, the liberum veto, the use of which, real or threatened, had consigned the majority of the Sejmy of Augustus II (1697–1733) and of Augustus III (1733–63) to nullity. Yet the veto's successful, widespread application was only possible because of a rough equilibrium of political strength between Poland's various magnate factions.After Augustus Ill's death, Russian military backing enabled the so-called ‘Family’, the party led by Michael Czartoryski (1696–1775) and his brother, August (1697–1782), to break through the stalemate. At the Convocation Sejm of 7 May to 23 June 1764, the Czartoryskis pushed through a series of unprecedented reforms aimed at conferring on the monarchy and the Sejm a degree of real authority over the country at large.

Two Pages of Fiction

Are the communist economies strong or weak? Russia bristles with arms and uses strong language. But is the socialist economy flawed at the center? Professor Hayek here argues, against the Polish economist Oskar Lange (Polish Ambassador to the USA, 1945–6, subsequently Chairman of Poland's State Economic Council), that without markets the efficient use of scarce resorces is not feasible. Is this why the Polish economy is now in turmoil?

The Polish Crisis of 1980 and the Politics of Survival

Abstract : The collapse of the Gierek leadership in Poland followed a two-month siege of workers' strikes ostensibly triggered by selective meat price increases. In fact, however, the collapse more accurately reflected the degree of political and social bankruptcy of the Party and state in Poland. The repercussions of the strikes have been devastating for the Party and its old leadership. Yet, in spite of the turmoil within the Party and its old leadership, as well as the search for alternatives which is now going on, Poland is still at a state where 'radical change in the political system is seen by the population as both absolutely necessary and completely impossible.' The problems and paralysis in Poland are far more acute than elsewhere in the Soviet bloc, but all these countries have similar problems. None of the bloc nations has entered the 1980s free from the specter of real economic crisis. Poland's is the first and most severe case but will certainly not be the last. (author)