Post-war Poland Research Articles

Performing memory – workers' strikes in post-war Poland

Performing memory – workers' strikes in post-war Poland

Nusekh Poyln and the ‘New Jewish Man’. The Image of the Jewish Communist in Yiddish Literature of Post-War Poland

Nusekh Poyln and the ‘New Jewish Man’. The image of the Jewish communist in Yiddish literature of post-war Poland

Jak usprawnić pracę w biurze? Jana Kościołka sposoby na racjonalizację pracy biurowej

Jan Kościolek was a trained lawyer, a clerk of mid-war and post-war Poland, author of many publications. Almost all of them had one objective: to make works of offices more effective. The main aim of the article is to describe his literary output and methods of dealing with records more efficiently, that are presented there. The first part of the article lists 34 publications of Kościolek in a matter of chronology and their subject. He published manuals describing all aspects of institutions functioning (from social problems of working in an office to specific office tasks), as well as articles and books about specific subjects, like controls on district levels or creating manipulative prints and forms. He also published reports on foreign literature and commentaries to regulations of that time. The second part of the article is a synthesis of topic that, according to Kościolek, were supposed to expedite office work, e.g. system of employees suggestions, a special organisational units dedicated to control of creating and storage of records, diagnosing problems in office work (with several methods of analysis), using forms, questions of office space and its equipment, the role of the management staff, working according to an agreed agenda, and systematic controls. The article also describes some of Kościolek’s suggestions about, among others, circulation and storage of records, elements of correspondence, methods of classifying records, office systems.

Przedwojnie i powojnie – podzielony świat w wizji modernizacji powojennej prasy codziennej (Łódź 1945–1948)

Pierwsze lata powojenne to moment konstruowania świata na nowo. Moment umożliwiający redefinicję – nadanie znaczenia starym słowom. Przyglądając się wydawanej w Łodzi powojennej prasie codziennej, można stwierdzić, że jedną z zauważalnych cech dyskursu jest jego organizacja wokół dwóch przeciwstawnych kategorii: tego, co było przed wojną – czyli „Polski przedwrześniowej”, oraz chwili obecnej i projektowanej przyszłości, czyli tego, co nastąpiło po II wojnie światowej. Na przykładzie czterech dzienników publikowanych w latach 1945–1949 śledzę binaryzującą logikę kształtującego się dyskursu socjalistycznego. Rekonstruuję, jak definiowany był powojenny świat, w tym rola robotniczego miasta w odradzającej się Polsce. Jaki punkt odniesienia dla modernizacyjnych wizji przywoływała prasa? Jakie były płaszczyzny nadchodzącej zmiany? Czy warto było wrócić do poprzedniej rzeczywistości społecznej II Rzeczpospolitej lub odtworzyć jej elementy? W poniższej analizie proponuję także spojrzeć na powojenną prasę w nieco innym niż zazwyczaj świetle. Po pierwsze, dystansuję się wobec ujmowania powojennego języka prasy jako nowomowy. Po drugie, podkreślam nie tyle znaczenie politycznej mobilizacji przypisywanej powojennej prasie, ile politycznego wyciszenia i budowy jak najszerszej koalicji dla rekonstrukcji kraju pod przewodnictwem nowego rządu. Z tej perspektywy binaryzująca logika dyskursu staje się uniwersalną charakterystyką języka próbującego narzucić swoją hegemoniczną wizję świata, a jej celem jest nie tyle aktywizacja, ile inkluzja.

Love of Wide Open Waters. The Polish Maritime Programme according to the Baltic and Western Institutes in the Aftermath of the Second World War (1945–ca. 1950)

This article analyses the Polish maritime programme after the Second World War, as expressed in scholarship of two main Polish research institutions: the Baltic Institute and the Western Institute. Given the considerable border changes at the end of the war, which incorporated a long coastline and three major ports on the Baltic Sea (Danzig/Gdańsk, Stettin/Szczecin and Gdynia) into post-war Poland, the maritime programmes gained a new basis for operations in comparison to the interwar period, and thus had to be adapted accordingly. They contained both continuities and modifications: in ideological terms they were based on the prewar premises of Poland’s origins as a Baltic Sea country, and had a strong anti-German dimension. On the other hand, they were more pragmatic and concentrated on the organization of the maritime economy and education. Similarly as in the interwar period, they were also seen as a modernizing project: the maritime economy and education were supposed to connect the Polish nation with the whole world, and thus assure its equal status as part of the Western world.

Gender and class: female workers, female resistance and female history in the communist system in Poland

ABSTRACTThis essay shows the effect of the systemic transformation on the role and place of women in society in post-war Poland. Relations between the socialist state and women were dynamic and changed over time. In the first post-war period, many women hoped that the new political order would improve their lives. The industrialization of the country led to the professional activation of women and changed their places of residence, social positions and lifestyles. However, the more the ideology of social justice proclaimed by the state differed from everyday experience, the more often the attitudes of women, as well as the rest of society, shifted from support to criticism. In the 1980s, a large part of the opposition and the Solidarity movement was composed of women, but there were also patriarchal relationships in those structures.Abbreviations:SDKP – Socjaldemokracja Królestwa Polskiego [Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland party]PPS – Polska Partia Socjalistyczna [Polish Socialist Party]PPR – Polska Partia Robotnicza [Polish Workers’ Party]

Literatura obozowa. Wstęp

The article contains terminological considerations concerning the term ‘camp literature’. In Polish literary studies it is most often referred to literature dealing with German Nazi camps, in particular concentration camps and death camps, and, less frequently, Soviet camps, especially forced labor camps. However, this definition turns out to be too narrow. It should also include the lesser-known works of Polish literature concerning, among others, the Polish internment camp (concentration camp) in Bereza Kartuska, communist labor camps set up in postwar Poland and the Spanish (Francoist) concentration camp in Miranda de Ebro. The term ‘camp literature’ could also include works on internment camps, prisoner camps, and even ghettos. The camp literaturę (not only Polish writings) requires, what is very important, a comparative approach.

Krótki kurs historii „kobiet”. Kobiety w języku partii komunistycznej w Polsce 1945–1989

Artykul zwraca uwage na dyskurs na temat kobiet formulowany przez partie komunistyczną w powojennej Polsce. Podstawą wyodrebnienia i rozumienia bardzo istotnej dla PPR/PZPR kategorii „kobiety” byly zarowno przeslanki ideologiczne, jak i tradycyjnie rozumiane roznice plci. Kobiecośc nie zostala odrzucona, lecz przedefiniowana. Dyskurs o kobietach zasadzal sie na tezie, ze rownouprawnienie i rownośc nie są sprzeczne z tradycyjnie rozumianą kobiecością. Partia starala sie go wykorzystywac do mobilizacji kobiet do „budowy socjalizmu”. Short course on the history of “women”. Women in the vocabulary of the communist party in Poland 1945–1989 The purpose of the article is to analyse the discourse formulated by the communist party in postwar Poland (1944–1989) on the category of “woman”. The author attempts to answer the question about what was understood by this category, what traits were attributed to women, in what way their social roles were perceived and what roles were postulated for them. Women in the understanding of the party and its activists made a separate group with its own identity. The way in which this category of “women” was constructed was based on the party’s ideology, but also on quite traditional concepts of gender, which resulted in certain contradictions: on the one hand the fight against stereotypes of women and their roles was proclaimed, while on the other some of them were shaped and strengthened. This was to serve political purposes: to mobilise women to “build socialism” in areas seen as “feminine” (for instance health and social care, household management, etc.). Conclusions drawn from the analysis lead us to a different thesis than the one formulated by Eva Fodor for Hungary; she claims that the “female subject/communist personality” was subordinate to that of male. In Poland the discourse of the communist party sought to incorporate values and roles it saw as female into the construction of a socialist society, without suggesting the inferiority of women.

When Politics Tipped the Scales: Locating Polish Documentary Films from the 1940s

This article introduces the reader to the 1940s history of the documentary film in post-war Poland when the tense relationship between the Communist government and the small community of documentarians determined the contents of factual cinema. The author argues that the formal and thematic choices made by the 1940s filmmakers fuelled the future growth of the Polish School of Documentary. Despite repressive censorship and close political scrutiny, the 1940s directors produced numerous subjective film visions of the social reality around them. Some worked in line with the political propaganda; others capitalised on the available margins of creative freedom; however, small the latter might appear from today’s perspective. Not only do these films testify to an unprecedented early proliferation of authorial creativity among Polish documentary film-makers, but they also form social and political chronicles of their time, a potentially valuable material for the history of everyday life under Communism. As micro-historical film records, they can complement the conventional macro-historical approaches, which with only some exceptions, tend to dominate the Western studies of the world once hidden behind the Iron Curtain.

From Promising Agent to Suspicious Francophile

This paper examines how the Polish communist intelligence service attempted to recruit professor Stefan Węgrzyn, who was a prominent specialist on automatic control and computer science in post-war Poland. Eventually, Węgrzyn’s refusal to cooperate with the Polish spy agency, together with his profound relationship with French scientist and servomechanism expert Jean Charles Gille, made them both targets of surveillance orchestrated by the communist security apparatus.In the broader context of human-intelligence studies, this case study involves the problem of moral ambiguity. We experience informative examples of scientists, who often – not only during the Cold War – have had to choose between commitment to the rules of the academic world, along with its openness and transparency on the one hand, and patriotism including an ethos of secrecy for the sake of the homeland’s prosperity, on the other hand.

Pamiętnik Heleny Wróblewskiej, mieszkanki Ziem Zachodnich

Pamiętnik nauczycielki Heleny Wróblewskiej, która przyjechała na Pomorze Zachodnie z Kresów Wschodnich II RP. W powojennej Polsce zdobyła wykształcenie, wykonując najpierw prace biurowe, a następnie spełniając swoje marzenie – po uzupełnieniu wykształcenia, rozpoczęła pracę w zawodzie nauczycielki. Jej losy to ilustracja awansu społecznego, stopniowej i konsekwentnej pracy kobiety, która spisała swoje wspomnienia z perspektywy osoby o stabilnej sytuacji zawodowej i materialnej, i to mimo rozpadu jej małżeństwa. Autorka opisuje swój udział w odbudowie kraju z wojennych zniszczeń, a także w rozwoju szkolnictwa i opieki nad młodzieżą.

“In Order to Adapt the Consumption...”. The Creation of a Rationing System for Petrol in the Polish People’s Republic in the 1980s

Abstract In post-war Poland, rationing was introduced on three occasions: right after the war in 1945, then in 1951, and at the turn of the 1980s. In 1976, rationing cards for sugar were introduced, in 1981 - for meat, fats, cereal products, cleaning products and many other goods. Fuels were the last product added to this list. This article describes the process of introducing a rationing system for petrol in the Polish People’s Republic. Though the supply system crashed as early as 1981, it took several years to organize a rationing system for petrol. Its evolution did not end until 1984. This delay was caused by the long discussions on how the system should be built. This forced the authorities to introduce a whole range of temporary solutions which limited the demand in the short run, but had no soothing effect whatsoever on the society. To the contrary - the chaos they created intensified negative tendencies (such as speculation), led to market insecurity, and increased mistrust of state regulations.

Rachunkowość społeczna w świetle badań polskich autorów

Rachunkowość społeczna w świetle badań polskich autorów The aim of the article is to present the essence and prerequisites of social accounting in the light of Polish authors' research. Initially, social accounting developed as a statistical-economic discipline used to capture economic processes on a macroeconomic scale. Social accounting in the micro scale became popular in the late 1970s with the increasing importance of corporate social responsibility. Therefore, the author decided to separate considerations on the essence and development of social accounting in macro- and microeconomic contexts in the article. The analysis shows that studies on the development of social accounting on the macroeconomic scale were conducted in post-war Poland by Peche and Kowalczyk. Accounting of social responsibility (also referred to as social accounting) in micro terms has been discussed since the 1980s. The first publications concerning this issue include works by Jaglińska, Wołkowski, Jarugowa, and Burzymowa. In recent years, the number of publications in this field has significantly increased with the growing interest in corporate social responsibility and the role it has to fulfill in this dimension. As a research method, a review and analysis of the contents of the deliberations and opinions of the authors of selected items from the national literature of the subject have been used. The article points out that the consideration of social accounting, both in macro and micro terms, is not an innovative concept and has been running since the 1980s.

The Shoah in Poland in the Work of Jiří Weil: Translations and Literary Reference*

Jiří Weil (1900–1959) is currently associated in particular with novel-writing. His works Moskva- -hranice (Moscow to the Border), Život s hvězdou (Life with a Star) and Na střeše je Mendelssohn (Mendelssohn is on the Roof) has been translated into several world languages. Jiří Weil was also a journalist, a researcher at the Jewish Museum in Prague and a translator. This study The Shoah in Poland in the work of Jiří Weil focuses on his translations of Polish poets and his literary work dealing with the Shoah and set in postwar Poland, Warsaw, Łódź and Auschwitz.

War, Dialogue, and Overcoming the Past

Research Article| August 01 2017 War, Dialogue, and Overcoming the Past: The Second World War Museum in Gdańsk, Poland Anna Muller, Anna Muller Anna Muller is assistant professor of history at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. From 2010 to 2013, she worked a curator at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, Poland. Her book on the life of women in prison cells in postwar Poland, titled If the Walls Could Speak, will appear in October 2017 with Oxford University Press. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Daniel Logemann Daniel Logemann Daniel Logemann studied East European history, Polish literature, and southeast Europe studies in Jena, Lublin, and Cracow from 2000 to 2007. For his dissertation on day-to-day contacts between Germans and Poles in Leipzig between 1972 and 1989 he received the 2010 Academic Promotional Prize of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland. From 2010 to 2015 he worked as a research assistant and curator at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk, Poland. Since February 2015 he has been managing director at the Europäisches Kolleg Jena, Germany. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar The Public Historian (2017) 39 (3): 85–95. https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2017.39.3.85 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Anna Muller, Daniel Logemann; War, Dialogue, and Overcoming the Past: The Second World War Museum in Gdańsk, Poland. The Public Historian 1 August 2017; 39 (3): 85–95. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2017.39.3.85 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentThe Public Historian Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2017 by The Regents of the University of California and the National Council on Public History2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Wpływ adeptów przedwojennej lwowskiej edukacji prawniczej na orzekanie Wojskowego Sądu Rejonowego w Opolu w latach 1950–1954 na przykładzie pierwszego szefa WSR w Opolu mjr. Edwarda Kotkowskiego i sprawy szewca Bolibrzucha z Moszczanki

The influence of students of pre-war Lviv legal education on adjudicating by the Provincial District Court in Opole in the years 1950–1954 offers, in the author’s opinion, an important research issue. Especially in a case such as the one mentioned in title of the article, when the accused was a pre-war Polish citizen, a resident of the eastern borderlands of the Second Republic. It seems that the case is very instructive. It shows a pre-war graduate in law from the University of Lviv, who gradually passes onto the side of the communistic state and a simple man who knows the truth about the Soviet Union. Others are also described as officers of the security organs, mostly inept, but still exerting a tremendous pressure on society to consolidate communists’ power in postwar Poland. A railwayman of the Borderlands can be a summary of the summary – you should stick to the truth and not give in to strong pressure of the evil.

Książki z serii „Biblioteka Młodych Miczurinowców” jako przykład łączenia popularyzacji wiedzy i ideologizacji młodego pokolenia w latach 50. XX wieku

BOOKS FROM THE “BIBLIOTEKA MŁODYCH MICZURINOWCÓW” SERIES AS AN EXAMPLE OF HOW POPULARISATION OF KNOWLEDGE WAS COMBINED WITH IDEOLOGISATION OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN THE 1950SIn the article the author discusses the Biblioteka Młodych Miczurinowców Young Michurinist Library — a series of popular science books about nature for children and young people published in post-war Poland in 1953–1956. She explores the specificity of the books from the series, which — in addition to information about plants, animals and their amateur husbandry — also provided their readers with elements of the communist ideology. They were to disseminate the idea of Michurinism launched by the famous Soviet biologist and experimenter Ivan Michurin. School gardens and farms were used to teach pupils how to cultivate crops and use generally available plants to the maximum, and how to enrich their diet with farm animals that were easy to manage. The simple, largely fictionalised stories about nature, featuring a basic end matter, were to help teachers develop children’s and young people’s socialist worldview, and teach the contents recommended by the ministry.

Miejsce samorządu lokalnego w systemie administracji terenowej w Polsce po 1945 roku. Zarys

In post–war Poland, there was a specific system of administration in which the structures of the general authority with its representative bodies and the fragmented, temporary, territorial self–government co-existed. The nature of the introduced system became particularly visible after 1950, alongside the strengthening of the ruling body and the realisation of the vision of the “unification of state power” in the field. In essence, local self–government was liquidated. This solution, as it was envisaged, was intended to guarantee the widespread democratisation of public life and the transparency of state governance. In practice, the non–democratic system of local administration ensured, amongst other things, a means of conducting the elections, limited the possibilities for decision–making by local councilors on matters relating to their districts and a lack of financial autonomy of the administration, which was the essence of self–government. The political and administrative supervision of local government bodies operating in the area of national councils was subordinated in an unnatural way to the ruling party. At the same time, the diffusion of the com�petences and activities of the general administration and national councils was not an isolated phenomenon, in practice causing the actions of individual members of the administration to be unclear, slow and ineffective.

Koszty utrzymania partii komunistycznej w województwie bialskopodlaskim (1975-1989)

The following study includes financial costs that the Polish nation had to bear after World War II, when the communist party established itself by the Polish authority. The article does not only present the way significant resources were allocated to the Polish United Workers’ Party’s activity, but, additionally, illustrates the role it played in the post-war Poland. Money for the party's budget came from membership fees, however, it was enough to merely meet PUWP’s basic bureaucratic expenses. In fact, the financing was provided mainly from the state budget in a form of subsidies and subventions that covered the party’s operation. Among others the resources included the National Bank of Poland's remitted loans, hundred per cent reliefs in social security fees from communist employees’ salaries, free-of-charge compulsory military service or so-called subbotniks. These were substantial sums of money considering the magnitude and omnipresence of the PUWP in the country. The article aims to reveal the communist party’s sources of funding based on the apparatus operating within the Biala Podlaska Voivodeship and attempts to estimate its total maintenance costs incurred by the Polish in the aforementioned period.

Edukacja domowa w Polsce – pedagogiczne inspiracje współczesnych edukatorów domowych

Homeschooling in postwar Poland celebrates its 25th anniversary. Its reactivation after years of absence was made possible by the Education Act from 1991. Despite the creation of the legal regulations it did not mean true beginning of home education. The first families of home educators started to selfstudy their children in 1995. At the turn of the 20th century there were only several dozens children being homeschooled, while now there are more than 6.000. The increase in number of home educators has also caused growing diversity of this environment. All of home educators share a common goal – to provide the best education for their children. Home educators also indicate that their views on education have long-standing traditions and approval of many pedagogues. This article is an attempt to disclose the pedagogic inspiration of modern home educators who refer to ideas of J. Dewey and A. Neill. They stress that the school teaches content which is detatched from the real needs, and does not take into account individual abilities of students and their preferred learning styles. Some of them – the followers of unschooling – quote I. Illich and emphasize that the child who is curious by nature wants to learn itself. Children take into account their abilities and interests and for that school is not necessary. They also refer to the concept of E. Key concerning family and the role of women in education, including the traditional model of the family with social roles strictly assigned to men and women.