Suchergebnisse

The author disputes Leder's idea in Prześniona rewolucja. Ćwiczenie z logiki historycznej [A Missed Revolution: Exercise in Historical Logic] (2014) that a great revolution, eliminating the "late feudalism" of the 19th century, occurred in Poland in the years 1939–1956 and that it happened because of the war's destruction of the old social structures and the Nazi genocide of the Jewish population, that is, the bourgeois class, which was replaced in the years 1945–1956 by unconscious beneficiaries of the change. The beneficiaries were unaware, he writes, because the essence of the changes and their benefits never entered the social imaginary. The core of the author's polemic is the claim that such change, which was conducted by force and by foreigners, can not be called a "revolution," that is, the passage of society to modernity. Furthermore, the author claims that the great Polish revolution was conducted in full by the nation, by the peasant classes, in the years 1914–1922, and was popular and independence-oriented in nature. It was the continuation of the Polish independence uprisings of the 19th century, the result of changes in the social structure that had been occurring for years in the Polish lands, which were at the time divided between the partitioning states, and of deepening self-awareness among the people. The revolution was continued after Poland's acquisition of independence in 1918. The Second World War, and foreign intervention, only disrupted that process.

The author advances a thesis about the folk pedigree of the modern Polish nation. He sees the present shape of the nation in the history of Polish nationalism and proves that the long period after the nation's loss of independence favored the nation's image of itself as an nation "eternally faithful" to the Church, with a common religion, language, and customs. He emphasizes that the struggle for Polishness based on such a view of the nation was folk-oriented, egalitarian, and democratic, and that after the acquisition of statehood the country's borders were decided by the Greater Poland and Silesian uprisings, which were popular in nature, and by the defeat of the Soviet offensive [sic!] in 1920, thanks to the engagement of the common people. In restored Poland, peasant groupings undertook many political initiatives; a government was formed and announced a revolutionary program for a democratic state. The parliamentary act on agricultural reform, the Constitution of March 1921, and elections according to the new constitution showed that the people's and workers' parties had acquired significant power. Thanks to this activeness, the new Polish nation had a peasant face. The author connects his thesis about the folk pedigree of the Polish nation with the present as well. He gives examples of cultural continuity and of the contributions made by classes of the common people. He views the forming middle class as a post-peasant level, unequipped with mature cultural capital but balancing between folk — mainly peasant — culture and mass culture.