Suchergebnisse

Abstract
The aim of this article is to investigate the concept of minority up to the temporary stabilization of its meaning in Polish concluded in the adoption of the March constitution of 1921. The history of the concept of national minority bore an imprint on the accommodation to the new political, territorial, and discursive circumstances after transition from empire to nation-state. The idea itself was well anchored in the liberal tradition, but the nationalist right also took it on board to protect the cultural hegemony of the Poles in the areas where they were a minority. Tackling the nexus of the emerging nation-state and the ensuing logic of minoritization sheds light on tiered visions of citizenship essential for understanding the 1921 debate. For this purpose, I use various available sub-corpora of texts—political leaflets, press, and parliamentary debates from the period 1788–1922.

SUMMARY: This article studies the process of drafting the Polish constitution adopted in 1921 in respect to the management of ethnocultural diversity in a highly heterogeneous and politically divided postimperial polity. Central to the study are the processes of the diffusion of constitutional ideas and the accommodation of political pressure from outside the country by domestic legislation. This process involved not only the adaptation of foreign influences but also their manipulation in the interests of the prevailing political model of the Polish nation-state. Further problematizing the process of accommodating minorities was the task of integrating the three former Polish partitions, each bearing the legacy of its host imperial regime, into a single polity with universal legislation. What was seen as a possible solution in one part of the country was fraught with unintended and undesirable consequences if applied in other parts. Резюме: В статье исследуется разработка принятой в 1921 г. польской конституции, а конкретнее решение проблемы управления этнокультурным разнообразием в крайне неоднородном и политически разделенном постимперском государстве. Центральное место в исследовании занимают процессы международной диффузии конституционных идей и реакция законодательства страны на внешнеполитическое давление. Эти процессы проявлялись не только в адаптации иностранных влияний, но и в манипулировании ими в интересах преобладающей политической модели польского национального государства. Дополнительным фактором, препятствующим эффективной защите интересов национальных меньшинств, была задача интеграции в единое государство с универсальным законодательством трех частей недавно еще разделенной Польши, каждая с собственным имперским наследием. То, что рассматривалось в качестве возможного решения в одной части страны, было чревато непредвиденными и нежелательными последствиями в случае применения в других частях.

AbstractThis article investigates the ethnic entanglements of the land reform debate in the first Polish Diet (1919–1922). Against the backdrop of global comparative studies, interwar Poland, haunted by land hunger, rural poverty, and high concentration of land ownership, is an odd case. Despite conditions conducive to far-reaching land reforms, that is, a high level of inter-elite conflict and semiautocratic order, the Polish reform was very moderate, if not disappointing. Unpacking the series of moves in the debate and the sequence of hairbreadth voting on its shape, I ask why, despite broad acceptance of the reform across the political spectrum, it could not attract enough support to be swiftly executed. The ethnic composition of the country triggered controversies concerning German farmers and peasants of the ethnically diversified eastern borderlands. Major political parties shared tacit Polish nationalism, but the history of political alignments made the nationalist politicians susceptible to the lobbying of the landed elite and estranged them from peasant parties. The land holdings of nobles were considered a bulwark of the nation, which effectively blocked the alternative idea of integrating the ethnic minorities via land ownership.

AbstractThis article investigates the internal impact of the Minority Treaty of Versailles, regulating minority rights and protection in the emerging interwar Polish state. The parliamentary debate on the Treaty was a critical juncture structuring the political sphere and arguably fostered the birth of 'ethnic democracy' in Poland. Performing a sequential analysis of the debate, I study the reconfiguration of political positions which locked the actors into their strategic entrenchments. Unexpectedly, the nationalist right defended the treaty because of their involvement in the Versailles negotiations. The left tried to delegitimize the treaty and simultaneously tip the scales of the domestic politics in favour of the minorities. This shifted the levers of implicit assumptions about the political community and effectively blocked the political efficacy of the treaty on the domestic level. Such refraction effects must be considered when one is studying convergence, diffusion and the role of international agreements and pressures.

The politics of concepts. Polish National Democrats and the concept of politics in early 20th century The article undertakes a conceptual analysis of the concept of politics in political writings of Polish National Democracy in the turn of 19th and 20th century. I argue, that due democratization and modernization, it was a time of conceptual change and emergence of modern social and political concepts in Polish. Drawing from conceptual history and rhetorical analysis of topoi, used to express the concept of politics, I investigate National Democratic invention in conceptual rendition of politics. The two major kinds of topoi are: temporal (politics as action); and spatial (politics as sphere). An investigation into their mutual relationshi passists understanding of a major change in National Democratic political thought and practice in that heated period. The gradual prevalence of spatial conceptualization and accompanying depoliticization of political enemies was an important factor in the process of sliding into authoritarian, antidemocratic and elitist understanding of politics among National Democrats in the forthcoming years.

AbstractThis article examines the impact of internal and external pressures on the parliamentary debate concerning the place of the working class within a newly emerging polity. Based on machine-assisted distant reading and close hermeneutics of parliamentary session transcripts, I ask how the first diet of the modern Polish state (1919–1922) responded to labour militancy and war. My analysis demonstrates that social unrest was successfully used by the left to foster inclusion of the popular classes in a political, social, and economic sense, contributing to the democratization of the state. In contrast, the external threat of war had an opposite effect. Although it justified the left advocating greater inclusion of workers and peasants because of their high death toll on the battlefields, it was actually the right that capitalized on national unity and readily used arguments about the Bolshevik threat or traitors among the landless masses to block or even reverse reforms aimed at democratization. The external threat of war, waged against a nominally leftist political force, helped the weak state to reduce the high impact of labour unrest on parliamentary proceedings.

The 1905 Revolution was often considered by workers writing memoirs as the most important event in their lives. This paper examines biographical reminiscences of the political participation of working-class militants in the 1905 Revolution. I scrutinize four tropes used by working-class writers to describe their life stories narrated around their political identity. These are: (1) overcoming misery and destitution, (2) autodidacticism, (3) political initiation, and (4) feeling of belonging to the community of equals. All four demonstrate that the militant self cannot be understood in separation from the life context of the mobilized workers. Participation in party politics was an important factor modifying the life course of workers in the direction resonating with their aspirations and longings. The argument is informed by analysis of over a hundred of biographical testimonies written by militants from various political parties in different political circumstances.

AbstractThe article seeks to fill a lacuna in Marxist scholarship concerning the actually-existing Marxism of politically-mobilised workers as an organic philosophy in its own right. To shed light on this issue, I investigate the reading-material which stimulated Marxist conversion and the accompanying intellectual invigoration of workers at the turn of the twentieth century in Russian Poland. For proletarian readers Marxism was the main political language, ushering them into the public sphere and allowing them to comprehend the emerging capitalist world. As a particular liaison of scientific knowledge and a practical political weapon, it allowed its adherents to redefine themselves and make political claims. Such a situational Marxism, drawing from but not reducible to the prevailing 'orthodoxy', allows one to see the latter as a socially diverse plethora of ideas.