Przynależność do PZPR wśród zatrudnionych w przemyśle polskim w latach 1949–1956

• Authors: Jędrzej Chumiński

Title variants

EN

THE POLISH UNITED WORKERS’ PARTY – ITS MEMBERSHIP OF THE POLISH INDUSTRY IN 1949–1956

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The first half of the 1950s in Poland coincided with a culmination of the Stalinist system. The crucial issue concerned the social basis of the antidemocratic and at that particular time outright criminal system. The structures of the prevailing system involved hundreds of thousands of persons, both members of the social elite and those on the lower rungs of the social ladder. The state of our knowledge about the motives of the conduct of the first group is relatively considerable, but almost nothing is known about the reasons for the participation of the so-called rank-and-file members of society in the structures of the totalitarian state. The establishment of their motives calls for examining such questions as the level of education, social origin, pre-war professional experience, as well as the age, gender and family situation structure. The article analysed the social and demographic features of the members of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP): workers and administration-technical employees working in 1949–1956. The sources are composed of files pertaining to 1472 workers in four factories (in Krakow and Warsaw). The conducted analysis demonstrated that the persons in question had an inferior education, originated mainly from the villages, and had little professional experience. At the same time, it must be emphasized that this was by no means a homogeneous group. The most elitist part consisted of members of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), who found themselves in the PUWP after a merge of the two parties. They differed from the other PUWP members due to a better education, the fact that a smaller percentage came from the villages, and their professional experience; they were also older and enjoyed a more stable family situation. In their case PUWP membership was not an ideological choice but merely a way of surviving Stalinist reality. By way of contrast, it appears that the chief reason why members of the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) joined the communist party was their limited cognitive perspective and authoritarian submission. In turn, the dominating motives of those persons who joined the PUWP in 1949–1956 were of a purely utilitarian character. On the other hand, it is difficult to indicate a statistically essential group of PUWP members due to their identification with the goals and methods of the communist authorities of the period.

Keywords

EN

INDUSTRY; PARTY; FACTORY

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla PAN w Warszawie
• Journal: Roczniki Dziejów Społecznych i Gospodarczych
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 69
• Pages: 111-145

Contributors

author

Jędrzej Chumiński

• Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny we Wrocławiu