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ZMS Policy toward March 1968

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Sadowska J.

Studia Polityczne (Political Studies)

2007

issue 19

273-310

In March 1968, students protested against the authorities' policies toward culture, science and education. The action initiated in Warsaw embraced almost all the academic centers and some smaller cities, going beyond the student milieu. The 'Zwiazek Mlodziezy Socjalistycznej', ZMS, (Union of Socialist Youth) was surprised by its outbreak, although the ferment had grown before its very eyes and within the framework of its structure. The attitudes of the Union's members towards the events of March were very diverse. Generally, the activists stood behind the authorities; the ordinary members, however, distanced themselves from the dispute or from identifying with the students who lent their support in various forms to the independent movement. In official pronouncements, the union condemned the protest actions, which organized groups of members attempted to hinder. The official youth-oriented press joined in the anti-Semitic propaganda. The fact that ZMS turned its back on the students finally compromised it in their eyes and many people resigned their membership. Also disappointed was the ruling of the Polish United Workers Party, which realized that the Union had no real influence on the younger generation. The March 1968 events thus both demonstrated ZMS' weakness and further compounded it, which led, in the course of a few years, to changes within the youth movement in Poland.

UNPUBLISHED POLLS - A SKETCH TO A PORTRAIT OF YOUNG PEOPLE AT THE END OF THE GOMULKA ERA

100%

Sadowska J.

Dzieje Najnowsze

2007

issue 3

111-120

In 1970 a team under Albin Klementowski conducted polls among secondary school students - members of the Union of Socialist Youth (ZMS - a mass-scale organisation in 1957-1976, closely associated with the Polish United Workers' Party). The posed questions concerned socio-political stands, values, interests, life targets, and visions of the future. Apparently, the majority of the respondents expressed a positive evaluation of Polish reality and optimistically faced the future. They accepted the socialist system, the only one that they had experienced, although they noticed some of its faults such as bureaucracy. They were or at least wished to be perceived as patriots, social activists and idealists, whose important goals included obtaining an education, social usefulness, and personal happiness, and who attached much less importance to money or popularity. Although they belonged to a political organisation, they were little interested in politics, in contrast to sport, music and the cinema; they were fascinated with Western culture with which they wanted to have greater contact. The majority of the responses in the anonymous survey were sincere. We are entitled to conclude that the examined activists did not differ from most of their peers, and that their attitude was rather typical for the young generation of the period. The characteristic feature of their behaviour had to be more determined only as regards political issues - as ZMS members they could not assess reality in critical terms.

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1 Dzieje Najnowsze

1 Studia Polityczne (Political Studies)

2 Sadowska J.

2 2007

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ZMS Policy toward March 1968

UNPUBLISHED POLLS - A SKETCH TO A PORTRAIT OF YOUNG PEOPLE AT THE END OF THE GOMULKA ERA