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PL
Due to historical reasons, the process of acquiring national identity by the peasants began relatively late. This process, for various reasons, was based on three models of education: formal, informal and non-formal. Schools emerging in the Polish territories were usually associated with the activities of the partitioner, moreover, it often met with distrust of a village quite closed in this respect. The People’s Movement complemented this formal education with performative activities, such as celebrating national holidays, which would give illiterate peasants the opportunity to participate in the acquisition of national identity. Another important part of this process was spontaneous non-formal education, i.e., peasant activity expressed in the acquisition of reading skills, which became the basis for building a national identity. In my text I discuss the process of acquiring national identity by peasants on the example of three models of education: formal, informal and non-formal.
EN
The king’s two bodies and political nation. Formation of peasants’ identity in the nation-building contextIn the 16th century, the political system based on the grangeserfdom economy and early modern elective monarchy was formed in Poland. One of the consequences of this process was an expulsion of the peasants outside of the society. The other one led to the formation of a political nation (a Pole) defined by his attitude towards king, freedom and noble democracy. Therefore, the peasants had no right to be a part of so understood “Polish” nation. The process of peasants inclusion into the tissue of the nation did not start until the late 19th century. In my article, I examine how the Polish nation developed in the context of the political theory of the king’s two bodies (Ernest Kantorowicz). Furthermore, I analyze the peasants’ attitude to the issue of a nation in the context of social changes of that period. Dwa ciała króla i naród polityczny. Kształtowanie się tożsamości chłopskiej w kontekście procesów narodowotwórczychW XVI wieku w Polsce ukształtował się system polityczny gospodarki opartej na pańszczyźnie oraz nowożytna monarchia elekcyjna. Pierwszy proces doprowadził do wyrzucenia poza margines społeczny warstwy chłopskiej. Drugi do wytworzenia się narodu politycznego (Polaka), definiowanego przez jego stosunek do króla, wolności i szlacheckiej demokracji. Chłopi nie mieli więc prawa być częścią tak rozumianego narodu „polskiego”. Proces włączenia się chłopów w tkankę narodu rozpoczął się tak naprawdę dopiero pod koniec XIX wieku. W swoim tekście badam, jak kształtowało się pojęcie narodu polskiego w kontekście teorii politycznej dwóch ciał króla (Ernest Kantorowicz). Ponadto analizuję stosunek chłopów do kwestii narodowej na tle ogólnych społecznych zmian.
EN
The migrations of peasants to Polish towns, which are considered inside migrations, in the pre-industrial era were intensive and similar to the ones in the countries of Western Europe. The sources prove the existence of permanent multi-generational migration networks that ensured a better start of a new life in towns for peasants, and an input of reliable workforce for towns. The migration processes slowed down in the 18th century, which was the result of the intensification of secondary serfdom, closing of villages, an economic decline of Polish towns at the expense of the gentry and an overall economic depression. All that is clearly visible in Cracow, where all the municipal registers and a significant part of birth and death certificates have survived. It turns out that towns influenced the increase of peasant territorial and spatial mobility, generated an increase of peasants’ enterprise, helped them to differentiate towards activities not related to agriculture, and weakened the feudal relations.
EN
The reviewed book of Janusz Łosowski attempts to investigate the importance of written documentation in the life of peasants in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th–18th centuries, especially in the lands of the Polish Crown, basing mostly on the sources concerning Lesser Poland (Małopolska). The study of Łosowski has been based upon extensive and thorough archive query, including very interesting groups of sources (some of them excerpted in the annexes). It attempts to deepen the knowledge of early modern legal culture and mentality of peasant societies.
EN
Piotr Świtkowski, both a priest and an editor connected with physiocratic ideas, became famous thanks to publishing “Pamiętnik Historyczno-Polityczny” (PHP). On the pages of the magazine, he focused a lot on the issues of the situation of peasants in the Republic of Poland at the end of the 18th century. It did not mean though that he was as radical as historians inspired by Marxism wanted these days. The key to interpretation of the texts related to peasants published in the magazines is the doctrine of physiocracy and an attempt to adapt it to Polish conditions. It was supported not only by the texts that were probably written by Świtkowski, but also by the reprints of the magazines or foreign books. ”PHP’’ analyzed the condition of Polish peasants and discussed many examples or new solutions that came from other countries. Moreover, the initiatives of enlightened Polish reformers were thoroughly discussed. Finally, the living conditions of peasants and their housekeeping preferences were also discussed.
EN
The starting point of this article is an attempt to answer the following question: why did some peasants in Cieszyn Silesia choose to convert to Catholicism during the Counter-Reformation (1654–1781), while others remained Protestant? This article analyzes the denominational choices of one ordinary peasant family living in Cieszyn Silesia at the time – the Suchanek family, who resided in the village of Brzezówka (now in the Cieszyn district), belonged to the Teschener Kammer (Komora Cieszyńska, Těšínská komora), a princely state owned by the Habsburg family. Contrary to claims made in existing literature, there is no evidence linking an individual’s affluence to their choice of denomination. The decisive factor was in fact the individual’s wife’s denomination – to put it in simple terms, some put emphasis on which church to go to, while others put emphasis on who they go to church with.
XX
The article aims at presenting and analysing peasants’ experiences of the agricultural reform conducted in Poland by a decree issued by Polish Committee of National Liberation on the 6th of September 1944. The article is mostly based on the peasants’ personal sources: materials from diary competitions (including the original ones that have not been used before in studies on the agricultural reform) memories, interviews, letters. As an aid, official documents and memories by land gentry have also been used. Three dimensions of peasants’ experiences of the agricultural reform have been differentiated for the needs of the article. The first one is made by emotions and attitudes in the time of the reform implementation; the second one includes personal feelings connected with the reform, including long-term influences on biographies; the third one represents evaluations, thoughts, and memories of the reform from a time perspective. The analysis shows a significant diversification of peasants’ experiences, which depends on numerous factors: usually on social status, political involvement, being a beneficiary of the reform or not. However, some elements that undoubtedly are common may be identified: mostly a generally positive attitude towards parcellation of the gentry’s land. Some other common experiences include mixed feelings of insecurity, fear, and joy when accepting the lands, difficulties in developing the allotted plots, as well as conflicts and litigations when parcelling the gentry’s land. The analysis of the peasants’ experiences reveals a very high conflict potential brought by the results of the reform.
EN
This article deals with encountering of history and ethnology during the study of the village of the past centuries. On the basis of the study itself I show how often I am obliged to use historical methods, in spite of the fact that I study the subject from the ethnological point of view. Kročehlavy was a small village in the 16th century. It consisted just of seven farmsteads. In the 17th century, two of those farmsteads had been bought for the needs of the manor-house. After the thirty Years’ War, the reconstruction proceeded very slowly. Manorial nobility rebuilt the manor-house and increased so the corvée. On account of the manor-house and the unsatisfactory remedy of the war damage, the area of the villiens’ farmsteads was reduced. simultaneously, the lord of the manor transferred the dues to the pastor of Kladno from the original farmsteads, that were transformed to the manor-house, to the villeins. However, these villeins refused it and rebelled against this practice.Their resistance was so great that they were expelled from the farmhouses, which were then occupied by the German colonists from the Broumov manor. During those turbulent circumstances, the farmland was divided into lots. this period was followed by peaceful development.
EN
Sources of research and subject literature do not give a clear picture of differentiation of the peasantry in terms of financial status. The problem concerns both the amount of property owned by them (land and livestock) and place in the hierarchy. This fact is very much difficult, sometimes even impossible to study the layers of peasant and any generalizations about it. It seems that the only possible way to study the most populous state in the Republic is to track individual fates of individual units that make it possible not precise enough to qualify for the category of the peasantry, but observe the changes taking place in the financial status over time and associated with the action taken.
EN
The nationality issues of interwar Poland’s eastern borderlands (Kresy) have been a popular theme in post-war Polish historiography. A considerable part of this historiography has continued the debates of interwar experts and political activists, which revolved around the two interwar censuses and the question of ethnic identity. For this reason, scholars have given priority to statistical evidence in order to determine the national belonging and categorize the inhabitants of the eastern borderlands into particular ethnic and national groups. What is more, they have drawn their conclusions on the assumption that identity is objectively definable by blood ties. I argue that peasant identity in these borderlands was driven by ‘localness’, that is, a specific symbolic universe, set of values and conventions typical of peasant culture. Thus, identity cannot be comprehensively described through ethnic categories alone. In the article, I explore some practices of localness such as the malleable roles people ascribed to others in everyday life. For large groups of peasants, they were of vital importance in the reception of nationbuilding projects.
EN
At the end of the 19th century, the teaching profession was the aspiration of many peasant sons. The position of a teacher ensured a modest but quite stable income. A Lithuanian, born in 1989, Stanislaw Keturakis, was one of graduates of the Teachers’ College in Wejwery near Kaunas. This institution offered a state scholarship. In return for this financial help, its graduates had to accept posts in primary schools determined by educational authorities. A few graduates of this school, mostly Lithuanians, were sent to work in village schools of Piotrków province. One of them, Stanislaw Keturakis, began his first teaching job in a school in Jedlno. He was confronted with difficult living conditions, the school was only planned to be built. At this time, he married Józefa Birsztejn and they had two sons: Eugeniusz Józef (1901) and Zdzisław Aleksander (1904). Peasants perceived teachers as tsarist officials. In 1901, S. Keturakis was transferred to Mstów, to work as a teacher, then to Wancerzów, and again back to Jedlno. Taking over a position of a teacher in Zagórze (1907) was clearly a promotion. The school belonged to the private property of Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia, a brother of Emperor Nicholas II. The last stage of S. Keturakis’s teaching career was his work in a school in Zagórze. Working there in the years 1907–1914, he taught Russian, Polish, Arithmetic, History and Geography. At the end of the summer 1914, he got an opportunity to take over the post of the forester’s assistant in Orłow province, but the outbreak of the war made it impossible. Lack of any sources does not allow us to determine what the further life of Stanislaw Keturakis was like.
PL
Artykuł przedstawia zarys dziejów chłopskiego rodu Miencielów/Mięcielów, przede wszystkim skupiając się na linii osiadłej od 1720 roku w Marklowicach koło Cieszyna. Jej najbardziej znanym przedstawicielem był Paweł (ur. 1881), nauczyciel w Międzyświeciu i Gruszowie, dyrektor Publicznej Szkoły Ludowej (ewangelickiej) we Lwowie, przed 1920 rokiem działacz proniemieckiej Śląskiej Partii Ludowej. Zebrany materiał może być wykorzystany do badań między innymi nad imiennictwem chłopów i przebiegiem kontrreformacji na Śląsku Cieszyńskim (Miencielowie przeszli z protestantyzmu na katolicyzm, ale jeden z przedstawicieli rodu po 1781 roku, zapewne pod wpływem matki-luteranki, przeszedł na protestantyzm).
EN
The article presents an outline of the history of the peasant family named Mienciel/Mięciel, primarily focusing on the line settled in 1720 in Marklowice near Cieszyn. Its most famous representative was Paweł (born in 1881), a teacher in Międzyświeć and Gruszów and a headmaster of the People's (Evangelical) School in Lviv, who before 1920 was an activist of the pro-German Silesian People's Party. The collected material can be used for research, among others, over the peasant family names and the course of the Counter-Reformation in Cieszyn Silesia (the Mienciel family converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, but after 1781 one of the family members, probably under the influence of the Lutheran mother, converted to Protestantism).
EN
The subject of the article is an analysis of a nineteenth-century folk song originating from Lesser Poland and the region of Kielce, which describes the events of the Tumult of Toruń (1724). The author used the historical method (factual analysis), anthropological method (theories of memory and orality) and discourse analysis (a written text as a reflection of mentality) to focus on three main issues. The first one is a polemic with the previous opinions of researchers, who argued that the folk song faithfully represents the events of the riots in Toruń (Thorn). In fact, it seems to be more of a propaganda text. It is impossible to determine precisely the place and time it was created, however, it seems that its author was a clergyman who wanted to convey his vision of the Tumult to the lower social strata. The song presents the community of Toruń as divided into two hostile camps, namely aggressive Protestants and pious Catholics. The article embedded the images of both sides in broader contexts of the German-Protestant stereotype and religious polemics in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The last part of the text is an attempt to answer the question why this particular song was internalized by the common people. The interest in the Tumult of Toruń could result from its sensational character, the fact that it was very well fitted to folk culture, and the possibility to derive satisfaction from the course of this event. The article ends with the presentation of folk songs as an interesting research material for historians, cultural anthropologists and scholars conducting interdisciplinary memory studies.
PL
This article highlights some of the challenges the nascent Florentine territorial state faced in the second half of the fourteenth century, after it was visited with the Great Plague of 1348. When mercenaries began to cross the territory, and the ruling class found itself unable to handle this kind of emergency, the exurban population turned to forms of self-defence. These initiatives resemble the coeval ones undertaken by the Tuchins in Normandy or those in Languedoc and southern Piedmont.
EN
Following an ethnographic field study, the author presents her findings on the cognitive collective identity of Belarusian kolkhozniks. Their self-definition as a group is based on the semiotic oppositions: peasant–‘lord’, peasant–Jew, and Christian–Jew, and it testifies to a longevity, or longue durée, of pre-modern mechanisms of conceptualising the social reality. The contemporary kolkhoznik defines himself as a simple (uneducated) but assiduous man, as opposed to his lord; in contrast to Jews, the kolkhozniks cultivate the land (as farmers) and are baptised. The post-serfdom identity of the ‘Christian kolkhozniks of-this-place’ is immersed in a mythical worldview and indifferent to any modern ideological and/or political projects.
PL
Powstała w październiku 1905 roku Partia Konstytucyjno-Demokratyczna na swoim pierwszym zjeździe przyjęła program, w którym również znalazły się punkty dotyczące kwestii chłopskiej. Między innymi proponowano bezrolnym i małorolnym chłopom przydzielenie ziemi państwowej i apanażowej, a także częściowe uwłaszczenie ziemi obszarniczej za wynagrodzeniem dotychczasowym właścicielom w tych regionach, gdzie by jej nie wystarczało. Postulowano utworzenie państwowego funduszu ziemi, przesiedlanie chłopów i uregulowanie kwestii dzierżawy. Program ten na posiedzeniu Komitetu Centralnego i na drugim zjeździe partii w styczniu 1906 roku uznano za niewystarczający i proponowano jego zmianę. Jednak liderzy partii z Pawłem Milukowem na czele uznali, że nie należy dokonywać żadnych zmian, co odbiło się na rezultatach wyborów do I Dumy Państwowej w 1906 roku, kiedy tylko 4% chłopów głosowało na partię kadetów.
EN
The Constitutional Democratic Party, which was established in October 1905, during its First Congress adopted a program that took into consideration the peasant issue. Among many others, party members proposed landless peasants and smallholders to allocate state and appanage land as well as partial enfranchisement of lands, with refund paid to its owners in the regions with no land to offer. They postulated the creation of a state fund land, resettlement of peasants and regulation of the lease. The program in question was declared insufficient at the meeting of the Central Committee and the Second Party Congress in January 1906. However, party leaders with Paul Miliukov amongst them, decided that no changes should be implemented, which gravely affected the results of the elections to the State Duma in 1906 with only 4% of farmers voting for the party of cadets.
RU
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PL
Artykuł dotyczy monarchistycznych koncepcji Polski Ludowej. O Polsce Ludowej na polskiej lewicy i centrolewicy pisano i dyskutowano przynajmniej od 1905 r., a koncepcje monarchistyczne były niszowe wśród jej wyobrażeń. Pojawiły się one jedynie w programie Związku Młodej Polski Ludowej w 1907 r. oraz w analogicznym dokumencie Zjednoczenia Ludowego z 1917 r. Pierwszy z tych tekstów jest bardziej socjalny w sferze społecznej, drugi – nieco bardziej zachowawczy. Oba są jednak świadectwem chłopskiego przywiązania do instytucji monarchii, które zniknęło ostatecznie w okresie międzywojennym.
EN
The article is about monarchist conceptions of People’s Poland. Polish left-wing and center-left were writing and were discussing a People’s Poland since at least 1905, but conceptions of monarchy were niche ideas. They ocurred only in the program of the Association of Young People’s Poland in 1907 and in an analogical document of the Union of People from 1917. The First text is more welfare in social things, the second – little more conservative. However both are the proof, that peasants were attached to monarchy. This attachment disappeared in the interwar period.
PL
Artykuł ma na celu przedstawienie charakterystyki współczesnych publikacji dotyczących historii ludowej Polski oraz kontekstu ich powstania. Uwaga autorów skupia się na pozycjach popularnonaukowych, takich jak Ludowa historia Polski Adama Leszczyńskiego czy Bękarty pańszczyzny Michała Rauszera, które łączy nowe podejście do historii ludowej, zakładające podkreślanie sprawczości podporządkowanych, odejście od „historii szlacheckiej”. Powstawanie nowych publikacji dotyczących historii ludowej Polski jest nie tylko wyrazem osobistych motywacji autorów, ale też konsekwencją szeroko rozumianego współczesnego otoczenia społeczno-politycznego. Zainteresowanie opinii publicznej „ludem” jest, według autorów, częściowo pokłosiem wyborów z 2015 roku i późniejszych analiz, kiedy to lud wyłonił się jako podmiot polityczny, a także częścią lewicowego oporu wobec prowadzonej przez rząd Prawa i Sprawiedliwości polityki historycznej.
EN
The article presents the characteristics of contemporary scholarship devoted to Polish people’s history as well as the context of their creation. The authors focus on two prominent texts: Ludowa historia Polski [The People’s History of Poland] by Adam Leszczyński and Bękarty pańszczyzny [Bastards of Serfdom] by Michał Rauszer. Both books employ a new approach to peasant history by emphasizing the agency of the subaltern and departing from ‘the history of nobility’. The emergence of new publications on Polish people’s history is not only an expression of the authors’ personal motivations but also a consequence of contemporary socio-political climate. The public interest in ‘the people’ is partially an outcome of the 2015 elections, which caused ‘the people’ to emerge as a political subject, and partially a manifestation of the left distancing itself from the historical politics of the current Polish government.
PL
The article discusses the role of plants in Poland’s economic development over the last 500 years. The author presents the role of five plants in the history of Poland’s development: cereals (wheat and rye), potatoes, sugar beet and rape. The specificity of the economic development of modern Europe has made Poland one of Europe’s granaries and an important exporter of cereals. This shaped the civilization of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and contributed to its fall due to institutional specificity. In the 19th century, potatoes played an important role in the population development of Polish lands, as they helped feed the rapidly growing population. The spread of sugar beet cultivation created the conditions for the development of modern sugar industry in the second half of the 19th century. It became one of the first modern branches of the food industry in Poland and contributed to the modernization of the village. Quite recently, oilseed rape was to become a plant that would bring back the times of agricultural sheikhs – no longer the nobility would trade in cereals on the European markets, but entrepreneurs producing a vegetable substitute for diesel oil.
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