Why has the modern nation not developed in Poland so long? Where do our civilizational delays and behaviors in everyday life come from, which are relics of past social relations and frequently hinder improvement and rivalry with another nations? These questions cannot be answered without an analysis of the deep division into Chams and Lords, i.e. a farm-restaurant over Poland.
Is this another folk story?
The Kraków historian, Prof. Andrzej Praise with a journalist, Wojciech Harpula. As a result, a kind of lexicon of the most crucial issues related to the Cham's title relations with the Lords was created. On Work Cards Cham and Pan. What about us, simple, from everywhere? We will find alphabetically arranged passwords allowing to recreate social relations prevailing in Popist Poland.
Poland's historiography, especially in the area of social and economical history, has somewhat changed its interests in fresh decades. During the times of the People's Poland, of course, she paid more attention to the position of the lower layers exploited. After 1989, there came a period of fascination with nobility and nobility, referring to romanticist traditions in this area. Almost everyone tried to search for “nobility” roots of his family, frequently making them up. Around 2010, however, publications began to appear in a kind called folk history. Of course, their inspiration was frequently the work of an American historian, an author first published in 1980 monumental sizes United States Folk History, Howard Zinn (Polish edition) People's past of the United States. From 1492 to today, Warsaw 2016). In this spirit they began writing among others. Adam Leszczyński, Andrzej Leder is Jan Sowa, and lately Casper Pobłocki. The book Praise and Harpula, as its authors declare, is expected to keep a balance between the various currents of explanation of Polish social history.
Aspective social modernisation
The problem of the liquidation of the country-state relations was not addressed by the majority of Polish political elites. The Enlightenment Age thinkers seemed to realize him, but their flagship product, Constitution 3, was In fact, their issues did not solve it; “Constitution authors have ensured that its farm records are general” (p. 189). This was not changed by local attempts to establish fresh relations, specified as interestingly described by authors of the Republic of Pawłowska founded by Vilnius canon, priest Paweł Brzostowski in the late 18th century. Poland was stuck in the nobility, not intending to get out of it. The modernization pulses came from outside. And it had its consequences, very violent, for the process of forming a modern nation. Andrzej Chwalba and Wojciech Harpula compose about the atmosphere after the appropriation of Polish peasants made in the Russian partition by the Tsar Alexandra II in 1864. The full 19th century is simply a clear alliance of peasants with possessive power against native nobility and landownery. “In 1864, the village exploded with joy. erstwhile the insurgents in the woods were fighting the lost buoys with the solstice, and many of them planted the first flowers on their graves, the peasants organized the ‘porn funerals’ (p. 23) – they write, explaining why Polish peasants had much warmer feelings than noble insurgents.
Similarly, it was earlier in the Prussian and Austrian partitions. The Polish nobility failed to pass the exam from social maturity, did not even want to declare steps that could bring about the emergence of a unified, self-conscious Polish nation. And to Alexander II the peasants built monuments and chapels.
The relics of farm management of the Polish economy function, according to the authors, and today. “The Polish organizational culture amazingly frequently includes a farm model: with a chief of the chief, authoritarian head and passive employees, who value occupation certainty and good, close familiality, relations with coworkers. It has small in common with the modern cognition and innovation economy. With the behaviour of management and farm workers 5 100 years ago – rather a lot” (p. 163) – they write. In fact, most frequently in business relations we deal with relics of the serfs. Although they origin ridicule and disgust, they proceed to flourish in many structures and companies.
Non-humans
The peasant, as we know from Sarmatian myths, was brought to Poland to the function of an object, and at most cattle. There is no uncertainty that in the First Republic a slave culture, based on imaginary, artificially created racism, established the origin of peasants from the biblical Cham, cursed as Noah’s son. This Sarmatian racism was an ideological justification for unimaginable violence. Since the peasant was not a man, but an object, he could not only be punished in any imaginable, sadistic way, but could besides be killed with complete impunity. The social and legal strategy of Jagiellonian Poland was based on the fact that the vast majority of the inhabitants of the country were out of law.
The centuries-old separation of different social groups led to the formation of 2 completely different mentalities – the "gentleman" and the "free" - which the prominent activist and the ideologist of the folk movement agreed with pain. James Boyko in his work Two souls of 1904.
The division, although in a little dehumanizing edition, exists to this day and produces certain effects, including political ones. "After the next election, many journalists repeat the unreflexed diagnosis of the result: ‘Stupid, poor, from tiny centres voted for X, educated, rich, from larger centres voted for Y’, and the online (although not only online) public opinion is full of epithets for ‘the mob’, ‘bovines’, ‘primits’ and ‘plebs’. Cham and Pan inactive live in the Polish soul?” (p. 111) – they ask, I think rhetorically praise and Harpula. Let us add that the long-standing, "Lord" attitude of the Polish political class to the descendants of the peasantry (although divisions are not readable today) has actually led to the creation of a folk sentiment, which in a skillful manner has been manipulating for years the camp present ruling and on Polish people in fact feeding, misrepresenting itself as this "her".
The Rebellion of the Forgotten Shela
The force of the Lords seldom caused only a violent consequence by the Chams. Praise and Harpula dedicate 1 of their slogans to the celebrated lexicon Jacob Shela, the 1846 Galician Robbery Leader. It must be admitted that the character is in the Polish historiography of a small forgetting, which he was afraid to take on the banners even the folk movement, possibly beyond his most extremist social wings.
In the meantime, contrary to the stereotypes that inactive be today, Shela wanted to organize a real-life rage, although he did not rather succeed. The cruelty of his rebellion was something not hard to predict, psychologically completely explained. "The peasant force was a mirror reflection of your violence. The ease of pain the peasants absorbed with serfdom milk” (p. 246) – we read.
Silenced by Most of Jacob’s Modern Rebellion Sheli was in fact 1 of the largest specified speeches, not only in Poland. "Rabation has been the largest peasant movement in Europe since the French Revolution. For the first and last time in the past of Polish peasants were extensively written in newspapers of 3 partitions, European press, and even American press" (p. 248) – writes Andrzej Chwalba and Wojciech Harpula.
Regional Differences
Social history, property relations, but besides religion shaped regional differences in Poland, sometimes observable and today. Let us take the school, discussed by the authors. In the 17th century, 12% of children in Warmia attended schools in the villages, 6.8% in Pomerania and Wielkopolska, and only 1% in Małopolska, Mazovia and the East. At the same time, the improvement of spiritual schools made the Jews stand out positively against the background of the Polish population in the field of education and alphabetization; in the 18th century 85% of judaic men had a basic education.
The authors besides dedicate quite a few descriptions to the differentities of Wielkopolska and another lands, which were after partitions within the Prussian state. There were not only accelerated modernisations, but besides the construction of social ties, seldom encountered in the classist Poland of another regions.
Jagiello degradation
Of course, the improvement of the social structure described by the authors is simply a work primarily of Jagiellońska Poland with its economical pathologies of agricultural monoculture, which any have wrongly described as the “spichler of Europe”. The fact that the first origin of centuries-old processes was the expansion to the East was written by many another authors who analysed the sources of Polish hold against the remainder of the continent.
“In the early Piast era, peasants were subjects of the prince or king. Modernity brought them subjection to the masters: personal, judicial and groundbreaking" (pp. 289-290) – authors compose Chama and Pan... A further conclusion can be drawn from this: the hub model was a model that possibly allowed a strong European state to emerge. The Jagiellonian model led a consecutive way to social, economical and geopolitical decay.
Integration of peasants
The authors of the book honestly admit that behind the first successful attempts to make an integrated Polish nation in the late 19th century were representatives of the national and folk movement. At that time, they faced opposition, not only ground opposition. “The war for ‘government of souls’ between folk intelligence and peoples and priests began in the countryside” (p. 315) – they note. In fact, the function of the Church – apart from the fewer exceptions of socially active clergymen – was usually to legitimize the existing farm and state-owned arrangement. This led to the emergence of anti-clerical moods, especially among Polish peoples.
Polish Nation de facto He didn't exist. Only the “nation” of Sarmacko-Szlacht was functioning. "The name of the uprisings – November, Krakow and January – as national (in the modern sense of the word) is hard to consider as justified for at least 2 reasons. As they erupted, there was no nation yet to bring together all layers of the population. There was inactive a long way to go. In addition, the largest component of the future nation, peasants, stood (except for exceptions) on the another side of the barricade or kept indifference to national liberation pursuits.” (p. 341). Divisions and mistrust have survived much longer; they have not been buried by the Second Polish Republic; “The Peasants Battalions, organized during planet War II, besides demonstrated a deficiency of assurance in the National Army Sanitation Officers, frequently regarded as representatives of the master world. National People's officers were closer” (p. 348).
The book by Andrzej Chwalby and Wojciech Harpula touches not only on historical issues, but besides on those that inactive play a key role, let us to explain any of our behaviours, including social, organizational and political ones. The elimination of the relics of the Jagiellonian class society and the formation of a modern nation inactive ahead of us. Especially since this period is celebrated in countless panegirics, especially as part of the current alleged historical policy.
Mateusz Piskorski
Andrzej Chwalba, Wojciech Harpula, Cham and Pan. What about us, simple, from everywhere?, Literary Publishing House, Kraków 2022, p. 425.
