KOR and the transformation of polish politics in the 1970s

It has been widely observed that the pattern of dissenting and oppositional activity in Poland had changed considerably by the early 1980s. While in the 1950s and 1960s it was characterised by spontaneity, lack of programme and strategy, the opposite holds true in the 1980s. Till the second half of the 1970s dissent in Poland was spasmodic and short‐lived, intertwined with relatively long periods of social calm and inactivity.

In the mid‐1980s the Poles have become highly politicised people, the previously common political apathy, to a great extent, has disappeared. Clandestine political organisations, inimical towards the communist state, abound. The number of free, uncensored publications can be counted in hundreds if not thousands. In the early 1980s there existed officially in Poland a free trade union which in fact performed some political activity as well. For this and other reasons it was suppressed, however the struggle to restore its official activity continues.

Nothing of that nature has happened in any other communist state. Poland seems to be the odd man out in the communist world. Political crises occur there more often than anywhere else in Eastern Europe. The period of official activity of the trade union Solidarity has usually been called the ‘Polish Revolution’ due to the seriousness of the crisis in that country.

The aim of the paper is to trace the changing pattern of dissent and opposition among the Polish intellectuals exemplified by the activity of the Workers’ Defence Committee KOR. It argues that the Polish intellectuals gathered in KOR influenced in a significant way the Polish crisis of the 1980s. The KOR group considerably contributed to the emergence of Solidarity, it also helped to shape its activity and articulate its demands.     

Edward Abramowski's concept of stateless socialism and its impact on progressive social movements in Poland in the twentieth century

The author traces the impact of Abramowski's ideas on the recent history of Poland. His concepts were not only popular in the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and the syndicalist movement in the interwar period (1918–1939), but they also exerted a profound influence on the cooperative movement and democratic left-wing opposition in the 1970s and 1980s. The leaders of the Workers’ Defence Committee (KOR) were much influenced by Abramowski's ideas and, according to some researchers, the Solidarity movement from 1980 to 1981 in Poland was the culmination of his concepts. Today's anti-systemic movements in Poland (anarchists, syndicalists, alter-globalists) are also inspired by Abramowski. The author also draws attention to certain similarities between Abramowski's ideas, Kropotkin's idea, Gramsci's concept of civil society and the thought of the young Marx. The author also outlines Abramowski's social ideas in the context of ideas promoted by the main theoreticians of the Polish left in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.     

“In the Truth of Our Political Nature”: Pierre Manent's Defense of Political Reason in Cours familier de philosophie politique

Abstract

Throughout the 1980s, Polish trade unions generated enormous interest among researchers as a vivid example of the power and influence of mass social movements in politics. Following the reemergence of Solidarity and the downfall of the communist regime in 1989, the focus of attention has shifted. Analyses of elite choices and strategies, rather than studies of social groups and organizations, have begun to dominate the scholarship on postcommunist Eastern Europe. Although the new perspectives have made it possible to compare democratization in Poland and other former Marxist-Leninist states with postauthoritarian transitions in Southern Europe and Latin America,¹ they often fail to provide an accurate assessment of the actual significance of the trade union movements and organizations in this process.     

Democracy: The unfinished journey, 508 bc to ad 1993

The aim of this article is to give an account of hope as it was understood by Józef Tischner a public intellectual and a prominent chaplain of the Polish Solidarity movement, which led to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989. The idea of hope was one of the basic ideas of the Solidarity movement, around which the daily experiences of its members were organized. The author thus offers insight into the intellectual history of the Eastern European dissidence movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Referring to Tischner’s biography she describes some of the ways in which Western ideas crossed the Iron Courtain. Using the example of Tischner’s dialogue with, and critique of, Thomism, she explains how dissidents’ interest in phenomenology interacted with the heritage of European thought. The author shows that despite Tischner’s distancing himself from Aquinas’ thought, he remained under Aquinas’ influence, and his own ideas were not as different and incompatible with Thomism as is often believed. Given the rising interest in the question of the relation between hope and democracy today, the question of the meaning of hope is pending.     

UNION DISCUSSIONS OF GENDER EQUALITY IN THE SWEDISH TRADE UNION NEWSPAPER JOURNALISTEN, 1961–1989

Sweden is arguably one of the most gender-equal countries in the world, and the historical development of that equality has been studied in detail. However, less is known about how the idea of gender equality was adopted in different professional spheres. In this article, I focus on this topic by using one profession, journalism, to analyse how gender equality was placed on the trade union agenda and negotiated in Sweden between 1961 and 1989. Drawing on a framing analysis of the discussion of gender equality in the trade union newspaper Journalisten, I argue that the Swedish Union of Journalists and its members took a somewhat moderate position in the struggle for gender equality, which, during the decades in question, was mostly framed as a women’s question. For the most active advocates of gender equality, it was nevertheless a deeply felt issue, and their work can be defined as trade union feminism.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 35, Number 1. February 2019

Front and back cover caption, volume 35 issue 1 Front cover FASCISM ON THE RISE? This picture features activists of the Polish National Radical Camp (ONR) who are about to start a celebratory march commemorating the anniversary of the movement's establishment back in 1934. The march's point of departure was the premises of the Gdansk shipyard – a place that became well known in 1980s due to a series of anti-regime protests by ‘Solidarity’ movement activists. The slogan above the gate reads: ‘Thank you for good work!’ (employees would see this slogan when leaving the premises, after their shift). The choice of place was far from coincidental. Polish mass media were quick to describe the anniversary as an attack on the memory of the Solidarity movement which, they emphasized, was the antithesis of fascism and which fought for liberalism. They also claimed that the march was a ‘reminiscence’ of September 1939 when Nazi Germany took over the Free City of Danzig (Gdansk). It is clear that the event was meant as a provocation and the organizers did not shy away from admitting it. Yet in his commemorative speech, the ONR leader referred explicitly to the events of 1980, reminding the gathered crowd that Solidarity fought for better work conditions, dignity and basic rights, and linked those arguments to a depiction of work conditions in the (present-day) neo-liberal system. He also emphasized that Solidarity brought about a revolution and that such a revolution is needed again today. His speech exemplifies well, a growing tendency for far-right movements to draw explicitly on socialist ideas and return to the idea of ‘the third way’, observable in Poland and beyond. The event was attended by activists from abroad, among them Forza Nuova activists and Polish economic migrants living in the UK and Ireland. In this issue, Agnieszka Pasieka considers what it is like to study the ‘unlikeable’ other. Several other contributions also discuss how anthropology might position itself in relation to the trend towards extreme right-wing politics worldwide. Back cover FIRE AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM, BRAZIL Oil painting, undated and without the artist's signature, which used to belong to the National Museum, Brazil, until the recent fire destroyed it. Depicted is a Bororo boy, baptized as Guido, who was adopted at approximately seven years of age by D. Maria do Carmo de Mello Rego, a lady of fine education, wife of the governor of Mato Grosso. Without children and of relatively advanced age, the couple treated Guido as if he were their own son. D. Maria do Carmo made great efforts to win his affection, teaching him to read and introducing him to the arts. For four years, from 1888 to 1892, Guido lived with her and her husband, first in Mato Grosso, then in the city of Rio de Janeiro until he died on a nearby farm due to natural causes, possibly pneumonia. Donated by D. Maria do Carmo before his death, this painting became part of one of the oldest National Museum collections composed of about 400 Indian artefacts she had gathered from Mato Grosso (the majority of these of Bororo origin), including an album with drawings and watercolours made by Guido and carefully arranged by her. Not only this painting, but the entire collection of ethnographic pieces and the album of drawings and watercolours were unfortunately destroyed by the fire. In this issue, Gemma Aellah and Jessica Turner interview João Pacheco de Oliveira, professor of anthropology and curator of ethnographic collections at the National Museum, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.     

Shaping the Economic Landscapes of Postsocialism? Labour,Workplace and Community in Nowa Huta,Poland

For years, the countries of east central Europe and the former Soviet Union were described as workers' states. The formal commitment of the governing parties to the construction of states run by workers for workers was reflected materially and ideologically in the landscape. The end of communism in 1989 brought new challenges for workers and workers' organisations in the region as the processes of transformation led these countries towards neoliberal and globalising economic and political systems. This paper explores these transformations in the case of Nowa Huta in southern Poland, mapping the role of workers in the shaping of economic landscapes. After considering the importance of labour in the construction of Nowa Huta, the paper considers the place of workers and workers' organisations, especially Solidarity, in shaping political and economic issues at both the local and national scale as socialism in Poland began to falter. The latter half of the paper explores the role of labour in shaping the experience of reforms after 1989. This discussion is set in the context not only of wider literatures on postsocialist transformations, but also of the growing body of work in labour geography. The paper argues that the particular development of labour movements and institutions in Poland presents opportunities for a community-based renaissance of worker influence, but that other historical and political factors—such as union support for marketisation and the divided nature of Polish labour politics—have, in practice, hindered the ability of Polish labour to shape the economic landscapes of postsocialism. The paper concludes on a note of optimism, recognising that the faltering of the Polish economy might open spaces for a successful labour intervention.     

The Political Economy of Class Compromise: Trade Unions,Capital–Labour Relations and Development in North East Brazil1

Abstract: This article investigates how capital–labour relations (encompassing processes of class formation, representation, struggle and compromise) impact on emerging regions’ developmental trajectories. It does so because much of development studies portray labour simply as an input (human capital) subordinate to more fundamental processes such as capital investment and accumulation. The paper draws on and extends insights gained from the “new working class studies” and global commodity chains literatures in order to examine evolving capital–labour relations—from relatively militant struggles to class compromise—in an emerging sector of North East Brazilian export horticulture. It identifies sources of workers’ structural and associational power and uses these to explain significant gains achieved by the region's rural trade union during the formation of the export horticulture sector. It then asks, why, despite continuing structural power, the region's trade union has entered into a class compromise with the leading employers via (a) reducing its militancy and its strategy of striking against employers to win concessions, and (b) shifting its objectives in terms of concessions sought. It speculates on the impacts of these changing class relations on the region's developmental trajectory.     

Restructuring British Public Sector Industrial Relations: State Policies and Trade Union Responses

This article examines how Conservative governments restructured public sector in day trial relations in Britain between 1979 and 1997, and identifies the main components of trade union strategic response to change. It argues that Conservative policy is important for its impact upon trade union strategy and practice, and that public sector unions constitute the leading edge of trade union strategic modernization in Britain.     

Shaping Public Perception: Polish Illustrated Press and the Image of Polish Naturalists Working in Latin America, 1844–1885

This article will investigate the ways in which Polish illustrated press contributed to communicating and reporting the work of Polish émigré naturalists working in Latin America to the Polish general public living in the Prussian, Russian and Austrian partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 1844–1885. It examines the ways in which illustrations were used to shape the public's opinion about the significance of these migrants’ scientific achievements. The Polish illustrated press, its authors and editors were instrumental in shaping the public's perceptions of the reach of Polish scientists, and exploring their impact on broader scientific debates, thereby situating Polish people and their work in a global context. The didactic and opinion-making role of the illustrated press was highly influential among Polish audiences during this period, at a time when the survival of Polish identity, culture, language, and education was uncertain. Illustrated weeklies were one of the vectors through which high science was made accessible to the Polish public. A study of pictures in Polish illustrated press will help to explain how they contributed towards shaping the images in the public eye of naturalists’ scientific work, and discourses about science and its actors more broadly.     

Between Napoleon and Tsar Alexander: The Polish Question at Tilsit, 1807

Abstract

The defeat of Prussia by Napoleon in 1806 and the resulting insurrection in Prussian Poland re-opened the complex ‘Polish Question’. The former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had been wiped off the map only eleven years earlier. The large size and the civic traditions of the Polish ‘political nation’ meant that the three partitioning powers (Austria, Prussia, Russia) were bound to be alarmed by the developments in Prussian Poland. Napoleon’s attitude to the Poles was cautious, but, as the campaign against Russia (Prussia’s new ally) continued into 1807, he authorized the creation of a Polish army and of a quasi-government in Warsaw. The article examines the negotiations over the future of Prussia’s Polish lands held between Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I at Tilsit in June–July 1807. Hard geopolitical considerations influenced the negotiations which eventually produced a compromise solution in the form of a so-called ‘Duchy of Warsaw’ under the King of Saxony. Although the Poles had no direct influence on the negotiations, the Polish military effort on the side of France was an important factor in the outcome of the settlement. The Russians remained deeply wary of the new duchy, especially after its enlargement in 1809. With the collapse of the Napoleonic Empire in 1814–15, Tsar Alexander acquired most of the duchy which was to survive for many years under Russian rule as the so-called ‘Congress’ Kingdom of Poland.     

Flowing goods,hardening borders? China’s commercial expansion into Kyrgyzstan re-examined1

The Dordoi Bazaar, in Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek, has in the past 15 years become a prime example of the increasing impact of China’s rapid development in this structurally and politically weak post-Soviet state and in relation to its people. Chinese-made consumer goods, worth several billions of US dollars annually, have been re-exported overland via Kyrgyzstan to wholesale and retail clients across Eurasia. However, the hardening of the state border to the north, and particularly following the foundation of a tripartite customs union (CU) including Kazakhstan, Russia, and Belarus in the same year, has threatened the livelihoods of numerous trade entrepreneurs at the bazaar. Given Kyrgyzstan’s recent accession to the newly formed Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) in May 2015, it makes sense to re-evaluate local representations and future perspectives on China’s powerful commercial expansion into Central Asia. Based on several months of ethnographic fieldwork in Bishkek between 2012 and 2015, this article analyzes the dynamic socioeconomic effects of China’s trade and transport policy on trade entrepreneurs in Kyrgyzstan. It outlines how China’s commercial dominance in the neighboring state, albeit discussed controversially and often running up against nationalist anti-Chinese sentiments, have strongly influenced Kyrgyzstani trade entrepreneurs’ interaction with Chinese partners and their strategies of doing business at and beyond the bazaar – as will be demonstrated herein through the example of Bishkek’s emerging apparel industry. This article also illuminates the ways Dordoi’s trade entrepreneurs make sense of the uncertainties after Kyrgyzstan’s accession to the EEU.     

From Solidarity to ‘Shock Therapy’. British Foreign Policy Towards Poland Under the Thatcher Government, 1980–1990

The Polish crisis of 1980 and 1981 was one of the intermittent bouts of protest that erupted in the communist bloc during the Cold War. The Thatcher government recognised Poland as a vital crucible of the conflict and that the regime in the country was among the most vulnerable in the region. The limited measures the British offered to assist Solidarity in Poland were a result of the Thatcher government's own position as well as the underlying geopolitical reality at that time. The strategy that Britain progressively employed towards Poland during the rest of the decade, ultimately achieving its long-term objectives, was indicative of the thaw in superpower relations, the consolidation of Thatcherism at home and the march of neo-liberal ideas internationally.     

Mercator’s Lithuanian–Russian Borderlands: Russiae pars amplificata (1595) and Its Polish Sources

abstract

This article focuses on the inset on Gerardus Mercator’s large map of Russia cum confiniis [Russia with surrounding lands] that was published in his Atlas (1595), and the map Moscovia [Muscovy] published by Jodocus Hondius in the Atlas minor (1607). Comparison of the contents of Mercator’s inset map, titled Russiae pars amplificata [Part of Russia enlarged] and Hondius’s Moscovia map with the Polish propaganda poem Raid on Muscovy by Jan Kochanowski that had appeared in 1583—just after the war between the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Muscovy—led to the suggestion that both Mercator’s and Hondius’s maps were based on Polish–Lithuanian narrative sources as well as on a map drawn by the Polish royal cartographer Maciej Strubicz. To test the hypothesis, a historical-linguistic analysis of the orthography of the map’s toponyms and hydronyms was employed to distinguish their Polish, German and Latin characteristics. The result confirms that the two maps were indeed based on a Polish military map containing a hidden Polish propaganda message.     

From Empires to Nation-State: Remaking the Roman Catholic Church in an Independent Poland

ABSTRACT

Roman Catholicism is most often imagined as an element of continuity in Poland’s turbulent history: even when a Polish state was absent from the map of Europe from the late eighteenth through early twentieth centuries, a recognizably ‘Polish’ church has been presumed to provide a robust institutional anchor for the Polish nation. This article, however, argues that the creation of a ‘Polish’ Roman Catholic church was a belated and protracted process, one that was only getting started in the years following the achievement of Polish independence in 1918. The church’s ‘Polonization’ was only partially a matter of emancipation from imperial-era restrictions. It often also involved the defence and attempted extrapolation of laws, practices and institutions that had developed under the auspices of the German, Austrian or Russian states and that the Catholic hierarchy viewed as healthy and desirable building blocks for a future Polish church. These imperial precedents continued to provide crucial points of reference in ongoing debates about what ‘Polish’ Catholicism was and what it should become.     

No Italian Stalingrads. The C.G.I.L. and the working class in the northern industrial heartlands, 1945-1955

ABSTRACT

This article challenges conventional wisdom on the northern Italian industrial heartlands during the first decade after the Second World War. For there still exists a certain mythology about the post-war proletarian north as a region that was both intensely political and united in purpose. What this article demonstrates is that the ‘industrial triangle’ of Genoa, Milan and Turin was far more divided than historians have assumed. By revisiting the manifold (wildcat) strikes, trade union demonstrations, and factory occupations of the early post-war years, it shows the industrial north to be divided along both social and geographical lines. In doing so, it sheds fresh light on the series of defeats that the main Italian trade union confederation (C.G.I.L.) suffered in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It argues that these defeats were due as much to the explicit politicization of labour struggles and their exclusive focus on the interests of skilled workers as to the hostile socio-political climate in which the C.G.I.L. had to operate.     

Becoming Cleopatra: the forgotten Zionism of Raphael Lemkin

The biography of Raphael Lemkin has emerged of late as a highly contested lieu de memoire in charged political debates in Europe, the United States and the Middle East about the meaning, past and present, of the Holocaust and genocide. At the same time, scholars have attempted to demythologize Lemkin by reinscribing his life into its pre-World War II Polish context. Yet thus far no one has identified the precise political activities and affiliations that shaped Lemkin’s concept of genocide. In this article, I show that Lemkin, far from being a Jewish Bundist, a Polish nationalist or an apolitical cosmopolitan, was an active member of the interwar Polish Zionist movement, from which he drew the ideas that inspired his idea of the crime of genocide. In the first part of this article, I use his published writings from the 1920s and 1930s in Hebrew, Yiddish and Polish to recover a rich Jewish political framework in which his concepts of barbarism and genocide first began to emerge. In the second section, I ask how this crucial dimension of Lemkin’s life and thought vanished from the historical record, and why it has yet to be recovered in spite of the boom in biographical scholarship. Finally, I suggest how the recovery of Lemkin’s Zionism helps to reframe the current political impasse in the historiography of Holocaust and genocide studies.     

Trade unions,the Australian Labor Party and the Trade–Labour Rights Debate

This paper examines the Australian trade union movement's campaign to convince the Australian Labor Party (ALP) to support the inclusion of core labour standards in international trade agreements. Despite historical affiliations, the Australian union movement has been unsuccessful in its attempts to influence the ALP. In contrast, the US union movement has convinced both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party to accept that core labour standards should be a part of the trade negotiating agenda. The reasons for the US unions' success on this issue are examined within the context of the changing relationship between the respective union movements and their traditional parliamentary allies. The need for Australian unions to examine and reassess their strategies by drawing lessons from the US experience, including the possibility of a changed relationship with the ALP, is discussed.     

In the front line: women,work and new spaces of labour politics in Poland

Pessimistic accounts of women's lives in post-communist Poland view women as powerless and passive victims of the transformation process. In contrast, this article argues that while political change and the restructuring of the economy have closed down some spaces of articulation and organisation, others have opened up. The article focuses on the way in which women in their spheres of work are shaping and actively resisting change through new organisations and individual and collective actions, which are in some ways a break with the past, but in other ways build on previous forms of activity. The work draws on qualitative research conducted over the last decade across Poland. This has coupled extensive interviews with women workers, national and regional trade union leaders, activists and feminists in a number of major Polish cities with reviews of Polish media and policy. We examine the economic and ideological context in which these new articulations are taking place, against the background of Poland's post-war communism and the rise of opposition movements. We look at the neoliberal restructuring of the economy and the implications for women within the labour market and in their domestic lives. In particular, we examine initiatives from below in workplace organisation, by focusing on new unions and new actions in the public sector, and the beginnings of organisation in the new areas of the economy such as supermarkets. Finally, we look at how women are articulating their interests beyond formal workplaces. We conclude that we should be optimistic about these new spaces of activism. While some are well established, others are embryonic but provide a strong foundation on which women can increase their participation in spaces that promote their varied interests.     

Reading Barthes

The Fédération des syndicats libres des travailleurs de la terre (FSLTT) was a trade union for farm workers established by the Christian confederation (CFTC) during the French Popular Front. Supported by two rural catholic action movements, the JAC and UCFA, it was a response to the wave of strikes in agriculture and viewed as a means to counter the perceived threat of communism in the countryside. Although the FSLTT remained small, its establishment and subsequent evolution is significant. Firstly, the union represented a break within social catholic thinking towards the rural world. Until the early 1930s, all wings of rural social catholicism supported the principle of syndicats mixtes—associations uniting workers, farmers and proprietors. The resulting clash between supporters of the FSLTT and the UNSA, the main association of agricultural syndicalism, whose leaders were also inspired by social catholic doctrine, left its mark on the future organisation of French agriculture under Vichy and during the Fourth Republic. Secondly, the FSLTT illustrates the contradictory nature of Christian trade unionism during the Popular Front period. During a decisive stage in its history, the CFTC's doctrinal and material link to social catholicism conflicted with the influence of pressures arising from the mass social movement. The article surveys the FSLTT from a national perspective, though much of the focus is on the Nord department, its strongest base.