Second draft for group 3
Communist Nostalgia in Poland
1. BACKGROUND
Our project is about “Communist Nostalgia In Poland”, with a focus on the situation of ex state farms workers. After the II world war the Soviet government tried to force the Polish one to eliminate private farming because according to communist ideology everything should have been collective, the land too. After the war there was a great change in the countryside, many of the people who worked there died in the war or moved away to the towns and cities or moved to the newly gained area in the West of Poland, that had been part of pre-war Germany. It was relatively easy for the state to take over former German farms and create state farms, settling here Poles from other parts of Poland.
So where state farms were applied “successfully” was where the former owners of the land had left Poland or where agriculture was poor and the idea of a state farm was an immediate economic benefit. But state farms were not successful: most of them were non –profit but the vast majority of people living in villages worked there and they were provided of almost everything they needed (like housing, medical attention, child care and so on ) by the State.
In 1956 the decollectivization began (so the collectivization model was abandoned) but, because private farming was not encouraged, what emerged was something very different from the Western norm. There were:
1) large and very inefficient state farms and
2) peasant farms which were still in their late 1940s structure (they were like an island of private ownership in a sea of social institutions, they couldn’t buy land or equipment because of the opposition to private farming).
So agriculture in Poland was not efficient and it lost stature as an occupation and as a lifestyle in competition with expanded urban industrial opportunities. Anyway, after the collapse of communist regime all state farms were closed and with their closure unemployment came among state farms workers and the problem exhists even now. State farms were not only an economic institution but also a cultural one which supported a certain type of personality of a “hopeless proletarian” (Palska). Having been provided with some income, housing and job, and perhaps some entertainment, the people were slowly devoid of any initiative or responsibility, and an enormous reliance on the state and its institutions was generated. So they are convinced even now that if the state shut down the workplace, it’s supposed to provide for the unemployed and his/her family.
The place of our research will be a small village in North Poland called Smiechow. There was a state farm and vast majority of villagers worked there. We don’t have more information about the village yet.
2.
RESARCH QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS.
a)
What do ex-state farm workers of Smiechow think about communism period in
Poland?
We assume that most of those people feel
strong nostalgia for communism (theory of nostalgia). But we want them to
explain what exactly they miss, what was good and what made them unhappy during
this time.
b)
How does memory of this time effect their present life?
The present situation of those people is
complicated. Most of them are unemployed and frustrated. They live from day to
day in a great poverty, thinking that there is no better future for them (theory
of poverty). So to ease the pain of the present they are focusing on their past.
What interests us is how the memory of the past influences them today, whether
it makes them passive or active, happier or more frustrated. Is thinking about
’the old good times’ a painkiller?
c)
How do young generations deal with the past?
In the place of our resarch there are young
generations, too. Some of them go to school, some maybe work, but there are also
those living from social service. Fear of being unemployed touches everyone.
Sharing the present situation with the parents makes youth easily influenced by
the memory of the past that they can not remember from their own experienced
(theory of collective memory). This is how myth of ’the good old times’ is
being created.
3.
METHODS AND THEORIES.
The place of our resarch is a small village. We want to stay there long enough to assimilate a bit with the people. That is whay we are going to do our fieldwork project for six monthes. This time will let us get closer to the everyday life problems. During our fieldwork we are going to use open interviewes as well as participating observations. Before starting the practical work we want to focuse on a few theories that we think might be helpful:
a)
THEORY OF NOSTALGIA:
An article of Kimberly K. Smith ’Mere
Nostalgia: Notes on a Progressive Paratheory’ and an article G. Bellelli and
M.A.C. Amatulli ’Nostalgia, Immigration, and Collective Memory’. Here
we have: an exact meaning of the word, a history of definition of nostalgia, a
present use of this feeling (especially by the politicians). As some theoristis
identify sense of homelessness or ’apartness’ as the conceptual core of
nostalgia, we should connect it with dispossesion and an article of Caroline
Humphrey.
b)
THEORY OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY:
As a main source we will use a book of Paul Connerton ’How Societies
Remember’. We assume that individual memory depends on ’a collective
memory’ or ’ social frameworks for memory’.
And we also think that the present social order is legitimated by the
images of the past.
c)
THEORY OF POVERTY:
We will focus on poor people. E. Tarkowska in her article “In search of
underclass in Poland” (Polish Sociological Review 1999) claims that the term
underclass can be used for interpretation of the present post communist Polish
poverty. She also says that the category of workers of former state farms is the
one that better embody the Polish underclass. We will also use the classical
concept of underclass by William J. Wilson (“The truly disadvantaged”).
4.
EXPECTED RESULTS AND THEIR RELEVANCE:
The target of our work is improving knowledge and understanding of the situation of ex state farms workers. We hope that this may lead to more effective policies to favour employment and to start programs of job trainings. Remembering the past should be seen as a way to express valid desires and concerns about the present.