Poland, Soviet Union, Russia. From past through memory to politics (original) (raw)
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Polish Political Sciences in a Global Context
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, 2018
Looking at the contemporary Polish political sciences in a wider international perspective—and specifically analyzing their location within the global hierarchies of academic knowledge production—may not only shed new light on the field but will also provide interesting insight to workings of social sciences in peripheral context. The position of the Polish political science, as measured in terms of international rankings or indexes of citations, is rather low. Moreover, its dominant intellectual schools and most commonly used methodological approaches may be considered old fashioned from the perspective of leading Western centers of the discipline. Descriptive analysis and traditional institutionalism dominate, while more sophisticated behavioral approaches or new institutionalism are rare. On the other hand, the field as such may be seen as quite strong, especially given its visibility in the national media, its considerable institutional and human resources, or high numbers of students attracted each year. Moreover, it can be argued that the field has achieved considerable autonomy from the global political science system and has successfully endured post-Communist transformation, retaining most of its staff and institutional assets from the previous regime (which was not the case in most other central European countries). At the same time, one can find within it a smaller faction of internationally oriented scholars. They contest the dominant, locally oriented majority of the field and are well connected to global academic networks. In effect, an interesting duality within Polish political science may be observed and interpreted as a phenomenon typical for many peripheral countries, understood in terms of the world systems theory. Relying on Wallersteinian perspective on the global system of social sciences coupled with Bourdieusian field analysis allows for reconstruction of the genesis and underlying structures of the contemporary field of political sciences in Poland, which may be interpreted as a case of successful autonomy building of a peripheral field of social sciences.
The article brings to light the relationship between politics and social sciences in interwar Poland in its local and transnational dimensions. It explores the beginnings of expertise in ethnology and the evolution of the discipline’s tools and methods as closely linked to the political goals of the interwar Polish state, and the post-coup Sanacja regime in particular. Ethnologists carried out fieldwork focused on multiethnic territories, such as Eastern Galicia, which were subjected to international territorial disputes. The collaboration with politicians and the administration – developed mostly in the framework of research institutes – was a source of inspiration and, at the same time, stiff competition between scientific schools. To illustrate some consequences of this collaboration, the article traces an argument over scientific approaches to the "ethnic question" which involved ethnologists and empirical sociologists, and the connection of this argument to the objectivity principle in science. These different approaches reflect international theoretical and epistemological divisions at the time as much as they show the direct and indirect exchange of ideas within the European scholarship.
2012
Analysis of the pre-1989 situation; The development of political science since 1989; Core theoretical and methodological orientations; Thematic orientation and funding; Public space and academic debates; Views on further development and major challenges
Polish Political Institutions: Continuity and Change (1918-1989)
Political System of Poland: Tradition and Contemporaneity, eds. S. Sulowski, T. Słomka, Berlin: Peter Lange, 2021
Even though analysis of political institutions - their history, legal and political foundation, and systemic significance - are more and more often treated as a kind of anachronism, this type of research is without any doubt the starting point for any reflection on individual political systems. In our view, institutions contain tradition, reflect the mentality of social groups, customs, ways of conduct, sanctioned by legal or moral norms, respected in each society, as well as reflect the socio-political realities in which they exist. Thus, the process of institutional changes, which is the main axis of the analysis in this chapter, is a key aspect of subsequent civilization evolutions. The twentieth-century history of Poland abounded in several institutions essential for the functioning of the political system, however, in our opinion, two deserve a detailed reflection. The first will be the Senate, which is part of the legislative power, which underwent significant transformations in the 20th century (or even liquidation in a certain period, which was an expression of the prevailing ideology). The second is the institution of the head of state (both in an individual and collegial form), which is part of the executive branch, which, like the upper chamber of the parliament, was subject to a number of changes resulting from the prevailing socio-political realities and the ideological foundations of political systems. The starting point for the analysis below is the hypothesis that, despite several transformations in the Polish state, it was the classic institution that reflected the social and political realities of individual periods in the history of the twentieth-century Poland, as well as the ideological foundations for given political systems crystallised within them. Due to the above observation, in our analysis we will use not only a historical approach to selected institutions, but also a normative and cultural approach. In this perspective, it will be crucial, apart from the normative conditions, to look at the phenomenon of focusing by institutions the most important constitutive symbols and ideas for particular periods in the history of Poland. The analysis will be located between the legal and constitutional approach focusing on the reconstruction of legal norms regulating the field of politics and explaining the relationships between them, and the approach to the science of politics, which emphasizes the description and understanding of this reality.
Eastern Europe in Polish Political Conceptions during 20-30-s of the 20th century
An endeavor to analyze the role and place of Eastern Europe in Polish geopolitical conceptions during the interwar period was made in the issue. The aim of the research was the scientific analysis of ideology and policy of federalism and prometheism which were realized into the camp's policy of Polish sanitation shared J. Pilsudski's political views. A role and place of Ukrainian problem in Eastern policy of Poland was considered according to the identified aim. The scientific article emphasized that the main attention was paid to Eastern geopolitical direction of Poland during the interwar period. Polish national democrats promoted a conception of incorporation which implied lands inclusion in Poland at the East with Polish ethnical and cultural priority. The adherents of J. Pilsudski united on the ground of federalism conception due to which Ukraine, Lithuania and Belorussia had to establish a united country with Poland, for instance Rzecz Pospolita. The federal idea's defeat that was certified by Riga agreement of 1921 gave impetus to the concept of prometheism formation in Poland. It was distinguished form a federational program by the fact of the Soviet Union existence and national emigration from Eastern Europe as well as from Central Asia and the Far East which was involved into the orbit of Polish influences. An endeavor of a complex study of prometheism concept in domestic and foreign policy of Poland was initially made in Ukrainian historiography. The ideological sources and traditions of Polish Eastern policy which were the base of prometheism concept, in particular the federational program of Polish socialists were considered. The evolution of Polish prometheism idea during the interwar period was analyzed in the issue. The author's understanding of specific nature of the international prometheism movement establishment and development, which united the emigrants from Russian under the aegis of Poland, was offered in the article.
PubMed, 2015
The article sketches the history of naukoznawstwo (literally meaning the science connoisseurship or the science of science or science studies) in Poland from the 1910s to the end of the Cold War (1991), and the recovery of full political independence in 1993. It outlines the changing research perspectives of this interdisciplinary field of knowledge in Poland against a background of changing political conditions caused by the reconfigurations of the political order. The first part of the article concerns the period from the 1910s, when Poland was occupied by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, through the regaining of independence by Poland in 1918, the reconstruction of the state in 1918-1939; the second part--World War II; the third part--the period from the initial period of Soviet dominance (1944-1954) in Poland and simultaneously the beginnings of the Cold War (1947-1954), the period 1955-1956 (when the Polish state was liberated from Sovietization), through the different political crises in October 1956, March 1968, December 1970, and June 1976, to the emergence of the Independent Self-governing Trade Union Solidarity in September 1980, the end of the Cold War (1991), and the recovery of full political independence in 1993. The article outlines the fundamental achievements of prominent Polish scholars (among others K. Twardowski, M. Ossowska, S. Ossowski, T. Kotarbiński, K. Ajdukiewicz, S. Michalski, F. Znaniecki, B. Suchodolski, L. Fleck, M. Choynowski, Z. Modzelewski, S. Amsterdamski), politicians (among others B. Bierut, E. Krasowska), politicians and scholars (H. Jabłoński, S. Kulczyński), as well as committees (among others the Academic Section of the Józef Mianowski Fund, The Science of Science Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences), schools of thought (among others the Lvov-Warsaw School of Philosophy), and academic units (among others the Science of Science Seminar in Kraków, the Department for the History of Science and Technology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and The Department of Praxeology and Science of Science at the Institute for the Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences).
Ukrainian Historical Science in the Second Polish Republic: Institutional Aspect
Shìdnoêvropejsʹkij ìstoričnij vìsnik, 2020
The purpose of the study is to reconstruct the institutional structure of the Ukrainian historical science in the Second Polish Republic. The methodologiical foundation of the study is an interdisciplinary approach. Primarily, it is a structural-functional systemic analysis of historiographical facts and a comparative historical method, based on the principle of objectivity and historicism. We also apply the methods of periodisation, classification and typologisation. The scientific novelty of this article