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Remaking the Polish Working Class: Early Stalinist Models of Labor and Leisure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Padraic Kenney
Padraic Kenney*
Affiliation:
University of Colorado
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Extract

The Stalinist revolution began to accelerate in Poland, as throughout eastern Europe, in 1947, with the implementation of multi-year plans, the repression of opposition and the enforcement of unity in the bloc; by the beginning of 1950, the transformation of the bloc was more or less complete. The construction of the Stalinist system did not occur in a vacuum but was shaped in part by societies, and the regimes which emerged were thus more complex than has been generally acknowledged. That complexity stems in part from Stalinist regimes’ interest in transforming society through mobilization and integration, rather than merely subduing it. Active participation in political and economic life was required; mere acquiescence to the demands of the regime was insufficient; and class conflict was to be eliminated, replaced by an alliance between the working class and its former adversaries.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , Spring 1994 , pp. 1 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1994

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References

1. Essential formulations of the Stalinist model are presented in the volume of essays edited by Tucker, Robert (Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation [New York: Norton, 1977])Google Scholar, especially the contributions by Stephen Cohen, Robert Tucker, Moshe Lewin and Mihailo Markovic. For a review of the concept, see Westoby, Adam, “Conceptions of Communist States in States and Societies, ed. David Held, et al. (New York: New York University Press, 1983), 227–30 Google Scholar.

2. Kloc, Kazimierz, Historia samorzqdu robotniczego w PRL, 1944-1989 (Warsaw: Szkoła Główna Handlowa, 1992), chap. 4Google Scholar; and idem, “Strajki—pierwsza fala,” Res publico (1989): 3, 51-59, provide an excellent overview of strikes in the 1940s.

3. Kuromiya, Hiroaki, Stalin's Industrial Revolution: Politics and Workers, 1928-1932 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988 Google Scholar; Siegelbaum, Lewis, Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity in the USSR, 1935-1941 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988 Google Scholar; Andrle, Vladimir, Workers in Stalin's Russia: Industrialization and Change in a Planned Economy (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Filtzer, Donald, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization: The Formation of Modern Soviet Production Relations, 1928-1941 (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1986)Google Scholar. François Bafoil has shown how labor competition in East Germany was explicitly modeled on Soviet precedents: “Adolf Hennecke, un Stakhanoviste allemande ou les fondements de la RDA,” Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique XXX, 1 (1990): 5-25. Labor competition elsewhere in eastern Europe has received virtually no mention in western scholarship.

4. Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967).

5. On Poland: Kersten, Krystyna, Narodziny systemu wtadzy: Polska, 1943-48 (Paris: Libella, 1985 Google Scholar) (now in English as The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 1943- 1948, trans. John Micgiel and Michael H. Bernhard [Berkeley: University of California Press, . 1991]); Albert, Andrzej, Najnowsza Historia Polski, 1918-1980, 2nd ed. (Warsaw: Polonia, 1989 Google Scholar); Reynolds, Jaime and Coutouvidis, John, Poland 1939-1947 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Leslie, R. F., ed., The History of Poland Since 1863 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980 CrossRefGoogle Scholar). On eastern Europe: Rothschild, Joseph, Return to Diversity: A Political History of East Central Europe Since World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989 Google Scholar); McCauley, Martin, ed., Communist Power in Europe, 1944-1949 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tomaszewski, Andjerzy, The Socialist Regimes of East-Central Europe: Their Establishment and Consolidation, 1944-67 (New York: Routledge, 1989 Google Scholar.

6. See Padraic Kenney, “Working-class Community and Resistance in Pre-stalinist Poland: the Pozńariski Textile Strike, Łódź, September 1947,” Social History 18, no. 1 (January 1993): 31-51.

7. “Labor competition” (wyścig pracy or współzawodnictwo) could encompass many things. There were three kinds of competition (with victory usually judged by the percentage of production norm achieved): between workers, groups of workers olfactories. Other forms of labor mobilization (included here under competition) were the multi-machine campaign (wielowarsztatowość), the “savings movement” in which workers were encouraged to use less material input and energy and produce less waste, the “inventor movement” (ruck racjonalizatorski), and others. All could be used to advance in the factory and the results of each could be expressed in ways which reflected the creation of a new work ethic or the economic benefit to the country. At least through 1949, the term “socialist competition,” standard in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s, was not common.

8. As a temporary seat of government and many cultural offices in 1945, Łódz had also attracted an ambitious coterie of young progressive intellectuals eager to tackle the old order. See Tranzytem przez Łódz (Łódz: Wyd. Łódzkie, 1964).

9. There were five rounds of the Youth Labor Competition; the last round, ending in late 1948, boasted 80, 000 participants nationwide. See Wieslaw Wolski, “Narodziny i przebieg MŁódziezowego Wyscigu Pracy w Łódzi i wojewodztwie Łódzkim w latach 1945-1949,” in W 3'5-lecie MŁódziezowego Wyscigu Pracy. Materialy i wspomnienia na spotkanie przodownikow MWP, eds. Andrzej Lech and Tadeusz Wojtkowiak (Łódz: Komisja Historyczna Rady Łódzkiej FSZMP/Miedzyuczelniany Instytut Nauk Politycznych UL, 1980), 19-29; Czesław Kozłowski, Zwiazek Walki MŁódych i Organizacja MŁódziezowa TUR w Łódzi i wojewodztwie Łódzkim (1945-48) (Łódz: Wyd. Łódzkie, 1972), 136-46. Labor actions preceding the Youth Labor Competition are discussed in Eugeniusz Gudzihski, “Zwiazki zawodowe wobec problemu aktywizacji produkcyjnej zalog robotniczych (1945-1948),” Kwartalnik historii ruchu zawodowego 4 (1981): 24-27; and Janusz Golebiowski, “Rola PPR w przyjeciu, uruchomieniu i nacjonalizacji przemyslu Łódzi, “ Rocznik Łódzki VI (1962).

10. The term “experienced” is used rather than “skilled” to include long-time operatives in textile and other industries who were not technically “skilled.“

11. Aleksander Janta, Wracam z Polski (Paris: Kultura, 1949), 149.

12. Julian Kaczmarek, memoir in “Materialy na 40-lecie MŁódziezowego Wyscigu Pracy,” Łódzkie zeszyty historyczne (Ruch mtodziezowy—tradycje i wsp6lczesno.sc) 1, no. 5 (1985): 140.

13. Regional Trade Union Commission (OKZZ) Wroclaw, plenum 10-11 Dec. 1997. State Provincial Archive in Wroclaw (WAP), Provincial Trade Union Council (WRZZ) #19, kartka 3.

14. My thanks to William Wei for pointing out this connection. Another common heroic image is the pioneer, explorer or inventor. Early communist Poland also made use of this metaphor, both in later labor competitions which focused on inventions (ruch racjonalizatorski) and in images of heroic work on the western frontier. See Padraic Kenney, “From Breslau to Wroclaw: Workers on the Polish Frontier and the Origins of Stalinist Society,” paper presented at the Eighth International Conference of the Council of European Studies, Chicago, March 1992.

15. Kozłowski, Zwiqzek Walki Młodych i Organizacja Młodziezowa TUR w Łódzi, 145-46.

16. Note that, as in the Soviet Union and in East Germany (where Adolf Hennecke debuted in October 1948), the first production hero was an experienced miner. Bafoil (11-12) and Siegelbaum (56-64) discuss the significance of stakhanovism in mining.

17. Economic-Social Department, report to Minister Mine, 15 Oct. 1947, New Documents Archive (AAN), Ministry of Trade and Commerce (MPiH) #1020, k. 137.

18. Michal Boni, “Stereotyp robotnika w kulturze polskiej na przelomie lat 40/50- tych” (Ph.D., Warsaw University, 1986), 85.

19. Speech by Food Workers’ Union representative, OKZZ Wroclaw, plenum 10-11 Dec. 1947, WAP WRZZ 19, k. 2. Wroclaw province textile industry report, January 1948, WAP WRZZ 2, k. 6.

20. Economic Section, Łódz Committee (Kt) PPR, report July 1948, AAN Central Committee (KC) PPR 295/XI/50, kk. 112-13. 21. Jedrychowski assured listeners that resistance was decreasing. Conference, PPR Provincial Labor Section Directors, 14 Dec. 1947, AAN KC PPR 295/XI/2, kk. 15-6.

22. Multi-machine conference, State Cotton Industry Plant (PZPB) #5, 27-28 Oct. 1947, State Provincial Archive in Łódz (ŁAP) Provincial Committee (KW) PPR l/IX/20, kk. 80-2. The speaker uses the Polish for female workers.

23. See Glos Widzewa (Łódz), 7 and 8, 24 February and 3 March 1946. Compare the use of the term “leader,” shifted back to experience, in note 52 below. 24. Quoted in personnel director (factory unknown), letter to Textile Workers' Trade Union, 21 Apr. 1948, ŁAP WK PPS 22/XII/11-12, k. 2.

25. City Committee (KM) PPR Wroclaw, report April 1948, WAP KW PPR l/VI/99, k. 51. The Pstrowski case remained one of the classic “unsolved mysteries” in popular lore throughout the communist era.

26. State Wool Industry Plant (PZPW) #36, 6 Feb. 1948, ŁAP District Committee (DK) PPS Łódz-Zielona, 33/XIII/2, k. 87.

27. Gtos robotniczy, 6 May 1948.

28. Ibid.

29. Mieczyslaw Lykowski, Ja tylko usprawniatam, Biblioteka przodownika pracy #5 (Warsaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1949), 30-37.

30. In the political arrangement which held through 1947, the PPR and PPS (increasingly dominated by a pro-PPR faction) were virtual equals in society and had comparable membership. From the start, however, the PPR took a more aggressive stance in factory elections and management appointments. The two parties seemed to employ very different tactics in the factory: while the PPR was concerned above all with numbers and the control of key positions—the personnel director, top management and the chair of the factory council—the PPS neglected these in favor of arguments, persuasion and policies, hoping more to win workers to the cause of socialism than just to the PPS in particular. This in turn meant that the PZPR, and the mobilization of society in general, would be conducted on PPR terms. This impression was gained from PPR and PPS archives in Wroclaw and Łódz, and supported by a conversation with Ludwik Krasucki, a former PPS City Secretary in Wroclaw and later a leading PZPR theorist, on 11 January 1990.

31. The efforts of the Polish communists to gain control over society, of course, paralleled and was stimulated by the steps taken by the Soviet Union to rein in diversity in Eastern Europe: the creation of the Cominform in September 1947 and the CMEA, in early 1949. Brzezinski's Soviet Bloc remains the best source on these developments; see also Tomaszewski, 152-54, 197-201.

32. Meeting of representatives of 15 Wroclaw factories, 5 Jul. 1948, WAP KW PPR l/X/28, kk. 232-5. The PPR took care to discourage any pledges involving overtime, in part to avoid conflict. The few such “excesses” in Łódz, admitted the Łódz PPR, caused some workers in those factories to protest against the extra work and against the PPR and government (Economic Section KL PPR, report November 1948, AAN KC PPR 295/XI/50, k. 129).

33. KW PPR Wroclaw, report October 1948, WAP KW PPR l/V/3, k. 59; report from Pabianice 27 October AAN KG PPR 295/IX/31, kk. 370-1. The resolution and other information on the campaign at Pabianice, are in AAN KG PPR 295/XI/47, kk. 35-42.

34. Report from Pabianice, early December 1948, AAN KG PPR 295/IX/31, k. 403; Economic Section, KL PPR report November 1948, AAN KG PPR kk. 179-80.

35. Economic Section, KL PZPR, report February 1949, AAN KC PZPR 237/XXXI/ 132, k. 30. An example of such layoffs in November 1949 is in ŁAP WRZZ #68.

36. Janusz Golebiowski, Walka PPR o nacjonalizacje przemyslu (Warsaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1961), chap. 2.

37. OKZZ Łódz, protocol 26 Nov. 1949, ŁAP WRZZ #19; Textile Industry Workers' Trade Union, Łódz Regional Administration, meeting 19 Dec. 1949, ŁAP WRZZ #275.

38. Regional Administration, Local Government and Public Utilities Workers' Union, Łódz, Division I, meeting 6 Feb. 1949, ŁAP WRZZ #297.

39. This was at the Poznariski Mill in Łódz, where 57% of the workers participated in labor competition in December 1949 (Provincial Trade Union Conference, Łódz, 11 Dec. 1949, ŁAP WRZZ #2, k. 85).

40. Michal Boni has drawn a contrast to Pstrowski's 1947 “defiant sporting challenge.“ In 1949-50, he writes, workers were shown participating in History as a numberless heroic mass (“Stereotyp robotnika w kulturze polskiej,” 104-9). Note the comparable dilemma faced by Soviet authorities in 1935, as described by Siegelbaum, chap. 4.

41. Wanda Goscimiriska, Moj wielki dzien, Biblioteka przodownika pracy #16 (Warsaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1949).

42. A significant date for Goscimiriska's readers, who would remember the great strike in Łódz at that time.

43. Ibid., 16-17. As does WŁódzimierz Gmitrzykowski (note 52), Gosciminska portrays events of barely a year ago as belonging to another era; the time for heroism, she implies, has passed.

44. Ibid., 23.

45. Ibid., 30-1.

46. Ibid., 32. On stakhanovites and “bourgeois” culture, see Siegelbaum, chap. 6. Vera Dunham first directed attention to the embourgeoisement of the labor elite in her study of postwar Soviet society, In Stalin's Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976).

47. Kozniewski, Kazimierz, “Extry i primy in Kozniewski, Most. Wybor reportazy (Warsaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1951 [originally published in the Biblioteka przodownika pracy series, 1950]), 129-30Google Scholar.

48. Ibid., 131-32.

49. Ibid., 134.

50. Ibid., 139-40.

51. In this competition, the penalties for poor quality were quite severe: up to 25% of one's base pay could be deducted (Ibid., 144-49). In fact, the PZPR expected protests against this campaign, and conducted meetings in factories throughout August 1949 before introducing the new system on 1 September. Wydziai Ekonomiczny KC PZPR, Circular 22 Aug. 1949, AAN KC PZPR 237/XXXI/5; accounts of protests: field reports, 8 and 16 Sept. 1949, Wydziai Organizacyjny KC PZPR, AAN KC PZPR 237/VII/118, kk. 350-1, 398-400.

52. WŁódzimierz Gmitrzykowski, Za przykladem Matrosowa, Biblioteka przodownika pracy #6 (Warsaw: Ksiaika i Wiedza, 1949), 14.

53. Boni, “Stereotyp robotnika w kulturze polskiej,” 101-3, 110-11.

54. Kenney, “From Breslau to Wroclaw.“

55. Pietraszek, Edward, “Urlop wypoczynkowy robotnika w Polsce w okresie miedzywojennym in Robotnicy na wczasach w pierwszych latach Polski Lndowej. Studia i materiaty (PAN, Oddzial w Krakówie, Prace Komisji Sociologicznej, 1), ed. Dobrowolska, Danuta (Wroclaw: Ossolineum, 1963), 50-52, 60–69 Google Scholar. This work is one of the few products of sociology's few years of freedom before Stalinism, and an invaluable source for a crucial moment in the transformation of social identities in Poland.

56. Pietraszek, 45-71; Aleksandrajacher-Tyszkowa, “Wczasy pracownicze w Polsce Ludowej w latach 1945-1950. Ich podstawy prawne i organizacyjne,” in Robotnicy na wczasach, 73-81.

57. Jacher-Tyszkowa, 81. On authorities’ concerns with the early unpopularity of wczasy, see report from 1st Congress of Textile Industry Social Welfare Directors, Łódz, 6-9 Feb. 1946, AAN MPiH #947, k. 95.

58. Sometimes there in fact was not enough to eat on wczasy; such news—or rumors—further disinclined workers to sign up ( Podgorecki, Adam, “Pierwszy pobyt na wczasach,” in Robotnicy na wczasach, 96, 93 Google Scholar). It is interesting that no strikes, in Łódz at least, made any vacation-related demands.

59. MZK delegates meeting 13 Feb. 1949, p. 11, ŁAP WRZZ #297. See also union meeting at Łódz Power Plant, 29 Jan. 1949, ŁAP WRZZ #297. At this meeting, a wczasy organizer explained that workers wouldn't go: “All last year I went to the boiler room and the machine shop. I even threatened [workers], anything so that the working stiff [robociarz] would go.” One who did go when forced was an older worker from Bedzin (Podgorecki, 94; see also 99-100): Last year I took myself to the village, to drink a little vodka and a little clotted milk in good company, because it is never so good in the city as it is in the village. This year I wanted to go to see the family again, but the personnel director said, “We want to do good for you, and you don't want to take advantage of it. Go to the mountains and that's it.” So I came.

60. Road worker, age 45, Lower Silesia; and railway metalworker, age 44: Podgorecki, 97, 103-4.

61. Quoted in Podgorecki, “Pierwszy pobyt na wczasach.” Note here and in later examples that workers usually preferred the term inteligencja for office workers, denoting a greater cultural gulf between groups than did the researchers’ term pracownik umyslowy (office worker, contrasted with pracownik fizyczny [laborer]).

62. Barbara Bazińska and Danuta Dobrowolska, “Ksztaltowanie sie spolecznosci wczasowej,” in Robotnicy na wczasach, 117.

63. The researchers evidently hoped that they themselves could serve as models of approachable intellectuals and reported that many workers praised them for being different from others of their class. They shared with the leaders of Stalinist Poland the hope that class conflict would disappear. In an essentially functionalist view of society, they saw conflict between classes disappearing as a result of modernization and progress. As Kazimierz Dobrowolski, an eminent prewar sociologist, writes in his introduction to the study, “the strong differentiation of the working class .. ., so characteristic of the interwar period, has at the present moment undergone … basic transformations which proceed in the direction of gradual equalization of contrasts.“ For these researchers, “transformations” referred to technological and educational advances, as well as the growth of “social organizations,” all of which “reach the most hidden corners of the country” (Kazimierz Dobrowolski, “Uwagi o badaniach nad wspolczesna. rzeczywistoscia. spoteczna.,” in Robotnicy na wczasach, 17, 10).

64. Bazińska and Dobrowolska, 114.

65. Two of the researchers commented that young workers “represented a higher level of education, were more accomplished, comfortable in company, accustomed to contact with the inteligencja. On wczasy they felt sure of themselves; they didn't consider wczasy to be some charity, but an institution which workers deserved” (Ibid., 122).

66. Bazińska and Dobrowolska, 116-7; other examples in ibid., and Podgorecki.

67. Podgorecki, 95. Szczyrk, Ustrori and Wisla are resort towns in the Beskidy mountains. Krynica is a well-known spa and mountain resort.

68. Miner, Wieczorek-Janow mine; unidentified miner; in Bazińska and Dobrowolska, 116-17. Zechcyk and szkot are cardgames particularly popular at that time in Silesia.

69. Ibid., 120. A cleaning woman at one of the homes made similar observations; that workers and “real” inteligencja were always polite to the staff and kept their rooms clean, while the “poor bureaucrats” acted above their station and treated staff rudely ﹛ibid., 129).

70. Interview with Hanna Świda-Ziemba, Warsaw, 23July 1990; also Świda-Ziemba and Katarzyna Madorń-Mitzner, “Notatki z zycia systemu” (journal excerpts and interview), Karta 3 (1991): 37-39.

71. Swida-Ziemba interview; see also Wladyka, Maria, “Spoleczne funkcje wczasow, “ in Robotnicy na wczasach, 153 Google Scholar.Jacek Kurori discusses the origins of “hooliganism“ in his autobiography, Wiara i wina (London/Warsaw: Aneks, 1989), 42-50.