The Polish Intelligentsia since 1944. Social Structure and Social Roles

Inteligencja polska 1944-1989 Struktury i role społeczne: problemy dyskusyjne

Janusz Żarnowski

Acta Oeconomica Pragensia, 2007, vol. 2007, issue 7, 472-480

Abstract: The author seeks to answer some important questions of Polish social history: the course and results of evolution of the Polish intelligentsia since 1944, modifications of the social roles of intelligentsia in Polish society, the problem of middle class in Poland and intelligentsia under Communist rule and in the contemporary Polish society since 1989. The Polish intelligentsia preserved its social and national identity in spite of deep transformation of its social basis and professional structure under Communism. In the Communist party-state intelligentsia was debarred from power, its social role consisted in distributing elements of modernisation and influence of Western civilisation. The Polish society in the 19th century did not generate a middle class after the Western pattern. Intelligentsia fulfilled in Poland some functions of the middle class and probably continued doing it after the World War II as the new media spread popular culture consisting mainly of elements created in the milieu of intelligentsia. After the turning point of 1989 some groups of intelligentsia are progressively forming the new Polish middle class as other groups, especially in public sector and non-economic branches, keep away.

Keywords: intelligentsia; Poland 1944-1989; middle class (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://aop.vse.cz/doi/10.18267/j.aop.236.html (text/html)
http://aop.vse.cz/doi/10.18267/j.aop.236.pdf (application/pdf)
free of charge

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:prg:jnlaop:v:2007:y:2007:i:7:id:236:p:472-480

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Redakce Acta Oeconomica Pragensia, Vysoká škola ekonomická v Praze, nám. W. Churchilla 4, 130 67 Praha 3
http://aop.vse.cz

DOI: 10.18267/j.aop.236

Access Statistics for this article

Acta Oeconomica Pragensia is currently edited by Klára Šimůnková

More articles in Acta Oeconomica Pragensia from Prague University of Economics and Business Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Stanislav Vojir ().