The intelligentsia in Poland

7/30/2019 The intelligentsia in Poland

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IS THE INTELLIGENTSIA STILL NEEDED IN POLAND*

Edmund MOKRZYCKI

Abstract : The intelligentsia is defined in terms of a social class constituted byeducated people in the specific circumstances of 19th century Eastern Europe.What is the role this class in post-communist Poland ? Can it survive themodernisation process ? It is transforming itself into a modern knowledge class ?Why has its political role declined so dramatically after the collapse of communism? One of the conclusions reached in this paper is that rapid increase in demand foreducated labour has, paradoxically, resulted in the disintegration of theintelligentsia as a class.

Making sense of the question

In order to answer the question posed in the above title. It isnecessary,unfortunately, to begin by making elementary conceptual distinctions.Intelligentsia is above all a collection noun for the possessors od certain socialcharacteristics (higher education being most frequently among them) and as suchrepresents a statistical category useful in various historical and constitutionalconditions.

In Poland (as well as in various other countries of the region) the termintelligentsia also has a deeper sociological meaning, namely as denoting asocial class which, after finally taking shape in the nineteenth century, played adecisive role in the defence of national identity and the formation of modern Polishsociety. The text below is of course concerned with intelligentsia in the secondsense. THere is no point in asking whether Poland still needs educated people,but it is worth asking whether the present crisis in intellectual circles represents the

twilight of an entire social class 1. It is clear that Poland still needs educatedpeople : the question is whether, given the present crisis in intellectual circles, thepresent class will fulfil this need.

A class of learned people

The formation of the Polish intelligentsia as a social class was a complicatedprocess, but two factors were it seems, clearly decisive :

1- our backwardness, and2- the lack an independent Polish state.

*The first version of this text was introduced during the Polish-American conference Poland 200 years after the thirdpartit ion : between east and west in her past and present organised by the Polish Studies Association. Polish Sociological

Association and Polish Society for Political Studies, Waesaw 5th August 1995.1cf. Joanna Kurczewska, Intelligencja polska : schodzenie ze sceny. Krytyka, 4, 1993 ; Marta Fik, Autorytecie wrc ?

Tygodnik Powszechny, 30 April 1995.


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International Conference Democratic Transitions in Latin America and in Eastern Europe:

Rupture and Continuity

4-6 March 1996, Paris, France

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1- Among many historical conceptions of Central Europe only a few- and thosethe most arbitrary- give a basis for placing all of Poland (and any of the

independent Polish states) on the western side of a line dividing the backward,agrarian East of Europe from the more developed transitional zone remaining

linked economically with the West 1. In the social dimension, Eastern Europeanbackwardness manifests itself in (inter alia) the dominance of peasant culture, theweakness of bourgeois traditions, a strong dependence of social position onaccess to the means of state power and a low level of education of the society asa whole.

The phenomenon the Polish intelligentsia fits perfectly in the latter sociallandscape, because it can be interpreted as being an answer to the modernchallenge, the answer of a society, whose basic social strata were not ready for

that challenge 2. CLearly decisive here is the coincidence of two sts of

circumstances. On the one hand together with the devolpment of elements of amodern economy, education became of ever more significant vocational value. Onthe other hand the internal differentiation of the category of educated people(whether according to specialisation, reputation of school or position in theemployment market) remains of secondary importance in the face of the basicdivision between learned people, a term still in use after the war, and the rest. It isnatural that the rapid growth in the need for educated people in a backward societycharacterised by a low level of education results in that factor being an unusuallypowerful determinant of social position.

In this sense the very existence of the intelligentsia as a social class is a

structural symptom of backwardness and the evolution of criteria ofmembership of the intelligentsia constitutes a particular measure of progress. Inprovincial Poland at the time of the second world war possessors of amatriculation certificate merited the status of members of the intelligentsia, whileaccording to research carried out under the direction of Professor JanSzczepanski in the nineteen-sixties university degrees had replaced thematriculation certificate, and nowadays we tend the threshold even higher, therebybringing the Polish conception of a member of the intelligentsia closer to theFrench conception of an intellectual.

2- THe lack of national independence affected the development of the Polish

intelligentsia, its prestige and place in the social scene, in a different way from theeffects of backwardness. Times of partition and occupation and in part, also ofcommunist governments, by setting the Polish intelligentsia the task which innormal times belongs to the political elite, favoured the filling by this resulting inresponsability for the fate of the national community.

The combination of civilising leadership and political mission made the Polishintelligentsia an exceptional formation even at a European level. The practice of

1Cf. eg Daniel Chirot (ed), The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe. University of California Press, Berkeley,

1989.2Cf. Zygmunt Bauman, Intellectuals in East-Central Europe : Continuity and Change. East European Politics and

Societies, Spring 1987, George Schpflin, The Political Traditions of Eastern Europe. Daedalus, Winter 1990.


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open recruitment coupled with the principle of service to society protected it fromclass criticism from below. It is characteristic that the victory of socialism affectedthe Polish intelligentsia, called at that time the working intelligentsia relatively

mildly, if one considers what happened in other countries under communist rule. Itis this fact that primarily explains the development of Polish culture and science inthe time of the Polish Peoples Republic in a way which was exceptional forconditions within a totalitarian state.

A Peoples Intelligentsia

The Polish intelligentsia is therefore both a structural and historical

phenomenon. It was because of the historically determined social context that

this class came into being and in so far as one can judge, only in this context doesit have a social raison dtre. Transformation of this particular social context-changes in the conditions of social activity, national independence, the system ofgeneral education, introduction of the foundations of a modern market economy-should reduce the social role of the intelligentsia in favour of other formationsanswering to the logic of changed circumstances, such formations as the middleclass, political elites, a knowledge class or intellectuals understood in theFrench sense of the term. Such processes actually began long ago, althroughthere are various opinions about their causal power. I will mention here, simply asexamples, two critical moments from the past.

With the attainment of national independence in 1918, the intelligentsia lostsome of its political mandate to a new political elite, frequently of military and partypolitical origin. Change of political culture in the country was immediate andperceptible, and the character of the changes can be successfully explained interms of class.

After the Second World War the experiment of establishing a peoplesdemocracy brought with it a very real threat not only to the position but also to thevery existence of the intelligentsia as a social formation (which had been heavilyreduced during the war, according to some estimates by as much as 40 %). Theorigin of this threat is not so much the secret police and censorship as the new

intelligentsia also known officially as the peoples intelligentsia and by its harshercritics as the baling-twine intelligentsia 1. With all respect to the suffering of thePolish intelligentsia, particularly in the first decade of the existence of peoplesgovernment, it should be said that a question mark stood against the future of thisformation not so much as a result of the repressive activity of that government butas a result of processes of structural change set in motion by those authoritieswithin the framework of their plans for modernisation.

The new intelligentsia was a peoples formation by pedigree, but itsideological and political links with the peoples authorities were by any measureambiguous. On the one hand the new intelligentsia was characterised by a servility

1Szapagatowa inteligencja : in this case a reference to the rough string holding together the bundles of belongings carried

by new arrivals from the countryside .


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exaggerated by the perspective of radical upward class mobility, and on the otherby a peasant conservatism ans small-town mentality- both fundamentally contraryto revolutionary ideology even in its Stalinist variant. This formation arrived on the

social scene without political vigour, and looked to the traditional intelligentsia asits reference group, rather than as a target to attack. For the authorities, however,this rapidly mobilised and trained cadre of specialists ready to join the process ofbuilding a peoples Poland was a substitute for the real intelligentsia.

The existential threat to the traditional inteeligentsia resulted from the veryexistence of the new intelligentsia and its capacity as an alternative source ofexpertise- available and more suited to changing conditions. At the beginning ofthe nineteen seventies this formation had already many characteristics of asocialist counterpart to the western knowledge class -amorphous and nonideological, but a reservoir of competent specialists of all kinds, from high national

officials to scientists.

The collapse of the socialist modernisation plan led to a complexedisentegration of the new intelligentsia. Part of it reinforced the party

nomenklatura and its fringes, part found itself in the circles of the traditionalintelligentsia most firmly in opposition, while some constituted a connecting tissuebetween them. The period of the first Solidarity was for the intelligentsia a periodof spectacular comeback to the social scene in its traditional role, and a triumph ofits ethos, political and social values and even of its specific style of politicalconduct. The famous ethos of Solidarity was nothing other than the

traditional ethos of the Polish intelligentsia reanimated under conditions of

dramatic political struggle and taken up by a movement of several million people. Ibelieve that only in those terms is it possible to find an answer to the oftenrepeated question, what happened to the ethos of Solidarity ? It left the movmenttogether with the intelligentsia.

Escape from the sector

It is time for the key question : what happened to the Polish intelligentsia afterthe collapse of the communist authorities and what is its role in the new political

conditions ?

Prime importance should be given to two empirical processes which are welldocumented in statistical data and in the results of sociological research. The firstof these, is the ever deepening pauperisation of the state funded non-industrial

sectors employing the majority of the Polish intelligentsia 1 ; the second is therapid growth of demand for a workforce with the highest qualifications, which in thelabour market brings with it a corresponding rise in its selling price.

These processes should cancel one another out in so far as they occurtogether, but they do not and this very fact shows that the state funded sector,

1In the year 1994 salaries in the non-industrial state sector fell by 3,3 % in the entrepreneurial state sector they rose by

4,2% while pensions ans annuities rose by on average 2,9 %.


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and even more so the part most heavily manned by the intelligentsia,

constitutes an anomaly from the point of view of the principles of marketeconomy.

The mining industry is also an anomaly in this sense. Although, whereas theprice of the labour force in mining is artificially high in relation to the market priceas a result of state subventions of various kinds (overt and covert), in the statefunded sector the price is artificially low. In other words, from the point of view of

the principles of market economy members of the intelligentsia employed

in the state sector are the objects of exploitation by the state . Thisexploitation is possible because of the states effective monopoly in this area ofactivity (science, higher education, the hospital service, etc.).

On the other hand, we observe a phenomenon which can be interpreted as an

escape from this exploitation. Those insolved might not choose to call it that, andsome of those involsed, for example a significant portion of academia, are againstsuch escape as a matter of principle. I have in mind, of course, the abandonmentof a vocation, something which takes various forms and extents in different areas.If for example we take the case od science and higher aducation, according tovarious estimates up to 30 % of academics have left. Unfortunately this is a matterof positive selection, in general the yougest and the best leave. Some go abroad,the majority take up other activities. Those who remain carry on dual professionallives, often regarding their academic activity as of secondary importance,legitimating a higher professional standing. In many departments and in manyinstitutes there are practically no academics below the age of forty.

The social consequences of this state of affairs will only be fully visible afterseveral years. If something exceptionally favourable to Polish academic activityhappens, a further several years would still have to pass before the best younggraduates began again to choose academic careers. During this time theyoungest amont the representatives of the still relatively numerous age groups inPolish academia would be reaching their fifties.Political changes with espect toscience and higher aducation, among them the inevitable radical reform of thisarea, will only be politically possible when the results of present policies affect

certain working class circles by blocking the road upward through free education 1.In a few years a Polish diploma from a state university will probably have less valuein the Polish market place, yielding its position to diplomas of private and foreignuniversities.

In Poland, academic activity along with art and culture, and in contrast toagriculture and industry, ahs retained in many areas (among them the socialsciences, something particularly noteworthy for communist countries) a goodEuropean standard. The unavoidable collapse of state run higher education inPoland (this thesis arises from demographic data) is in the context of our presentconsiderations doubly important. Science and higher education constitute not only

1For a more detailed analysis of the negative effects of working class opposition to reforms see Edmund Mokrzycki,

Class Interests, Redistribution and Corporatism in : Christopher Bryant and Edmund Mokrzycki (eds). Democracy, CivilSociety and Pluralism in Comparative Perspective : Poland Great Britain and the Netherlands, IFiS Publishers, Warsaw,

1995.


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of the most important occupational spheres of the intelligentsia, but also the areain which the intelligentsia perpetuates itself.

In the case of science and higher education two phenomena are clearly visible.Firstly, a change of social position is taking place on a massive scale i.e. a

mass transfert from one social-vocational position (e.g. educated) to another(e.g. politics or industry). The scale and character of this process makes it aprocess par excellence of social tranformation, giving rise to a significantregrouping of the social scene. In our case the regrouping is resulting in a partialdisintegration of the social fabric constituting the traditional intellignetsia, and theformation of a new structure driven by the market mechanism. Without going intodetail it is possible to state that as a result of unfirtunate policies with respect

ti the state sector and of profitable changes in the labour markert1 a partial

and spontaneous transformation of the traditional intelligentsia into a post

socialist counterpart to the western knowledge class is taking place.

A second phenomenon is connected with this development. The part of thestate sector manned by the intelligentsia ever more clearly constitutes anundefended social space (to borrow a term from Thomas Heller), that is, a

space which does not attract the attention of poweful political actors and stronginterest groups. As we have seen, in view of the situation in the labour market,people with the highest qualifications adopt individual escape strategies in

response to the pauperisation of that sector. The weaker part of the intelligentsiafrom the state sector, having neither strong suits to play in the market place, norpolitical capitaln is helpless. Although the latter are clearly the object ofexploitation, their plight is of interest neither for the political class nor for thetrades unions (if you do not take into account general declarations ofunderstanding ans support). It is characteristic that the single serious attempt atprotest from this milieu, the strike of teachers in 1992, met with a surprising anssingle-minded reaction from the more important actors on the political scene, inspite of the fact that the action of the teachers from the point of view of content (theeconomic and legal basis of their demands) and in the context of the mores ofPolish strike action took and exceptionally positive form.

Peoples power ?

In a modern society, particularly in a democracy, political power does not onlybelong to those who exercise it. The second, more profound, dimension of politicalpower is founf within society. Here, in the arragement of relations between interestgroups, the processes deciding the fundamental directions of state policy, takeplace over generations rather than months or parliamentary terms.

In post-communist Poland a particular a arrangement is taking shape. Theclass of workers in heavy industry occupies an absolutely commanding position,

1According to research carried by the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences under thedirection of Prof. H. Domanski, the socialist divergence of the two basic factors of status, ie education and income, is

systematically disappearing.


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well-organised and parctised in the struggle for its class interest. From thereimpulses flow on to political scene, which in the highest degree determine thebehaviour of the political elite. Deprives of their own organisation the peasantry

influence political decisions through the post-communist PSL (Polish PeasantsParty), which at present gives them an important share in the formation of statepolicy. The political elite meanwhile engage in what Leszek Balcerowicz has

recently called 1 `small politics, the essence of which is the primacy of electoralarithmetic. As a result of the elite opportunism a significant influence on thepolitics of the country is, conversely, beginning to be strongly exerted by thedifferentiated category of the professionally inactive (those receiving old-age anddisability pensions, the unemployed etc. -together somme 11 million peopleamong a population of nearly 39 million). The intelligentsia and the alreadynumerous class of entrepreneurs each find themselves as body on the margins ofthe countrys political life.

From the point of view of liberal reform this is an extremely

disadvantageous arrangement. In this context, above all its is necessary toexplain the braking of reform by the present coalition? Especially unfortunate wasthe sudden withdrawal of the intelligentsia from the role of politically leading socialactor. In part this withdrawal happened due to the paradox of Polish reform alreadyoutlined : suitable conditions for the individual careers of the educated weakenboth the bonds within groups of such people and their need to defend groupinterest. The myth of Solidarity as a movement transcending class is by no meansinsignificant, and this myth has been transferred to the next, post-communist,utopia of peoples government under the leadership of the working class.

Empirical research from opinion polls to deep sociological studies show thatthere is a positive correlation between education and support for liberal reform,privatisation, mechanisms of the market economy, democratic institutions, theidea of an open society, and integration with Western Europe. Educated peopleare laso less suceptible to populist manipulation (cf. for example data concerningeducated pensiones) authoritarian temptations, and the charms of ideologyappealing to the herd instinct. It is necessary also to remember that in Polandbarely 7 % of the population has higher education, one of the lowest indice ofscholarisation in Europe, and to remember the structure of education in Poland isas levels that of a system still geared to meet the needs of the planned economy.

Poland is as it always has been, a country of low general education inwhich an educated elite stands out the rest of society in its views, lifestyle,

customs, values, aspirations, interests and, what is most important today,

possibilities for development. In this situation, the disintegration of the

intelligentsia, of the single social forum for articulation of the interests of theeducated, and through it of the interests of national development, must berecognised as a most unfortunate event.

1Master of `smallpolitics are great players but small people. Leszek Balcerowicz, Barriers to Reform, Wprost, 33,

1995.


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The intelligentsia is losing its position not only in Poland, but also in other post-

communist countries 1. This, it seens, is consitent with the logic of post-communisttransformation. It might be possible to say that this has brought us closer to the

model of modern society, were it not for what is happening in other segments ofsociety. The political dominance of the (socialist) class of workers in heavyindustry, and the strengthening of anachronistic peasant conservatism in thecountryside, stand in the way of Polish societys conformity to that model.

1Cf. Boris Dublin, The End of the Intelligentsia and the Emergence of a Professional Class, Fifth World Congress of

Eastern and Central European Studies, Warsaw 6-11 August 1995.

The intelligentsia in Poland

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