Kamil Janicki, “Serfdom. A real history of Polish slavery”, Wydawnictwo Poznańskie 2021
First. Yes, a single actually good book about social history of Poland is case such unique in last decades that it’s worthy of notice.
Second, the disclaimer. As i mentioned several times, you can’t publish a book in Poland without it including a ritual attack on USSR and/or communism (it’s even in pulp romances and youth adventure novels), and especially a book about history. This one includes it too, completely non seqitur nazis and Soviet equation on quarter of page.
Why that book is good, you will ask? Because it is the most historically materialist book written in Poland i seen in a long time. It used many socialist historian sources and it look at the topic from the class point of view, nearly everything is analysed through the lens of property and economy, even the parts about church are devoid of idealistic bullshit. Author mostly avoid marxist vocabulary, though one of the sub-chapters straight out call turning feudal farming into the slave-labour driven commodity production “capitalism without the risk”, and he often uses the word “exploitation”, and even in correct meaning.
Next, author openly stated he’s fed up with the apologetic bullshit peddled in modern Polish historiography and busts several longstanding myths about the topic, for example:
- Number of nobles in Poland, according to myth it was almost 10%, but in reality barely over 5%, and in the most populous provinces in Greater and Lesser Poland there were even less nobles than in Western Europe.
- “All inns were Jewish, Jews were responsible for alcoholism epidemic”, even the premise is false, overall around quarter of inns were run by Jews and mostly in the south-east, in Greater Poland for example there was less than 0,5% Jews in that business. Second part is nonsense too, inns were controlled by local nobles, landowners, church etc. Jews were only as we could say today “franchising” it. Also the word “inn” is inadequate for the polish word “karczma”, those were mostly just peasant huts used for meeting and drinking.
- “Socialism is responsible for shitty Polish work ethics”. Even on a first glance, there was 40 years of socialism which actually greatly improved things after 400 years of slavery, it’s pure slander, how do they think work ethic would look in a country where nearly 90% of people were literally enslaved for 400 years?
- “Polish serfdom was not that bad” It was slavery. Straight up, even foreign noble travellers were horrified.
There’s several topics and aspects analysed in the book chapters:
- Genesis of serfdom in Poland
- XVII century catastrophes and their dire consequences for peasants
- What is serfdom
- The extend of peasant exploitation in Poland, also taxes.
- Violent noble rule, law of fist and oppression over serfs
- Control, invigilation, propaganda, obscurantism as tools of oppression
- Role of alcohol in exploitation and addiction of peasants. Inns. Propination
- Serfdom as chattel slavery andd rule over peasants life and death
- Absolute poverty
- Forms of peasant resistance
I wrote this post in English mostly for informative reasons, since that book will be likely never translated to English, and for you to know that not only semenbag montefiore can be published in Poland, even if that’s one good book per 6 years on average. Also i promised @vovchik_ilich@hexbear.net :)
That’s for the writeup. I have zero knowledge of Polish serfdom aside from what you just wrote. Is it glorified/romanticised/apologised for in the national mythology? And what’s that about Polish work ethic?
Polish nation was traditionally only nobles. Official version of history was that nobles were descendants of Sarmatians* that conquered and enslaved Slavic peasants (and they were proud of that). Non-nobles were actively discouraged by nobles from any participation and kept under boot. The very famed and venerated 3rd May Constitution basically only confirmed that only nobles are Poles, that only nobles are real people.
But then the partitions came and in XIX century, like everywhere, modern nationalism came. Poland and Polishness were reinvented from scratch, on base of noble culture, because the inventors were nobles themselves and they did not knew anything else. Because literally nothing else existed, cities were often germanised and peasant culture didn’t existed in writing because peasants were illiterate slaves. And lo and behold it succeded and suddenly in 1918 one of the first decrees in new Polish state was abolishing of nobility. From on all were officially Poles, all were officially Sarmatians, though none were officially nobles (and of course only part of them inherited the wealth and everything else). Interesting example: the main and most used honorific in Poland is “Pan” or “Pani” for women. It is usually translated to English as Mister/Mistress, but while the current meaning is similar, the origin of the word is not - English term came from Master, which was honorific for someone respectable but not noble, usually a burgher, but the Polish one is literal “Lord/Lady” the very same as for example in bible “Lord thy God”, which is always causing some laughs among school children when it’s understood in modern sense as “Mister God” and “Mister Jesus”.
So yes, modern polish propaganda heavily glorifies the nobility as a whole, and dismiss the misery of peasantry, so the picture painted by this book that in fact 90% of Poles were slaves of the 5% is contradicting the official version.
Work ethic is yet another myth which is super widespread but working for decades in various places among both Poles and foreigners i can safely say it’s nonsense, that Poles are lazy workers that only look to be lazy and steal. In reality i can say it’s mostly like everywhere, “Jaka płaca taka praca” (You get what you pay for). So as usual it is more of a critique of lousy Polish employers standards and practices. The origin of the myth is probably the fact that in socialism there was a lot of educational and propganda campaign about the work conditions and etics (very similar to those in USSR, mainly aimed at people demoralised by war economy and destruction but continued even later) and from widespread of it capitalist propaganda spinned that it was nedded because socialism = lazy work and stealing. Oh and it really was true in some part in XIX/XX century, millions of people does not shake off centuries of slavery just in few years.
*That’s of course complete bullshit, the forming of nobility in Poland is well documented and it was very similar to most post migrational European countries, nobles were descendants of the same early medieval Slavic tribesmen as peasants.
The feudal period is romanticised, as poland was at the time a big power in europe, the horrific treatment of serfs is barely talked about.
Regarding polish work ethic, there is this common idea in poland that we are lazy people and thats why we are poorer than western europe. Its also completely not true as we have one of the highest average amount of hours worked per year in EU.