Subversive Modernity

Over the recent years, Polish historiography has experienced a noteworthy "people's turn." Regrettably, these works tend to reinforce stereotypes that portray the peasantry as a politically inert "mass." The objective of this paper is to challenge this portrayal of the Polish peasantry as a largely passive majority lacking effective means of contestation. To accomplish this, I delve into an analysis of peasant self-organization during the turn of the early twentieth century in Galicia and the Kingdom of Poland. My investigation is based on a micro-historical approach, drawing upon autobiographies authored by activists engaged in rural cooperatives written in the initial decades after World War II. The cited autobiographies provide plenty of specific evidence regarding plebeian collective agency. By juxtaposing the political perspectives of modern institutions with the vernacular categories of actors within specific historical circumstances, I aim to ground theoretical conclusions in an asynchronous and subversive vision of modernity

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Literature · Modernity · Peasant · Political science · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History · Law · Polish Historical and Cultural Studies

• Subversive Modernity

  Open Access•Bartłomiej Błesznowski•Slavic Review•2026

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