Jews Not Nobility Exploited Peasants Znaniecki

The Polish Peasant in Europe and America: Monograph of an Immigrant Group, Volume 2, by Florian Znaniecki, William I. Thomas. 2010

Inequality Caused Social Classes as Much as Social Classes Caused Inequality. The Polish Peasant Was Locked in an Often-Harmful Codependency With the Jew

This second volume has a common pagination with the first. [My review is based on the original 1927(?) edition, which was reprinted in 1958]. Owing to the fact that this volume presents a great deal of information, I focus on a number of salient topics.

“ETHNOGRAPHIC FRONTIERS” MYTH: THE CHARACTER OF POLISH RULE OVER “NON-POLISH” REGIONS OF THE KRESY

The SZLACHTA originally formed a nationally conscious class through clans, and later, through agnatic connections. Thomas and Znaniecki implicitly reject the argument that Polishness was a form of imperialism, or that it was otherwise forced on the non-Polish KRESY peoples: (quote) …the whole nobility constituted intrinsically one unified society, even aside from the common political interest, how this unity favored the development of the ideal of one nation and how the Polish nobility succeeded in absorbing and Polonizing without any political measures the leading social elements of other racial groups federated with Poland—Lithuania and Ruthenia—by extending to them the same principles, treating them as members of the same social body and actually establishing numerous family connections with them. (unquote). (p. 1435).

CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF CLASS DIVISIONS IN OLD POLAND

Do social classes cause inequality, or does inequality cause the emergence and maintenance of social classes? Interestingly, Thomas and Znaniecki see the centuries of divisions between the Polish nobility and Polish peasantry (in terms of class, as well as Polish national consciousness) at least as much a consequence, as cause, of the isolation, poverty, and lack of culture of the latter. (e. g, p. 1120, 1269, 1432).

EARLY INITIATIVES OF THE NOBILITY TO ELEVATE THE PEASANTRY

The authors decisively reject the premise that the Polish nobility was only interested in preserving its privileged status. They comment, (quote) The movement for the education of the peasants began in Poland in the middle of the eighteenth century, in connection with the general movement for national reorganization and under the partial influence of French rationalism and the “enlightenment” ideal. The peasant had to be gradually prepared for freedom and active participation in political life, and public education was to be the all-powerful method of preparation. The wide system of public schools established by the Educational Commission between 1773 and 1791 gave free access to peasant children and many nobles, in order to encourage education, granted freedom to every serf who learned to read and write. This development was interrupted by the partitions. (unquote)(p. 1335). Russian education was relatively backwards, and both it and the German education system became tools of the Russification and Germanization of Polish peasants.

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POLISH-JEWISH CONFLICTS: JEWS ORGANIZE TO BLOCK POLISH PROGRESS THAT MIGHT THREATEN THEIR PRIVILIGES

An extract from a 1903 issue of the newspaper, GAZETA SWIATECZNA, is instructive. It describes the efforts of a priest to get the Polish peasantry, at Skomlin in Prussian-ruled Poland, to alleviate their misery by uniting their scattered landholdings: (quote) Persuaded by the priest, the majority of the farmers had signed their names; but after leaving the office some stirred up the others against it. The local shopkeepers, Jews, contributed to this a great deal because they were afraid that in a unified village they would be unable to get a dwelling and that their trade would be ruined. (unquote). (p. 1180).

THE LURE OF “EASY MONEY” FROM JEWISH USURERS

Other extracts from around 1900, in GAZETA SWIATECZNA, discuss such matters as Polish peasants becoming trapped by appealing offers from Jewish usurers (pp. 1216-1217, 1241), of Polish priests vainly trying to get peasants to accept Jews as their equals (beyond nominal recognition of equality before God, p. 1241), of Jews generally having a looser view of sexual mores than Poles (p. 1243), etc. However, in no sense are these articles making scapegoats out of Jews. They freely discuss problems caused by Poles themselves.

THE POLISH PEASANT TRAPPED IN A CODEPENDENCY WITH THE JEW

Thomas and Znaniecki summarize, based on quoted newspaper extracts, what essentially is the codependency of Polish peasants and Jews at the local level. (quote) The Jewish shopkeeper in a peasant village is usually also a liquor-dealer without license, a banker lending money at usury, often also a receiver of stolen goods and (near the border) a contrabandist. The peasant needs and fears him, but at the same time despises him always and hates him often. The activity of these country shopkeepers is the source of whatever anti-Semitism there is in the peasant masses. (unquote)(p. 1200).

JEWS AS A BAD INFLUENCE ON THE MORALS OF POLISH PEASANTS

Znaniecki continues, (quote) We have seen in the documents the methods by which the shopkeeper teaches the peasant boy smoking, drinking, and finally stealing; the connection established in youth lasts sometimes into maturity, and almost every gang of peasant thieves or robbers centers around some Jewish receiver’s place, where the spoils are brought and new campaigns planned. Gangs composed exclusively of Jews are frequent in towns, rare in the countryside; usually Jews manage only the commercial side of the questions, leaving robbing or transporting of contraband to peasants. (unquote)(pp. 1200-1201).

Now much later, in 1936, Polish Cardinal August Hlond made a since-condemned statement on Jews as freethinkers and as a bad moral influence on Poles. Perhaps the paragraph above indicates part of what Cardinal Hlond had in mind.

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POLISH PEASANT IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA

The second half of this volume is a useful source of information on major organizations and parishes in the USA (for example, the St. Stanislaus Kostka Church in Chicago). It also provides a frank description of the social problems facing the early 20th-century Polish immigrant in the USA.