Poland THE SOCIAL ORDER
Haystacks at the foot of the Tatra Mountains.
Courtesy Sam and Sarah Stulberg
Highlanders guiding their sheep to pasture in the Tatra
Mountains.
Courtesy Sam and Sarah Stulberg
Musicians at the Zywiec Folk Festival.
Courtesy Sam and Sarah Stulberg
The dislocations during and after World War II changed
Poland's class structure and ethnic composition. Important
parts
of the Polish middle class--which between the world wars
had
become the foundation of industrial and commercial
activity--were
annihilated or forced to emigrate, and those that survived
the
war lost their social status with the advent of state
socialism.
Nazi and Soviet occupation also decimated the
intelligentsia that
had supplied expertise to the legal, medical, and academic
professions. Under the postwar communist regimes, leaders
of the
ruling Polish United Worker's Party (Polska Zjednoczona
Partia
Robotnicza--PZPR) formed a new elite class by combining
workers,
peasants, and members of the intelligentsia in their
ranks. Then
in the late 1970s, the intelligentsia began to carry
greater
weight in the social structure by leading an intermittent,
longterm protest movement. That movement culminated in the
overthrow
of the communist elite and reemergence of the dormant
entrepreneurial segments of society.
Data as of October 1992
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