Kołodziejczyk, Dariusz(The Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University, 2012)
In 1957, when Karl Wittfogel published his seminal book on “Oriental Despotism", it was evident from the outset that the author’s arguments were heavily biased against Russia and deeply rooted in the Cold War atmosphere. Wittfogel’s chief argument about the liaison between irrigation and state despotism had to wait for its critics until more recent times, but his treatment of Russia as an example of a “hydraulic society” was immediately perceived as an intellectual aberration. Nonetheless, the notion of Russia as an “Oriental Tyranny” or “Asiatic Tyranny” proved handy in journalistic efforts to explain the Soviet system to a Western reader, and it has retained some popular cur¬rency up to the present day. In a paragraph of his book, headed “The Introduction of Oriental Despotism into Russia,” Wittfogel blamed the Tatars for being “decisive both in destroying the non-Oriental Kievan society and in laying the foundations for the despotic state of Muscovite and post-Muscovite Russia.” In doing so, he invoked such different authorities as historians Vasilij Ključevskij and George Vernadsky, and... the poet Alexander Pushkin. Among the tremendously rich literary tradition that blames the Mongols and Tatars for infecting the Russian soul with the spirit of despotism, two other influential writers can be named here: a nineteenth-century French author Marquis de Custine and an early twentieth-century Polish historian Jan Kucharzewski....
Masowa emigracja zarobkowa z ziem polskich przed 1914 r. wywołała żywe dyskusje. Wzbudziła obawy o przyszłość narodu. Winę za spowodowanie tego zjawiska i jego narastanie przypisano m.in. agentom emigracyjnym, czyli pośrednikom sprzedającym bilety na okręty do Ameryki. Wiele przestępstw i nadużyć, które były nagłaśniane w prasie, potwierdzały ten stereotyp. W niniejszej pracy został on poddany analizie i zestawiony z opiniami samych emigrantów. W pracy podjęto również próbę rekonstrukcji i opisu kontekstu społecznego, struktur, zależności i metod działania składających się na pracę agentów emigracyjnych. Zarysowano także problem znaczenia działalności agentów dla emigracji w poszczególnych jej fazach w porównaniu z tym, jaką rolę odgrywały inne czynniki....
This is a paper presented at the meeting organized at Paris in 2012 to commemorate the 50 years of activity of the Center of Polish Culture at Sorbonne. The Center was organized by Bronislaw Geremek, an eminent Polish historian who played an important political role in the anti-communist movement many years later, and who became the Minister of Foreign Aff airs after the communism. Both Universities established the Center to facilitate contacts of Polish and French social scientists, difficult at the time of communism. The Polish communist government encouraged this endeavour to smooth the contacts with France, which seemed more independent from the United States than other Western countries. Polish social scientists used this political conjuncture to built contacts with their French colleagues, especially from the “Annales” school. Fernand Braudel wanted to know the Marxist historians
from the East and he appreciated the Polish historical school. The Poles seemed him more reasonable than Marxists from most other communist countries. Quai d’Orsay looked with relative optimism to changes in Poland after 1956, so they facilitated the implementation of Braudel’s ideas. Most probably, Warsaw University was the unique University in the Eastern bloc to have such a center in Paris already in 1962.
After the fall of communism the Polish-French contacts are not as important for Polish social scientists as they were before—for the simple reason that the contacts with most other countries are easy today. Let’s hope nevertheless that the Polish French common programs will continue....