Wrocławskie Studia Wschodnie

Aktywizacja społeczno-polityczna kobiet na Wołyniu od końca XIX do lat dwudziestych XX wieku

Joanna Dufrat — 2024-12-20

At the turn of the 19th century, the situation in Volhynia was not conducive to Volhynian Ukrainian women’s political engagement or, in fact, to their presence in the public sphere as such. Tsarist Russia’s anachronic and repressive policies left Volhynia underdeveloped in civilisational terms and its population almost stripped of any national awareness and largely illiterate, with the illiteracy rate among women topping 80%. Besides, the fact that there was no tradition of women’s organising there and that the dominant cultural models reduced women’s vocation in life to the role of wife and mother was an additional obstacle to Volhynian women’s political and social involvement. Nevertheless, there were notable exceptions: outstanding women whose artistic and public work was an important contribution to Ukrainian life. This group included, for example ,Lesya Ukrainka, her mother Olena Pchilka, who sought to transplant the ideas of the emergent women’s movement into Volhynia int he 1880s, Helena Levchanovska, who was a senator during the first term of the Parliament of the Second Polish Republic, and the leaders of the Union of Ukrainian Women in Volhynia.

Życiorys Augusta Krasickiego (1873–1946) na tle dziejów rodziny

Michał Michniewicz — 2024-12-20

The Krasicki family remained in possession of the Lesko estate for a little less than 150 years. During this period, many Krasickis were involved in the Polish independence movement as well as engaged in political, economic and cultural activities. The last owner of Lesko
— count August Krasicki (1873–1946) — took part in public life both during Austrian rule and in independent Poland. Before 1914, he held the position of the marshal of the Lesko county and served as a member of the Diet of Galicia and Lodomeria. During World War I, he served in the Polish Legions as the commandant’s aide-de-camp. He was part of the 2nd Brigade of the Legions. In 1916, he became a member of the Military Department of the Supreme National Committee. A dendrologist by education, he served as the president of the Galician and then Małopolska (Lesser Poland) Forest Society, as well as a member of many other economic and educational organizations (local and national). His biography shows numerous similarities with the fate of his ancestors, thus proving the vitality of the landed gentry tradition.

Koncepcje i praktyka wykorzystania tak zwanej szlachty zagrodowej w polityce wewnętrznej władz Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej w drugiej połowie lat trzydziestych XX wieku

Piotr Cichoracki — 2024-12-20

Nationality policies of the Second Polish Republic’s government between 1935 and 1939 were marked by intensified confrontational approaches to non-Polish citizen groups. Among the operations launched by the state authorities at the time was a Polishness campaign targeting the rural population segment regarded as the so-called farming gentry. The article depicts the target group of the gentry campaign, discusses controversies concerning its size and distribution and outlines the Polonisation agenda for this community. The pursuits for enhancing their engagement carried out under the banner of the Związek Szlachty Zagrodowej (Farming Gentry Union) are described, whereby attention is focused on the Polish-Ukrainian borderland, in particular on the south-western provinces of the Second Polish Republic, which were designated as the priority area by the government for political and social reasons.

Kresy Wschodnie w filmie polskim okresu PRL

Dorota Skotarczak — 2024-12-20

Films that addressed themes related to the Polish Eastern Borderlands, be it only cursorily, were seldom produced under the Polish People’s Republic. More such films were made in the early 1980s as a the state’s policy became somewhat liberalised. They paved the way for similar productions in the following years, which were largely informed by certain myths of the Borderlands, particularly the Arcadian myth and (to a lesser degree) the heroic myth. The filmmakers undoubtedly found it a challenge to reproduce the realities of the Borderlands. In tackling this challenge, they mainly had actors speak in stylised Borderland dialects and portrayed the area as being multicultural and, in a sense, exotic because of its diversity of national communities. These films add up to a theme-oriented movement in the Polish cinema of the 1980s which holds points of interest in artistic and also social terms.

Kresy na wystawie filmowej. Projekt ekspozycji „Bliskie Kresy” w Baszni Górnej

Rafał Syska — 2024-12-20

The article presents a narrative multimedia film exhibition on the history of the Eastern Borderlands. Titled “Bliskie Kresy” (“Close Borderlands”), the show is developed at the Osada Kresowa (Borderland Settlement) entertainment-hotel-and-conference centre in Basznia Górna. The article looks at the exhibition project through the museum-studies lens geared to examining narrative and film exhibitions. The argument presents the script and the major ideas of the show, whose general tenor and narrative model are derived from film museology and multimedia exhibitions. As a result, the legacies of the Eastern Borderlands, film and modern narrative exhibition practice come together in one locus: the “Bliskie Kresy” project.

Pieśni i opowieści łemkowskie. Etnograficzno-teatralny projekt „Spotkania/Muzykowania”

Magdalena Pietrewicz-Magiera — 2024-12-20

Spotkania/Muzykowania (Meetings/Music-making) was an ethnographic and theatrical project carried out at the New World Centre affiliated to the Modjeska Theatre in Legnica, Poland, from April 2011 to October 2012. The project focused on Lemko culture, specifically, on Lemko folk songs and the narratives of the Lemkos resettled under Operation Vistula in 1947. Building on Victor Turner’s experiments and experiences, the project was designed to ‘perform ethnography’ as part of theatrical work on the narratives and folk songs encountered in the field. An amateur musical performance staged in Legnica, Gorlice and other venues was one of the project’s outcomes. The article briefly introduces the history of Operation Vistula, outlines the stages of the project (research, workshops and the performance) and attempts to capture the reception of the performance and its impact and influence on the audience, the participants and the interlocutors.

Przypadek pustej formy kompozycji Johna Cage’a 4′33″ z perspektywy buddyzmu zen

Grzegorz Dąbrowski — 2024-12-20

The article aims to examine the piece 4′33″ and its composer John Cage through the lens of some concepts developed in Zen Buddhism, a philosophy embraced by Cage himself. This approach requires gesturing toward a broader context which can be generalised as ‘Eastern inspirations,’ mainly meaning concepts and practices derived from Indian, Chinese and Japanese cultures and related to the Buddhist thought and its kin movements. The concept of emptiness is an essential element of this cultural field. In some sense, Cage’s 4′33″ seems to emphatically express the meaning of this concept. Importantly, given what we know of Cage’s biography, exploring his work through the lens of ‘Eastern inspirations’ appears to be a well-warranted approach and to afford opportunities for subtle transcultural reflection, which is also part of this article.

Wytwarzanie Europy. Praktyki dyskursywne wokół praw LGBT w Polsce

Monika Baer — 2024-12-20

In this article I analyze the historical process of production of Europe, including its East and West, with reference to the postsocialist transformations in Poland exemplified by discursive practices focused on LGBT rights. I pay particular attention to grassroots discourses and practices that emerged in Wrocław in the context of two team action research projects cofinanced by the European Union and based on the concepts of sexual citizenship and the Pink Agenda of the EU. In the light of these concepts Eastern Europe (including Poland) appears as “backward” in relation to “modern” Western Europe, whose standards it should implement. Yet, such a vision of Europe is destabilized by grassroots discourses and practices that reveal problems brought by naturalization of a specific model of social positioning of non-heteronormative people as a measure of Europeanness. They point rather to the need to capture the multidimensional, relational and dynamic character of Europe that defies binary ways of thinking.