Abstract
World War II, the Germans invasion of Poland and the occupation of Warsaw was a time labelled by anthropologists as a liminal situation, and philosophers (e.g. Giorgio Agamben) as a state of exception/emergency. The existing institutions and standards collapse. Social life takes on new forms. So I ask the following question: was the Warsaw Housing Cooperative, which developed its own social life institutions (legal, cultural, and economic)—alternative to the state ones, in such a liminal state, in the state of crisis? The cooperative organisational structures tested before the war proved to be efficient and effective under occupation, and the residents proved that ‘Żoliborz socialism’ was not only an idea, but a social practice of siding with those who suffer. The briefly described post-war period ends this narrative, because the WHC was taken over by the state and centralised power. From a residents’ bottom-up, self-governing initiative, it evolved into a state-controlled housing enterprise. There was nothing left from the idea of cooperativism.
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Notes
- 1.
Secret learning courses [tajne komplety] were illegal gatherings of young people (in students’ or teachers’ private apartments) in order to learn, under the supervision of educators, the pre-war middle school or high school curricula and pass the maturity exam [egzamin dojrzałości].
- 2.
The meetings mentioned by Dunin-Wąsowicz took place in the flat no 136, in the Colony IV. It was a social dwelling of the WHC.
- 3.
In addition to the activities described here, it is worth noting that during the war, he participated in the Warsaw Uprising, and he fought in Żoliborz. After 1945, he was the editor of the ZNMS ‘Płomienie’ magazine and the author of the famous manifesto titled O socjalizmie humanistycznym [On humanistic socialism] which, in 1946, triggered a discussion in the press (in which Adam Schaff, Julian Hochfeld and Stanisław Ossowski, among others, were involved). The press discussion ended with the end of democracy and freedom of speech and the consolidation of Stalinism in Poland in 1948. In 1949, Strzelecki graduated in sociology, defended his doctoral dissertation in 1964 and became assistant professor in 1987. He worked at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. He was an adviser to the solidarity movement (in August 1980, he supported the work of the Expert Committee at the Presidium of the Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee [Prezydium Międzyzakładowego Komitetu Strajkowego]), a member of the Alain Touraine research team and a co-author of Solidarité. Analyse d’un mouvement social, Pologne 1980–81, Paris 1982.
- 4.
‘Żegota’ is the code name of the Council to Aid Jews, the only state organisation in Europe that helped Jews during World War II. ‘Żegota’ was operating underground in several regions of Poland, involving people of various political options, denominations and beliefs.
- 5.
In 1919, Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Österreichs won the elections to the city council of Vienna by the overwhelming victory, appointing for the first time in history the mayor of the capital. Dominated by the Social Democrats, the city council of Vienna carried out, during the interwar period, many projects to improve the workers’ existence. Thanks to the Social Democratic government’s policy, Vienna managed to create a model of a welfare town that was a model for the workers’ movement from around the world. The Social Democrats carried out tax, school and construction policy reforms in Vienna and introduced care for the elderly, mothers and children. In 1929, 55% of SDAPÖ activists (out of 718 thousand in the whole country) lived in Vienna.
- 6.
- 7.
The State National Council was established on the New Year’s Eve of 1944. It was formed by members of the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) and was a kind of self-proclaimed Polish Parliament. The State National Council described itself as ‘the actual political representation of the Polish nation, authorised to act on behalf of the nation and direct its fate until Poland has been liberated from occupation’. The State National Council was composed, during its first meeting, of Władysław Gomułka, Stanisław Szwalbe, Stanisław Tołwiński, Ignacy Loga-Sowiński, Franciszek Jóźwiak, Zenon Kliszko.
- 8.
The PAU work has been described in detail by Helena Syrkusowa who organised particular issues and topics discussed. As it turns out today, the architect took very conscientious notes from lectures and presentations made by her colleagues, and also kept, for example, ‘Notatkę w sprawie zamówienia miejskiego dla Pracowni Architektoniczno-Urbanistycznej (Warszawa, 1 X 1941)’ [Note regarding the city order for the Architecture and Urban Planning Studio (Warsaw, 1 October 1941)’. (See Syrkus 1976, pp. 229–328).
- 9.
All of the essays were published in Ossowski (1967c).
- 10.
The following works were written during that period: Kultura robotnicza [Workers’ Culture] (1943), O drogach upowszechniania kultury na najwyższym poziomie [On the Means of Popularising High Culture] (1944), Z zagadnień przyszłej polityki stypendialnej [On the Issues of Future Scholarship Policy] (1944), Socjologia w świecie powojennym [Sociology in the Post-War World] (1946). All of the above essays were published in: Ossowski, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol 6, 1970.
- 11.
Topiński probably meant by ‘boys’ members of various underground militias; they were responsible for liquidating informers and blackmailers.
- 12.
The history of the Topiński family was also described by their son Piotr on the website of the Polish Righteous https://sprawiedliwi.org.pl/en/stories-of-rescue/story-rescue-topinski-family.
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Matysek-Imielińska, M. (2020). State of Emergency and Everyday Life in Żoliborz. In: Warsaw Housing Cooperative. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23077-7_10
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