INTELIGENCJI POLSKIEJ PORTRET ZBIOROWY
A COLLECTIVE PORTRAIT OF POLISH INTELLIGENTSIA

Summary/Abstract: Polish intelligentsia has always evoked public discussions, strengthened by a 3-volume synthesis Dzieje inteligencji polskiej do roku 1918 (The History of Polish Intelligentsia until 1918) edited by Jerzy Jedlicki and written by Maciej Janowski, Jerzy Jedlicki and Magdalena Micińska. With it fundamental questions returned about the definition and social limits of intelligentsia, reasons and mechanisms of its formation, its social and historical role. There are two main trends in literary sources: the former one acquires formal criteria of education or profession, whereas the latter one emphasizes self-awareness of the group, its creative role and its ethos. This defining problem occurs in other countries, e.g. in Russia, where opposition towards conservative, oppressive state is considered a condition sine qua non of belonging to intelligentsia. The authors of the synthesis avoided definition arguments introducing the category of‘environment’, thus allowing a fluent approach towards the group limits. They were also reserved towards social origins. Opposing statistic methods in the group recruitment, they replaced them with the sources of the group ethos, pointing to the idea of ‘the good shepherd’. This denies nobility origins of the group, shifting its origins to the middle of the 18th century and emphasizing the role of the environment of educating orders, like e.g. Jesuits, in the formation process of Polish intelligentsia. The authors reveal how Polish intelligentsia, deprived of the state support and security, gradually took over many functions normally conducted by state institutions. One of the major qualities of Polish intelligentsia is its social involvement (national involvement), a sense of social mission and responsibilities for ‘lower’ social groups, which dominated typical of intellectuals attachment to ideal and universal values. Intelligentsia took the responsibility for the fortunes of the nation with often suicidal sacrifice, regardless of its lack of license to representation of national affairs. As it happened, both these qualities made them guilty...

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