Powstanie Towarzystwa Rozwoju Ziem Zachodnich na Pomorzu Zachodnim w 1957 roku
Creating the Association for the Development of Western Territories in West Pomerania in 1957

Summary/Abstract: The Polish concept of the Western Territories is one of the most interesting intellectual trends in the post-war Poland. The concept included a wide range of ideological and political questions, as well as the ethnic, demographic, confessional, cultural, social and economic ones. The milieu connected with the concept was especially active in the 1940s, and at the end of that decade it fell victim to the Stalinist unification. The revival of an especially active policy towards the Western and Northern Territories took place when Władysław Gomułka came back to power, and the Association for the Development of the Western Territories became the main organisational form of the milieu. West Pomerania is here especially interesting as its social tissue was reconstructed from scratch after the war, the region was deprived of intellectual elites and additionally fell victim to the centralist assumptions of the six-year plan; in 1956 the concept in question exploded to be gradually put out in the subsequent years. It is possible to understand the main tendencies in the relation between the Association and the authorities, as well as the aspirations of the society, through the analysis of the circumstances in which the Association was created. Such were the conditions under which the new local intellectual community was being born and the principles of its participation in the social life were crystallising, being an example of grass-roots activity of the society within the existing socio-political system in the hot after-October period

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