NAUKI HISTORYCZNE W PRL: AUTONOMICZNE CZY HETERONOMICZNE?
Historical sciences in the People’s Republic of Poland: autonomous or heteronomous?

A perspective of the sociology of fields

Author(s): Valentin Behr
Subject(s): Sociology
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: historiography; Stalinism; intelligentsia; historical policy; nomenclature
Summary/Abstract: Understanding historical policy in Poland as a product of a power struggle taking place at the intersection of several fields (especially the scientific, political, and bureaucratic fields) and involving actors with unequal resources in these different fields allows us to go beyond the previous scholarship on the topic. The structure of the relationship between the bureaucratic field and the scientific field is partly determined by the actions of effective actors, in this case historians, who support a historical policy. Viewed from a relatively long sociohistorical perspective, the structure of the relationship between these fields reveals a form of continuity, characterized by the existence of a pole of production of official history, but also remarkable evolutions: at several moments during the Polish People’s Republic, historians most equipped with scientific capital were able to maintain a form of autonomy of historiographical production in the face of orders from the authorities.

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