The Socialist Citizenship: Social Rights, Working Classes, and a New Political Community in Postwar Poland

• In Event: Labour and Rights in Post-War East Central Europe: Rewriting History from Below

Abstract

I discuss my work in progress on a concept of state-socialist citizenship as a theoretical lens to examine postwar Polish history. The 1990s rendered our understanding of society and citizenship in the post-socialist states and, in consequence, sharpened the contrast with the state-socialism period. While the 1990s are usually portrayed as a crucial period for building civil society and widening political rights, social and economic exclusion worked, at the same time, in the opposite direction - excluding masses of people, narrowing their biographical choices, and limiting access to necessary welfare support. I am interested in the concept of social citizenship after 1945 and its practices under state socialism. The postwar moment of socialist modernization reconstructed the concept of citizenship by democratizing access to the political community based on social rights. I examine moments of extending citizenship from the citizens-in-the-making’ perspective, in particular, workers and peasants.

Author

• Agata Zysiak, U of Vienna (Austria)