Lost in Transition(s)?: Survival Strategies and Self-Support of Former Polish State Farm Laborers in the 1990s: A Case Study from Southern Poland

• In Event: Experiencing, Remembering, and Forgetting Social Advancement in (Post)Socialist Societies

Abstract

This paper examines the survival strategies and self-support mechanisms of former Polish state farm laborers during the 1990s, particularly in terms of employment, social exclusion and adaptation to a free market economy. Drawing on oral history interviews from Paczółtowice, a small village in southern Poland, alongside archival sources, I explore how the transition from socialism impacted rural areas with state farmland. Theoretical insights from Zygmunt Bauman’s liquid modernity and Gayatri Spivak’s subalternity reveal the workers’ resilience and agency, challenging narratives that portray them as passive victims - once beneficiaries of socialism, later stigmatized as symbols of its failure. By highlighting social capital and inventive survival mechanisms, the paper counters stereotypes of post-socialist transformation.

Author

• Joanna Rozmus, U of Vienna (Austria) / NRU Higher School of Economics (Russia)