The Stolen Passive Revolution: Intelligentsia Hegemony and Dependent Development at Europe's Former Imperial Periphery

• In Event: Passive Revolution in the Postcolony

Abstract

This paper examines Poland's transformations in 1918 and 1989 through the lens of Gramscian passive revolution, arguing that these transitions reveal a distinctive pattern of peripheral modernization that diverges significantly from both classical passive revolutions and postcolonial trajectories. The Polish case demonstrates how a bourgeois-led passive revolution project can be appropriated by cultural elites, producing a hybrid formation characterized by intelligentsia hegemony, radical social reform without revolutionary discourse, and structural dependence on the core of the Western economic system. This "stolen passive revolution" generated a remarkably stable configuration in which political sovereignty masks economic subordination, and apparent restoration conceals fundamental social transformation. The concept of passive revolution has proven invaluable for understanding postcolonial transitions, yet its application to post-imperial peripheries, particularly those in Central and Eastern Europe, remains underdeveloped. This paper extends the passive revolution framework to analyze the distinctive trajectories of societies that emerged from multinational empires rather than colonial rule, focusing on Poland as a paradigmatic case of what is called a "stolen" passive revolution. It is understood as a process in which the intelligentsia appropriated the institutional and ideological infrastructure prepared by economic elites for their own passive revolutionary project.

Author

• Tomasz Zarycki, University of Warsaw, Poland