"Oni" - polscy ludzie Stalina : rekonstrukcja wizji świata i człowieka polskiej elity władzy lat 1944-1956

Abstract

The present article deals with matters belonging to several academic disciplines: history, sociology of knowledge, and, partly, social psychology. Above all, however, it is a study in historical hermeneutics - a work based on a specific historical source. The author’s purpose was to reconstruct „the vision of the world and the man” represented by the most outstanding Polish communists in the period from 1944 to 1956, on the basis of the interviews which seven of them gave Teresa Torahska, and which were later published in the book They. The author focused on the following problems, treating them as elements of the reconstructed communist world-view: - the vision of the social reality (how the Polish communists perceived the subjects and objects of social activity) - the vision of the historical process (how they perceived the historical process, and who, according to them, played the most active role in it) - the province of values and social purposes. The highly idiosyncratic convictions within this group stem from their ideological assumptions. Their outlook was also shaped by the characteristic social, and political experiences, it resulted also from the specific conditions that shaped the formation of this group.