APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3
of Jewish influence in Poland's political life was not one of the many problems which it faced upon assuming power.
Because many of Poland's Jews were leaders in the professions and in cultural and academic life, their departure has had a negative impact on society, at least in the short run. This was illustrated by the emigration to the West of leading members of the world-famous Warsaw Jewish Theater, including its internationally known doyenne, Ida Kaminska, and such personalities as film-makers Jerzy Toeplitz and Alexander Ford, as well as by the less visible impact of personnel losses in Poland's scientific research and in general management.
Poland's constitution of 1952 grants ethnic minorities the right to preserve and develop their own culture. This right, generally ignored during the Stalinist era, has been publicized and to a limited degree honored since 1956, although its implementation has been confined to those segments of the existing minorities devoid of political importance. In general, however, minority members had some opportunity to receive school instruction and to read periodicals and books in their mother tongues. Serving as the main vehicles for cultural development—and enabling regime supervision—are the sociocultural associations for each of the significant minority groups except the Gypsies. Formed mostly in 1956 and 1957, these associations maintain for the minorities various regional recreational-cultural centers, libraries, and amateur theater groups. They also assist in the education of children in the schools for minorities, now slowly decreasing in number, within the regular Polish school system. In 1968, a total of 3,132 students (mostly in elementary school) attended these schools, which either provided all instruction in the mother tongue or used Polish as the language of instruction while giving lessons in the minority language. The latter type appears to be gradually replacing the former.
3. Social characteristics (C)
Polish national identity coalesced in the 10th century as a result of growing external threats. Since then, the search for national security and the proper means to achieve it has been the chief factor in shaping the Polish people's view of themselves and others, as well as in shaping individual, group, class, and inter-state relationship.
In A.D. 966 the Polish tribes of the Vistula and Oder river basins between the Carpathian Mountains and the Baltic were united into one state by Mieszko, the first historic ruler of the native Piast dynasty (966-1370). In the same era, Mieszko was baptized and brought the Roman Catholic faith to Poland, which at the time was the most powerful state among the Slavs. The fate of the church in Poland and that of the nation have since been inextricably intertwined, a relationship which has molded the cultural awareness and social orientation of the Polish people. Thus, the year 1966 marked the millennium of both the state as an entity and the dominant Roman Catholic Church.
Both of Mieszko's achievements were urgently needed, since the Polish tribes were being threatened by the developing power of neighboring tribal unions and feudal states. On the West, the Poles were faced by the Germans, whose kind had been Holy Roman Emperor since 962. At the same time, Poland's eastern neighbors had been united by the Norman Run in the Kievan state, which accepted the Christian faith from Byzantium and soon began to invade the Polish border areas. Lying between these two rising powers, the Poles opted for cooperation with the Latin West, but with independence from Germany and under the protection of the papacy. Subsequent centuries of struggle against incursions from both the east and the west—religious conflict with the latter sharpened with the rise of Protestant Prussia—resulted in periods of national crisis and honed the national consciousness and pride of the Polish people. Inherent Slavic individualism, the divisive tendencies of the nobility, and differences over whether the east or west posed the main danger, however, often eroded the strong nationalism conditioned by the Roman Catholic faith and contributed to the successive foreign partitions of Poland, culminating in the disappearance of the Polish state in 1795.
The new Polish state which reappeared in 1918 benefitted as well as suffered from most of these same factors. Expansive nationalism, barred from outlets to the west, led to a successful military campaign in the early 1920's against a Russia weakened by internal upheaval. As one result, Poland's eastern frontiers in the interwar period encompassed sizable new minorities. The existence of these minorities and the struggle by different social groups for political dominance led to marked social stratification, even though the dislocations of the initial post-World War I period had increased social mobility in some cases. Differences in levels of wealth, class, and cultural attainment were emphasized by the broad urban-rural division of society. Such social conflict as existed was primarily among the many nationality groups and within the ranks of the increasingly numerous and underemployed intelligentsia. Although the domi-
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3
