On 1/10/07, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Woj knows better than I, but my understanding is that
> the Polish aristocracy was not destroyed until quite
> late. The Russian Empire tended to vassalize local
> elites, not wipe them out.
Some 28 of the Czech aristocracy got strung up in Prague's Old Town Square after their forces were defeated in battle -- they have as many X's set into the cobblestones. Kind of unusual even for a semi-sectarian matter, no?
[WS:] I think that Poland and Czech Republic are an excellent case study what difference the presence (Poland) or absence (Czech R) of landed gentry can make on national development. The Czech Republic is basically a modern state with strong social democratic institutions. Poland is essentially a backward peasant society, superficially modernized and propelled to the 20th century by the Communists, but fundamentally pre-modern in the Weberian sense.
Poland suffers from the consequences of the strong landed gentry in two ways. First is the strangling of the cities and urban economy by landed aristocracy, especially during the Reformation - as the Polish gentry was strongly papist. But the other and a bit more insidious and subtle role was played by the far more numerous lesser gentry - the so-called "szlachta" who economically were more or less equivalent to the Russian "kulaks" (rich peasants), but culturally aligned with big time, wealthy aristocratic land owners (the so called "magnates"). The "szlachta" was probably the most reactionary and parasitic element of the Polish society. Like the "magnates" they lived off the land and serf labor, but unlike the magnates who were major importers of Western technology and culture and often time social and technological innovators, the "szlachta" was fundamentally philistine and opposed to any change of the status quo.
During the 19th century, the social position of "szlachta" declined dramatically. First they were pushed off the land by the "magnates" - who benefited from their cozy relationship with the Russian authorities who ruled most of Poland throughout the 19th century. Secondly, the abolition of serfdom by the Russian tsar in early 1860s furthermore undermined their economic base and pushed them into the cities, where they had to compete with the foreign bourgeoisie (mainly German) as well as Jewish merchants and artisans (and later professionals.) The dominant position of foreign bourgeoisie and Jewish merchants in Poland's urban economy at that time was of course the effect of strangling Polish urban economy two centuries earlier by the landed gentry.
As a result, this reactionary, xenophobic, downwardly mobile "szlachta" eventually became the urban intelligentsia - giving it a rather atypical for this social class reactionary, nationalist and pro-aristocratic flavor. By contrast, the Czech intelligentsia grew out of the local urban classes - artisans, merchants, and later workers - and thus lacks the reactionary flavor visible in the Polish intelligentsia, and is more amenable to social democracy.
This argument is pretty much in line with those of Barrington Moore and Robert Brenner re. the social origins of capitalism and social democracy.
Wojtek