Limiting Privilege: Upward Mobility Within Higher Education in Socialist Poland

by Agata Zysiak

State socialism tried to industrialize, urbanize, encourage the more frequent washing of hands, urge people to leave the church, emancipate women, and electrify cities—all within a single lifetime. Central to these initiatives was extending educational opportunities to the working class and creating a vision of an egalitarian socialist university that offered advancement for all. Limiting Upward Mobility Within Higher Education in Socialist Poland traces the possibilities and limits of this goal by looking at a model socialist university established in 1945 in the working-class city of Łódź, Poland. Initially a flagship project of socialist modernization, the university tried to offer social advancement by privileging admission for peasant and working-class children, but these efforts were often fought by the elite who sought to preserve their privilege. By looking at first-generation students, intelligentsia faculty, and an industrial city, Limiting Privilege explores a complex story about utopian visions, failed aspirations, and reluctant academia.

271 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2016

Reviews

[T W · Rating 5 out of 5]

This thesis turned book by Agata Zysiak gives a very unique perspective not only on the educational system of socialist Poland, but also provides a thorough sociological account of Poland from the 1920s onward.

Although this is an academic production, dont think the book is simply a dry rundown of socialist Poland. Zysiak also conducts a cultural analysis on the university institions. She uses Baudrillard to describe the lagging effect of socialist restructuring and how this affects workers, peasants and the intelligentsia.

Something this book also does (maybe without intending to) is humanizing socialist Poland by shining a light on those who truly experienced the upward social mobility. Something that was simply not in the imagination of Polish workers and peasants in the interwar period.

Truly a unique and sober perspective on the PRL project that is rarely available to English speakers.