Complaints and Their Researchers

East European Politics and Societies and Cultures Volume 28 Number 2 May 2014 296-317 © 2013 SAGE Publications Complaints and Their 10.1177/0888325413510313 http://eeps.sagepub.com hosted at Researchers: http://online.sagepub.com The Evolution of Sociodicy in Poland in the Period of 1949–1988 Joanna Tokarska-Bakir Polish Academy of Science, Warsaw “Reading newspapers, watching television, taking part in public meetings, and also listening to the ‘popular voice,’ one can have an impression that Poland is a country full of frustrated, manipulated, ignored people who have been pushed to the margin and deprived of the respect they deserve,” claim the authors of the book Cudze problemy (Problems of Others) in 1991. From this perspective, it is impossible to overestimate the role played in the system of “popular democracy” by institutions of social control, worker/peasant inspections, bureaus of letters and complaints, and also by books of complaints and requests, which were supposed to act as substitutes for nonexistent democratic institutions. This article, based on a historical Old Polish tradition of laments and supplications, will contextualize the articulation of injustice in the trade discourse popularized in the period of the Polish People’s Republic through books of complaints and requests. Keywords: complaints; sociodicy; Mary Douglas’s theory of blaming; Polish People’s Republic; books of complaints ary Douglas argues that when it comes to disasters, human societies are inca- Mpable of assigning them to more than a certain number of blaming schemas.1 The blame is cast on an individual, either the victim or someone associated with them, accusing the said individual of breaking a taboo; alternatively, the blame is cast on an outside enemy. The disaster can also be said to be the result of a rivalry between competitors in an economy of scarce goods; likewise, the society itself can be accused of provoking the disaster, as is done, for example, in the case of criminal- ity ascribed to social marginalisation.2 Each type of blaming generates a particular theodicy, or rather sociodicy3—a set of clarifications whose function is to answer the questions “why me” and “why now,” which are probably rightfully considered the oldest existential questions. A valuable source for the study of sociodicy lies in complaints—historically changing forms of grievances, which the aggrieved individuals address to those whom they consider to be their most appropriate recipients. In this article, I intend to compare—based on existing work concentrating on the second half of the twentieth century4—the formulation and content of complaints written to the party, press, or television authorities during four micro-periods of recent 296 Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at UNIV OF MICHIGAN on May 16, 2015 Tokarska-Bakir / Complaints and Their Researchers 297 Polish history, falling into the years between 1949 and 1988. As a parallel topic, I will look at how these complaints are perceived by their researchers, who already live in a different reality than the authors of the examined sources. By simultaneously studying the object and the subject of the reflections about complaints addressed to the authorities, I hope to gain an insight into the system of notions about justice, which has been evolving during the transformation from the Polish version of com- munism into capitalism and economic liberalism. I define the term sociodicy here as a system of implications regarding normative relations between individuals, the community at large, and the government authorities pertaining to the issue of social justice and reconstructed on the basis of letters, negotiated and not explicitly formulated, albeit emerging from objective documents of a political system. Citizens’ complaints filed with the authorities and concentrating on wrong-doings à rebours reveal the expectations regarding the proper functioning of the system. Three Types of Complaints Complaints from the Stalinist Period, 1949–1953 The title of an article by a team of authors under the leadership of Marcin Kula, Supliki do najwyższej władzy (Supplications to the Highest Authority), highlights the discrepancy between the slogans and the practice of real socialism, which “in its own perception was creating a new world, new life and a new human”; in reality, however, “it was perpetuating traditional phenomena, at times almost feudal in spirit,” such as the supplications in the title. Supplication is a genre of Old-Polish literature, which features letters to a lord of the manor, in which the authors com- plain about their own situation, the estate manager, or excessive taxes. In return for the homagium included in the letter, they expect understanding, intervention, and support from the recipient. According to the authors of the article, the letters sent to the KC (Komitet Centralny, Central Committee) of the PZPR (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza, Polish United Workers’ Party) in the period of 1949–1953 show an identical structure.5 They formulated their research goal as follows: they had intended to “look at the phenomenon of writing to the authorities—the motives and mentality of the writers; the party apparatus’s response to the issues raised; the relationship between the gov- erning and the governed; and, probably most importantly, the image of Poland emerging from this correspondence.”6 Let us start with the researchers’ answer to this very question: In light of the processed complaints—they conclude—there emerges a country where justice or a sensible solution could be expected only in Warsaw, and even that depended on the will of the authorities; a country where the whole structure of government Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at UNIV OF MICHIGAN on May 16, 2015 298 East European Politics and Societies and Cultures institutions and lower party echelons was something of a decoration, which duplicated itself, but did not have explicitly defined competences, and as a result could not function properly. At the same time, reading the analysed complaints gives the impression that despite appearances, the Central Committee governed the everyday life of the country only to a limited extent. The party seems to be a weak organisation. It was supposed to be a structure enabling authoritative rule, but it did not have enough strength. The plan failed due to the individuals representing the PZPR in the field.7 In the letters to the KC, on which this opinion is based, there is a remarkable “over-representation of peasants”; according to the authors of the analysis, this can be explained by “an exceptionally great intensity of problems in villages, arising due to the founding of produce co-operatives and the implementation of de facto anti- peasant policies.”8 The senders of these letters more often than others tend to sign them with group classifiers, for example, “we, the smallholders” or “the peasant community.”9 Besides peasants, the authors of the letters include workers, in rare cases also public officials and dignitaries (a tax office director, a public prosecutor, an inspector at the Ministry of Forestry), sometimes their spouses, soldiers and mili- tiamen, but also a large group of disabled or wronged individuals. Another large group consists of party members, who often include their membership card number and sign as “an old comrade.” Most letters concern local officials—directors, public officials, party functionar- ies and the police officers—who did not keep the promises of social justice made by the party. The complainants declare full identification with this idea and demand its implementation, which is hindered by conscious or unconscious sabotage by outside enemies. The following letter formulates this in a comparatively mild manner: “The party is the leading unit of the working class, but only on the central level, not on district levels, where the situation is completely different. On the district level, it has to be said that the party is a crowd of different elements.”10 In fact, all the authors of the complaints use the language of the political system whose representatives they are addressing; the authors of the article explain this with conformist motivations.11 The letters include a lot of expressions like “class forces,” “people’s cadres,” “our workmen,” “proletarian grit,” “a healthy, proletarian attitude,” “work for the masses,” “struggle for People’s Poland and socialism,” “a just system,” or “the beloved party.”12 As well as choosing an idiolect that the author calculated would best convey meaning to the recipient, authentication strategies included declaration of one’s ideological affinity (“the party line has been my guidance in everyday life”),13 suitable origin (“I am a worker’s son”),14 and reference to “the war bond”15 or current affairs (“I am compelled to write by the sad event of comrade Stalin’s death”).16 A common trait of many letters is their intimacy and decrease of distance, usually more characteristic of private correspondence: “Beloved Comrade Secretary, I would like to write you something about myself, and believe me, I don’t know where to start.”17 Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at UNIV OF MICHIGAN on May 16, 2015 Tokarska-Bakir / Complaints and Their Researchers 299 The language of the letters is characterised by strong antagonism, manifested in a high occurrence of cacophemisms—linguistic means intending to evoke aversion to the object to which they refer.18 There is a recurring use of “war with the reaction,” “destructive,” “enemy work,” “hostile

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