Discussion
The aim of this paper is to introduce the category of ‘personal communism’ as an analytical tool in the reflection of the patterns of radical left-wing political involvement in the 20
th century. In my argument I propose a bottom-up and micro perspective focusing on individuals, men and women who embraced politics and incorporated it into their personal experience within certain ‘institution of collective action’, which was communist movement. I consider ‘personal communisms’, as dynamic configurations of ideas, emotions, aspirations, practices and identities rooted in various political, social and cultural experiences. Combined together, they constituted an intimate experience of being a communist or being entangled in the political practices scripted and supervised by the communist organizations.
The paper will examine ‘personal communisms’ of members of the Polish communist movement in the first half of the 20th century. My approach will focus on the biographical experiences of actors overshadowed by top leaders and intellectuals. Thus, I will examine ‘ordinary revolutionaries’: small-town rebels roaming the country in search for job during the Great Depression, amateur poets from the textile mills and locksmith workshops, proletarian readers of political brochures, militant youngsters eager for class struggle as well as brawls, radicalized peasant activists looking for a way out of agrarian dilemmas, etc. Among the issues addressed will be how members of unprivileged strata were finding links between ideological scripts and their own fortunes (and, therefore, what were the patterns of their political thinking), what were the processes of disciplining and changeling the diversity of ‘personal communisms’ into obedient and orthodox Stalinist ranks, and what was the post-war dynamics of change from revolutionaries-subversives into revolutionaries-creators, from plebeians to political white-collars.
My argument will be based mostly on the various types of ego-documents: party autobiographies, questionnaires, and assessments, published and unpublished memoirs, as well as my interviews with the descendants of studied group. Thus, the paper will also deal with the matter of narrative strategies employed by the authors in order to construct their communist selves.
