Peasants and the Politics of History: Memories of Serfdom in Debates on Land Reform in Early Inter-War Poland

The article contributes to memory work on serfdom, which is part of the current momentous debate in Poland on the history and heritage of the peasantry. The article also explores the role that the arguments presented by peasant circles in favour of the implementation of land reform in the early Second Polish Republic (1918–26) played in the politics of history, in particular peasant memory of serfdom and its key element, compulsory labour. Drawing upon the main press organs of the leading peasant parties (PSL Piast and PSL Wyzwolenie), the article shows that in addition to advancing arguments of a social, economic and ethical–legal nature, supporters of both the moderate and radical versions of this reform justified their positions in historical terms, regarding reform as compensation for the centuries of systemic injustice that the nobility inflicted upon peasants in the Polish lands during serfdom. The article ends with the conclusion that despite deep divisions between various factions of the Polish peasant movement in the first decade of independence, the shared aspects of peasant historical policies regarding historical injustice were an important factor that enabled the unification of this movement in the early 1930s.