Polish peasants in Eastern Galicia: Indifferent to the nation or pillars of polishness? National attitudes in the light of Józef Chałasiński's collection of peasant youth memoirs

Abstract

The following article will discuss Polish national attitudes among peasants in Eastern Galicia in the light of memoirs of peasant youth that the sociologist Józef Chałasiński collected in 1938 and analysed in his seminal work Młode pokolenie chlopów [The young generation of peasants]. It will start with a discussion of differences in processes of the integration of peasants into the Polish nation in Western and Eastern Galicia until WWI. The article will argue that Western Galician peasants, represented in the Polish peasant parties, embraced the idea of being the 'pillars of Polishness' while for Roman Catholic or Polish speaking peasants in Eastern Galicia that remained rather an ascription by nationalist circles of the Polish intelligentsia. This condition, as Józef Chalasiński's collection of memoirs show, does not seem to have changed much during the interwar period.