Decent Citizens Serving Chauvinism : Social Portrait of Students Participating in the Blockade of the University of Warsaw in 1936

Mrzygłód, Izabela

doi:2450-8462

- ris
- BibTeX
- EndNote
- Csv

Decent Citizens Serving Chauvinism : Social Portrait of Students Participating in the Blockade of the University of Warsaw in 1936 Mrzygłód, Izabela

Object structure

Decent Citizens Serving Chauvinism : Social Portrait of Students Participating in the Blockade of the University of Warsaw in 1936

Acta Poloniae Historica T. 125 (2022), In Memory of Professor Włodzimierz Borodziej

Mrzygłód, Izabela

Polska Akademia Nauk. Komitet Nauk Historycznych ; Polska Akademia Nauk, Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla

Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk

Warszawa

2022

p. 17-48

University of Warsaw - 1900-1945 ; Antisemitism - Poland - Warsaw - 1918-1939 ; students - Poland - attitudes - 1918-1939 ; social portrait ; political socialization ; right-wing extremists - Poland - 1918-1939

November 1936 saw the blockade of the University of Warsaw, an occupational strike organised by far-right students demanding the introduction of the so-called ‘ghetto benches’ for Jewish students. This article draws a social portrait of the ordinary participants in the blockade and analyses their motivations. I argue that the socialisation of youth into exemplary citizens of a modern nation-state created a fertile ground for far-right organisations and their demands. Moreover, the largest student association, the Fraternal Aid Society, became a space for self-organisation into extreme nationalist politics. Its leaders tapped into the positive motivations of youth, i.e. the search for a sense of belonging and the desire of individuals to fit into the normative order of the community. My examination of the blockade offers a unique insight into the academic background of the far-right and its means of political mobilisation.

Breinlinger Sara and Caroline Kelly, The Social Psychology of Collective Action (London, 2014)
Fromm Erich, Escape from Freedom (New York, 1941) (Polish edition: Ucieczka od wolności, ed. Edmund Wnuk-Lipiński, transl. Olga Ziemilska and Andrzej Ziemilski [Warszawa, 2014])
Garlicki Andrzej (ed.), Dzieje Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego 1915–1939 (Warszawa, 1982)
Goffman Erving, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Edinburgh, 1959) (Polish edition: Człowiek w teatrze życia codziennego, ed. Jerzy Szacki, transl. Helena Datner-Śpiewak and Paweł Śpiewak [Warszawa, 2000])
Jasper James M., The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements (Chicago, 1998)
Majewski Piotr M., ‘Społeczność akademicka 1915–1939’, in id. (ed.), Dzieje Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego 1915–1945 (Warszawa, 2016)
Muszyński Wojciech J., ‘Blokada Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego’, in Marzena Korytkowska (ed.), Encyklopedia “Białych Plam” (Radom, 2000), 116–19
Natkowska Monika, Numerus clausus, getto ławkowe, numerus nullus, “paragraf aryjski” (Warszawa, 1999)
Pleskaczyńska Małgorzata, ‘Struktura społeczna młodzieży UW w okresie międzywojennym (na podstawie danych z roku akademickiego 1934/35),’ Roczniki Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, xi, 2 (1971), 41–52
Rudnicki Szymon, Falanga: Ruch Narodowo-Radykalny (Warszawa, 2018)
Skarżyńska Krystyna (ed.), Podstawy psychologii politycznej (Poznań, 2002)
Skarżyńska Krystyna, Człowiek a polityka. Zarys psychologii politycznej (Warszawa, 2005)