CREES Noon Lecture. Women’s Forgotten Revolution: Communism and the Struggle for Emancipation in Post-war Poland

This lecture will analyze female participation in shaping the socialist modernization of post-World War II Poland and women's emancipation through education and culture. Competent and dedicated female politicians and civil servants (e.g., Żanna Kormanowa, Zofia Dembińska, Eugenia Krassowska) steered the reform of the Polish educational system immediately after the Second World War and during the Stalinist period, creating a project for a school that was supposed to be egalitarian in terms of class and gender. At the same time, editors of magazines and publishing houses (e.g., Anna Lanota, Halina Koszutska), writers (e.g., Wanda Żółkiewska, Janina Dziarnowska, Helena Bobińska), and film directors, scriptwriters, and pedagogical advisors to Polish television (e.g., Wilhelmina Skulska, Elżbieta Jackiewiczowa) were committed to shaping the image of the new Polish woman: well-educated and professionally active. The role of these “architects of communist Poland” diminished with de-Stalinization, but many of them continued their work, such as representing Poland in international institutions including the UN Commission on the Status of Women and UNESCO. Mrozik will address the absence of post-war leftist women's activism in current historiography in Poland and will discuss recent developments in the field.

Agnieszka Mrozik is a Senior Dianne Widzinski Visiting Fellow at the Copernicus Center for Polish Studies (CCPS) at U-M. She is an associate professor of literary studies at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She is affiliated with two research units—the Center for Cultural and Literary Studies of Communism and the Women’s Archive. She was a fellow of the Imre Kertész Kolleg in Jena (2017), the Institute for Advanced Study at CEU (2018/19), and the DAAD program at the University of Hamburg (2019). She was also recently a guest professor at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) (2023/24). Mrozik is the author of Architektki PRL-u: Komunistki, literatura i emancypacja kobiet w powojennej Polsce [ Female Architects of the Polish People’s Republic: Communist Women, Literature, and Women’s Emancipation in Postwar Poland] (Wydawnictwo IBL PAN, 2022) and Akuszerki transformacji: Kobiety, literatura i władza w Polsce po 1989 roku [ Midwives of the Transformation: Women, Literature, and Power in Post-1989 Poland] (Wydawnictwo IBL PAN, 2012). She has co-authored and co-edited several collective volumes, including Reassessing Communism: Concepts, Culture, and Society in Poland, 1944–1989 (CEU Press, 2021).

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.