Slavic Studies in Poland: A Historical Perspective

Slavic studies, also known as Slavistics, is an academic field dedicated to the study of Slavic peoples, languages, history, and culture. This area studies field emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, coinciding with the rise of Romantic nationalism among Slavic nations and ideological efforts to foster a shared Slavic identity, exemplified by the Pan-Slavist movement. While originally focused on linguistics and philology, Slavic studies has expanded to encompass various disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. In the United States, Russian studies often dominates the field, but a broader understanding of Slavic studies acknowledges the distinct histories and cultures of all Slavic nations, including Poland.

The Evolution of Slavic Studies

The history of Slavic studies can be divided into three distinct periods. The first period, lasting until 1876, was characterized by a focus on documenting and publishing monuments of Slavic languages, including the earliest texts written in national languages. This era saw the creation of the first modern dictionaries, grammars, and compendia for many Slavic languages.

The second period, which ended with World War I, witnessed the rapid development of Slavic philology and linguistics. This growth was particularly notable outside of Slavic countries, within circles formed around figures like August Schleicher and August Leskien at the University of Leipzig.

After World War II, centers of Slavic studies proliferated at universities worldwide, expanding into other humanities and social science disciplines. This expansion was partly driven by political considerations in Western Europe and North America during the Cold War.

The Development of Polish Studies

Within the broader context of Slavic studies, Polish studies has emerged as a significant area of focus. Poland's complex history, culture, and language have attracted scholars from around the world.

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Resources for Polish Studies

Numerous resources are available for those interested in Polish studies. These include:

Collections of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw: This institute provides access to valuable materials related to the history of Polish Jews, some of which are available online.
Expansive online archive of the Karta Center: The Karta Center focuses on the social history of the twentieth century in Poland, offering an extensive online archive.
Basic information about the national archive network in Poland: Researchers can find information about the national archive network in Poland, facilitating access to historical documents.
Information about books in the national library: The national library provides information about its book collections, aiding researchers in locating relevant publications.
Expansive archival collection of documentaries, feature films, historical footage, theater productions, and more: This collection offers a wealth of visual and performing arts materials related to Poland.
Catalogue of the collections of academic Polish libraries: This catalogue provides access to the holdings of academic libraries across Poland.
Oral history collection compiled by the Warsaw Uprising Museum: The Warsaw Uprising Museum has compiled an oral history collection, preserving firsthand accounts of this pivotal event.
Digital library created by the National Library of Poland: The National Library of Poland has created a digital library, providing online access to a variety of resources.
Archival resource aggregator that allows archival collections across Poland to be searched digitally: This aggregator enables researchers to search archival collections throughout Poland digitally.
Official YouTube channel of one of the oldest film studios in Poland featuring movie clips and entire films: This YouTube channel offers access to films and clips from one of Poland's oldest film studios.
Digital collections of the USHMM: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) houses digital collections related to Poland.
Primary professional organization for the study of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia: This organization serves as a primary resource for scholars in the field.
Program that allows language learning through interactive stories and videos, focusing on stories relating to Polish culture: This program provides an interactive way to learn the Polish language and culture.
Major newspaper: Access to major Polish newspapers provides insights into contemporary Polish society.
News and podcasts on different topics of Polish news, politics, history, and culture: These resources offer current information and analysis of Polish affairs.

Memorial Library's Slavic, East European and Central Asian Area Studies Section

The Collection Policy of the Slavic, East European and Central Asian Area Studies Section of Memorial Library is to acquire material of research value published in all Slavic and East European languages covering subjects in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The Polish collection was begun in the 1930’s by Witold Doroszewski and Jozef Birkenmajer, the first chairs of the Department of Slavic Languages, then called the Department of Polish. Later acquisitions include a collection of Polish Solidarity materials. Memorial Library holds many of the major Czech, Slovak, and Polish scholarly periodicals in the social sciences, history, and literature. Active exchanges are maintained with the libraries of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and the National Library of the Czech Republic and the National Library of the Slovak Republic. Memorial Library contains the works of most of the major writers of Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and the nations of the former Yugoslavia. Scholars of Serbian history also have access to the Komadinic Collection in Balkan social and political history. This collection includes publications and pamphlets of peasant, socialist and other radical movements from the last half of the nineteenth century up until World War II. It consists of some 7,000 items, mostly in Serbo-Croatian, and is based on the private library of Milan Komadinic (1882-1944), the founder and organizer of the zadrugarstvo, an early society of cooperatives in Serbia. The collection was further developed by Slobodan Komadinic, the son of Milan Komadinic, and was subsequently purchased by Memorial Library. The Library’s holdings from the Central Asian and Caucasus regions focus on history, politics, and literature. The library has been acquiring Russian-language materials about and from Central Asia for many years. The Library also acquires materials in the Tajik language, and in the Turkic languages of Azeri, Kazakh, Uzbek, Tatar, Bashkir, Turkmen, Kyrgyz, and Uighur. Materials relating to Armenia and Georgia are not collected at the research level and vernacular Armenian and Georgian materials are only collected on a small scale, with the exception of dictionaries. The library has been steadily collecting Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian materials for several decades. Many of the major titles in Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian literature and history are represented. Professors Valters Nollendorfs and Valdis J. Zeps were instrumental in the acquisition of Latvian émigré books for Memorial Library. The Department of Special Collections houses a Latvian collection as well as the Alfred Senn Lithuanian Collection.

The Significance of Studying Polish

There are numerous compelling reasons to study Polish. Polish is spoken by approximately 38 million people within Poland and by Polish speakers throughout the globe, especially in hubs of the Polish diaspora such as Chicago, London and New York. With over 50 million Polish speakers around the world, both in Poland and abroad, learning Polish opens doors to a vibrant community and a rich cultural heritage.

Poland's political history and location at Europe's crossroads make it a unique vantage point for understanding the formative events and processes that produced our world: the two World Wars, the project of state socialism, and the post-socialist transition to democracy. Poland's shifting borders and the complex history and politics they represent provide a unique point of entry into modern European history. As Dariusz Skorczewski notes, Poland's experiences of foreign domination and the history of empire have shaped contemporary Polish culture and society. Polish Literature and National Identity reveals how the experiences of foreign domination and the history of empire have shaped contemporary Polish culture and society. Skorczewski explores transformations of national identity as reflected in Polish literature and critical discourse from Romanticism to the twenty-first century.

Furthermore, Polish serves as a gateway into all Slavic languages, facilitating the study of related languages and cultures.

In today's globally networked world, bilingual employees are highly valued. People who speak more than one language earn 5-20% more than monolinguals on average. Employees with multiple languages under their belts can nurture international business relations and expand the intellectual horizons of a workplace.

Polish Studies at the University of Kansas

The University of Kansas has a more than thirty-year tradition of teaching Polish language and literature. Polish language and culture courses at KU are designed to accommodate students with a wide range of interests, including students with Polish heritage, students interested in Polish and East European history, literature, film. The Department of Slavic, German, and Eurasian Studies offers courses of elementary, intermediate and advanced Polish. The beginning of the sequence is offered every other year.

Polish Studies at the University of Chicago

The tradition of Slavic studies at the University of Chicago is almost as old as the University itself. It goes back to 1896 when one of Russia’s best educated men, Prince Sergei Volkonsky, came to the University of Chicago to give a series of lectures and to deliver a convocation address. It was Volkonsky’s talks on Russian art, theater and literature that are said to have sparked an enthusiasm for Russia in the University’s first president William Rainey Harper. One bottle from this case, half emptied, is now found in the archives of Samuel Northrop Harper, the president’s son. A few facts about the president’s son follow. Encouraged by his father, Samuel Northrop Harper went to Paris to study Russian, visited Moscow in 1904 and Petersburg in January of1905, just in time to witness "Bloody Sunday" - the Tsar’s troops shooting at a demonstration of unarmed workers near the Winter Palace. Harper reported what he had seen to the American Embassy and came back to teach courses in Russian language and political institutions at the University of Chicago. Even though he supported the democratic process in Russia, interviewed members of the Duma and was hopeful about the Provisional Government formed in the wake of the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in February of 1917, Harper was dismayed and disheartened by the Bolshevik Revolution in October. Without ceasing to teach Russian subjects here in the Humanities division throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Samuel N. It was at this University that the future Minister for Foreign affairs of that short-lived Provisional Government of Russia, Pavel Miliukov, presented twelve lectures in 1903. He later expanded these lectures into the book Russia and its Crisis published by the University of Chicago Press in 1905. In the winter of 1905 (the same winter in which Samuel N. Harper witnessed the events of "Bloody Sunday"), Miliukov returned to Chicago to gives lecture on the Balkan states to history students. Indeed, the pride of this Slavic department is that we do not measure the importance of a culture by the size of its nation or by a military might. We are among the only ten Slavic departments in the US and Canada, which on the strength of the multiethnic composition of its program can be called a "full-service" Slavic Department, rather than being called a Russian one. On the one hand, this "all-Slavic" profile is justified by the fact that Chicago is a very Slavic city, with large Polish, Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Bulgarian ethnic communities. It took a long time for this to become our official philosophy, however. In the course of the past century, Russia was looming large, and the sad thing about academic policies then (as now) was that large things were noticed first. The second year of the Great War in Europe, 1915, was the year intended by President Harry Pratt Judson to be the beginning of a Russian department at the University of Chicago, with Samuel N. Harper as its chairman. When in the l940s the University was selected as a Center for Russian language and area instruction under the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP), Russian émigré, Count George Bobrinskoy, a specialist in Sanskrit and of the Linguistics Department, was asked to teach his mother tongue to military intelligence officers. His staff of eight, which included Fruma Gottschalk and Raissa Palyi, utilized methods of orals-aural language instruction first developed at Chicago. After the war, Gottschalk remained in charge of Russian language teaching and Slavic as well as East Asian became part of the Linguistics Department. Francis J. Whitfield was the Department’s first full-time Slavist. In the decade after the war, Slavic studies slowed down again. A minimum of courses were maintained - basic language courses and a survey of the literature - until the mid-fifties. After Samuel N. Harper’s death in 1942, Professor Bobrinskoy kept calling for an appointment of a full-time specialist in Russian, but the administration dawdled, filling the vacancy with temporary appointments. As elsewhere across the US, it was Khrushchev’s beeping Sputnik that was academia’s wake-up call to the existence of Russia. After 1957, the study of Russian began to receive financial support from governmental and foundation programs. A Committee on Slavic Area Studies was established in 1959. Specialists in the Slavic realm appeared in a number of Departments: History, Economic, Anthropology, Linguistics, Political Sciences. The new graduate Department of Slavic Languages and Literature was established in 1961 with Edward Wasiolek (part-time) and Hugh McLean’s (full time) appointments. For Russian literature, Krystyna Pomorska was a visiting professor in 1962 and 1963. In 1963, Ralph E. Matlaw joined in; in 1967, Milton Ehre and Barbara Monter; in 1971, Norman W. Ingham. Concurrently, appointments were made in Slavic linguistics. In 1961, Zbigniew Golab came to Chicago from the University of Cracow strengthening the program in West and South Slavic linguistics. Howard I. Aronson joined the staff in 1962, and rounded out the program of Russian and general Slavic linguistics, with a particular strength in Bulgarian. Peter Jonikas taught courses in comparative Balto-Slavic and the history of Lithuanian.

Study Abroad Opportunities in Poland

Students interested in immersing themselves in Polish culture and language can take advantage of study abroad opportunities in Poland. Carolina offers study abroad opportunities in the historical city of Krakow. Our institutional partnership with Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań provides a natural bridge to the bustling world of contemporary Poland.

Poland's Transformations and Traumas

Over the last century, Poland has undergone an extraordinary range of transformations and traumas: the end of partition among three empires (Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian) leading to the brief period of interwar independence; Nazi conquest, and the virtual elimination of Poland's Jewish population; Soviet subjugation; Solidarity and the revolt against Soviet rule; martial law; and in 1989, independence once again.

Read also: Is Polish a Hard Language?

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