Transforming Worlds of Work. Post-1989 Privatization in Poland through the Eyes of Factory Workers

0545289 - ÚSD 2022 CZ eng R - Book Review
Pehe, Veronika
Transforming Worlds of Work. Post-1989 Privatization in Poland through the Eyes of Factory Workers.
[LEYK, A.; WAWRZYNIAK, J.: Cięcia : mówiona historia transformacji. Warszawa, 2020. 503 s.]. Soudobé dějiny. Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v. v. i. Roč. 28, č. 3 (2021). ISSN 1210-7050
Institutional support: RVO:68378114
Keywords : Poland * economic transformation * privatization
OECD category: History (history of science and technology to be 6.3, history of specific sciences to be under the respective headings)
Method of publishing: Open access
https://sd.usd.cas.cz/getrevsrc.php?identification=public&mag=sod&raid=18&type=fin&ver=1

The subject of this review is the monograph Cięcia. Mówiona historia transformacji (Cuts. An Oral History of the Transformation) by Aleksandra Leyk and Joanna Wawrzyniak. The review outlines the structure of the book, which is the output of a larger project conducted at the University of Warsaw between 2010-2018. This project gathered the life stories of workers of initially socialist enterprises in Poland, which were then privatized through foreign direct investment in the 1990s. The review argues that although the volume lacks a comprehensive analytical and interpretive framework, the highly readable oral histories that form the core of the book are an invaluable historical source in themselves. The review briefly compares the book to the somewhat similar publication Telling the Great Change (eds. Kaja Kaźmierska and Katarzyna Waniek, 2020), which attempts to capture the experience of the post-1989 systemic transformations in Poland on three generational cohorts, using the sociological method of biographical research. While the latter publication offers a robust conceptual framework, Cuts leaves the burden of interpretation to the reader. Both approaches, the reviewer suggests, are valid and complement one another. The value of Leyk and Wawrzyniak’s monograph lies in creating a rich historical source that does not offer clear-cut answers and demonstrates the complexity of lived experience in an era of rapid modernization, both socialist and capitalist.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0322021