„Życie adaptuje się do tego, co jest”. Inteligenckie strategie przetrwania 1939-1945. Rekonesans poznawczy

One could risk saying that not so much resistance and armed combat as everyday struggle was the main problem of a huge part of the Polish people throughout the whole occupation. The present article attempts to categorise and analyse such lengthy strategies of survival which, according to contemporary definitions, are systems of values to recognize and assess chances and threats for actions and behaviours to ensure the survival of people (Jan Jeżak). Those were planned, long-range and well-thought actions, while an accurate assessment of situation made it possible for people to undertake proper actions and to correctly use their resources. This phenomenon was dynamic one, and social actors adjusted to changing circumstances.

The text is limited to the part of Polish society (the intelligentsia) and almost e clusively to the General Government, only marginally noticing the areas incorporated to the Third Reich. Such a limitation was imposed both by different occupational policies pursued in individual parts of the country, and by the actual accessibility of sources. This applies particularly to journals, the most valuable, personalized source which makes it possible to study survival strategies in a long term perspective. Their authors are, in most cases, members of the intelligentsia (often intellectuals), who during the occupation were in the General Government. The present article is based on diaries written by representatives of different professions, both living in big cities and small villages: writers (M. Dąbrowska, Z. Nałkowska, J. Iwaszkiewicz, S. Rembek), technicians (F. Czekajewski), physicians (Z. Klukowski), old age pensioners (E. Kubalski, F. Wyszyński), sociologists (J. Szczepański, W. Kula), office workers (S. Sebyłowa, A. Kamiński), actors (M. Wyrzykowski), and lawyers (S. Kasznica).

An analysis of both these journals, and other written sources (the occupational underground press, reports of the Government Delegation for Poland, etc.) persuades me to propose a following categorisation of the intellectual survival strategies: 1) creative/ autonomous ones: work outside their former professions, selling off the family wealth, commerce (often black-market one), setting up their own companies, etc. 2) continuationlegalistic strategy, in which people kept their permanent employment, both in Polish and German institutions, that made it possible for them to feel a minimal sense of stability, albeit at the same time it meant the situation close to collaboration with the occupant 3) preemptive strategies that consisted in finding and using loopholes in the occupational system or in suitable interpretations of regulations 4) strategies basing on partnership and domination, available almost solely to landowners with estates in the territory of the General Government who for the occupants made a group socially, culturally and materially attractive. Certainly, the above division is imperfect, to a large e tent intuitive and simplifying (for e ample, it does not include such important social groups as workers and peasants). But this attempt could be treated as an invitation to methodologically innovative, cross–sectional studies of the Polish society during the Second World War.