Intellectuals and Civil Society. The Polish Case

The notion of public intellectual is, undoubtedly, a product of modernity. Nonetheless, the roots of this concept should be traced back in the late Middle Ages themselves, when intellectuals, in a quite vague sense, begin to assert themselves socially as a distinct entity. After World War II, being an intellectual acquired new connotations in accordance with the new social and political context. In Eastern European countries, intellectuals were confronted with some major decisions, the stake being their independence as regards a totalitarian regime. That being said, the present article analyses the structural transformations applied in communist Poland to the class of intellectuals. Additionally, we are going to detail the stages of the conflict between the Polish humanist intellectual elite and the ideology of the party-state, as well as the evolution of the relationship between left-wing intellectuals and the Polish Catholic Church. The main aim of this study is to enhance the role played by Polish intellectuals, after 1945, in the configuration of a civil society able to successfully oppose the totalitarian regime.