The Man from the State Farm as “Homo Sovieticus”: Between Social Policy and Special Pedagogy
The Man from the State Farm as “Homo Sovieticus”: Between Social Policy and Special Pedagogy

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the article is to attempt a kind of reconstruction/rehabilitation of the community living in State Farms as well as the place itself, which is considered in the text from the perspective of (un)conscious social inclusion. In the explored reality we find more ambiguity instead of concrete answers. For many of us, however, the PGR (Państwowe Gospodarstwa Rolne, State Collective Farm) is nothing more than a symbol of a bygone era, whose legacy is the poverty and social confusion of the inhabitants of post-state farms. The author poses the research question: Can the presence of people with intellectual disabilities in PGRs be considered a form of social inclusion, or was it rather an emanation of the criteria for recruiting employees to PGRs according to the idea/stigma of homo sovieticus? The ambiguity of the assessment appears even more so when we juxtapose the recruitment criteria of the PGR with the recruitment criteria in contemporary workplaces for people with intellectual disabilities. In the PGR the criteria were (despite the pathological connotations) the skills and competences of each member of the PGR community. In contrast, in today’s workplaces, e.g. Occupational Activity Centres, Protected Workplaces or even the open labour market, disability is the most important recruitment criterion. The analyses undertaken are based on an (auto)ethnographic research strategy, as well as a critical analysis of sources, and a meta-analysis of concepts relating to the research problem posed.

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