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The Resettled Peasants Bring Movement into the City

Summary/Abstract: This article explores literary critical and historical discourses on resettlements after 1945; it also examines selected practices adopted by writers and reporters, with Franciszek Gil serving as an example. Before the war Gil had reported on issues pertaining to the peasant population, developing a range of metaphors for the Recovered Territories as a place of advancement – from the village to the city. His vision is naturally based on simplifications, but there is more to it. For instance, many of the metaphors to describe Szczecin in the Socialist-Realist register – such as the slogan ‘Szczecin – the world’s port;’ fish being referred to as ‘gold’ and fishery as ‘gold-digging’ – have entered the local vernacular. This language, which over time was recognised as an instance of Socialist Realist poetics, was supposed to validate these spaces and the people who had transformed illiteracy and poverty into education and work. Gil explored the mechanisms of that transformation. But while wrote that ‘social life is beginning to be coherent with itself,’ his story suggests that this coherence was short-lived, for he sank into obscurity. It is his legend that lives on in the region. The present article discusses these mechanisms of attraction–repression–assimilation (of places, events, individuals).

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