Kobiety w buncie antykolektywizacyjnym w Okole w 1953 r.: wybrane konteksty interpretacyjne
Women in anti-collectivisation rebel at the village of Okół in 1953: selected interpretation contexts

Summary/Abstract: On 28 August 1953 at the village Okół in the Kielce region a rebellion broke out against the delimitation and ploughing with tractors of a large plot of land which was to be farmed jointly within a newly created cooperative. Its participants actively stood up against representatives of the local authorities and supporters of the cooperative. Some of them were beaten up, and the tractors that were ploughing the apportioned plot of land were damaged. The revolt resulted in in arrests, detentions and lawsuits of its most active participants. A special role in this rebellion was played by women, who were attacking the organisers of the cooperative. Research has revealed that this unusually large participation of women in the anti-collectivisation resistance was not only a Polish specificity. Its traditions reach back to the women’s revolts against the creation of cooperatives in the USSR that escalated in 1929–1930. Women were especially active in anti-collectivisation rebellions in some other Eastern European countries after 1948 (Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania). There are among the forms and strategies of the peasant resistance against collectivisation some which were more often used by women than by men. This “gender of the resistance” was expressed by an exceptionally emotional reaction to all the forms and manifestations of the policy against the Church, by the use of religious rituals and their instruments (singing, saints’ images, processions) in the fight against collectivisation, inclinations to use particular tools associated with the role played by women in the rural life. There is evidence to suggest that the authorities were less inclined to victimize women fighting in the revolt than men.

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