Scott McLemee has an interesting article on the recent 'outing' of Bauman's Stalinist past. Read the whole thing--he does a nice job contextualizing and criticizing Bauman's would be outers, arguing that the matter is hardly one of concealment and revelation and that what is more likely at stake today is the generational and political problem of governance in Poland. Link: Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :: Speak, Memory.
In March, a paragraph concerning Bauman appeared at Sign and Sight, a Web site providing capsule summaries in English of the Feuilletons (topical cultural articles) appearing in German newspapers and magazines. It noted the recent publication in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of an article by a Polish historian named Bogdan Musial. The piece “uncovers the Stalinist past of the world famous sociologist,” as Sign and Sight put it.
It also quoted a bit of the article. “The fact is that Bauman was deeply involved with the violent communist regime in Poland for more than 20 years,” in Musial’s words, “fighting real and supposed enemies of Stalinism with a weapon in his hand, shooting them in the back. His activities can hardly be passed off as the youthful transgressions of an intellectual seduced and led astray by communist ideology. And it is astonishing that Bauman, who so loves to point the finger, does not reflect on his own deeds.”
A few weeks later, another discussion of the matter appeared in The Irish Times — this one by Andreas Hess, a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Dublin. The piece bore what seems, with hindsight, the almost inevitable title of “Postmodernism Made Me Do It: A World Without Blame.” (The article is not available except to subscribers, but I’ll quote from a copy passed along by a friend.)
Summing up the charges in the German article, Hess said that secret files recently declassified in Poland revealed that Bauman “participated in operations of political cleansing of alleged political opponents in Poland between 1944 and 1954. The Polish files also show Bauman was praised by his superiors for having been quite successful in completing the tasks assigned, although he seems, as at least one note suggests, not to have taken any major part in direct military operations because of his ‘Semitic background.’ However, to be promoted to the rank of major at the youthful age of 23 was quite an achievement. As the author of the article [in the German newspaper] pointed out, Bauman remained a faithful member of the party apparatus.”
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