Nowa ludowa historia: charakterystyka i społeczno-polityczne korzenie współczesnych narracji o historii chłopów polskich

The article presents the characteristics of contemporary scholarship devoted to Polish people’s history as well as the context of their creation. The authors focus on two prominent texts: Ludowa historia Polski [The People’s History of Poland] by Adam Leszczyński and Bękarty pańszczyzny [Bastards of Serfdom] by Michał Rauszer. Both books employ a new approach to peasant history by emphasizing the agency of the subaltern and departing from ‘the history of nobility’. The emergence of new publications on Polish people’s history is not only an expression of the authors’ personal motivations but also a consequence of contemporary socio-political climate. The public interest in ‘the people’ is partially an outcome of the 2015 elections, which caused ‘the people’ to emerge as a political subject, and partially a manifestation of the left distancing itself from the historical politics of the current Polish government.