12 MILLENIUM
explain the horrors of the recent past as the necessary trials of the nation's
progress towards a better future. Above all, it accepted the nation as a perma-
nent and objective reality. In its own special way it combined the Messianism of
the Romantics, the Realism of the Staficzyks, the Positivism of the Varsovians,
and the Nationalism of them all. For these reasons, it stood to heal and anaes-
thetize and was readily adopted by a whole generation of scholars who had lit-
tle ultimate faith in the validity of its precepts.
Yet the Marxification of History in Poland was no easy matter. For one thing,
apart from the tiny Association of Marxist Historians founded in 1948 by
Arnold, Jablonski, and Bobinska, there were virtually no native Marxists. A
whole generation had to be schooled from scratch by foreign Soviet mentors.
For another, the schooling had to proceed in the context of Stalinism, where
genuine ideological concern was shamelessly subordinated to immediate politi-
cal considerations. History was to be used as a blunt political instrument with
which the enemies of the regime could be bludgeoned. As Professor Arnold
explained at the First Methodological Conference of Polish Historians at
Otwock in December 1951, 'the only scientific approach to historical problems
is ... to treat them as a most terrible ideological weapon directed against the
rulers of Wall Street.'^15 Worst of all, the specific characteristics of Polish History
did not lend themselves easily to existing models of Marxist or Soviet historiog-
raphy. The weakness of slavery in early Polish society, for example, made it
extremely difficult to adopt Engels's scheme of pre-feudal developments. The
scarcity of revolutions prior to the seventeenth century made it difficult to be
precise about the emergence of Feudalism; whilst the superabundance of violent
eruptions in the subsequent period presented an entirely baffling proliferation of
socio-economic diversions during the emergence of Capitalism. The absence of
a sovereign Polish state between 1795 and 1918 prevented any simple adoption
of Russian models, where the role of the state had always received special
prominence. From the Marxist point of view it would have been entirely
respectable to attribute the Partitions to 'unhistoric forces'. But from the reign-
ing political point of view this was unthinkable, since the expanded territorial
base of the Russian Empire, as established by the Partitions and inherited by the
USSR, was the principal 'socialist achievement' which the People's Republic and
the new Polish History were now required to defend. In consequence, it is not
surprising that the Academy of Sciences of the USSR was able to complete a
'History of Poland' long before Polish historians could agree on a synthesis of
their own.
The Soviet Istoriya Pol'shi, published between 1954 and 1965, was in many
ways a remarkable achievement, not least since it confirms that Poland has a
continuous historic existence. (Had it been commissioned a few years earlier,
there is little doubt it would have proved the opposite.) In general, it applies the
standard Five Stage Scheme, identifying Primitive, Feudal, Capitalist, Socialist,
and Communist stages of development. But some of its chosen turning-points —
at 965,1795,1848,1917,1944- are most eccentric. The year 1848, for example,