A THOUSAND YEARS OF HISTORY 17authorities, in contrast, were mounting a purely secular and political demon-
stration. For them, 'Millenium', with its Romish overtones, was not acceptable.
For official purposes the vernacular caique of Tysiaclecie was preferred. Whilst
the banners on the churches read 'SACRUM POLONIAE MILLENIUM', civic
buildings and the streets were festooned with the slogan 'TYSIACLECIE PAN
-STWA POLSKIEGO' (A Thousand Years of the Polish State). 'DEO ET
PATRIAE' was matched by 'SOCJALIZM I OJCZYZNA' (Socialism and
Fatherland), 'NAROD Z KOSCIOLEM' by 'PARTIA Z NARODEM' (The
Party is with the Nation), 'POLONIA SEMPER FIDELIS' by 'SOCJALIZM
GWARANCJA POKOJU I GRANIC (The Communist Regime is the
Guarantee of Peace and Frontiers). In the Western Territories gained from
Germany in 1945, the banners proclaimed such messages as 'A THOUSAND
YEARS OF POLAND ON THE ODRA' or 'A THOUSAND YEARS OF
POLAND ON THE BALTIC - both plain mis-statements of fact.
For the historian, the use to which his subject is put by politicians, both cler-
ical and communist, is not without interest. To the impartial observer, the
Roman Catholic identification of Church and Nation in the past was as specious
as the communists' habit of identifying Party and People today. Both Church
and Party live by dogmas of authority and infallibility, and both conceal the full
nature of their complicated relationship with the population as a whole. Once
the Millennium was in prospect, both were bound to launch rival, and mutually
exclusive, interpretations of its significance.
In the 1970s, in the Gierek era, Poland's historians reacted to a new political
climate with new initiatives. On the one hand, seeing the continuing failure of
the Academy to complete its supposedly authoritative survey of Polish History,
they produced a number of collective syntheses to fill the gap. On the other
hand, some of them enagaged in what proved to be the last flush of Marxist his-
torical theorizing.
On the collective front, three historical teams competed - one in Cracow, the
second in Poznan, and the third in Warsaw.^21 Generally speaking, these tended
to have ambitious goals that were only feebly implemented, especially in rela-
tion to the contemporary period. The first of them, from Cracow, was marketed
in western commercial style as 'the showpiece of Polish historiography'. In more
sober estimation, they suffered not only from the usual stylistic flaws of com-
posite works, but also from all the traits and omissions of the official ideology
and of latter-day Polish Nationalism. They cannot be rated as anything more
than competent but stereotyped products of their day.
On the theoretical front, Professor Jerzy Topolski made a determined effort
to put Polish History into a respectable Marxist framework. He was the succes-
sor at Poznan of the late Jan Rutkowski (1886-1949), who was a pre-war
scholar of genuine left-wing convictions, who had fought in the International
Brigades in Spain, and who, as a pioneer of economic history, possessed wide
recognition abroad.^22 Topolski's work started with several studies on the
regional history of Wielkopolska, and in particular, on the feudal economy of