THE RECRUITMENT OF YOUNG PEOPLE INTO BRIGADES OF THE 'SERVICE FOR POLAND' UNIVERSAL ORGANISATION (1946-1955)

After the end of WW II the young Polish generation became engaged on a mass scale in the six-year plan in order to supplement the gaps created by a labour force deficit . A prominent part in the youth-oriented plans of the Polish communists was performed by the 'Service for Poland' Universal Organisation, whose brigades in 1948-1955 were composed of tens of thousands. Such an enormous campaign called for numerous organisational and propaganda efforts as well as an efficiently functioning apparatus of recruitment and employment. The enlistment and transport to workplaces revealed the true attitude of the young generation towards the Stalinist project of modernising Poland. It soon became apparent that the recruitment was by no means voluntary, and that evading it was threatened with penal sanctions. Despite the penalties, young people and their parents sought assorted methods to avoid working in the brigades. The recruitment apparatus was concerned only with meeting the demands of the distribution lists imposed upon particular regional commands. Hence the brigades were frequently joined by family breadwinners, pregnant women, or the ill and the weak. The incorrectly conducted recruitment and the often badly organised transport of thousands of young people constituted, however, a mere introduction to the fate awaiting them in the 'Service for Poland' brigades.