The Research Program on the Beginnings of the Polish State between Polish Western Thought and Historical Materialism : Structural Developments and Political Reorientation

Focussing on the development of organizational infrastructures, financial constitutions as well as staffing policies of the research program on the beginnings of the Polish state and discussing them in relation to the political framework of post-war Poland, this paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the general preconditions and requirements. Presenting information from archival documents and a close reading of the steps and forms archaeological contributions to the millennial theme have taken, it tries to retrace the development of its thematic and conceptual orientation. This development is presented here as reorientation from a starting point within the realm of the Poznań intellectual centre and thus the Polish Western Thought towards a Warsovian centralization and the implementation of Marxist methodology and, officially at least, Stalinist ideology.