Robotnicze Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Dzieci w latach 1944–1949 : funkcjonowanie i problemy ideowo-organizacyjne

p. 5-28

Zawiera tabele.

Streszcz. ang., pol.

Powstałe w II RP Robotnicze Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Dzieci (RTPD) próbowało w zmienionej rzeczywistości politycznej po II wojnie światowej (korzystając z poparcia PPS współrządzącej Polską) przekształcić się w Ministerstwo do Spraw Dziecka. Program RTPD z 1947 r. zawierał nowatorskie pomysły oddzielenia opieki lekarskiej nad dzieckiem od całości opieki medycznej i połączenia jej z wychowaniem i opieką, tzw. poradnictwo zintegrowane. RTPD, oficjalnie popierane przez państwo, nazywane beniaminkiem rządu, zostało zaatakowane (w 1948 r.) przez kierownicze gremia PPR. Atak na samodzielność RTPD przebiegał na trzech płaszczyznach: ideologiczno-politycznej, materialnej i organizacyjnej; stowarzyszeniu narzucono rolę pasa transmisyjnego polityki PPR, odebrano przedsiębiorstwa produkcyjno-handlowe i przekształcono w TPD, pozbawiając większości placówek opieki nad dzieckiem.

s. 5-28

Summ. eng., pol.

Tables included [5]

The Second Polish Republic saw a period of intense development of the Workers’ Society of Friends of Children (WSFC), established in 1919 as a separate division of child care at the Central Executive Committee of the Polish Socialist Party. Two of its divisions stood out, namely the Warsaw Division (of Żoliborz), and the Łódź Division. After WWII the WSFC, which was suspended by the Germans during the occupation, began its reactivation, initially losing its ideological character of a socialist association. The year 1946 was a period of rapid and spontaneous development of the Society, with eight provincial (voivodeship) delegations and ninety branches which organized 240 institutions of child care (including 23 orphanages) for 40 thousand children. The Society, as the favorite of the Polish authorities headed by socialists, first Edward Osóbka-Morawski, then Józef Cyrankiewicz, was financed by subsidies of the state. The money was used by the General Board to finance numerous and expensive building investments, including sixteen agricultural centers. In 1947 the General Board worked out a plan of gradual transformation of the WSFC into a ministry for child affairs. A program of the WSFC of 1947 had some innovative ideas though out by Dr. Aleksander Lande who wanted to separate child health care from the whole health care in Poland and to combine it with child education and care to organize the so-called “integrate counseling”. He also wanted pediatrician to be broadly educated, especially in social sciences, and was against the institution of nursery as in his opinion it was family that played the most important role in the development of a child. Those ambitious plans of the Society were thwarted by political events of 1948, that is a final abolition of the autonomy and independence of the Polish Socialist Party. An attack against the independence of the Society was launched by the leadership of the Polish Workers’ Party (PWP) in three planes: ideological political, material and organizational ones; in the mid-1948 the Society was imposed a role of transmission belt for the ideology and policy of the PWP, and in the latter half of the year the WSFC was transformed into the Society of Friends of Children and deprived of a majority of its former child care centers. This new Society lost its old ideological identity, focusing on the implementation of Stalinist political and social program of the Polish United Workers’ Party in the sphere of child care and education through the propagation of anti-Church slogans and the so-called “secular schools.”