"There is no store in Tarda again..." Some remarks on the functioning of rural communities in south-western Mazury on the example of Bartężek, Tarda and Winiec

Abstract

This article describes the economic and socio-cultural transformations experienced in recent decades by the communities of three villages, Bartężek, Tarda and Winiec, located in the western part of the Warmia-Mazury province. The immediate cause of these changes was the political and economic transformations that took place in Poland after 1989. However, the aftermath of the specific, and often predominantly negative, effects of these transformations are seen in the contemporary history of the region and its inhabitants; in particular, the challenge faced by the newly forming Polish state to domesticate, incorporate and unite – both administratively and economically, as well as (most importantly!) symbolically and culturally – the areas of the so-called Recovered Territories with the rest of the country. The great experiment, which was the formation of a new and modern society (in intention) of the Northern and Western Territories, was not successful everywhere. The localities and their inhabitants featured in the work are examples of this. Objective factors, mostly unemployment and transportation exclusion, which afflicted and partly continue to afflict the residents since the early 1990s, overlapped with the lack of sufficiently strong social and cultural ties binding the group together and with the inhabited space. The result of this process was a rapid exodus (if not flight) of primarily young people in search of income and a new place to live. This exodus determined the social and cultural condition of the described villages today, and perhaps many similar ones in the region. The article, using ethnographic detail, reveals the backstage of the economic and social collapse of the villages mentioned and the communities that comprise them, and points to the socio-cultural and symbolic causes of this process.