Let There Be Light: Rural Poland’s Electric Awakening

lampa_pod_sufitem_1975_fot_caf_pap_19710101_004.jpg, default, Ceiling lamp, 1975, photo: CAF / PAP

Or, how Polish villagers began ‘to speak the language of glass houses’.

In Pamiętniki chłopów (Peasant Diaries), published in 1935, many of the problems faced by authors – for instance, those related to leisure time intended to be spent reading or diary writing – come down to the fact that ‘it’s not worth the kerosene’. A farmer from the Lviv area noted:

[…] forget about matches, women carry fire from house to house using lighters or tinder, while I break one match into two, or even four; kerosene and lamps are luxuries here. Impossible times are coming, after all, as our grandfathers used to foretell. We light our fires with wooden splinters, but I dreamt I’d see the day I could turn on an electric light. Nothing on the horizon, though […]. [Trans. Anna Potoczny]

Only one diarist in the volume mentioned above, a peasant from the Poznań area, could boast having electric light. This, however, was followed by a litany of complaints – that kerosene was cheaper, that a kilowatt of electricity was more expensive in the country than it was in the city, that you had to pay an additional fee of 3zł a quarter for an electric meter (at the time, it was the equivalent of around 30 loaves of bread, 10 kilos of salt or 5 litres of kerosene).

The pre-war energy industry was largely dominated by large joint-stock companies with mostly foreign capital – it simply wasn’t in their interest to invest in the construction of expansive energy networks in the provinces where it would be used mostly by minor customers, households with low energy use.

By the late 1930s, the situation slowly started to improve, in terms of both legislation and investments. Grassroots initiatives, such as emerging electrification cooperatives, started to form as well. Despite all efforts, however, electricity ended up reaching mainly industrialised and suburban villages. On the eve of World War Two, less than 5% of rural settlements in the Second Polish Republic were electrified.

The countryside, however, was not the only problem. In their book Wiek energetyków. Opowieść o ludziach, którzy zmienili Polskę (The Age of Power Engineers: The Story of the People Who Changed Poland), Rafał Zasuń and Bartłomiej Derski inform us that, according to a survey conducted by the Association of Polish Cities (Związek Miast Polskich), around 100 out of 603 Polish cities still weren’t electrified in 1939.

Pitting a lamp against a transformer

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Cecele, 1955, photo: Mottl / CAF / PAP

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In his documentary Ziemia, ziemia… (Land, Land…), published in 1946, Franciszek Gil described the problems of a reporter in the field ready to conduct interviews on land allotment, whereas the thoughts of the peasants were already preoccupied with a different issue – electrification.

What incredibly strange language the peasant spoke. ‘The power line’s supposed to cost three thousand – depending on the number of people in the commune – and a thousand for each lamp. I’d pay in a snap to avoid the grease and the soot. And I’d cook, and all […] what comfort, man, like I don’t know what. Now Boguchwała and Zwięczyca are being set up […]. It’ll get here sooner or later […] darn, it’s moving commune by commune.’ Oh, he was no progressive or radical. He didn’t belonged to any party. If you knew his ‘political thoughts’, you’d certainly call him a reactionary. But something strange was happening there. We’d always talk about horses during the summer holiday. […] And now peasants are using the language of glass houses!

The second peasant and the third talked about electric lamps. For me, this was new and strange, but there was a growing readiness within them to accept electric wires into their homes; it was already simple and natural for them – part of the commune. [trans. AP]

Along with the agrarian reform, electrification became the most important propaganda symbol of modernisation-related changes to rural areas. Legislation was passed in 1950 on universal electrification; appropriate guidelines were included in the six-year plan, yet these quickly proved unrealistic. The success of electrification efforts was largely due to the grassroots self-organisation of hundreds of communes, of over 2,000 electrification committees that appeared spontaneously in Poland. For a long time, the authorities didn’t get in the way of their activities; at worst, they took credit for their achievements after the fact. The locals would hold fundraising events to make electrification possible – such as raffles or ticketed dance parties – and they entered into contracts with energy companies (often still private until 1948) on their own. Apart from farmers, the committees often included representatives of local elites – school principals, mayors, priests. ‘Electrification committees didn’t work out; they were dominated by rich private farmers, complained Trybuna Ludu (The People’s Tribune) in the 1950s.

The book quoted above, Wiek energetyków, contains a description of the entire electrification ritual that was developed in the countryside. The commune would gather around a brand-new transformer, the oldest person in the committee would crash an oil lamp against it, the priest would consecrate it with an aspergillum, and then there would be light. Afterwards, the peasants and the electricians would throw a celebration together – out in the fresh air, in the school or in the firehouse.

However, electrification committees weren’t the only grassroots initiatives to be discovered in the historical sources of the period: the efforts of the commune and the work of their own hands gave rise to village schools and community centres; village housewives’ associations and farmers’ associations were formed. Electrification also brought so-called kukuruźniki to rural areas – radio speakers installed in homes on request. Broadcasting propaganda messages to the inhabitants of the countryside was a crucial argument in favour of electrification for the new government.

Electrification committee: a case study

Hallo Uwaga: Gromada Słocina urządza na elektryfikację wsi w niedzielę dnia 18. VIII. 46. r. w parku Słocińskim wielki festyn, 1946, fot. Biblioteka Narodowa Polona — Hello Attention: Commune Słocin is holding a grand fete in Słocin’s park on Sunday, 18 August 1946, for the electrification of the village, 1946, photo: Biblioteka Narodowa Polona

Let’s explore their activities by looking at one specific electrification committee. The organisational problems and bureaucratic obstacles they had to tackle were described in-depth by a farmer and peasant activist living in a village close to Ryki (then in Warsaw Voivodeship, now in Lublin Voivodeship), the author of a diary titled Gospodarz z ołówkiem w ręku (A Farmer with a Pencil in His Hand), published in a volume of Awans młodego pokolenia (Advancement of the Young Generation).

The committee was formed on the wave of the social upheaval that followed the thaw of October 1956. On 20 January 1957, after Sunday mass, three farmers came to an agreement that the issue of electrification ought to be raised. They held a village gathering on the following day. After a heated discussion – what sparked the conflict was mainly the question of whether costs would be divided depending on the number of hectares of land someone owned or evenly among households – they successfully selected the representatives of the electrification committee and established that everyone who ‘wants to belong to the light’ had to pay a deposit of 500zł to cover the set-up costs.

They drew up a list of interested farmers – 50 out of 60 expressed interest. They formed an alliance with the neighbouring villages to join efforts in advocating for electrification. And it was then that they started being dragged from pillar to post: the committee delegates went to Lublin to the Agricultural Electrification Company (they didn’t achieve anything); they went to Warsaw multiple times – for a meeting with an MP who had promised to help them with the matter, to the engineers from the Central Board of Agricultural Electrification, to the Voivodeship National Council, to Wołomin – to the home of the engineer who was supposed to have prepared the documentation, and so on. The issue, however, was worth the hassle, and, as our narrator explains, ‘We’re scared to do it privately, since you can slip up and end up behind bars’. In 1958, the authorities’ approach to spontaneous electrification was already unfavourable – the management of one electrification company was charged with corruption, sentences were passed – and hence everything had to be done officially, at the appropriate institutions.

The first measurements were taken in the village in the spring of 1958, preceded by the promise that it would be included in the universal electrification of 1959. In December, it turned out that one colony [kolonia – an administrative unit, a kind of rural settlement formed as the result of an expansion of a previously existing settlement, trans.] was excluded from the plan, which only generated conflicts in the already impatient communes. As our farmer wrote, ‘No one said anything during the assembly, but after the assembly they all had a lot to say’. In March 1959, another engineer took further measurements, and new documentation was drawn up, according to which the electrification plan, once again, only included part of the village:

Handling the matter this way by the gentlemen from Warsaw caused us great harm and will continue to wreak havoc on community works in the village for many years. What the class war accomplished in the past has recently evened out a little, and things started to improvements visibly. It seemed that everything would now be fine. But such a division of the village in terms of electrification ruined everything. The village broke up into a bunch of groups, parties, and micro-parties. Everyone was dragging the committee relentlessly through the mud. [Trans. AP]

Another year of efforts and promises passed. Finally, after the harvest of 1960, the committee received a message to go and pick up the pylons from the station in Ryki.

When the high-voltage pylons arrived, although it was the height of sowing season, still whoever had horses set out for the pick-up. When the brigade arrived, the plots had already been provided. We helped with the hole digging, erecting the pylons, and other works. I must admit that everyone did honest work, and no one refused to help. When the high voltage was turned on, all the farmers rushed to see it. And it was a pleasure to watch the works coming along. The engineering crew was fed by each landowner in turn, four at a time at someone else’s place each day, according to a list, and the committee always made sure that food was provided. There was a lot of hard work because it was the time for digging, sowing, and threshing, still, everything somehow got done in the end. [Trans. AP]

The completion of the job was celebrated in the community centre on 23 October, and in November 1960, almost four years after the committee was formed, the entire village was connected to electricity.

The first flick

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Wygiełdów, evening lit by lightbulbs, 1950, photo: PAP

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What kind of emotions did bringing electricity evoke? We can find out from diary fragments included in Awans Młodego Pokolenia Wsi (Advancement of the Young Rural Generation) edited by Józef Chałasiński quoted above.

A girl from Poznań Voivodeship, 1959: ‘We finally have electric light here. What comfort, what a different life. An iron – finally no more metal cooling down. Radio, light – I don’t know how I ever managed to do anything by the light of an oil lamp’.

A girl from the Łapy district, Białystok Voivodeship, 1960:

Saturday, 6 February. The lights went on today. Everyone’s rejoicing. They had this ball for the workers and the whole village. […] When I dropped by the firehouse, all the girls were already having fun. All the boys were drunk, stomping on each other’s feet. […] It was quite nice. Sunday, 7 February. The entire village slept until noon. Only grandmothers went to church with the children. The electricians left, too.

(In this diary, there’s also a thread about an infatuation with a wireman lodging in the house.) Immediately after, the cited diaries start to catalogue the electrical appliances that appeared in the village shortly after it was connected to electricity. Washing machines. Irons. Stoves. Radios. Record players. Electric motors. As in the quote below:

The 20th century came around to our village, too, after all! […] What joy it was, that first flick! Father kept flicking the switch on and off for fun at first, like a child. He’d say: ‘Look, now the light’s on, now it’s off’. Mother would turn her head away, she’s very emotional. […] Once we had light, we bought an electric motor, my oldest brother gave us a radio, and actions surpassed our dreams! [Trans. AP]

However, disappointed voices are also to be found, as in the diary of a farmer from around Węgrów (Warsaw Voivodeship): ‘Lightbulbs shone thanks to the efficient help of local people. Flats became bright, pockets empty. In the cities, investments like these are made at the state’s expense. The peasant feels wronged […]’. Another reason for chagrin was the low standard of electrification. Anecdotal stories proliferated about farmers who, after their houses were connected to electricity, would buy chandeliers in which only one lightbulb lit up.

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Jarosław district, 1973, photo: Krzysztof Łokaj / CAF / PAP

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Work gained particular intensity in the 1960s, when households located further apart in villages with more dispersed, colony-like layouts were being connected to the electric grid. The plan for ‘universal electrification’ was being implemented mostly on the lands of central and eastern Poland – by Gomułka’s decade, the western voivodeships were almost 100% electrified.

The final villages were electrified in the late 1970s. Another problem appeared, however. In the mid-1960s, it turned out that, faced with the rising demand for energy, energy companies couldn’t manage to keep up the maintenance of existing infrastructure, of transformers built on wooden pylons, assessed to last for 15-20 years, and so forth. As Stanisław Krakowiak wrote in his work on the electrification of the countryside, the main obstacle was the cult of new investments which dominated the entire period of the People’s Republic of Poland. Ribbon-cutting looked much more spectacular in pictures and film chronicles than the renovation of existing equipment.

‘Farmers are waiting for the third stage’ – claimed a headline in Sztandar Młodych (Standard for the Young) [a communist-era propaganda newspaper that targeted young people, trans.]. Interventionist articles proliferated in the press. In 1976, Dziennik Ludowy (The People’s Daily), gave the example of the village of Gieniusze in Białystok Voivodeship: ‘After turning on two electric motors, the village couldn’t watch television anymore. When the third one was turned on, the transformer conked out, and the entire village lost power’. The editor of Słowo Powszechne (The Common Word) concluded:

There’s no doubt that a lightbulb in a farmstead which for centuries had been lit with a torch of some sort, then with a cresset-light, and finally with an oil lamp was a great step forward. But over the course of these 20 years, world agriculture has made even greater strides towards mechanisation, and a mere lightbulb is far from sufficient. (Both citations from Wiek Energetyków.) [Trans. AP]

However, these first flicks led to an entire array of social changes that rural Poland underwent in the 20th century. As electrical appliances started to appear in people’s homes, they started to have more leisure time, which contributed to the emancipation of peasant women, who became actively involved in the social life of the village. As Wiesław Myśliwski wrote in Kres kultury chłopskiej (The End of Peasant Culture), through radio and television, ‘the whole wide world rolled into the peasant home’. Moreover, the media message worked to promote uniformity of imagination, and the language of TV speakers was replacing local dialects.

Our Lady of Electricity

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Erecting a transformer pylon, Jurgów, 1967, photo: Dąbrowiecki / CAF / PAP

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Electrification constituted a crucial subject in ‘socialist stories of upward mobility’, as Magda Szcześniak terms them in her book Poruszeni. Awans i emocje w socjalistycznej Polsce (Moved: Upward Mobility and Emotions in Socialist Poland): film chronicles, short documentaries, reportages, and narrative films. The introduction of electricity as a promise of the collective advancement of the rural community serves as the subject of the first post-war film that fulfils the postulates of socialist realism – Eugeniusz Cękalski’s Jasne Łany (Bright Fields, 1947). The electrification of rural areas can also be an interesting subject for contemporary art, as proved by Agnieszka Polska’s Plan Tysiącletni (The Thousand-Year Plan) in Warsaw’s Museum of Modern Art, an exhibition discussed on our website by Piotr Policht.

Another common motif in Polish culture, especially in satirical works, is the fear of modernity, the clash of the old and the new. ‘And now we can truly believe we’re home. If not for all these electrical things, I’d feel perfectly relaxed’, says the repatriate Leonia Pawlak in Sylwester Chęciński’s Sami swoi (All Friends Here). Electrification-related plot lines have also been a crucial element in the works of writers of the so-called peasant movement. The protagonist of Wiesław Myśliwski’s Traktat o łuskaniu fasoli (A Treatise on Shelling Beans) is sent, directly after finishing school, to join a crew working on the electrification of the countryside. At first, he serves as a helper, then he’s allowed to place wires on pylons. Wishing to save up some money for his dream instrument, a saxophone, he takes on additional gigs after hours. According to official guidelines, electricians were allowed to install only one socket per dwelling, but in every village there was someone who wanted additional sockets – in the hallway, the larder, or the attic – and hence, for an additional charge, they connected any room that someone wished to have connected. He manages to save a pretty penny (although the currency reform of 1950 swallows up his savings, as a result of which he almost hanged himself on one of the pylons he’s erecting). However:

Not everyone was in favor of electricity, though, far from it. Some folks wouldn’t even give permission for a pole to be put up outside their house. What, I’m supposed to stare at a pole for the rest of my life? The hell with that! It’s my land up to the middle of the road. There were times they came after us with pickaxes, we had to call the police. They wouldn’t let us into their homes, they’d drive us off like thieves. Especially because with the houses, they weren’t being forced. If someone didn’t want electricity, that was their business. How did they explain it? In different ways. That there’d be another war soon, just you wait. And in wartime oil lamps are your best bet. If you run out of kerosene you can burn linseed oil. You just had to plant flax. Of all the different kinds of light, the most reliable were the sun, as long as God was willing, and oil lamps. It doesn’t need to be as bright in the night as during the day. It’s enough if it’s light during the day, nighttime is for sleeping. Were we trying to turn the world upside down? With all these poles and wires? What if the sparrows and the swallows sit on them? They’ll get burned to cinders. It’ll draw lightning. Sickness too, maybe. [Trans. Bill Johnston]

In Edward Redliński’s satirical work Awans (Advancement), these fears are depicted in a more grotesque manner. According to the rumours circulating around the village of Wydmuchów, electricity is ‘the flight of a gentleman’s fancy’ which would bring about an entire encyclopaedia of infectious diseases – from consumption to typhoid – as well as chase the inhabitants into a ‘common pot’, i.e. the reality of total collectivism in which, surrounded by barbed wire, they’d have to share their wives, share their children and share the same bowls. The narrator, who, after being educated in the city, returned to modernise his home village. His mother experiences a revelation of the Virgin Mary crying because of electricity. What proves to be a breakthrough is the first television set in the village and a public screening of a French film. Soon after, the villagers from Wydmuchów, converted to progress and wishing to turn their village into a modern summer resort, want to add another holiday to the ritual year – that of Our Lady of Electricity. Similarly, in Redliński’s Konopielka, the arrival of a teacher from the city and the announcement of electrification initially encounter resistance in the village of Taplary (‘we have no need of meliorations or electricity; we’d be happy even in a bog – we’re used to all that’). Soon afterwards, however, they become a harbinger of what Myśliwski, in his essay, calls ‘the end of peasant culture.’

To use military terminology, peasant culture lost the clash with the forward march of civilisation, even one as rickety as the Polish version. It simply had to lose. To the culture of poverty and isolation, civilisation offered a higher quality of life and work and openness to the world. These temptations were too strong to be resisted. [Trans. AP]

Translated from Polish by Anna Potoczny

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