The paper discusses memories and representations of ownership changes in post-war Poland. The beginnings of the People's Poland were associated with communist ideas and a radical re-evaluation of the status of material goods. How one should understand and define various types of property needs to be determined in relation to post-war transformations, including agrarian reform, attempts to introduce a policy of agricultural collectivization, the nationalization of industry, and accompanying acts of expropriation. I focus on ways of negotiating ownership relations between individuals and collectives, as well as ways of redefining what is "common" and "public" in relation to "private" and "state." The starting point of the study is, therefore, the question of how the understanding of, and attitudes toward, various types of property have changed in post-war Poland, and what the present representations of this experience are. The empirical part of the paper is based on a reexamination of diaries submitted to the contest "Nowe Pamiętniki Chłopów" organized in 1955 by a number of magazines, the Polish Radio and publishing house "Wiedza i Książka".
The seemingly distant post-war period has become significantly more relevant recently. Current problems with reprivatization are deeply rooted in post-war ownership changes and the nationalization of property. The issue of ownership also crops up in discussions on the public sphere, i.e., the meaning of what is "common" – shared by and belonging to everyone – and as such, often referred to as "nobody's" (belonging to no one). These issues are essential in the context of current post-war ownership discussions in Central and Eastern Europe, but they are not limited to the former Soviet satellites. As Verdery and Humphrey (2004) note, the ownership category was particularly relevant at the turn of the millennium. Property had a special place in the socialist political economy. Thus, the political transformation has put the issue of ownership transformation at the center, not only in the local but also the global context. It seems that in the current situation, we are dealing with another need to reformulate the existing notion of ownership.
