ABSTRACT
Transformations in social identity, class relations, national identity, and attempts to construct a harmonious, shared community between 1795 and 1918—when a Polish state reemerged as a discrete political entity—were inflected by the French Revolution, the effects of which spread all over Europe. The ethos of unmediated tradition, the key ideas of national identity and historical experience, need not be shared by everyone for them to have a certain material force. Olga Narkiewicz asserts that Wincenty Witos, a peasant and the longtime leader of Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (PSL)-Piast, allied with the National Democrats, landowners, and other right-wing elements less because of his own conservative politics than because they, like he, were anti-Ukrainian and tended to be Slavophiles and hence pro-Russian. Whatever the motivation of Witos's political conservatism, the PSL-Piast incorporated large landowners and the more prosperous peasants into its fold and represented their interests throughout its history, including in its latest-but-one manifestation as the United Peasant party.
