Sixteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

The end of the Great War became an opportunity for the Polish nation to regain their own independent state after 123 years under foreign occupations. That time, the so-called partitions period when Poland had been torn between Prussia, Austria, and Russia, was particularly oppressive for Polish science and education. Polish language was officially forbidden at schools and universities, students were forced to study in occupant languages within three different educational systems of the three occupant states, and many Polish academics had to conduct their research in foreign centres such as Moscow or Berlin. But the Poles remained resilient. The purpose of the paper is to prove that over a century-long resilience of Polish scientists, professors, and teachers allowed for the creation of a unified and coherent system of national university education immediately after the end of the global crisis of the Great War. I discuss this process by a brief analysis of the situation of the five Polish state universities – Krakow, Warsaw, Poznan, Lviv, and Vilnius – with particular emphasis on the latter, the Stefan Batory University in Vilnius, whose case is the subject of my PhD thesis (currently in preparation). Also, I would like to mention the role the most eminent Polish researchers whose scientific results had a measurable impact on European and global science. The research is based on the analysis of state educational laws issued after the year 1918, selected primary sources, and scientific literature.