Kobieca sprawczość w powojennym społeczeństwie Ziemi Lubuskiej. Między narracją instytucjonalną a pamięcią osobistą

This paper examines the issue of women’s agency in the Polish People’s Republic, focusing on the example of the Zielona Góra and Lubusz regions, which formed part of the Western and Northern Territories (WNT). After 1945, these areas underwent profound demographic and social transformation as a result of forced migration, settlement processes, and the displacement of the German population (deteutonisation). The concept of agency is understood in two ways here: on the one hand, as activities undertaken within party-state institutions embedded in the official ideological framework, and on the other, as personal experience expressed through everyday practices. Drawing on archival materials from the Central Archives of Modern Records (AAN) in Warsaw – primarily documents from the 1985 Women’s Commission meeting in Zielona Góra – and on the memoirs of a repatriate and local activist, Zofia Walencik, held at the Archives of the Western Institute in Poznań, the paper explores forms of both institutional engagement and personal initiatives undertaken for the benefit of the local community. The authors argue that women’s subjectivity in the Polish People’s Republic was not homogeneous but emerged within the framework of ‘state feminism’, shaped at the intersection of structural constraints and opportunities for personal involvement. Consequently, women’s agency in non-democratic systems should be understood as a multidimensional phenomenon situated between state-driven narratives and authentic social commitment.