Translated material
Children's world
Polish society is grateful to the scouts for the opportunity to be kind
Polish scouting is a unique phenomenon in the country of the former socialist camp - something between pioneers and scouts. The children's movement survived in the 90s of the last century thanks to the great desire of adults to preserve this “territory of childhood.” The hunters did not rush into politics in search of money when socialism was replaced by a market economy, but continued the tradition of earning small money for small needs.We met with the scouts in Gdansk during lunch in a small restaurant in the city center. To our surprise, it turned out that this catering point belongs to the Scout House, where it is located. Real “pioneers” walked along the corridors, coming to study clubs and sections. Unlike the Youth Palace located on the same street, where all activities with children are commercial, with scout detachments, painting, dancing, music, and sports are done free of charge.
The cynical question, what’s the catch here, suggested itself. A modern Moscow parent is unlikely to believe in the existence of a state-wide charitable organization that disinterestedly entertains both young children and pre-teens, as well as lyceum youth. However, after a four-hour conversation with functionaries of the movement and “torture” them with tricky questions, it turned out that neither political nor religious organizations burden the scouts with their ideology.
The organization’s funding comes from three sources: part is provided by the government under the heading “summer children’s holidays”, part is provided by local authorities to pay for utilities and year-round maintenance of administrative staff and real estate. The scouts earn a significant portion of their money themselves. This last part would not have happened if not for the colossal enthusiasm of the educators, who grew up from the same scouts and made scout romance a hobby for life.
The Union of Polish Scouts (Zwiazek harcerstwa Polskiego), as the scouting organization is officially called, has been active since 1918. The word "stalker" comes from the name of the Polish horsemen - knights who, riding forward in front of the troops, fought in the first duel. The first groups of Polish scouts arose in 1910 in Lviv, which was then part of Austrian Galicia. From the very beginning the movement was militarized. Teenagers were taught to use weapons and navigate the terrain. Children in those years grew up early, and scouting was not a game for them: 1,400 teenagers of the Lviv Eaglets detachment defended the city together with adults during the Polish-Ukrainian War of 1919.
During the interwar period, Polish scouting turned into a powerful youth movement, numbering about 250 thousand members by the beginning of the Second World War. With the Nazi takeover of Poland in 1939, scout organizations were banned and some activists were arrested and executed. At a meeting of scout instructors in Warsaw, it was decided to create an underground scout organization “Grey Ranks”. The “gray ranks” were divided into three organizations by age: “zawisza” (the name is given in honor of a famous Polish literary hero) for younger children, “combat schools” for middle age, and “assault groups” for older age.
Junior scouts, among whom there were even children as young as seven, helped the scouts and carried correspondence. Middle-aged scouts took part in actions of “small sabotage” - they wrote anti-fascist slogans on the walls, hung Polish flags, distributed leaflets, and disrupted the showing of German films. Assault groups participated in military actions. Girl scouts worked as nurses. Hunter battalions took part in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, which was brutally suppressed by the Nazis. Hundreds of scout liaisons were killed.
After the liberation of Poland, the Union of Polish Scouts (SPH) was restored. Inevitably, the movement soon came under the control of the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP), which included the SPH in the structure of the Union of Polish Youth, bringing the movement as close as possible to the pioneer one. However, it was never possible to merge the scouts with the pioneers, and both organizations existed in parallel throughout the Soviet period. Already in 1956, the SPH was restored under its former scout name. A small fraction of what was pioneering still remained in the scouting organization, in particular the motto Czuwaj! (“Be ready!”). This motto has survived to this day.
By 1977, the union had over 2.7 million members, including 100 thousand instructors.
After the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the fall of the power of the PUWP in Poland, the number of scouts sharply decreased, and several new scout organizations broke away from the union.
Today in Poland there are two large scout organizations and several small ones. The leaders are the Union of Polish Scouts and the Union of Scouts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. There are smaller organizations at churches and public associations.
The Union of Polish Scouts consists of zuchs (zuch - daredevil) - children 8-11 years old, junior scouts (12-14) and senior scouts (up to 16 years old). “Travelers” are separately identified - these are young people under 25 years old. The basic unit is a squad consisting of approximately 20 people. Each squad has its own profile, which is reflected in its name and attributes. The most common squads are tourist, maritime, fishing, artistic, border guard, scout, and technical.
Those who have left the scouts due to age, but who want to connect their future lives with scouting, can take the “guide” course and receive the first step, the rank of instructor. In the future, you can increase your rank, becoming, for example, a Hartsmith - a master. Administrative growth is still possible - to head a khufets (territorial unit in a city or voivodeship) as a commandant.
Together with the children, they try to involve their school teachers in the scouting movement, especially when it comes to villages. “There are no problems in the city with the recruitment of instructors, there are problems in small villages,” admits the commandant of the Horongwi of Gdansk (the Horongwi unites the scouts of the Pomeranian Voivodeship) Bogdan Mierzewski. “Sometimes you have to solve the problem like this: if there is no permanent instructor on site, from the city on weekends a seconded instructor is coming."
For modern children, the military past of the scouts is nothing more than a legend. And yet, in Poland today there are about 200 thousand scouts, in the Pomeranian Voivodeship - 5 thousand. These are not “dead souls” for a one-time demonstration event, parade or march. These are real children with whom teacher-instructors work on a daily basis outside of school hours. “Of course, today there are not as many children in our ranks as there were in former times,” admits Bogdan Mezhevsky. “But with regard to these children, you can be sure that the state and society are fulfilling their educational function.” In the 90s, along with a significant loss of government funding, the movement lost many participants: government funding, whatever one may say, is a key point in the popularization of such organizations. In return, however, the scouts received some new participants, because in socialist times, some Poles from strongly religious families associated scouting with the propaganda of communism. Now it's just leisure - without any associations.
Among the instructors and educators there are even those who in the past had to convince parents to allow their children to attend the scout detachment. “Back in the 80s, we had to talk with fathers who forbade their children to come to us,” recalls one of the most titled scout instructors in Gdansk, Andrzej Stuzhec. “You are teaching your children communism,” they said. I answered: no, I teach children hiking skills, the ability to see nature.”
Younger schoolchildren today are attracted to groups by free activities in clubs, older children by camp romance, camps, tents and parties. “Children play at being adults, try on the activities of adults, experience adult responsibilities in extreme conditions on a hike, and this is interesting to them,” explains Mr. Mezhevsky.
Much of a scout's winter life consists of preparing for the summer trip. Poles love to travel around their country, since the distance from their Baltic Sea to their Carpathian Mountains is short; and children especially love to travel. Summer holidays are financed under a separate line of the state budget. The share of children's camps per capita in Poland is significantly higher than in Russia. Voivodeship scouting organizations apply for the allocation of the amount of money they need, motivating their requests by the number of planned activities. To prove that the children for whom money is allocated actually exist and that they are organized into squads and detachments, and not just represented by some list of schoolchildren, all-Polish scout congresses and rallies are held.
At rallies, the squad can receive encouragement - a distinctive sign. The more such signs that are sewn onto the uniform as badges, the higher the prestige of the squad. By the meeting, the squad must prepare a collective report. For the 2010 rally, which will take place in Krakow, the squads are preparing work about their native land and their studies of history, ethnography and nature. Those squads that have already prepared such material in past years must prepare a report on the sea and their upcoming trip there.
In addition to collective achievements, children who are part of a squad or detachment must present individual projects at the congress. Everyone makes a report on what they have learned to do over the past period, such as playing a musical instrument or baking pies.
In Poland, almost all children play musical instruments. Therefore, full-fledged musical groups are often found among scouts. The list of skills that a scout must acquire and which can be assessed with an insignia is not arbitrary, but is established by the Scouts Union. Set insignia are either stripes or badges on linings, linings of different colors depending on the level of achievement.
Individual training, be it a boxing section or a studio of young poets, a foreign language club or guitar courses, as Bogdan Mezhevsky emphasizes, is the educational function of scouting. “We did not profess marching in formation, we always said that the squad is a team consisting of individuals, where everyone has the degree of respect and such insignia that they deserve through their own achievements, and this is our big difference from the classic Soviet pioneers,” - reflects Mr. Mezhevsky. “This allowed scouting to survive in the 90s, and this attracts children now.”
“The secret of the vitality of our movement is also that we never relied on the funding of the state or political movements, therefore we were spared the leading role of the state to the extent that this leading role was present in the Soviet Union in relation to the pioneer organization,” - says Bogdan Mezhevsky.
“In the Soviet Union, the pioneer organization was large and strong, but initially it was positioned as communist and 100% financed by the state and the ruling party. For scouts, historically, everything was aimed at finding money and opportunities to earn this money, recalls Bogdan Mezhevsky. - Even in the socialist era, when scouts were allocated very good money from the state, the movement did not lose the ability to look for money on its own. When our government funding was cut in the 90s, we became even more determined to find funds, and this is the secret of the vitality of our movement.”
There are scout squads that have made their summer vacation self-sustaining. The trip to the camp for an ordinary Polish child, if he is not a scout, is paid jointly by the state, voivodeship or city authorities and parents. There are scouting teams, mostly made up of high school students, who can independently provide themselves with a summer vacation on a vessel they built themselves. According to scout functionaries, there are teams of 15 to 60 people who, having collected “initial capital” of 1000 zlotys (about 10 thousand rubles), purchased materials and, under the guidance of shipyard engineers, built their small sailing yachts. They can rent out these same yachts to other children's camps when they are not using them themselves. Senior scouts can earn money in “construction teams” at local enterprises. Younger children earn money by bagging groceries in hypermarkets, driving carts, organizing lotteries, fairs or concerts. For the holidays, scouts bake cakes and pastries , selling them in schools and other public places. For the national holiday - All Souls' Day, celebrated on November 1 - scouts make and sell candles, which, according to tradition, townspeople place on the graves of their relatives.
Parents in Poland instill in their children respect for small money earned through their own labor. In a modern child whose pockets are filled with portable, expensive electronic toys, such respect is very difficult to cultivate. And in such a situation, an individual child is unlikely to have an incentive to earn pennies. The opportunity to earn money together is what creates a team spirit, when the amount earned together is large enough and allows you to buy a rather expensive item for shared use - sports or camping equipment or an instrument for a children's rock band. Some scout teams have their own small shops. However, for stationary trading, VAT (in Poland VAT) is charged on scout earnings, as with a regular business - 22%. Hunter catering is subject to 7 percent VAT, like the restaurant business.
Scouting is by no means just about playing games and making money. The state allocates money for scouting as an educational structure. In order to join the scout detachment, you need to observe a certain ritual and show knowledge of those moral and ethical standards, the implementation of which is mandatory for every well-bred child. The oath clauses of the youngest, the zukhs, are quite standard - the zukh must be truthful, diligent, and respectful. The Zukha oath also contains more relevant points for this age: the scout is pure in thoughts, actions and language, does not smoke or drink.
Hunterism took very deep roots in the life of Polish society. Children earn money not so much because they have superpowers in business, but because of the favorable attitude towards it in society. The Poles themselves do not see or realize this, believing that it should be so by itself; Visitors notice a kind attitude towards children.
“People are incredibly willing to give money to children who are trying to earn money by selling crafts, newspapers and baked goods, helping to fill up cars at the gas station or helping to pack groceries in stores. Seeing tables with scout goods, many will stop and buy a trinket for the sake of respect for child labor,” Russian emigrants unanimously confirm, accustomed in Russia to the fact that children seeking to earn money are considered “beggars.”