The main thesis of this paper is the assertion that, in contrast to the prevailing opinion about the decline or deep crisis of the intelligentsia, it is precisely this social group—and especially its elite—that is the dominant actor in social life. This thesis emerges from an analysis of the role of the intelligentsia, using ‘longue durée’ categories and also the broader international perspective of ‘world system theory’, in which Poland is assigned to the (semi)-periphery. Elements of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory, particularly the idea of cultural capital and the field of power, are an important theoretical poin in the author’s argument. In this view, the structurally privileged position of the intelligentsia in Poland is understood as an aspect of the specific configuration of the Polish field of power, in which—at least since the end of the First World War—cultural capital turns out to be the strongest and most stable dimension in the creation and reproduction of elite social positions.

While considering the anthropological and sociological aspects of development of the historic city of Zamość , it is necessary to mention the elements of its residents’ life that brought intellectual values in the cultural space of the city entered in 1992 into the List of World Cultural Heritage. The paper has recalled a unique meeting place of the Zamość intelligentsia in the years 1957–2003 – the Ratuszowa café. It was located in the very heart of the city, in the Zamość Town Hall. The paper proves that it was not only a place of careless entertainment but of creative debate and work. It has also evoked memories of the “café life” and regular visitors to coffeehouses in Lviv, Krakow and Warsaw

This paper addresses the public discussions among Polish scholars and social scientists which took place following the Second World War. The debate on the sociological and historical genealogy of the Polish intelligentsia started with the publication of a lecture given by the sociologist Józef Chałasiński. Covering this debate, the paper shows the way in which the literary and publicist stereotypes came to be a research question for the Social Sciences and Humanities.

This article presents little known facts sampled from the notes and personal records of Professor Stanis$aw Pigoń and Karol Wojtyła. The two met for the first time in 1938, when young Wojtyła began his studies at the Polish Department of the Jagiellonian University. A bond of mutual liking and respect, based on similar personalities and similar war experiences, morphed into an abiding friendship in the years after the war. The article chronicles that friendship on the basis of documents and private papers held in the Jagiellonian Library (Professor Pigoń’s Archives) and the Archives of the Metropolitan Curia in Cracow. Wojtyła, when he became Pope John Paul II always spoke warmly about his university teachers, especially about Professor Pigoń.