The Influence of Graduate Students fromthe Department of Political Economyat the Institute for Training Scientific Cadres in Warsaw on the Polish Economics after World War II

This paper is an attempt to describe the Department of Political Economy at the Institute for Training Scientific Cadres (IKKN), which operated in Warsaw in years 1950−1953, and later changed its name to the Institute for Social Sciences (INS). I endeavour to analyze the influence of the Department’s graduate students (aspiranci) on the Polish economics. I disagree with John Connelly’s opinion that the Institute had only a small contribution in strengthening the position of MarxismLeninism in Polish academia. In case of economics the situation was different. I present numerous ways in which young economists from IKKN supported their teachers and mentors: Włodzimierz Brus, Bronisław Minc, Józef Zawadzki, Seweryn Żurawicki and others, who in Stalinist Poland took over high schools of economics through administrative and police methods. In particular, aspiranci from the IKKN hold the key positions in the structures of the Marxist political economy, newly formed after 1949. It helped them to gain strong influence over its crucial aspects, starting from access to economic information, through the research and publishing economic papers and books on economy, to the teaching. As a result IKKN, next to the Main School of Planning and Statistics (SGPiS) opened in 1949, proved to be one of the main tools in transforming Polish economics into communist political economy.