The Polish language is much more than a vehicle of communication – it is a way of seeing the world. It also embodies attitudes and values that have been shaped, for good or ill, by Poland’s complex history.
If, therefore, the character of modern Poland can be read through its language, kombinowanie may be a good place to start. The meaning of this Polish word can, depending on context, oscillate between positive and negative connotations. It can be defined as “thinking”, “apprehending”, “trying to find a solution”, “juggling”; but also as “swindling” or “contriving”. As a matter of fact, it can refer to almost every attempt to manage a situation. In its way, it is a perfect example of how language both responds to a certain form of society and then creates protean, flexible meanings that can burrow into its foundations.
In short, kombinowanie is a word that portrays a Polish reality corrupted by the communist system that ruled the country for over four decades after the second world war. This reality, brilliantly analysed by the great Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz in his book The Captive Mind, was dominated by the figure of homo sovieticus (Soviet man) – the unprincipled survivor, publicly conformist and privately selfish, living among official lies by becoming a practised liar himself. Homo sovieticus was a pure product of the communist system and kombinowanie was the red thread that guided his actions.
The communist system combined material scarcity, bureaucratic power, and everyday corruption. In these circumstances, kombinowanie describes the distinct way in which Poles negotiated their everyday lives. Their every dishonest or underhand act could be justified as part of an indefinite struggle for biological survival, an all–too–human defence mechanism against an inhuman system.
The work ethic was nonexistent under communism: anyone who got rich behind the “iron curtain” did so by climbing the party ladder, or securing the favour of those near the top, not by working. This generalised hypocrisy allowed Poles to attach kombinowanie to conduct that they approved of.
This use of kombinowanie was nourished by the system’s championing, even fetishising, of “common goods”. In classic newspeak fashion, the ownership of all property by the state combined with the ownership of the state by the people meant that universal common goods belonged to all. Everybody was the owner of everything.
In theory it sounded terrific. In practice it didn’t work so well. If common goods belonged to everybody, they belonged to nobody. No single owner was responsible for any particular item in the public realm, to care for it and ensure that it was used in a proper way. The absence of personal responsibility led not to collective harmony but to institutionalised selfishness.
Kombinowanie expanded under communism like the weeds in the cracks of the ugly, crumbling housing blocks in Polish cities. Stealing light–bulbs from public elevators for use in “private” flats (which in legal terms were not private at all); ironing already validated bus tickets so they could be used repeatedly; bribing a watchman with a bottle of vodka to “get” a bag of cement from a municipal construction site; using company time and resources for personal ends – all could be labelled with the magical and extremely flexible word kombinowanie. Under communism, its variations were endless and multiple.
This was not subversion, but entrapment. The fine Polish thinker Jozef Tischner once said: “Homo sovieticus could set a cathedral on fire to fry his scrambled eggs”. The citizen may have been enslaved by the communist system, but he was a also client of it, feeding off what goods communism offered him. These were supposed to come free, but in reality homo sovieticus paid an enormous price: a spreading corruption of mentality where kombinowanie was encouraged and even sanctified. Thus, although kombinowanie could feel like a way to outmanoeuvre the system, in reality it became a mere adaptation to its habitat.
When communism was dismantled in Poland, kombinowanie might have been expected to fade away. Instead, the old communist mentality has been given a new cut–throat “entrepreneurial” twist. People still think that there must be a trick to everything and that if only they could find out what it was, life would be easier. Kombinowanie has now survived communism and commerce. The Poles clearly still have uses for it.
