Undignified Old Age. Fates of Old People in the Light of Complaints Made in the Polish People’s Republic of the 1960s and 1970s

Abstract

The starting point for the article was a documentary film directed by K. Gradowski, which was broadcast in Warsaw cinemas in 1970, and was widely commented on by the society. The film, addressing the problem of loneliness of old people and broadly understood violence and indifference towards old people, was also echoed in letters and complaints sent by citizens of the Polish People’s Republic to the central authorities of those times. The purpose of the article is above all an attempt to answer the question to what extent the film image was a real and common picture of the old man’s fate in this period and to what extent the image emerging from the film coincided with that appearing in the correspondence and complaints of Poles of the 1960s and 1970s. In a broader perspective, the text also addresses the problem of care and responsibility in a social/welfare state of People’s Poland, brushing against the issue of broadly understood biopolitics of the Polish People’s Republic.