نبذة مختصرة : これまでポーランドの再建は、国家の独立、持続する紛争、国際人道支援といったテーマごとに考察されてきた。本稿は、ウッチ市の簡易食堂に焦点を当てることで従来の知見をつなぎ合わせ、新興国家の再建過程を総合的に捉えることを試みた。簡易食堂は、総力戦に直面した住民が、自分たちの社会関係に依拠して設営したものであった。一九一八年一一月に国家が独立しても、食堂の維持は物価高騰と物資不足のなかでむしろ困難になったが、自治体やアメリカ救済局から支援を受けつつ、学校給食の提供に重心を移し、児童保護が優先された。その後、アメリカから届いた物資の管理不備が発覚した結果、簡易食堂は一九二一年に市営化された。一連の考察は、住民のあいだの既存の社会関係を活用し、再編することで地域住民の統合を進めた自治体が、国家再編過程において重要な役割を果たしたことを示している。
In November 1918, Poland returned to the map of Europe as an independent state. However, as with other new states in Central Eastern Europe, Poland had to struggle with serious problems such as conflicts over borderlands, a sharp rise in prices of goods, epidemics, and lack of food. In such circumstances international relief activities also played an indispensable role. The reconstruction of Poland has been studied mainly from three different academic perspectives. First, there are studies of the First World War, but many of them end the discussion with November 1918 and treat independence as a final national “goal.” In contrast, recent scholarship addressing the long-term influences of the First World War beyond 1918 has suggested that reconstruction of the new state proceeded on meandering path due to the prolonged border conflicts. The newly resurrected Poland and international relief has also been a prominent topic, and in this context, the American Relief Administration, established by Herbert Hoover with the dual aims of humanitarianism and anticommunism, has also attracted academic interest because it provided Poland the largest support, supplying a vast supply of funds and material, which the Polish government could never have provided on its own. This article aims to comprehensively grasp the reconstruction of Poland through a case-study of the soup kitchens (in Polish, tania kuchnia) in Łódź, which enables us to synthesize understandings drawn from the abovementioned three types of studies. Łódź had developed in tandem with the textile industry through the 19th century, and its population was composed of Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, whose religious affiliations broadly corresponded with their ethnicities -- Poles, Germans, and Jews. The city was located in the area controlled by the Polish government in Warsaw shortly after independence. Even when the Red Army surrounded Warsaw in 1920, the frontline did not reach Łódź, but it hampered the activities of the soup kitchens in Łódź, which received American humanitarian support during the years 1919-1924. Since its establishment as a municipal institution in 1915, the Soup Kitchens Committee (in Polish, Komitet Tanich Kuchen) registered those using the kitchens, tried to control the price and quality of soup, and negotiated with other municipal institutions in Łódź as well as the American Relief Administration to maintain of the soup kitchens. Shortly after the outbreak of war, Łódź was occupied by troops of the German Empire. The frontline had moved beyond the city by the end of 1914, but the urban population was cut off from stable food supplies, and the rationing system introduced under German rule did not provide adequate calories. In order to ameliorate the situation, people established soup kitchens on their own based upon their social relationships such as occupation, religious affiliation, or residential area, and the Soup Kitchens Committee was also set up by the local government to support and manage them. Viewed from the standpoint of the soup kitchens in Łódź, ordinary life had yet to stabilize even though the Polish state had gained independence. On the contrary, rapid price spikes of the most important kitchen items including potatoes, cabbages and coal compelled the Soup Kitchens Committee to limit the number of those using the kitchens. Even international relief could not resolve this situation. Yet, the fact that the number of school children receiving their lunches in the soup kitchens grew dramatically during 1919-1921 indicates the proactive role of the local populace, which previous studies of the American Relief Administration often underestimate by not making reference to the local archival documents in Poland. However, the Soup Kitchens Committee itself had problems due to mismanagement that invited malpractice on the part of the staff of the kitchens. Although there were various cases reported in the minutes of the Committee, the most significant abuse was diverting American provided supplies to the black market. After the successful defense of Warsaw, American support was concentrated on the eastern borderland, which had been devastated, and consequently many of the soup kitchens in Łódź were forced to close because of the lack of supplies. The Soup Kitchens Committee, however, was unable to prevent the remaining inventory of the closed kitchens from ending up on the black market. Severe criticism arose and resulted in reorganization of the Committee and municipalization of the soup kitchens so they would be managed more rationally. In providing a case-study of the soup kitchens of Łódź, this paper demonstrates a methodologically significant viewpoint for understanding how and where Poland was reconstructed. Although the municipality, being located between newly born state and its population, played a very significant role, the municipalization of the kitchens, which had originally been established as voluntary mutual aid institutions, meant that even the municipality would have to utilize pre-existing social relationships for the integration of its citizens.
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