Stanisław Józef Moskal, alias Śledź Otrembus Podgrobelski (born 4 March 1935 in Kraków, died there on 8 May 2019) was a Polish scientist and writer, a rural sociologist, a professor of agricultural science, associated with the Agricultural University of Kraków. He researched cultural transformations and determinants of development in Polish villages, particularly the ecological awareness of its inhabitants. He was knowledgeable about the local subdialects of Podhale. A lover of mountains, ethnologist, and traveler. For many years, he studied the determinants of agricultural development in Algeria.
He authored Introduction to imaginescopy in the form of a satirical treatise, the fictitious methodology and stylization of which were used by readers in various practical and theoretical applications. He created the character , to whom he attributed many theses related to . The book, first published in 1977, became the subject of numerous literary, logological, and philosophical analyses, as well as a famous topic for many blogs. The concept of imaginescopy proved to be an inspiration for numerous and innovative artistic experiments. Interest in it has particularly developed in the 21st century.
The author's professional experience as a scientist and sociologist is reflected in the humorous scientific text, which is compared to the works of leading representatives of similar prose genres. The author wrote under the pseudonym "Śledź Otrembus Podgrobelski". In 2012, he also published a volume of his own memoirs.
Early life He was the son of Stanisław (1903–1984) and Jadwiga née Jordan (1908–1964). His father was an engineer and technical director of a chemical factory producing soap and vegetable fats in Trzebinia. His mother was a teacher and came from the historical family of former salt Żupniks of Wieliczka, whose members distinguished themselves in the November uprising and the Hungarian Revolution.Major Spytko Jordan was the first commander of the Kraków 10th Infantry Regiment, established in January 1831 by the Polish Temporary Government during the November Uprising. Major Władysław Jordan was an officer in General Józef Bem's Polish Legion during the Hungarian Revolution in 1849.
He was born in Kraków. He was strongly connected to his family's (on his father's side) village of Sułkowice near the Beskids and its traditions, where he experienced the German occupation. He graduated from high school in 1952 at one of the oldest Polish schools (established in 1588) – Bartłomiej Nowodworski High School, whose graduates included his grandfather and uncle.
He completed his studies in zootechnics (1957) at the Agricultural University of Kraków, and then studied sociology (1965) at the Jagiellonian University. From 1960, he worked at the Agricultural University of Kraków as an assistant, and from 1965 as a senior assistant in the Department (from 1970, Institute) of Agricultural Economics and Organization. In 1970, based on his dissertation Non-agricultural work as a factor of change in the farm and peasant family of Podhale, he obtained a doctorate in agricultural sciences and was employed as an assistant professor. In 1978, he obtained his habilitation based on the work Dual-occupation population in the process of socio-economic rural development.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he spent a year working on a farm in the small town of Belmont-sur-Yverdon in the French-speaking canton of Vaud in Switzerland, thanks to which he gained significant experience working and living in Swiss society compared to the economic and social conditions in Poland at that time. In 1971, he visited Siberia during a scientific internship in Novosibirsk. During the academic year 1973/1974, he spent a research scholarship in Algeria. In 1975, he visited the surroundings of Uzhhorod in Carpathian Ruthenia. From 1976 to 1979, he was an economic consultant at the in Balice.
He returned to Algeria from 1979 to 1986 and worked at the Higher Agricultural School (now ENSA) in El Harrach on the outskirts of Algiers. There, he lectured on economic development issues, agricultural economics, and prepared a detailed feed balance sheet for Algeria on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture. He also conducted numerous field trips, including into the Sahara desert.
At the same time, from 1979, he was employed at the Agricultural University of Kraków as a docent in the Department of Agricultural Policy, and from 1994 as an associate professor at the Department of Sociology and Rural Development. In 1989, he was awarded the Golden Cross of Merit.
In 1992, he participated in a study visit at Université Laval in Canada. He received the title of professor of agricultural sciences in 2000. From 1994 to 2004, he was the head of the newly established Department of Sociology and Rural Development at the university. He retired in 2007.The Agricultural and Forestry Departments of the Jagiellonian University served as the basis for the establishment of the Higher Agricultural School of Kraków in 1953, which was renamed the Agricultural University (named after Hugo Kołłątaj) in 1972 and then granted university status as the Hugo Kołłątaj University of Agriculture in Kraków in 2008. Therefore, Stanisław Moskal was a retired professor of the University of Agriculture ().
He died on 8 May 2019 in Kraków, and was buried at Rakowicki Cemetery (section P, row 2, grave 18).
Scientific work
His scientific output comprises over 220 interdisciplinary works, bridging the fields of rural sociology and agricultural economics. The topics of his works include issues related to the transformation of agriculture in the process of economic development, changes in the socio-economic structure of the population, the functioning of peasant farms, labor resources in rural areas, as well as cultural and civilizational aspects of rural development, including the ecological awareness of its inhabitants.
He authored a frequently reissued academic textbook on rural sociology and two monographs analyzing non-agricultural work in peasant families in the Podhale region. The first monograph, which served as his doctoral thesis, examined the challenging living and working conditions of peasant workers in the 1970s in the fragmented agricultural farms in the villages of and Ostrowsko in the Podhale region, who worked in a shoe factory in Nowy Targ. He also authored monographic studies on the situation of rural youth in Poland and on agriculture in Algeria. He collaborated with universities in Rennes, Paris, and Montpellier, as well as in Nitra and Prešov.
He studied cultural changes in Polish villages, particularly the regional phenomenon of dual employment in rural areas and rural overpopulation. He noted that despite the visible civilizational progress in rural areas at the beginning of the 21st century and household equipment comparable to urban areas, a large part of rural youth – unlike their parents' generation – critically assesses the countryside as a place to live and expresses professional aspirations associated with urban and non-agricultural sectors of the economy. Rural youth consider their own non-agricultural business as the optimal solution.
He developed a program for the development of agricultural areas and analyzed initiatives undertaken by urban-rural and rural municipalities to activate local communities and direct economic transformations in rural areas in the situation of fragmented rural farms. He particularly studied the psychological determinants of the reconstruction of villages in Lesser Poland. Based on survey research conducted in 2000 in the voivodeships of Lesser Poland and Subcarpathia, he proposed solutions for creating alternative job opportunities to agriculture.
He introduced quantitative methods for studying the ecological awareness of rural residents. He demonstrated that at the end of the 20th century, two-thirds of respondents in Lesser Poland perceived environmental degradation in rural areas mainly due to deforestation, wild landfills, progressive land development, and unattractive architecture. His literary works reflect his knowledge of the folklore of southern Poland's foothills.
He served as an advisor to agricultural state and local government institutions. He was a member of the board of the Lesser Poland Rural Development Program and the team for Agricultural Unemployment in Kraków, and participated in training programs of the Lesser Poland Association of Agricultural Advisory Services. He consulted study trips and seminars to France and Ukraine for the Rural Areas Renewal Association Wieś i Europa from 2000 to 2002. He criticized the system of direct payments granted to Polish farmers by the European Union.
Since 1997, he was a member of the editorial board of Krakowskie Studia Małopolskie and since 2002 of the quarterly journal of the Polish Academy of Sciences . He supervised three doctoral dissertations in Algeria and three in Poland, the last of which was conducted at the in 2005.
In the characterization of social-economic representatives in Kraków in 2015, he was considered a "significant figure" in this community and was described as "focused on science, with a very solid methodological scientific background, and rather avoiding popularity without direct reference to science".
Literary works
Introduction to imaginescopy
He was the author of the text and drawings of the satirical Introduction to imaginescopy in a literary form of a "pastiche of scientific text". The book was first published in 1977In 1973, four years before the book publication of Introduction to imaginescopy, the weekly magazine quoted the thought of "Jeremiasz Apollon Hytz" about "expanding imaginescopy" as a motto for a feuilleton (). by Wydawnictwo Literackie under the pseudonym "Śledź Otrembus Podgrobelski" – his surname as the author is listed in library catalogs,Nietoperz Publishing House in Kraków published the second edition in 1992 in an edition of 5,000 copies. The book was also published by L&L Publishing House in Gdańsk in 1998 (). a review from 1979, bibliographic data from 1986, and some biographies, while the author's note in the 1998 edition indicates that the author was associated with Kraków.
The Introduction to imaginescopy also includes a bibliography of fictional scientific sources (30 items) which were described in a specialized lexicon in 2016. The fictitious creator of and the related pendology was the pharmacist-philosopher (1841–1914) from Pidhaitsi – the author of the sentence "before whose logic even the most skeptical minds must yield: Every effect has its cause".
The author provided a description of imaginescopy:
Imaginescopy is a method of expanding imagination, the strengthening of which depends on the type of imaginescope used and its hypothetical technical parameters, which the book analyzes in a scientific style. The relationship between fiction and authenticity of these definitions and descriptions is complex, and "the separation of their scopes ceases to be solely a matter of simple assessment". The connection of imagination understood in this way "with art, and especially with poetry, still seems natural, common, and obvious".
The Introduction to imaginescopy "is essentially a 'fable' – a false apocrypha exposing the myth of objectivity and relativity of science". The book "imitates authenticity only to reveal its own falseness, and then to maintain it again". "The basic function of parody in Podgrobelski's book is to suggest literary quality," which can be understood similarly to the literary quality of contemporary Silva rerum. The book "seems ostentatiously playful", and its language is a pastiche of the formal scientific text used by the author in his professional scientific activity with mocking additions of the language known to him from the inhabitants of Podhale, as in the quote: