THE EVASION OF FREEDOM

...The intellectuals themselves realized the difficulties besetting Gomulka's balancing act as controls within the Soviet bloc were tightened, but they also felt that it could easily lead down the slippery slope of totalitarian reconsolidation, rather than to the "socialist reformation" or "humane socialism" which they desired...

...In practice the purge may not fulfill expectations...

...Only the workers of the Zeran and Kasprzak factories, who together with students from the Warsaw Polytechnic, provided the main support for Gomulka a year earlier, refused to join in the anti-student campaign...

...The workers, who so strongly supported the students in October 1956, displayed little concern about the 'fate of Po Prostu...

...The Party theoretician Schaff announced that although "freedom of inquiry" is guaranteed by the new policy, intellctual freedom is "not identical with liquidation of a definite cultural policy...

...Carried along by the pre-October momentum, the young revisionist intellectuals continued to press for radical changes, but they soon realized that the wave was receding, that "consolidation" would mean something quite different from what they had envisaged...

...They think that a war is a war, and slavery cannot lead to freedom, but only to greater slavery...

...The pattern is familiar...

...One of Gomulka's purposes may be achieved, the liberal-minded intelligentsia may be cut off from the "masses...

...What did happen in Poland in October 1956...

...The Party cannot allow "a camouflaged struggle against the policy of socialism to be carried on under the cloak of an alleged struggle for the freedom of spiritual creativity...

...Polityka was edited by the Minister of Higher Education, Zolkiewski, with the help of other exStalinist intellectuals such as Putrament and Rakowski, who had jumped on the "October" band-wagon and were now eager to develop the ideology of "Gomulkaism," an ideology without any previous existence...

...The official formula was to attack Stalinist "dogmatism" and liberal "revisionism" simultaneously, but in practice the offensive was concentrated against the latter...

...The first number of Po Prostu after the interval, prepared for 21 September, was held up by the censor...

...At a meeting with the Zeran auto workers in the fall of 1957 he accused Po Prostu of blackening the socialist achievements and failing to follow the Party line...

...But even the limited freedom of choice left to the population dashed with this postulate, and could only add to the internal Party divisions...

...This joke, circulating in Warsaw a year and a half after the Polish "spring in October," is characteristic of the current mood of disenchantment...

...Po Prostu shifted to internal problems of a more humdrum nature...

...Their defense necessarily had to rest on arguments within an intellectual framework they no longer accepted but which they were not free to discard...

...And last but not least, economic and social instability resulting from the relaxation of the hold of the state over society, was accompanied by a wave of absenteeism in industry, and by increased alcoholism and juvenile delinquency...

...The regime which had emerged from October preferred not to celebrate its first birthday...

...This mood contrasts with the previous "existentialist" attitude of exasperated Polish youth...

...One of the most prominent among them, Leszek Kolakowski, expressed the mood of the moment in the introduction to his book of essays, Philosophy and Daily Life: "The Great Crisis has revolutionized political and philosophical consciousness to a point where hope is changing into doubt but not into hopelessness...

...The resolution of the VIII Plenum of the Polish CP which brought Gomulka to power proclaimed that the Seym should become "an effective instrument of control by the people over the activity of the Government and the State administration...

...But by now the attacks on "revisionism" had begun...

...The official Party organ, Tribuna Ludu (5 October 1957), decribed its articles as "a complete negation of the 13-year achievements of the Polish People's Republic and an apologia for the capitalist West...

...What has changed in Poland since October...

...T. Toeplitz, Nowa Kultura, 28 April 1957...

...Schaff assures his readers that these new commissions will not exhibit a "bureaucratic and dogmatic approach to creative work...

...A week after the upheaval, writing in the courageous student Po Prostu, which became the intellectual spearhead of the "revisionist" democrats and quickly attained a circulation of 150,000 copies, E. Lasota and R. Turski answered the question: "What has happened in our country...

...they may help to maintain power based on fear and lies but they cannot help to build socialism" (ibid...

...they thought of themselves, in this new situation, as a ginger group pressing for radical improvements in various fields...

...He wanted to rule through a monopolistic but "sovereign" Party...

...To accelerate that process Schaff proposes to Iaunch a Party campaign using familiar methods: What are we to do in our situation "to catch the wind in our sails...

...We need two elements for this purpose: an appropriate organization, and people who are capable of putting the ideologcialoffensive into operation...

...But the Zeitgeist affects various generations: just as, before October, "existentialist" despair gave some courage to the middle-aged intellectuals, so now the positivistic nil desperandum influences the younger generation...

...Trybuna Ludu, the official Party paper, in an editorial on November 4, 1957, categorically declared: "In October 1956 our Party did not proclaim a new revolution...

...The rewritten issue was still considered too critical, and it was suppressed...

...The revisionists, the writers, the students, became a relatively easy target for attacks from the reconsolidated Party machine...

...The Soviet leaders could not risk another Hungary, and the Polish people did not want to risk it either...

...Besides, attacks on Polish revisionists were steadily mounting in the Soviet press...

...The mood that is now spreading even in political opposition tendencies may be compared to the one which arose after the failure of the Polish national uprising of 1863...

...The workers in any case were more interested in wage in 133 creases than in industrial self govern ment...

...When the anniversary of the "spring in October" arrived, it passed by quietly, with neither festivities nor parades...

...The followers of this kind of revisionism no longer believe in Orwellian catchwords that "war is peace" and "slavery is freedom...

...F. Konstantinov, the head of Agitprop, wrote in an article in Pravda (February 5, 1958) that "what Nagy did in Hungary in practice and in politics is being done by the Kolakowskis in theory...

...Hence the schizophrenic mood displayed in Trybuna Ludu, one day lamenting the high proportion of intelligentsia in the Party, and another, issuing warnings against "the anti-intelligentsia tendencies within the Party...

...IV From the beginning Gomulka displayed no great sympathy towards the intellectuals...

...They appreciated the changes that had occurred: the end of terror and the new freedom of thought (though not of speech...

...he remained the Titoist he used to be before his arrest...

...Soon after the closing of Po Prostu, the censor con fiscated the first number of the new literary monthly, Europa, its editorial board was dismissed and the periodical itself closed...

...1957), "that no party is capable of action if it covers such an ideological span...

...Though acclaimed from right to left as the "man of Providence," he had no political force behind him...

...instead there was a requiem for Po Prostu...

...The previous system of incentives, based in part on terror, ceased to operate and a new one had not yet been devised...

...It is not surprising to read the poetical verdict on October by Wazyk, summarizing the disappointed hopes: It was only a small fire in the laundry, The fireman came, and promptly put it down .. . VI In order to consolidate the Party, Gomulka decided on a purge...

...Ever since, raison d'etat has become a semiofficial shibboleth to cover up all Gomulka's political actions, including many which were clearly due to internal expediency...

...Apart from deviationists, the members to be eliminated are those who joined the Party for private benefit, careerists, "clericals", and so on...

...To show individual preferences for 5 out of 8 candidates in a constituency was, he argued, tantamount to "crossing Poland off the map of Europe...

...The October 1957 number of a bulletin for Party activists gave more specific reasons: During the existence of the paper, nothing positive was ever written about the USSR or any other socialist country [on the...

...But the commissions of Party control were neither inclined nor able to apply strictly all these criteria...

...He appealed to the electorate not to use the restricted freedom of choice between the few selected candidates (previously approved by the Party) that had been granted under the electoral arrangements made in 132 the first flush of October...

...It inaugurated a series of investigations into the seamy sides of Polish life...

...If they did, hardly any members would be left, apart from Gomulka and his immediate entourage...

...A year before, as it happened, in his first speech after assuming power, Gomulka had himself painted such a black picture of the Polish economy that some Western analysts were inclined to think it deliberately exaggerated for political reasons...

...Accordingly the wings had to be clip 136 ped to enable the Party to fly without them...

...It dealt with the corruption of local officials, the abuse of power by provincial bosses, economic waste, cultural obscurantism...

...but publicly they had to pay tribute to such old fetishes as the "dictatorship of the proletariat," and the "Leninist unity of the Party...

...Its theme is the mechanism of total power as exercised by Torquemada through the Holy Inquisition...

...contrary] the paper tried to publish long articles which would have ruined our good relations with the USSR and other brotherly countries and parties, had it not been stopped by the Press Office...

...ing mixture of political empiricism and hopefulness may help to preserve the spirit of revolt despite the fact that in the short run it will probably succumb to the reconsolidated Party rule...

...The first kind of revisionism means socialism or creative anxiety...

...The tightening of the press censorship began in March 1957...

...It is, firstof all, necessary to mobilize 80-40talented "pens" on the Party line, to outline the line of attack, to assign people to deal with particularproblems, and to give deadlinesand order them to write...

...This new agricultural policy brought immediate results, but there was no new, consistent, over-all economic policy...

...its reflection of the ideological ferment, hitherto bold and sharp, was toned down...

...Polish geography is different, the Polish Party was sharply divided and the change in its leadership came as a result of a popular revolt against the regime...

...but a new problem will perhaps be created by the mass of expelled members (some of them politically-minded) who will not be threatened by the consequences of the Stalinist purges...

...I guarantee results...

...Galileo, to defend himself, had to demonstrate that his thesis did not contradict Biblical texts...

...Gomulka, after the defeat of the Natolin group of die-hard Stalinists, was bent on appeasing the Party functionaries, whose sympathies were fundamentally not on his side but could be won by concessions...

...The political strife within the Party may not be eliminated...

...The first action of the "watch man state" was to tighten the Post Office censorship of foreign, including literary, publications...

...The number of members eliminated so far is 150,000, out of a total membership of 1,283,000...

...It is a positivistic attitude of "organic work" reminiscent of the program then recommended to the emergent Polish middle class and urbanized nobility...

...In a diplomatic response Gomulka told the correspondent of the Times that "the so-called revisionist movement was false and belonged to the past...

...Meanwhile Gomulka grew franker in his hostility to the revisionists...

...New literary works still reflecting the pre-October literary ferment coincide with the political regression since October, an example of the time lag between life and its reflection in literature...

...A new poem by Adam Wazyk indirectly comments on this new situation...

...The Catholic church, which gave Gomulka tacit support, received in return several concessions, including the opportun ity to organize religious education in schools...

...Many of them had almost completely abandoned doctrinal positions...

...More than 50°%o of the contents of each number was suppressed, and several of its surveys stopped...

...In the future any ferment will have an incomparably easier starting point than that which originated the pattern of anti-totalitarian revolt before October...

...This was necessary because all the existing cultural periodicals, such as Po Prostu, Przeglad Kulturalny, Nowa Kultura and others, had become infected with heresy long before "October...

...They were aware of the implicit restrictions imposed by geography and they were ready for compromise and a more empirical approach to politics...

...Their mood and opinions were well expressed in Po Prostu, and they are bound to feel disillusioned...

...Polityka, February 9, 1958...

...Gomulka was both at the parting of the ways and in a paradoxical situation...

...Moscow, which for the time being abandoned the Natolin group, was gently pushing Gomulka towards the suppression of "revisionism...

...The danger of Soviet intervention prevented the revolt from becoming a revolution...

...It enumerated them one by one and punctuated each with an ironical comment that it was not implemented for "reasons of state...

...They argued that there are two kinds of revisionism: According to the first kind, the democratic rights of citizens should not be suppressed or curtailed in any circumstances...

...Gozdzik, the "hero of October" and secretary of the Party cell in Zeran, refused to sign the statement condemning the students, with whom he had been in such close contact during the October days...

...Such a reconsolidation, however reprehensible certain features of it may be, cannot mean a return to the previous conditions...

...Gomulka accepted spontaneous decollectivization and released the peasants from some of the compulsory deliveries...

...The followers of the second kind of revisionism still live in a world of sophistry...

...Whether they may remain idealistic or become cynical, Gomulka's influence among them is bound to decline...

...Polityka came into violent conflict with Po Prostu, castigating it for its "negative" attitude...

...Although the subject is treated historically, the transparent analogy was not lost on its audiences...

...Thus the problem was not so much the compromise itself, as where to draw the line...

...Just as after the defeated uprising, so after the frustrated revolt, the result...

...The two connected themes of reform were the role of workers' councils and the so-called "new economic model" making greater use of the price mechanism...

...A year later, on October 2, 1957 Po Prostu was closed down and two weeks after that, Lasota, Turski and other members of its editorial board were expelled from the Polish Communist Party...

...Facing a situation in which the Party had ceased to exist as a unified force, he decided to reconsolidate it under his leadership...

...The Party apparatus in Poland did not rally around a national hero like Tito...

...The Hungarian tragedy naturally aroused such fears in Poland that it was possible to represent the voluntary abandonment of a limited right as necessary for "reasons of State...

...After the closing of Po Prostu, the writers also began to feel the pinch...

...To end such "anarchy," the Party is creating permanent commissions for control of science, culture, and education, similar to earlier departments abolished after October...

...True freedom for science depends on a clear and effective cultural policy of the Party...

...However, the Titoist objectives of "soveignty - cum - monolithic - party" are more difficult to achieve in Poland than in Yugoslavia...

...Polish intellectuals who were in the forefront of the revolt are now subject to censorship and administrative pressure...

...The statement by the Party Secretariat said that it had "descended to a position of barren negation and presented the political and economic realities of the country in a false light...

...What really happened was that, while the revolution was proclaimed, it did not, in fact, occur...

...certain ominous signs indicate what Gomulka meant when he said that "Poland does not intend to close the wide-open doors of democratic freedom but it must watch these doors better than in the past...

...Schaff has equated revisionism with "social-democratism" and rejected the idea that it is best to leave cultural and scientific problems to the writers, artists, and scientists themselves...

...But they were not disillusioned...

...Gomulka, unlike Tito, has to face a more articulated society reactivated by the revolutionary process which brought him to power...

...Gomulka has changed...

...but his own dependence on the Party apparatus will surely also increase...

...The revisionists now became his chief obstacle, since they, having helped to destroy the old orthodoxy, refused to accept a new one...

...137...

...The entrenched vested interests of the economic bureaucracy prevented the acceptance of the fairly far-reaching proposals of the revisionist economists...

...Tito drew the line when Djilas proposed to legalize a socialist opposition, Gomulka—when the "% election" might have been taken as a first step away from the single party state...

...Everyone concerned realized that it had to be accepted as a necessary compromise...

...Nor had Gomulka changed...

...There was no immediate alternative...

...Gomulka made his choice...

...Despite the fears of inflation, Gomulka granted them more wage in creases than he originally said was possible, but he dealt firmly with all spontaneous strikes...

...Discredited and defeated 135 before October on the issue of Party interference in literature, art, and science, it is now trying to reassert its position, albeit a little shamefacedly...

...No longer were there such outspoken comments in its columns as L. Kolakowski's reflection: "When Communists are pushed to crimes they become criminals...

...The proscription of Po Prostu was followed by a spate of articles denouncing its stand...

...After October Po Prostu realized the limitations arising from Poland's geographical situation and therefore 131 soft-pedalled its political revisionism and theoretical debunking...

...And as the revolutionary wave re ceded, it was the "revisionist" students and intellectuals who, among all the pressure groups, were the easiest target...

...On us, the sad, the work-weary, the thoughtful and the impatient...

...The idea of withdrawal from political activity, of "internal emigration," 130 was resolutely rejected by the young writers...

...The "revisionists" found themselves in a difficult situation...

...The power of the workers' councils was gradually reduced...

...As a protest against the decision to close Europa the members of its editorial board, Andrzejewski, Jastrun, Zulawski and Wazyk (author of the Poem for Adults), resigned from the Party...

...It was ready to observe certain taboos dictated by the post-Hungarian situation: no criticism of Soviet "friends," no references to Hungary or other delicate subjects...

...In France the Revolution devoured its children, in Soviet Russia the children of the Revolution devoured their parents, and in Poland the old apparatchihi are regaining lost ground from the young intellectuals who formed the vanguard of rebellion against their rule...

...But social and economic reform, widely debated, was slow in coming...

...It must be stated in plain and simple language that a revolution has occurred...

...On May Day 1957 Po Prostu declared: "Our fate depends primarily on ourselves...

...III The post-October regime was seen as an obviously transitory stage, the result of a "negative equation...

...The second can only lead to its defeat (K...

...The arguments of the "revisionists" had similarly to be free from doctrinal blasphemy...

...Intended as a link with the Western cultural scene, the stillborn Europa was considered "dangerous," like Po Prostu...

...some of the arrested students were sentenced 134 to terms of imprisonment ranging from eighteen months to three years...

...The first kind is the strenght of our revolution...

...A revolution or a revolt...

...Po Prostu suffered most...

...Though the tone of the paper changed little, pressure kept mounting and the editors decided to suspend its publication for the "vacation period," and to devote this time to a discussion of editorial policy...

...The sociologist J. Szczepanski attributed the breakdown of social discipline and morale in part to the atomization of social groups and voluntary associations enforced by a totalitarian state...

...It is clear," wrote the weekly, Swiat (3 Nov...

...The offending article, which the editors agreed to withdraw, dealt with the unfulfilled hopes of the "Polish October...

...On our attitude and our further effort...

...Jan Kott, the literary critic who, together with K. T. Toeplitz, was largely responsible for destroying the theory (and practice) of "socialist realism" in Poland, also gave up Party membership...

...But these assurances of the chief dialectical acrobat of the regime are accompanied by such ominous signs as the nomination for head of one commission of Leon Kruczkowski, the Stalinist ex-chief of the Polish Writers' Union...

...The Party, however, is already taking precautionary steps on the cultural front...

...It was never strong in our country, and is now disappearing...

...This was due not only to his personal background, but primarily to the fact that the revolutionary intelligentsia which helped bring him to power on the pre-October wave of popular discontent, constituted an obstacle to his project of dictatorship through a reconsolidated Party...

...Waryk, who ended his Poem for Adults with an assurance that things will be rectified "through the Party," now, having left it, writes about people who "came out of madness but are still insane," and reflects on "Time which heals wounds and transforms ideas into the instruments of others...

...At first the intensification of censorship affected mostly the journalists...

...Officially the categories affected by the "verification" are to be the "dogmatists" and the "revisionists...

...Almost at the same time as the suppression of Europa, the play based on the book by its editor, Jerry Anrzejewski, was taken off the stage...

...Party propagandists persuaded the workers that political unrest interfered with Gomulka's attempts to solve their bread-and-butter problems...

...A change of such dimensions could hardly begin by subsituting a plebiscite for the proposed limited elections, yet that was precisely what Gomulka proposed to do...

...The young elements of the population cannot be induced to accept another version of "numb speech...

...Corruption, previously hidden, was now flagrant...

...V Polish intellectuals, who were the second source of the "spring in October," have also undergone a disillusioning experience...

...The students who protested against the closing of Po Prostu were beaten by the police, their posters demanding freedom of the press torn down...

...Their social weight or organizational strength makes them more formidable opponents and Gomulka was careful not to antagonize them, even though the long term costs of antagonizing the youth and intelligentsia may still have to be assessed...

...In the meantime the campaign against "revisionism" in the Soviet and satellite press is gaining momentum...

...By contrast, the peasantry, the Catholic church, and petty bourgeois "private initiative" all received impor tant concessions which have so far been preserved...

...The leaders of the Natolin group, Mijal, Klosiewicz, Witaszewski, Mazur, Lapot could not be dealt with as quickly and effectively as their equivalents in Yugoslavia...

...These tactics, though apparently safe ideologically, did not endear Po Prostu to the Party apparatus or, for that matter, to Gomulka, who wanted to consolidate his hold over it...

...S. Kurowski's leading article in the censored September issue revealed the true face of the paper...

...Justifying the ban, the Party Secretariat said that Po Prostu "denied the policy of the Party and Government...

...It may seem paradoxical that those who were most active in the revolt are the most vulnerable after it has partly succeeded, while those who were least active and stood aside benefited most...

...The subversive material by Western writers to be published in the first number consisted of articles by Stephen Spender on poetry, Dwight MacDonald on the British press, and Elia Kazan on the cinema...

...Philosophy, science, or literature should not be interfered with on any grounds...

...Having defied the Soviet leaders and persuaded them to accept Poland's limited independence, he decided that the next step was to win over the largely antagonistic Party apparatus...

...The literary freedom they have enjoyed for the past year is threatened...

...Student delegates met with indifference in factories...

...Its "centrist" line representing the official attitude of the Gomulka leadership, it often voiced the resentment of the disgruntled Party functionaries, for whom October had represented a threat to their position, privileges, and power...

...their strength largely evaporated because of the general apathy of the population which, fearing Soviet intervention, reverted to an apolitical mood...

...The young enrages were thus a constant source of embarrassment to the Party leader in his dealings with the powerful "protector...

...The absence of such a policy is not democracy and only leads to anarchy...

...In Poland, the first sign of a coun ter-offensive against the revisionists and against intellectual freedom was the appearance of a new weekly, Polityka...

...Now three times as many as before the war (130,000 compared with 43,000 in 1938), the students are thus likely to become alienated again...

...The first retrograde step was taken in the elections to the Seym...