The Rise and Fall of Po Prostu
JELENSKI, K.A.
Polish youth's revolutionary weekly The Rise and Fall of PO PROSTU -By K.-A. JelenskiIn its issue of June 30, 1957, the Polish weekly Po Prostu announced that it was suspending publication for...
...One might say that Polityka was the incarnation of "raison d'etat...
...The Left will oppose tailoring ideology to the demands of the minute, to necessary concessions, to tactical measures...
...They believed they were choosing the career of the "professional revolutionary," without seeing how it degenerated into that of the bureaucratic "apparatchik...
...Just before leaving for BelK.-A...
...Several days of negotiations followed, in the course of which it was announced that Po Prostu would reappear on October 1. But certain members of its editorial board felt they would rather sacrifice the paper altogether than compromise its spirit...
...now it was the "fathers and mothers of Polish families" who protested against an excellent novelette by Marek Hlasko in Po Prostu...
...More precisely, it is a question of establishing a clear line of demarcation between ideology and the political tactics of the moment...
...In the anti-Stalinist, anti-Soviet rage which swept Poland, Left and Right tended to become dangerously blurred...
...When Gomulka was arrested in 1951, they were probably busy sniffing for signs of "right-wing deviation" among their comrades...
...Khrushchev have two children, Sergei, who accompanied his father to London, and Nadezhda...
...It is not surprising that Lasota, following October, entered that incongruous Polish pantheon which also included Gomulka, Cardinal Wyszynski and Gozdzik, the secretary of the Zeran auto workers' union...
...The USSR, while detested for the Stalinist tyranny and despised for the post-Stalinist conformity, was represented by October 1917, Mayakov-sky, sexual freedom and constructive enthusiasm...
...now it was once more finding fertile soil among the petty-bourgeois Catholic masses...
...Whereas Polish intellectuals of mature years remained frozen in their prewar view of "Western culture," pursuing the old dialogues between Gide and Claudel, the Catholics siding with Maritain and the agnostics with Giraudoux...
...Another study, dealing with prostitution and venereal diseases, put an end to the conspiracy of silence maintained in this area by Stalinist prudery...
...A group of ex-Stalinist intellectuals undertook to formulate the "official ideology" of "Gomulkaism" in the weekly Polityka, which, while continuing to attack the Stalinists, claimed to embody the "positive" aspect of the new regime and reproached the "revisionists" for their "negativism...
...The culmination of this study was the series of articles by W. Godek and R. Turski, entitled "The Twilight of Marxism.' But Po Prostu was by no means confined to theoretical criticism...
...The young editors of Po Prostu were not satisfied with such excuses...
...It may well have been with a feeling of relief that the editors decided to suspend publication for the two summer months...
...This new class, if it had succeeded in crystallizing and constituting itself, would not have been the equivalent of the bourgeoisie...
...The ex-Stalinist Polish economist Oskar Lange was presented simply by ten lines listing his functions and titles...
...And all this with the limited means available (two editors for an intellectual enterprise of nationwide scope), with obvious gaps in information, and with a high seriousness of which Central Europe is one of the last strongholds...
...Between 1945 and 1953, they entered political life as members of the "apparatus," at the level of the ZMP (Polish Youth League, or Komsomol...
...Mud and Dollars," one of the most sensational studies of all, dealing with Polish foreign trade and showing the incredible waste which resulted from the use—for "political" reasons—of shady intermediaries in the Western countries...
...Before October, anti-Semitism had been incited by the Stalinist Natolin group...
...The magazine also published a surprising number of Kafka's writings...
...It was not enough to criticize "socialist realism" in art...
...They refused to make Beria's or Stalin's profile a Cleopatra's nose...
...In preceding issues...
...Its features ("Politics," "Religion," "Personalities," etc...
...It must take a rational attitude, clear and unequivocal, toward the sclerotic religiosity of the Stalinist version of Marxism and also toward the threat of petty-bourgeois clericalism...
...Significantly, the last issue (June 30) started with a cry of anguish...
...In the long run, however, the apparatus and Government could not base themselves on a revolutionary leftist movement...
...Naturally, Po Prostu and Polityka became embroiled in a violent polemic...
...Smitten with "hot" and "cool" jazz, enthusiastic about Porgy and Bess, Po Proslu entered upon far more serious paths as well starting in 1955...
...In the January 1957 elections, Lasota, along with Gomulka, received the highest percentage of votes...
...The Po Prostu writers spared neither traditional Polish anti-Semitism nor Stalinist anti-Semitic provocation...
...Thus, "Gomulkaism" simultaneously wooed both Stalinist and right-wing reaction...
...They were under the intellectual influence of Kuznica ("The Forge," the intellectual center of Polish Marxism between 1945 and 1948), but they reproached Jan Kott, Jerzy Putrament and others with being "lukewarm," with succumbing to liberal temptations of petty-bourgeois origin...
...The Left does not reject compromises with reality, but it demands that they be labeled compromises...
...The right of abortion and birth control (which is vital in a poor, overpopulated country like Poland) had previously been denounced by the Stalinists in the name of "Marxist anti-Malthusianism...
...The editors of Po Prostu and the liberal Catholic Tygodnik Powszeehny joined in a round-table discussion, and Po Prostu published the transcript under the title, "Cooperation between Marxists and Catholics...
...From the start, one fact stands out: The editors of Po Prostu were all, at the beginning, Stalinist hired men...
...Among the major sociological studies, the most significant was that devoted to anti-Semitism...
...Until 1955, Po Prostu was no different from similar journals in other "people's democracies...
...They belonged to that youth which is naturally enthusiastic about the "cause" of the moment, which responds to the fervor of common action...
...The "Mud and Dollars" series was halted by the censor, but Po Prostu was nevertheless able to announce the formation of a Government committee of inquiry, which included a member of its editorial board...
...The result was a curious melange, as though the magazine looked to Fortune for sociological inquiry, to the New Yorker for humor, and to Sartre's Temps Modernes for heavy documents and the philosophical turn of mind...
...Once begun, however, the change was rapid...
...There was nothing about them, at that time, of Orwellian "doublethink...
...The lead article was entitled: "Beware...
...Their careers resemble one another so much that one is tempted to draw a collective portrait...
...It was precisely in the last two years that Po Prostu, a modest student paper of Stalinist origin, had become the major weekly of the young Polish anti-Stalinist left...
...One might simplify by saying that, in the 1950s, the young Pole "of the Left" frequented the cellars and worshiped the cult of the blues even if he had no musical sense in the same way that the young Pole "of the Right" rushed to church even if he was not a believer...
...as usual, the chief points of contention were compulsory religious instruction and the social claims of the Church...
...Po Prostu, November 1956) Po Prostu thus undertook to confront Marxism with historical experience...
...Following an interview he had given to some West Berlin journalists (which irritated East Germany), Eligiusz Lasota was forced out as editor-in-chief...
...As soon as they started to speak freely, these youths, apparently isolated in a Stalinist world, showed themselves abreast of modern science, of new sociological approaches, of the real history of our time...
...America by its effective materialism, jazz (of course), Steinberg drawings, science-fiction, realistic movies, and new methods of sociological research...
...It was an undogmatic attitude: "While we regard historical materialism, Marxism, as the most fruitful current in the social sciences, we regard as nonsense the sectarian attitude that one should scorn all the discoveries—often major—of other schools of thought...
...Curiously, Gomulka's visit to Tito seems to have been related to this stiffer policy...
...whose authors encountered fantastic obstacles in cutting through fictitious official statistics and the refusal to speak of those in responsible positions...
...A curious osmosis seemed to operate between them and the young generation in other countries...
...Whether it dealt with Keynia, foreign trade, the Plan or the political police, each Po Prostu study provoked thousands of letters and embarrassed explanations on the part of those responsible...
...They rejected, of course, Marxism-Leninism as interpreted by Stalin, "who was not a Marxist and did not represent Marxism" (Po Prostu, November 1956...
...The young writers of Po Prostu denounced the use of man as an "element of the forces of production" which served "the economic interests of the state...
...There were economic studies: "The Price of the Plan...
...This desire to provide a Marxist analysis of Stalinist tyranny was particularly apparent in the debate between Po Prostu and Kazimierz Brandys, a writer of the "socialist realism" school...
...In the period between July and October, Eligiusz Lasota, editor-in-chief of Po Prostu, became one of the best-known men in Poland...
...That was the time of the tight alliance between intellectuals and workers, a period of exaltation, truly revolutionary, which is recalled with nostalgia in Poland today...
...The announcement seemed curious...
...In this debate, J. J. Lipski wrote in Po Proslu for June 1, 1956: "The danger which we seem to have happily avoided— although, God knows, we were theoretically prepared for it—is the danger of seeing part of our Party apparatus and of the state constitute itself into a new class...
...Po Prostu, Gomulka declared, "must follow the Party line or it will not appear...
...One has only to realize some of the Western Communist parties' sources of revenue to appreciate the danger of undertaking a study like this...
...But the crucial factor was the development of the rather vague idea known in the West as "Gomulkaism...
...The men, the social group which pushed in this direction are not easy to unmask...
...The building of socialism had not taken place in the conditions foreseen by Marx, that is...
...What caused the ultimate downfall of Po Prostu was neither the hatred of the Stalinists nor the distrust of orthodox Catholic circles...
...It was a debunking action on a grand scale, respecting neither slogans nor received ideas and directed as much against the inherited bureaucratic sclerosis of Stalinism as against the traditional taboos of reactionary, chauvinistic petty-bourgeois Poland...
...Everything started with jazz, which seems to have functioned as a kind of ritual protest in the Stalinist world...
...The study of biology in Polish universities, published in June 1956, was an attack on Lysenko and "Michurinism...
...The Poznan revolt projected Po Prostu into the center of the political struggle...
...Their reasoning took a course similar to that later pursued by Milovan Djilas...
...In reviewing the development of Po Prostu, one learns a good deal about the future of post-Stalinist society, not just about a single episode in Poland...
...He cited the titles of articles which were incompatible with the "Polish path to socialism...
...JelenskiIn its issue of June 30, 1957, the Polish weekly Po Prostu announced that it was suspending publication for two months...
...We feel that Marxism must be subjected to the same methods of control and scientific verification as any other discipline of thought...
...Previously, it had been the censor who forbade any expression of eroticism, any sexual realism in art and literature...
...Last April, Po Prostu suffered its first setback...
...Which well-known authors did one find in the columns of Po Prostu...
...It thus found many points in common, on the one hand, with bureaucrats who wanted to perpetuate the regime regardless ef its ideological content, and, on the other, with the reactionary petty bourgeoisie which was just as unconcerned with ideology once the market became a little freer and they could "do business...
...it would have known how to create privileges for itself, to divide itself from the rest of the nation by a wall of isolating, 'elite' institutions, by an alienating way of life, by another type of culture, of dwelling, of vacation, of love, all of it based on economic and political privilege and repudiating democracy...
...In it, the atheists of Po Prostu showed more tolerance than the Catholics...
...Yes, just that: into a new class...
...A study on agriculture...
...On October 2, the Central Committee of the Party decided that Po Prostu would not appear again...
...Po Prostu accused Polityka of being opportunistic and unconcerned with socialism...
...Among other things, it was forbidden to criticize the new Communist youth organization, the ZMS, through which the regime was trying to rebuild the wreckage of the old ZMP...
...Po Prostu had commented on the celebrated survey conducted by the Communist youth organ Sztandar Mlodyrh among young Poles...
...It was under attack by the magazine's editors that Premier Jozef Cyrankiewicz modified his view of Poznan and launched a new line which culminated in the October "turning point...
...They made use of revolutionary slogans, and, what is more, they were hated by the bourgeoisie as much as by the real revolutionaries...
...the young Marxists of Po Prostu struck one at once as internationalist and contemporary...
...This momentary "national union" which formed around Po Prostu was accompanied by much misunderstanding...
...after capitalism had reached its zenith, but, on the contrary, in the economically underdeveloped countries...
...The attitude of Po Prostu came close to that of Sartre, who recently described Marxism in Les Temps Modernes as "the common cultural heritage of the Left...
...Po Prostu made attempts to reach an understanding with the liberal Catholics...
...The articles on biology resulted in a conference of biologists organized by the editors...
...On September 15, Sokorski, Minister of Culture in the Stalin era and now head of the Polish radio, called a press conference at which he declared that Po Prostu would not come out for the time being...
...The process must have been a long one...
...The Left will not pay any price merely to be in the camp of a majority, no matter which one...
...Jelenski, a Polish-born intellectual, writes regularly on East European affairs for the Paris monthly Preuves, from which this analysis has been condensed...
...We must ceaselessly confront it with the facts, revise it and develop it...
...Whatever future may await the writers of Po Prostu, their refusal to accept compromise suggests that their future can be envisaged in the terms in which Leszek Kolakowski defined the role of the Left in Poland (Po Prostu, February 24, 1957) : "The Left must formulate a clear condemnation of Polish nationalism—together with a condemnation of the foreign nationalisms which threaten Poland...
...since then, the weekly's young editors had submitted to the censor enough material each week to fill 24 pages, in the hope of publishing 8. This time, it seemed, not just a single article or report was at stake but the very essence of Po Prostu...
...As a result, the last issues of Po Prostu lacked incisiveness and a clearly defined program...
...To be sure, the attacks of Soviet and East German papers—to which Po Prostu replied at first with surprising vigor—put the Government in an embarrassing position...
...This, then, was the basic line of Po Prostu: against the "new class" and for a genuine socialism...
...Before October and even until the January elections, "Gomulkaism" could be identified with Po Prostu...
...On September 1, the 150,000 readers of Po Prostu looked for their paper in vain...
...The title which Po Prostu gave it was "Socialism, God and Country": Polish youth was imprisoned in idealistic fictions, and socialism, far from playing a liberating role, had merely taken its place among the great platitudes...
...and Mrs...
...When did they begin to be undermined by doubt...
...The editors referred to an old custom "neglected these last two years because of the pressure of events...
...A chauvinistic, neo-clerical atmosphere was not long in appearing, which Po Prostu reacted sharply against...
...This attempt to trace the history of Po Prostu would be incomplete without mention of its effort to deflate all conventional idealisms...
...To this end, they sought to deepen the methods of Marxist analysis...
...Their ideal was Felix Dzerzhinsky, the icy Chekist...
...now it was being denounced by all the forces of the Church...
...One was thus led to reject many theses which, only vestcrdav, were [Marxist dogmas: the law of the progressive pauperization of the working class under capitalism, the Marxist theory of crises, the theory of the soc ialist re\ o-lution, all the problems pertaining to the mechanism of power in countries governed by Communist parties, theories about imperialism and technological progress...
...it must simultaneously repudiate socialist phraseology which serves as a fagade for police states and democratic phraseology which conceals the rule of the bourgeoisie...
...The Left's principal demand, in the present situation, is of an ideological nature...
...We might think, then, that if we had common enemies with them we also had common aims...
...The time when Po Prostu could publish its startling reports on the Hungarian Revolution was past...
...Toward the 10th, the news spread that two issues of Po Prostu had been seized by the censor...
...Some, picked at random, were: Rosa Luxemburg, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Vladimir Mayakovsky, John Reed, Karl Radek, Ernest Hemingway, Lion Feucht-wanger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ignazio Silone, Bert Brecht...
...There were cultural studies: "Index Librorum Prohibi-torurn"—books withdrawn from circulation by the Stalinists (John Reed's Ten Days That Shook the World, the works of the greatest Polish revolutionary writers...
...Socialism made no sense if one detached oneself from the fate of the individual in society...
...Hence the series of celebrated studies in Po Prostu which, in a matter of months, made it a national spokesman...
...On his return on September 21, he delivered a speech to the Zeran auto workers in which, after attacking Milovan Djilas, he accused Po Prostu of "blackening socialism...
...Polityka accused Po Prostu of being negative and destructive...
...Under "Religion," news from Vatican City appeared alongside a "most Christian" letter from the Patriarch of Moscow to the Patriarch of Cyprus and a picture of a statue of Stalin...
...The Left knows that one is sometimes helpless in the face of crime, but it does not believe in calling a crime an act of kindness...
...Po Prostu had already been subject to censorship for six months...
...Although they did not share his skepticism about the possibility of building a genuine socialist society, they were the first to invent the term, "the new class...
...It would not have denationalized the factories and the land...
...It would have been able to dispossess the working class without in any way instituting private ownership of the means of production...
...The idea of the workers' councils was born from this alliance...
...Only in this way can the Left maintain its place apart, which is in the minority...
...And nobody noticed the "pressure of events" diminishing in Poland last summer...
...Thus, under "Personalities," between Edith Summerskill and a Cologne banker, one could read: "Nikita Khrushchev: married at 28...
...For the most part of proletarian origin, brilliant and favored students, the oldest among them campaigned with enthusiasm for the Communist party in the election of 1945...
...Stalinism gave the name of socialism to that "process of primitive accumulation which Marx attributed in his historical scheme to capitalism" (Po Prostu, October-November 1956...
...The Workers' Councils in the Mines Are in Danger...
...It had its real aficionados, but it also attracted all the young people who saw in this music from another world a means of expressing their fundamental dissatisfaction with the reality which surrounded them...
...However, many intellectuals who had taken an active part in establishing the Stalinist regime argued that the "evil" had resulted from "tragic necessity...
...displayed an acid, often malicious humor, almost always with a touch of the unexpected and bordering on the absurd...
...It could not court successfully the genuine left represented by Po Prostu and the "revisionists"—a left which was trying, often in a contradictory manner, to make its way toward a real, humanistic socialism...
...From France came a tendency to reconcile an "open" brand of Marxism with existentialist psychoanalysis, and the young Poles of Po Prostu would have readily found a common idiom with the "angry young men" of England...
...One read, for example, this excerpt from a police report, said to have resulted in imprisonment for a certain N, "known as an enemy of People's Poland, which he demonstrates by the ironical expression on his face, and when there are ideological meetings he sleeps...
...There were political studies: "The Province" showed the absurdly arbitrary behavior of the provincial "militias...
...A harrowing study was based on a visit to Kcynia, the "model" prison for juvenile delinquents...
...It was an example of Po Prostu s predilection for raw documentation, for humor and ridicule even in tragic circumstances...
...One found these young people in the provincial towns of the new "western marches" taken from Germany —enthusiastic "engineers of the soul" campaigning for collectivization of the land...
...Po Prostu organized a gallery of modern art, which immediately became a rallying point for Polish abstract painters...
...The revolt of Polish writers preceded Khrushchev's report to the 20th Party Congress by several months...
...It would have known how, while preserving the formal characteristics of our system, to destroy the content...
...A study on housing...
...In their vision of the world, various countries were curiously woven together...
...The censor had re-established a system of very definite taboos, most of them pertaining to the USSR...
...grade, Gomulka urged Polish journalists to prove their total solidarity with the policies of his regime...
Vol. 40 • December 1957 • No. 48
