Reaction in Poland

...These doctrines were viewed with suspicion by certain Catholic circles...

...Lipinski urged the abrogation of the requirement that two-thirds of the members of a workers' council be workers...

...The young Oxford economist Peter Wiles, who has been sympathetic to Gomulka's Poland, told Po Prostu: "The difference between capitalist or socialist management of a factory is minimal...

...To be sure, the Cardinal is as terrified as the Party Central Committee by the thieving, "hooliganism," and sexual promiscuity in the workers' districts...

...One recalls the hatred of the Italian bourgeoisie for the neo-realistic films (The Bicycle Thief, Miracle in Milan) which, it felt, compromised Italy in foreign eyes...

...the old Stalinist inquisitor Jerzy Putrament and the putative inquisitor Swiecicki...

...It is more important to produce efficiently than to have a good social organization in a factory...

...the role of the workers' councils should be limited to problems of labor sociology and psychology, to problems involving "human relations," according to the concepts of Elton Mayo...

...One is stupified by the affinities between this kind of Catholicism, which no longer dares to present itself openly in democratic countries, and Stalinism...

...Gomulka's reaction to this film stemmed more from a sense of respectability than from political principle...

...Communist regime and right-wing elements combine to harass writers, workers' councils, Catholic liberals Reaction in Poland By K. A. Jelenski The curse of Eastern Europe between the two world wars was the weakness of nascent democratic elements caught between Communist and fascist fanaticisms...

...We shall no longer dredge around in our mud and throw it in the faces of our brothers...

...A decade of postwar Communist rule has had the effect—as the events of October 1956 in Poland and Hungary demonstrated!— of immeasurably strengthening the popular forces of democracy, particularly among workers, students and intellectuals...

...the veterans of the security police and the veterans of the Falanga...

...Most of them were labelled "destructive...

...He prefers to put the blame on the influence of "decadent" art, "subversive" literature, "demoralizing" plays and films...

...Anne's church in Warsaw condemned the activities of "minimalist" Polish Catholics, who were accused of publishing articles in "self-styled Catholic" journals which support dubious theses borrowed from "defensive" French Catholicism...

...The results of this division are surprising only on the surface: On one side is the First Secretary of the Party and the Cardinal Primate of Poland...

...Stomma, a leader of these liberal Catholics, has said: "Materialists and atheists are close to us, and we are finding that we have goals in common with them," goals "conceived in terms of love of man—not man in the abstract, but man as he is...

...Given the immobilism which the geographical situation of Poland imposes on political life, given the social structure of Poland, the dvisions into "Left" and "Right," "dogmatists" and "revisionists," "Marxists" and "Catholics" lose a good pari of their significance...

...He proposed instead that the councils be exclusively composed of technicians—or, at least, that no more than half its members should be workers...

...In 1940, he had appeared in the Polish Army in Scotland where he tried to organize an anti-Semitic and anti-liberal mafia under the pretext of "the anti-Communist struggle," but General Sikorski's energetic intervention put an end to his activities...

...If in the industrial field we find the technocrats combining with Stalinists, in the cultural field we see the regime backed by the most reactionary elements of the Catholic Church...

...But now, K. A. Jelenski suggests, these democratic forces are being repressed by new unholy alliance between the ruling Communist bureaucrats and the traditional Right...

...and the Front of Moral Renewal puts in the same basket Sartre and Camus, Hlasko and Frangoise Sagan, Brigitte Bardot and the Polish films of social protest...

...The same desire for respectability, the urge to push sordid reality under the rug, unites the Stalinist disciples of "socialist realism" and the reactionary Catholics...

...And so Wyszynski, recalling that the Primate of Poland had traditionally been the "Interrex" in the periods between the elections of kings, began leaning on the traditional, conformist prestige of the Church in Poland...

...They unite for the purposes of whitewash...

...But October had no such outcome...

...The thousandth anniversary of the baptism of Poland—which coincided with the foundation of the state—fell at an appropriate moment...

...Paradoxically, the behavior of the Polish Catholics toward Stalinism had initially strengthened the liberal wing within the Church...

...The pragmatic technicians, who opposed Stalinist centralization in the name of economic efficiency, opposed the embryonic workers' democracy for the same reason...

...their arguments might just as well have been offered by the directors of General Motors...

...And, as we shall see, the Polish regime, in its defense of traditional propriety, has enjoyed the unanimous support of the petty bourgeoisie and the reactionary Right...

...The very idea of the workers' councils had been heatedly attacked not only by Stalinists but by economists, technicians, bureaucrats...

...Prostitution...

...Once again Hlasko is a principal culprit...

...This alliance between the survivors of "socialist realism" and the eternal representatives of "national realism" takes on more sinister overtones with the "Front of Moral Renewal," a new organization under the patronage of Pax which recently concluded its first national meeting...

...Piasecki having openly threatened the supporters of October with Soviet intervention, Pax seemed hopelessly compromised...

...but Gomulka let himself be carried along by the revolutionary wave in the hope of adapting that bureaucratic dictatorship to new conditions...

...The movie based on Hlasko's The Last Day of the Week, which was to represent Poland at the Cannes Film Festival, was withdrawn at the last moment: Shown privately to members of the Central Committee, it infuriated Gomulka, who left the theater before the showing was over...

...In the second half of the 20th century, the Primate of Poland is unable to formulate a few simple ideas on the consequences of a brutal upheaval of traditional structures, on the rupture of organic links and the inability of creating others on a new foundation...

...Nonetheless, his message was formulated in Zhdanovian terms: "clear and legible colors," "as in the works of the Masters," "dredge around in the mud," "no more blemishes and dirty blotches," "modern confusion...

...A year-and-a-half later, this Left has been largely disowned, while Gomulka's Communist party has moved toward accommodation with the traditionalist elements of Polish society: the Church, the peasantry, the chauvinistic petty bourgeoisie...

...Another division is making itself felt, depending on whether one accepts or refuses to accept reality—and the right to study this reality more profoundly...

...Thus, the liberal wing of the Church is still represented by the weekly Tygodnik Powszechny and the magazine Zncik, but we no longer know to what extent they represent the hierarchy...

...The same considerations prevailed when Tryburm Ludu declared that, in The Cemeteries, Hlasko's vision of a Warsaw of whores and drunkards was "an insult to the entire people...

...Pax," a movement of so-called "progressive Catholics" who were faithful agents of Stalinism, was founded by Boleslaw Piasecki, the former little fiihrer of prewar Polish fascism...

...When the Cardinal was released from prison, he naturally surrounded himself with these liberal Catholics...

...Alcoholism...

...They have attempted to legitimize the concept of a dynamic Catholicism—universal and humanist—as opposed to a formal, traditional, static Catholicism...

...All had unanimously declared that the workers' councils would obstruct production...

...This would be extremely dangerous, for then "error and truth would have the same rights in public life...

...They too, were infuriated by Hlasko and other realistic writers, and they, too, referred to Frangoise Sagan, who has become the bete noire of the Right in Poland...

...It suspended publication of Po Prostu and Europa, kicked the editors of Sztandar Mlodych upstairs, sharply curtailed press freedom, and has now begun to attack literature...

...He was indignant that "Professor Swiezawski neglected to point out that the Inquisition had been proclaimed ex-cathedra, and that it had been championed by Popes and Saints...

...And, in Tygodnik Powszechny, the Thomist philosopher Swiezawski condemned the doctrine which proclaims the right to propagate the faith by such means as "deprivation of personal liberty, armed conflict, corporal punishment, tortures, death," as well as any material or state pressures...

...The Front of Moral Renewal purports to be a "rampart of socialism," and Przetakiewicz's appeal is an extraordinary verbal melange, defending "socialism," "patriotism" and "purity" against ideological indifference in all forms...

...Swiecicki concluded: "Where we must contend with moral anarchy which saps the bases of social life, the intervention of the State is indispensable for its own protection...

...When the Gomulka regime liquidated the workers' councils, the Right was indifferent...

...While "Pax" did not protest the arrest of Cardinal Wyszynski, the prewar progressive Catholics were condemned to hardship and "internal emigration...

...We shall again live anew, revive hope...

...After prohibiting publication of Marek Hlasko's The Cemeteries, the regime also stopped a number of other books which had already been accepted by the state publishing house, some of which had already been set in type...

...One is amazed, too, by the fact that a censorship as rigid as the present Polish censorship—which closed magazines edited by Communists, such as Po Prostu, or by Communists and liberals, such as Europa, which bans realistic novels by Marek Hlasko—.allowed the publication of such clear appeals to Catholic fascism...

...This was the characteristic viewpoint of "managers...

...Had October led to a genuine socialist regeneration, the Church would have been led by its liberal wing...

...His old reactionary followers rallied to his Stalinist movement, which the Vatican officially condemned...

...There he rallied all the professional groups, the motorized detachments of the modern pilgrimage...

...In public life, Swiecicki declared, "we cannot accept the equality of rights for error and for truth, because truth is in a certain sense total...

...In the review Homo Dei (March 1958), J. M. Swiecicki maintained: "If the Church renounced all means of pressure save moral pressure she would have to renounce the bracham saeculare, that is, the support of the State, for the realization of her doctrine and her morality...

...We shall no longer depict life by blemishes and infinitely large blotches of dirt, but with a clear and legible line...

...A series of sermons delivered at St...

...He believes in proselytization only by means of persuasion and example...

...The paradox underlying Poland's "turning point" of October 1956 was this: The Left—the workers and democratic-minded intellectuals—supported Wladyslaw Gomulka in its fight against the bureaucratic dictatorship, which it regarded as the major obstacle to genuine socialism...

...Meanwhile, seven high-school principals in the industrial town of Rzeszow—presumably former Stalinists— recently published a manifesto defending the National Customs, the National Culture and the National Heroes...

...J. Werblan, a member of the Party Central Committee, has told Polish writers that henceforth they must write "positive" works...

...And what enraged Zycie Warszawy about an interview given by Hlasko to L'Express in Paris was that he was photographed with his trousers full of holes...

...Swiezawski condemned the Inquisition and similar methods, and preached respect for the convictions of non-believers...

...That is why heretics are turned over to the hands of the state...

...The regime was quick to adopt repressive measures against intellectual "revisionists" and against the embryonic workers' councils which had sprung up after October...

...Absenteeism...

...His last New Leader article was "The Rise and Fall of Po Prostu...

...the "socialist realist" writer Krucskowski and the "national realist" writer Zofia Kossak...

...At the sanctuary of Czesto-chowa, he renewed the nationalist vows of King Jan-Casimir at the time of the Swedish invasion of the 17th century...

...Hence Professor Edward Lipinski, who played an important role in the revision of Marxist practice between 1954 and 1956, argued in Zycie Gospodarcze (December 24, 1957) that managerial decisions should be the prerogative of the technical leadership...

...Its president, Z. Przetakiewicz, was formerly Piasecki's lieutenant in the fascist "Falanga...

...it would have done likewise, after all, had it been in power...

...On the other side, there-are philosophers, sociologists and writers—Marxist, socialist, liberal and Catholic—who do not share the same vision of the future but who reject the aid of lies, no matter how "idealistic," in assessing the present...

...Blame it on Bonjour Tristesse and A Certain Smile...

...All the modern confusion, devoid of soul, constituted of indeterminate sensations, impassioned heads, instead of ordered thoughts, all the chaos of feelings torn to shreds, all the disintegration of body and spirit—this new hell will see Christ...

...The culmination of this drive was the Easter message of Cardinal Wyszynski: "Faith in the Resurrection," he declared, "gives men's actions a precise character so that they may depict human life in legible and clear colors as we see them portrayed by the Masters in works inspired by the Faith...

...Jelenski is a Polish Socialist intellectual, now living in Paris, who has written for Preuves, Encounter and Partisan Review...

...Nevertheless, though both Cardinal Wyszynski and Gomulka had reasons to detest it, the Pax group rapidly regained favor...