Polish Paradox

...Recent events add their comments...

...Reviewed by Stefan Korbonski Author, "Fighting Warsaw," "Warsaw in Chains" IT IS ASTONISHING to find that a man like Frank Gibney, with no previous association with Poland, could write this profound and many-faceted book after such a short stay in that country...

...In spite of the fact that Gibney's appraisal of Party Secretary Wladyslaw Gomulka is qualified by many "buts," in the last analysis Gomulka emerges as a sincere fighter for Poland's independence...

...So, clearly, if the withdrawal of the Soviet army from Poland would bring the fall of Communism in Poland, Gomulka would prefer to have that army remain...

...I would be the last to criticize Gibney for succumbing to the charm of the Polish struggle and atmosphere, but in many cases he has overestimated the people and the events...

...Gibney shows that a few weeks spent in a new country by a man with an open mind and heart, with an intellectual background and with a fine writing talent, may result in a significant work...

...Gibney is excellent in his descriptions of the conditions within the Polish Communist party and its division into the Polish and Moscow groups, of the intellectual rebellion in literature, art and science, and of the cautious policy of Cardinal Wyszynski...

...In sum...

...Censorship has increased and books by writers deviating from the Party line are not being published...

...I am afraid, therefore, that if the sheet of ice which froze the revolution begins to break, it will not be because of the warmer climate in East-West relationships, but because of the pressure of the huge glacier which, just as it did ages ago, moves westward and endangers Europe...

...Gibney's short, successful excursions into Poland's history contribute a number of relevant comparisons with the present which say more than any lengthy discussions...

...Instead, the factors so abundantly cited in Frozen Revolution tend to show that Gomulka strives, at most, for a degree of independence that would not endanger the Communist system as he conceives it...

...It is true that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, on his last visit to Poland, rebuked the local Stalinists and confirmed the right of the Poles to their own road to "socialism," but at the same time he promoted the recently organised "farmers' circles" which show a tendency toward the return to collectivization...

...For example, he compares the moral significance to the Poles of the Russian Orthodox Church—built by the Tsars in the heart of Warsaw and torn down after Poland regained its independence in 1918—with the Palace of Culture—built by Stalin and now harshly dominating the landscape of Warsaw...

...The chapters devoted to the search for a modus vivendi between these forces, the efforts to camouflage the gains of the liberation movement under the bearskin of Communism, the groping for the permissible limit beyond which one dare not go—these are the most fascinating parts of Frozen Revolution...

...Gibney was able to gain a special perspective which a Polish writer, burdened in some measure by his subjectivity, could not attain...

...His presentation of the differences between Poland on paper —as it appears in the plans of the Communists—and Poland in reality does honor to Gibney's qualities of observation and analysis...

...However, Frozen Revolution is a book dictated by emotion as well as wisdom...

...But the nation captivated Gibney with its charm, its sense of humor and its determination to fight, and these are set down for the reader with objectivity, freshness and originality...

...Gomulka proved it clearly by his merciless liquidation in 1945-47 of the anti-Communist Peasant party, a party which wanted to save at least the remnants of independence and democracy...

...Gibney's vast political knowledge is especially evident in the brief syntheses into which he arranges the paradoxes of the Polish situation and the ideological brain twisters created by the clash of the national liberation movement with the alien system of Communism...

...Factory workers' councils have been transformed into Workers' Conferences, in which Communists from the factory Party cell and labor unions prevail...

...And in a country where alien troops remain against the will of the nation, there can be no real independence...

...To Gomulka, the Communist system is not, as it is to thousands of Poles, camouflage which protects the country from greater Soviet interference, but the system which he wishes for Poland...

...He gives the reader not only material which he himself has digested and appraised, but in many cases, when raw material speaks for itself, he gives it in the original, quoting the poet, Adam Wasyk, the philosopher, Leszek Kolakowski, and the Communist writer, Wictor Woroszylksi...

...Gibney's trouble here is that he fails to indicate that Gomulka would ever sacrifice himself and Communism for independence...