Returning to 'Normal'
LABEDZ, LEOPOLD
Poland's Literary Scene: RETURNING TO NORMAL' By Leopold Labedz FOUR YEARS AGO Adam Wazyk ended his "Poem for Adults"' with the following words: We make demands on this earth. for which we did...
...He included in it Bert Brecht and the writings of the young Ilya Ehrenburg...
...All this was due to the removal of the Party stranglehold on Poland's artistic and scientific life...
...Without socialist realism the ideology of the working class and its modern revolutionary movement could not find its voice in art...
...The practical conclusions drawn by Zolkiewski are contradictory, and they show that he still does not want to go the whole way in the reimposi-tion of Party dictates in every matter of style, form, and subject matter...
...According to him, such processes "were concerned with the problems which were the main target of attack by revisionists and they were in the sphere of the strongest influence of bourgeois ideology...
...As its lever in influencing the "democratic choice" of the writers, the regime used the writers' "problems of livelihood"—in plain language, the power of patronage in the hands of the state, the power which can be regulated according to the political requirements of the Party...
...The Party organ...
...thieves' jargon into which our publications were turned...
...The censorship was actually tightened some time ago...
...In the protracted struggle against the reimposition of Party control, the writers held their own until December 1959, when a new policy for literature was announced and a new presidium of the Writers Union was elected at the annual Writers Congress held in Warsaw...
...The concept itself and the idea of control of art forms and subjects by the Party was so completely rejected that nobody would have dared to use the words "socialist realism...
...A great deal has happened in Poland since that time...
...Zolkiewski has brought back the concept of socialist realism, but he also tried to broaden it by providing it with a more respectable genealogical tree...
...We demand these every day...
...Polish sociology had revived...
...This time, however, Zolkiewski...
...While such cultural contacts are to be extended in the name of "peaceful coexistence of the two systems," the Polish writers' margin of freedom is shrinking...
...Wazyk himself is no longer in the Party...
...and even the Party officials charged with the task of guiding the writers ideologically shied away from it...
...In the new situation the Polish writers cannot afford to do so...
...Zolkiewski, until recently a Minister of Higher Education and now a Central Committee member in charge of cultural affairs, enjoys a slightly more liberal reputation...
...We demand through the Party...
...who provided the main ideological platform for the Congress, reintro-duced and "rehabilitated" the concept of socialist realism...
...Putrament, a writer with an unsavory reputation, jumped on the Gomulka bandwagon after October 1956...
...This power has been used in a discriminatory manner in order to subdue the more unruly writers individually, and also collectively, when the state refused to settle certain financial matters affecting the writers in general as long as the old presidium remained in office...
...for which we did not throw dice, for which a million perished in battle: for a clear truth, for the bread of freedom, for a burning reason, for a burning reason...
...Thus, an exceptional period which provided an opportunity for an artistic and intellectual revival in Poland has come to an end...
...for the past 20 years, have carried out the destructive procedures with zeal and application sharpened by fear...
...The new presidium does not include the more liberal writers who were elected in the flush of October 1956 as a reaction against what the outgoing president of the Union (who agreed to remain in the presidium) called "that conglomeration of liturgy and LEOPOLD LABEDZ, associate editor of Soviet Survey in London, has often written on European Communism...
...It consists of rather finely drawn distinctions and it is pushing the Polish writers into the direction of a Khrushchevian type of Gleich-schaltung—without, however, reaching that point...
...And does it not flow...
...unlike their position in the Stalinist period, they were not compelled to express what they did not feel...
...This year, with other developments indicating retreat from October, the pressure on the writers has increased...
...They were concerned with strictly political problems: power, and its relation to the ruled, the role of the Party in society, and the real social significance of the socialist ideal...
...In his speech, Zolkiewski attacked both Chalasinski and the revisionist philosopher, Leszek Kolakowski, for contributing to what he called "the processes of regression...
...Now another step has been taken toward restoring it and some spheres of activity are facing increasing pressures to conform...
...in line with Khrushchev, called for ideological rearmament in order to be ready for such an eventuality...
...Instead, some of the writers who were compromised in the Stalinist period by the zealous imposition of the socialist realist strait-jacket on Polish literature have now returned to the presidium...
...Although this freedom is still greater than in Russia and the other satellite countries, some of the feelings expressed by Wazyk in his poem are beginning to sound ominously relevant: The dreamer Fourier beautifully prophesied that the sea would flow with lemonade...
...but it was confined to the negative side: Artists and writers were prevented from expressing some of their feelings and thoughts but...
...This means, in practice, a more direct control over what the writers write and the possibility of remote control over their contacts with Western writers and intellectuals...
...After the recall of the Natolin diehards, General Kazimierz Witaszewski, Tadeusz Gede and Eugeniusz Szyr...
...Polish writing was resuscitated...
...the doctrine of "socialist realism" was thoroughly discredited in Poland...
...Without the ideological activity of the working class the culture of the 20th centurv would have been in a state of stagnation...
...Kruczkowski, a Stalinist diehard, was some time ago put in charge of the Party Cultural Commission...
...Trybunu Ludu, vigorously attacked them for their stand, and made it quite clear that the reimposition of party control was only postponed, but not abandoned...
...Three of them are particularly well known: Leon Krucz-kowski, Jerszy Putrament, and Stefan Zolkiewski, all members of the Central Committee of the Party...
...Without socialist realism, a real polarization of ideas could not have taken place...
...On the one hand, "the Party does not want to choose for the writer," but on the other hand, "it is difficult to separate the artistic problems from the problems of the social function or political content of a work...
...At the 1958 Wroclaw Writers Congress, the writers put up a spirited fight against censorship and succeeded in maintaining the old presidium...
...the dismissal of Professor Josef Chalasinski and the liquidation of his Institute of Sociology, and the expulsion of New York Times correspondent A. M. Rosenthal for "probing too deeply into Polish life," came the turn of the writers...
...He said that "in the sphere of the social tasks of art the competent political inspiration of the Party is indispensable for the writers...
...He said: "It is anti-historical nonsense to identify socialist realism with the unsuccessful works, which, together with masterpieces, are produced by every literary trend...
...they have to be reasonable and play the game, but it still leaves a bitter taste in their mouths...
...From this carefully balanced formulation of the new Party line toward literature in Poland it is clear that it is not a simple return to Stalinism...
...He stressed that he expects a further extension of cultural relations with the "capitalist countries...
...In October 1956 Wladyslaw Gomulka came to power and the gradual process of consolidation of the new regime spelled the end of some of the hopes expressed by the Polish writers who paved the way to reform...
...Three years ago...
...It is particular nonsense to identify this trend with those unsuccessful postwar works in which shortcomings of artistic expression were magnified under the influence of mistaken conceptions of cultural policy in socialist countries...
...During that period Polish films had become the talk of the world...
...They return quietly home to vomit to vomit...
...But he added that "it cannot limit artistic exploration, although it should principally be taken into consideration with respect to the social and political utility of literary works...
...The censorship withholds or cuts films already made, nips scripts in the bud and exercises increasingly thorough control over the publication of books and magazines...
...They drink sea-water, and cry— Lemonade...
...In his address before the Council of Culture and Art in March 1956, Antonin Slonimski described it as "a precision tool for destroying art by officials, who...
Vol. 43 • February 1960 • No. 8
