Poland Today: Communism Sans Ideology:
JELENSKI, K. A.
POLAND TODAY: By ?. A. Jelenski COMMUNISM SANS IDEOLOGY THE MANY American-style publicopinion polls conducted in Poland since 1956 have cast a vivid light on the complex nature of the...
...The young dream of new cars, motor-scooters, color television...
...In the future as well, however, we can only count on the support of our eastern allies...
...Gomulka, however, wishes neither to persecute us nor to buy us...
...10.7 Material gain...
...Curiously, no one in the family is a Party member...
...From the West resound the threats of a man whom we do not like," the Cardinal said on one occasion...
...and Mrs.," the name chosen (a common middle-class Polish surname, yet one that could suggest descent from the minor nobility) and the father's occupation (government official) all stamped the Kowalskis as part of the traditional Polish intelligentsia...
...But Polish "immobilism," whose roots lie both in the country's geographical position and in the structure of the Party apparatus, quickly cast a chill over those ambitions...
...But, again, other questions show the students' attitude to be more complex...
...On this point, there is no difference of opinion between Gomulka and Cardinal Wyszynski...
...Another position now began to take shape...
...During the "thaw" period and the events of October 1956, it was indeed the "elite" section of the Polish intelligentsia that was in the forefront: the writers, newspapermen, economists, and philosophy and sociology students...
...Present-day Polish Communism has no ideology, and it troubles itself very little about Poland's intellectuals...
...The second most frequent response was "the opinion of my parents and friends," while no one replied "the opinion of priests" or "the opinion of political figures...
...The opportunity to undertake an objective study of Polish life, seemingly heralded by the new strides made in sociology, is now limited to a few groups of university professors working in isolation and without adequate research facilities...
...This man, full of pride, confident of his strength, is threatening the lands of our forefathers and, by virtue of that very fact, our freedom...
...2 So it would appear that Warsaw University's student body includes 68 per cent believing Catholics as contrasted with only 1.8 per cent Marxists...
...They lean toward material well-being (the longing for a "consumer society") and technology (with stress laid on "knowledge" and on "professional skills," which reflect the technological side of industrial civilization...
...Uppermost then was the "reformist," universalist tendency in the Polish intellectual, which causes him to assume responsibility for society...
...It is therefore not at all astonishing that the Polish intellectual elite was able to reaffirm its independence of judgment, the moment the Stalinist myth collapsed, by means of an alliance between the best representatives of pre-war Poland and the young intellectuals who were seeking to rethink socialism...
...It is in these two roles that the Polish intellectual plays out his destiny: He is a reformer when the historical juncture is propitious, or he is an undeluded, knowing servant of a dictatorship which he accepts without attributing to it any charismatic quality...
...Apart from "heroism" and "altruism" (the percentages for which are, in any case, below the total ?f conventional responses normally obtained in surveys of this kind), the students' values are curiously concrete and practical...
...The pre-1939 series was called "The Daily Life of Mr...
...And it is in the independent Catholic press, in Cardinal Wyszynski's official weekly, Tygodjiik Powszechny, that this thesis finds its most authentic expression (inasmuch as the Communist press is obliged to express itself in ideological jargon...
...11 Non-believers, non-practicing . . . ...13 Avowed enemies of religion...
...The students declared themselves unanimously in favor of nationalizing heavy industry, and those who believed in private property were in a majority only where artisans and small farmers were concerned...
...National solidarity is a decisive concern for the Polish prelate, and he has not hesitated to inveigh against West Germany's Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, one of Europe's most prominent Catholic layment...
...Here are some of the replies received when the Polish students were asked to specify their ""aim in life": Aim in life % Material well being...
...The two serials, tracing the "everyday life" of a family—work, the food market, dinner together in the evening, family quarrels, the son's studies, the daughter's love affairs—were conceived with the same objective: to reconcile the "average listener" to the poverty of his material existence, the grayness of his daily life, by elevating to the position of a national "star" a family which is just as poor as he is, which is bored in the same way he is, and in which everyone is "good," "positive" and "sympathetic...
...True, at the time the entire country saw itself reflected in those young Communists who genuinely wished to return to the sources in quest of a rigorous body of Marxist and socialist thought...
...Kowalski...
...They were asked: "What is the decisive authority for you in a situation where you have to resolve a moral conflict: the precepts of religion...
...It has lost its pathos and its mystique, despite the efforts of the old-time chauvinists...
...The bulk of the "mental workers" no longer felt, as they did during the 19th century, that they were called upon to play a part at a decisive moment in history...
...30 Believers, but non-practicing...
...However, while 78 per cent of the young people who replied to Polityka's questions described themselves as Catholics, only a third of the total declared themselves opposed to legal abortion...
...Yes, definitely...
...The building of socialism had not taken place under the conditions anticipated by Marx, i.e., when capitalism had reached the peak of its development, but, on the contrary, in economically underdeveloped countries...
...Patriotism has changed its face...
...I write this as a person whose viewpoint is independent and critical with regard to the party that rules Poland...
...Obviously, Communism's ideological problems scarcely touch Poland's youth, which supports the social changes Communism has brought but is extremely distrustful of its contempt for democratic methods of government...
...6.9 Finally, here is what these young Poles replied when asked what they put at the top of their scale of values: Value % Knowledge . . 28.6 Physical beauty...
...However, even though "believing Catholics" are in a majority, they by no means accept the implications of their faith at the level of social policy...
...POLAND TODAY: By ?. A. Jelenski COMMUNISM SANS IDEOLOGY THE MANY American-style publicopinion polls conducted in Poland since 1956 have cast a vivid light on the complex nature of the people's attitude toward the two organized forces contending for their favor: the Communist party and the Catholic Church...
...This analysis seems borne out by the Polityka poll referred to at the outset...
...1.8 Clearly, the "depoliticization of Polish youth has reached remarkable proportions...
...the children are students...
...United by the distrust which both the totalitarian Government and the reactionary masses feel toward these last Mohicans of radicalism and liberalism, they still control the avantgarde literary reviews and the cafes of Warsaw, but they have little hold on the country as a whole...
...Not a single Polish scholar or writer was imprisoned during the Stalin era because of his opinions...
...This elite intelligentsia seems to oscillate between two positions, embracing now one and now the other in accordance with the historical circumstances of the moment...
...This was stressed in Tygodnik Powszechny of September 4, 1960 by Stefan Kisielewski, Poland's most influential journalist: "I feel that those Poles who are not Marxists and who have a different outlook play an extremely important role when they show real understanding of the situation that exists, of the need for the alliance with the Soviet Union and of its natural consequences...
...5 Working for others (altruism) . . . . . 9.7 Political power...
...18.2 Inclined toward no . . . 8.7 Definitely not...
...This is hardly surprising, given the structure of the regime...
...Domestic policy, ideological conflicts and international problems interest modern Polish youth only insofar as they have a bearing on the problems of the economy, of organization, production, profit, credit, efficiency, wages and living standards...
...In October 1956, it resolved to rethink Marxism and attempt to achieve the socialism which had been made a travesty during the Stalin era...
...While the people do not yet have much fear of the police, the police no longer have any fear whatever of the people...
...One was presented before the War, the other has been on the air since the October 1956 uprising...
...Finally, it is because of raison d'etat that there is a tacit understanding between the people of Poland and Gomulka, who is the only man capable of retaining Khrushchev's confidence and, at the same time, safeguarding the basic achievements of October 1956: the decollectivization of the countryside, the truce with the Church and the elimination of arbitrary police rule...
...The fact that the mass of the Polish intelligentsia has conceived a passion for the Matysiaks and, obviously, recognizes itself in them shows that its internal solidarity has declined and that it is taking on characteristics which make it more like the pre-war petty bourgeoisie...
...the precepts of a social philosophy...
...The "split" in the intelligentsia was already an accomplished fact...
...The watchword of Communist boss Wladyslaw Gomulka's Poland is raison d'etat...
...40.4 That it be interesting...
...having become Rosa Luxemburg Communists or democrats, they can no longer regard Khrushchev as one of their own kind...
...The current series is called "The Matysiak Family...
...At the same time, perhaps to offset the more depressing long-term implications of this position, sociological arguments of world-wide application are borrowed from W. W. Rostow, Raymond Aron and George Kennan in an effort to prove that, without even changing sides, Poland may be able to achieve greater freedom...
...But the young revisionists, whose Marxist training had been more serious and thorough, were not satisfied with these Sunday-school excuses...
...It is unquestionably because it gives limited support to the regime that the Church in Poland enjoys a special status, although truths of that sort are not easily uttered in public...
...On the other hand, the students were asked: "Do you consider it permissible for the State to restrict certain civil liberties so that it can carry out reforms affecting the general interest...
...The importance attached to "love" and "physical beauty" should also be analyzed in the light of contemporary world trends...
...That is, of course, in keeping with the principal changes wrought in the regime by "Gomulkaism," which is characterized by a tacit understanding with the country's traditional institutions: the peasantry, the Church and the petty bourgeoisie...
...Their thinking followed a course similar to that which Milovan Djilas was later to take, and, while they did not feel his skepticism about the possibility of creating a genuinely socialist society, it was they who first coined the term "the new class...
...A Poland that was not successful economically and technologically would have no appeal for them...
...Their minds formed in the years 1945-53, they entered political life as members of the "apparatus" through the Union of Polish Youth (ZMP), the equivalent of the Soviet Komsomol...
...44 Improved professional skills 20.2 Luck in love 18.5 A high po;itical post 1.6 And here is what they looked for in their work: Work goal % That It pay well...
...There is reason to believe that the collective systems may become free societies and that the free societies are evolving toward a collective economy...
...Like Khrushchev, those who had been the most committed of the Stalinist intellectuals now outdid themselves in idealistic phrases...
...The regime is once again championing "socialist realism," even though it does not quite dare to call it by its right name and is using the carrot rather than the stick as its chief weapon...
...As for the great mass of "mental workers" with baccalaureate degrees, whom Polish sociologists always include in the "intelligentsia," it seems to be developing more along nationalist (though not, as before the War, chauvinistic) than along ideological lines...
...A very great majority replied: "My personal conscience...
...It is because of raison d'etat that Poland's antiCommunists voted for the lists presented by Gomulka in the January 1957 elections...
...The father is foreman at a factory...
...Studentowicz is equally blunt in explaining why a "Western alliance" would scarcely be advantageous for Poland, despite the people's sympathetic feelings toward the West: "If we had found ourselves in the Western sphere of influence after World War II, it would have been impossible for us—as we can now see in the light of the events and tendencies that developed subsequently—to satisfy our just demands with regard to Germany, Only the peoples of the Soviet Union, which bad also suffered the terrible effects of Nazi crimes, could give us such clear-cut and powerful support in this respect...
...Messianic patriotism, that spiritual manna which nourished several generations, has been replaced by technological patriotism...
...The creation of a "people's intelligentsia," conceived as the first step toward a classless society, is a theoretical possibility within the framework of a genuine workers' democracy...
...Their backgrounds were so similar that one can draw a composite portrait of them: Of working-class origin for the most part, brilliant students and darlings of the regime, the oldest worked enthusiastically for the Communist party in the election campaign of 1945...
...the opinion of political figures...
...Rather than "romantic" yearnings, it obviously reflects the modern mythology, at once sentimental and narcissistic, which is propagated by the movies, television and popular songs—in short, the influence which is already being exercised by Western-type "mass culture...
...33.7 Definitely not...
...your personal conscience...
...24.6 Inclined toward yes...
...Nowhere else in the world is there so wide a gulf between the official line followed in the press and opinions expressed in private...
...It is out of the question under a system where an established political apparatus wields usurped authority "on behalf of" the working class...
...The same group of students defined its position with regard to the Catholic Church as follows: Position % Devout believers, regularly practocing . . . 9 Believers, regularly practicing Believers, but not regularly 18 practicing...
...K. Studentowicz, one of the most representative members of the Catholic Znak group, recently wrote in Tygodnik, in an article entitled "Polish Raison d'etat": "A continuation of the cold war not only would be exceedingly prejudicial to our national interests but also would favor the revenge-seeking efforts of West Germany...
...and Mrs...
...Most of them replied: "Only under exceptional circumstances and for very limited periods of time...
...A philosophy of raison d'etat based on an alliance with Russia or even on the temporary acceptance of de facto Russian domination, moreover, is not without precedent in Polish history...
...The Polish intellectuals were able to play an important role in the "anti-totalitarian revolution" partly because of certain qualities peculiar to Polish Stalinism...
...It is because of raison d'étal that the anti-Stalinist revolt did not go beyond the limits so clearly defined by the fate of the Hungarian Revolution...
...the opinion of your parents and friends...
...The father's conversation shows traces of a Social Democratic past...
...This "geopolitical" view, based on classical concepts of foreign policy, is accompanied by the hope—shared by many Western observers—that the forces inherent in an industrial society will gradually diminish the differences between the two blocs: "Socialist and capitalist industrial organization are heading toward a pragmatic type of unity...
...In fact, it appears to have made them embrace a Social Democratic viewpoint which is bereft of illusions and anti-ideological...
...In the Soviet Union, even some intellectuals parrot Pravda editorials in private conversation...
...10.6 Luck in love...
...They refused to reduce Stalin's profile to Cleopatra's nose...
...the opinion of priests...
...They have watched their dream of a workers' democracy collapse and are unable to express in any way their conversion to social democracy...
...The evolution of the popular stereotype of what the average Pole is like can also be studied by comparing two enormously popular radio series depicting a "typical" family...
...44.7 No opinion...
...One Polish writer described the present state of affairs this way: "Under the prewar authoritarian regime, the Government occasionally persecuted us and frequently bought us: under Stalinism, we had a choice between terrible persecution and wellpaid sinecures...
...Before we attempt to analyze their respective characteristics, it should be pointed out that the Party's desire to create a "people's intelligentsia," anchored in the working class and the peasantry, has come to nought...
...public opinion...
...What is more, some Party cultural leaders, such as Professors Adam Schaff and Stefan Zolkiewski, allowed Polish philosophers and sociologists to continue their research quietly...
...The "Mr...
...Their daily preoccupations and their conversation reflected this: Up on the latest bestsellers, concerned with their social standing, they look part, at the very bottom of the ladder, in the collective existence of the intelligentsia...
...Socialism had no meaning if the nation's leader ceased to take an interest in the fate of the individual in society, and that was precisely what Stalinism had done when it had lent the name of socialism to that "process of primitive accumulation which Marx, in his historical scheme, assigned to capitalism" (Po Prosta, October-November 1956...
...11 That it be easy...
...Polish economists have not been able to apply their new ideas to an industrial apparatus which is mired in bureaucratic routine and forced to toe a political line...
...By drawing frontiers for the new Poland that extended further westward than the Poles themselves had ever dreamed possible, Stalin executed a master stroke at Potsdam which in a sense condemned the Poles—so long as the Oder-Neisse frontier was not recognized by the Western Powers and Germany—to upholding their alliance with Russia without regard to any considerations of political and social ideology...
...K. A. Jelenski, a Polish Social Democrat now living in Paris, has contributed to Encounter and Preuves...
...Hence, it was necessary to jettison many of the notions that had only recently been articles of Marxist faith: the law of the progressive impoverishment of the working class under capitalism, the Marxist theory of crises, the theory of the socialist revolution, and the various views held on the mechanics of power in countries ruled by Communist parties, on imperialism, on technological progress, etc...
...34.1 Would you like to see the world become Socialist...
...12 Heroism...
...The Polish revisionists were all originally minions of Stalinism...
...Under post-Stalinist Communism, the intellectual is tempted to retreat into the role played by intellectuals in the days of enlightened absolutism: If those in power are willing to grant him freedom of thought and research, he will provide them with useful analysis and information without divulging any of it to the masses...
...STEFAN KisIELEWSKI characterized the new, pragmatic visage of Polish patriotism in Tygodnik Powszechny as follows: "Ideals have gone underground...
...The disillusionment which Poland's young intellectuals experienced at that time seems to have made them skeptical about the possibility of carrying out a genuine evolutionary program...
...The revolt of the Polish writers preceded Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 "secret speech" to the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist party by several months...
...Only a small minority cited religion or "a social philosophy...
...Many of the intellectuals who had played an active part in setting up the Stalinist regime, however, staged their revolt in such a way that it would also serve them as an alibi...
...28 That it be socially useful...
...Significantly, when the elite of the young Leftist intelligentsia, during the great political debates of 1956-57, demanded changes which might have brought it closer to the working class, its concept of a democracy ruled by workers' councils and its egalitarian slogans were stifled, by the apparatus...
...They thought they were choosing the career of "professional revolutionary" and failed to see that their role had been degraded to that of bureaucratic apparatchiki...
...The classical "national" approach, a carry-over from the 19th century, holds that the Russian alliance is vital to Poland...
...There had been "evil," but it had been the result of "tragic necessity...
...The epousal of these views, of course, is very helpful to a regime which is governing a predominantly hostile people and which does not wish to reintroduce the worst features of totalitarian rule...
...And since 1945, too, it has been buttressed by a weighty fact of geography...
...More than four years have passed since the uprising of October 1956...
...Yes, definitely . .. 1.8 Inclined to be ...11.4 No opinion 17.2 Inclined not to be...
...Poland has given up playing Hamlet, waiting for miracles, succumbing to ideological enthusiasms...
...Recently approved by the Government, legal abortion has encountered fierce opposition on the part of the Church...
...In a sense, the attitude of young Poles toward the Church seems to be the reverse of their attitude toward Communism...
...Thus Studentowicz combines two approaches in his expression of a state of mind that is extremely widespread in Poland...
...Polish writers and artists continue to spurn this discredited brand of conformism, but their hearts are no longer in the bold experiments which they conceived when the future seemed to be theirs...
...Poland's 1954-58 "revisionist" debate, therefore, was the affair of only an active minority...
...The Polish intelligentsia has, in a sense, divided into two segments—those who retain the distinguishing features of "intellectuals" in the Western sense of the term and the great bulk of socalled "mental workers," who form a kind of middle class...
...The young writers of Po Prosili, the revisionist journal, denounced the attitude that man was simply "a factor in the production process" who served "the economic interests of the State...
...Thus, the Polish revisionists undertook a critique of Marxism by confronting it with historical experience...
...Indeed, the support of independent Catholics on this vital point is so useful to the regime (which is itself, after all, a "natural consequence" of the Soviet alliance) that it can well afford to grant Catholics and their publications a measure of freedom in return...
...Yet, since his October 1956 birth on the airwaves he has voiced approval of Gomulka, the Party and the Government for reasons which are a mixture of common sense and patriotism...
...The name is unmistakably of peasant origin...
...1.9 Other questions clarified the seeming paradox of adherents of socialism in a Communist country being at the same time opposed to Marxism...
...The idea of "coexistence" among various schools of philosophical thought has been severely shaken...
...Here, for example, is how the students of the University of Warsaw replied in 1958 to questions about their attitude toward Communism: Are you a Marxist...
...The Communist minority governs the country—a Communist party that has fewer illusions, is more pragmatic and has less sense of "guilt" (because it is less alienated from the people) than that of any other country in the Soviet bloc...
...For although only a handful appear to be "believing Communists," they seem in large measure to accept Communist Poland's social system...
...That is why our political alliance with the Soviet Union is irrevocable, quite apart from all problems, which are of secondary importance compared to those which involve our national existence and the territory which is vital to us...
...However, we are living at a particular time when the Party line coincides with the nation's raison d'etat on the most crucial point, i.e., the need to retain an area which is vital to the preservation of the nation's biological forces...
...in Poland, the Party leaders do not take the Trybuna Ludu line unless they are on a rostrum...
...Another relevant poll, dealing with legal abortion, was conducted by the weekly Polityka in 1960 among youngPoles between the ages of 15-24...
...The hopes of the revisionists have long since died...
...The elite of the Polish intelligentsia, on the other hand, had never been crushed, as in the Soviet Union, and had never lost all contact with Western thought...
Vol. 44 • June 1961 • No. 24
