Poland's Socialist Surrealism
HUSARSKA, ANNA
COLOR ME ORANGE Socialist Surrealism in Poland BY ANNA HUSARSKA Almost a century ago, Alfred Jarry planted the seed for the Theater of the Absurd with Ubu Roi, a play that "takes place...
...In Warsaw that same day, a flier showing Lenin's bald head appropriately attired announced the "Revolution of the Dwarfs...
...In Communist countries March 8 is International Women's Day...
...The witnesses—his girl friend and his friends, all dressed in orange, she pulling a plastic toy lion on wheels—gave such absurd testimony that the court had to recess several times...
...After he was held for three weeks, the "satirical prisoner"— as the Major referred to himself—was granted an appeal...
...The regular police and the secret police soon began doing their own act, and detained two dozen of the spoofers...
...That afternoon on Swidnicka Street young people wearing hats, sunglasses and trench coats with KGB or CIA badges under their lapels, and carrying trumpets or funnels as "listening devices," asked passers-by for ID papers...
...Their name evokes the Buddhist holy color and Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork film...
...The established opposition had already selected him for its highest honor: Waldemar Fydrych was among the recipients of the 1987 Solidarity Cultural Award...
...Sanitary pads, Yes...
...Fydrych and his friends declared March 1 "Day of the Plainclothes Policeman...
...Another slogan was "We Demand Full Rehabilitation of Comrade Leon Trotsky...
...Finally, Fydrych was acquitted...
...Reform Today, Discipline and Welfare Tomorrow...
...On June 1 in Wroclaw 2,000 hand-sewn dwarfs' hats were distributed by Orange Alternative members urging, "Dwarfs of the World Unite...
...The Theater of the Absurd is alive and well—and it is taking place in Poland...
...Thus on Policeman's Day a 17-foot-long flower was carried in the town square with the inscription "The Youth of Wroclaw on Policeman's Day...
...It all took shape last summer...
...Quite logically, this led a West German TV crew to report a Trotskyist demonstration...
...Both events went undisturbed...
...Our principle," the Major explained in an interview with the underground bulletin Szkola, "is to break certain norms...
...Fear is a certain norm, torpor is a certain norm...
...Red Borscht...
...The police were not amused...
...Known as the New Culture Movement in an earlier, more elitist phase, the group has no stated political convictions...
...A sign painted in white on black fabric mourned, "Toilet Paper R.I.P...
...Anna Husarska, a frequent contributor to The New Leader, is a Polishborn free-lance translator and journalist...
...In the gloomy landscape of postSolidarity Poland—where economic reform is loudly proclaimed while living conditions sharply decline...
...In March Fydrych received a two-month jail sentence for leading a street farce that spotlighted a burning issue of Polish feminists with the slogan, "Pershings, No...
...read: "Socialism, with its extravagant distribution of goods, as well as an eccentric social attitude, has put toilet paper in the forefront of people's dreams...
...Perhaps this new attitude reflects the regime's embarrassment and frustration the last time it attempted to legally counter the Orange Alternative...
...Of late, however, the Polish regime seems to be taking a different tack...
...A strange circular that surfaced in the southern city of Wroclaw declared in part: "A dwarf is a little-known creature...
...On Polish People's Army Day, mock maneuvers codenamed "Melon in Mayonnaise" were conducted under the war cry, "Warsaw Pact—Avant-Garde of Peace...
...The manifesto for the next happening, entitled "Who's Afraid of the Toilet Paper...
...It includes Solidarity supporters, activists from Freedom and Peace (an organization of conscientious objectors and ecologists), and even a Communist Party member...
...Banners carried a variety of messages: "We Support Boris Yeltsin.' "We Demand an Eight-Hour Workday for the Secret Police...
...Let us bring our own toilet paper...
...Let justice begin with toilet paper...
...Socialism appreciates the idea of dwarfs, and not only because of the redness of their hats...
...Another assured everyone, "We Can Also Wipe the Government's...
...In Poland there is a large dose of surrealism in such a reference," commented a Solidarity leader from Wroclaw, Józef Pinior, who attends most of the Alternative's street performances...
...These can be behavioral norms, or norms of form in art...
...Orange Alternative's aim is to ridicule the Communist authorities' penchant for pompous celebrations of this or that date, and to expose the emptinessoftheirslogansandthestupidityof their administrative rules...
...take it out slowly, and distribute it to people piece by piece...
...The Polish independent (read, clandestine) media always announce the big Orange Alternative happenings, and devote considerable space to reporting this new form of opposition...
...In the People's Republic of Poland dwarfs will probably be seen next June 1 [International Children's Day], on Swidnicka Street at 3 p.m.....The dwarfs of the fairy tales might well turn out to be the patrons of the Second Stage of Economic Reform...
...The official press at first virulently attacked the "public order disruptions," but recently the Communist Party weekly Polityka ran an interview with the Major that acknowledged his group's impact...
...In order to satisfy the imperative of progressive thinking, let us come to Swidnicka Street on October 1, at 4 p.m...
...15 participants were taken into custody...
...For the rite of spring this year Orange Alternative-affiliated groups in Gdansk and Cracow revived the traditional drowning of winter puppets in the Vistula River...
...COLOR ME ORANGE Socialist Surrealism in Poland BY ANNA HUSARSKA Almost a century ago, Alfred Jarry planted the seed for the Theater of the Absurd with Ubu Roi, a play that "takes place in Poland, that is to say, Nowhere...
...The government's poster for last November's two-part referendum on economic reform, for instance, urged: "Vote Yes Twice...
...That most ritual fete anywhere east of Berlin, the Anniversary of October Revolution, was sacrilegiously celebrated last year on the "eve" because the anniversary itself fell on a Saturday when the audience would be smaller...
...Eightyard-long cardboard models of the battleships Aurora and Potemkin were produced and a battle was staged with the participation of " Budenny Army" (immortalized in Isaak Babel's stories) riding wooden hobby horses and wearing red cavalry hats...
...The Major himself was active in the Students' Solidarity Committee before the August 1980 workers' revolt...
...He staged his initial happening—Foreign Legion maneuvers on the dunes—with fellow inmates at a psychotherapeutic camp made up largely of people determined to avoid military service...
...Orange Alternative finds particular delight in making fun of the police and the Army, the most staid institutions in any Communist country...
...Orange Alternative responded: "Wroclaw, the Town of 100 (200) Per Cent Turnout...
...Let us share justly...
...The most popular happening thus far was a Mardi Gras parade held in Wroclaw this past February 16, which attracted 5,000 people...
...The circular was, in fact, an announcement of the first large-scale happening of the Orange Alternati ve, a loose group of individuals led by 35-year-old art historian Waldemar Fydrych (aka "the Major...
...When no absurd commemoration is at hand, "ceremonious dates" are invented...
...Today, with that country's situation (politically speaking) only a trifle more precise, some Poles have taken to turning the Theater of the Absurd into a weapon against their ubuesque governors and the stiltedness of officially prescribed life...
...The enterprise was launched in an innocent vein: On June 1,1987, dozens of dwarfs wearing red hats danced in the town square of Wroclaw, distributed candy to children and sang nursery rhymes...
...The following month 30 young people in Poznan attempted a "Mathias Rust Kommando" parade (named in honor of the young pilot from Germany who turned the Red Square into an international airstrip...
...It was met with truncheons and tear gas...
...Police intervened and many people were taken into custody for "disturbing public order" and "littering" (some candy fell on the ground...
...Neither the Encyclopaedia Britannica nor the abridged History of the AllRussian Communist Party (Bolshevik) nor any other great works of world knowledge speak of dwarfs beyond describing them as tiny people living in the woods...
...The police, to judge from their brutal reaction, did not think it funny that the puppets had the features of Wojciech Jaruzelski and Mikhail S. Gorbachev...
...Many of the Polish authorities' political actions provide obvious inspiration for anyone with a sense of humor...
...Among those who have had close contact with dwarfs are the Grimm brothers and Snow White...
...they arrested 150 people...
...where stiff, solemn meetings have replaced spontaneous gatherings—street happenings seem the very essence of reason...
...After six hours of deliberations, the misdemeanor court decided that his act (distributing sanitary pads in the town square) "cannot be considered a crime in the light of the Polish law...
...By acting out the absurdities of "Socialist surrealism," the group also brings some fun into life behind the gray curtain...
Vol. 71 • August 1988 • No. 14
