The Paradox of Poland
THOMSON, GEORGE
The Paradox of Poland by GEORGE THOMSON THE YOUNG American businessman in the plush bar of the Warsaw hotel looked puzzled. "I don't understand this country," he said. "On the train I found a...
...There was a repeated insistence that Poland is now more liberal than Yugoslavia, where Titoist heresies are enviously resented by the Polish Marxists...
...But all he wanted to talk about was how much the police are paid in America and how badly they are treated in Poland...
...But for some time now the trend has been reversed...
...Why, from the top of the Palace of Culture, of course...
...My guess is that they would stick to a liberalized socialistic economy...
...The "time of troubles"—as October, 1956, is euphemistically called—was sparked off by poetic manifestoes of freedom forcing themselves through the iron censorship on to the printed page...
...They have decided you can hate on only one front at a time, and they concentrate on the Germans...
...Western diplomats agree that there are currently no political prisoners in jail for their'opinions...
...But they are not in the newspaper offices either...
...That is why they are now pressing again their Rapacki plan for a nuclear-free, ultimatelydisarmed zone across Central Europe...
...Afterwards there was a movement towards a freer press...
...Naked Soviet power has been carefully withdrawn since 1956 but has left behind a visible reminder of its overshadowing presence in its legacy of architectural Socialist realism...
...Officially it is only the West Germans they fear...
...The Poles do not lack heroism, but most of them have accepted the foolhardiness of trying to fight geography...
...The details of life," he remarked in October, 1956, when the Soviet tanks were gathering around Warsaw, "are richer than Socialist theory...
...He disbanded four out of five of ^ the collective farms and increased investment in the land...
...In the 1957 elections the Cardinal voted Communist...
...Despite vast propaganda sums spent on Communist youth movements, the university students remain overwhelmingly withdrawn from politics...
...He is a passionate Polish patriot, but he is also a convinced Communist...
...They regard President Kennedy's arrival in the White House as opening a period of renewed hope for negotiating an ending of the cold war...
...And on ramshackle billboards below the Red Star on the top of the palace, fly the tattered gay posters of the postwar Polish cinema—a sign that the creative spirit of the Poles remains unbroken...
...He has no illusions about Soviet Communism, of which he has had bitter first hand experience, but he has doctrinaire illusions about the West which he has never visited...
...Of course, Poland is not as free as Yugoslavia in terms of criticizing the Soviet Union...
...Gomulka has had success with the peasants, but he has failed with the youth...
...But freedom of expression has been set sharp limits by Gomulka...
...Where do you get the finest view of Warsaw...
...This incident illustrates the paradox of Poland since Wladyslaw Gomulka came back to power by defying the Soviet tanks in the revolutionary crisis of October, 1956...
...in the April elections this year he retreated from this degree of support, but did not go to the length of telling the faithful not to vote...
...Poles like grumbling and have a flair for bitter jokes about the restrictive Communist regime, but it would be a mistake to assume that given the chance they would revert to a Western-type private enterprise system...
...While I was in Warsaw, Premier Gomulka, as part of his election campaign, addressed the annual conference of the supposedly "rival" Democratic Party...
...But foreign news of an inconvenient nature is carefully censored out altogether...
...And on this, for the Poles, everything else depends...
...With loving care they have rebuilt their medieval town in the heart of Warsaw from heaps of rubble into an exact replica of its former glory...
...The secret police still operates, but has had its teeth drawn...
...ask the irrepressible Poles...
...Where his own people are concerned his Communism is colored by common sense...
...Gomulka's real opposition comes from the Catholic Church...
...Certainly the Polish Djilases are not in jail...
...But the Poles have a sense of good taste that is not to be stifled...
...Above all, the Poles passionately want peace...
...There is a ferment of free speech alongside a censored press and a political system still under the tight control of the Communist Party...
...He is a lonely, withdrawn man who looks like a priest and has the same sense of dedication...
...There are nominally three political parties in Poland but they are all Communist fronts...
...But the Polish Communists kept telling me proudly that they were the freest country in the Communist world, and they are probably right...
...This is a false assumption that is common in both Russia and the West, and is one of the sources of cold war tensions...
...There is no overt criticism of Russia...
...Above it towers the extremely ugly Palace of Culture, a gift from the Soviet Union...
...That's the only place from which you can't see the Palace of Culture...
...But then there is nof much public criticism of Russia in democratic Finland either...
...Marzalkowska, once one of the great avenues of Europe, is now a dreary Stalinist stone desert...
...The outright fabrication of news from the West which was a feature of the Stalin regime has not been resumed...
...Since the vast majority of Poles are not Communists and speaking their mind is the only safety valve allowed by the regime, there is probably more open grumbling against the government to be heard by a visitor to Poland than by a visitor to the United States...
...Both Gomulka and Cardinal Wyszynski were in Stalinist jails and since 1956 there has been a unique though uneasy truce between them...
...GEORGE THOMSON is a Laborite Member of Parliament who has written widely on public affairs for American and British publications...
...It is their tragic destiny to be sandwiched between two nations—Russia and Germany—which history has given them ample reason to fear...
...Today in the countryside new fences are going up and the peasants are seen coming back from market loaded up with scarce consumer goods...
...But I attended a conference at which East German delegates were present, and despite effusive protestations that Communist Germans were different from other Germans, it was clear that there was little love lost...
...On the train I found a policeman beside me who talked English...
...The Soviet Union was compelled in 1956 to retreat before his patriotism, but only because they were assured he would keep all political power in Polish Communist hands...
...I felt sure he must belong to the political police sent along to keep an eye on me...
...The rebuilt Parliament with its slender white pillars is as elegant as the Palace of Culture is crude...
Vol. 25 • October 1961 • No. 10
