From Class Struggle to Conservative Revolution: Andrzej Wajda Censors Tadeusz Junak’s The Palace

Abstract

“It is an unacceptable film,” Andrzej Wajda said during the approval screening of Tadeusz Junak’s Pałac (The Palace, 1980). Wajda wanted to block the release of the film at all costs. This article asserts that Junak’s vision of history based on class struggle (Marxism) ran counter to the concurrent conservative revolution of which Wajda unexpectedly became the chief cinematic architect. His censorial attack on Junak’s film is evidence of how, in the Solidarity period, at a time when national unity was being built under the banner of Catholic values, artists linked to the democratic opposition suppressed all emancipatory impulses and potential. In The Palace, Junak creates a genealogy of peasant liberation. He does not stop at showing the misery of the serf but also projects various forms of peasant rebellion: mimicry and violence. First, the main character performs someone else’s social class, plays the role of a lord, but cannot erase his own—peasant—identity. Second, the violence that the peasants use against the lords is related to the power of opposition, which is the leaven of politicality. This local case illustrates a wider, global trend—the impending catastrophe of the entire left-wing culture. The counter-revolutionary forces unleashed in the late 1970s anticipated the end of the great socialist utopias that dominated the 20th century.