Polish Communist Research Articles

Ideowe zmagania Stefana Kisielewskiego z polskim komunizmem

Stefan Kisielewski’s intellectual struggle with Polish communism: Stefan Kisielewski (1911–1991) a Polish novelist, composer, music critic, essayist, feature writer and a politician, was an exceptional personage in post‑World War II Poland. In his features, published in Tygodnik Powszechny since 1945, in a light, ironic and allusive way to prevent censorship, he described the Polish reality that his readers were acquainted with, in a way that revealed the real causes of the phenomena he observed. The truth was simple: the communist reality was the result of politico‑economic system that was imposed based on a Marxist theory of economy. Kisielewski’s criticism of communism was not just a matter of a keen observation and sensible conclusions; it was based on his studies of Marxism that he began before World War II. In turn, in Wilhelm Röpke’s Die Gesellschaftskrisis der Gegenwart (1942), he found an accurate characterisation of the socialist economy and an explanation for its non‑functioning. The second important reason for his criticism of communism was Kisielewski’s Catholicism, which operated as a counter‑balance to Marxism, combined with the idea of a liberal‑democratic regime. In his later years, Kisielewski criticised the social teachings of the Catholic Church, and suggested a new idea that they were based on “the theology of profit” (a prefiguration of the encyclical Centesimus Annus) as an ideological justification of the attitudes necessary for the functioning of the market economy in Poland. He even suggested the implementation of a dictatorship to avoid long parliamentary democratic procedures, and in this way to establish a quick and effective market economy on the ruins of socialism.

“Exquisite cadaver” according to Stanisław Lem and Andrzej Wajda

Abstract The article examines Andrzej Wajda’s Roly Poly (Przekładaniec, 1968), a 35-minute film made for Polish public television, that is an expanded version of Stanisław Lem’s short grotesque play Do You Exist Mister Johns? (Czy Pan istnieje Panie Johns?) published in 1955. Roly Poly tells a story of a car race driver, Ryszard Fox. A victim of several car crashes, he gets so many transplants from other victims of these collisions, with his brother being a first donor, that eventually he becomes a mix of different organisms, including female and animal parts. Wajda presents the whole story in brief scenes and episodes using an aesthetic mix of black humor, grotesque, absurdism, surrealism, and pop art imagery. The author argues that with its narrative focus on transplant experiments and aesthetic concoction of different styles, Roly Poly becomes a cinematic variant of the surrealist parlor-game of exquisite cadaver, where an often accidental collection of words or images is assembled into a new entity. Furthermore, the article claims that the film presents a dystopian variant of Bakhtinian grotesque body and as such it opposes the concept of ideal, uniform, and homogenized communist/national body. Eventually, the body of transplants displays a transgressive potential of trespassing different divisions and hierarchies and as such it indirectly subverts the main premises of nationalistic politics led by Polish communist party in the late 1960s.

Marek Hłasko – working-class hero

In his early twenties Marek Hłasko (1934–69), an ‘angry young man’ and a rare ‘authentic’ working-class voice, became the great literary hope of the Polish Communist Party. In the space of a few months, and at a crucial moment in post-war Polish history, he made his literary debut, published two books, received the Polish State Literary Prize and instantly became a popular youth-hero and celebrity rebel. But just as rapidly he became an exile, an outcast and a pariah. In the West he found ‘freedom’ as difficult to negotiate as life under communism, and while he continued to write, after 11 nomadic years he died of an overdose. His life and his writing are of one piece: his career trajectory illustrates how the Party could operate to promote writers it favoured, but to block and isolate those who opposed it.

The Road from Paradise: The Kresowianie on the Trail to Rediscover Poland, 1944–1946

Abstract This article examines postwar repatriations of Polish citizens from the Lviv1 region, a territory in southeastern Poland (presently in western Ukraine) incorporated into the Soviet Union during World War II. The war that historians neatly consign to the familiar time brackets of 1939–1945 did not end with Germany’s collapse. The unspeakable confrontation that decimated and uprooted millions of Europeans continued under the guise of postwar forced migrations, repatriations, and population transfers. Indeed, relocation and displacement provided fundamental building blocks in the Polish communist effort of reconstructing Poland. Building a Polish nation-state impelled the new regime to identify and claim Polish inhabitants of the so-called kresy, Poland’s former eastern provinces ceded to the Soviet Union. Migrations of Poles to the territories that Poland acquired from the defeated Nazi state, comprised critical moments in the emergence of new Polish communities in former German lands. These repatriates considered relocation as an opportunity to escape a cherished homeland now under the domination of a foreign and detested power. This article, thus, explores the wider cultural context in which Polish women and children assigned meaning to their traumatic experiences. The meanings that these eastern Poles (kresowianie) attached to the conditions at embarkation points and on dirt and pathogen-infested transports are crucial to understanding how the experience of repatriation reshaped postwar Polish identities. Indeed, this study addresses pivotal questions for the understanding of post-1945 Eastern Europe: what was the role of mass population movements in the reconstruction of war-torn societies? How did displaced people start new lives in adverse and unpredictable circumstances? Most importantly, how did the new communist authorities and migrants from the kresy renegotiate the meaning of resettlement and the postwar national community in general?

Marzenie o zmianie narodowego imaginarium. Uwagi o książce Andrzeja Ledera

In connection with Andrzej Leder’s book Prześniona rewolucja. Ćwiczenie z logiki historycznej [The Missed Revolution: Exercise in Historical Logic] (2014), the author of the article considers the question of examining difficult areas of the past, which he believes has still not been accomplished in Poland. The issue has been addressed in regard to the Holocaust only to become a major point in the public dispute between the conservative right and leftist and liberal camps. The author decidedly supports the need for historical and moral reflection in this regard, yet he also expresses reservations about excessive concentration on the economic consequences of the Holocaust and on the postwar agricultural reforms and nationalization (which largely form the subject of Leder’s reflections). He points out that all settling of accounts in regard to history are extraordinarily complicated. In his opinion, the equally — if not more — important sphere of “unconscious and denied guilt” in Polish society is its general and conformist engagement on the side of the Polish communist party (PZPR).

Better Not at All Than Not Well. A Review of a Biography of Władysław Gomułka

Wladyslaw Gomulka was the Polish communist leader who, most probably, played the most important role in the history of Poland. In the years 1943–48 he was the Secretary of the Polish Workers’ Party, and next, from 1956 to 1970, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party. According to the rule ‘the more power the more responsibility’, which had particular significance in non-democratic systems, Gomulka was responsible or co-responsible for everything good but also for everything bad that happened in Poland during his rule. At the same time he is this Polish communist leader, on whose life and activity over twenty books were published. One of the recent ones was published by Anita Prazmowska. Unfortunately, this is not a successful attempt.

Grotowski e a Política

Resumo: Discute-se a relação entre arte e política na trajetória de Grotowski e seu Teatro Laboratório, expondo como suas ações artísticas estavam imbuídas de resistência política que, em muitos momentos, determinaram as decisões e o destino do grupo. Após um breve panorama do contexto sócio-político-econômico polonês, apresentam-se determinadas ações de Grotowski que estavam conjugadas com estratégias de sobrevivência perante o regime comunista polonês. Diante dos fatos apresentados, é possível afirmar que Grotowski foi um verdadeiro mestre no jogo político, ganhando uma série de batalhas que garantiram não só a existência de seu grupo como também a realização de experiências artísticas.

Buildings from the Socialist Past as part of a City’s Brand Identity: The case of Warsaw

Abstract The aim of this paper is to investigate those buildings left over from Warsaw’s socialist past as a part of the city’s brand visual identity including their perception by foreign tourists and local citizens. Although Lisiak (2009) examined the destruction, removal and presence of these remnants from the socialist past in Central European cities, a comparative study of the perception of these architectural sites erected in Warsaw during socialist times has not been carried out specifically so far. To fill the gap, the authors concentrated research efforts on the following buildings: Palace of Culture and Science; the SMYK Store at Bracka 15/19; Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development at Wspólna 30; Office Building and Atrium at Wspólna 62; and the former headquarters of the Polish Communist Party at Nowy Świat 6/12. These buildings were built after the Second World War between the late 1940s and the first half of the 1950s. With the exception of the Palace of Culture and Science - which is one of the most notable symbols of Warsaw - these architectural sites are not on a priority list of the average tourist who does little or no planning for their trip. Nevertheless, these buildings are connected to the Polish People’s Republic era and might attract different groups interested in this historical period and architecture. Apart from being potential tourist attractions, these buildings are being re-evaluated and restored to become integrated into the urban environment and more ‘comfortable’ for the local inhabitants. This paper gives some insights into the recognition and attractiveness of these architectural sites from the socialist past by those from Russia and the USA who have visited Warsaw as well as by Poles who know this city well. It is recommended that these results be taken into consideration by tourist agencies who deal with tours in Warsaw as well as institutions responsible for the city’s image. The authors express the hope that this paper might be of interest for officials with public relations duties related to these architectural sites.

The Oder – a river that floods: the problem of environmental adaptation in literary texts

ABSTRACTThis article discusses inter and post-war works of fiction written by Polish and German-speaking authors with biographical connections to Oder River regions. The literary texts provide insights into the vulnerability to and resilience constructions of floods, which are related to such cultural factors as migrant histories and traditions, regional beliefs and religion, and the political background of changing frontiers in 1919 and 1945 that affected residents of this cross-border area.The capacity to cope with the flooding Oder, especially after the major flood in 1997, intertwines with the problematic Polish-German relationship, including Silesia. For Polish communities, whose environmental cultures have been distorted by wars, resettlement and communism, vulnerability and resilience perceptions lack representations of the tangible river. It is culturally bounded in the stigmatising image of the Oder as the border of division, revived after 1945 and exposed by the Polish communist party in the so-called ‘Polonisation’ of the ‘Recovered Territories’. Fiction detects the problem of overworking the difficult past in response to the Oder’s hazardous nature. Writers representing an emotional attachment to the river and an aquacritical approach express the need to learn about the river’s lively nature, both in cooperating and sharing space, which is called the environmental adaptation.

Polish discourses concerning the Spanish Civil War. Analysis of the Polish press 1936-2015

The Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939, as an ideologised and mythologised event, has been and is still used instrumentally within the Polish public discourse. The war was an important subject for the Polish press in the years 1936–1939. The Catholic, national-democratic, and conservative press supported General Franco’s rebellion. The governmental and pro-government press also supported the rebels. The Christian-democratic and peasants’ party press remained neutral. The social demo­cratic, communist, and radical press backed the Spanish Republic — as did liberal-conservative organs such as Wiadomości Literackie. After the Second World War, the Polish communist media created the positive legend of Polish participants in the Spanish Civil War in the International Brigades, label­ling Franco’s post-war regime fascist. In contemporary Poland, the same division within the Polish political scene as in 1936–1939 can be observed. Starting in 1990, the Spanish Civil War, as a subject of the Polish political discourse, has been the source of heated disputes, whose participants often present more radical views and narratives. The key issues that entered the canon of Polish political disputes after 1989 the International Brigades of volunteers, religious crimes, the support of fascists and communists for opposite sides of the conflict, are concentrated along the lines of the dispute arising from the debate within pre-war Poland: the clash of the traditional, Catholic world with the communist revolution.

Działania aparatu bezpieczeństwa wobec ludności niemieckiej i tzw. autochtonów polskich na Warmii i Mazurach w latach 1945-1956

The article describes the activities of the Communist political police against former German citizens who remained in their places of residence in the part of East Prussia incorporated into Poland. Polish communists until the end of the 1940s were conducting a policy that would eliminate German nationality from the inhabitants of Poland. From the end of the 1940s there was a concerted attempt to eliminate anyone with German nationality and those questioning the new Polish–German border that was created in 1945 among the remnants of the German citizenry. The Communist political police were also interested in people (and their views) who showed a critical attitude toward the Communist regime introduced into Poland

From Promising Agent to Suspicious Francophile

This paper examines how the Polish communist intelligence service attempted to recruit professor Stefan Węgrzyn, who was a prominent specialist on automatic control and computer science in post-war Poland. Eventually, Węgrzyn’s refusal to cooperate with the Polish spy agency, together with his profound relationship with French scientist and servomechanism expert Jean Charles Gille, made them both targets of surveillance orchestrated by the communist security apparatus.In the broader context of human-intelligence studies, this case study involves the problem of moral ambiguity. We experience informative examples of scientists, who often – not only during the Cold War – have had to choose between commitment to the rules of the academic world, along with its openness and transparency on the one hand, and patriotism including an ethos of secrecy for the sake of the homeland’s prosperity, on the other hand.

Relocation of people between Poland and the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic in the years 1944-1946 in the light of czechoslovack military sources

In the result of the shift of borders, occurring after World War II, the Republic of Poland lost its south-eastern provinces in favour of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (UkSSR). Nevertheless, a significant Ukrainian minority, estimated between 500 and 700 thousand, remained within the borders of Poland. In addition, a significant number of Poles remained on the Soviet side. On September 9th, 1944, Polish communist government and the government of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic concluded an agreement on the relocation of people.Officially,the relocation was supposed to be voluntary. In September 1945 the Polish army, against the provisions of the agreement of September 9th, 1944, started forced displacement of the Ukrainian population to UkSSR. The dislocation of the Ukrainian population to the USSR lasted till the late 1946’s. Throughout 1944-1946, 488,057people were dislocated from Poland to Ukraine. At the same time 787,674people moved from Ukraine to Poland. In order to avoid dislocation to the Soviet Ukraine, some Ukrainians moved to the Carpathian Mountains, and sought refuge in Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovak army and security services caught refugees and deported them back to Poland.
 Keywords: Poland, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the relocation of people, Czechoslovakia

Multiculturalism and multiethnicity in the cityscape: The case of Białystok religious landscape

Bialystok is the capital of a province in north-eastern Poland. In the past the city featured ethnic, cultural and religious diversity, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Protestants, and Jews coexisted here in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Jewish communities shaped the city’s religious landscape and local identity significantly since the second half of the 19th century and until World War II when they constituted half of the city’s population. This was the biggest minority group among Polish cities. The post-Jewish landscape became invisible and silent by now. It was the result of the Nazi policy of extermination, and the anti-Semitic policy of the communist Polish authorities, as well as the attitude of Polish society towards the Jewish minority until the late 1960s. From among almost 60 synagogues and prayer houses which operated before the war, only three have survived, but they have not been in use for religious service for a long time. Bialystok has also been inhabited by the so-called Polish Tatars. The Muslim community, which for centuries consisted mainly of Polish Tatars, is increasingly visible in the city, which is also the seat of Muslim Religious Union, the largest Muslim union in Poland. There is also the Bialystok Centre of Islam and a house of prayer. Today’s religious landscape of the city is mostly formed by both Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. As a result of the city’s demographic and spatial development, the number of churches has grown significantly as compared to the inter-war period. The strongest and the most visible qualitative changes were observed after World War II. Multiculturalism is still important asset of the city. This paper presents the transformation of the cultural and religious landscape of Bialystok in the context of the impact of the politics and ideology from the 19th century to the present. It also highlights the importance of multiculturalism in the city landscape for the promotion and development of tourism and city branding.

GEOPOLITICS AND GEOPOETICS IN STANISŁAW KOLBUSZEWSKI’S BALTIC ESSAYS

The paper discusses Stanislaw Kolbuszewski’s essays devoted to the capitals of the Baltic states (W stolicach państw bałtyckich, Poznań 1939; (In the Capitals of the Baltic States).) the author visited in the 1930s. Kolbuszewski’s aim was to familiarize the Polish reader with modern Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia as seen through the eyes of a (friendly) stranger. His book clearly transcends the conventional limits of its genre (travel writing, journalism, reportage). The three capitals function there as extended conceptual metaphors of the Baltic states, their history, architecture, urban layout, and local color being viewed by the Polish “tourist” as symbolic manifestations of their inhabitants’ national mentality. The paper focuses on the geopolitical and geopoetic ideas implicit in Kolbuszewski’s account, exploring the connections between “imagined” geographical space and the nation’s collective memory. Curiously enough, though a Polish nationalist at heart, Kolbuszewski does not make any territorial claims on what was once “Polish Livonia”. Instead, he enthusiastically endorses Baltic nationalisms, dismissing the German and Russian cultural contributions as hostile foreign intrusions. The tropes of ethnic “purity” and folk cultures viewed as pillars of national identity, recurrent in Kolbuszewski’s Baltic essays, bring to mind the anti-German propaganda employed by Polish National Democrats after WW1 and Polish communists after WW2 in their attempt to justify Poland’s annexation of German Silesia, Pomerania, and Masuria, symbolically redefined in the Polish political discourse as the so-called Regained Territories. The connection between Kolbuszewski’s Baltic essays and his affinities with the Regained Territories narrative, as developed by Polish Western Thought and the Piast historiography, is our focus in this article.

Między obroną wolności a drogą do rewolucji. Strajk nauczycielski 1937 r.

W marcu 1936 r. ukazał się poświęcony Związkowi Sowieckiemu numer wydawanego przez ZNP czasopisma dla młodzieży „Płomyk". Część ów­czesnej prasy określiła go jako element sowieckiej propagandy. W obronie swojego dobrego imienia wydawcy pisma wytoczyli jednej z gazet proces, który przegrali. Półtora roku później, we wrześniu 1937 r., rząd zawiesił Za­rząd Główny ZNP i wyznaczył kuratora. Jednym z zarzutów, oprócz tych dotyczących nieprawidłowości finansowych, były prokomunistyczne sym­patie polityczne.W odpowiedzi na działania rządu część pracowników Zarządu Głów­nego zorganizowała strajk okupacyjny, wkrótce poparty przez samych na­uczycieli i wiele organizacji związkowych i politycznych. Strajk okazał się zwycięski, najpierw rząd odwołał dotychczasowego i powołał nowego ku­ratora, a następnie zjazd ZNP wyłonił nowy Zarząd Główny, złożony z klu­czowych działaczy sprzed strajku.Dla badaczy bliskich ZNP działania rządu stanowiły zamach na wol­ności związkowe, a strajk miał charakter jedynie obrony wolności i swobód obywatelskich. Można jednak odnaleźć ślady bezpośrednich kontaktów KPP z inicjatorkami strajku i dążeń — przynajmniej niektórych działaczy, jak Wanda Wasilewska i Janina Broniewska — do eskalacji konfliktu i wy­wołania strajku generalnego.

Polskie kino lat 1949–1955 wobec realizmu socjalistycznego. Ideologiczna mobilizacja jako kontekst dla myśli pedagogicznej

The article concerns a specific period in the history of Polish cinematography, called socialist realism (1949–1954). The new style of filmmaking (according to the ideology of the Polish Communist Party), was imposed by the filmmakers, but was not accepted by the cinema audience.

Promoting the ‘China Way’ of communism in Poland and beyond during the Sino-Soviet Split: the case of Kazimierz Mijal

Kazimierz Mijal – a promoter of the “China Way” in Polish communism during the Sino-Soviet split – was not only a nuisance to Warsaw’s leadership domestically but had a certain effect on international politics within the communist world. He was used as a political tool by both Albania and China, and complicated Poland’s delicate diplomacy with both Beijing and Moscow. His long biographical and personal journey – forced but also intentional, grounded in belief and shaped by geopolitics – embodies contradictions and paradoxes of the international communist movement which often spread beyond the reach and control of the Kremlin during the cold war.

Retoryka ciągłości: o dziedzictwie prawnym II Rzeczypospolitej i rządów komunistycznych

THE RHETORIC OF CONTINUITY: ON THE JURIDICAL LEGACY OF THE SECOND POLISH REPUBLIC AND COMMUNIST GOVERNMENTSThe aim of the article is to establish whether the continuity between the Second and Third Polish Republics officially declared by the Polish elites is based on facts. The authors analyse the qu­estion with regard to three areas: symbolic events handing over of the presidential insignia in 1990 and the 1998 resolution of the Senate of the Republic of Poland on legal continuity, judgements of ordinary courts and the Constitutional Court as well as legal scholarship. In their conclusion they point out that the rhetoric of continuity between the Second and the Third Polish Republics on the legal level hides real continuity between the communist regime and the normative system in force in Poland since 1989.

Rejonowy Ośrodek Pracy Partyjnej w Radzyniu Podlaskim (1982-1989) – element struktury organizacyjnej PZPR, aktotwórca, zespół archiwalny

Local Party Labor Centers were created in January 1982, in connection with reorganization of assignments of the Polish United Workers’ Party in the new socio-political situation after the declaration of martial law in Poland. The article present this element of the complex bureaucratic structure, holding dictatorial authority in the party, by describing its political history and documentary legacy from the archival perspective. The laboratory example is the Local Party Labor Center in Radzyn Podlaski. The author set himself a task to describe what was the role of the Center in the Polish communist party – a formation so characteristic for the last decade of existence of the Party. The LPLCs were not elective statutory bodies of the PUWP, but they were a bureaucratic structure, that served an advisory and coordination function towards basic levels of the communist party. The LPLC in Radzyn Podlaski was one of four such formations created in the Bielsk Podlaski Voivodeship, and its area of action were counties from the period before the administrative reform in 1975. The scope of the Center were district committees of the PUWP situated in Czemierniki, Drelow, Kąkolewnica, Komarowka Podlaska, Miedzyrzec Podlaski, Ulan, Wohyn; the Town Committee in Miedzyrzec Podlaski and the Town-Distric Committee in Radzyn Podlaski. Archival materials of the LPLC in Radzyn Podlaski were transmitted on September 2, 1992 with documentation created by the County, the District, the Town and the Town-Disctrict Committee from 1950 to 1989. The materials were scattered. In 2007–2008 fonds of this documentation were recognized and in 2011 the materials of the LPLC were arranged and described in the State Archive in Lublin, Branch in Radzyn Podlaski.