Dziwne przypadki (?) Dziadów Dejmka
The strange cases (?) of “Dziady” by Kazimierz Dejmek

Summary/Abstract: In my article I analyze the mechanism which led to the staging of “Dziady” by Kazimierz Dejmek on the stage of the National Theater in November 1967 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. I draw particular attention to certain curiosities, starting with the choice of the work by Mickiewicz, through the puzzling behavior of the Ministry of Culture and Art, finishing with the passivity of the censors, particularly visible in the light of the contemporary practices of that institution.The above mentioned peculiarities have led me to a thesis that the anniversaryperformance was a result of an intrigue or provocation prepared by the Minister of Culture and Art, Lucjan Motyka, the General Director of the Ministry of Culture and Art, Stanisław Witold Balicki and the President of the General Office for the Control of the Press, Publications and Performances, Józef Siemek. I also draw attention to the similarity between the meaning of the performance, which accentuated such elements as: progressiveness, patriotism, plebeianism and anti-Russian ideology and the beliefs of the Moczar group, which may, in my opinion, imply that the “guerrilla fighters” wanted to use it as a certaintype of manifest determining their attitude towards culture and revealing elements close to them. Furthermore, it may have been intended to play a role in consolidating the environment and at the same time attracting a bigger group of intelligentsia, which was more and more disheartened with Gomułka. The actions of the “commandos” taken in defense of “Dziady”, may have caused among the supporters of the minister of internal affairs a feeling of appropriating a performance which was close to them, which may have affected the extent of brutality used by structures subordinate to the minister when suppressing the students’ protests in March 1968.

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