Keywords: culture; policy; authorities; Polish People’s Republic; 1945–1989; writers
The policy of the communist authorities towards writers and artists in the 1945 to 1989 period can be divided into several stages. The first lasted from the end of 1944 to November 1947. The second stage lasted from November 1947 until the end of 1949, when socialist realism was forcibly introduced into all areas of cultural life. The third stage ended at the beginning of 1955, when one could observe a weakening of the authorities (accused of violations of the socialist rule of law). The whole year 1955 and the turn of 1956/1957 is referred to as the “thaw” period. During Władysław Gomułka’s era (October 1956 – December 1970), the attitude adopted by the authorities towards artists remained mostly unchanged. It manifested itself as an ideological offensive and repression of any emerging signs of resistance in that community. When Edward Gierek was in power as the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party (1970–1980), the policy towards writers and artists evolved in two stages. The first (1971–1976) was characterized by liberalism and pragmatism, as part of a regime’s legitimization strategy. During the second stage, lasting from February 1976 to August 1980, preventive and repressive elements began to prevail in the position taken towards artists, who increasingly voiced opposition towards the authorities. Opposition was to be quashed by more stringent censorship, numerous searches, interrogationof artists and harassment. In 1980 and 1981, the authorities concentrated on ensuring that the managing bodies of the artist/writer associations had the right political credentials, although with no effect. They supported artists with communist party affiliations and unsuccessfully tried to attract the neutral centre and to exploit it. During the martial law period, the authorities adopted a repressive policy towards artists, but they failed to put an end to their boycott of public institutions. The attempt to use artists to legitimize the activities of the authorities in the perestroika period was only partially successful. Finally, the cultural policy of the authorities was put aside altogether after the political changes of 1989.
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Keywords: GDR; Polish United Worker’s Party; Political Bureau; Central Committee; Wojciech Jaruzelski; Stanislaw Kania; Erich Honecker; „Solidarity”
The August Agreement of 1980 and the creation of free trade unions in Poland caused anxiety among leaders of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). The development in the neighbouring People’s Republic of Poland had significant impact on the geopolitical environment of the communist German Democratic Republic. The leader of the SED and the GDR head of state, Erich Honecker, strongly supported the idea of a Warsaw Pact invasion of Poland. However, other East European communist rulers were not willing to go that far, at least in the short term. Under these circumstances, East German authorities tried to influence the leaders of the Polish United Worker’s Party (PZPR), Poland’s ruling communist party, and urged them to impose countrywide martial law. They pinned their hopes on general Wojciech Jaruzelski, who was designated prime minister in February 1981. However, Honecker soon became disappointed and came to the conclusion that new leadership in Poland was necessary. At that time, SED apparatchiks and East German diplomats held many talks with their PZPR colleagues, including local leaders, members of the Central Committee and even the Political Bureau. Following on from this, those among the Polish communists unhappy with the hesitant policy of their leader Stanisław Kania were encouraged to seek for a new leadership. Honecker hoped that, at its eleventh plenary session in June 1981, the PZPR Central Committee would overthrow Kania and bring about political change in Poland. This calculation failed and in July, Kania was even re-elected party leader at the ninth PZPR congress. No change in the politics of Poland seemed possible without Jaruzelski, the head of the army and still a popular figure. In the early Autumn of 1981, GDR authorities received hints that Jaruzelski no longer supported Kania and had become more willing to impose martial law. Kania’s opponents among the Central Committee, strongly supported by the SED and the Soviets, finally managed to oust him from power in October 1981. The Committee appointed Jaruzelski its new First Secretary. Less than two months later, martial law was imposed in Poland. From Honecker’s perspective, his minimum goal was reached.
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Keywords: escapes; illegal emigration; football players; football; athletes; People’s Republic of Poland; secret police; passport policies
Illegal emigrations of football players from the People’s Republic of Poland were quitefrequent, but in most cases they were not treated as high profile in the mass media. The only exception was the 1988 escape of Andrzej Rudy, a player in Poland’s national football team. The examples of emigrating athletes discussed in the text have been divided into two categories: defectors per se (those who left their teams’ foreign training camps), and peoplewho refused to go back to Poland after legally obtaining a consent to travel to a Western country (or Yugoslavia). The first case of an athlete illegally leaving Poland took place inthe 1950s, while the last one in the last months of the break-through year of 1989. It wasusually footballers playing for Silesian clubs who opted for illegal emigration to West Germany. Family reasons were often quoted as a basis for making such a decision – numerousdefectors were able to prove their German roots. The 1980s saw a particular intensificationof escapes, which was related both to deteriorating economic conditions in Poland and more liberal passport policies at the end of the decade. It is worth noting that the communistauthorities changed their attitude towards the phenomenon. While in the 1960s the secret police would keep the defectors and their families under surveillance, 20 years later the government would simply register anyone “refusing to return to Poland”.
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Keywords: Solidarity refugees; Chicago Polonia; social movements; social networks
Social movements emerge from established networks, and movement participationstrengthens existing solidarities and alters identities. How do these solidarities survive the disruption of emigration? This paper focuses on the activities of Solidarity refugees in Chicago during the 1980s, and, in particular, the organizations Freedom for Poland andSolidarnosc Wspolnota Rozproszonych /Brotherhood of Dispersed Solidarity Members,as well as organizations formed around the 1989 elections and the economic and politicalchanges in its aftermath. Data were collected through participant observation, interviews,organizational archives, and surveys. This case study shows that there were strong concrete and ideological ties between Solidarity refugees in Chicago and the opposition in Poland. In sum, while emigration dispersed refugees, commitment (to the movement), pre-existing networks (to Poland), and renewed networks (in the U.S.) helped Solidarity refugees reconstitute on foreign soil and continue “to fight the good fight” from abroad.
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Keywords: Cognition; image of the past; imagination; memory; experience; world view; culture
The critic of the fundamental foundations of the traditional historiography was/is particularly influential from the point of view proposed by widely understood constructivism. It questioned that reality is something external and independent from cognition, and that the truth or falsity of its results depends on the nature of the world. In light of constructivism knowledge cannot be treated as an effect of the relation between the subject and object, its shape is not defined by the external world and, finally, that the scientific apparatus does not provide an adequate image (description) of the world (independent from culture). In this way from the constructivists’ conceptions of history we cannot say that “the past is real”, at least, “not the past as it is used by historians”. The images of the past are therefore a construction and are intelligible, not because of their own nature, but because of the a priori criteria which establish their intelligibility and which contribute to the knowledge of historians or the society in which they operate. Historians can be perceived as a part of the whole system, and their social credibility depends not only on (historical) sources, but on the fact that their discourse has its roots in cultural, social and linguistic prejudices that shape our perception of reality (or the past).Within the framework of these changes the category of (historical) imaginationand its part in possible images of the past formulated by historians arouses special interest. From this point of view we can see (historical) imagination as a tool participating in constructing images of the past. Reflection on historical imagination in this way can lead to showing in new light not only the cultural prejudices of historical cognition (historical studies), but above all the reason for the necessity to reformulate the investigative programs and the forms of representing the past. The problems and questions raised in the article derive perhaps only from necessity a fundamental change of our relation to imagination. So in everyday life, the media, art, literature, and also scientific discourse, imagination – often even in defiance of arguments that some time appear in social and scientific circulation –is identified as “fiction and fantasy”, and leads to it being treated as an alternative for “truth and reality”. Meanwhile, it seems that likewise we do not think about a given culture that is true or false, so we should not also bring discussion on imagination into problems of its falsity or fictionality irrespective of whether we treat imagination as a “child of culture” or inversely, culture as a “child of imagination”. However, we wish to emphasize at this point, that it is not our intention to suggest that (historical) imagination is the (essential or crucial) tool of cognition of past reality, but rather we ask if imagination has such an essential part inhistorical knowledge, can we perceive it in the investigative practice of historians. Therefore, we do not try to force the thesis that the stories composed by historians are the work of imagination, but rather that representation (re-presence) of the past is possible with, or even thanks to, (historical) imagination.
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Keywords: collective memory; democratization; privatization of memory
The text describes crucial changes in the ways the Polish people remember their past after 1989 in reference to cultural processes concerning gradual transformation from the authoritarian to democratic ways of remembering the past. Various ways of understanding the concept of democratic remembrance were discussed in the article. A large part of the article was also devoted to the characteristics of the above mentioned changes in remembering the past and to the issue of their determinants. The basic question the author of the text was concerned with was: to what extent the changes occurring after 1989 resulted from political factors and to what extent they were the result of more profound changes in contemporary culture?
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Keywords: historical museum; representation; spectacle; education; entertainment
The article is an attempt to respond to the issue of what are the reasons for the changes in the institution of a historical museum in the context of modern cultural transformation. It reveals new perspectives, which are being opened for exhibition creators, and challenges resulting from new interpretation strategies. Museums (and histories created in them) are one of the ways, in which a human being refers to issues and ideas which concern himself and his past. Exhibitions not so much explain the past realities as they rather describe them in the context of their contemporary social and political conditions. The present interest in historical museums (both in Poland and in the world), reflected in numerous publications,conferences and research projects is an effect of museums trying to adapt to new situations and cope with conditions unlike those which accompanied their creation as public institutions. As institutional symbolic tokens of cities and regions, museums have new tasks to improve their image and to attract tourists; they become symbols of cultural revitalisation and representatives of the so called “soft” economy and new urbanisation. It has an impact on exhibition strategies and profiles in which new tendencies towards entertainment, performance and show are highlighted. It seems that we are now witnesses to the emergence of a new generation of historical museums (dubbed “new museums”) which aregoverned by different rules of representing the past and communicating with the audience than before.
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Keywords: comics; history; art; popular culture; graphic narrative; story; historical novel
Writing about historical cartoons, one has to keep in mind two perspectives –that of art and that of history. Each of these perspectives specifies different tasks for a cartoon and these tasks are often contradictory to each other. While – for a historian – an ideal in a historical cartoon is compliance of the content and images with source documents, for a cartoon creator, the principal objective is an efficient fulfilment of the storyline. In the article, the author raises the question of a possibility to create a historical cartoon which would satisfy both art critics and historians. This question is in fact a question about the truth of historical facts in art. Searching the answer to the above question, the author points to postmodernistand avant-garde dictate, dominating today in theoretical digressions concerning the role of the art and of the history. The author recognises that the contemporary positions of theoreticians do not make it easier for him to find answers to the questions raised above.Therefore, the author turns in his considerations to classical solutions, paying attention to the attractiveness of the Aristotle principle of mimesis. He also notices that similar problems to these the cartoon creators are facing now while trying to present history in a form of a storyline, were the challenges classical authors of historical novels had to cope with earlier. Since the cartoon can be considered a part of the literary horizon, the author gives some thoughts to a dilemma whether novelists’ experiences will remain useful for cartoon creators. It seems that it is not entirely so, since contemporary fiction (and hence also cartoon) is influenced by phenomena related to a fragmentation of the plot. Therefore, the author is rather inclined to adopt the position that historical cartoon, if it wants to upkeep an element of a storytelling, will – in the future – be forced to use the experiences of filmmakers since the plot still plays an important role in movies. Closing paragraphs of the article are devoted to a poetic value of a historical cartoon and the attempt at defining it. The author tries to prove that chronological descriptions of events also characteristic of a historical source material, in case of a historical cartoon turns into a logical course of events filled with the protagonists’ emotions while, from the point of view of plastic art, it turns intoa sequence of drawn images subordinated to the rights of aesthetics of a frame and a chart. The author underlines that despite determination to accurately recreate facts in a storyline, as well as, to recreate the visual impression of the relevant epoch, the creators should also try to accomplish their own goals identical to the objectives a work of art is supposed to accomplish.
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Keywords: historical reconstruction; historical reenactment; a living history lesson; Staging; show; the twentieth century; the Warsaw uprising; Soldiers Outcasts; military; battle reconstruction; Historical Re
The author undertakes the attempt to analyse an increasingly popular in Polandphenomenon of historical reconstruction. She refers to such terminological issues as historical reconstruction, historical recreation, staging, mistakenly regarded as homogenous. In order to distinguish between the above mentioned definitions, she additionally specifies the reconstruction levels as represented in a particularenvironment. The article contains a review of main problems connected with reconstructionand its perception, issues of ethics and morality included. Moreover, she presents an outline of the history of the reconstruction movement both in the world and in Poland. The author tries to reveal, step by step, the mechanism of the formation of historical reconstruction groups and similar associations, beginning with a gathering of the people interested in forming the group through the selection of its name and the vision of its activities, up to collecting the equipment. This process results in the emergence and development of a separate reconstruction environment where those who share the common passion have a chance to exchange experience and knowledge. The text also describes the forms of activities practiced by the performers (apart from specific recreations) and their tasks. It is connected with the presentation of objectives, the historical reconstruction tries to achieveand which stand behind the reconstruction performers’ motivations. The article shows merits of the phenomenon, not ignoring, at the same time, its deficiencies and potential threats. The author also tries to answer the question: what the historical education provided by historical reconstruction should be based upon?
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Keywords: decommunization; vetting; settling accounts with the Communism; the security authorities; the acquisition of archives special services; prosecution of perpetrators of communist crimes; clearing debate
After knocking down communism in 1989, Poland and other countries of Eastern Europe were burdened with a task of settling accounts with their totalitarian past both in institutional dimension – through legal compensation for the victims of crimes and persecutions, trying their perpetrators and developing institutional standards preventing functionaries of the former communist secret services and their co-workers from having an impact on public life (lustration) and also enabling the victims to have an insight into the documents collected in the past on them. Since, in the centre of the lustration debate an issue of exploring, developing and settling accounts with one of fundamental pillars of the totalitarian system i.e. former security forces was placed, one of the elements of settling accounts with the communist past was the creation of institutions responsible for taking over the archives of the communist special forces and revealing the network of agents of thepolitical secret service, as well, as conducting research and educational activities in that area. The text analyses the conditions in which that process occurred in Poland and her bordering countries: Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Russia.The concluding paragraphs of the article contain the assessment that the process of creating the institutions responsible for taking over the materials of the state security organs, their development and making them available was a part of a political ritual of transformation from totalitarianism to democracy. That transformation was experienced by all post-communist countries of Central Europe which chose a democratic variant of social development. The institutions established in order to accomplish that goal have similar competences apart from investigative functions possessed only by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance. Lesser successes were achieved as far as the attempts to legal persecution of the perpetrators of communist crimes were concerned and it relates to the entire geographical area. The state of law proved to be an inefficient tool in bringing the guilty ones to justice within the course of passing years. Settling accounts with communism was never done in Russia. One may think that Russian leaders came to the conclusion that society is not ready yet for such a move since it would entail huge social and political costs and that its full realisation would be possible only after the natural generation exchange has been accomplished. The author puts forward a thesis that a future researcher of the historyof the post-communist era in Europe will be able to clearly distinguish the borderlines of the countries which have settled their accounts with a totalitarian past and of those where this has not been done with all the system, social and moral consequences of that fact.
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Keywords: Radio Free Europe; surveys; Polish People’s Republic; little Stabilization; sociology; the Sino-Soviet conflict; racism; the Vietnam War; the Six-Day War
Radio Free Europe was one of the most effective tools of Cold War in the hands of the western countries. The fact which is relatively unknown is that one of its units was conducting widespread surveys primarily aimed at establishing the level of the Station’s popularity in the countries to which it directed its broadcasts. Somehow additionally, the Station collected the information which today allows us to obtain the picture of the Polish public opinion on various topics, among others, on the issues concerning international affairs. International affairs are very closely linked with the internal situation of the country and are mainly perceived from this perspective. Particularly interesting are the opinions of the Poles on the Arab-Israeli War which got a lot of publicity in Poland, above of all, in the form of an Anti-Semitic witch-hunt symbolised by March 1968. Another interesting aspectis the attitude of the Poles to the problems of racism in the United States. Anti-American opinions, unfavourable to racism, are mixed with xenophobia which many Poles did not conceal. From the perspective of the RFE studies, the Polish People’s Republic emerges as the country of dying hopes, deepening stagnation, and the Poles as the opponents of the system who are hostile towards the USSR yet are not willing to risk a mutiny or a protest. In spite of all, in their majority, they assumed positions of adapting to and conforming with. Simultaneously, the surveys recorded also the opinions of the RFE employees who prepared the reports; these people often did not understand the realities of the studied countries and had a tendency to see the world only in black and white colours.
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Keywords: Partry Forum; the counter-revolution; the fraction; Andrzej Żabiński; Vsevolod Volchev
In spring of 1981, conservative forces within the Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP) sprang to life, articulating a necessity to strengthen the Party ideologically and to engage into a decisive struggle against “Solidarity” Trade Union. One of the main representatives of the conservative fraction was the Katowice Party Forum (KPF). The founding meeting of the Katowice Party Forum was held on 15 May 1981. The Forum was established at the Katowice Regional Committee of the PUWP under a patronage of its first secretary, Andrzej Żabiński. In the first stage of its activities, the Forum consisted of over 100 people who were mostlyactivists of the Polish United Workers’ Party from the Katowice Region, functional activists of the industry trade unions and officers of the Citizens’ Militia (MO) and Secret Police (SB). The executive body of the Katowice Party Forum was the Programming Council consisting of highly positioned functionaries of central and regional echelons of the PUWP. The Council was chaired by a member of the Politburo of the PUWP Central Committee, Gerard Gabryś and a Marxist ideologist, Wsiewołod Wołczew. The main objective identified by the Forum activists was a struggle for keeping the socialist system intact and maintaining the ideologicalline of the communist party. First of all, the KPF members underlined a critical diagnosis of the Party condition, for which they blamed the PUWP Management. As particularly dangerous, the Forum regarded the functioning of linear structures of reformative, grass-roots, internal movement described as revisionist and right-wing. The Forum accused the members of that movement of the will to transform the PUWP into a liberal and social democratic party. The Forum activists were equally critical of the “Solidarity” movement, accusing trade union leaders of exploiting workers and creating counterrevolutionary structures striving for the change of the system. The Katowice Party Forum became soon a subject of a massive criticism by the PUWP activists and was fiercely opposed by the leaders of the Silesian “Solidarity”. Party leaders accused the Forum activists of creating an illegal fraction within the Party and attempts at hindering the process of democratization in the country. Unfavourable attitude of the Party Management led to the Forum losing support of a part of the PUWP activists who, so far, were well disposed towards it, and its initial activity came to a halt. In July 1981, also the delegates to the 9th PUWP Congress negatively assessed the functioning of the KFP. The Katowice Party Forum ceased to exist in September 1981 and then it was transformed into the Katowice Marxist-Leninist Seminar.
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