The Censorship of Polish Literature in the Stalinist Period, 1948-1954

John Bates

It is only fairly recently that censorship in Poland during the Stalinist period has begun to attract serious scholarly attention.[1] With the abolition of the Main Censorship Office in April 1990 and the transfer of many of its files to the state archives, researchers understandably headed for the choicer parts of that institution's ignominious history, such as the crises of 1956, 1968's 'March events', and the Gierek era.[2] The early 1950s, when repression was at its height, failed to stimulate quite the same enthusiasm, mainly because of the generally abysmal quality of the literature produced at that time: no deformed masterpieces lay in wait for the foraging academic to resurrect and restore to their rightful place in postwar Polish literary history. The other side of the coin was the undoubtedly correct perception that, in comparison with other institutions, the Censorship Office played a largely ancillary role in the control of literature. Only after 1956 did it move, so to speak, into the front line of the battle for politically correct literary works and become the main focus of writers' usually ineffectual sallies against the régime.

A major reason for the subordinate status of the Censorship Office in the early 1950s was the existence of the obligatory literary programme, socialist realism, officially launched at the Szczecin congress of the Writers' Union in January 1949. This congress is generally seen as a turning point in postwar Polish literature, when the Party made plain its desire to subordinate writers and their works to its absolute control.[3] To see such control solely as censorship, however, would be a gross simplification. Regardless of the restrictions, the vast majority of writers responded positively to the Party's call for a new, socialist literature which would more closely reflect the concerns and interests of the working classes; nor can their response be reduced solely to venality and a desire for the considerable inducements offered by the authorities.[4] If censorship should be properly understood as the delimitation of taboo areas, that it marks the limits of the permissible in any society,[5] then it might be said that censorship did not exist in the Stalinist era. Yet censors were fully engaged at the time and did themselves produce a substantial 'literature', so this would be overstating the case. Defining their activity from the most general terms — the formal place of the Main Office in the political system and its operating principles — to the treatment of specific works constitutes the subject of the present paper. First, however, some consideration must be given to the wider system of literary production in which the censorship office was only one, albeit a major, component.

Party control in its most totalitarian variant can be understood as deriving from three factors:

(a) monopolization of the means of production and distribution;

(b) subordination of the sponsoring institutions;

(c) domination of the agencies of reception

The first stage of the establishment of its control was the nationalization of printing works and paper production. Even while publishing remained officially divided into three sectors — state, collective, and private — in the first few years after the war, the Party authorities dominated from the outset the provision of basic services and materials to publishers. In successive stages, under the slogan of 'democratizing culture', that is of giving the population cheap access to books, the Communists managed to make publishing almost entirely dependent upon state subsidies.[6] This deliberate policy of decommercializing publishing had as its principal aim the elimination of ideological competition; as a result, all literary production could be decided independently of any commercial considerations, free of any concern for profitability and, ultimately, with complete disregard for readers' real preferences.[7] A corollory of this process was cultural centralization: by 1950 most publishing houses and major literary periodicals had relocated to the capital.[8]

Party domination also affected the sponsoring agencies. Key amongst these was the Ministry of Culture, which, in conjunction with the presidium of the (Communist-controlled) Writers' Union, decided the allocation of grants, trips abroad (primarily to fraternal socialist countries in the Stalinist period), and places on 'field trips' (wyjazdy w teren). The Party channelled other cultural initiatives primarily through the Ministry, such as the closed competition for novels in installments which was intended to secure the mass reader's interest in contemporary fiction. Eventually, the Ministry assumed responsibility for the general shape of the annual publishing plan covering each publisher's proposed lists for the coming year.

Most importantly, the Party determined each work's reception. By dominating the literary and non-literary press, which also came under censorship office supervision, and by setting up 'creative sections' in the Writers' Union, which subjected a colleague's latest endeavour to sometimes astringent criticism, the Party ensured its decisive voice in the agencies of reception. In the longer term, the education system, supplied with ideologically correct interpretations of past and contemporary works of Polish literature by trusted Party literary critics and scholars, was to regulate the literary tastes and understanding of the new state's citizens. In this way, via a complex of factors both material and socio-psychological, the Party developed a system of control designed to condition the literary work from its initial conception in the author's mind until its final consumption by the reader.

The censorship office thus came into play during the phase of the work's reception, not only determining its final acceptability from the political and ideological standpoint but also 'supervising' the parameters of the debate. Until 1948, a watershed year in both a cultural and political sense for Poland, it seems that the censorship of literature was relatively benign.[9] The censorship office directed its attention primarily to emasculating the independent political opposition, the PSL, especially during the 1946 referendum and 1947 general election.[10] PSL activists challenged the actions and powers of the censorship organs in a memorial sent to the government on 16 August 1946, and PSL deputy Hanna Chorążyna questioned the July 1946 decree establishing the Main Office in a speech at the nineth session (20-23 September 1946) of the National Council.[11] Writers, too, drew attention to the activities of the censorship office at their first postwar congress in Cracow (30 August-2 September 1945) when they called for 'complete freedom of speech within limits which do not violate the foundations of a democratic system'.[12] The PSL's demise, however, saw the instigation of tighter controls.

The term 'censorship', unsurprisingly, does not feature in the decree of July 1946 which purported to set up the office; instead 'supervision' (of the press, publications and public performances) and 'control' (of the dissemination of all kinds of work by means of print, image and spoken word...) are the preferred euphemisms.[13] The existence of censorship considerably predated the legislation and had been operating on Polish territory since at least the end of 1944. The arrival of two employees from the Soviet Glavlit at that time gave an impetus to the creation of a central body to which, in principle, all other institutions with censorship privileges should be subordinate.[14] The Central Bureau of Press Control, established in January 1945, was later superseded by the Main Office of Control, which had branch offices in every major city and sections in most towns.[15] The legislation at least provided a slightly clearer picture of the Office's place in the official hierarchy, its duties and of the criteria according to which it functioned.

Technically, the Main Office was subordinate to the prime minister, who could appoint and dismiss the Office's director. Apart from 'supervising' the 'press, publications and public performances within the provisions defined in law', it 'controlled' the 'dissemination of all kinds of work by means of print, image and the spoken word, as well as advertisements, announcements and posters'. It also granted permission to publish periodicals and supervised all print, graphic and stamp-manufacturing works. The decree defined the general scenarios in which censors would intervene as: 'a) threat[s] to the system of the Polish state, b) the waging of military propaganda, c) the revelation of state secrets, d) action detrimental to the international relations of the Polish state, e) violation[s] of the law or morality, f) [the] misleading [of] public opinion by giving information inconsistent with reality.' There was no possibility of appealing against decisions (the office operated completely within the legal framework, but was not specifically subject to it), and anyone who sought to obviate censorship procedure could be punished by one year's imprisonment or a fine of 10, 000 złoties, or both.[16]

The above criteria for intervention are not exceptionable and indeed were comparable with prewar legislation, particularly for cinematic works. For censorship employees alone, however, there were significant supplements which dealt in much greater detail with the Party's current requirements. From the 1960s, the Main Office formalized these instructions by providing 'Books' of materials; in the first decade after the war, speeches at regular conferences (odprawy) by officials from Warsaw functioned as the main conduit of information about key changes. At the conference in February 1949, Laskowska, the head of the Department of Public Performances, detailed the main criteria censors were to apply in relation to contemporary plays:

(a) when the topic contains destructive tones

(b) when it suggests dilatoriness in the process of rebuilding and a lack of faith in the implementation of economic plans

(c) when it shows disdain for members of our government or of democratic countries

(d) when anti-democratic overtones come into play which present the state administrative apparatus as bureaucratised and malevolent towards the citizen

(e) Kulak peasant ideals which applied during the Sanacja regime

(f) anti-Russian topics, which can be brought up to date by reactionary elements

(g) allusions exacerbating obsolete resentments towards the Soviet Union, which survive from the Sanacja period

(h) texts which mock socially concerned actions (crêches, community centres)

(i) which suggest the absence of the freedom of speech

(j) when they deal with racist matters

(k) where idealism is presented in opposition to materialism.

In relation to specifically religious performances, she provided the following guidelines on excisions:

1) when it approaches the issue of our motherland from a mystical or religious viewpoint

2) when the piece proclaims the supremacy of religious faith in life

3) when the author suggests that there is a struggle against religion in our state

4) passages suggesting that religion is under attack from the state in our schools

5) in the cases of attacks on civil marriages

6) when the author identifies the concept of love of one's country with love of religious faith, inculcating in the audience the conviction that the term 'a good Pole' is synonymous with 'Catholic'

7) when the text has a political, not a ritual character.[17]

Although these instructions refer to plays, their applicability to other genres is self-evident. Nonetheless, despite providing greater detail than the 1946 decree, they are far from complete. One of the key matters on which they fail to shed any light is the German question.

While specific instructions regarding this matter have yet to be discovered in the archives, the general drift of Party policy and censorship practice can be traced both from exchanges at the conferences and the internal evidence of individual reports or reviews (recenzje). Initially, in the years 1945-49, censors appear to have reflected an officially sanctioned anti-German chauvinism and removed any positive references to Germans, any suggestion of Polish admiration for German scientific, philosophical and cultural achievements, or references to fraternization between Poles and Germans particularly on Polish territory in the immediate postwar years.[18] From 1950, most likely in response to the foundation of the GDR and the consequent need to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Germans, the noun and adjective ‘German’ underwent rehabilitation. As a result, a tendency to replace ‘German’ by ‘Nazi’ whenever reference was made to the Occupation, and to comment unfavourably on the absence of positive German figures may be noted.[19] This was, of course, part of a larger shift in the tone of Communist propaganda from nationalist (in which scheme the disparagement of everything German was acceptable) to a more class-conscious, properly Marxist view of Polish-German relations. Nonetheless, even in the slightly more liberal periods, certain officially propagated myths could not be challenged: the Party’s view of the ‘Regained Territories’ as intrinsically Polish caused censors to eliminate clear references tot heir German past.[20]

Censorship procedure regarding fine literature encompassed four stages: preliminary ('wstępna' — the censorship of the author's typescript), actual ('faktyczna' — censorship of the proofs), subsequent ('następna'— pre-distribution) and secondary ('wtórna'— postdistribution).[21] At any of the first three stages, publication might be suspended. Indeed, during the first stage, it seems likely that the responsibility for censorship may have been shared between editors in the publishing house and censorship employees. Secondary censorship, which appeared only on the cusp of 1949 when the need to revise the repertoire in the light of the new doctrine became paramount, reviewed the work subsequently to its distribution in order to verify the correctness of the original decision to allow publication. Changed political circumstances might then militate against a reprint.

The heart of the censor's activity was the writing of reviews, which had the following rubric: 1. work's title, 2. author, 3. publisher, 4. intended print run, 5. new book or renewal, 6. original work or translation, 7. language of the original, 8. date of receipt of work for review,[22] 9. the review proper, which had to incorporate (a) the book's theme and issues it dealt with and (b) its ideological and socio-educative significance, 10. the reviewer's proposal (with the irrelevant options deleted): to (a) grant permission, (b) not grant permission, (c) grant permission for the book's publication after 'interventions' had been completed, 11. reviewer's signature, 12. decision.

The review proper (9) constituted the most important part of the document, since the censor had to identify for his/her superiors the ideological justification for publishing the work and the extent to which it deviated from ideological norms. But in writing the report, the censor had to assume a kind of dual identity, having to be au fait with the Party's current ideology, and at the same time, examining the work from the standpoint of the hypothetical average reader. Any proposed changes or specific misgivings (particular wordings or whole passages), which were normally indicated immediately after this summary of content, therefore had a dual character: they included strictly political/ideological objections and an assessment of the work's likely effect upon the culturally unsophisticated, politically immature, working class audience. For that reason, in the early 1950s, especially where reprints of classic works were concerned, the censor would sometimes suggest that the needs of the intelligentsia audience had already been satisfied and that a new edition was not warranted. The censor might equally well propose reducing the print run. The final decision rested with the censor's superiors, whose positive decision did not always mean that the book duly saw the light of day.

A slightly different rubric applied for secondary censorship. This took place automatically with new editions of the work, although it could occur in due course some time after publication. The review had an enlarged format,[23] the most important section in which, 14., offered the following options: I. renewal (a) without changes (b) after completing certain changes, II. non-renewal, while III. and IV. determined the extent of distribution: whether the book was suitable for school libraries and general libraries. Generally speaking, once a literary work had passed successfully through the censorship process, it normally received a second edition. Nonetheless, as Andrzej Urbański has remarked in connection with censorship in the 1970s, the censors would test to destruction the reprinted work's potential ideological incorrectness.[24]

In principle, censors intervened chiefly on political grounds, and evaluating the artistic aspects of any work always played a subordinate role. Yet the boundaries between the artistic and the political were often difficult to define since the work itself tended to be treated as a political fact. The setting of a socialist realist novel, for example, could fall foul of specific instructions concerning the preservation of economic, military and state secrets.[25] Similarly, satirical works might contravene regulations forbidding defamation of state dignitaries.[26] At a conference in June 1951, Helena Landsberg, Head of the Non-Periodical Section of the Main Office, laid down these guidelines for censors:

While the need to safeguard state secrets in technical and scientific works should be particularly underlined, the relevance of these matters to literary works, which will be ever more closely connected to life and hence to issues of industrial production and expansion during the Six-Year Plan, should not be forgotten either.[27]

Fiction was thus subject to the same restrictions as newspaper reportage or other informative texts in so far as they dealt with contemporary Poland. Since writers were encouraged to portray the achievements of the Six-Year Plan, this could in theory only increase purely 'technical' interventions by censors. As far as artistic matters were concerned, the censorship administration promoted the 'synchronization' of censorship activity with the new publishing policy.[28] One of the prerequisites of such 'synchronization' was the proper functioning of professional literary criticism, which would then take a large part of the responsibility for shaping the new literature.

A number of scholars have argued convincingly that in the Stalinist era critics served as the main exponents of the Socialist Realist doctrine and thus occupied a position senior to that of writers in the literary hierarchy.[29] To the extent that literary activity was a public affair, this certainly seems to have been the case: censors did suggest in their reports that (from the ideological standpoint) not entirely satisfactory works might be left to the depradations of the critics. In this respect, criticism may be viewed as a further censorship filter.[30]

The boundaries between the competences of censorship and criticism have yet to be adequately defined (and are beyond the scope of the present paper), but the absolute subordination of Polish literature to Party ideology in the Stalinist years meant that censors invariably ventured further than the political domain. Their position was an ambiguous one, somewhere between that of guardians and co-authors.[31] In censorship parlance, they were meant to avoid the two extremes of wścibstwo (interference) and przeoczenia (oversights), although what exactly constituted wścibstwo was not always clear and their 'interference' — in terms of positive suggestions to writers — seems at times to have been supported by their superiors. Evidence in the state archives suggests that on occasion censors tried to influence the construction of the key figure in Socialist Realist novels, the positive hero. With the launch in 1949 of the programme to commission novels in instalments, for instance, Landsberg was seconded from the Main Office to the committee considering proposals in order to provide political and ideological guidance. In the main, this guidance amounted to the stipulation that, as a character whose behaviour and ultimate stance were intended to be worthy of emulation by the reader, the positive hero should not have middle-class or intelligentsia origins.[32] In this respect, the censor functioned as a pre-publication critic.

Socialist realist practice brought to light a number of problems both of a theoretical and material nature, which injected a certain amount of realism into the Party's expectations. The unpromising nature of the human resources with which, of necessity, the cultural administrators had to work, led to the 'factoring-in' of certain allowances. These most notably affected prominent individuals such as Jan Parandowski and Julian Przyboś, who, whilst broadly sympathetic to the cause, were not required to submit to the new aesthetics in their works. Nor were Party critics insensitive to the frequently botched implementation of the doctrine in the works of the younger writers on whom the Party staked its hopes. The stalwart Marxist critic Melania Kierczyńska provided eloquent testimony of the Party's realism about the quality of these works in her reply to an attack by Aleksander Jackiewicz, the author of Penicylina, on the pettiness of censorship:

There's no question in their minds that the changing of ten sentences will make the book a fundamentally different work, what matters is that the book has to appear. I don't believe that you can rewrite or cut out ten sentences and end up with a different book. That concession in respect of ten sentences relates to the most drastic points, whereas we have to let the characters be, since otherwise the book might not appear or would lose a lot in the rewriting.[33]

This admission highlights the distinction between authoritative declarations, which characterize most public utterances by the Party's key decision-makers on the subject of the desired new literature, and the assumptions usually voiced in closed sessions and more indicative of the Party's actual thinking on the subject. Special significance should be attached in this connection to an address by one of the ruling triumvirate, Jakub Berman, in May 1949 concerning Party tactics in the Writers' Union:

We criticize irresolute elements to varying extents and degrees of intensity, striving to win them round and, where possible, to distinguish between them. We should fight patiently for every non-Party writer despite his immaturity and lack of consistency. In respect of every writer who is attracted to us, a principled stance should be combined with the most tactful and kindly criticism and persuasion. Pressurizing such people and the use of primitive interference, as sometimes happens, are not acceptable methods. In publishing our policy is one of limited tolerance, without, however, refraining from honest and amicable criticism.[34]

This difference may be expressed as one of 'fundamental principles' (the unchanging general aims of the Communist project) versus 'operative ideology' (the day-to-day assumptions governing practice).[35] The tension between the two finds a particularly interesting reflection in censorship discourse.[36] Even in the Stalinist period, the occasional relative liberalism of the powers-that-be contrasts vividly with the censors' own understanding of their role as the custodians of ideologically correct expression and, by extension, of the 'fundamental principles' of the socialist system. Although the Polish censorship system drew considerably upon Soviet experience, it was not entirely circumscribed by it. The differing conditions sometimes required rather different solutions.[37]

One of the key points of distinction from the Soviet system lay in the practice of (admittedly) limited concessions to writers. Kierczyńska and Berman in their essentially semi-private statements acknowledge that writers need to be granted some small measure of liberty. Similarly, despite the rigours of the new doctrine, a degree of elasticity was built into the system itself. Although an author had no legal recourse to challenge the censor's decisions, if he could obtain sufficiently powerful backers in the Party's upper echelons or within the publishing house itself,[38] he might gain substantive concessions for his 'vision'. Thus, the appearance of Aleksander Rymkiewicz's collection of lyric poetry, Warszawskie cegły, can be attributed to the influence of Jerzy Putrament, General Secretary of the Writers' Union and an old colleague from prewar Wilno.[39] Another, even more eminent example would seem to be Tadeusz Konwicki's endeavours to have his novel W¸adza published after it was rejected by the Secretary of the Department of Press and Publishing Stefan Staszewski, one of the highest placed officials in the cultural administration.[40] In an episode reminiscent of the path to publication of Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, Konwicki and a sympathetic critic, Grzegorz Lasota, approached Jakub Berman, one of the ruling triumvirate, who overturned Staszewski's decision.[41] More typically, in cases which the censor identified as controversial, referring the work for a final decision to higher authorities up to the level of Staszewski (and perhaps beyond) indicated a strong urge on the part of censorship officials to protect their own backs.[42]

In the main, as Stefan Kisielewski noted, the censorship system was designed to make the reader believe that authors actually thought as they wrote and to 'accustom writers to thinking and formulating their thoughts in one particular way since writing in any other manner would be eliminated or changed by the requisite excisions.'[43] There were cases, however, which rendered such operations well-nigh impossible: it was felt that censoring the already well-known texts of Polish classics would diminish the Communist authorities in the reading public's eyes. In those cases, trusted critics provided suitably correct introductions intended to moderate, particularly, anti-Russian passages. This practice also applied with collected editions of contemporary writers. Tadeusz Borowski's collected works, which were arranged in chronological order, provoked considerable disquiet because of the concentration of his death camp stories in the second volume. One censor suggested using Borowski's later denunciation of these works as an introduction, before doubts were finally allayed by Wiktor Woroszylski's preface which offset their pessimism and provided hints as to their correct interpretation.[44] Conversely, as restrictions relaxed after Stalin's death, the publication of the interwar catastrophist poet, Józef Czechowicz, became possible. Here, however, the anthology's compilers were rebuked for failing to provide an introduction that was sufficiently critical of his elitism.[45]

Contemporary literature, especially when it dealt with life in People's Poland, proved to be — to adapt Jerzy Putrament's metaphor — the most closely patrolled sector of the 'literary front'. Despite all the official injunctions and the writer's well-developed sense for self-preservation, the censor still had a significant part to play even at the height of the socialist realist programme in the early 1950s. How significant may be illustrated with reference to one of the era's classics, Kazimierz Koźniewski's Piątka z ulicy Barskiej (Five Lads from Barska Street, 1952), which later became the first colour feature film made in postwar Poland.

The novel deals with the integration of five juvenile delinquents into postwar society. Koźniewski's professed aim in writing the novel was to show how the consequences of war continued to affect people's mentalities, which is not to overlook the concurrent financial benefits of writing a contemporary novel. In effect, Piątka marks an attempt to provide a 'novel in instalments' which cultural functionaries fixed upon in the first half of 1949 as a means of satisfying the Party's call for socialist realist works. In a letter to the deputy Minister of Culture, Włodzimierz Sokorski, Wanda Żółkiewska, Secretary of the Commission for Literature in Instalments, pointed out that the large readership for such works indicated that it might serve as an 'excellent educational tool'.[46] Furthermore, it offered the Party the prospect of challenging the domination then enjoyed in that format by foreign (Western) works in translation or Polish works deemed ideologically unsuitable.[47] Accordingly, the Commission announced a closed competition for professional writers. A list of respondents from April 1950 featured several future leading lights of Polish socialist realism with proposals for what would be some of the key works of the period: Tadeusz Breza (Uczta Baltazara), Stanislaw Zieliński (Ostatnie ognie), Leszek Bartelski ( Ludzie zza rzeki), and Koźniewski, whose Piątka was described as a 'novel about young people taking an active part in contemporary life and in the positive matters of work and reconstruction.'[48]

Koźniewski's presence on this list resulted only from several months' deliberations by the Commission and the provision of a draft outline of the proposed novel. Members of the Commission then proposed changes to the outline, which the author incorporated before beginning work on the novel per se. Koźniewski managed to pass this first filter of control without major problems due to the necessarily sketchy nature of his outline. The presentation of the finished typescript to the eventual publisher, PIW, marked the beginning of the censorship process proper. During a session of the Prose Section of the Writers' Union on 15 December 1952, Koźniewski described this process somewhat euphemistically as one of 'considerable interruptions or, more exactly, changes, not fundamental but considerable changes'.[49] This is borne out by the numerous censors' reports on the novel, dating from January 1951.[50] Three major issues requiring amendments by the author emerge from these reports: the interrogation of the boys by magistrate Wilczyńska, the biography of the journalist Kornecki and the work's ending, which in its original form represented the complete acceptance and assimilation of the boys into the new society.

The crux of the problem was the boys' brutal treatment at the hands of the police, which departed considerably from the requisite positive presentation of authority figures.[51] In effect, Koźniewski's approach showed the 'state administrative apparatus as [...] ill-disposed towards the citizen'. The policemen appear to have been as brutalized by the war as the boys in that they fail to recognize the need for greater self-restraint on their part. Moreover, these scenes are given through the eyes of Wilczyńska, herself an authority figure, and thus doubly validated. Two extracts from the third edition (1953) in juxtaposition with the original typescript (1950) from the Ministry of Culture archives illustrate the degree of censorship interference (passages are continuous, except where indicated '[...]'):

1. Third edition, pp. 12-13: Manuscript, pp. 7-8:

'They forced us !' 'They forced us !'

'That's how it was', added Jacek 'That's how it was', added Jacek.

'Well, yeah, they forced us', said 'Who beat you ?' Wilczyńska asked

Marek, getting bogged down in a out of a sense of obligation.

labyrinthine, vague and ambiguous Unfortunately, beatings still took

explanation. place at the time — as a result of the

savagery of war. The police did not consist of experienced educationists,

and the lads weren't angels. Three years of ideological training had indeed turned the young partisan, recruited by the police in 1945, into a

well-disciplined and efficient defender of the law. They had been taught how to deal with adults. But little had been said about juveniles, and so they took it as read that since they could tan the hides of their own sons, there wasn't any real obstacle to using the same methods with stubborn young thieves.

'The same older policeman who arrested me punched me in the face. Then the big, strong plain-clothes

'They threatened not to release us', said policeman beat me up. They said

Kazek, helping Marek out with his answer. they wouldn't release us until we

'And you were afraid of that ? Twelve hours confessed. What could we do ? We

in detention ? But you weren't afraid to attack signed the confessions !'

people and rob them ?' She didn't expect any

reply to her comment. She knew their sort:

cheeky and all lip until they were arrested and

put on trial, then filled with fear, and denying

everything from the outset at every new stage

of the trial. They lied automatically, just in case,

and then conceded their guilt when the evidence

was presented. So she passed on to specific

questions.

'Do you know Zygmunt Radziszewski ?'... 'Do you know Zygmunt Radziszewski ?'

2. Third edition, pp. 15-16 Manuscript, pp. 10-11

The detective from the police station appeared

before the court.

'He was the one who beat you up ?'

She said to Marek.

'Yes'.

'Did the witness beat up one of the

accused ?'

I know my duties, your honour. I

wouldn't call it a beating. It was just

a tap, cos they both annoyed me. It

wasn't a beating. I know what a beating is. I myself ... well, never mind. His sort can try the patience of a saint. They called me all the names under the sun ...'

'You didn't do too badly, either,'

said Kazek.

'They didn't want to talk, your honour. And we had proof that they'd stolen the paper ...'

'What can the witness tell the court about 'All right, but what can the witness

the assaults ?' tell the court about the assaults ?'

'In the first few days of September [...], In the first few days of September [...]

it became clear to us that the Barska lot it became clear to us that the Barska lot were responsible for everything.' were responsible for everything.

'It's not true !' snarled Marek, interrupting So, when they denied it, and started

the policeman's statement. calling us names, well, a bloke gives

'But you confessed.' them a tap once or twice. But it

'But we were under arrest ... they threatened wasn't a beating, oh no !'

us.' 'For him, beatings only happen if you've

'You caved in easily,' she repeated her earlier got a stick or a metal bar,' Wilczyńska

remark, which the lads again greeted with stunned thought to herself. In the detective's lapel

silence. Only Kazek rebelled: was the badge of a concentration camp

'You haven't got any evidence against us !' survivor.

'We'll just see about that !' The terror of the Occupation had left its corrosive mark not only on the young defendants. The police needed to be

Judge Wilczyńska called the next witness: educated as well. She decided to refer

Zygmunt Radziszewski. the matter to the police authorities. 'But doesn't the witness know that even "a tap" isn't permitted. The witness is dismissed. Radziszewski.'[52]

The enforced changes — leaving aside the question of whether they are artistically successful — tone down the magistrate's obvious sympathy for the boys and soften the presentation of their treatment at the police's hands. Wilczyńska proves more sceptical about their innocence while physical brutality in the original gives way to the 'merely' psychological threat of prolonged detention in the published version.

The censors’ objections to the figure of the journalist Kornecki concerned his bourgeois origins. In the opinion of one censor, Koźniewski had constructed his character in a manner that was ‘contrary to the principles of socialist realism’. As she went on to say, ‘the author has collected together a series of types which are remarkably negative in every respect. One gains the impression that there were no politically conscious people dedicated to People’s Poland at all. The author fails to reveal the enthusiasm of the Polish nation and its dynamic force, particularly within the working class.’[53] Similar reservations on the censor’s part led to fairly far-reaching changes. The original version of Kornecki’s background ran as follows:

Andrzej Kornecki came from a bourgeois intelligentsia family who lived in Warsaw and were on the quiet proud of their gentry hearth (whose wealth in truth had been blown during their grandfather’s revels in town at carnival-time and elsewhere – but who would remember that?; they remembered only the Kornow name, a fine manor house), who were much vaunted for their progressive liberal outlook and, in reality, were very satisfied with their privileged and affluent material position; Papa Kornecki was the owner of a paper factory. Kornecki was a sensible sort who could always adapt to every kind of personal, economic and political necessity. Even now he wasn’t cross at the way history had turned out, regarding the changes that had taken place after the war as an act of historical justice and without any internal struggle he became a loyal employee of the state sector. His sense of practicality was linked to artistic interests: he made music, composed elegant verses, sketched – for his own pleasure and without pretension, sufficient in short to be a connoisseur and not a hack. Finally, he loved to make merry – since he was yet one more link in the chain of the family’s temperament – but he did so within the norms of plutocratic decorum, so even his wife forgave him.[54]

In the published novel, information about the Kornecki family is reduced to a minimum. The colourful figure of the grandfather disappears, Andrzej’s father occupies a less elevated place in the pre-war social hierarchy and becomes as a result more ‘positive’. Presumably, too much detail about figures which tended not to comply with the new political and artistic schemata would have undermined the thesis about the ‘mobilization of the young and their involvement in the positive issues of labour and reconstruction’:

Andrzej Kornecki’s father – employed after the war as an electrical engineer – was a serious and sensible individual, endowed by nature with but a single weakness: he made music, composed verses, did a bit of sketching – for his own pleasure, without pretension, sufficiently to be a connoisseur and not a hack. [1953: p. 93]

Despite these far-reaching changes, Koźniewski considered that he had achieved his main ambition — to present the Workers' Party's true, subordinate status in the 1947 workplace in contradistinction to portrayals of its usually dominant position.[55] Censorship reports demonstrated a consistent desire to enhance the Workers' Party's role in events, but no changes materialized in response to the censors' ideologically justifiable criticisms.[56]

Koźniewski's case indicates the extent of censorship interference necessary even in the work of one very favourably disposed to the new order (the Church is effectively absent from the novel, for instance). At the cost of certain substantial changes, Koźniewski managed to preserve something of the reality in his depiction of industrial and social life in immediate postwar Poland. Censorship was not all-powerful, and the objections of the Main Office's employees, whilst undoubtedly justified from the political and ideological standpoint, at times gave way before greater, long-term considerations. Equally, the essential irrelevance of their concerns in the face of yet another literary abomination could assail censors:

Jerzy Miller is conscious of the times in which he lives. He is conscious of the tasks which socialist reality sets poetry and knows what today's poetry should be like. That's why there are no major political errors in his works. Nor is there any poetry, for Jerzy Miller is a cold-blooded hack who, in writing to order, has absolutely nothing to say ...[57]

Ideological correctness was ultimately no guarantee of artistic worth.

---

[1] There are two key articles for this period devoted exclusively to censorship: Bogna Brzezińska, 'Polens Zentrale Zensurbehörde und die deutschsprächige Literatur 1945-1956', Literaturindizierung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Studia Germanica Posnaniensia XXII 1995, pp. 107-123, which deals with the criteria, evaluations and interventions applied to German (primarily GDR) literature in Polish translation; and Dariusz Jarosz, 'Zapisy cenzury z lat 1948-1955', Regiony, 1996, No. 3, pp. 2-37, which provides an overview of censorship instructions together with a selection of reviews of individual works. Stanisław Adam Kondek has written extensively about the state of publishing and libraries during the Stalinist period: Władza i wydawcy (Warsaw: Biblioteka Narodowa, 1993); 'Stracone złudzenia. Kłopoty dysponentów obiegu książki z rzeczywistością czytelniczą w latach 1952-1955', Instytucje — publiczność — sytuacje lektury. Tom 6 (Warsaw: Biblioteka Narodowa, 1997), pp. 222-53; 'Wycofywanie literatury popularnej z obiegu instytucjonalnego w latach 1949-1955', Retoryka i badania literackie. Rekonesans (Warsaw: Uniwersytet Warszawski, 1998), pp. 183-243.

[2] Up to about 1995, scholars enjoyed more or less complete freedom of access to materials; now, however, the thirty-year law (karencja) is applied with considerable stringency.

[3] Jan Józef Szczepański, Kadencja (Cracow: Znak, 1989), pp. 7-9. Krzystof Woźniakowski has argued, somewhat against Szczepański's personal experience, that the provisions of the new programme were actually rather more liberal than those which the Marxist 'Kuźnica' group had been promoting in previous years. He states that the main change marked by the congress was administrative: the new regime now took complete control of literary production. Życie Literackie, 1988, No. 11, p. 4.

[4] See, for example, Hans Kneip, Regulative Prinzipien und formulierte Poetik des sozialistischen Realismus. Untersuchungen zur Literaturkonzeption in der Sowjetunion und Polen (1945-1956) (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995), p. 106.

[5] Or, as Antonina Kłoskowska puts it, 'the permitted freedom of certain kinds of speech acts', Piśmiennictwo — systemy kontroli — obiegi alternatywne. Tom 1 (Warsaw: Biblioteka Narodowa, 1992) , p. 10.

[6] Economic arguments, especially when relating to the 'rationalization' of the publishing industry, were essentially ideological ones in support of the Party's monopoly. See: Kondek,Władza ..., pp. 145-64.

[7] Much to the Party’s dismay, readers still indicated deep-rooted preferences for 'reactionary' classics such as Sienkiewicz. In a sense, economic reality had begun to impinge by the early 1950s. So the system was never entirely hermetic, whatever the Party leadership envisaged. Kondek, 'Stracone złudzenia...', pp. 235-36.

[8] By 1955, 97% of the entire publishing production was based in Warsaw. Oskar Stanislaw Czarnik, Literatura polska 1918-1975. Cz. I, Tom 3: 1945-1975 (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1996), p. 123.

[9] Tadeusz Drewnowski, 'Cenzura PRL a współczesne edytorstwo', Autor tekst cenzura (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 1998), p. 15. This is a personal perception, which the sparsity of archival materials for that period can neither refute nor corroborate.

[10] Comments by Ferdynand Chaber, deputy Secretary of the Central Committee's Press and Propaganda Department, are instructive in this regard: in June 1951, he placed the censors' activities on a par with those of the Security forces in 1946 and 1947. GUKP, 421 t. V, p. 208.

[11] Czarnik, op. cit., p. 110.

[12] Marta Fik, Kultura polska po Jałcie. Kronika lat 1944-1981, t. 1 (Warsaw: NOWa, 1991), p. 48.

[13] In this it merely duplicated Soviet practice. See Martin Dewhirst, 'Soviet Socialist Realism and the Censorship System', In the Party Spirit. Socialist Realism and Literary Practice in the Soviet Union, East Germany and China (Amsterdam-Atlanta: Editions Rodopi, 1996), p. 27.

[14] For a fuller account, with Soviet documentation, see T.M.Goryaeva's chapter 'Blitskrig w Pol'she' in Isklyuchit' vsyakie upominaniya (Minsk: Staryj Svet-Print/Moscow: Vremya i Mesto, 1995), pp. 107-38. The appearance of some of these documents in Moskovskie novosti in 1994, nr 24 [12-19 June]. Their later reprint in Życie Warszawy, 18 June 1994, generated an interesting discussion in the columns of Rzeczpospolita [16-17 and 23-24 July 1994] about the identity of the first Polish censor as well as challenging the accuracy of some of the Soviet employees' reports.

[15] Most of these offices, as Aleksander Pawlicki points out, existed outside the law. 'W cenzorskiej rodzinie', Magazyn Historyczny (mówią wieki), 1999, No. 4, p. 15.

[16] Jerzy Bafia, Prawo o cenzurze (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1983), p. 218-19. Point b) concerning military propaganda was a later amendment.

[17] Her further instructions were that censors should forestall any attempts by Workers' Party circles or workers' teams to put on nativity plays, eliminate any anti-Semitic elements, and excise jokes 'containing traits of a complex of racial inferiority, which accentuated class and religious differences as well as nationalistic and chauvinistic factors.' GUKP, 201, t. 4, p. 10. Cf. Daria Nałęcz, Główny Urząd Kontroli Prasy 1945-1949 (Warsaw: ISP PAN, 1994), p. 23; Jarosz, op. cit, p. 3.

[18] At the very first national conference of censors in May 1945, a report on Magdalena Samozwaniec’s play Wanda nie chce Niemca describes the censorship office’s dissatisfaction with the – in its opinion – over-sympathetic portrayal of a German (GUKP, 201, t. I, pp. 58-9; cf. Nałęcz, op. cit., p. 73). Similarly, a review of Mieczysław Pruszyński’s W Narwiku, w Tobruku i w Moskicie, a volume of short stories set during World War II describes one of its positive features as ‘a fundamental aversion for Germans’, before taking issue with certain passages that present German soldiers in a good light. GUKP, 145, 31/22 (‘Czytelnik’ 1948), pp. 9-10..

[19] In their reports on Bohdan Czeszko’s novel Pokolenie (1951), censors proposed changing ‘German’ to ‘Nazi’ in many places (GUKP, 375, 31/28 (‘Czytelnik’ 1951, pp. 446, 449), while Stanisław Zieliński’s Przed świtem (1951) caused one to comment that ‘the author fails to notice any positive German figues’ (ibid., p. 76).

[20] Symptomatic of this trend was the removal of the description of Wrocław as a ‘German town’ in Anka Kowalska’s Opowiadania wrocławskie (1955), GUKP, 386 (‘PIW’ 1954), p. 1002.

[21] Nałęcz, op. cit., p. 17; Mieczysław Ciećwierz, Polityka prasowa 1944-1948 (Warsaw: PWN, 1989) pp. 48-9. These terms as well as the format of the official reports would appear to have been taken directly from Soviet practice. See Dewhirst, ibid.; A. Blyum, Za kulisami "Ministerstwa Pravdyj" (St Petersburg: Gumanitarnoe agenstvo "Akademicheskij proekt", 1994), p. 99.

[22] This was part of the internal supervision of the censor who had to begin his assessment within five days of receipt.

[23] Point 4 incorporated the additional questions of whether the book was a copy, a first edition, a renewal from the (a) prewar or (b) postwar period. Point 5 specified the edition (in the case of renewals), 8 the language in which the book was being published, 9 the particular section under which the work came (belles lettres, etc.), and 10 the print run. Points 11 and 12 dealt respectively with the number of pages and the preventive censorship reference number, while 13 was the review. Section 16 was entitled 'comments'. The preventive censorship reference number facilitated cross-referencing with the original reviews and thus acted as an additional safeguard when checking the work's ideological content.

[24] 'Cenzura — kontrola kontroli (system lat siedemdziesiątych)', Piśmiennictwo — systemy kontroli — obiegi alternatywne. Tom 2 (Warsaw: Biblioteka Narodowa, 1992), p. 252.

[25] References to the presence of a branch of Lloyd's shipping in the Gdańsk shipyard in Andrzej Braun's novel Lewanty (1952) was questioned, GUKP, 375 ('Czytelnik' 1952, t. II), p. 405; the noun 'sabotage' was removed from the following sentence in Tadeusz Borowski's Czerwony maj: 'in the afternoon the head of the Sabotage Department from the District Office of the Security Police, Comrade Józefkowa', GUKP, 386 ('PIW' 1953), p. 388.

[26] According to one censor, Sławomir Mrożek's debut collection of short stories, Półpancerne praktyczne (1953), risked violating the 'GUKP instruction of 8 April 1953 on the non-publication of offensive comments aimed at leaders of Western governments'. GUKP, 395 ('Wydawnictwo Literackie' 1953), review no. 17.

[27] GUKP, 421, t. V, p. 124.

[28] Comment by Kubik of the Łódź office at a session on 27 June 1949. GUKP, 201, t. IV, p. 124.

[29] Janusz Sławiński, 'Krytyka nowego typu', originally published in 1985 (reprinted in Teksty i teksty, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo PEN, 1991, pp. 130-52); Krystyna Kasztenna, Chapter 2, Z dziejów formy niemożliwej (Wrocław: Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Polonistyki Wrocławskiej, 1995, pp. 73-126); Dorota Tubielewicz Mattsson, Polska socrealistyczna krytyka literacka jako narzędzie władzy (Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 1997).

[30] In his response to my paper in Warsaw, Włodzimierz Bolecki suggested we might look at the critics as a kind of ‘repressive censorship’, whose disapproval of a work signalled the authorities’ reservations which were not quite sufficient to disqualify its publication. Whilst an intriguing idea, it rather confuses the issue by imparting transparency to a system whose distinguishing feature was precisely its secrecy. Such unfavourable reviews may have been an instance of the authorities' 'protecting their own backs', a phenomenon I discuss later.

[31] Marta Fik coined this term, which has gained much currency in recent years, in her essay 'Cenzor jako współautor', Literatura i w¸adza (Warsaw: IBL, 1996), pp. 131-47. This choice was meant to indicate the secret nature of censorship in People's Poland. The term has further ramifications which render its use problematic, not least the fact that the Main Office preferred, as Pawlicki notes (op. cit., p. 14), a relatively passive role. It took on an active, creative role when it could not wait for the Party's official interpretation on a subject. Generally, it may be more accurate to call the censor a 'co-editor'.

[32] AAN, Ministerstwo Kultury i Sztuki (henceforth: MKiSz), Departament Twórczości Artystycznej, Wydzia¸ Twórczości Literackiej, 486, 'Protokół z 29.XI.1949r.', p. 117. It is difficult to determine the extent to which Jackiewicz followed her advice. In the main, authors proved remiss in creating working-class heroes, preferring intelligentsia or white-collar types such as engineers.

[33] Archiwum Związku Literatów Polskich, Sekcja Prozy ZLP 1951, ‘Sprawozdanie stenograficzne z przebiegu pierwszego posiedzenia Sekcji Prozy, odbytego dnia 8-ego stycznia 1951 roku w siedzibie Zarzędu Głównego Związku Literatów Polskich w Warszawie’, pp. 29-30.

[34] Archiwum Akt Nowych, KC PZPR Wydzia¸ Kultury 237/XVIII-1, p. 9. In the light of other archival materials, where similar desiderata are expressed together with evidence of deviation from Berman’s principles, it appears that ‘primitive methods’ were the norm.

[35] Ray Taras, Ideology in A Socialist State. Poland 1956-1983 (Cambridge: CUP, 1984), pp. 27-29, 36-38.

[36] As Kubik put it in June 1949: 'We have to remember that we need to pass even artistically feeble novels if there is some guarantee that the author will in future become a progressive, combative, useful writer', ibid.

[37] A key issue in this respect was the official brake on collectivization, ultimately sanctioned by Stalin. Censors were upbraided by Chaber in June 1951 for allowing journalists to call repeatedly for the collectivization of agriculture and the liquidation of the kulaks despite official policy, op. cit., p. 4.

[38] At the Prose Section meeting convened to discuss his novel, Koźniewski thanked Dir. Liefeld of PIW for his 'care over the book, without which it would not have appeared, because there were certain obstacles within the publishing house connected with publishing practice'. Ibid., p. 57. As before, and as was usually the case, the censorship office was not given by name at such sessions, which might also reflect a certain division of competence between the publisher and the censor.

[39] GUKP,145 ('Czytelnik' 1950, t. II), p. 719.

[40] There is no archival evidence suggesting that the novel produced any great problems. Reports identify possible anti-Semitic accents, but the book is given a generally positive appraisal. GUKP, 375 (31/32) (Czytelnik, 1953, t. II) pp. 517-22; 375 (31/33) (Czytelnik, 1954, t. I), pp. 432-34.

[41] Staszewski discusses this incident in conversation with Teresa Torańska. Oni (Warsaw: Agencja Omnipress, 1990), pp. 351-52. The major condition insisted upon by the censor, according to Konwicki, was the addition of the words 'End of Part One' on the final page of the novel (Stanisław Nowicki, Pół wieku czyśćca, London: Aneks, 1986, p. 61). Konwicki intended no sequel.

[42] Such was the case with Breza's Niebo i ziemia (1951), which required substantial changes to its portrayal of interwar Communists. These changes were sanctioned by Staszewski and Pański, and subsequently communicated to Dir. Bida, Head of the Main Office, who then informed Landsberg, and thereafter the individual censors responsible for checking that the required changes were made. GUKP, 145 ['Czytelnik' 1951, t. I], p. 561.

[43] 'Przeciw cenzurze — legalnie (garść wspomnień)', Bez cenzury, 2nd edition (Paris: Spotkania, 1983), pp. 79-80.

[44] As one censor commented in connection with the volume: 'The book ceases to be a denunciation of fascism and denounces humanity as a whole [...] I think the volume in its entirety will corrupt young people and the mass reader', GUKP, 386 ('PIW' 1954), p. 119. The edition was deliberately given a restricted distribution, on the understanding that it was intended for the elite reader, ibid., p. 137.

[45] GUKP, 375 ('Czytelnik' 1954, t. II), p. 463.

[46] Letter dated 6 September 1949. MKiSz, ibid., 487, 'Komisja do Spraw Literatury Odcinkowej [Projekt regulamina, preliminarze, stengoram z I-ej konferencji, protokoły posiedzeń] 1949-50r.', p. 1.

[47] 'The daily and periodical press in their wish to satisfy readers' demands for literature in instalments currently make use either of translations (of 23 novels now being printed in instalments, 18 are from foreign languages, usually already published in book form) or entrust the writing of them to random, inappropriate authors.' Ibid. The other side of this promotion of a desired popular literature was the elimination of undesired — chiefly prewar Polish and Western — models of popular fiction, particularly from public libraries and reading rooms, in which process censors played a vigorous part. Stanisław Adam Kondek describes in detail the procedures, targets and thinking behind these purges in his essay 'Wycofywanie literatury ...', op. cit. Such popular Western writers as Edgar Rice Burroughs and Agatha Christie featured high on the official hitlists.

[48] The letter dates Koźniewski's submission of a summary as 15 April 1950, for which he was paid the considerable sum of 50, 000 złoties. Ibid., p. 78.

[49] Sekcja Prozy ZLP 1952, stenogram z posiedzenia odbytego w dn. 15.XII.52r., p. 48.

[50] The censorship of the novel took place over a considerable period of time and, it appears, in a number of waves: January, August-September, December 1951, and January 1952.

[51] Censor Pomyheło, in a report dated 5 November 1951, listed among the proposed interventions: 'p. 7 - remove the issue of class struggle and the question of the beating, other pages (8-10); p. 11 - not only the terror of the Occupation'. GUKP, 386, 31/122 ('Czytelnik 1951, t. II'), p. 63. The fullest objection comes from a probationary report written by an apprentice censor, Zofia Turska, who voiced the following objections: 'p. 7 This is wrong and what is the purpose of publishing the fact that in 1947 policemen hit underage criminals in the face ?' GUKP, 386, 31/123 ('Czytelnik 1952, t. I'), p. 48.

[52] MKiSz, Departament Twórczości Artystycznej, Wydział Twórczości Literackiej, 578.

[53] GUKP, 386 (PIW 1952), p. 49. This was Turska’s view. Other censors do not write so precisely about the novel’s failings at this point. Nonetheless the passages were changed.

[54] MCA, 578, p. 99.

[55] As Koźniewski put it at the session of the Prose Section: 'I told myself that I had no wish at all to reflect this sort of influence [of the censorship office — JMB] and that the role of the Party would be depicted as I imagined'. Ibid. In conversation with me in September 1999, Koźniewski rejected the idea that censorship interference had caused any major problems.

[56] Pomyheło criticizes Koźniewski for failing to show properly 'the new meaning of the apparatus of People's power, [in the case of] both the judicial system and the police — the author shows them in an extremely false light', op. cit., p. 62. In an undated report from the materials for 1951, one censor criticizes the information that the workers on a building site are not 'kept on a tight ideological rein - both working class parties [amended in the published version to 'the PPR and PPS'] formed a little over one-tenth of the workforce', GUKP, 386, 31/122, p. 55. This sentence remains essentially the same (3rd edition, 1953, pp. 56-7). Another undated report from early 1952 also identifies this issue as problematic: 'the author puts the issue in a way that suggests that equal initiative was shown by the PPR and the PPS in mobilizing the masses to take part in the socialist competition of labour', GUKP, 386, 31/123, p. 42. Presumably, the PPR's input should have been greater.

[57] GUKP, 145 ['Czytelnik' 1950, t. II], p. 601.