APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3
experimentation. Among several poetic groups the foremost was Skamander (named after a literary monthly), whose main figures were Julian Tuwim (1894-1954) and Antoni Slonimski (1895- ). In the 1930's, the novel moved to the foreground, the human personality becoming the predominant theme. Representative of this period are the humanist novels of Maria Dabrowska (1892-1965), whose masterpiece Noce i dni (Nights and Days) shows the influence of Western writers, including the Polish-born English novelist, Joseph Conrad (1857-1924). Of all literary genres in the interwar period, drama was weakest. Many trends in painting appeared, almost all having ties with the various "isms" fashionable in Western Europe. Architecture, the most neglected of the arts during the period of Partition, tended towards a monumental style possessed of little inspiration or originality. In music, Karol Szymanowski (1883-1937) won recognition as the greatest Polish composer since Chopin; like Chopin, he made use of native folk music, with which he blended modern idioms.
Polish scientists and scholars contributed substantially to all branches of learning, perhaps most notably to philosophy and mathematics. The work of Kazimierz Twardowski (1866-1938), Tadeusz Kotarbinski (1886- ), and others made Poland one of the most important international centers of research in logic, semantics, and the philosophy of mathematics. Leading scholars included Waclaw Sierpinski (1882-1969), who headed a famous school of pure mathematics in Warsaw; Leopold Infeld (1898-1968), a nuclear physicist who collaborated with Einstein; and Florian Znaniecki (1882-1958), head of a school of empirical sociology in Poznan and coauthor of a monumental study on the Polish peasant in the United States.
2. Development under communism
Since World War II, artistic and intellectual life in Poland has passed through four stages related to the evolving political situation. The immediate postwar years saw the revival of arts and sciences and the reestablishment of international ties. The second phase, the Stalinist era, established Communist Party direction and control over all branches of art and learning, and ideological doctrines of socialist realism and dialectical materialism were imposed on artists and scholars. Denied the possibility of open resistance, the creative intelligentsia responded with silence, compromise, and submission. The third phase began with the "thaw" following Stalin's death, which permitted increasingly outspoken intellectual opposition to the concept of party direction of culture. This opposition helped to prepare the political climate for Gomulka's return to power in October 1956, and prompted a subsequent but temporary upsurge in intellectual activity which many Western literary critics have termed as some of "the most graphic European literacy work of recent years, revealing a bold and desperate imagination." The withdrawal from this early Gomulka policy after 1957 and the resulting relative cultural immobilism has constituted the fourth phase of postwar cultural development. Whether the Gierek regime's loosened reins on the intellectual community and its public embrace of cultural tradition — symbolized in the decision to rebuild Warsaw's Royal Castle, which was heavily damaged by Nazi bombers in September 1939 and razed completely in 1944 — signifies the beginning of a new phase in Communist cultural policy is not yet certain.
In its evolution after 1957, Gomulka's cultural policy steered a middle course between the repressive regimentation of the Stalinist era and a complete freedom of artistic and scientific pursuit, a course that, with modification, is still pursued by Gierek. On fundamental goals and principles, the views of Gierek and his predecessors are in general agreement. The primary task of both the arts and sciences is said to be to assist the construction of socialism: art, literature, and the social sciences must help shape the socialist consciousness of the nation, while the physical and technological sciences must advance the socialist economy. Inasmuch as the party regards itself as responsible for bringing about the socialist transformation of the country, it cannot be "indifferent" to the methods and contents of artistic and scientific work. The party stresses its support of the methods of socialist realism in the arts and the methods of dialectical materialism in the sciences — methods which allegedly in no way restrict the freedom of expression or research. Moreover it accepts "progressive and useful" work arrived at through other methods. In art and literature, the party calls for a content that focuses on contemporary problems and supports "the general trend of Poland's development mapped out by the Party." While disavowing any intention of dictating on matters of form and style, party spokesmen appeal for works that are "realistic" and intelligible to the general population. Although the Gierek regime now encourages scientific and cultural exchanges with the West, it still deplores instances of uncritical acceptance of Western styles and scientific findings. Unlike Gomulka, however, who soon resorted to strict censorship, various
67
APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3
