APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3
economic pressures, and on occasion to arrest, demotion, and withdrawal of foreign travel privileges as means of taming errant intellectuals, the Gierek regime (while retaining censorship) has not only removed prominent waivers from earlier blacklists, been more solicitous of their material welfare, and considerably eased restrictions on foreign travel, but has actively attempted to engage the cultural milieu in the process of "national renewal."
Many Polish intellectuals, particularly of the older generation, seem to accept Gierek's terms for a new relationship. Indeed, these terms benefit from the contrast with those imposed by Gomulka during the decade of the 1960's. During that period, disillusioned and frustrated writers and creative artists manifested their opposition both passively and actively. Halfhearted compliance, evasion, and inactivity were used to counter dictated production of socialist art, while new artistic forms flourished, often suffused with allegorical political overtones. Clandestinely procured and circulated books, pamphlets, tape recordings, and other articles of cultural expression, produced in the West, enjoyed great popularity among intellectuals. Active expression of antiregime dissent included the March 1964 public protest by 34 leading writers against censorship, the intellectual turmoil of late 1966, and the protests of both party and nonparty writers in early 1968 which led directly to the student demonstrations in March of that year and contributed to the general political crisis within the regime. The degree to which a relatively isolated event could unleash widespread cultural dissent which soon gathered its own social and political momentum was illustrated by the chain of events in the spring of 1968, which were triggered by the regime's closing in Warsaw of Mickiewicz's play Dztady (The Forefathers) beca [illegible] acclaim for the play's anti-Tsarist, [illegible], anti-Russian sentiments. The [illegible] intellectual atmosphere accompanying the political crisis in Poland, together with [illegible] purges of leading academicians and artists in the fields of film, theater, and literature ushered in what many Polish intellectuals regarded as another, although temporary, period of cultural "dark ages." By contrast, therefore, the Gierek regime's easing of restraints and, most importantly, its commitment to alleviate the social and political strains in society that fueled cultural dissent, does seem to most intellectuals to be shaping de facto a new, pragmatic cultural policy.
a. Literature and art
Poland's postwar literature is largely the product of an irreconcilable conflict between traditional standards of artistic excellence and the Communist regime's ideological requirements. Although there has appeared no work of masterpiece caliber, either as judged by Western artistic criteria or by the values of socialist realism, much of the output has literary merit and much commands interest from a sociopolitical viewpoint. With some exceptions, the literature of the Stalinist era shows a high degree of adaptation to the required doctrine of socialist realism and is characterized by uniformity and stereotype. Most works of distinction belong either to the early postwar period or to the years of the "thaw" after Stalin's death, roughly 1954 to 1957. Many of them were harshly attacked by the Gomulka regime for having broken off "from the main current of the life of the nation," laving unheeded appeals from the regime for a literature treating the contemporary man undergoing socialist transformation. Instead, they sought safety in historical themes, favoring in particular World War II and the German occupation.
Postwar literaturę includes important contributions to the novel, short story, poetry, and drama, made by both an older and younger generation of writers. Of several well-established prewar novelists writing in the postwar period, Jerzy Andrzejewski (1909- ), has probably become the best known, largely, but not exclusively, through his Popiol i diamond (Ashes and Diamonds). Published in 1949 and later made into a successful motion picture, this much-discussed novel deals in a skeptical manner with the clash between Communist and anti-Communist forces at the end of the war. Other productive prose writers of the older generation include Adolf Rudnicki (1912- ), most of whose works explore the Jewish tragedy of World War II; Antoni Golubiew (1907- ), whose Boleslaw Chrobry is considered one of the best postwar historical novels; and Tadeusz Breza (1905-70), whose works have attacked the bureaucracy of both the Polish state and the Vatican. Postwar poetry came to the forefront during the "thaw" of the mid-1950's. The outstanding poets of those years were Mieczyslaw Jastrun (1903- ) and Adam Wazyk (1905- ), whose Poemat dla doroslych (Poem for Adults) played a significant part in the intellectual ferment of 1955-56.
The younger generation of writers achieved prominence after October 1956. They are chiefly associated with a "black" literature trend condemned by regime critics for being "an awkward imitation of existentialism" and featuring elements of brutality allegedly copied from the U.S. novelist Ernest
68
APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3
