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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3


language broadcasts in favor of Polish-language programs for expatriates and for Polish seamen on the high seas. In mid-1972 this effort was conducted by means of nine shortwave transmitters and totaled 336 hours per week. Of this total, 24.5 hours were devoted to musical programs introduced in various languages, and 101.5 hours to broadcasts in the Polish languages for Poles abroad. The net total of foreign-language programs—broadcast in 11 languages—was 210 hours per week in 1972 as compared with about 157 hours in 1966. Much of this increase was accounted for by the initiation of Arabic-language programs after the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Czech-language programs after the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, the doubling of German-language programing and an increase in English-language broadcasts, both an aspect of Poland's detente policies. Simultaneously, a token 1-hour per week Russian-language program was discontinued. Major radiobroadcasts to and from Poland are shown in Figure 55.


3. Press, publishing, and film

Newspapers and periodicals, which for a short time in 1956 displayed a liveliness and unorthodoxy unequaled in the Communist sphere, soon thereafter became largely stereotyped and exhortative rather than informative in content. Since the advent of the Gierek regime in December 1970, the official stress on two-way communications between the people and the government has enlivened most publications in terms both of their informative content and many nonpolitical, special interest features. Although censorship remains, and the self-regulatory approach of most editors has generally precluded the reappearance of ideological unorthodoxy, the press has regained at least some part of the influence it had before the rapid expansion of radio and television in the 1960's. The range of special interest publications, many of them popularly oriented and wholly nonpropagandistic, has always been greater in Poland that in most other Communist countries.

According to official data, 55 newspapers (43 dailies) and 1,903 periodicals were published in 1970; the latter included 117 weeklies, 575 monthlies, and 452 quarterlies. The average daily circulation of all newspapers combined was claimed to be 8.3 million, and overall circulation of periodicals, 23.8 million. This compares with data for 1955 when 45 newspapers and 593 periodicals had a circulation of 5.4 million and 12.7 million, respectively. Warsaw is the press and publishing center of the country; in 1970, 18 of the 55 newspapers, and 1,298 of the 1,903 periodicals were published in the Polish capital. The industrial


FIGURE 55. Major radiobroadcasts to and from Poland, 1972 (U/OU) (chart/graph)


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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3