Two Educational Projects - Tadeusz Różewicz

In the history of Polish culture the years of “small stabilization”

marked not only a revision of the Romantic tradition and heroic myths

Two Educational Projects | 175

– discussed in the previous chapter – but also attempts at reconstructing some positive models of collective identification. Władysław Gomułka’s rise to and consolidation of power paved the way for building “national communism” in Poland, as the stance of the party faction affiliated with Gomułka was referred to in the 1956 debates. Simultaneously, with the end of the post-October clashes within the Communist Party, a new power balance was established in which, besides the Gomułka-led cen-tre, a relatively liberal group emerged accompanied by the “partisans” of General M. Moczar. The latter faction, beginning with the early 1960s, strove to seize absolute power, utilizing nationalist ideology that com-bined selective and politicized collective memory with an attempt to define Poland’s national interest in terms of ethnic antagonisms. Marek Grzelewski, analysing the mechanisms of social communication in the years 1963–1970, notes that, in the sense of a mental-cultural transfor-mation, their offensive was a radical “neo-bourgeois” way of “limiting the realm of tradition, culture, its pluralisms and its values”.²⁹⁵ Moczar’s

295 “There was a retreat from a certain level of intellectual accomplishments, a certain world of values, to the place where one normally retreats after losing faith, idea, and cultural maturity – namely, to what the Germans call a children’s room, to the Kinderstube. […] Retreating there, those people would only find fragments made up of their xenophobic impulses, inartic-ulate prejudices, of past wrongs and equally unearned strokes of luck whose rationalizations, so painstakingly arrived at, were lost again. Retreating to the “children’s room”, they would find landscapes ravaged by the storm, which was connected with the history of occupation, the holocaust of the Jews, the destruction of cities, the smuggling and the looting”. M. Gr-zelewski, op. cit., p. 43 (Grzelewski’s article is, in that part, an exact repetition of Krzysztof Wolicki’s diagnosis from his 1981 paper, see K. Wolicki, Dziedzictwo Marca, in: Marzec 68.

Referaty z sesji na Uniwersytecie Warszawskim w 1981 roku, eds M. Gumkowski, M. Ofierska, Warszawa 2008, p. 188). The construction of the “public enemy” in the symbolic universe of Party nationalists was primarily based on the ideologeme of the ethnic-cultural otherness of one part of the state elites, “alien” to the rest of the homogeneous nation and acting to its detriment. According to Głowiński the word “alien” in the “March period” was no longer applied to “such phenomena as social class or ideological group”, its point of reference now being the nation. Thus “alien” stood for “nonnative”, which, given the enforced friendship with Slavic nations, led to the narrowing down of the “alienness” category to Jews and Ger-mans. M. Głowiński, Nowomowa i ciągi dalsze. Szkice dawne i nowe, op. cit., pp. 24–25. The

176 | Culture, Memory And Community

followers, or the “Moczarites”, as they were commonly called, basing their worldview on the writings of Zbigniew Załuski, among others, strove to construct the memory of the occupation days, the post-war period, and the October “thaw” in ways that would foreground them as the dominant patriotic formation, seasoned in the fight against Ger-man fascism, and representing the nation’s best interests. At the same time, the Moczarites saw themselves as victims repressed by the Stalin-ists arriving from the USSR. The formula of transmitting that ideology to the masses was an educational-patriotic rhetoric, mostly a xenopho-bic vision of history and tradition, one that projected onto Poland’s past the national, rather than class-based, social grid resulting, among other causes, from the highly instrumentalized and reduced vision of cultural heritage (and cultural memory).²⁹⁶ The Communists, though

practical criterion for evaluating the participants of the conflict was their factional-biograph-ical identity. The attacks of the nationalist faction were, after all, targeted at the segment of Communist Poland’s establishment holding the highest-ranking posts in the state apparatus and in the country’s state-run economy over the first two post-war decades. Striving to take over that group’s privileges, the nationalists from the Polish United Workers’ Party appealed to the collective memory of their generation that still cultivated the language of the 1930s’

Polish anti-Semitism (e.g. the radical nationalist rhetoric as an instrument in the struggle for political support and state power) as well as the experience of the extermination of the Jew-ish populace perpetrated by the Nazis during World War Two, mostly on the territory of our country, and that of the political terror and demoralization of the 1940s.

296 As Adam Kersten explains, the previously emphasized “revolutionary and folk traditions, those that had evolved in the days of sharp social conflicts, after 1944 soon became an anachronism, all efforts at spreading them among the masses being thus a foregone conclusion. The wither-ing class bonds were yieldwither-ing to national ones; significantly, the post-1944 transformations had been preceded by the war, which contributed enormously to raising national consciousness in the country. The direct result of those processes was the takeover of the past’s entire cultural legacy, without the division into ‘folk’ and ‘noble’ elements, or the ‘bourgeois’ and the ‘proletar-ian’ ones. The takeover and appropriation were accompanied by the presentist projection of con-temporaneous ideas onto the past. […] The illusions, cherished by some, that it was possible to eliminate ‘gentrification’ from the canon of tradition were unreal and, what is more important, eventually harmful. The new Polish society had to internalize its own past first.” A. Kersten, Sienkiewicz – “Potop” – historia, Warszawa 1974, pp. 253–254.

Two Educational Projects | 177

also exerting an influence on the image of past eras, first and foremost strove to rule, in their own best interest, over the latest history – that of the 20^th century – for example, by making it out to be an ideological extension of selected earlier epochs.

As Czapliński tells us, Załuski, the author whose books – Przepust-ka do historii [A History Pass] and Siedem polskich grzechów głównych [Seven Polish Cardinal Sins] – were reprinted many times in the 1960s,

“fought against mock-heroic tendencies, attacking the ‘ridiculers’ and

‘pacifists’, the Polish Film School and theatrical grotesque, Eroica, Lot-na, and Zezowate szczęście”, while at the same time “bombasticizing the past” and endorsing “the Sienkiewicz version of Polishness and patriotism”.²⁹⁷ Creating thus a positive mythology of national history, Załuski in fact reduced the collective memory to war and insurgent motifs, and narrowed the patriotic ethos to a sense of pride in one’s homey ways, conservative values, martyrological bravery, and military successes. What is more, he interpreted World War Two as an essen-tially Polish-German conflict, while in subsequent essays he connected the history of European revolutionary movements with the issue of Po-land’s independence in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.²⁹⁸ This

interpreta-297 P. Czapliński, PRL i sarmatyzm, op. cit., pp. 168–169. The phenomenon of the popular-ity of “Sarmatism” in Communist Poland is discussed at length by Czapliński in Resztki nowoczesności, where he notes that “both Siedem polskich grzechów głównych and the film adaptation of Potop were created not only to cure historical complexes but also as a reaction against […] pragmatic interpretations” offered by such critics of “the Sienkiewicz lesson of Polishness” as K.T. Toeplitz, P. Czapliński, Resztki nowoczesności. Dwa studia o literaturze i życiu, Kraków 2011, p. 87.

298 The author of Siedem polskich grzechów głównych, noting that “today [i.e. at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s – WB] already two-thirds of the nation are youth and children”, emphasized the pedagogical aspect of his essays and insisted that both their protagonist – by whom he meant

“the likes of Głowacki and Mastalerz, Poniatowski and Kozietulski, Sucharski and Ordon” – and their addressee is the same common man, an inhabitant of a country like many others.

Z. Załuski, Siedem polskich grzechów głównych. Nieśmieszne igraszki, Warszawa 1985, pp. 180 and 208. That memory narrative was used in the 1960s in order to redesign the political scene

178 | Culture, Memory And Community

tion of Polish historical identity entered the public discourse of Com-munist Poland, affecting also the praxis of home policies implemented by Gomułka, while the popularity of Załuski’s books among common readers and journalists reached almost a mass scale, thus really influ-encing popular opinion.²⁹⁹

An alternative, competing project of national community was the vision of Polish Catholicism developed by Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński.³⁰⁰

and create an official identity for the “partisans” and their circles. An important part of that identity was the public cult of Polish martyrology harnessed to the state machinery of “veteran-ship”. The martyrology was grounded in the image of World War Two as a conflict between two ethnic nations, Germans and Poles, and the conviction that the sacrifice of the Polish people during the war was unique in its scope. Those who endorsed that ideology projected a positive identity, focusing on educating the youth in the spirit of heroism and martyrology, recognizing the significance of the traditions of insurgent and independence movements, and defending national solidarity against internationalism. The “kinderstube” of party nationalists was thus a vision of a closed native community, firmly rooted in the traditions of Romanticism and social naturalism, grounded in the affective and morally obligating collective memory unified by the disciplining myth of the nation’s unity within the boundaries of a unitary state.

299 Janusz Dunin, writing about modern book culture, including that of Communist Poland, con-firms that Załuski was read by masses of readers. J. Dunin, Pismo zmienia świat. Czytanie-lektu-ra-czytelnictwo, Warszawa-Łódź 1998, p. 172. Barwy walki by M. Moczar was on the curricu-lum for the 8th grade of elementary school, on the elective reading list. See Język polski. Program nauczania ośmioklasowej szkoły podstawowej (tymczasowy), Warszawa 1970.

300 This conflict over the “hearts and minds” was brutally described by Gomułka in his talks with Jerzy Zawieyski of 1 October 1958 (referring, among other things, to the Cardinal’s Lublin sermon “revolving around the binary opposition: Civitas Dei – Civitas Satanae”) and of 12 May 1959: “The church is waging a war against us, but it is not going to win that war. We are going to win it, and you are going to be swept away by history. Wyszyński keeps making claims, keeps demanding something. He wants to rule over the hearts and minds. But in this country it is socialism that rules over the hearts and minds. Socialism reaches out for the hearts and minds, the church has no right to do so!” J. Zawieyski, Dzienniki, vol. I: Wybór z lat 1955–1959, Warszawa 2011, pp. 580–590, 650. The Catholic Church, in the years preceding the emergence of strong political opposition, was the only real alternative to Com-munist Poland as the authoritarian state implementing its own cultural-educational agenda in a society stripped of civic institutions. Not only did the church have its own idea of Polish identity but also the means to implement it. As Robert Krasowski writes about the church in the 1970s and 1990s: “The very down-to-earth power of running a huge institution was crucial. One that had its own structures, people, money, buildings, and, first and foremost, the pulpits, that is its own media.” R. Krasowski, Gra z Kościołem, “Polityka” 2011, no. 28,

Two Educational Projects | 179

The 1960s – as Jan Prokop tells us – was the decade of “the nation’s deep and widespread spiritual awakening triggered by the millennial festivities and the Cardinal’s pastoral activity, invariably focused on the Christian foundations of Polish identity”.³⁰¹ At the cost of concessions to the Communist regime, amounting, among other things, to the rec-ognition of post-war borders and economic reforms, the condemnation of the 1940s’ anti-Communist resistance movement, and the mainte-nance of an official distance from the institutions of the government-in-exile, the Cardinal strove to implement the ideology of “the Christian nation’s Church” and “healthy nationalism”.³⁰² As Józef M. Bocheński, a theoretician of Catholic nationalism in the 1930s, explained:

Nationalism is a social trend in the sense that it prompts realiza-tion, deepening, and expansion of certain cultural values embod-ied by a group of people; the effort is supposed to be a collective one, with personal interests being subjugated to large-scale social goals. Secondly, nationalism is a current that aims to cultivate and popularize certain cultural values. Finally, nationalism is an ex-pansionist trend, an active one, that urges its followers not only to live in accordance with certain norms, but also to strive to make as many people as possible, at least within a given group, to live accordingly.³⁰³

p. 20. The church’s “organizational assets” in Communist Poland amounted to “real estate, telephones, printing houses, personal contacts, pulpits as communication media, and also the people’s time, energy, and [political] alertness”, all the more keen in an ideological secular state. K. Kosela, op. cit., p. 207.

301 J. Prokop, op. cit., p. 19.

302 See G. Kucharczyk, op. cit., p. 75.

303 J.M. Bocheński, Szkice o nacjonalizmie i katolicyzmie polskim, Komorów 1995, p. 91 (Bocheń-ski’s book is a collection of essays and polemics from the years 1932–1938).

180 | Culture, Memory And Community

Polish identity thus conceptualized amounted to a blend of national culture, equated with the system of values and memory of the cultural nation and a religious mission within the state.³⁰⁴

304 The idea of national Catholicism , which seems to be the most integrated and consistent, was propagated in the 1930s by Bolesław Piasecki’s Falanga, a radically nationalist movement. The aim of “bepists” (nicknamed after the politician’s initials) was to create the “Catholic state of the Polish nation”. Their programme featured a strong critique of “amoral” culture (i.e. individu-alistic-liberal, democratic and Communist) and plans for great social-economic reforms – with the ideological impact aimed not at intellectual elites but at the working masses – both resulting from the essentially romantic premise that it is the collective, mass-swaying experiences that are decisive for the nation’s moral-ideological unity. The Catholic nationalism of Falanga opposed the nationalist tradition of Narodowa Demokracja (National Democracy) in which the nation constituted the absolute value. The only absolute value in the ideology of the “bepists” was God, the nation remaining the highest good and the loftiest worldly aim. The manifestation of that vision of Poland were the Jasna Góra Vows connected with the academic pilgrimage of 1936.

The event was organized by the nationalists supporting the programme of the “Catholic state of the Polish nation”. As Lipski reminded us, throughout the pilgrimage there was a continuous emphasis on anti-communism, the Christianizing mission of the Polish nation in secularized Europe, the necessity to make Catholic ethics an integral part of national culture, of social and familial life, and of youth education. See J.J. Lipski, Katolickie państwo narodu polskiego, Lon-don 1994, pp. 87, 97, 216–225. Ksawery Pruszyński, comparing in his reportage coverage of the Vows the model of the Polish Catholicism of the 1930s with the French and Spanish ones, noticed in the former not only an emphasis on mass participation and the national unity (of the people and the intelligentsia) but also some traits of Sarmatian religiousness. K. Pruszyński, Podróż po Polsce, op. cit., pp. 26–29. Falanga’s programme was continued after 1945 by the so-called Catholic-National Movement, whose leader, B. Piasecki, strictly collaborated with the Communist regime. The ideology of the “Catholic state of the Polish nation” was also on the agenda of the Polish Episcopate. In 1947, for example, the bishops postulated that the new constitution should “duly reflect the tribal character and the Christian ideology of the nation”

(see G. Kucharczyk, op. cit., p. 72). Regulations implemented in the first years of Communist rule, such as “the introduction of the secular family, civil, and criminal legislation, judicial and administrative proceedings, secular hospital system, and, first and foremost, secular educa-tion” as well as the constitutional separation of church and state, radically reduced the Catholic church’s impact on the social reality. M.A. Rostkowski OMI, Kościół wobec procesu laicyzacji szkolnictwa w Polsce Ludowej, “Śląskie Studia Historyczno-Teologiczne” 1997, no. 30, p. 277.

Nevertheless, the episcopate, also under S. Wyszyński’s leadership, strove to carry out the pre-war political project of national-Catholic Poland, which presupposed a recourse to mass ap-peal. See A.L. Sowa, Historia polityczna Polski 1944–1991, Kraków 2011, p. 277. From Stefan Wyszyński’s articles published in “Ateneum Kapłańskie” in the years 1932–1939, when he was Editor-in-Chief of the periodical, one can infer that the ideological stance of the future Cardinal

Two Educational Projects | 181

Creating and popularizing its own vision of the world, the Church – according to the sociologist – represented the social grievances about the status quo, while at the same time organized the means of expressing such grievances, defined the moral dimension of political problems and private life in Communist Poland (defining public space as the “clash between the forces of good and evil”), offered identity patterns and behavioural norms to individuals, and devised long-term strategies for collective action.³⁰⁵ Car-dinal Wyszyński, understanding the realities of applied socialism, addressed his message not to the intelligentsia – which, until the mid-1960s, was rather critical of national-Catholic traditions or considered religion a pri-vate affair, while at the same time accepting the values of Christian person-alism – but to the average Pole suffering from an identity crisis.³⁰⁶ Aimed at creating his/her communal identity were such rituals as the 1956 renewal

and Primate of Poland was resolutely anti-Communist and anti-liberal, simultaneously stressing the value of “social justice”. After all, the periodical in those days would often feature lengthy articles on cultural nationalism and its pedagogical principles, whose authors looked favourably upon National Socialism and “anti-Judaism”, blaming them only, if at all, for their insufficient acknowledgement of Catholic values. See e.g. Rev. Dr P. Tochowicz, Zasady wychowawcze na-cjonalizmu i politycyzmu, “Ateneum Kapłańskie” 1937, no. 2 and 3; Rev. Dr Józef Pastuszka, Filozoficzne i społeczne idee A. Hitlera, “Ateneum Kapłańskie” 1938, no. 1. On the subject of distinguishing within Polish nationalism the current of Catholic nationalism, see the polemic:

B. Grott, Idee mają konsekwencje and M. Zmierczak, W odpowiedzi na uwagi Bogumiła Grotta, published in “Przegląd Zachodni” 2011, no. 1, pp. 273–282.

305 K. Kosela, op. cit., pp. 146, 155.

306 If, after the period of “privatization” of religious worldview in post-war Poland (as the 1958 polls indicated), denominational identification and collective religious rituals were to recover their original function of “group symbol and banner”, a conducive psycho-social undertow was needed. This undertow is reconstructed by the sociologist as “an accumulation of links between socio-political stands and attitudes to religion, and an acknowledgement of those links among big social groups”. The process resulted in the “politicization of one’s attitude towards religion on a massive scale”. By way of historical analogy, Nowak points to the victory of Catholicism among the Polish gentry in the 17^th century. The nobles, after a period of divisions and refor-mational transformations, re-integrated their ranks, using religion as “weapon and banner” in the struggle for their group interests, elevating, one could add, the latter to the rank of national

W dokumencie Tadeusz Różewicz (Stron 175-192)