Vystosky

Michael Pugliese debsian at pacbell.net
Fri Jan 31 08:32:50 PST 2003

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On censorship in People's Poland see, "The Black Book of Polish Censorship, " Random House/Vintage, 1984, translated from a '77 Polish samizdat derived from official files.

<URL: http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/staff/Blackbook.html > 1977 London

A collection of Polish censorship documents from 1974 - 77 "Taken from the forthcoming Censorship: A World Encyclopedia, edited by Derek Jones, to be published by Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, London, in May 2000"

The Black Book of Polish Censorship (Czarna ksiega cenzury PRL)consists of approximately 700 pages of classified documents, which the Cracow censor, Tomasz Strzyzewski, smuggled out of People's Poland to Sweden in February 1977. Strzyzewski had collected, copied and removed these materials from his office between the summer of 1975 and his departure. The London emigre publisher Aneks published them first in two volumes in 1977. Subsequently, extracts were published in Poland, appearing in the bulletin of the oppositionist Workers' Defence Committee as well as in other underground journals such as Zapis (The Record). The "second circulation" publisher NOWA issued selections from the materials in book form in 1977 in a run of some 1500 copies, making it one of the biggest underground publications in the pre-Solidarity era .

The Black Bookrevealed for the first time to a wider audience the extraordinary extent of censorship in socialist Poland. It removed the anonymity of both those working in censorship (an annex in vol. I lists the names and office numbers of censors in Warsaw together with those of the heads of the regional offices) as well as the principles according to which they operated. Previously, the workings of the censorship office, whose existence was itself an official secret, and the rationale behind its procedures had been largely the subject of (informed) speculation on the part of Polish intellectuals. The Black Book, however, provided the first concrete evidence of the reality of censorship within the entire Soviet Bloc, and therefore became a major point of reference for commentators on information control in those countries.

The appearance of these materials had a profound impact upon the Polish intelligentsia, particularly writers, who were astounded by the draconian restrictions applied by the state. These restrictions included a complete ban on the works of Kazimierz Orlos, who had dared to publish the novel A Fine Den of Thieves, his expose of small-town Poland of the Gomulka period, in the Paris Instytut Literacki in 1973, and the notorious "blacklist" of 37 authors (in reality, writers, artists, actors), who had signed petitions against changes to the Constitution in 1975 - 76 and whose names could not be mentioned in the press without prior application on a case-by-case basis to the central administration. The publication of the Black Bookundoubtedly gave an enormous fillip to the activities of the underground publishing network, by demonstrating the need for its existence, and also increased the pressure upon the authorities to relax restrictions on creative work.

The information gathered by Strzyzewski extended, however, far beyond details of cultural repression, although they were of a particularly dramatic kind. The Black Book provided a fascinating insight into the government's almost pathological sensitivity about the country's economic performance and social policy. In effect, it was principally journalists who bore the brunt of the censor's attentions - indeed, censors themselves claimed that the press was the most prestigious area of their work (see: Schopflin, p. 105) - especially as the economy collapsed towards the end of the 1970s. The bulk of materials in the Black Bookrepresent the foundations of the regime's so-called "propaganda of success" - the rigorously enforced positive image of life in Poland at the time. The Party's obsession with information control and its desire to stifle dissenting or critical views can be found in instructions regarding even small-scale affairs, such as a gagging order applied to news of the emission of harmful substances from "material used to seal windows in School No. 80 in Gdansk", which had resulted in the suspension of classes (Leftwich Curry, p. 219). Evident in this particular example was one of the key principles of censorship, namely to atomize society according to information provision (from complete blackouts on certain information - as here - to limited dissemination of information to local concerned parties) and thereby to forestall any general informed resistance to the official version.

Terming these materials a book is something of a misnomer. Rather, they represented part of a constantly expanding and ever changing catalogue of annotations or memoranda ("zapisy"), as well as training materials and reports, all of which governed the censor's activity. The central document was the "Book of Memoranda and Recommendations" of the Main Office for Control of the Press, Publications and Public Performances in Warsaw. This might be described as the censor's "Bible", a source of reference in doubtful cases, consisting of 13 sections beginning with new items and then covering industry, economic issues, foreign relations, religious affairs, culture and emigrŽs. In the interests of improving the censor's work and alerting him - or, more often, her- to deficiencies, quarterly overviews of censorship activity were issued (theBlack Bookcontains a copy of "Instructional Materials" for the first quarter of 1974), listing key "omissions" and "superfluous interventions", and offering "proposals, explanations and interpretations", which largely related mistakes back to the appropriate memoranda. The special status accorded to the press is illustrated by the fortnightly reports on censored materials from newspapers (for the period from mid-March 1974 to mid-December 1975). In these reports, materials fall under 4 headings: socio-political, socio- economic, literary and historical, religious. These were prefaced by tables showing the number of cuts in each category and the total number of "offences" committed by each newspaper during each fortnightly period. The authorities might then use these figures as a basis for punishing offenders by reducing paper provision and thus limiting the size or circulation of those which repeatedly infringed.

While showing the efficient operation of media control in mid-1970s Poland, the Black Booknonetheless reveals the conditional nature of that censorship. Although ideological considerations were uppermost in the minds of officials, the realities of Poland's position between West and East led the censorship into seemingly contradictory positions: thus, restrictions upon information about Polish emigres presupposed their inclusion - albeit to a limited degree - within public channels, in which respect Poland was considerably more liberal than other Bloc countries. Nor did bans upon authors exist in perpetuity. Significant in this connection is the figure of the 1980 Nobel laureate, Czeslaw Milosz, whose works began to appear legally on a large scale in Poland after 1980 for the first time since the war. The relaxation of censorship criteria in respect of his person and work was indicated in another document dating from January 1981, which was later stolen from the Censorship Office and published in Paris Kultura (1981, 7-8). In the mid-1980s, Solidarity published a set of 5 monthly reports for 1983 - 84, which had been smuggled out of the Lublin office. One of the ironies of the collapse of communism in Poland is that, in view of the current 30-year restriction on access to documents in Polish state archives, the originals of the documents Strzyzewski stole may not be officially available for another 7 - 10 years. In some cases - such as the infamous blacklist (see Fik) - they may have disappeared for good.