Since the essential precondition for creating the desired new socialist citizen was the elimination of the family unit as a formative influence, women were obliged to work and to place their children in crêches, where the process of indoctrination began. It was followed up in nursery, primary and secondary schools. Textbooks, particularly on history, were rewritten and new subjects, mostly dealing with Marxism or the history of Russian communism, found their way onto the curriculum. The children were obliged to join the Scouts or the Pioneers, and later the Union of Polish Youth (ZMP), which ensured that they were fully occupied outside school hours, and took them off to summer camps or winter sports during the holidays. These organisations fed them with a stream of propaganda, taught them to distrust their parents, and inculcated socialist principles and the virtues of collective action. The process of indoctrination did not end with school. An Institute of Social Sciences turned out new cadres of teachers and experts who subjected every field of study and endeavour to Marxist theory.
Censorship was omnipresent, and even some of the works of classic authors such as Mickiewicz and Słowacki were banned. Translations of books from ‘imperialist languages’ such as English were halted, and the market was flooded with translations of Russian socialist literature. Adults had to endure lectures and courses so that they too might understand the class struggle and Marxist economic theory, and everyone was expected to belong to at least one progressive organisation, such as the Polish Women’s League or the Polish-Soviet Friendship Society.
Culture played a major part in the process. Outside a handful of showcase examples, what was left of Poland’s heritage, particularly the built environment, was wilfully neglected or destroyed, including tens of thousands of country houses.
In 1947 the Party’s Central Committee issued guidelines on which themes should be addressed in art and literature, denouncing the ‘anachronistic ideal of falsely interpreted “artistic freedom” ’, and in the following year called for a new literature and art of Socialist Realism. The members of the Writers’ Union were taken on factory visits while their weekly organ
TWENTY-TWO
The announcement of Stalin’s death, on 5 March 1953, stunned more than it relieved, and the degree to which his system had been implanted in Poland can be gauged from the fact that many Poles actually wept. Katowice was promptly renamed Stalinogród as a mark of respect and subservience while the Party waited nervously to see which way the wind would blow. After a few months, the signals from Moscow were that a general ‘thaw’ could take place. As a result, writers who had not published for years appeared in print, journalists discussed taboo subjects and economists went so far as to question Marxist-Leninist theories.
A few months later, Colonel Józef Światło, deputy chief of the UB’s Tenth Department, in charge of keeping tabs on the Party itself, defected and began a series of broadcasts on Western radio. Even senior Party members were astonished to hear to what extent every aspect of Polish life had been dictated by Moscow. Gomułka and others were quietly released from prison, the Ministry of Public Safety was abolished, and the security services lowered their profile. Party Secretary Bierut admitted that ‘mistakes’ had been made and that there had been a ‘tendency to widen the field of activity of the security services’, but he wavered.