Jacek Kuroń - First signs of a thaw (47/150)

To listen to more of Jacek Kuroń’s stories, go to the playlist:    • Jacek Kuroń (Social activist)   Polish activist Jacek Kuroń (1934-2004) helped to transform the political landscape of Poland. He was expelled from the communist party, arrested and incarcerated. He was also instrumental in setting up Workers' Defence Committee (KOR) and became a Minister of Labour and Social Policy. [Listeners: Jacek Petrycki, Marcel Łoziński; date recorded: 1987] TRANSCRIPT: We see here the aversion of the masses towards participating in political life which serves to create bureaucracy and distortions. And so we had to - and this distorts this entire system. Somehow, we had to ask about those deformations, what they were like. Around the same time, a group of friends which was made up of more than the Walterowcy, not just those who went off to set up the Walterowcy but a broader and older group, began to meet and to read and to debate. We read the history of WKP(b) aloud, because that's where we had to look for the start where, what, how that revolution came to be depraved, when it was depraved. We thought perhaps it was during the collectivisation, that perhaps during that mass war of the peasants... in that complete destruction. I want to say that this knowledge, we didn't yet have access to any classified information, so this knowledge that collectivisation was a mass battle fought against the village we got from Soviet literature, from these 'bruski' which I read very carefully and in which I think it's well reported. There are traces of this, but they were enough to pick this up. In any event, these were the kinds of discussions we had. At the same time, as I've already mentioned here, there were some signs that the thaw had already begun. To go on about it now is a bit pointless. I remember the amazing discussions we had on the primacy of heavy industry. And suddenly a resolution, it was the fourth or fifth plenary session which said something in regards to this matter which violated the dogma of the primacy of heavy industry. There was this kind of security session under the influence of light from Radio Free Europe, but none of my friends listened to Radio Free Europe then, so we knew nothing about any light. I think that's how it was, I have an impression that I remember this well. And the idea that Stalin is the person with whom it's all connected, that he is the reason for Party bureaucratisation - we had decided this for ourselves a whole lot earlier. So when bad Khrushchev appeared, we were all read... this wasn't a good enough answer. Bad Khrushchev means, Tyrmand wrote a story about 'Bad' who was a hooligan, and Khrushchev presented his Secret Speech which was being sold in Warsaw, therefore it was said there were two bestsellers, the first one 'Bad' by Tyrmand, and the other one 'Bad' by Khrushchev. But, when I think about it, in a wider social context, the force that reacted first to those reforms coming from above was the youth, and it was a cultural revolution. This was most obvious in the art, the clothes, the way of dancing, love, all of these things. The first rally I took part in was a meeting with Krzywicka. Krzywicka had written a piece about love for 'Nowa Kultura'. It was frivolous, saying that free love is acceptable, and there was a massive meeting in Auditorium Maximum, a genuine rally, a meeting with her where the audience was divided into two equal sides. It's hard to say if they were equal, but both sides were more or less even. One side was for sex before marriage, the other against. That's when I took the floor for the first time ever at a rally, and I said that it really didn't matter, that I understood Catholics, they've got priests, but those who don't believe and who are saying, what the official is saying, I don't understand that, this is love we're talking about. Afterwards, Krzywicka summed up by saying, 'You're all so old' - she dated back to the time of free love - 'you're all so old! There was one young voice here among you, I disagree with him' - and she pointed to me - 'I disagree with him completely because he's making sex into a fetish, he can't do it without love, but at least it was a young voice and he had a point to make, but you, you're all stuck with formalism.' She didn't understand that. It was simply a question about how life should be lived, which, I've said this here already, the profoundest evil of Stalinism was the rupturing of culture which itself provides answers to the question of how to live life. Everything was destroyed. [...] Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/jac... to read the remaining part of the transcript.