caviar and ashes

marci shore

Caviar and Ashes

a w a r sa w g e n e r a t i o n s life and death
i n m a rx i s m , 1 9 1 8 1 9 6 8

yale university press new h a v e n & l o n d o n

Published with assistance from the Koret Foundation.

Copyright 2006 by Marci Shore.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and
except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shore, Marci.
Caviar and ashes : a Warsaw generations life and death in Marxism, 19181968 /
Marci Shore.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-300-11092-8 (alk. paper)
1. CommunismPolandHistory20th century. 2. PolandIntellectual life
19181945. 3. PolandIntellectual life19451989. I. Title.
HX315.7.A6S45 2006
320.532309438dc22
2005014528
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my friends, the women who kept me company

c o n t e n ts

Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xv
Cast of Characters xvii
Introduction: When God Died ... 1
1 Once upon a Time, in a Caf Called Ziemiaska 10
2 Love and Revolution 33
3 A Visit from Mayakovsky 52
4 A Funeral for Futurism 70
5 Entanglements, Terror, and the Fine Art of Confession 90
6 Autumn in Soviet Galicia 153
7 Into the Abyss 194

v i i i c o n t e n t s

8 Stalinism amidst Warsaws Ruins 257

9 Ice Melting 305
10 The End of the Aair 330
Epilogue 360
Conclusion: Does History Go On? 366

Notes 379
Index 447

a c k n o wledgments

in t h e c o u r s e o f researching and writing Caviar and Ashes I have

incurred a tremendous number of debts, and I am very happy to be able
to acknowledge some of them here. I owe the most to my unceasingly
generous advisor Norman Naimark and the other members of my dissertation committee at StanfordHans Ulrich (Sepp) Gumbrecht, Amir
Weiner, and Steven Zipperstein. They believed in this project from the
very beginning, and I am enormously grateful for their ideas, critiques and
support. I cannot imagine that anyone has ever had a better experience
as a graduate student. I owe more than I can express here to Norman for
teaching me to love the archives and for keeping me grounded, with unfailing honesty and saintly patience, when my ideas wandered; and to Sepp
for sharing his beautiful, inspiring imagination, for loving this project as
much as I haveand for wanting to hear more about the caviar at Bruno
Jasieskis Moscow dinner party. The rst draft of this book was written
as a dissertation at Stanford during the 20002001 academic year. My
warmest thanks to Amelia Glaser, who shared her home in Napa Valley
with me and read everything; to Meredeth Rouse and Daniel Shore who
(besides being the only tourists in Warsaw the previous January) helped
edit the entire text and suggested a Cast of Characters; and to Alexander Zeyliger who, among many other things, helped me decipher the
ix

 a c k n ow l e d g m e n t s

handwriting in Wadysaw Broniewskis NKVD les and shared his love

and intuition for Russian literature and the Russian language.
This book was made possible by the opening of the archives that
followed the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union. It was made possible as well by what were undoubtedly dicult
decisions on the part of this books protagonists and their heirs to preserve
(and make accessible) personal correspondence. Researching Caviar and
Ashes took me to seventeen archives in ve countries. That these trips
were successful owes much to archivists, friends, and colleagues. I am
especially indebted to Sawomir Kdzierski and Regina Kamierczak of
the Wadysaw Broniewski Museum in Warsaw, who were always generous with their time and their knowledge. Sawomir Kdzierski also
answered countless, intricate questions via email. My thanks as well to
Grzegorz Sotysiak, who provided me with much material from his archive in Warsaw; Padraic Kenney, who introduced me to Grzegorz; Ksenia
Zadorozhnaia, who took me to the Mayakovsky Archive in Moscow and
was a constant source of support in Russia; Gennady Pasecznik, who was
so helpful at Adolf Bermans archive in Tel Aviv (and made hundreds of
pages of photocopies for me); Jerzy Tomaszewski, who was a warm and
generous advisor in Warsaw; Jan Gross, who pointed me towards the
Central Committee of Polish Jews Collection at the Jewish Historical Institute; Iwona Butz, who facilitated my access to everything at the Jewish
Historical Institute; Eleanora Syzdek, who pointed me toward Kiev; Serhy
Yekelchyk, who put in a good word for me at the archives in Kiev; and the
American Councils for International Education sta in Washington and
Moscow, who arranged my trips to Russia and Ukraine.
I have been very fortunate as well to have had so many colleagues
and interlocutors with whom to consult at various stages. Lara Heimert,
my editor at Yale, had faith in a long, unconventional manuscript by a
rst-time author. Molly Egland stepped in and took care of the manuscript
following Laras departure. Gavin Lewis was a remarkably attentive and
talented copyeditor. Jessie Hunnicutt managed the production of this book
with unwavering enthusiasm. Henry Dasko, Jan Gross, Tony Judt, Antony
Polonsky, Yuri Slezkine, Timothy Snyder, and Michael Steinlauf read and
commented on the whole manuscript at various stages; Brian Porter, Luisa
Passerini, Janet Rabinowitch, and Gabriella Safran read and commented
on chapters. Asia Bartczak, Kacper Bartczak, Ewa Domaska, Magorzata

acknowledgments x i

Fidelis, Anna Frajlich, and Alexander Zeyliger oered suggestions about

translation in specic instances. Iwona Butz and Joanna Swat helped me
to decipher Wadysaw Broniewskis and Aleksander Wats handwriting,
respectively. Wadysaw Bartoszewski, Emanuel Berman, Marek Edelman, Wadysaw Krajewski, Mr. and Mrs. Aleksander Masiewicki, Teresa
Toraska, Lucyna Tychowa, Ewa Wasilewska, Ryszarda Zachariasz, and
the late Czesaw Miosz, Irena Olecka, and Chaim Finkelstein spoke with
me about the protagonists of this book whom they had known. Aleksander
Masiewicki allowed me to use his letters to Adolf Berman. Ewa Zawistow
ska provided me with copies of Wanda Wasilewskas letters to her grandmother, Janina Broniewska, and shared with me much from her own life
in a fascinating correspondence about her grandparents. Exposing ones
own life to the scrutiny (and implicit voyeurism) of a historian is rarely
a painless choice, and I remain enormously grateful for their openness
and generosity.
I owe thanks as well to many other people, including Hanna Markowicz and Wacaw Przemysaw Turek for teaching me Polish, and teaching
me well; Gertrud Pacheco and Margaret Tompkins at Stanford for supportively easing various logistical crises; Luisa Passerini and her research
group Europe and Love in Essen for being such interesting company;
Joshua Safran for hosting me in New Haven; Tony Judt for recommending
a lighter introduction; Piotr Sommer for discussing Wats correspondence
with Mioszand for loving Mayakovsky; Henry Dasko for being so enthusiastic; Gail Glickman for sharing her love of languages and literature
for over three decades; Henning Ritter at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
for asking me to write without footnotes; the young taxi driver in Kiev for
spending (and enjoying) an afternoon at Wasilewska and Korneichuks
dacha in Pliuto; Ina and Jonatan Markovitch and their children for keeping me company in Kiev; the late (and much-missed) H. Gordon Skilling
and the Czech seminar in Toronto for creating a wonderful intellectual
space; Jacek Leociak for many conversations in Warsaw; David Holloway
and Barton Bernstein for believing in my scholarly potential before there
was any good reason to do so; Eva Kalivodov, for introducing me to the
(very intricate) world of Slavic grammarand of translation; Brian Porter
for rescuing my panel in Tampere, Finland, and giving such an exciting,
entirely impromptu discussants paper; Nicholas Basila for saving me
during my various and sundry computer crises; Chad Martin for putting

x i i a c k n ow l e d g m e n t s

together my desk in California; Bradley Abrams for a decades worth of

conversations about Eastern Europe; Mikoaj Kunicki for giving me a copy
of Lucyfer Unemployed as a present; Hiroaki Kuromiya for having faith
both in this manuscript and in the complexity of the human psyche; my
adopted nephews Moshe Chaim Bookstein and Max Patyk-Finkel for being
my little buddies in Warsaw and Stanford, respectively; Robert Shore for
asking what existentialism means; Dariusz Stola for asking why I felt so
close to these angst-laden poets; Jan Gross for being so supportive, and
most of all for introducing me to Stephanie; Stephanie Steiker for loving
this projectand for more than I could ever thank her; Agata Jagieo
for coming to our Hannah Arendt seminar in Warsaw in 1997 and for
speaking to me in Polish; Kasia Chamera for keeping me sane during the
Polish winter (and checking the Polish diacritical marks in my notes); Ross
Forman for moral support; Ian Bremmer for insisting that I write novels;
Lida Havriljukova for telling me that I have a Russian soul; Konstanty
Gebert for telling me he felt responsible for communism as a person on
the left, but not as a Jew; the late Chaim Finkelstein and his wife Jadwiga
for the vegetarianism analogy; The Russian School at Middlebury (and my
teachers Todd Armstrong, Yulia Morozova, and Ludmila Parks) for being
amazing; and Ludmila Parks for explaining to me that the world is divided
into two kinds of people: those who have read The Brothers Karamazov
and those who have not.
A thank you as well to all my friends and colleagues at Stanford,
Columbia, and Indiana Universities. At Indiana University the History
Department benets from the friendliest sta I have ever encountered,
and the Slavicists benet from excellent library resources cultivated by
Murlin Croucher. In Bloomington I have also been extremely fortunate
to nd myself amidst three extradepartmental bodies: the Russian and
East European Institute, the Polish Studies Center, and the Jewish Studies
Program. The opportunity to be a part of all three and to surround myself
with colleagues with such rich knowledge of both Slavic and Jewish studies
has been a unique one for which I am grateful. I share, moreover, with
Maria Bucur a vibrant group of graduate students.
I also want to acknowledge all those who generously supported the research for this project over the past six years: the Institute of International
Education Fulbright Program, the Center for Russian and East European
Studies at Stanford, the International Research and Exchanges Board, the

acknowledgments x iii

Fulbright-Hays Program, the Mellon Foundation, the Taube Center for

Jewish Studies at Stanford, the Harriman Institute at Columbia University,
the American Council for International Education, the Russian and East
European Institute at Indiana University, the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University, and the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut in
Essen, where I wrote the nal two chapters. The History Department at
Indiana University gave me leave in fall 2004; and the Institut fr die
Wissenschaften vom Menschen, an extremely congenial place to work, was
my host in Vienna during the nal stages of preparing this manuscript.
The responsibility for what I say in the pages that follow is, of course,
my own.
A nal note: In transliterating from Cyrillic I have followed a modied
version of the Library of Congress system, with the exception of instances
in which other transliterations have become conventional, and when citing English-language sources that have already adopted a transliterated
version of a given name. All translations of sources cited in Polish and
Russian are my ownas are all inadequacies. And a nal thank-you: to
Timothy Snyderfor asking (and subsequently not asking) about the
Berman brothers.

a b b r e v i ations

Bund

Der Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln, un Rusland

(The General Union of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland,
and Russia)
Komunistyczna Partia Polski (Communist Party of Poland)
KPP
NKVD Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (Peoples Commissariat
for Internal Aairs)
Polska Partia Socjalistyczna (Polish Socialist Party)
PPS
PZPR Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza (United Polish Workers
Party)

xv

c a s t o f characters

a d o l f b e r m a n (19061978)younger brother of Jakub Berman; a

teacher and writer, trained as a social psychologist; one of the leaders of

the Marxist Zionist party Poalei Zion Left; active in the Jewish resistance
and in egota during the war; emigrated to Israel in 1950 and became a
member of the Israeli Knesset. Died of cancer in Tel Aviv in 1978.
jakub berman (19011984)older brother of Adolf Berman; a liaison of

the Communist Party of Poland with the intelligentsia during the interwar
years; one of a triumvirate of postwar Stalinist dictators in Poland; oversaw cultural aairs and the security apparatus during the Stalinist years;
expelled from the Party in 1957. Died in Warsaw in 1984.
m a r i a n b o g at k o (19061940)a bricklayer by trade who became

Wanda Wasilewskas second husband; active in the Polish Socialist Party

during the interwar years. Killed by the NKVD in Lvov in 1940.
j e r z y b o r e j s z a (19051952)brother of the Stalinist security ocer

Jacek Raski; enchanted rst with Zionism and later with Spanish anarchism before becoming a communist; a leading gure in cultural aairs
during and immediately after the war. Died prematurely in 1952 shortly
after his fall from the Partys grace.
xvii

x v i i i c a s t o f c h a r a c t e r s

mieczysaw br aun (19021942)a poet from d associated with the

poetic avant-garde in the 1920s; friend of Wadysaw Broniewski; irted

with Marxism in the interwar years. Died in the Warsaw ghetto in 1942.
janina broniewska (19041981)author of childrens literature as well

as three volumes of memoirs and two wartime notebooks; a journalist in

the Soviet Union during the war and a Party activist in the postwar years;
the rst wife of the poet Wadysaw Broniewski and the closest friend of
Wanda Wasilewska. Died in 1981.
w a d y s aw broniewski (18971962)a poet who fought against the

Soviets in Pisudskis army during the Polish-Bolshevik War; irted with

the futurists in the 1920s, yet remained more a lyrical poet than an avantgarde poet; a revolutionary poet by the mid- to late 1920s; imprisoned in
the Soviet Union 19401941; spent the latter part of the war in Jerusalem
after leaving the Soviet Union with the Anders army. Died of throat cancer
in Warsaw in 1962.
wadysaw daszewski (19021971)a communist-sympathizing artist

and scenic designer who frequented Caf Ziemiaska during the interwar
years and had many friends among the poets; most likely the provocateur
in the arrests of Wadysaw Broniewski, Aleksander Wat, Anatol Stern,
and Tadeusz Peiper in Lvov in January 1940. Died in 1971.
i s a a c d e u t scher (19071967)born in a Galician shtetl; a Zionist in

his youth before becoming a Polish communist; expelled from the KPP
in 1932 for belonging to the Trotskyite opposition; emigrated to England
at the outbreak of World War II where he became a biographer of Trotsky.
Died in Rome in 1967.
m i e c z y s aw grydzewski (18941970)friend and editor of the Ska-

mander poets; editor of the liberal cultural weekly Wiadomoci Literackie

during the interwar years; emigrated to London when the Second World
War broke out and never returned to Poland. Died in England in 1970.
jan hempel (18871937)older communist activist in the cultural realm

who joined the KPP after much ideological searching; editor of Nowa

c ast of char acter sx ix

Kultura in the 1920s; imprisoned with the editorial board of Miesicznik

Literacki in 1931; emigrated to the Soviet Union. Executed in Stalins purges
in 1937.
j a r o s aw i wa s z k i e w i c z (18941980)one of the Skamander poets

who made his debut in 1918 at Pod Pikadorem; close to the Pisudski
government in the interwar years; remained in Warsaw during the war
and together with his wife was active in hiding Jews in and around their
estate in Stawisko; served as president of the Writers Union after the
war. Died in 1980.
b r u n o j a s i e ski (19011938)a futurist poet from Cracow who wore

a wide tie and a monocle in the 1920s; co-author with Anatol Stern of one
of the rst books of Marxist revolutionary poetry in Poland titled The Earth
to the Left; in 1925 left Poland for Paris, where he wrote the novel I Burn
Paris; emigrated to the Soviet Union after being deported from France in
1929; arrested in 1937. Executed in 1938 in the Stalinist purges.
l e o n k r u c z k o w s k i (19001962)began his professional life as a

chemist before becoming a writer; by 1936 an important gure at the

communist-front Congress of Cultural Workers in Lww; called into the
army as a reserve ocer in September 1939 and soon captured by the Germans; spent over ve years as a prisoner of war; leading gure in the
cultural realm during the Stalinist years. Died in 1962 in Warsaw.
i r e n a k r z y w i c k a (18991994)daughter of Bundist parents and

daughter-in-law of the famous Marxist sociologist Ludwik Krzywicki;

writer, journalist and for many years the lover of the literary critic Tadeusz
Boy-eleski (18741941); close friend of the Skamander poets; feminist
and advocate of birth control and womens sexual liberation; one of the
rst to write openly about homosexuality in interwar Poland; author of
the memoir Wyznania gorszycielki (Confessions of a Scandalous Woman).
Died in France in 1994.
alfred lampe (19001943)a young Zionist before becoming a Polish

communist; member of the KPP Central Committee who spent much

time in prison in interwar Poland; close to Wanda Wasilewska during

xx c a s t o f c h a r a c t e r s

World War II, when he played a leading role in the creation of the Union
of Polish Patriots. Died in Moscow in 1943.
j a n l e c h o (18991956)Skamander poet; broke with his old friend

Julian Tuwim in New York during World War II due to Tuwims support
for the Soviet Union. Committed suicide in New York in 1956.
micha mir ski (1905c. 1990)a member of the KPP in the 1920s and

1930s; active on the Jewish street and in the cultural sphere; editor of
both Polish and Yiddish postwar communist publications; left Poland in
the wake of the anti-Zionist campaign of 1968. Died in Denmark.
tadeusz peiper (18911969)poet and literary theorist; born in Cracow

and spent the years of World War I in Spain; leading theoretician of the
Cracow Avant-Garde; founder in the 1920s of the constructivist journal
Zwrotnica; arrested and imprisoned in Lvov in 1940; returned to Warsaw
after the war and spent his last years in isolation. Died in 1969.
j u l i a n p r z ybo (19011970)born into a peasant family and studied

at Jagiellionian University in Cracow; poet of the Cracow Avant-Garde;

leading gure in the literary sphere in the immediate postwar years; became embroiled in polemics about poetry and socialist realism. Died in
Warsaw in 1970.
a n t o n i s onimski (18951976)Skamander poet and author of a fa-

mous weekly column in Wiadomoci Literackie during the interwar years;

spent the Second World War in England; returned to Warsaw in 1951 and
lent his support to the new communist regime; leading dissident gure
in the last decade of his life. Died in Warsaw in 1976.
stanisaw ryszard stande (18971937)poet and Party activist; one

of the rst to join the KPP after its creation; second husband of Adolf
Warskis daughter Zoa Warska between 1927 and 1935; co-author with
Wadysaw Broniewski and Witold Wandurski of one of the rst volumes
of Polish proletarian poetry titled Three Salvos; left Poland for the Soviet
Union in 1931. Executed in Moscow in 1937.

c ast of char acter sxx i

a n d r z e j s tawa r (Edward Janus) (19001961)Marxist literary critic

who took an anti-Stalinist line in the 1930s; close friend of Aleksander

Wat; spent the war years in Hungary; his work was banned in communist
Poland before his rehabilitation in 1955. Died in France in 1961.
a n at o l s t e r n (18991968)a futurist poet and co-author of various

futurist manifestos together with Aleksander Wat in the early 1920s; translator of Vladimir Mayakovsky into Polish; co-author with Bruno Jasieski
of one of the rst books of Marxist revolutionary poetry in Poland titled
The Earth to the Left; later a screenwriter; arrested in Lvov in January
1940; returned to Poland after spending the war in the Soviet Union and
Palestine. Died in Warsaw in 1968.
j u l i a n s t r y j k o w s k i (19051996)born in a Jewish shtetl outside

Lww/Lemberg in Austrian Galicia; a Zionist in his youth; became a Polish

communist after his expulsion from his Zionist youth group; worked as a
proofreader of Polish-language Stalinist publications in the Soviet Union
during the war; became a novelist in the postwar years; returned his Party
card in 1967 in the wake of the Koakowski aair. Died in 1996.
julian tuwim (18941953)luminary Skamander poet originally from

d; politically unengaged during the interwar years; ed Warsaw in

September 1939 and spent the war years rst in Paris, then in Rio de
Janeiro, and nally in New York; returned to Poland in 1946 and lent his
wholehearted support to the new communist regime. Died in Warsaw
in 1953.
witold wandur ski (18911934)graphomaniac and manic-depressive

poet who was among Mayakovskys rst Polish translators; directed a

workers theater in d in the 1920s; co-author with Wadysaw Broniew
ski and Stanisaw Ryszard Stande of one of the rst volumes of Polish
proletarian poetry titled Three Salvos; left Poland for Kiev following a stay
in Polish prison; directed a Polish theater in Kiev. Executed in the Soviet
Union as a Polish nationalist in 1934.
wa n d a wa s i l ewska (19051964)daughter of independent Polands

rst foreign minister, Leon Wasilewski; Polish Socialist Party activist and

xx i i c a s t o f c h a r a c t e r s

novelist from Cracow; became the Polish Lefts personal connection to

Stalin during the war; remained in Kiev after the war with her third husband, the Ukrainian communist playwright Oleksandr Korneichuk. Died
in Kiev in 1964.
a l e k s a n d e r wat (19001967)a futurist poet in the early 1920s; be-

came a Marxist by the late 1920s; editor of the legendary Marxist newspaper Miesicznik Literacki, 19291931; imprisoned in the Soviet Union
during the war; returned to Poland in 1946; spent the latter part of the
1950s and 1960s abroad in western Europe. Committed suicide in Paris
in 1967.
o l a wat owa (19041991)Aleksander Wats wife from 1927 until his

death in 1967; deported to Soviet Kazakhstan during the war; author of the
memoir Wszystko co najwaniejsze (Everything That Is Most Important).
Died in France in 1991.
adam wayk (19051982)nicknamed Wayk brzydki twarzyk (Wayk

with the ugly little face); an independent avant-garde poet aligned neither with the futurists nor with the Cracow Avant-Garde; Polands rst
translator of the French futurist Guillaume Apollinaire; one of the postwar
dictators of cultural policy and terroreticians of socialist realism in the
Stalinist era; author of A Poem for Adults, which in 1955 inaugurated
de-Stalinization in the literary sphere, the so-called Thaw. Died in Warsaw
in 1982.
j z e f w i tt lin (18961976)poet and prose writer associated with ex-

pressionism in his early years; a Jew who converted to Catholicism; spent

his youth in Lww/Lemberg and his university years in Vienna; lived in
d from 1921 to 1927 before coming to Warsaw; close to the Skamander
poets and to Aleksander Wat; left Poland for France in 1939 and emigrated
to the United States in 1941. Died in New York in 1976.

Introduction
when god died .. .
But for us the joy came from the fundamental collapse, that there
was now room for everything, that everything was doable.
Aleksander Wat

i t wa s e a r l y w i n t e r in Berlin, thirty-six years after Nietzsche had

declared that God was dead. Now in 1918, Rosa Luxemburg wrote to Adolf
Warski, for the past three decades her fellow ideologue of internationalist Marxism in the Polish lands. She told him that their current position
of supporting Bolshevism while rejecting Lenins call for national selfdetermination was enthusiasm coupled with a critical spirit. And what
more could they desire? Like her comrade, she was uncomfortable with
Bolshevik terror, but assured Warski that it was aimed only against internal
enemies supported by European capitalists. All of this couldand with
full certainty wouldbe resolved when the European revolution came.
She added reassuringly: And this is coming!1
Rosa Luxemburg introduced Adolf Warski to the woman who would
become his wife. The marriage produced a daughter, Zoa Warska. As Luxemburg wrote to Warski of the coming European revolution, the man who
would one day be his son-in-law was studying philosophy and philology at
the university in Cracow.2 Zoa Warska and her second husband Stanisaw
Ryszard Stande belonged to a generation of Polish literary intellectuals
born at the turn of the centuryinto a Poland that had not yet come into
being but was rather only imagined in the minds of its patriots. These
young people grew up at the margins of three great empiresHabsburg,
German, and Russian, creations of centuries past. Those born in Warsaw


 i n t r o d uc t i o n

inhabited the western reaches of the tsarist empire; they grew up amid
various languages and cultures: Polish and Russian, and often Yiddish,
German, and French. Those among the Polish intelligentsia who were of
Jewish origin were rst- or second-generation assimilated Jews, Polish
patriots and cosmopolitans, their families often split apart by diering
responses to a modernity that had arrived somewhat later in Europes
east. Aleksander Wats father was a Kabbalist whose spoken language
was Yiddish, but who read Nietzsche in German and Tolstoy in Russian; as a child Wat saw Jews as antisemites did: in gabardines, dirty,
merchants, money.3 Julian Tuwim, growing up in an assimilated Jewish
family in d, felt a similar aversion to those uniformed men in beards
and their Hebraic-German garble and their traditional mutilation of Polish
speech.4 Jews werein the eyes of the assimilatedregressive characters of a dying, separatist, undesirable world. And so among these young
intellectuals even the Jewsinspired by Romantic and modernist Polish
literaturegrew up Polish, at a time when a Polish state did not yet exist,
had not for over a century.5
Patriots of a bygone Poland had never resigned themselves to statelessness. For them the nineteenth century was an age of insurrections
and of inculcating in their children the words of the national hymn: Poland has not yet perished, as long as we still live. Polish politics continued in the Polish states absence, a politics preoccupied, as throughout
nineteenth-century Europe, with nation and class. Rosa Luxemburgs Social Democratic Party denied the possibilityor desirabilityof future
Polish independence in favor of international revolution, a legacy of selfannihilation that would linger long afterwards. On this point she argued
with Lenin. More inuential on the Left was the Polish Socialist Party
(PPS), a blend of socialism and patriotism created by, among others, Jzef
Pisudski. Pisudskis vision of a reborn Poland was a multiethnic federal
ist one, united by a civic Polish patriotism. By the turn of the century
Pisudskis rival for the nations heart was Roman Dmowski, leader of the
National Democratic Party, and theorist of a more willful national egoism, of a nationalism growing increasingly xenophobic and antisemitic,
of a patriotism virtually dened by hate.6
Stanisaw Ryszard Stande and Zoa Warska were young children
when the 1905 Revolution reached Warsaw. In the center of the city, on
Theater Square, Standes mother was killed during demonstrations, and

introduction 

Stande suered an injury that would disgure his face for the rest of his
life.7 Antoni Sonimski watched the charging of the tsarist cavalry, the Cossacks on horseback, the massacre on the Square. He ed with his brother
to their home on Niecaa Street, where their physician father was already
treating the wounded.8 At a safe distance, in the courtyard of his building,
the ve-year-old Aleksander Wat led his own childrens division; they
waved a red ag and sang revolutionary songs. When his wounded brother
returned home later that day, it was the rst time the boy saw blood.9 A
decade later, those children born at the n de sicle, too young to ght,
watched one Europe destroy itself and another come into being during the
First World War. The war was a radical break in time, the end of empires,
of the partitions of Poland, of the old world. Warsaw was liberated from
the Russian Empire, as was Cracow from the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
and Pozna from Germany. In the midst of this came the Bolshevik Revolution, although what it was, no one yet knew. The occupying German
army departed from Warsaw, Pisudski arrived in the city a hero, and an
independent Polish state came into being. It was a state too ethnically
diverse to embody Dmowskis concept of nationhoodwith only twothirds ethnic Poles, and the remainder Ukrainians, Jews, Belarusians,
Germans. In the capital city of Warsaw, Polish Jews were one-third of the
citys population. A fairly cosmopolitan small empire, yet insuciently
satisfyingor secure from the Bolshevik threatfor Pisudski.10 At once
he fell into a mutually expansionist war against the Soviets in the east, a
war determining Bolshevisms western boundaries, and a war in which
many of those too young to ght in the First World War now participated.
Most often they did so themselves not knowing what the new Soviet state
meant, ghting more for love of Pisudski and of Poland than for hatred
of the Bolsheviks.
While some did suer physical battle wounds, it was a war that seems
to have left astoundingly few scars on the young intellectuals, who afterwards had little to do with the military.11 Theirs was a particular generation,
the last to be educated in Russian or German under the partitioning empires and the rst to come of age in the universities of independent Poland. Following the Polish-Bolshevik War, they returned, for the most
part, to Warsaw, to a Poland in which the patriotic burden of poets had
been lifted, replaced by a license for more daring exploration, a license
for transgression. The young poet Jan Lecho captured a certain temporal

 i n t r o d u c t i o n

ethos when he wrote: And in the spring let me see spring, not Poland.12
There was something else present as well: a sense that the First World
War had altered notions of possibility in Europe, engendering utopianism,
nihilism, and catastrophism all at once. Everything was now possible, a
dizzying endlessness of possibilities. It was a time when the boundaries
between Marxism in theory and communism in practice were not clear,
when both meant revolution, and revolution meant consummation, an escape from nothingness. Crusty apparatchiksbalding or otherwisehad
not yet appeared, nor had anyone glimpsed ominous specters of show
trials; for many young Polish literati of the 1920s, communism was cosmopolitan, avant-garde, sexy.
For this generation of Varsovian intellectuals born at the n de sicle, life
was unbearably heavy. They moved about in entangled circles with shifting boundaries, connected to one another by not more than one or two
degrees of separation. They were quintessential cosmopolitans, polyglots
who felt at home in Moscow, Paris, and Berlinyet who at once felt inextricably bound to Poland, who believed in their role as the conscience
of the nation, who very much felt that Warsaw belonged to them. They
suered (sometimes advantageously, sometimes painfully) from a certain pathological narcissism. They sat in their caf called Ziemiaska
and believed, with absolute sincerity, that the world turned on what they
said there. Often they fell into bouts of despair and self-hatred, andnot
despite, but rather precisely because of their narcissismthey embodied
the observation that intellectuals comprise the only class that loves to
hate itself.13
The story that follows is theirs. The young avant-garde of the early
1920s became the radical Marxists of the late 1920s. They abandoned
dadaism and futurism and ceased their games with words, having come
to the conclusion that such carnivalesque possibilities were merely bourgeois decadence. Rather, they decided, there was in fact such a thing as a
persons actual condition in society, and the true calling of a writer was
to enlighten peoplemost especially workersas to this actual condition.
I begin with their coming of age after the First World War and continue
through the Second World War, the Stalinist era, the Thaw of the postStalin years, and nally the anti-Zionist campaign of March 1968, exploring why and how these intellectuals came to embrace Marxism at dierent

introduction 

moments and what those choices meant. My periodization transcends

conventional historiographical boundaries delimiting the interwar years,
the Second World War, and the Stalinist eraa categorization that implicitly conceptualizes the Second World War as a moment of absolute discontinuity. I want to escape the tendency to examine the war in isolation,
as if these were years that existed outside of time. For those about whom
I write, the war was both a temporal rupture and a maturation period.
Polish history has been written primarily through the prism of politics;
I have attempted to move away from politics per se, in favor of a history
of ideology and aesthetics whose focal point is the act of opting forand
often ultimately out ofMarxism. This book is a cultural and intellectual
history, a biography of a milieu, and a postCold War exploration of Marxism as a belief system. That said, this was a century, and a part of Europe,
where a space to be unengaged, to be outside of politics, eectively dissolved; and in this sense a political subtext is ever present. The story of
these individuals and their relationships is a story of a journey from the
cafs to the corridors of power, a story of faith and betrayal.
These cosmopolitan intellectuals, many of them non-Jewish Jews,
in their friend Isaac Deutschers words, very much felt themselves to
be Poles; their Jewish identity was uid and often subtle.14 Several of
themAdam Wayk, Julian Stryjkowski, Jakub Bermancame from
families divided between communism and Zionism, between Polishness
and Jewishness. Jakub Berman rose to become one of a triumvirate of
Stalinist leaders in postwar Poland, and dictator in the realm of culture;
Adolf Berman became a Marxist Zionist leader and a member of the Israeli Knesset. During the interwar years each of three Berman brothers,
as well as their two sisters, made distinctive ideological choices, choices
that brought them together as activists of the Left and members of the
avant-garde intelligentsia, and choices that later placed them on opposite
sides at a moment when the world was being reinvented. In the pages that
follow I say little about Polish-Jewish relations, or the Jewish question
in Poland per se, yet in a sense the whole book is about that.15
Intertwined with a shift away from politics as such is a reading of the
past in which the loci of power are complex, constantly in ux.16 Much of
the archival material I use consists of personal correspondenceand I
have tried to preserve a natural polyphony, a mosaic of individual voices,
public as well as private, with attention to their points of intersection

 i n t r o d u c t i o n

and departure.17 A motif of entanglement lurks throughout. These were

people whose lives were intertwined with one anothers, and while a larger
public, political narrative plays itself out on one plane, the people I
write about play out their own private, personal relationships on another. In this connection among my greatest intellectual debts is that to
Hayden White. In writing this book I haveI hoperemained sensitive
to Whites observation that in necessarily narrativizing history, historians
have been biased in favor of order and coherence, that we have always
already tended to edit out the chaos and disorder that is the more natural
condition of any moment in the past. In writing a story that already to
some extent possesses a narrative tropethat of The God That Failed:
conversion, disillusionment, repentanceI have tried to elude the imposition of typologies or teleological narratives in favor of respecting, and
revealing, the nuances and idiosyncrasies of the past.18 To Hans Ulrich
Gumbrecht I am grateful for the notion of the quereinschieendes Detail, a
detail, perhaps excessive, that hits obliquely. In the course of researching
this book I came, I believe, to know the subjects of my manuscript well,
even intimatelyyet even so, each time I went into the archives I would
discover another occasion when they did not act the way I would logically expect them to act based on the objective (to use that monstrous
distinction, as Aleksander Wat once said) circumstances in which they
found themselves. People betrayed people who saved them, and forgave
people who betrayed them. The tensions implicit in structuring a narrative of many dierent life trajectories connected by a peculiarly persuasive
ideology without imposing articial narrative coherence emerge on the
pages to come. Yet perhaps in the end this books central contribution to
our understanding of Marxism lies in this, in the exploration of Marxism
as a lived experience, its messiness and the failure of typologies. Rather
than delineate a paradigm, I have tried to understand what it meant to
live Marxism as a European, an East European, a Jewish intellectual in
the twentieth century.
The foundational work on the engagement of European intellectuals
in politics is the French philosopher Julien Bendas The Treason of the Intellectuals, prefaced with the comment that our age is the age of intellectual
organization of political hatreds.19 In Bendas reading, the involvement of
intellectuals in politics was ipso facto a betrayal of their vocation. This is
certainly the moral of Past Imperfect, Tony Judts history of a conversation

introduction 

among French intellectuals, led by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, who rose to ascendancy in the postwar years and came to support
communism, including the Stalinist regimes. Judts writing sparkles, yet
his tone is moralistic and self-righteous. The book is not a history of
French intellectuals; it is, rather an essay on intellectual irresponsibility,
a study of the moral condition of the intelligentsia in postwar France.20
The author reaches the normative conclusion that perhaps in the future
intellectuals should make the moral choice not to be engaged.
While I depart from Judt in choosing not to draw such conclusions
(this is, to me, not the point of the story I am telling), and in my greater
empathy for those about whom I write, I share with him certain ideas
about twentieth-century European intellectuals who came to be engaged
with Marxism. Judt begins by describing intellectuals as a self-abnegating
class. Never has this been more pronounced than among Marxist intellectuals, caught in their role as vanguardists often a priori implicated by their
bourgeois origins, acutely cognizant of belonging to a class destined for
eradication by History. Sartre, as Judt points out, harbored a famous sense
of worthlessness; and Judt posits the thesis that communisms insistence
on intellectuals accepting the authority of others was part of its appeal.21
I draw also to some extent upon the Existentialist categories that Judt describes in relation to Sartre and his friends, in particular the predominant
notions of engagement and choice, and the problem of responsibility in
an absurd world. I agree with Judt that a temporally specic idea existed
that the world was divided into communists and anticommunists, and
there was no space to occupy in between. This relates as well to what Judt
notes as Sartres contribution to the idea of revolutionthat is, revolution as a categorical, existential imperative.
I make every attempt, writing now against most of the existing literature, to avoid being either hagiographic or demonizing. I depart as well
from Czesaw Mioszs classic work The Captive Mind, written just after his
defection from Stalinist Poland in 1951. For Miosz even the most fanatical
belief is not absolute; from an Islamic tradition he borrows the explanatory
notion of ketman, a kind of splitting of the self, and from the Polish
novelist Stanisaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy) he borrows the allegory
of the Murti-Bing pills, an intersection of psychological opportunism and
belief. The real-life inspirations for the communist writers Miosz calls
Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta, some of whom appear in later chapters,

 i n t r o d uc t i o n

are a generation younger than the protagonists of this book.22 The subjects
of Mioszs case studies came to communism after the war, through their
experiences in the war, when communism was already Stalinism, and
Stalinism was coming to power in Poland. In contrast, the generation I
write about came to Marxism for the most part in the 1920s, at a moment
when no one was entirely sure what communism in power meant, a moment before Stalinism, before socialist realism, before Marxism meant the
imposition of Soviet power in Poland. Their Marxism was a much more
multivalent and contestatory one. This excuses nothing, of course, but
it does demand that Polish Marxism be taken seriously as an authentic,
indigenous current, inuential in Polish intellectual life long before Soviet
occupation. There was little space for far-left opportunism at that moment:
on the contrary, the Marxist intellectuals born at the turn of the century
suered persecution in interwar Poland. Perhaps they suered for their
own narcissism, but that, after all, is a separate issue.23
The backdrop for this story is that of Marxism as an ideology of modernity, a modernity that encapsulates a shift in conceptions of time from
cyclical to linear and a consciousness of the present as an ephemeral moment on the path towards the future. In this respect, to draw upon a favorite term of the futurists, I see no possibility for dismissing Marxism in its
historical context as pass. The enormity of the experiment in the European twentieth century remains in some ways to be understoodnot because Marxism should be reinvoked in the contemporary political sphere,
but rather because understanding Marxism and its seductive force is so
critical to understanding European (and not only European) modernity.
Jacques Derrida suggests as much in his beautiful, poetic essay Specters
of Marx, a self-described hauntology on the need to (re)claim the inheritance of the multiple, heterogeneous spirits of Marx. He reminds us that
Marxs specter haunting Europe is a specter to come, and prophesies that
the spirit of Marxism, its ghostthe whole ontology of Marxism, Hegelianism, progress, teleologywill continue to haunt us forever.24
At the end of his life, the poet Aleksander Wat asked, Why was our
group so much destroyed by history and communism? Why did communism destroy the lives of those people, and why did the people who joined
the communists in the mid-thirties make such careers for themselves?25
In existentialist terms, the decisive moment for these n de sicleborn

introduction 

intellectuals was the moment of making a choice, the act of opting for
Marxism; and guilt is the true motif of Wats extraordinary, angst-laden
memoirs. What, then, did it mean to make the world anew at a moment
when the world seemed poised at the crossroads of catastrophe and utopia? Certainly this was a time when there was a sense of the force of
History, yet given that, where was the realm of fate and determinism and
where was the realm of choice and contingency? I have tried in my own
reading of the past to assume absolute contingencythe momentum
of History being something the people I write about believed in, but I
as their historian reject. In particular, I have tried to resist all impulses to
lter the interwar years through the Second World War, to allow, rather,
the moments at which other outcomes were possible to reveal themselves.
Yet here, with respect to the challenge of dispensing with teleology, I am
sympathetic to Michel Foucaults compelling passage on the diculty of
evading the clever, and potentially sinister, Hegel: But to truly escape
Hegel involves an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to detach
ourselves from him. It assumes that we are aware of the extent to which
Hegel, insidiously perhaps, is close to us; it implies a knowledge, in that
which permits us to think against Hegel, of that which remains Hegelian.
We have to determine the extent to which our anti-Hegelianism is possibly one of his tricks directed against us, at the end of which he stands,
motionless, waiting for us.26 I have tried throughout to pay my respects
to Hegel by illuminating both the tension between subjectivity and telos
within modernity, and the Marxist phenomenon in which individuals
become agents in the destruction of their own agency. At once, however, I
see the history of these Marxist intellectuals most fundamentally as a story
about making choicesand a story of a moment when the space for being
unengaged dissolved and there was an existential imperative to make a
choice. For these intellectuals, the paradox of choosing Marxism was the
way in which they came to take a creative role in the conscious liquidation
of their own subjectivity, abdicated in deference to History. Questions of
guilt and responsibility aside, the narrative topos of this generation is one
of idealism and disillusionment, and their story is a tragic one.

c h a p t e r one

Once upon a Time,

in a Caf Called Ziemiaska
There is not a gray hair in my soul,
no senile tenderness in me!
Having thundered the world with the might of my voice,
Ibeautiful, twenty-two years old
go.
Vladimir Mayakovsky

in the elegant capital city of Warsaw, the editor Mieczysaw Gryd

zewski would bring his two dachshunds to a caf called Ziemiaska.1 In
the summer the caf on Mazowiecka Street opened its garden, yet the
place of honor remained a table poised on a platform protruding from
the stairway. In these years following the First World War, a small group
of poets would gather at Ziemiaska. Their Warsaw was a city of cafs
and cabarets, of droshkies pulled by horses through cobblestone streets.
Often they fell into depressions, overcome with nihilism, with the premonition that the world would soon end. Even so, these were lively times
at Ziemiaska. The beautiful Ola Watowa, who might have become an
actress, loved their caf life: At Ziemiaska our friends, people we knew
sat around every table, passing from one to another. The atmosphere was
lively, amusing, people were witty. There were some venomous jokes as
well: instances of ridicule, like ... Wayk with the ugly little face [Wayk
brzydki twarzyk]. Painters, writers, poets. Sonimski was incomparable in
his sharp wit. ... Impassioned discussions would break out constantly,
everywhere. ... On rare occasions the wonderful Witkacy would appear.
In the summer Stefan eromskibeautiful, imposingwould sit in the
garden at Ziemiaska. ... I would mix chocolate into my coee.2
The table on the platform belonged to the young poets of the journal
SkamanderJulian Tuwim, Antoni Sonimski, Jan Lecho, Kazimierz
10

a c a f called ziemiaska 11

Wierzyski, Jarosaw Iwaszkiewicz, and their friend and editor Mieczysaw

Grydzewski. They believed deeply in the present.3 Their luminary was
the bibliophile Tuwim, with his unearthly ear for sounds and penchant
for Esperanto.4 Tuwim, the son of a quiet bank clerk, was a Jewish boy
from d who attended a Russian school and resolved to become a Polish
poet. His sister thought him to be a panacea for all ills and believed him
to be surrounded by a magical aura. Tuwim suered from agoraphobia;
at times he appeared restless and fretful. He suered from something
else as well: there was a large birthmark on his face, about which he
was terribly self-conscious. Those around him, though, saw something
else. The Russian novelist Ilya Ehrenburg was struck by Tuwims beauty;
Jarosaw Iwaszkiewicz by his sparkling eyes.5 The young Iwaszkiewicz
had come from Ukraine; he became the host of the legendary Stawisko,
an estate where he lived with his beloved wife Annaand often with his
male lovers as well. Iwaszkiewicz was gentle; his letters home during his
days in the military were delicate and loving. My dear Mama! he wrote
home from the army, Yesterday I tramped around Ostrowa all afternoon
with Chwat [Wat], a neofuturist in the machine-gun company here.6 After Antoni Sonimski fell from a horse in 1919, he was bedridden in his
mothers home for weeks. Iwaszkiewicz would come to visit him, and
would cringe at Sonimskis harshness towards his mother.7 Sonimskis
acerbic edge was also his most distinguishing character trait, so much a
part of his brilliance as an essayistwhich made his youthful, unrequited
love for a married woman the more poignant.8
Also frequenting Ziemiaska were the futurists. Tadeusz Peiper, an
avantgardist from Cracow just a few years older than the others, returned
from a trip to Spain to nd that a younger generation, without so much as
a glance requesting permission, had seated themselves around the table of
literary life. Peiper began to make out their faces: Bruno Jasieski, Anatol
Stern, Aleksander Wat.9 The avant-garde included as well independent
poetsWadysaw Broniewski, Adam Wayk, Stanisaw Ryszard Stande,
Mieczysaw Braun, and Witold Wandurskialthough the latter two resided in d and came to Ziemiaska only when they found themselves
in Warsaw. In January 1922 Broniewski lamented in his diary that he had
been reading the Skamander poets and saw that his own poems were
only wretched imitations.10 Stanisaw Ryszard Stande was thin, with an
oblong, pale face and a wry grimace, a face that would take on a mocking

12 a c a f c a l l e d z i e m i a s k a

expression when he smiled. Jan Lecho interpreted Standes expression

as revealing disgustor at the least distastefor his Skamander friends,
yet this was perhaps unjust: that grimace was the physical result of an
accident. During the 1905 Revolution, as an eight-year-old child, Stande
was trampled by horses.11 In 1919 he became the rst of the poets to join
the Communist Party of Poland (KPP).12
Irena Krzywicka, the free-spirited daughter-in-law of the great Marxist sociologist Ludwik Krzywicki, was present at the caf Pod Pikadorem
where the Skamander poets made their debut in November 1918. A young,
shy student, she came to the caf with her aunt and uncle, who were
taken aback by the young poets who had departed so radically from their
predecessors. Krzywicka herself felt dierently. I devoured those young
people, whose every poem seemed a revelation of the new poetry, she
wrote, with my eyes, my ears, my entire soul.13 She was sensitive to the
aesthetics of physicality: Iwaszkiewicz was enormous, slender, with a rare
beauty and dreamy, slanting eyes, a thick, sensual mouth, an idle grace;
Sonimski had the wise face of a typical intellectual, with a powerful gaze
from behind his glasses and narrow, joking lips; Lecho was ugly, thin,
with a prominent nose, all crooked with sharp angles, but unlike anyone
else; Wierzyskithe most banal and the most handsome in the common
sense of that word; well and nally he, Tuwim, with a dark birthmark on
his cheek, with raven-dark hair and burning eyes and a strongly bent nose,
a typical southerner with an explosive temperament.14 Irena Krzywicka
noticed that conversations with Tuwim tended to take on a fantastical
character. She knew Antoni Sonimskis verses by heart, and watched the
beautiful married woman who was Sonimskis inspiration.15 Krzywicka
liked Aleksander Wat very much, but was never able to acknowledge him
as a literary master. She was skeptical of futurism, and felt neither inclined
nor competent to write without sense. The skepticism was mutual, and
Krzywicka was criticized for being a passistea criticism to which she
in part attributed her own literary paralysis. And so she remained only
a fan of constructivism, not a participant.16
Yet it was Wat who was intellectually the most sophisticated. He read
prolically in all the languages around himPolish, Russian, French,
Germanwith the exception of Yiddish, the only language his father
spoke well. His childhood reading included Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and
Darwin, and when he was only just on the verge of adolescence he had

a c a f called ziemiaska 13

f igure 1 Caf Ziemiaska. Caricature by Jotes, 1930; courtesy of Muzeum Literatury

imienia Adama Mickiewicza.

already become a Darwinistwho would insist to his Catholic nanny

that God did not exist and humans were descended from apes.17 When
in school he became friends with Anatol Stern, Stern gave Wat the name
Buddha-Zarathustra, and together they experienced the negation of all possibilities.18 Adam Wayk was not alone in believing that the young Wat actually harbored religious longings, of which he was terribly ashamed.19
In January 1919, at the age of eighteen, in a feverish, manic, trancelike state Wat composed the long prose poem JA z jednej strony a JA z

14 a c a f c a l l e d z i e m i a s k a

drugiej strony mego mopsoelaznego piecyka (I from One Side and I from
the Other Side of My Cast-Iron Stove). Some ve years earlier, the Italian
futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti had liberated words from syntax.20 Wat
had not yet discarded syntax, but he did stretch syntax to its threshold,
to that liminal space beyond which meaning in its conventional sense
was no longer possible. Hovering at this threshold, Wat now told a story
of rotting and decay, of the degeneration of civilization. The esoteric sophistication and density of the language betrayed a knowledge of foreign
languages, the Bible, European literature, and Greek myths astounding
for an eighteen-year-olda self-education that devastatingly pointed to
catastrophism and nothingness. He wrote of eternal nights; of the horror
of encountering at midnight ones own sallow image; of the nightingales
that sang him to death; of his faces, which he changed with each zenith
of the sun. Wats web of images and allusions played with an inversion
that might have been carnivalesque were they not so dark, so macabre.
Sleepy castrates moaned in the corners of a grotesque arcade; children
emerged from graves to suck his ngers; and God with a swollen hydrous
body trembles from cold and loneliness. At midnight, the young Wat
wrote, it is always necessary to place your head under the dazzling, yes!
dazzling knife of the guillotine. The piece was saturated with a deep
sense of moral degeneration, of the collapse of civilization, of the accursed principium individuationis that paralyzed him. Nothing redemptive remained, there was no salvation, and the blasphemy throughout the
poem suggested less heresy than it did nihilism. Sexuality had become
licentious and grotesque: I leave for your meeting, where trembling in
tears and without sensation you will surrender, you will surrender, he (she)
will surrender, we will surrender, all of you will surrender, they (they the
women) will surrender. Images materialized in his feverish mind: Anda
lusian witches clapping castanets danced with a long dark thin musical
Jew in the heavens of the inhabitants of the Kirghiz steppes. The knight
Death approached with rattling gold taps, the knight Hell just behind
him. They kissed the narrators fragrant hands. Palimpsests moved gray
sheets of lice and in the corner of a closet a louse was crunched under
the large ngernail of a mad god. Wats friends appeared as well, as did
the smile of the woman Antoni Sonimski loved. To the Skamander poets
Wat devoted the following passage:

a c a f called ziemiaska 15

Sages Slit: to Ant. Sonimski.

Stagnation of steam marbles. Polymorphism and
polychromism of your skull bewitched you.
Signboards will spit and growl: Old scoundrel.
To Julian Tuwim.
In the polar glowing spaces let love be weakness, which you
want to eradicate. naa NN aaa Na Naaa.
To Jar. Iwaszkiewicz.21
In the last stanza Wat returned to himself, tormented by his own narcissism, and wrote that it was he himself who was burning in the inquisitorial interior of his cast-iron stove. This was too much for Irena Krzywicka, but not for the older, magnicent Witkacy, who loved Cast-Iron Stove
and forced his whole court in Zakopane to read it. Later Bruno Schulz told
Wat that it was Cast-Iron Stove that had inspired him to begin writing.22
Wat had spent his youth absorbing books he found in his parents
home and imagining a bleak future for himself as a drunk in the gutter, a
clochard, or a hermit philosopher living in extreme poverty.23 His life played
itself out somewhat dierently. In the spring of 1923, around the time of
his twenty-third birthday, Anatol Stern and Jarosaw Iwaszkiewicz came
with Wat to an end-of-the-year ball at Warsaws drama school; it was there
that Wat met Ola Lew, a rst-year drama student. Irena Krzywicka pointed
out that while Wat was very ugly, Ola Lew was beautiful. Shortly after
that ball, Wat saw Krzywicka on the corner of Nowogrodzka and Krucza
streets and called to her, Have you seen what good fortune has come to
me? Such a beautiful girland she wanted me.24
Ola Lew was the greatest stroke of good fortune in Aleksander Wats
life. Her parents, however, were not sympathetic; because she brought
home a futurist and not a doctor or a lawyer, they refused her a dowry.25
Undaunted, she left her parents home and entered Wats world of colorful personalities. She met Anatol Stern, the only person Wats tolerant
father ever threw out of their home, and Bruno Jasieski, whose memory
for poetry was extraordinary.26 Hovering about their circles as well was
Adam Wayk with the ugly little face, the rst in Poland to translate the
French futurist Guillaume Apollinaire. This independent avant-garde poet
came upon the stage with a dazzling rst book, Semafory (Semaphores),

16 a c a f c a l l e d z i e m i as k a

given a glittering review in Mieczysaw Grydzewskis Wiadomoci Literackie

(Literary News).27 Wayks brother Saul kept their Jewish surname Wagman and wrote poems as wellZionist poems.28

polish fut u r i s m
The Polish futurists enjoyed far less popularity among the reading public
than did the Skamander poets. This was largely of their own doing, the
result of their eorts to transgress all boundaries of propriety. Polish
futurism as a semicoherent endeavor materialized in 1918, when Bruno
Jasieski and two other poets organized a futurist club in Cracow. Jasieski
himself had only arrived there recently, after graduating from a Polish
secondary school in Moscow in the spring of 1918.29 Of all of them, it was
Jasieski who had been closest to the Russian Revolution. He was also the
most elegant, and the most pointed cultivator of dandyism, with his top hat
and gaunt gure cloaked in black. To some he seemed very self-controlled,
closed unto himself, as though he had inside him some obsessive thought
that he chose not to share with anyone.30 Such a demeanor could be oputting, but also seductive; it did not escape Jarosaw Iwaszkiewicz that
schoolgirls went crazy when they saw him.31 Jasieski drew the attention
of his male classmates as well: I would see him almost every day in front
of the main building, with a monocle on his eye: his huge tie suggested
the Romantic era, bygone nineteenth-century elegance, and this almost
theatrical accessory seemed all the more agrant on a writer who, in all
other respects, had broken with the past and with tradition.32
The following year, in 1919, the Cracow futurists Warsaw counterparts
Aleksander Wat and Anatol Stern made their debut with a poetry reading
titled A subtropical evening organized by White Negroes. The number
of Polish futurists was small, but not without interlocutors, including
Witkacy and the avant-garde theater director Leon Schiller, as well as Cracow avantgardists Julian Przybo and Tadeusz Peiper. It was Peiper who
proclaimed the slogan of the metropolis, the masses, the machine. Wats
circle, whose own attitude towards civilization was far more ambivalent,
exalted in the revelation of the materiality of language and the liberation
of language from representation. For Wat it was this freeing of words that
was most essential: You see, that slogan, the idea of words being liberated,
that words were things and you could do whatever you liked with them,

a c a f called ziemiaska 17

figure 2 Bruno Jasieski. Portrait by Witkacy, 1923;

courtesy of Muzeum Literatury imienia Adama Mickiewicza.

that was an enormous revolution in literature; that was a revolution like,

lets say, Nietzsches God is dead.33 While Wat credited Marinetti with
imbuing him with the idea that words could be liberated, Anatol Stern
credited his mother. It was she who taught him to have faith in words, a
faith that now set him ablaze like a live torch!34
The futurists embarked on various creative experiments with language,
playing with typefaces, neologisms, and phonetics. Wats namopaniki, like
the Russian futurists za-um poems, were aesthetic exercises based purely
on sounds with a deliberate disregard for semantic meaning. GGA, the
rst Polish almanac of futurist poetry, began:

18 a c a f c a l l e d z i e m i as k a

primitives to the nations of the world and to poland

the great rainbow monkey named Dionysus took his last breath
long ago.
we are throwing away his rotten legacy we declare
i. civilization, culture
with its justiceto the trash heap.35
Having dispatched civilization to the trash heap, the manifesto announced
the abolition of history, posterity, and tradition, and the destruction of
the cities. Wat and Stern also articulated a program for futurist poetry.
They declared their belief in the self-referentiality of languagethat is,
language was to be reied, words were no longer to be signiers representing things, but rather to be things themselves.
poetry. we are allowing rhyme and rhythm to remain as they
are primary and fertile. the destruction of rules constraining
creativity the virtue of awkwardness. freedom of grammatical form, spelling and punctuation, independently of the
creator. mickiewicz is limited. sowacki is incomprehensible
mumbling.
words have their own weight, sound, color, their own
design. they take up room in space. here are the deciding
values of a word. the shortest words (sound) and the longest
words (a book). the meaning of a word is a subordinate matter
and is not dependent upon the concept ascribed to it it is
necessary to treat words like phonetic material used not
onomatopoeically.36
The manifesto went on to state: we glorify reason and therefore also reject
logic, that limitation and cowardice of the mind. nonsense is wonderful
because of its untranslatable contents which set o our creative breadth
and power.37 In declaring their intention to destroy civilization, including all the mechanisms of airplanes, trams, inventions, telephones, the
Polish futurists departed from the cult of technology that was integral to
Italian futurism. Their ecstatic reication of words more closely resembled
the Russian futurists Aleksei Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikovs theory
of the word as such. Stern and Wats deliberately oensive rejection of

a c a f called ziemiaska 19

the revered nineteenth-century Polish poets Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz

Sowacki mirrored the Russian futurists order in their 1912 manifesto A
Slap in the Face of Public Taste to throw Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy
et al. from the steamboat of modernity.38
GGA was emblematic of a predilection for programmatic manifestos
that characterized the avant-garde throughout Europe. Wat and Stern intended to be shocking, and the early futurist evenings could be character
ized by carnivalesque scandal. On one occasion the futurists crashed a
Zionist meeting and recited caricatured antisemitic speeches.39 Iwaszkiewicz described the futurists at the time he was serving in Pisudskis army
during the Polish-Bolshevik War:
In Ostrowa I also met Aleksander Wat, whom I had already
known from Warsaw, who served in a machine gun company
and with whom I now spent long hours in conversation about
literature. He seemed to be a sensible person, although his
previous Warsaw appearances did not at all possess the quality
of sensibleness: with his friend Anatol Stern he had created
a literary group of neo-futurists and the performances of that
group distinguished themselves by improbable extravagance.
On one serene Sunday, for example, Stern brought Wat in
a wheelbarrow from the Belweder Palace to Castle Square.
Stern appeared naked to recite their poetry, with only a g leaf
which was supposed to be burned at the conclusion of their
program, etc.40
With the exception of a call for liberation from passisme, the futurists programs tended to lack theoretical coherence, vacillating instead
between a fetish for the future and a call for a primitive, Adamite paradise.
Stern later admitted that such contradictions could present problems for
the uninitiated: Something that could certainly lead to conceptual confusion on the part of the unprepared reader was the fusion of anticivilized
moments with the apotheosizing of contemporary technology. Of course
this was the result of the complicated synthesis on which was founded, on
one hand, the aspiration of the primitivists to salvage original, primitive
sensitivity and to smother all kinds of diseased and decadent manifestations in the psyche of the urban-dwellerand yet on the other hand an
apotheosis of civilization, not so much contemporary as that which was

2 0 a c a f c a l l e d z i e m i a s k a

only supposed to be approaching. From that resulted a host of understandable antinomies.41

Like most avant-garde endeavors, Polish futurism did not enjoy longevity; unlike Skamander, the futurists never did succeed in establishing
a stable publication. In 1921, Stern founded the journal Nowa Sztuka (New
Art) in collaboration with Jarosaw Iwaszkiewicz and Tadeusz Peiper; it
was an ambitious project that included avant-garde literature and happenings throughout Europe. Peiper, who had given his translations of Spanish
poetry to the less radical editor Grydzewski, later took them back and gave
them to Stern for Nowa Sztuka instead. If he was going to participate in a
group endeavor, then he wanted it to be with the most innovative group.42
The Polish futurists had no doubt that they were this, and notwithstanding
their provocative behavior, they took themselves very seriously. In July 1921
they sent a letter to the Russian futurist Vladimir Mayakovsky, which began the Polish futurists, establishing relations with futurists of all countries, send fraternal greetings to the Russian futurists. The letter solicited
contributions from Mayakovsky, Vasilii Kamensky, David Burliuk, and
Velimir Khlebnikov for the rst large international journal-newspaper
devoted to futurist poetry from all over the world in all languages. The
letter was signed by Bruno Jasieski, Aleksander Wat, and Anatol Stern
in the name of the Polish futuriststhat is, themselves.43
Nowa Sztuka was short-lived. Iwaszkiewicz declined to work on the
following issue due to certain disagreements and the second issue of
February 1922 was also the last.44 The next collaborative venture came in
the form of Peipers journal Zwrotnica (The Switch), which declared itself
to contain art of the present. The rst issue, which appeared in May
1922, was largely Peipers own creation, a reection of the metropolis,
the masses, the machine.45 Peiper aspired to iname in our man a love
for newness, which he himself has created. ... I desire to awaken in him
faith in the miraculous epoch in which he lives, and distaste for the dead
epochs that live in him.46 Disparagement of the past was very much part
of the cultural zeitgeista trend that in turn soon embraced futurism
itself. In October 1923, in the sixth issue of Zwrotnica, Peiper presented an
extensive criticism of Polish futurism. Even more signicant was Bruno
Jasieskis recantation. Jasieski began by describing futurism as a certain form of collective consciousness, and insisted that in order to speak
of it, it was rst necessary to overcome it in oneself. He went on to tell

a c a f called ziemiaska 2 1

figure 3 Bruno Jasieski, c. 1924. Photo by F. Zwierz

chowski; courtesy of Muzeum Literatury imienia Adama
Mickiewicza.

the story of the falling ill of Warsaw, and of his acquaintance with Wat
and Stern. Jasieski announced futurisms closure and commented on
the sources of the futurists guilt:
The whole of our guilt lies in the fact that there was a certain
moment of collective consciousness, common to all of us,
which we failed to take upon ourselves, failed to recognize as
our own and failed to endeavor to grasp in certain new artistic
forms. Only when those forms are created will it be possible
to speak about the overcoming of that exact moment. By passing over it in silence we fail to move forward by even an inch,

22 a c a f c a l l e d z i e m i as k a

moreoverwe exclude the possibility of any kind of forward

movement. This is, consequently, the source of many very
amusing reversals. The present situation, for example, presents
itself to be entirely the opposite of what the public judges it
to be. I am no longer a futurist, whereas all of you are futurists.
This appears to be a paradox, yet so it is.47
This issue of Zwrotnica did not go unnoticed by futurisms critics. An
article in Wiadomoci Literackie called the issue of Zwrotnica a liquidation
of futurism.48

skamande r
Despite Polish futurisms dadaistic self-referentiality, Wat and the other futurists were always engaged in many conversations; these began, perhaps,
with the young Skamander poets, who themselves carried out an implicit
dialogue with the older writers of Young Poland. The birth of Skamander
as a literary entity coincided precisely with the regaining of Polish independence and Warsaws reemergence as a European capital city. On 29
November 1918, the young poets Jan Lecho, Julian Tuwim, and Antoni
Sonimski premiered at the Warsaw caf Pod Pikadorem (Under the
Pikador). The advertisement for their rst appearance read:
Countrymen!
Workers, soldiers, children, old people, people, women,
intellectuals, and dramatic writers! On Friday November 29th
at 9 in the evening opens: The First Warsaw Caf of Poets
pod picadorem, Nowy wiat Nr. 57. The conscience of young
artistic Warsaw! The General Headquarters of the Army of the
Salvation of Poland from all of the homelands contemporary
literature. Daily tournament of poets, musicians and painters.49
On that day Jarosaw Iwaszkiewicz was summoned by acquaintances from
the aristocratic home where he worked as a tutor; two young poetsJulian
Tuwim and Antoni Sonimskiwished to see him. When Iwaszkiewicz
arrived at Nowy wiat number 57, the caf was still being painted. On
the program for that evening, below the name Pikador, was the slogan
Poetry, to the streets! Iwaszkiewicz took the slogan seriously. It seemed
to meas it undoubtedly did to my contemporaries as wellthat reading

a c a f called ziemiaska 23

a few verses of poetry between one cup of coee and the next was poetrys
getting out to the street.50 A year later, in January 1920, the original Pod
Pikadorem poets, now with Iwaszkiewicz and Kazimierz Wierzyski,
began their own periodical. In the rst issue of Skamander they oered
a self-introduction: We want to be poets of the present and this is our
faith and our whole program. We are not tempted by sermonizing, we
do not want to convert anybody, but we want to conquer, to enrapture,
to inuence the hearts of men, we want to be their laughing and their
weeping. ... We believe unshakably in the sanctity of a good rhyme, in
the divine origin of rhythm, in revelation through images born in ecstasy
and through shapes chiseled by work.51 Anatol Stern was unimpressed;
for the author of futurist manifestos, here was a programmatic article
in which one can nd everything except a program.52
A program was unnecessary. The Skamander poets were a dazzling
success, becoming at once the darlings of Polish readers.53 Their poetry
drew upon the spoken language and in this sense reected the more
general impulse of leftist intellectuals to liberate themselves from bourgeois elitism. The work of these young poets, though innovative, was not
radical; in contradistinction to the transsense endeavors of the futurists,
the Skamander group had not broken with representation. Adam Wayk
described Skamander as the only formation in Europe of that time that,
amidst the confusion of the postwar years, lit the lantern of the heart.54
In essence Skamander played the paradoxical role of the traditional wing
of the avant-garde. While the more radically experimental writers, often
engaged in polemics with Skamander, were implicitly the Skamandrites
rivals, they were simultaneously bound to the Skamandrites by both literary collaboration and personal ties. The liberal newspaper Wiadomoci
Literackie, published from January 1924, served as a forum for the Skamandrites as well as the avantgardists. In an era of newly regained independence, the paper embraced cosmopolitanism, devoting much attention
to literary and artistic developments abroad, particularly in Russia, France,
Czechoslovakia, and Italy.55
Not all polemics among the poets were innocuous. Just before a 1921
futurist poetry reading organized with Witkacy in Zakopane, the Skamander poet Jan Lecho appeared and began informing the local butchers that
Jews had arrived in town with the intention of insulting the Virgin Mary.
Presumably Lecho understood the implications of his instigation, and

24 a c a f c a l l e d z i e m i a s k a

the reading ended in violence.56 Yet even incidents of this kind did not
end relations between the avantgardists and the Skamander poets. In 1927
Tuwim was a witness at Wats wedding, and this was after Wat and Stern
had abused Tuwim in their booklet ydek-Literat (The Jew-Boy of Letters),
a parody of Polish antisemitism.57 Tuwim had described himself in 1918
as the rst Polish futurist, although he never actually participated in the
futurists literary endeavors.58 Nonetheless, there were natural anities.
Tuwims response to an interviewer who, in 1926, asked what his passion in life was revealed that Tuwims own creative impetus was close
to Wats: The word, the word, and the word! A word is as real a thing
as a tree. Words are truly alive. The interviewer then cited a fragment
of one of Tuwims verses: I feed my famished body / with words like
fruits.59 Moreover, despite Tuwims love for Pushkinwhom the Russian futurist Vladimir Mayakovsky wished to throw from the steamboat
of modernityTuwim was among Mayakovskys (and Marinettis) rst
Polish translators.60
Wat looked upon Skamander with both admiration and condescension.
The dazzling young poets failed to understand one thing: A pleiad of talent one encounters once in a hundred years, an almost instantaneous mastery of poetic techniquemoreover, in Poland, a revolutionary turn. One
had to have been a witness to Pikador and to have been aware of the poetic
constellation in Poland at that time in order to appreciate the dimensions
of their revolution. But the peacock and the parrot of nations had already
long since been excluded from the conscious circulation of poetic language
and ideas. And the revolution of the Skamandrites was pre-Rimbaudian,
naveit failed to question itself. They were navenave and deaf and
blind to the fact that the old world had collapsed irreversibly.61

unfriendly o b s e rve r s
Attacks on futurism by those outside of the literary world revealed moments of solidarity between Skamander and the futurists. When Stern
was arrested in December 1919 on charges of profanity, the Skamander
poets came to his defense. Antoni Sonimski began a petition stating,
We, the undersigned, in the name of justice, claim as writers that the
poem being spoken of does not contain profanity, and that only a certain
awkwardness of form has brought about a painful misunderstanding.62
Stefan eromski, the older novelist of the patriotic, neo-Romantic group

a c a f called ziemiaska 25

known as Young Poland, was among the signatories. The petition was
only partially successful: it was only two years later that the charges were
dropped. Stern spent several months in prison.63
Nor was this the last attack from the government. In July 1922 a group
of right-wing parliamentarians initiated a protest against the futurists
posters. The National Democrat Tadeusz Dymowski, a vocal advocate of
liberating Poland from Jewish economic inuence, led a campaign insisting on the enforcement of a 1917 law that permitted the display of posters
in languages other than Polish only under the condition that a Polish
translation be simultaneously provided. Futurist texts were in violation of
this law, Dymowski argued: The futurists have been organizing a whole
host of evenings at various spas, as part of which they hang posters of the
oddest content and in futurist language, which is the most horrible corruption of the Polish language. Because we are aware that there exists a law
that permits the display of posters only in cases when a Polish-language
text is simultaneously providedas far as we are aware, futurist language
has not been acknowledged as Polishaccordingly we regard that allowing such posters to be displayed is worthy of punishment.64 Dymowskis
campaign against the futurists failed in the Polish Sejm. On this occasion the Skamandrites again came to the futurists defense, mocking Dymowski and his supporters by citing the linguistic and stylistic errors in
Dymowskis and his allies own texts. In response, Dymowski tore down
the futurist posters by himself.65
Dymowski was not the only one unpleasantly predisposed towards
the futurists. Aleksander Wats aunt was similarly horried, and prayed
that God not punish her nephew for mutilating their beautiful Polish language.66 A more painful attack was that by Stefan eromski. In his book
Snobizm i Postp (Snobbism and Progress), which appeared in December
1922, eromski condescendingly chastised the futurists for snobbery. By
the expression snob, eromski began, one denes and characterizes a
person who passionately practices pretentious dandyism and adheres to
the canons of fashion with exaggeration and excessive solicitude. It was
mimicry, however, which was the decisive marker of snobbism: Blind
imitationthis is the most essential, the fundamental characteristic of
snobbism. eromski accepted the most modern artistic currents elsewhere in Europe, but disparaged their Polish counterparts: These trends
are in essence new pages of Italian, French and Russian literature. In

26 a c a f c a l l e d z i e m i as k a

Poland, however, they are cigarette butts, alien, colorless, unreadable,

material evidence of snobbism.67
eromskis attack was taken seriously, not least by the young aspiring poet Wadysaw Broniewski, who wrote in his diary on New Years
Eve of 1922: eromskis book enlightened me as to the other side of the
coina critical light on my literary enthusiasm. New poetry and snobbism.68 Wat later concurred: they were under the inuence of foreign
poetry, of Russian futurism. Jasieski had been in Russia in 1917, he had
seen the Revolution. Moreover, he had an unusual memory for poetry;
Vladimir Mayakovsky was forever in his mind. And not only Jasieski,
but all of themTuwim, Jasieski, Przybo, Sonimski, Stern, Wat, and
Waykwould come to be among the breathtaking Russian futurists
Polish translators. So, too, would Wadysaw Broniewski.

the search i n g s o f a yo u n g p o e t
As a young man Wadysaw Broniewski wore the gray uniform of the Polish Legions, decorated with a sky-blue ribbon Virtuti Militari.69 His room
in his mothers apartment on Danilowiczowska Street in Warsaw emanated the ambience of the Polish nobility: Persian rugs, crossed swords,
ancestral daggersand an upright piano.70 He came of age as a soldier in
Marshal Jzef Pisudskis Legions ghting for Polish independenceand
as the author of a diary that he described upon its October 1918 inception
as an intellectual garbage bin.71 Irena Krzywicka was happy that the
shy soldier with literary ambitions did not succumb to futurist fashion. When Broniewski read his poems aloud, even the most zealous of
the futurists would fall silent at their irresistible beauty and strength of
expression.72 Of all the clientele at Ziemiaska, it was Broniewski who
most embodied Cezary Baryka of Stefan eromskis novel Przedwionie
(The Spring to Come), the romantic youth who, following youthful mistakes, self-absorption and decadence, found his way to the Revolution.
Broniewski was moreover most heir to the legacy of nineteenth-century
Polish patriotism and Polish literature, with his lyricism and romanticism.
He himself was not unaware of thismoreover, he was not unaware of
himself as a pure Slav amidst a literary scene that included so many
assimilated Polish Jews.
Alongside his shyness and self-doubt, Broniewski harbored a certain
arrogance. At the age of twenty, in October 1918, he commented in his

a c a f called ziemiaska 27

f igure 4 Wadysaw Broniewski in his Legionnaire uniform with his grandmother

Jadwiga Lubowidzka, 1921. Courtesy of Muzeum Wadysawa Broniewskiego.

diary that a woman who is not pretty should be sensible, otherwise she
is intolerable.73 In fact Broniewskis entanglements with women would
absorb much of his energies in the next few years. More important, perhaps, was his changing attitude towards the army. By October 1918, he no
longer wished to return to those murderous, empty, thoughtless days,

28 a c a f c a l l e d z i e m i as k a

idiotic and banal conversations with idiotic friends, the abominable vege
tation of the barracks. The desire to pose as a national hero has left me
long agoand there remains only a tough, inexible obligationto which
I submit despite everything.74 The following month he wrote critically
in his diary: Todays meeting irritated me. What cattle they are! Hurrahpatriotism combined with primitive antisemitism.75
It was not an easy path from decorated Legionnaire to avant-garde
poet, and Broniewski was plagued by ideological uncertainties. On the
same day of that unpleasant meeting Broniewski wrote of how, despite
his respect for the Left, he was not yet able to embrace its program. In
spring 1919 he began to readand increasingly respectthat Trotsky
who is so despised in our country. He admired Trotskys quickness, his
exibility of thought, yet concluded that the ideas themselves remained
too orthodox, too canonical to justify the sacrice of his individualism. In
his diary Broniewski wrote: I am beginning to understand how average
and below-average communists imagine the social equality of the future.
These people are similar in their psyche to some sectarians or Jesuits:
often, in their nave conceptualization, they fail to realize how far they
are departing from Papa Marx et consortes. At the same time he dreamt of
some kind of fantastical romance with a demonic womanset against
the backdrop of war.76 He longed for an entanglement of love and war,
and despaired of boredom, his lifes tragedy. He felt unconnected, as if
he had departed so far from all dened realms that he no longer had any
place. By January 1921 he had claried what he needed, again in the language of nineteenth-century Polish literature: to nd an idea that would
rejuvenate me, that would force me to treat my own life as a backdrop,
that would propel me towards sacrices, towards battle. As it was seven or
eight years ago. ... To nd a creative power for myself, that would allow
me to become immortal in the eects of my own action.77
Later that year Broniewski encountered the avant-garde; he met Aleksander Wat, one of the extreme futurists.78 By the end of 1921 he found
himself under the futurists inuence. No longer was their work opaque
to him, and Broniewski resolved to follow in their path.79 This was not to
be easy. Broniewski wrote to Bronisaw Sylwin Kencbok, a friend from
his days in Pisudskis Legions, that he was suering from depression
and was unable to write: So, my dear oneinsofar as it turns out that
my literary pseudo-talent is not a ction of arrogance and graphomania,

a c a f called ziemiaska 29

then perhaps there will come a time, after a couple of years, when those
who know me will be able to say: Ah, I, too, know a futuristin a similar
way as they would speak of their aunt who is a black woman. Either way,
my literary to be or not to be remains my heaviest and very uncertain
dilemma.80
Broniewski experienced the classic symptoms of a self-doubting intellectual: depression, literary paralysis, self-hatred. In February 1922 he told
Kencbok that he was undergoing a period of the most intense abomination of himself. That spring he explained that he simply felt things more
intensely than others did. Moreover he was engaged in a battle against
himself, not so much to embrace new values as to cast o the old. He
had begun to read Nietzsche. Late that summer, in a letter dated 26 August 1922, he wrote to Kencbok: In fact, however, society is divided into
those who truly want reform and such people who, while making a few
declarations, endeavor to maintain the old state of things. ... The others
are divided into two fundamental groups: those who want change at the
cost of violent changeof battles per fas et nefas as a principle: the end
justies the meansand those who want to achieve those same goals via
a legal, bloodless path, yet who do truly aspire to those goals. To this last
group Pisudski belongs.My dear one. Life has ordered me to reect
upon whether that last path is the right one. ... Until now Ive taken
the position of bloodless battle, but whether Ill maintain that position,
whether life will allow me toI dont know.81
The letters oscillated between ts of self-doubt and moments of
supercilious arrogance. Broniewskis self-doubt was not without its own
melodrama. On 24 November 1922 he wrote: What do Iwith all my
weaknesses, my quasi-culture, quasi-talents, without willpower, without
decided aspirations in a single direction, placing a question mark above
everythingwhatever in the world do I have to say to people? Perhaps
to put a question mark over my own obituary? He went on to compare
himself to a weathervaneto function he must have airlet that air be
love, passion, a noble idea, insanity, something other than nothingness. In
this letter to Kencbok, Broniewski despaired that all he had done in his life
had been the result of chance, contingency, external impulses. He craved
change, innovation, action.82 With these feelings, Broniewski drew closer
to Wats circle; in December 1922 he described his relations with them:
At Maa Ziemiaska Ive been meeting with a small group of writers

30 a c a f c a l l e d z i e m i as k a

from Nowa Sztuka: Stern, Wat, Braun, Brucz. All Yids. People of much
intelligence and erudition. ... I have beneted much from thatabove all
because Ive become acquainted with the new Russian poetry. ... Mayakovsky, the most important of them all, has revealed to me completely
new worlds.83
By March 1923, under the inuence of Mayakovsky, Broniewski had
undergone a changea new enthusiasm had healed his former despair,
and he rejoiced in his newfound faith in the constancy of his ideas. He
compared his former individualism, his egocentrism, to an old car:
yes, he had been very attached to the old automobile, but it had broken
down and was in a state of disrepair, useless and dysfunctional. He had
nally accepted the necessity for separation. Now, he wrote, I feel united
with the whole world of people whoin one way or anotherare moving
forward. To where? But the point here is not the destination, but rather
the path itself. The ght for a better, more beautiful life.84
Later that spring Broniewskis letters returned to literary matters. His
new friend Mieczysaw Braun from d pointed out that Broniewskis
poems were lacking in what we call heart. Furthermore, Broniewski
was reading Bruno Jasieskis poetry, and judged that Jasieskis recent
poem Pie o godzie (A Song about Hunger) would have seemed impressivehad Broniewski not already read Mayakovsky and so seen in
Jasieskis work only imitation. Jasieski, they all saw, was a victim of his
own uncanny memory for poetry. Broniewski was reminded of Snobbism
and Progress, and the charge of imitation.85
By winter Broniewski had fallen into another depression, and he experienced another period of Hamletesque self-questioning. In November
1923 he wrote to Kencbok that he did not yet know how to live. By the
following spring, he had claried the problem: It is necessary to believe
in something, to love something, to be a fanatic about something.86 He
longed for simplicity, and simplicity was not what he was nding at Caf
Ziemiaska. Now Broniewski became very critical about the futurists
whose ideas had been so revelatory to him the year before. In the same
letter to Kencbok, he went on to say:
Im fed up with those Jewish literati from Ziemiaska,
with whom Ive had a lot to do lately (with the exception of
Braun, whom I value and who is not in Warsaw). After closer

a c a f called ziemiaska 3 1

acquaintance, Ive become convinced that these people have

psyches very distant from my own. Here are the characteristic
traits of their intellect: ashiness, quick development, false
depth, and quick exhaustion. We Slavs have an intellect thats
heavier, less imaginative and ethereal, but also heavier qualitatively and with a deeper, farther-owing current. A fundamental relationship to truth in life, in creative work, in everything
separates us from them. They are masters of outcry, of a noisygloomy passion entangled in itself, of boasting. A Slav always
questions: in the name of what? to where? for what goal?
Yet they respond to those questions supercially or not at all.
Yet Broniewski cautioned Kencbok against assuming that his wariness
of the Jewish literati implied that he had turned to the right: On the
contrary, Broniewski wrote, Im intensely aware of the abyss that divides the past from the future, which is manifested in the example of the
new creative work in Russia and the pitifully boring literary mustiness
in Poland. I stand powerfully and deeply in new, revolutionary art. And
I treat it seriously.87
Mieczysaw Braun also encouraged Broniewski to stay away from
Ziemiaska. In October 1923 Braun admitted to Broniewski in a letter
that he had dropped by that terrible city [Warsaw] only for a few hours
and returned all the more quickly:88
Every, even the shortest, stay in Warsaw teaches me a lot and
conrms me in my terribly unfortunate awareness that surgunt indocti et rapiunt coelos! Cloaca maxima of literature
(literally as per Verlaines sense of literature, and not poetry)
Ziemiaska breathes poison on me with its badly disguised
distaste and ill willthe cause of which is probably not di
cult to ascertain.
Im not speaking about true poets, to whom Im connected
by a more than heartfelt friendship, but rather about those
whitened sepulchers, those insipid mediocrities, heads without
talent, for whom everything is easy, who have an answer for
everything, who sni out and go after catchy words and
sayings, not knowing that its necessary to mature into every

32 a c a f c a l l e d z i e m i as k a

poem, to reach the poem by hard, internal labor, who, nally,

in the fact of the matter are equally as distant from poetry as
they are from ethics.
Im certain you understand me, Wadzio. I have much faith
in you and I can feel in you a poetthat is why Im writing
this to you, however well you know this yourself. I want to
warn you against that awful atmosphere of literati and their
bad literature, because I know that its dicult not to suocate
in their fumes. Im begging you in the most passionate manner, insofar as you have a self-preservation instinct as a poet,
distance yourself from all of them. Dont go to Ziemiaska
at all. Keep away.

c h a p t e r t wo

Love and Revolution

Poetry is not a private matter.

Mieczysaw Braun

mieczysaw br aun concluded his May 1923 letter to Wadysaw

Broniewski with the words: Down with the decaying bourgeoisie! and
down with the dull proletariat! Long live pure poetry! 1 Yet the notion
of the proletariats dullness was quickly becoming unpopular. Bruno
Jasieski, a year after his 1923 recantation of futurism, published a collection of poetry together with Anatol Stern titled Ziemia na lewo (The Earth
to the Left). The cover, a collage by the young constructivist Mieczysaw
Szczuka, was a bizarre juxtaposition of photographs, including portraits of
Stern and Jasieski, and in this sense was still very much within a futurist
aesthetic.2 In their introduction, in which they identied themselves as
former futurists, the authors revealed that much of their wrath against
passisme had shifted to bourgeois-ism:
Poets, choose. The little salon of bourgeois culture sent by
exotic, crumpled cushions of sentimentor the naked street
convulsing with birth pains. But even the historians of bourgeois culture themselves voice its decline. We are sensitive.
And we mercifully desire to hurry its death, so as to raise a
new foundation in a completely clean place. We hate the bourgeoisienot only that which today obstructs our world with
a shabby banknotebut the bourgeoisie as an abstraction,
33

3 4 l ov e a n d r e v o l u t i o n

its view of the world and everything that belongs to it.

We desire a new Polandnot a new store.
The Earth to the Left is the rst volume of poetry in Poland
dedicated to the man of the masses, that hidden hero of
history.3
The publication of The Earth to the Left coincided with the collaboration of Wat, Stern, Broniewski and Jasieski with the Marxist journal
Nowa Kultura (New Culture). The editor of that endeavor, Jan Hempel,
was a committed Party member who had come to communism via theosophy, anarcho-syndicalism, the PPS, and an unsuccessful search for God.4
Hempels magazine had debuted a few months earlier, in July 1923, with
this programmatic introduction:
New Culture is not an empty sound or a pretty-sounding
phrase. The workers movement, in its desire to realize the
enormous act of its social and economic liberation, must create
new cultural values. ... Today it is still dicult to dene the
day of the victory and wonderful rise of a truly new civilization,
created by the collective eorts of the boundless popular
masses, so long kept in darkness, steeped in ignorance, given
over as prey to prejudices and superstitions. ... What of the
fact that the building of the new cultural world meets with so
many diculties? What of the fact that one establishment after
another falls under blows? What of the fact that in Cyprian
Norwids expressionagainst a few thoughts so many threatening forces and weapons are mobilized? We believe that the
seed has not fallen on stony ground, that it will sprout in abundance and astound the world with its fruits. We believe that
the longing for new shores and the gathered will of the multitudes are precisely that wind that turns the cards of history.5
It was through Wadysaw Broniewski that the futurists became involved
with Nowa Kultura, an alliance Wat named that Ark of the Covenant.6
Broniewski had met Hempel, Stanisaw Ryszard Stande, and Witold Wandurski in 1922, through the Peoples University, an organization of leftist
intellectuals who wished to bring socialist culture to the masses.7 By then
Stande was already a Party member. His poetry, and that of Mieczysaw

l ove and revolution 35

f igure 5 Cover of The Earth to the Left. Designed by Mieczysaw Szczuka;

reproduction by Biblioteka Narodowa.

Braun, appeared in Nowa Kultura in August and September 1923, before

ocial collaboration commenced; and Witold Wandurski contributed a
long article on the Workers Theater in d as early as August 1923.8 The
article was as pointed a revelation of Wandurskis graphomania as it was
of his subject position vis--vis the proletariat. On one hand Wandurski
acknowledged the theatrical collectives artistic gaps and weaknesses; on
the other hand he gloried these gaps and weaknesses as evidence of
proletarian authenticity.9 His unconscious condescension towards the
workers was even more striking in his next article. There he announced
that the current intellectual level and aesthetic taste of workers left much

3 6 l ov e a n d r e v o l u t i o n

to be desired. Yet Wandurski was not despondent, for this would inevitably
change. Such was historical necessity.10 This article was followed several
issues later by Wandurskis poem Do panw poetw (To Messrs. Poets)
in which he attacked caf life and independent creative work with a
Biblical reference: Oh, independent hypocrisy! Freedoms of Onan! / How
does it fail to disgust you, poets, this verbal masturbation?11
In January 1924, formal collaboration with Nowa Kultura commenced.
The magazine now took on a dierent appearance. Hempel was still writing many of the articles, but there were new voices as well. Appearing
in the rst issue of 1924 was Aleksander Wats short story Prowokator
(Agent Provocateur), a tale of forty-year-old Grzegorz, a former revolutionary and veteran of prison and hunger strikes, and now a professional
provocateur informing on his former comrades, full of nostalgia for his
Catholic childhood, longing for Gods love, and searching for his true
identity:
Everything exists in dual form: good and evil, truth and falsehood, light and dusk, the policeman and the revolutionary.
For how can there exist a higher perfection, a higher degree
of existence than the connection of these two in one person,
than their synthesis, than their unity, than a provocateur!
Godhe thought further in an enraptured burst of passion
is the omnipotent creator of everything, and so falsehood
as well as truth, evil as well as good. Evil, towards the greater
victory of good, since the greater is the strength of evil,
the greater the triumph of good. How then should I name
the highest essence, if not a provocateur! how then should
I name the whole world, if not an enormous provocation!12
Grzegorz the provocateur fantasized about the end of the world. He
envisioned an unending row of electric chairs, a policeman standing in
front of each, a revolutionary sitting in each, and Grzegorz the provocateur
himself, raised on the highest platform, preparing to ring a bell. When he
did, each policeman pressed a button, and in each chair a revolutionary
perished. Following this fantasy, Grzegorz became ecstatic over a plan to
entice the whole of the revolutionary proletariat into committing terrorist
acts so as to turn them all over to the police at the appropriate moment. He
lured more and more revolutionaries into the world of terrorism, but the

l ove and revolution 37

moment was still not right. Too late, he was awakened during the night
by a banging at the door and was arrested. The verdict was execution. As
he was being shot he imagined that the barrels of the ries were aimed
not at himself, but rather at the highest provocateur, whose name is not
uttered in vain.13 Wats story was neither futurist nor proletarian, but
rather a metaphysical, absurdist parable about guilt, existential dilemmas,
and making choices.
The following two issues included Wats poem Policjant (The Policeman) and Sterns poem Karnaway (Carnivals), neither of which could
be described as proletarian poetry, as well as translations of Apollinaire
and Mayakovsky.14 Several weeks later Nowa Kultura published a review
of Stern and Jasieskis collection The Earth to the Left; and this more or
less marked the end of the former futurists presence in Nowa Kultura.15
Jasieski was largely silent. He had been overcome by a creative crisis,
a conviction that it was no longer possible to write as before.16 While
Jasieski was seeking out the classics of Marxism, something in the way
of an epilogue to the futurists contributions to Hempels journal came
in March 1924 with Mieczysaw Brauns short piece titled My Personal
Opinion about Poetry. Here Braun insisted on the independent creativity that Wandurski had just been mocking:
I write about everything I must write about. Nothing limits
my freedom: neither aesthetics, nor style nor proclivity. I am
guided only by internal compulsion. ... A poet is a parliamentary representative of human society, the dierence in the
metaphor being that society did not choose him. ... In poetry
there are no more important or less important themes. For
instance, war or revolution can mean as much as the crowing
of a rooster in the courtyard. ... In societys battles the poet
must stand on the side of the laboring branch of humanity.
He himself works hard. He waits so many years for each word!
And the world is large: two words do not capture it.17
Hempel was displeased with Brauns declaration. Two issues later
there appeared an article titled Literary Misunderstandings, proclaiming
the failure of the collaborative experiment, and attacking Braun in particular for his bourgeois programlessness and absence of ideology vis--vis
poetry. The verdict was the following:

3 8 l ov e a n d r e v o l u t i o n

Unfortunately it very quickly became evident that these pieces

of writing were artistically incomprehensible to our readers.
Not for the reason that they might be overly intelligent, rather
simply for the reason that they are ideologically alien to the
workers movement. ... A personal discussion with these
poets, conducted because of their works, only manifested our
dierences still more powerfully. We spoke as if in dierent
languages. They were entirely unable to understand what our
point was and why we were not pleased with their workthematically revolutionary, condemning war, religion and courts
of justice. They judged that we were demanding that they write
versied political slogans, they reproached us with a desire for
dictatorship over poets and appealed to freedom of inspiration.
We, however, must only demand that a poet who wants to
write for the working class live by the workers ideals, think
workers thoughts, love and hate not only that which, but also
in such a way as the worker loves and hates. Then nothing
(exceptof coursethe Press Department of the police) will
limit his inspiration.18
Hempel, obedient to the Party, severed ties with the futurists; and Broniewski was replaced by Hempels comrade, the KPP member Witold
Kolski.19
Braun had been skeptical about the alliance between Hempel and the
poets from the outset. In December 1923 he wrote to Broniewski inquiring whether, in the end, they had all decided to cast in their lot with Nowa
Kultura.20 In January Braun wrote that, thanks to Wandurski, he had read
in Nowa Kultura a wonderful story by Wat. Braun had not been disillu
sioned, he wrote to Broniewski, by the results of Broniewskis plans for
an artistic takeover of that venture; yet at the same time he expressed his
doubts that ultimately such an alliance could succeed, and insisted to
Broniewski that theythose who are foreign to our aspirationshad
not given the poets a free space to work. Do you plan to continue to
busy yourself with the smuggling of poetry? Braun asked.21 And when
Broniewskis experiment did reveal itself to be extremely short-lived, Braun
did not fail to say I told you so. A month later, he reminded Broniewski
that he had warned everyone against such collaboration. In any case, he

l ove and revolution 39

was glad it was now over. With respect to Hempel and his KPP comrades,
Braun wrote of their complete lack of respect for intellectual work, and
a blatant disregard for poetic creation. Our marriage, as you say, was a
msalliance on both sides.22
Not everyone had been ill-disposed towards this collaborative project. In 1924 from d, Witold Wandurski had begun a prolic correspondence with Broniewski. Unlike Braun, Wandurski had been a great
enthusiast for Broniewskis collaboration with Nowa Kultura. He wrote
to Broniewski in January 1924: each issue of Nowa Kultura that reaches
me brings me true joy.23 It was another case of ery enchantment and
quick disillusionment. By May 1924, Wandurski lamented the pervasiveness of pseudo-Marxists from pseudo-new culture and had forgotten
his previous enthusiasm:
What youre saying does not astonish me at all ... yet weve all
known about this for a long time. We had only deluded ourselves that we would be successful at changing something for
the better. ... In short, and practically statedwhat remains
for us is splendid isolation. ... Ive become disillusioned
with the people from Nowa Kultura not only in a literary-artistic
sense, but also politically. There can be no talk of the revolutionariness of those bookish know-it-alls: theyre cool-headed
theoreticians whoen route to intellectual ardoraccepted
the program of the communists. Yet intellectually not only
are they not Bolshevized, but they also fear any kind of truly
revolutionary catastrophe ... like the devil fears holy water. ...
None of them want to understand that revolution is a painful
tragedy, a glorious re, in which you must burn yourself, descend into savagery, into barbarismin order to discover in
yourself the simple joy of life. ... All of it of courseand rst
and foremost the rabbinical connement of intellectual (Im
no longer sayingaesthetic) horizons pushed me away from
those people and from communism. Presently Ive become
very much interested in theoretical anarchism (as organically
Ive always been an anarchist)a synthesis of cooperative
communalism with individualism.24

4 0 l ov e a n d r e v o l u t i o n

In 1924 the former futurists also contributed to Stefan Kordian Gackis

new Almanach Nowej Sztuki (Almanac of New Art), which continued into
1925 and survived for four issues. Yet by that time Polish futurism was
well past its half-life. Even as the futurists participated in Almanach Nowej
Sztuki, it was a time when, according to Wat, our group of futurists and
dadaists got fed up with futurism, that is, when we came to the conclusion
that things couldnt go on like that.25 Thus, following their disengagement from Nowa Kultura, did the futurists set out upon dierent paths.
Braun rebelled against both proletarian poetry and the avant-garde, telling
Broniewski in January 1925 that he was now writing in a classical style:
Today Im at a new stage. Nothing connects me to the so-called new art.
Im reaching out to other places for models. Im writing classically. I
dont care at all about the gains of futurism, Russian poetry is alien to me;
Mayakovsky, Esenin, Apollinaire fell somewhere into a void and utterly disappeared for me.26 Wat wrote a collection of short stories titled Bezrobotny
Lucyfer (Lucifer Unemployed), which he dedicated to Ola Lew as a wedding
gift. The stories were parabolic, anti-utopian and nihilistdeparting from
futurist phonetic experiments and dadaistic self-referentiality, but also
betraying no traces of ideological engagement. Rather Wat portrayed a
historical moment in which all previously understood values and notions
of order had suddenly been subjected to radical contingency, a radical
contingency demanding a radical antidote.
In Wats story yd wieczny tuacz (The Eternally Wandering Jew),
Nathan, an orphaned Talmudic student from the shtetl Zebrzydowo, traveled through all of Europe to America in search of his benefactor, the rich
Baron Gould. The story was framed by the refrain, there is always mud in
Zebrzydowo, and set during a moment when Europe stood poised at the
edge of an abyss: cannibalistic, impoverished, mystical, sadistic, prostituted.27 In New York, now as Baron Goulds secretary, Nathan conceived
of the ideal social world as one that reconciled communism and Catholicism. He insisted that the Jews must convert to Catholicism en masse; and
the yeshiva student himself became Pope. The story ended hundreds of
years later, when the last antisemites came upon Zebrzydowo. There they
converted to Judaism and restored the ancient Hebraic traditions. The circular structure of The Eternally Wandering Jew read against all Hegelian
narratives of History. Ultimately there was no telosand no exit.

l ove and revolution 4 1

love letters
It was around this time that Wadysaw Broniewski made the acquaintance
of Janina Kunig in Kalisz, having arrived in her hometown already surrounded with the halo of being our poet. Janina Kunig and her friends
were embarrassed by the popularity preceding him and above all by
his age, for he was twenty-six. A Legionnaire, a reserve captain, impossibly mature.28 In a soft voice, he commanded his young audience to
listenand he read them his revolutionary poem Pionierom (To the
Pioneers), ending with the stanzas:
So what if theyre stomping? So what if theyre strong?
So what that their rie butts have crushed faces?
Towards the wallhead rst. Heart leaping.
Bastille Dayvictoriousmarches on.
Let them pound your chestit will not break.
Close your mouth, though inside is blood ...
There will be brighter, more beautiful days,
there will be joy and there will be song.29
When Broniewski had nished reading there was a long silence. The
young Janina Kunig felt that any word after that poem could only be a
banality.30
Afterwards Broniewski sent Janina Kunig owers and a postcard
from a hotel. Through Broniewski she met Stande and Wandurski, who
seemed to her even more adult than Broniewski. Their courtship grew
more serious, and there followed a period of deliberately not seeing one
another as a nal test of their feelings. In the absence of visits, there were
letterslled with the language and characters of Stefan eromskis novels. The letters, opening with a plethora of versions of diminutives of her
name, drew upon aristocratic, antiquated Polish. Broniewskis rst letter
to Janina, dated 24 July 1925, began To My Gracious and Revered Young
Lady! He had been thinking of her entirely too often.31 Two days later:
Im writing to you on a Saturday night. I cannot sleep, Im pacing about
the apartment, lying down on various pieces of furniture, and constantly,
constantly thinking of you. He had recently reread all of her letters, he
told her: I experienced them again, I recalled how I had read them with
anger and regret, how I was grieved in an irrational and childish way,

4 2 l ov e a n d r e v o l u t i o n

and again how they awakened in me an insane joy, likewise not terribly justied and childish. Ah, I will not philosophize any longer on that
theme! I know only one thing: I want to be with youyet this devout wish
claries nothing. Perhaps in general Im hovering on the border of some
kind of monstrously amusing arrogance.32
In February 1926 Broniewski responded to Janinas apparent comment that their deliberate separation was purposeless. He vowed not to
give up her love, not to be satised with only her friendship. And yetfor
his own self-respect, he insistedhe wanted to remain pure. He relished
the drama of self-restraint, of ostensible selessness, and wished for nothing banal, ordinary, vulgar to taint their romanticism. Beneath it all, as
this letter disclosed, lurked his reluctance to be married: I wish you
happiness, regardless of what kind of fate awaits me as part of that. Youve
rightly observed that something hostile is coming into being between us
against the background of the fact that internally, I have not agreed to all
that today plays the greatest role in your happinessyet neither you nor
I can do otherwise. And rightly: Your feelings, in which I believe, are honest and strong, yet you should protect them even against the thought of
someone else, even against yourself. You should cultivate them in yourself,
enlarge and ennoble them.33
Janina Kunig responded to his lavish romanticism with some guilt,
writing in March 1926: I have something to say to you: namely, why do
you spoil me so? I look at these owers and think, how have I deserved
this? More bad than good has come to you from me and it makes me feel
terribly stupid, as usual, when I accept something undeserved. I have
the impression that Im exploiting your feelings for me in a distasteful
way.34
Broniewskis letters reected a remarkable constancy of feeling during that rst year of their epistolary courtship. By August he had decided
to marry Janina. That month he received a glowing letter from Irena Krzywicka, full of praise for his decision. Krzywicka added that, despite her
frequent solo travels about the world, she valued her marriage tremendously and regarded life as a couple as a beautiful thing.35 In September
1926 Broniewski wrote: Jaka! So you truly love me? You write of that
with such joy and ... I feel the truth of your words! Listen to me, I am
going insane with joy. I dont know how to tell you, I dont know how to
write to you how much this means to me. Your love is for me the condition

l ove and revolution 43

of everything ... for it Im prepared to do anything, to exert the greatest

eorts, to make sacrices, even to commit crimes, if that were necessary
for you. Only now do I feel that I am alive, that I can do something, that
I want to live and that life makes me so happy. Everything in me is awakening as in spring.36
Yet something had happened during their separation: a woman in
Cracow was pregnant with Broniewskis child. Now Broniewskis tone,
once so lofty and rened, became harsh, almost crude: With K ... its
quite strange. After my arrival I found several letters, which I answered
very explicitly in a negative sense, although I didnt yet write about you.
As soon as I had sent that letter, I received yet another one by express,
which distinguished itself by two kinds of threats: rst, that she will harm
herself, and secondly, that she will not liquidate you-know-what. This letter
I havent answered ... The most amusing thing is that in this last letter
she called me a seducera great exaggeration, who really seduced whom
here? Broniewski went on to write of other topics; he seemed condent
of Janina Kunigs support. He ended by reminding her: Forgive me in
advance, if I repeat too often that I love you like a lunatic and in no way
can I live without you.37
Janina Kunig was tolerant (or perhaps, rather, forgiving) of this development. The following day Broniewski wrote to her: Demand from me
what you want, even the worst lunacy, so that I would know I am nothing
to you, so that I would hear from you that incomprehensible, wonderful
word: I love. Look, its never been this way with me! Theres something
unheard of in my present feelings for youits greater than love, its some
kind of union, fused into one person, it seems to me that I think and feel
through you. Im writing this to you, you exasperating girl, so that youll
know of your importance to me and do with that what you wish, even
if it were to be to defend yourself against me.38 Despite his decision,
Broniewskis hesitancy to marry lingered, even as he reassured the object
of his aection that there was no reason for her to be concerned with the
fate of the woman in Cracow.
Jasiek, you write that I should marry you as soon as possible,
because you fear some kind of change. Im not worried about
changes: with me its out of the question, and I have so much
faith in you, perhaps even more than you deserve (a wealth of

4 4 l ov e a n d r e v o l u t i o n

experiences). I believe you that you love me, nally, with serious, enduring emotion, and if that faith deceives me, then let
happen what will. ... Dont think about Cracow, Jasiula. Nothing can any longer happen there that would change us. There
remains only regret, and its best to forget that. These matters
grate on me a bit: that woman continually threatens that she
wont go to Poronin. Yesterday I wrote her a thick letter (after
a four-day silence), in which I conducted an analysis of the
entire relationship. In conclusion I demanded categorically that
she liquidate the known projects, threatening that if she does
not I dont want to hear anything about her and Ill take the
child, though by force. ... One way or another, these matters
havent the slightest inuence on me. They only irritate me.
Im feeling a bit unwell.39
In November, a friend of Janina Kunig wrote to Broniewski, urging
him to marry Janina as soon as possible.40 Broniewskis grandmother,
Jadwiga Lubowidzka, was not pleased by this prospect: Janina Kunig was
not a Catholic and the wedding would not take place in a Catholic church.41
She wrote an inamed letter to her grandson. She had been aware that
he was no longer a practicing Catholic, but that you would forgetat
such an important moment, a decisive one for the future of your entire
life, my beloved Wadzio, that I cannot comprehend. I know that your
mother is also opposed, and does the sacred memory of your father and
grandfather mean nothing to you?42 Jadwiga Lubowidzkas wishes were
ignored. In December 1926 Broniewski and Janina Kunig were married;
on 27 December 1926 he wrote his rst letter to her as her husband.43 Soon
afterwards, he brought his young wife to Warsaw, where Irena Krzywicka
befriended her. It was, from the beginning, a dicult marriage.44

a prolific m a n i a
The mid-1920s were a time of many changes for Broniewski: his marriage,
his debut as a proletarian poet, and his increasingly close friendship with
Witold Wandurski. After being arrested by the Bolshevik Cheka in Ukraine
in 1920, Wandurski had made his way back to Poland in 1921.45 Following
his return to d he composed a beautiful album of photographs, poetry,
and prose for his young daughter. He showed it to Irena Krzywicka, who

l ove and revolution 45

was touched by the fatherly love and the artistic sophistication.46 To Broniewski, however, Wandurski spoke not of his little girl but of revolution.
In July 1924 Wandurski wrote to Broniewski suggesting that they should
have drunk to their brotherhood long ago and begun addressing each
other by rst name. He enclosed a poem he had dedicated to Broniewski
and inquired as to the latest developments at the literary-artistic market
at Ziemiaska.47 Wandurskis letters were long, manic, eager for replies.
On 12 February 1925 he wrote, Youre as silent as a yogi. Whats happened
to you?48 Broniewski now answered quickly, and several days later, on
17 February 1925, Wandurski responded to Broniewskis resumed state
of depression with a discussion of joy, the new key word in this postfuturist-proto-Marxist era of these writers lives:
There is no joy in youregardless of your great reserve of
masculine strength, which others lack. Of course, joy cannot
be dispensed by a prescription; one arrives there organically.
... Im already on the path. Joy gives me the conviction that
Im disposed with my entire being towards life, towards everything that matures, that ghts for its right to existence, that is
healthy, manly ... (Im now a decided atheist. It happened
somehow suddenly and unexpectedlyand gave me a feeling
of extraordinary joy and freedom.) Im living wonderfully
not so much in material terms, perhaps, as in the sense of a
physical frame of mind. I know that Im maturing. I know that
Im a true futurist-constructivist: that means: all the force of
my decision is directed towards the futureand the present
is only a joyful ladder towards the approaching future.49
By April 1925 Wandurski was preparing his play mier na gruszy
(Death on a Pear-Tree) for the Workers Theater in d, and was rumored
to be a dangerous communist.50 Little pleased him more, and in his letters he referred to police informers with ill-concealed pride. The attention
was uplifting. Prove to them that youre not a camel, Wandurski wrote
to Broniewski in Russian, in reference to the impossibility of convincing the Polish police that he was innocent of revolutionary activity. Im
writing this to you so that youll be careful. The gentlemen-policemen
werent pleased by your last letter, they even wanted to take it with them,
butsince they were tiredthey somehow forgot about it and I destroyed

4 6 l ov e a n d r e v o l u t i o n

it. He concluded with an allusion to Broniewskis poem To the Pioneers:

Just a little bit more, a little more, and there will be brighter and more
beautiful days, there will be joy and there will be song.51
Yet even as Wandurski was embracing his new reputation as a danger
to the state, he remained unable to embrace fully the revolution in Russia.
In a June 1925 interview, Wandurski discussed plans for a new play about
the problem of contemporary culture and the tragic quality of revolution.
He was, alas, convinced that even if he should complete the work as he
wanted to, neither in Poland nor in Russia would theaters want to perform
itin the former case out of consideration for order and public safety,
in the latter case due to its very critical relationship towards revolution.52
At the same time, Wandurski was working towards revolution on his own
terms. While consumed with his role in the Workers Theater, Wandurski
also found time to co-author a collection of revolutionary poetry together
with Wadysaw Broniewski and Stanisaw Ryszard Stande. Trzy Salwy
(Three Salvos) appeared in 1925. The poets wrote in their introduction:
We are not writing about ourselves. We are workers of the word. We
must express that which other people of the workbench cannot express.
In the proletariats merciless battle with the bourgeoisie we stand decidedly on the left side of the barricade. Anger, faith in victory, and joythe
joy of battlecommand us to write. Let our words fall like salvos on the
downtown streets, let them thunder with an echo in factory districts. We
are ghting for a new social order. Battle is the highest content of our
creative work.53
Broniewskis grandmother was little pleased. She was, in fact, happy
with very little about her grandsons life since he had left the army. In 1925
she wrote to him from his hometown of Pock: And now, my Wadzio, as
for your poetic creationsafter having read them, I wept bitterly. I spilled
many tears during your time at war (I am writing of this for the rst time),
but those were tears of concern about your life and safetythese tears are
entirely dierent and very painful. I know that you have little faith, but
that you would blaspheme against sanctities, that you would be capable
of thisthat I never expected. Its true that people in Pock told me that
you were very progressive, but I had understood that dierently.54 Others were more admiring, and Broniewski began to receive letters from
the aspiring proletarian poet Stanisaw Wygodzki in the gloomy town of
Bdzin.55 The correspondence began in late 1925, during Wygodzkis early

l ove and revolution 47

f igure 6 The authors of Three Salvos. Left to right: Stanisaw Ryszard Stande,
Wadysaw Broniewski, Witold Wandurski. Courtesy of Muzeum Wadysawa
Broniewskiego.

imprisonment for communism. He addressed Broniewski formally, in the

third person, and enclosed his poems written in prison for Broniewskis
evaluation.56 By his next letter, Wygodzki was addressing Broniewski in
the communist and socialist style of the second person plural.57 The letters
continued steadily throughout 1926, as Wygodzki was released from prison
and then imprisoned again. He fell into depressions, alternating between
expressions of enormous gratitude and desperate pleas for responses
which were often slow in coming.
Stanisaw Wygodzki was not alone in experiencing dicult periods.
By November 1925 both Wandurski and Broniewski had lapsed again into
depressions. Youre depressed? Wandurski wrote, So am I.58 At the
same time, Wandurski had become very popular, and wrote a week later,
If you only knew what pilgrimages have reached me every day since the
publication of Three Salvos. How many shoemakers, lathe-hands, weavers, electricians.59 Of course, they liked the introduction the best. Stande
wasWandurski emphasizedtoo dicult for them to understand, not
Polish enough. Three Salvos was being passed around at labor union

4 8 l ov e a n d r e v o l u t i o n

eetings; whoasked Wandurskiamong the Skamander poets could say

m
the same?60 Wandurski continued to oscillate between self-congratulatory
rapture and intense depression. In January 1926 Wandurski learned of
the young Russian poet Sergei Esenins suicide, and his mood descended
once again. He couldnt accept a sober Marxist relationship to reality,
Wandurski wrote. Esenin, he told Broniewski, had been too much of a
romantic, never a real communist. The letter was full of pity. Wandurski
insisted that Broniewski write about the poor fellow in the next issue
of Wiadomoci Literackie, and reminded him that of all the Russian poets,
it was Esenin who was closest to Broniewski, no one had translated him
so well as Broniewski. I feel depressed myself, as after the loss of a close
friend, Wandurski wrote.61
A few weeks later came an epiphany. On 22 January 1926, in a long letter to Broniewski from d, Wandurski exclaimed that he had searched
through his spiritual baggage and found that something was not right
with him. He spent too much time with pen and paper, and true knowledge and maturity would come only in praxis, in engagement. Now he
had found revelation and catharsis.
Simply put, Im lacking knowledge and maturity of thought.
Both the rst and the second are available for acquisition.
But theyre to be acquired in active work, in battlenot in lazy
contemplation, in the closet of ones own room, at ones desk.
At least for those with natures such as mineaggressive,
agitatedthis is the only path.
You speak about some kind of danger, about the fact
that conforming to people of Hempels type can very quickly
destroy me insideIve considered thatand Ive come to
the conclusion that this is only self-deception.First and foremost, Im conforming not to people, but to the cause, Im
actively entering the workers movement. ... My obligation
and aspirationlike yours, and Staszeks [Stande]is to make
that movement powerful and valuable. And that is only possible
when a person of our type (that means a stagnated and stubborn individualist) wholly and without reservations conforms
to the general line, to general discipline, when he becomes

l ove and revolution 49

thoroughly acquainted with the program and work method,

when he becomes active in the general movementand only
then does he have the right to be in the opposition, naturally,
an opposition of a tactical nature, relatively, substantially. Such
an opposition can be creative. Our present intellectually independent position is only masked intellectual opportunism,
lack of decisiveness, distaste for discipline, avoidance of eort,
appeasement. ... Yes, appeasement!. ... But negation alone
will not get you far. Two roads lead from negation of the actual
state of things: the road towards the past and the road towards
the future, to Catholicism and to communism. Our entire
freedom, our independence lies in freedom of choice,
nothing more. Its necessary, nally, to choose one of the
extremesand to oscillate around that extreme. Everything
elseis self-hypocrisy, remnants of romantic-literary superstitions, the rebellion of a poetic individualist. ... I want content. I want life. Knowledge. Joyjoy! direct joy! With what
pleasure Ive returned now to the bed of the river that I swam
when I was 1719! ... Im learning. I want to be a true futurist.
... You write: where are the new aesthetics, law, ethics?
WhereIn our headand in our activity. We have to create
themthrough direct contact with the workers movement.
As ordinary soldiers of class war. ... As of several days ago
I am now formally the secretary of the Leather Workers Union
and the Construction Workers Uniontwo of the reddest.
And I feel wonderful.62
Wandurski concluded with an attack on Wiadomoci Literackie, among
others on Stern and Grydzewski (whom Wandurski sarcastically called
arch-Polish and referred to by his former name Grycendler): The kikes
are now outright cynically causing problems and playing sanctimonious
hypocrites.63
Thought, feeling, knowledge came in action, Wandurski now knew.
He reminisced nostalgically about 1917, the year of the Revolution, the
most beautiful time of his life, the moment that brought him to writing.
He had come to the conclusion that he could not exist outside the Revolution. He was ready to ghtand reminded Broniewski that when the

5 0 l ov e a n d r e v o l u t i o n

moment had come, Broniewski had not pondered for long but rather had
taken his gun and gone to join the Legions. Wandurski had never been
in the army, thus far he had been a slouch. But no more. As for his
friends reservations about dialectical materialism, they were exagger
ated. Historical materialism was only a method. After all, did Kantians or
Hegelians abdicate their freedom of thought? The entire realm of emotions remained open. Wandurski was certain that once Broniewski became
more closely acquainted with the dialectical method, he would come to
appreciate this for himself.
A month later, on 17 February 1926, Witold Wandurski was arrested.
This time he was released on the same day, and seemed not in the slightest
bad humor about the arrest. He was terribly busy, and his work had put
him in an elevated mood. Today I no longer feel alone, he wrote on 19
February 1926, My connection with the proletariat is becoming more
powerful, more heartfelt with each passing day. ... Today I know what
I want. I know how to speak and what to say. As for the literary scene
at Ziemiaska, he had become still more dismissive. It was all awful
stuness and stench. Worseand now he switched to Russianin
general its an empty place, the hole in the bagel. This did not surprise
Wandurski. After all, life is only on the left side.64 Before long Wandurski
began to notice undercover police informers following himand he took
great pleasure in unmasking them. Upon spotting them, he would call
out Something stinks! and hold his nose.65 Wandurski was full of plans
in that spring of 1926. He was condent that he could produce authentically proletarian art, poetry, literature, theater. He had written a play for
the Workers Theater and he was convinced that it was truly proletarian,
truly Polish, not an imitation. Furthermore, he had a wonderful group of
workers at the Workers Theater. Of twenty-three members in the collective, he reported happily to Broniewski, only three or four were Jews!66
In May 1926, Marshal Jzef Pisudski came to power in a coup and Poland
became an eective dictatorship, albeit initially a relatively benign one. Julian Tuwim and his friends were among Pisudskis supporters. Pisudski
had been a patron of literature in the early days of Polish independence,
and Antoni Sonimski remembered fondly the Pisudski of the Pod Pika
dorem era. This was the Pisudski who agreed to let the young poets
perform their satirical cabaret at the governments Belweder Palace, the

l ove and revolution 5 1

Pisudski who canceled cabinet meetings so that the poets could use that
room as their performance space. This was the Pisudski who was not
insulted by the satire that did not spare him as the object of its jokes,
and who afterwards fed the young cabaret poets pastries.67 In May 1926,
the Communist Party of Poland, under Adolf Warskis leadership and in
accordance with current Comintern policy, made the decision to endorse
Pisudskis coup. Many of Wandurskis workers then facilitated the coups
success by means of a transit strike.68
Yet in his letters to Broniewski, Wandurski appeared too self-absorbed
to pay Pisudskis coup much attention. By that summer he had still more
plans, for a Club of Proletarian Cultural Workers, for an almanac, for
a nationwide social-artistic organization that would be part of the inter
national workers movement.69 An era of unengaged artistic experimentation had drawn to a close. In summer of 1926, Anatol Stern declared
that poetry had become an anachronism.70 In the very last issue of 1926,
Wiadomoci Literackie published a retrospective of the caf Pod Pikadorem,
with reminiscences by the Skamander poets. Antoni Sonimski even set
aside his usual sarcasm and wrote nostalgically of autumn 1918 when Warsaw emerged as the capital of newly independent Poland, and when the
words freedom, independence, Poland, communism, and revolution
did not contain a shadow of the gray quotidian or even disillusionment
or discouragementwe were full of enthusiasm, strength and hope. On
the evening when Pikador rst opened the entire elite of contemporary
Warsaw was gathered there.71 It had been a time when the young Skaman
der poets held the country in their hands, when the young avant-garde
was overwhelmed by the simultaneous sense of the ending of the old
world and the endlessness of present possibilities. This lasted only for
a moment. In December 1926 Julian Tuwim felt acutely the change in
atmosphere:72 Futurism! New art! How tiresome they are today and how
new and attractive it all was then!

c h a p t e r three

A Visit from Mayakovsky

For the rst impression that he made was precisely this:

an impression of enormity.
Anatol Stern on Mayakovsky

in 1928, witold wandur ski at last found himself in prison. There

he felt liberated from all previous anxieties and depressions. Time passed
quickly; he had never felt better. In April he wrote to Broniewski: Ive made
many valuable observations here, Ive acquired much experienceand in
general Ive enriched my psychological capital. Presently I am convinced
that for a proletarian writer a stay in prisonjust like a stay in a hospital
or work in the labor unionsis simply essential, practically imperative.1
Prison had given Wandurski new condence, and he spoke to Broniewski
now with a sense of heightened status:
It is precisely nowand precisely from herethat I could take
the oor in the polemic over proletarian poetry. The prisoners
arein spite of the opinion of various Hulkasintensely
and particularly interested in that issueand the percentage
of workers in our prison is around 70 percent. ... The three
of us, our work has been subjected to harsh and material
criticism.Recently there occurred an interesting incident.
Im in a cell with two workers. Im teaching them. During a
geography lesson I read them an ancient Egyptian prayer to
the Nile, which evoked sincere admiration and several obser
vations so cogent, that I was amazed at my students (a weaver
52

a v i s i t from mayakovsky 53

from Pabianice) vigilance towards beauty. They relate to me

in a straightforward manner, warm and very friendly. We laugh
a lot, we poke fun at one otherbut we also converse seriously.
In general the mood is wonderful, manly and sober.2
Wandurski was not Broniewskis only epistolary contact with the world
behind prison walls. Stanisaw Wygodzki, the aspiring poet from Bdzin,
had also found himself incarcerated once again and was not in such good
spirits. For Wygodzki prison was all too familiar; it was uninteresting and
gray; the cell was crowded; conditions for creative work were abysmal.3
Broniewski was slow to reply, and by February 1927 Wygodzki was pleading for some word from the poet, and in particular an assessment of his
poems. The uncertainty, especially in this vulnerable situation, was destroying Wygodzki, paralyzing him.4 In April Wygodzki wrote that he had
been delaying writing this next letter, waiting until he had some stronger,
better work to enclose, work that would reveal his soul to the more senior
poet. I remain under your inuence, he informed Broniewski, and I
have no scruples about that, as I regard you as an artist of the new ideological school, despite the fact that [stylistically] youre a Skamandrite.5 On
May Day Wygodzki and his comrades in prison had recited Broniewskis
poetry. If we were to be released at this moment, Wygodzki told him,
sixty agitators would carry news throughout the Basin of the existence of
proletarian, revolutionary, powerful, joyous poetry.6 Now Broniewski did
respond with a postcard; and Wygodzki was very grateful, he had feared
that the older poet had forgotten about him.7 Yet afterwards Broniewski
was silent again for a time, willing to answer Wygodzki only after his release from prison in late 1927.8 Wygodzki was angry and hurt, yet his tone
remained deferential. By January 1928 all seemed to have been forgiven,
and Wygodzki asked Broniewski for permission to translate some of his
poems into Yiddish.9 That year Wygodzki made his own contribution to
literary polemics with an article in Wiadomoci Literackie about the tasks
presently facing Polish poetry.10 Anatol Stern was displeased. In Sterns
opinion, Wygodzki was himself not terribly well read, and had ignored,
among other works, Jasieskis and Sterns own The Earth to the Left, misdating Polish proletarian poetry from the appearance of Three Salvos.11
Broniewski himself continued to suer from insecurity, despite the
legendary aura he was acquiring. Once, after Broniewski had given a

5 4 a v i s i t f r o m m aya k ov s k y

poetry reading for some leftist students, one of them asked the poet what
he had been doing years earlier when he had fought for Pisudski against
the Bolsheviks. Another student shouted at the rst to be quiet, but a
third agreed that Broniewski should account for his actions. And is it not
enough, Broniewski answered his audience, that I am with you now?
Broniewskis student admirers felt then the painful loneliness of the poet
they adored.12 Yet Broniewski was about to become less alone in the world
than ever before. In November 1929, Janina Broniewska gave birth to
their daughter, Anka. It was a transformative moment for Broniewski,
who now embraced fatherhood from its rst moments. Of Ankas birth
Janina Broniewska wrote, And here most likely began the greatest, most
important love in Wadeks life. Love at rst sight, his most faithful and
most enduring lovefor Anka.13

collaborat ive ve n t u r e s
The failed Nowa Kultura was not the last attempt at collaboration between
the avant-garde and the Polish Communist Party. When the next project
came into being, the dynamics of collaboration were quite dierent. By
this time the literary critic Andrzej Stawar, surrounded by the myth of
the worker-autodidact, had joined Broniewski, Stande, and Wat. Stawar
was rare among the now fellow-traveling writers in the depth of his
knowledge about Marxism and in having begun his intellectual life as
a communist.14 The journal, named Dwignia (The Lever), was an alliance between writers leaning towards Marxism and constructivists in
the visual arts, in particular the husband and wife Mieczysaw Szczuka
and Teresa arnowerwna, who conceived of the journal as a vehicle for
propagating revolution through art. Dwignia, whose rst issue appeared
in March 1927, did not on the surface look so dierent from Nowa Kultura;
yet now control had shifted: the Party member Jan Hempel was only a
contributor, while the inuence of Stawar and the fellow-traveling poets
was most pronounced. Wat became involved through Stawar.15 Dwignias
programmatic statement of March 1927 dened its purpose:
The task of Dwignia is to gather those cultural workers
(writers, artists, etc.) who base themselves on the aspirations
of the contemporary proletariat. There are considerably more
such people in Poland today than it might seem, but they are

a v i s i t from mayakovsky 55

scattered and isolated. Our publication is intended to connect

them, to focus their eorts. It is intended as well to orient the
reader amidst the chaos of bourgeois cultures present decay
and to point the way to the creation of new values.
We are fully aware of the preparatory character of our work,
as well as of the meager possibilities for realizing our activities
in the framework of the present order of things. We are working for the future with the complete feeling that the future
belongs to us and that at some point, in conditions of complete
freedom, we will conduct our work incomparably more broadly
and more ecaciously.16
Dwignia published poems by Stande and Jasieski, as well as translations of Vladimir Mayakovsky. There were long-winded and self-righteous
pieces by Wandurski, including an article on the Workers Theater in d.
Wandurski also published an attack on the Russian novelist Ilya Ehrenburg
(who that year visited Tuwim in Warsaw) enclosing his revolutionaryness sarcastically in quotation marks. In his article on Ehrenburg, Wandurski coined the term erenburszczyznathat is, literature characterized
by perverse necrophilia, the quasi-philosophy of Smerdiakov from The
Brothers Karamazov, bourgeois vindictiveness. Wandurski drew attention
to Ehrenburgs origins as the son of a Jewish merchant.17
Andrzej Stawars voice was most prominent. He, the one who was
not a poet himself, was the star, the most sophisticated writer. A literary
critic, Stawar passed judgment on his friends. He wrote that of the three
authors of Three Salvos, Broniewski undoubtedly demonstrated the greatest lyrical force and the least consistent social feeling.18 Stawar believed
that in the postwar era, prose had fallen incomparably far behind poetry, a
crisis revealing the primitive nature of literary culture in Poland. Stawars
understanding of dialectical materialism was his own; and he made no
pretenses either of ingratiating himself with the Party or of speaking to
the working class from which he himself had emerged.19 In another article
Stawar analyzed ostentatiously and proudly emphasized Westernness as
a bourgeois slogan, a bourgeois construct allowing for the use of East versus West as a nave opposition of two worlds: black and white, evil versus
good: The Westernness of Poland, Polands belonging to the West, constitutes one of the favorite motifs of ideological reections by representatives

5 6 a v i s i t f r o m m aya k ov s k y

of the Polish bourgeois intelligentsia, he wrote.20 This came at a moment

when Wiadomoci Literackie, while not alienating itself from Russia, was
embracing a European cosmopolitanism and even beginning to publish
occasional issues in French under the title La Pologne Littraire.
Survival was dicult for Dwignia; and Janina Broniewska felt the
criticism from the Left most painfully. In her reading, some of this leftist
criticism came from neophytes, and some from Marxists who attacked
Broniewski and his friends for a lack of orthodoxy. Stawar pointed to
the opening line of Broniewskis To the PioneersIf your heart in
your chest is too heavy / open your chest, tear out your heartwith the
criticism that a real worker did not have to tear out his heart, even symbolically.21 Moreover, there was repression from the state. In April 1927,
Broniewski wrote to his wife, I dont know why or what for, but today
the police came to Hipoteczna Street looking for me. Im supposing from
this that a search awaits me, and who knows if not arrest. I dont have
reason to worry about all that, but everything is possible before the rst
of May.22
It was around this time that someone ran into Caf Ziemiaska,
distraught by the unanticipated news that Adam Wayk, who had kept
his distance from Dwignia, had been arrested during the night. Janina
Broniewska was shocked: Pugnacious Adam Wayk, the poet, the chess
player, a great chum, but at that time still quite far from being engaged
in the cause and distant from circles compromising enough to result in
police repression. What sort of story was this? She was the one sent to go
for help, as a reward for which she was given a pastry from Ziemiaska.
She ran to Julian Tuwim, who had friends in the government: My God,
Juleczek! Why Wayk? Have they gone mad?. ... as I love God, hes no
ydokomuna [Judeo-Bolshevik]! She asked Tuwim to call the commissioner at City Hall, and Tuwim answered her: Must I? Hes the last person I feel like talking to just now ... But what I wouldnt do for you, my
little witch! So o rushed Tuwim to intervene; Janina Broniewska repaid
him with a kiss on the forehead. When Tuwim put down the telephone, he
was rather disgusted: the commissioner had ordered his ocers to search
all the cells, and Wayk was nowhere to be found. When the avant-garde
poet nally returned from prison a few days later, it emerged that the
commissioner had indeed searched for him as promised, but the search

a v i s i t from mayakovsky 57

had initially proven fruitless because everyone had forgotten that Wayk
was only a literary pseudonym. Later Janina Broniewska was uncertain
as to whether her eorts merited that pastry, but she never regretted the
kiss. It was, she believed, well deserved for the many times that Tuwim
would come forward to help their friends.23
Julian Tuwim was not the only one who felt aectionately towards
Wadysaw Broniewskis young wife. Janina Broniewska only once, in
her words, paid back her husband for his indelities, and it happened
in the second year of her marriage. One night, when she pulled herself
away from a gathering that had gone on past midnight, Andrzej Stawar
decided to escort her home. We were standing for a while by the gate,
she told, and suddenly my caretaker smacks me awkwardly on the cheek
and confesses to me a love of many years. The scene was so little romantic,
the confession so schoolboyish, that I burst out laughing. And then in the
glow of the lantern around the house number on the gate, I saw something
so evil in Jdrzejs [Stawars] eyes, that passion seized me as well.24 Despite this feeling she rejected him. Stawar was angry; in his mind, she had
given him some hope. The very principled Janina Broniewska demanded
that Stawar tell his friend, her husband, who was so trusting towards
himand so Stawar did. Upon hearing Stawars confession, Broniewski
was more sympathetic than angry; he returned home and asked his wife
to grant amnesty to his poor friend.25
Larger events were occurring around them. Pisudski was no longer
very much of a socialist; and Polish communists soon regretted having
assisted the Marshals coup. On 1 May 1928, less than two years after
encouraging the transit strike on Pisudskis behalf, the veteran communist leader Adolf Warskiwhose daughter Zoa Warska had married
Stanisaw Ryszard Stande the year beforeappeared in Theater Square,
at the head of an enormous demonstration against Pisudskis dictatorship.
Among the crowd of demonstrators were Pisudskis former allies. The
Marshal was taken aback; his militia shot into the crowd. Isaac Deutscher
watched as hundreds were wounded, and Warski held up his white-gray
head to address the crowd.26 On the same day Broniewski wrote to his
wife: Im writing this letter under the impression of the bloody massacre
in which I found myself today on Theater Square. I was there when the
militia ... shot into the crowd.27

5 8 a v i s i t f r o m m aya k ov s k y

mayakovsky c o m e s t o wa r s aw
In The Spring to Come, Stefan eromski had envisioned just such a clash
between the authorities of the young Polish state and the revolutionaries
who felt betrayed by it. As a generation, it was, perhaps, the young intellectuals identication with eromskis coming of age novel and their love
for the Russian futurist turned revolutionary poet that set them apart.
It was a love that consumed them with particular intensity. For these
poets, the Revolution spoke in the words neither of Marx nor of Lenin, but
of Vladimir Mayakovsky. Witold Wandurski met Mayakovsky in Moscow
in 1920. In autumn of 1921, when Wandurski, dressed in rags, made his
way back to Poland from the east, he brought with him a pair of old socks,
a single shirt, and several volumes of Russian poetryNikolai Aseev,
Velimir Khlebnikov, Sergei Esenin, and Vladimir Mayakovsky. Soon after
his return to Poland, Wandurski met with his old classmate from d,
Julian Tuwim. Tuwim greedily threw himself upon the books of Russian
poetry, lamenting that in Poland, we all live in such a boring, colorless
way.28
It was the rst new Russian book that Id held in my hands in ve
years, Tuwim wrote. I can compare the poetic jolt that I experienced,
reading Mayakovsky for the rst time, only with the unremembered impact
of the voice and sight of the sky torn apart by lightening. A setting in motion, upheaval, thunderbolts, ameseverything new, without precedent,
wonderful, terrifying, revolutionary. Verserevolution, rhythmrevo
lution, illustrationrevolution. The feeling that in poetry something
of an enormous dimension, in the sense of an artistic turning point,
had taken place.29 The following day Tuwim brought Wandurski to Caf
Ziemiaska, where they introduced Antoni Sonimski to Mayakovskys
work. Soon a chorus of Ziemiaskas clientele was reciting Mayakovskys
poetry; even the waiters, Wandurski wrote, were running among the
tables in time to Mayakovskys March, as if someone were spurring
them onLeft.30
In April 1927, Mayakovsky came to Warsaw. He spent little more
than a day in the Polish capital; he was on his way to Paris. Broniewski,
arnowerwna, and Stawar were among the few who met Mayakovsky that
evening.31 Immediately afterwards Broniewski wrote to his wife: Yesterday I was at the Krzywickis. ... Wed been drinking quite a lot and in all
likelihood would have stayed there longer had Teresa [arnowerwna] not

a v i s i t from mayakovsky 59

found out by telephone that Mayakovsky had come and they were waiting
for us. ... [He was] large, with coarse features, and a voice low and deep
and so strong that when he speaks loudly the upright piano jingles, he
plays the cynic but one can sense some kind of shyness in him.32 Wandurski had the impression that Broniewski did not like Mayakovsky.33
Broniewskis feelings were conicted, as he wrote to his wife: So it is,
that I prefer the Mayakovsky of seven years ago to that of today. He read
a lot of things written recently; an exaggeratedly disgusted relationship to
everything that he sees on this old globe, a parody of poetic-ness. It seems
to me that I dont have a dened relationship to this writer, I must reect
upon this more deeply. But the old poems that he recited: Left March
and Our Marchacquire a completely new content in the authors recitation. Imagine a live, talking locomotive.34 The following month, in May
1927, the Russian poet returned to Warsaw for ten days on his way home
from Paris. Wandurski, Wat, and Stawar awaited Mayakovskys train.35
Police informers looked on. Then Anatol Stern arrived late, breathless.
Wandurski watched as from the railway car there emerged a tall, broadshouldered man with a smooth face, as if chiseled in stone and with deep,
double wrinkles between wise, penetrating eyes.36 Stern described the
Russian poet as gigantic, lling out space with himself.37 The Polish
poets introduced Mayakovsky to Dwignia; it seemed to Wandurski that
Mayakovsky was pleased, seeing the Polish journal as akin to the Russian
revolutionary literary group Lef. And in fact Mayakovsky wrote of Dwignia
that it was closest to us.38
The Soviet embassy held a banquet in honor of their revolutionary
poet. Ola Watowa was seated next to Mayakovsky; for the rst time in her
life she drank too much and was unable to get up from the table. Mayakovsky gallantly lifted her, together with the chair.39 When the doors of
the embassy hosting him closed behind him, Stern wrote, the impression of something gigantic remained with us.40 This feeling was shared
by all of them. Wandurski was shaken, nearly deafened by the power
and unusual strength beating from that man.41 A second banquet in
Mayakovskys honor was organized by Dwignia at Caf Astoria; Wayk,
Stern, Sonimski, Tuwim, and Grydzewski were also invited. Stande was
absent; he had traveled to the Soviet Union for the tenth anniversary of
the Revolution.42 Mayakovsky arrived wearing the same gray English wool
suit that he had been wearing when he had gotten o the train; and it did

6 0 a v i s i t f r o m m aya k ov s k y

not escape Wandurskis attention that whereas the writers associated with
Dwignia were also dressed casually, their less radical counterparts arrived
in dinner jackets.43 With respect to these less radical counterparts, Mayakovsky found Sonimski to be calm, self-satised. Of Sonimskis fellow
Skamander poet Mayakovsky observed: Tuwim, obviously very talented,
restless, fearful of being misunderstood, once wrote and perhaps now,
too, wishes to write authentic works of battle, but is clearly thoroughly
reined in by ocial Polish tastes.44
On another evening Ola and Aleksander Wat hosted a party for the
visiting poet. At a certain moment, Mayakovsky stood up from the table,
put his leg on the chair and, holding a pickle, began to recite the poem
that had so captivated Caf Ziemiaska:
Chest forward with might!
Let banners be raised to skys height!
Who starts to march with the right?
Left!
Left!
Left!45
Mayakovsky recited the lines in such a strong voice that the window-panes
shook and the doors of the cabinet fell open. With such a voice, Janina
Broniewska wrote, it would be possible to ll a great stadium, a hall of a
factory!46 Yet she saw something else as well; she saw that this giant had
something boyish in himself. A live and talking locomotive, as Wadek
concisely described him after his rst meeting. Disgust for all kinds of
poetic-ness? And if that were self-defense against shyness and lyricism?47
She went to help Ola Watowa wash the glasses, and from the kitchen she
watched Mayakovskys eyes follow Aleksander Wats beautiful wife: How
much enchantment in those eyes, how much lyricism, despite what that
energetically delineated mouth talks about so thunderously:Constructiv
ism? Yes. Thats expediency! And only expediency! The usefulness of an
object denes its form. Behold, even that cup of yours. ... What are those
little patterns, those gildings, those owers for?Mayakovsky argues,
turning around the delicate little cup in his large, powerful hands. And
his eyes once again in pursuit of someone who was virtually the quintessence of fragility, gilding, ornamentation, a pure mimosa crossed with
ivy, fullling the role of hostess at the most revolutionary of revolution-

a v i s i t from mayakovsky 61

ary literary gatherings.48 Ola Watowa, too, sensed the thunderous poets
paradoxical delicacy. It seemed to her that at once in that gure of a
giant there was something very gentle, disarming, something that at moments seemed like weakness.49 Her husband felt it, too: a gentleness
that smacked a little of cosmic melancholy.50
Mayakovskys voice ensorceled all of the Polish poets. For Wat it was
unmistakable: that wasnt a man, that wasnt a poet; that was an empire,
the coming world empire.51 The Polish poets felt a respect that was closer
to reverence, and which contained enormous aection. They gave Mayakovsky copies of their own books, inscribed them with dedications:
Wadysaw Broniewski, To Vladimir Mayakovsky, the poet of the revolution 17 May 192752
Bruno Jasieski, with comradely greetings France 23 VI 192753
Anatol Stern, To Vladimir Mayakovsky, my rst teacherwith love
and gratitude 14 V 2754
Aleksander Wat, To the greatest of poets of contemporary times, Vladimir
Mayakovsky, with comradely greetings 12 V 2755
Adam Wayk, To Mr. Vladimir Mayakovsky with respect 14 V 192756
Mayakovsky returned to Moscow with the books he had been given in Poland. There, in his journal, he noted the new acquaintances he had made:
Stawar, Wandurski, Broniewski, Sonimski, Tuwim, Stern, and Wat. Of
Wat he wrote, a born futurist.57 Of Warsaw he noted: Some Poles call
Warsaw a small Paris. In any event, its a very small Paris. ... Other Poles
say that Warsaw is Moscow. This is simply a mistake.58
Aleksander Wat and his wife saw Mayakovsky again two years later, in
1929; and it was during this second visit that the two poets grew close.59
Mayakovsky no longer wanted to talk about politics, about anything Soviet,
about the dissolution of Lef or about attacks by the Russian Association of
Proletarian Writers. He seemed to Wat to have grown melancholic, and he
spent most of his time in the Soviet embassy playing billiards, drinking,
and talking obsessively about Aleksandr Blok, Sergei Esenin, and Viktor
Shklovsky.60 He was pathologically clean; he washed his hands constantly.
Ola Watowa accompanied him on shopping trips when he bought enormous quantities of scissors and razors and other objectswhich he then
gave away to his friends when he returned to Moscow. She knew that
something was wrong. He was dying in front of our eyes, she wrote.

6 2 a v i s i t f r o m m aya k ov s k y

One day she arranged to meet Mayakovsky at the Soviet embassy, so that
he could continue his shopping. He seemed nervous, as if frightened. He
was waiting for a telephone connection to Paris: At last the telephone.
The conversation took place in the adjacent room. Mayakovsky returned
completely transformed. One felt as if he had been struck, that something
irrevocable had happened. He was speaking with a woman whom at that
time he loved very much. She was a White Russian and lived in Paris.
He had been trying to persuade her, perhaps pleading with her, to leave
Paris and go with him to Moscow. And just then, while I was present, he
received the nal rejection.61 In October 1928, Mayakovsky had fallen in
love with the Russian migr Tatiana Yakovleva in Paris. The following
year Mayakovsky once more traveled west from Moscow, attempting to
make his way to Paris to see her again.62 His hopes were disappointed.
In October 1929, upon hearing that Mayakovsky had either been denied
a visa to France or had been warned strongly against applying for one,
Yakovleva accepted another mans marriage proposal.63
Wat wrote that Mayakovskys 1927 visit galvanized the Polish poets.64
No other single gure was ever so beloved by them. No one else embodied
so beautifully the convergence between the avant-garde and the Revolution. For Wat, Mayakovsky became a gangplank that conveniently led
from the avant-garde position, formal innovation, to communist, revolutionary writing.65 After Mayakovskys visit, Broniewski described how
Russian revolutionary poetry had been the greatest inuence on his work.
To Mayakovsky, he wrote, I owe my nal break with symbolic rubbish
and a relationship to the word as to an instrument of battle.66 Just days
after Mayakovsky had left Warsaw, Stern published an article about him
in Wiadomoci Literackie. Mayakovsky had in himself, in contrast to his
comrades, Stern wrote, that internal imperative of self-limitation, by
which, as Goethe said, one can recognize a master.67 Yet Mayakovskys
visit to Warsaw was more than the visit of a master; for the Polish poets it
was something more intimate. He was their greatest love aair, the nexus
point through which they fell in love with the aesthetics of the Revolution.
Wat said of his and Ola Watowas relationship with the Russian futurist:
We simply fell in love with him as a poet. The image of himwith all that
strength and size and a certain great inner tenderness. Tendernesshe
was very tender.68

a v i s i t from mayakovsky 63

a polish poe t m ove s t o p a r i s

Bruno Jasieski was not in Warsaw when Mayakovsky arrived. He had
already met the Russian futurist, in Paris. In 1925 Jasieski and his wife
Klara Arem had left Poland. In March 1928 Jasieski wrote to Broniewski
from Paris, angry at Stern for having signed Jasieskis name to an open
letter concerning proletarian art.69 The attestation of his break with Stern
was the beginning of Jasieskis correspondence with Broniewski. Since
his departure Jasieski had drifted away from the Polish literary world;
now he asked Broniewski to send him a more detailed account of leftist
literary ventures, adding that he would be very willing to support Dwignia
with his modest person. Given their common ideological platform, and
the thinness of ranks, they should, Jasieski believed, maintain the
tightest solidarity.70 He added, With respect to my old comrades-in-arms
from around Nowa Sztuka, weve broken up in directions too varied and
today speak languages too dierent for there to remain anything from the
platform (even purely artistic) that once united us, apart from memories.
In their examples, I see how very demoralizing the atmosphere at home
that you have to breathe today must be.71
In Paris Bruno Jasieski and his wife lived in poverty. The Polish
writer Stanisaw Brucz, who had been among those at the futurists table
at Ziemiaska in the early 1920s, saw Jasieski shortly after his arrival in
Paris: In December 1925 I found Jasieski in the least expected neighborhood: in lower Montmartre, in the impasse Poissonire, on a back street
crushed into a block of tenement houses at the intersection of boulevards
Rochechouart and Barbs. And so in a workers district, noisy and crowded,
full of cheap bazaars, shoddy market stalls, bistros, mechanical workshops
sprawling the whole width of the sidewalks and resounding with racket
from morning to night.72 Aleksander Wat visited Jasieski in May 1926
in the same neighborhood, yet Wat found it beautiful, very typically Parisian, and very petty bourgeois. By then Jasieski had undergone a
transformation; little remained of the arch-snob prowling about and
surrounded by young women.73 He had grown much calmer. Brucz found
Jasieski focused on his work, his day carefully divided: work on his long
poem Sowo o Jakubie Szeli (A Word about Jakub Szela) in the morning;
paid work for newspapers in the afternoon; correspondence and study in
the evenings.

6 4 a v i s i t f r o m m aya k ov s k y

In Paris Jasieski surprised me with his homebound lifestyle.

And not only with that. The Jasieski I had remembered from
Warsaw was full of anxiety. He, always so restrained, so embarrassed every time a conversation concerned his intimate aairs,
often he could not hide his heightened nervous sensitivity,
some kind of internal irritation, a neurasthenic tendency
towards sudden jumps from spasmodic boredom to explosions
of cold irritation. Of course one could have explained this
by the pressure of the Warsaw literary atmosphere, nancial
problems, quasi-homelessness, the necessity of spending the
greater part of the days and nights in cafs and bars, briey
statedby the gypsy-like chaos of his life, which in truth he
very much disliked. Here the evenness of his temperament
and his serenity astounded me.74
When Jasieski had nished Jakub Szela, it made its way to Poland in a
covert edition, a pocket-size pamphlet printed on a hand hectograph that
circulated among progressive student circles with the note after reading,
pass along to someone else.75 The students were enthusiastic. Julian Tuwim was less so. Its dicult for me to believe in articial sincerity / basted
in a sauce distinctly snobbish, he wrote in a poem about Jakub Szela.76
While the text circulated in Poland, Jasieski remained in Paris. He
was in full agreement with his visitors concerning the salutary eects
of his absence from his own country. In November 1926 he wrote to his
Warsaw friends:
This trip abroad in general has done me well. I felt it right
away, from the rst moments. ... Quite obviously I had been
lacking some necessary distance and had felt that I wouldnt
manage to do anything. My departure to Paris and months of
separation from Poland have cured me of that forced inactivity
and have enabled me in the course of a few winter months to
execute without diculty a plan Id harbored for a long time,
not having found the right approach to it. ... In the course
of the long years spent there, I took Poland so much into myself that at the moment I feel no nostalgia for my homeland.
Perhaps it will come with time at some point. ... When I deter-

a v i s i t from mayakovsky 65

mine that I have nothing more to learn from the French

Ill gladly move on to another place. Traveling is a disease that
has always consumed me and consumes me and from which
I will certainly die.77
To Stefan Priacel, a French journalist and onetime secretary of the
left-wing periodical Monde, it seemed that integration into Parisian life did
not come easily to the Polish poet who wore a monocle and spoke of himself as a communist. Priacel sensed Jasieskis insecurity in the French
environment; he rarely left his home and rarely frequented the literary
cafs, harboring a distaste for both the Polish migr intelligentsia and
the French, whoPriacel judgedhe in turn understood poorly. Frankly
speaking, Priacel wrote, one sensed in him the poorly masked despair
of a man who has the constant awareness of his alienness and struggles
against the diculties piling up around him.78 Making connections in the
French literary world was complicated; and Jasieskis French was weak.
He was aided by an enthusiastic recommendation from Tomasz Dbal, a
Polish communist and former parliamentary deputy, which brought some
assistance from the communist-sympathizing author Henri Barbusse.79
Though Jasieski had dabbled in proletarian poetry while still in Poland, it was in Paris, while living in poverty, that his explicit identication
with communism beganand the novel Pal Pary (I Burn Paris) came
into being.80 Wat saw Jasieskis indignance upon seeing the French writer
Paul Morands novel Je brle Moscou in a bookstore window. As Jasieski
understood it, the title meant I Burn Moscow, although Wat saw the lin
guistic misunderstanding: the verb brler could also mean to pass through
a place quickly.81 It was not only the title that upset Jasieski, though.
Morands novel included the characters Vasilissa and Ben, a couple who
lived with the communist poet Mordecai Goldvasser, who was terried
of contamination and obsessed with cleanlinessan unattering satire
of Mayakovsky and his close friends, the revolutionary intellectuals Lilia
and Osip Brik. Jasieski was enraged.82
His rage was a creative one. I Burn Paris depicted a deathly plague
transmitted through contaminated water in the French capital. When the
bourgeois city was destroyed it was the prisoners, whose water supply
drew from a dierent source, who were spared. I Burn Paris was not a

6 6 a v i s i t f r o m m aya k ov s k y

socialist realist novel; its fantastical plot reveals the experimental nature
of Marxist literature in the 1920s.83 Another Polish writer in Paris began
to see Jasieski at the Caf du Dme in Montparnasse. At times Jasieski
would come with his wife and they would all sit together; at times he
would come with Ilya Ehrenburg, conspicuous for his enormous black
crop of hair and strange-colored greenish clothing.84 By then the French
edition of I Burn Paris was appearing in excerpts in LHumanit; the Polish
writer, who was following the novel, found it weak. I Burn Paris seemed
less weak and more threatening to the French government, however, and
in 1929 Jasieski was forced to leave Francedespite eorts by Barbusse
to organize protests against his expulsion.85 From Paris Jasieski went to
Leningrad.

miesiczn i k l i t e r a c k i
Shortly after the publication of Lucifer Unemployed, Aleksander Wats active engagement with the Left began. In 1928, for the tenth anniversary of
Polands regained independence, Wat, together with the scenic designer
Wadysaw Daszewski and theater director Leon Schiller, was invited to
put together a Pozna theatrical production titled Polityka spoeczna (Social
Policy). Wat considered Schiller a ne specimen of the salon communist.
Daszewski had been born into the dclass nobility; he was sexy and charming and occasionally vicious. Both were among those Marxist cultural
gures who embodied a certain irony of Pisudskis Poland: they were
radicals who were nevertheless close to the regime. As Aleksander Wat
recalled, [Schiller] was on very friendly terms with the minister of internal aairs and was close with Beck and Pieracki. But thats Poland. And
when left-wing writers came from the West, from Germany or France,
like Priacel, Barbusses secretary, they couldnt get over our sitting in the
Caf Ziemiaska with the colonels, with Wieniawa-Dugoszowski.86 Wat
considered the play he produced with Schiller and Daszewski to be pure
communist theater, a montage based on authentic material dealing with
labor, working conditions, and (violations of) social legislation. Wat was
paid well, and used the money to seek out European contacts for the next
venture in revolutionary literature; he and Daszewski, together with their
wives, set out abroad. Their trip included Berlin, where Stande and his
wife Zoa Warska, on the KPPs instructions, had also gone.87 There in
Berlin in 1928 Wat saw decadence, a Babylon of debauchery. In Paris,

a v i s i t from mayakovsky 67

f igure 7 Jan Lecho, Julian Tuwim, and Antoni Sonimski (left to right) sitting
at their table at Caf Ziemiaska with Colonel Bolesaw Wieniawa-Dugoszowski.
Caricature by Wadysaw Daszewski. From Wiadomoci Literackie 36 (1928);
reproduction by Muzeum Literatury imienia Adama Mickiewicza.

Wat, Brucz, and Jasieski went out together on the Rue Blondel, in the
red light district. The street of naked women and brothels was one of
Jasieskis favorite places to visit, but they would go only for a beer.88 On
the banks of the Seine, the Polish poet Jzef Wittlin told Wat that Wat
would end up a Catholic.89
Wat was reluctant to join the Communist Party. The KPP was illegal in
Poland, and the rejection was mutual: for the KPP, the Polish state was the

6 8 a v i s i t f r o m m aya k ov s k y

ugly bastard of the Versailles Treaty.90 Despite such mutually hostile

sentiments, there were communist members of parliament. Stawar approached Wat with the proposition that the Party nominate him for election to the parliament, but that would have involved joining the Party, and
Wat demurred; he feared infecting the Party with his intellectualism.91
Now precisely because of his non-Party status, Wat became the ideal candidate to found and edit the (tenuously legal) Marxist literary periodical
Miesicznik Literacki (The Literary Monthly), a successor to the failed Nowa
Kultura and Dwignia.92 His editorial board included Hempel, Broniewski,
Daszewski, Stawar, and Stande. Ola Watowa was the secretary; Wadysaw
Daszewski designed the cover for the second issue.93 Isaac Deutscher, who
had been writing for the Jewish (and Zionist-sympathizing) paper Nasz
Przegld, had joined the KPP in early 1927, at the age of nineteen, and
now began to work on Miesicznik Literacki.94
Adam Wayks participation was minimal.95 Anatol Stern was not part
of the project at all; he was writing screenplays and producing lms, and
according to Wat was deteriorating into a life of drinking and decadence.96
This was perhaps the case, but along with decadence came dabblings in
Catholicism. In a Confession that prefaced his 1927 poetry collection
Bieg do Bieguna (A Run to the Pole), Stern admitted that while he had
once been the most extreme adherent of Marxism, he had become dis
illusioned with the vulgar materialism of the proponents of a proletarian
dictatorship. In his desire to respect what was emotional and spiritual in
humanity, Stern had arrived at the doors of the Church. Presently he was
convinced that Marxs teachings in no way opposed religious spirituality,
that rather these two sources of wisdom constituted one anothers mutual fulllment, without which the battle for the happiness of humanity
would have no foundations.97 This was the theme of the collections title
poem, which concluded Like a diamond, tossed into clear water, / so
would I like to dissolve and disappear in Christ. / AMEN.98
Wat had cut himself o from all spiritual seductions, and stood now
rmly on the side of the materialists. The strategy of selecting a non-Party
member as editor was initially successful; and for a time following its
debut in December 1929 Miesicznik Literacki did manage, despite persecution, to maintain a nominally legal existence. Hempel played the role of
transmitter of the Partys wishes. To Wat, the older communist was both
saintly and cowardly. He was a man of great goodness, who ran back

a v i s i t from mayakovsky 69

and forth between Wat and the Party, always in fear that the Party leaders
might be unhappy with Wats editorial decisions.99 The Party sent other
liaisons as well, including a well-educated Party member Wats own age
named Jakub Berman.100
The journals premiere was awaited in the Warsaw cafs; Caf Ziemia
ska anticipated something extraordinary.101 When it did appear, Miesicznik
Literackis rst issue was the project of a small editorial circle; it included
a fragment of Broniewskis play Proletarjat (The Proletariat); Wats critique
of Remarque and German pacist literature; an article about Mayakovskys
friend, the Russian literary theorist Viktor Shklovsky; and a harsh review
of Jasieskis I Burn Paris.102 The reviewer began with the Revelation of
Saint John describing the fall of Rome; he went on to comment that at
the time of the Apocalypse the oppressed masses were incapable of independent battle. Rather, in the Apocalypse a judgment was handed down
upon a depraved world in which only the chosen few were saved. This
New Testament prophecy was, in the reviewers opinion, the dominant
allegory of I Burn ParisParis became a new Babylon, a city of debauchery, a Sodom in which all inhabitants were condemned to death. Just as
Christians had substituted Christians for Jews as the chosen people, so
had Jasieski appropriated Christian mysticism and substituted the communist nation as the chosen one. According to the reviewer, the model
of the Apocalypse was radically inappropriate; the proletariat was a class
that would self-consciously rise up against its oppressors, not a chosen
few who would be saved by a metaphysical miracle. The verdict: Jasieski
had failed to understand scientic determinism, had failed to grasp that
Marxism was based on materialism as opposed to metaphysics, that in
proletarian ideology there is nothing mysterious, nothing mystical, nothing religious.103 In short, while Jasieski may have intended to create
communist literature, he had failed miserably. It was a time, however,
when the Miesicznik Literacki editors themselves were unsure precisely
what communist literature meant.

c h a p t e r four

A Funeral for Futurism

The futurization of Polish life failed denitively.

Aleksander Wat

some at caf ziemiaska, having anticipated something extraordinary, were now disappointed by Miesicznik Literacki. In his weekly column
in Wiadomoci Literackie, Antoni Sonimski attacked the very rst issue.
By no means generously predisposed towards Wat and his editorial sta,
Sonimski accused them of navet, primitivism and a lack of connection
to real life: The publication presents itself quite poorly. The meagerness
results not only from the lack of literary force and the staleness of the
material, but above all from the narrow-mindedness of its nave class conceptualizations of complicated matters of human creativity. Polish Marxist
criticism, like, after all, other positions of our intellectual life, presents
itself quite dismally. One must admit that proletarian chatter for the time
being breaks all records for boredom and primitivism. In the space of the
entire issue of Miesicznik Literacki the reader fails to come across the minutest trace of organic life.1 Sonimski added that Miesicznik Literackis
editorial sta lacked any coherent conception of proletarian literature. He
advised them, with his usual sarcasm, to go o to the side and come to
some agreement as to what is proletarian and what isnt. Then come talk to
us. In connection with this Sonimski mocked the journals fetishization
of the word bourgeois: The word bourgeois is used with the greatest
satisfaction by Miesiczniks sta. The word is not only supposed to dene
70

a f u ner al for futur ism7 1

a writers class membership, but also bears a hue of disgust. Bourgeois

literature, bourgeois poetry, bourgeois pacism, and bourgeois theater.
... We now know that there is a bourgeois view on electron theory and
the proletarian truth about electrons. Sonimski concluded, Everything
together is very childish and nave, and most importantlyentirely unnecessary. Glancing at Miesicznik one feels like asking From whom is
this child? as the children of Israel say.2
While it was not Sonimskis rst attack against the radical Left in his
weekly columns, the feuilleton took Miesicznik Literackis editor by surprise. In the months prior to the journals premiere, Wats relations with
Sonimski had been good.3 Now Sonimskis December 1929 feuilleton
began a polemic between Miesicznik Literacki and Wiadomoci Literackie;
Wat and his editorial sta answered Sonimski in the second issue. They
pointed out that Sonimski had once written of literary criticism as serving the purpose of an advertisement. Now Sonimski, they said, had applied this commercial theory to Miesicznik Literacki, composing an antiadvertisement. Miesicznik Literacki drew an analogy with an undertone
of antisemitism: Mr. Feinkind stands in front of his shop and calls out:
Dont go to my competitor, he has stale merchandise: buy only at my
shop. Ultimately Mr.Feinkind is Mr. Feinkind, shouting in such a way is
his rightbut with respect to literary aairs its customary to do this more
delicately than Mr. Sonimski has done. And yet hes failed to secure any
objective. Mr. Feinkind stands in front of his shop and with a dramatic
air points at his competitor and asks: From whom is this child? Who will
buy that, who will read it?4
In reply Sonimski compared Miesicznik Literackis low intellectual
level to that of Christian literature, exacerbating the hostility between
poets who several months earlier had been friends: I have in front of me
the new issue of that monthly. Ive already written about the rst issue,
and the oensive words with which I was answered have not changed
my gently derisive relationship towards that refuge of all those who have
experienced disappointment and proven themselves to be failures. And
yet it was possible to expect that despite all Miesiczniks dullness it would
have at least made attempts to apply Russian methods to the conditions
and demands of a dierent terrain. This expectation was unmet. Those
materialist-literati did not fall upon the idea of taking changed conditions

7 2 a f u n e r a l f o r f u t u r i s m

into consideration, and with lazy mental inertia transposed ready-made

models of Russian criticism onto Polish ground. Sonimski did not shy
from ad hominem attacks:
The editor of Miesicznik, Mr. Wat, to whose person I intend
to devote a few words, did not pass through a revolutionary
period. Its sucient to look at the confession of his youth,
located in issue number two of his publication, to remind oneself of all the buoonery, humbugs and instances of making
a fool of himselfby which he attempted to arrive at literature.
It happened during those times when the poets of the old
group Skamander were creating new values, the by-products
of which the majority of proletarian poets are still feeding on
today. Mr. Wat passed very quickly from fashionable futurism
to the later more fashionable neo-Catholicism in order to
nally, in his search for orthodoxy, take shelter in the camp
of bourgeois-snobs-turning-communist. The path of Mr. Wats
deterioration is similar to the stories of present-day Jewish
chauvinists. Despite a few good stories [Wat] is a lazy writer
without a following and without signicance; it thus should not
surprise us too much that he so easily passes from Catholicism
to Marxism in search of a comfortable situation through which
to recoup his losses.5
The notion of snob popularized by Stefan eromski in 1922 had
endured. It was now paired with the bourgeois, and Wat responded
with an article about Sonimski and his friends as men of fashion, salon writers, and salon snobs. He referred to Sonimski as our snob and
invoked the rather eccentric-sounding verbal noun usnobizowaniethat
is, the process of becoming a snob.6 Yet another, equally belittling piece
in Miesicznik Literacki was titled The shmoncesman [Jewish cabaret humorist] abroad: What Mr. Sonimski saw in London. A miniphoto essay,
the piece consisted of pictures of destitution, homelessness, and violently
beaten workers in London, with such captions as: The unemployed, not
nding space in the overlled shelters, sleep under bridges, under factory walls. In the working districts of London this kind of picture belongs
to a normal series of street landscapes relished by adventurous tourists.7 On the same page, Miesicznik Literacki quoted from Sonimskis

a f u ner al for futur ism73

recent essay in Wiadomoci Literackie about his trip to London: I saw

as well communist May Day parades. Its similar to the Saturday crowd
at Ziemiaska. There are mostly semitic-type women and very elegantly
dressed men. The unemployed, of whom London cannot in any way rid
itself, predominate.8
So the attacks went on. In a column that same month, July 1930,
Sonimski derided the little crowd of our pious Marxists whose entire
activity was limited to proclaiming their connection to the proletariatto
the exclusion of producing actual literary work.9 It was a criticism that
found resonance on the Left as well. Three months later, a communist
from the town of Rzeszw wrote to Broniewski: In following the development of Miesicznik Literacki and glancing through the most varied
publishing catalogues, I come to the same conclusion as does that smelly
Jew Sonimski. I consider your productivity to be equal to zero plus very
little, which very much saddens us, the gray masses. We are doing everything in our power to have you among us, but what of that when youre
elusive ... not a book, not a poem, not a play, not a theater, so where
are you? With us, with them, or perhaps you dont exist?10 Neither was
this the only internal criticism. When Broniewskis poetry appeared in
Miesicznik Literacki, his closest friends attacked him for doleful sentiments and exuberant individualism. It was a time of painful criticism
from those on the same side of the barricade, and more than once Janina
Broniewska saw her husband return home unhappy from Miesicznik
Literackis editorial board meetings.11
New dynamics were emerging among the old friends from Caf
Ziemiaska. In 1929 Julian Tuwim, long a supporter of Pisudski, composed Do prostego czowieka (To the Simple Man), a poem widely read
as expressing a deep disillusionment with Pisudskis Poland. For Tuwim
the poem was radically engag, albeit less in the direction of communism
or even Marxism more broadly understood than of pacism. In it Tuwim
called to the simple man to be aware that his patriotic sentiments were
being exploited for the material gain of the ruling classes. The poem
concluded:
Throw your machine gun onto the pavement.
The oil is theirs, the blood is yours.
And from capital to capital

7 4 a f u n e r a l f o r f u t u r i s m

Cry out, guarding your toil:

Gentlemen of the nobility, you do not fool us.12
The attacks came from all sides. Right-wing critics demanded that Tuwim be led to the gallows, and the Left considered the poem a typical
bourgeois expression of pacist sentiment.13 Tuwims friends described
his lack of comprehension at the controversy: the older poet Leopold Sta
tried to speak to Tuwim about the poem, only to hear that Tuwim was
thinking exclusively about poetic assonance.14 Once Tuwim had been
made to understand the political implications, however, he published
a qualication: the poem was meant to express only humanitarianism
and in no way advocated the disarmament of Poland; it would be an
absurdity to extrapolate from the poem that he did not honor heroism in
defense of his countrys independence. He accepted the blame for any
misunderstandings.15
Earlier, in 1928, Tuwim had given an interview to a PPS periodical
about the relationship between literature and the working class. His views
were vague. He likened literature and socialism to two enormous rivers
each owing along its own channel, and spoke abstractly of how the
working class was neither homogeneous nor monolithic, about how it
was engaged in a relationship of osmosis with the bourgeois world. He
reminisced about his childhood in the factory city of d: as a young
boy he had seen the bloody 1905 Revolution, and while growing up he
had seen the workers poverty and exhaustion. He felt connected to workers by an awareness of their suering, but insisted that this was not an
awareness to be expressed programmatically. While Tuwim was not
nearly so harsh as Sonimski, he, too, criticized the bourgeois snobbery
among the young, so-called proletarian poets.16 A short note that Tuwim
wrote to Broniewski in February 1931, gently taunting Broniewskis very
serious sense of engagement, was revealing of the complicated personal
dynamics: Woodia! I dreamt that you were a Spanish general and were
suppressing the revolution. What does that mean?17

recantatio n s o f f u t u r i s m s p a s t
In the second issue of Miesicznik Literacki, which appeared in January
1930, Wat initiated an attack against his own futurist past. He reected
upon his own history, beginning with the judgment that boredom and

a f u ner al for futur ism75

aversion were the midwives of Polish futurism. He told the story of the
birth of Polish futurism, the movements Italian and Russian origins, its
battles against passisme, and its own decadent and anarchist character.
Wat wrote of inaugurating Polish futurism together with Anatol Stern
in late 1918, just as Skamander came into being. The Skamander poets
declared themselves the heirs to the great Romantic tradition that the
futurists derided.
The Skamander poets, in Wats reading, aspired to attain and succeeded in attaining the status of ocial poets, largely by declaring a cult
of programlessness and a slogan of life as such, and by desiring above
all to protect their own youth from the winds of revolution. He regretted
now the cooperation with Skamander and the way in which the Polish
futurists to a certain extent conformed to Skamander as the latters subordinate left-wing. A political subtext, Wat implied, had been present
from the beginning, despite the self-declared anarchism and decadence
of futurist activities.18
Now Wat saw that while the futurists had aspired to a progressive
revolution of forms of expression, they had instead engendered only anarchization. There was no place in bourgeois art for a battle against passisme; yet the futurists own battle against passisme, which should have
led to social revolution in Poland as in Russia, led them instead towards
anarchism and decadence: For the social stratum from which the Polish
futurists originated, it was a time of panic and fear of revolution, and at
once a time of hedonism, debauchery, speculation, self-enrichment not on
the basis of production but on the basis of inationary exploitation. Polish
futurism only exaggerated these frames of mind. Its dynamic was not
civilizingjust the opposite: it was decadent, anarchistic. The futurists
were ensconced in a paradox: those who saw their own right of existence
in the contemporizing of poetry, in the vindication of the present day, were
especially isolated from their own concrete domestic contemporaneity.
We were building ourselves into an imagined contemporaneity, formed
from programmatically distorted, predominantly imported components.
Yet the situation was not and could not remain static. On the contrary, it
was inacja that most marked the futurist eraa term meaning literally
ination (and perhaps inspired by the hyperination of the early 1920s)
but more abstractly encompassing a sense of relentless intensication in
an eort to sustain liminality. Ination, Wat wrote, was at that time a

7 6 a f u n e r a l f o r f u t u r i s m

form of seeing things. ... The right of identity ceased to obtain. A thing
ceased to be itself. The day after tomorrow it would no longer be what it
had been the day before. Ination tore apart the identity of a thing with
itself. Moreover, the growing revolutionary tide could not fail to aect the
futurists as well, and more specically, the worker had begun to make
even the futurist poets aware of his existence.19
It was in 1921, around the time of Nowa Sztuka, in Wats retrospective
reading, that the divisions between avant-garde poetry and passiste poetrythat is, between the futurists and Skamanderbegan to deepen.
This was a time of formal inventiveness and a search for new slogans,
denitions, names, a time of ination of programs. In contrast, programlessness and a fetish for talent and inspiration characterized Skamander, as did notions that we ourselves are the greatest innovation and we
want to be banal, we wont betray our hearts for novelty. Here Wat indicted
the Skamandrites in their role as court poets, for they were implicitly collaborating with the enemy that was the state. Their programophobia,
Wat explained in a line of argumentation increasingly proto-Stalinist in
form, masked their reactionary nature: Skamanders programophobia
resulted naturally from its traditionalism. A program is unnecessary and
even harmful to a traditionalist group in a certain period of its evolution
for it would unnecessarily reveal its reactionary physiognomy.20
Conversely, Wat wrote that Polish futurism, in spite of its errors, did
contain progressive and proletarian elements. He cited eromskis Snobbism and Progress as representative of the central attack on futurismthat
is, later and so imported, and hence foreign, articial, snobbishand
insisted that Polish futurism was not merely an imitation, that it necessarily diered from its Italian and Russian predecessors due to the inuence
of Polands socioeconomic conditions. Here Wat was, in a sense, at crosspurposes with himself. The article was a self-criticism of his futurist past,
which at once noted futurisms contribution and presented a teleological
path from decadence to communism. By returning again and again to the
futurists lack of popularity, Wat betrayed a lingering sense of outsiderness,
a resentment of social rejectiondespite his self-conscious engagement
in transgressing social norms. Futurism had indeed begun with a petty
bourgeois character, yet it had matured and progressed, and the result
was not entirely negative: I claimed that futurism in its rst, primitive
period had a petty bourgeois physiognomy. ... In connection with that I

a f u ner al for futur ism77

wrote about the anti-civilizing and reactionary nature of the rst period
of futurism, which ultimately did not exclude the presence in futurism
of revolutionary embryos.21
Wat also wrote critically of Zwrotnica, accusing Tadeusz Peiper of urbanism, aestheticism, and identication with the legacy of nineteenthcentury Polish positivism, which called for productive, organic work on
behalf of the nation. According to Wat, Zwrotnicas aestheticizing character revealed itself most plainly in the issue devoted to futurism when
Peiper expressed his opposition to futurisms extraliterary activities.
Here Wat quoted Peiper: The way in which (the futurists) related art to
life acknowledged the supremacy of real-life activity over artistic creation
and permitted artistic reforms only because they were part of general,
real-life reforms. This is a false, unartistic mode of relating. Art needs
life the way a traveler needs a walking stick. But the nal goal must be
exclusively artistic. The cause must be art and only art. Now the editor of
a communist journal, Wat followed his critique of Zwrotnica to its logical
conclusion: together with urbanism, positivism, and aestheticism, Zwrotnica was guilty of grand capitalist tendencies. Here Wat concluded selfrighteously that instances of cooperation notwithstanding, the relationship
of proper futurists to Zwrotnica was always one of distaste.22
Wat also revisited the futurists engagement with Jan Hempels Nowa
Kultura. It was at this point that they had begun to move unsteadily towards radicalization, an impulse Wat attributed not only to deeper social
causes, but also to rejection by the ocial literary establishment. He cited
Jasieskis A Song about Hunger as a manifestation of the futurists leftist evolution, although he was critical of Jasieskis and Sterns The Earth
to the Left as failing to embody revolutionary ideology. Here Wat oered
a self-criticism of the futurists collective failure to understand historical
materialism, while at the same time criticizing Marxists for failing to appreciate futurisms innovations: On one side extreme individualism and
a lack of familiarity with the elementary bases of Marxism. On the other
side a lack of understanding of the progressive formal values that futurism had brought to literature produced a discouraging eect.23 The time
following the 1924 break with Nowa Kultura was one of further vacillations
manifesting themselves in Almanach Nowej Sztuki, which Wat credited
with a high intellectual standard. The collaborators came together on the
common platform of formalism, yet in the end formalism threatened

7 8 a f u n e r a l f o r f u t u r i s m

them with a void and they failed to formulate a coherent program. It was
political and ideological divergence that was the true cause of Almanach
Nowej Sztukis short life, Wat wrote, as well as of the impossibility of
building a front of New Art.
Wats narrative of Polish futurism was not devoid of a certain nostalgia. His memoir was self-critical, yet restrained; he remained, as he had
been in his futurist years, defensive vis--vis Skamander. His conclusions
were laden with ambivalence; his condemnation of his futurist past was
juxtaposed with an insistence on futurisms progressive intentionshowever misguidedly they might have been expressedas well as an assertion
of the value of futurisms aesthetic innovations. While noting that the
objective results of futurism had not yet been suciently ascertained,
he ventured to conclude that futurism added much color to Polish literary
life, serving as a laboratory of new forms as well as a point of departure for
Polish proletarian poetry. Polish futurism, Wat concluded, was the revelation of the dark side of contemporary Polish society, the crooked mirror
in which Caliban looked at himself with a grimace of abomination.24
These memoirs of futurism met with at least one protest. In Miesicznik
Literacki Tadeusz Peiper criticized Wats description of Zwrotnica and contested Wats portrayal of Peipers positions. In his letter, Peiper denied
having ever used the word urbanism, pointing out that not everyone
who wrote about the city was an urbanist, just as not everyone who wrote
about the future was a futurist. He further accused Wat of distorting his
words by drawing upon incomplete citations. Zwrotnica had never called
for a return to positivism; neither had Peiper opposed only futurisms
extraliterary ventures, but rather the entire system futurism implicitly
embracedwhile at once recognizing futurisms importance within the
rubric of New Art. Moreover, Peiper insisted on his own socialist beliefs
and protested Wats portrayal of Zwrotnica as a capitalist project. As a socialist, Peiper had gathered together diverse talents precisely because he
wished for Poland to be as creative as possible on the day of the proletariats victory. His own socialism he dened as an aspiration, not allied with
any particular party or party program, towards abolishing social classes
through the socializing of the means of production. Various people of
dierent beliefs collaborated on Zwrotnica, Peiper corrected. Moreover,
the editor himselfthat is, Peiperwas and remained a socialist.25

a f u ner al for futur ism79

In his reply, Wat conceded nothing. He defended his description of

Peipers journal as aestheticist and quoted Peiper (in what could be a selfcritical attack against his own literary coming of age as well): Because
we love words: just as you, Madame, love cameos and you, Sir, I beg you,
love old coins as well as new ones. While acknowledging the possibility
of Peipers own socialist beliefs, Wat maintained that Zwrotnica did possess objectively dominant grand capitalist tendenciesa phrase that
betrayed the inuence of an emerging Stalinist idiom.26

the death o f m aya kov s ky

Miesicznik Literacki was not only about sharp polemics over Marxist literary criticism and bourgeois pacism. Nothing about the Revolution in
Russia was as close to Wat and his friends, or as personal, as Mayakovsky,
and the journals harsh tone softened when Mayakovsky took his own
life on the morning of 14 April 1930. The rst detail that reached Janina
Broniewska and Wadysaw Broniewski in Warsaw was the phrase from
Mayakovskys suicide note, liubovnaia lodka razbilas o byt (the love
boat crashed against the everyday). The news fell upon Janina Broniewska
as something incomprehensible; but Ola Watowa and her husband had
felt a certain premonition.27 Wat dedicated the May issue of Miesicznik
Literacki to his Russian friend who had led him to the Revolution. Broniewski, Stande, and others contributed as well, but it was Wat who wrote
the eulogy, which began below a photograph of the beautiful Mayakovsky
lying in his con, his head wreathed in owers.
What Wat wrote was devoted to Mayakovskys life rather than his
death; Wat said almost nothing about the suicide. He wrote of the Russian
poets development in a tone obligingly critical in light of the suicide, but
also warm. He revisited the origins of Mayakovskys futurism in nihilism
and cited Mayakovskys own understanding of his coming into futurism: He bore the pathos of a socialist convinced of the necessity of the
destruction of the obsolete. In the beginning, Mayakovskys pathos was
that of an outcast intellectual, an anarchist, almost a nihilist (I erect
above everything that has been made nihil), brought to socialism by hatred towards and rebellion against the existing state of things. In Wats
reading, it was just this rebellious quality of Russian futurism that was
the essence of its departure from its Italian counterpart. Wat described
Mayakovskys poetry as a laboratory of innovation and Mayakovsky himself

8 0 a f u n e r a l f o r f u t u r i s m

as a contemporary Pushkin, and a poet of the street who revolutionized

Russian poetic language through the language of the masses.
There was a touching personal description of Mayakovskys heroic
sublimity and the moving experience of hearing him read his own poetry: There is nothing that can be compared to the suggestiveness of his
voice, thunderingnot metaphorically. Wat credited Mayakovsky with
having foreseen the Revolution and with having had the strength to temper his own individualistic tendencies: He learned to discipline his own
anarchistic egotism, he accepted revolution not only as a realization of
aspirations, but also as a fundamental revolution in his creativity. From a
poet-rebel he became a poet of a revolution ... from a negator blowing
up bourgeois society from within, he became a participant in battle, a
creator of positive values. Mayakovskys art was a struggle to rebuild the
world, and Wat cited Mayakovsky himself describing the critical shift in
notions of literature from representation to transformation: We came not
to photograph the world, but to ght for the future with literary tools, to
rebuild the world. That Mayakovsky succeeded in transcending his own
anarchistic hyperindividualism and becoming a poet of revolutionary
collectivity Wat saw as perhaps the poets greatest achievementand here
Wats writing was so poignant, and as engaged as if he were speaking of
himself as well: For Mayakovsky the path towards revolution was not a
given, but rather a struggle, and in the end he was not able to resolve all
of his internal contradictions. He continued to be plagued by a lack of
agreement between the register of his voice and the topic. That great poet
of enormous strength to shape and inuence, perfectly in agreement with
the tempo of revolution, with the dynamics and eects of the ght of the
masses, had a voice too highly tuned and too little dierentiated for the
tasks which the social reality of the reconstruction period presented.28
Several of Mayakovskys poems followed Wats eulogy, as did poems in
memoriam by Stande and Broniewski. Glory to him who has fallen,
wrote Broniewski, Let us go on.29
Mayakovskys death eected a temporary peace between Miesicznik
Literacki and Wiadomoci Literackie, the former futurists and Skamander,
the more radical and less radical writers. In response to Mayakovskys
Levyi Marsh (Left March), Sonimski had once written a Kontrmarsz
(Countermarch), replacing Mayakovskys refrain Left! Left! Left! with
Up! Up! Up! and describing his own army as marching neither to the

a f u ner al for futur ism8 1

right nor to the left, but rather upwards, as smoke and lava spurt towards the sky. When in Warsaw Mayakovsky had thanked Sonimski for
Sonimskis Polish translation of Left March, Sonimski had asked him,
And for the response as well? Mayakovsky answered: For Up let the
powers that be in Poland thank you.30 Now, however, even the acerbic
Sonimski published an aectionate poem to the dead Russian poet, concluding with the words:
Yet when the great meteor no longer shines,
When it burns out, when it buries itself in the earth,
We who, alien and distant, are revolving still
Send you greetings with lights in the mist.31

the end of m i e s i c z n i k l i t e r a c k i
In his earlier polemic with Wat, Sonimski was not entirely correct in
his accusation of simplistic importing of Russian models: the discourse
embodied by Miesicznik Literacki, despite the ever-present dialogue with
Soviet literature, was a Polish one. The Soviet Union was a model, but not
a master; and Stalin was absent from the monthlys pages. The language
of criticism was not yet codied or formulaic; there was still a search for
an appropriate idiom. Wat and his friends were much closer to Leninism
than to the nascent Stalinism that was developing in the east; they believed
that a revolutionary vanguard was needed to bring class consciousness
to the massesand in so doing to nudge History along. It was a time
of these intellectuals genuine eort to nd a proletarian literature that
would express the exigencies of the class struggle and to nd a voice, a
language, and an aesthetic with which to write for and about the workers
in Poland. No one was certain in what such a literature would consist, or
precisely what form it would take.
The culmination of the monthlys attempt to nd a proletarian voice
and to engage the workers themselves came in Wats campaign for reportage. In a series of articles, Wat described the evolution from bourgeois
to proletarian literature as a move from ction to fact. He struggled to
develop a theory of a communist literary genre, and argued for reportage
as the most rational and ecacious literary form.32 In connection with this,
Wat confronted the problem of Miesicznik Literackis insucient accessi
bility to the working masses. Writers must work harder at expressing

8 2 a f u n e r a l f o r f u t u r i s m

themselves more directly. Yet at once Wat was defensive: Marxist culture
was not about easy lessons. While readers complained about dicult
language, sometimes a complete resignation from certain diculties in
expression would be equivalent to a resignation from thought.33 Here
Wat was critical of the workers: until recently their submissions of poetry and prose had been impossible to publish due to weak artistic merit
or expression of false ideology. Yet recently the journal had launched a
reportage contest, and the results had been remarkably positivethat is,
while the workers had not succeeded in writing poetry or ction, they had
succeeded in writing reportage.34 Wats call for reportage was closely tied
to an implicit progression towards the end of strictly literary literature,
and in this way his campaign was self-negating. He himself published
neither ction nor poetry during this time; he believed that there would
be no literature as such in a happy communist society. Literature was irrational; and the future had to be built scientically.35
Marxist literary criticism was to be part of this scientic development,
and it became the focus of polemics on the pages of Miesicznik Literacki.
Apart from examples of proletarian poetry, Miesicznik Literacki published
very little in the way of literature, and the journals content focused rather
on discussions of what a true proletarian genreand true Marxist literary criticismshould be. Andrzej Stawar and Stanisaw Ryszard Stande
were central gures in this debate. Stawar made the most signicant
contribution with a series of articles about the development of literary
criticism as a genre, the role of the Marxist critic, and the dierence between Marxist and bourgeois critics. He contended that the critics role
expanded as the reading masses enlarged. Ultimately literary criticism
should serve to facilitate a change in the mass readers relationship
to the whole shape of literary mattersa relationship after all created
under the inuence of a hostile class ideology.36 Stande, a poet himself,
contributed his own Talmudic polemic on the subject of the Marxist
critic.37 He was didactic: Marxism was a philosophy, not merely a political doctrine; and Marxist criticism could contribute to the development
of class consciousness among the proletariat. Ultimately, however, the
proletariat must liberate itself.38
Thus in the end, while the journal did publish examples of reportage
and autobiography written by actual workers, its pages were dominated
by intellectual discussions of Marxist criticism that were internal to the

a f u ner al for futur ism83

editorial sta. Miesicznik Literackis relations with authentic workers remained tenuous at best, and the workers in its pages often seemed to be
more icons than comrades. This did not go unnoticed. The communist
intelligentsia criticized the monthlys editorial board for publishing overly
intellectual articles and using too many foreign words. In October 1930,
a communist in the Polish provinces wrote to Broniewski: When are [all
of ] you nally going to speak to us in our language, for us?39 For these
and other reasons, the KPP also had reservations about Miesicznik Liter
acki. The Party wanted a less blatantly communist publication, which
could win the support of uncommitted intellectuals with leftist sympathies. It was Wat, Broniewski, and Stawar who had no tolerance for the
uncommitted.40
Despite this criticism, Miesicznik Literacki was received with reverence, even (and perhaps especially) by those unable to grasp the intricacies of the debates over Marxist literary criticism. While attacked by his
old friend Sonimski and criticized by the Party he believed in, Wat was
received warmly by the many workers who came to visit him. In general,
they did not complain: Theyd say, yes, its dicult; you have to take some
trouble and keep on reading, but thats how you learn.41 The periodical fell
into the hands of a young worker, who remained grateful for his initiation
into the Marxism of intellectuals: I will not say that at that time my age
and my general level allowed for complete understanding of the content of
that literary publication, intended for readers with an education dierent
from my own. Yet thanks to Miesicznik Literacki I became acquainted with
the proletarian poems of the poet Wadysaw Broniewski. ... At the same
time the book reviews taught me to look critically at everything that presented itself to be read and everything that was happening around me.42
In this way, Miesicznik Literacki exerted an unusual inuence. Perhaps
for this reason, the monthly attracted unfavorable attention from the state.
Two issues were conscated, and Wat was forced to move from city to city,
from Warsaw to Cracow, Pozna, and Lww, in an attempt to evade the
censors. He never had any doubts that it would all end in prison.43

i nitiations i n p r i s o n
And so it did. In September 1931 Miesicznik Literacki held an editorial
board meeting at Ola Watowas parents apartment in Warsaw. Janina
Broniewska was in another room, visiting with Ola and her newborn

8 4 a f u n e r a l f o r f u t u r i s m

figure 8 Aleksander Wat and Ola Watowa with their infant son, Andrzej.
Reproduction by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

son Andrzej. The delivery had been dicult; Ola Watowa remained ill,
and Broniewska began to help her with the infant. As Broniewskis wife
undressed the baby to change his diaper, she was startled to see that the
revolutionary coupleapparently, despite everything, loyal to the Jewish
tradition of their parentshad had their child circumcised. It was the rst

a f u ner al for futur ism85

time she had seen this done to a baby, and it saddened her. Ola Watowa,
embarrassed, tried to explain: it had been on the doctors advice.44
Then the doorbell rang. Some ten policemen carrying revolvers came
into the apartment, led by the assistant commissioner. In the living room
where the editorial sta was meeting, stacks of manuscripts lay on the
table. Wat sensed the assistant commissioners disappointment when he
discovered it was only editorial material, not actual Party documents.45 The
search went on for several hours. Before being led away, Broniewski managed to whisper to his wife: If you can manage in time, clean up a bit at
home.46 Searches of the editorial stas individual apartments followed.
Janina Broniewska rushed home to check for potentially incriminating
materials before the police arrived. She glanced at her husbands desk and
contemplated the book dedicated to him by Mayakovsky, which had by
then rested there for several years. How many times had the police already
read Mayakovskys dedication during their searches? She left the book in
its place. Yet this time the police did take the book that meant so much to
Broniewski, since it served as evidence of personal contact with Russian
communists.47 The police escorted Wat back to his own apartment; and
Wat worried that materials there relating to a protest he had organized
against new prison regulations would incriminate him. What they found
instead when they reached his apartment, however, was his maid in bed
with some guy ... very good-looking.
A dress coat and dress shirt were hanging on the chair. It
turned out that he was a footman from the Italian fascist
embassy, a Pole, her sisters anc apparently. He was in despair of losing his job. The plainclothesman wanted to take
him in along with me. He explained that he worked in the
embassy, but the plainclothesman didnt believe him. Finally,
we all started laughing because the situation was laughable.
The plainclothesman called the embassy to nd out if he
worked there and then handed him the receiver. He took it
and explained that he had dropped by an apartment and the
communist who lived there was being arrested. And clearly
the people on the other end asked him, Who is this guy?
to which he answered, How should I know who the guy
is? That I found irritating. He sleeps with my maid in my

8 6 a f u n e r a l f o r f u t u r i s m

marriage bed and, to top it o, speaks like that of me. And so

I said to the plainclothesman in jest, You know, maybe we
should be brought in together. But of course they let him go.48
They did not let the editorial board of Miesicznik Literacki go. That night
the police arrested Aleksander Wat, Wadysaw Broniewski, Andrzej Stawar, and Jan Hempel, together with a KPP member who had been attending the meeting as a Party representative and Wats twenty-year-old
brother-in-law, a medical student who was uninvolved in the project.49
Ola Watowa and Janina Broniewska, in consultation with each other, began their visits to lawyers. Broniewska paid a visit to Stawars mother
as well, who received her warmly, although they had never met. 50 Ola
Watowa went to see an attorney. Now, please tell me, he asked her,
which would you prefer: that your husband sit in prison or that he cheat
on you? Revolutionary proclivities aside, with respect to her marriage
she remained a traditionalist. Let him sit in prison, she answered without hesitation.51 She went as well to the Skamander poetsTuwim, Sonim
ski, and Wierzyskiwho attempted to use their inuence on behalf of
the imprisoned revolutionary writers.52 Tuwim made a date to meet with
Janina Broniewska ostentatiously at Caf Ziemiaska; he helped her put
together food packages and take them to the prison.53 Moreover, Sonimski
now behaved generously, publishing a public response, the pretext for
which was a letter from a reader of Wiadomoci Literackie. The reader had
inquired if, given what he had heard about the arrested sta of Miesicznik
Literackis having been maneuvering large sums of money, the journal
would continue to exist and if so, might they be accepting new people.
Sonimski concluded his response: I dont know in what kind of world
you were born, but in any case your birth was unnecessary. I burned your
letter, since it was a curiosity of madness, greediness, stupidity, and moral
misery. I dont want to keep such distastefulness in my home.54
For those on the editorial sta, the prison experience was a signicant
one. In the initial period following their arrest, all six of their group were
in Security, in basement cell number 13, where Tuwims friend Colonel
Wieniawa-Dugoszowski sent them two large bags of food and vodka from
Hirschfelds delicatessen.55 Wat learned quickly that, while he did not
behave in too cowardly a way, he did not have the endurance for prison.

a f u ner al for futur ism87

What he did possess was an inborn sense of fatalism. Daily food packages came from his family, always with a letter from Ola tucked inside the
head of the herring. Prison was dicult for Stawar as well, who became
closed into himself and fatalistic about their possible sentences. Hempel,
older and a Party member, fared better.
Jan Hempel emerged as the wise father gure in the cell. The KPP was
in turmoil during this time; Hempel had been living in constant anxiety
about what the Party leadership would say, whether the Party line would
suddenly change. Now in prison his anxiety dissipated, he knew how to
act, he grew calm. He reconciled conicts in the cell and taught the others
how to behave in prison.56 Communist discipline came easily to him. On
one occasion the communists in prison had concluded a hunger strike
and the commune leader was sent from cell to cell to inform the other
communists that the hunger strike was over. Hempel, however, was reluctant to credit such informal notication and demanded to be sent something in writing.57 His faith was the most unproblematic; it stabilized and
contented him. Awakened at night by painful stomach ulcers, he would
tell his companions that at that very moment, in the new Soviet town of
Magnitogorsk, socialism was being built. Both Wat and Broniewski were
struck by this quiet passion.58 Broniewski wrote a poem about sitting
with Hempel in cell number 13 and counting the hours when Hempel
groaned, awakened, sat up and told him, You know in Magnitogorsk /
today two great furnaces are being red.59
Shortly after arriving in prison, Broniewski asked his wife to send food
that could be easily shared, underwear, a cup and spoon, cologne, shaving
supplies, Wiadomoci Literackie, a Russian dictionary, and everything by
Pasternak.60 To Wat, Broniewski appeared somewhat crazed, pacing in
circles around the cell like an animal, a caged lion, unable to reconcile
himself to the enclosure, conjuring up fantastical escape plans.61 Wat
accused Broniewski of behaving like a horrible egoist, and yet noted
that there was something attractive about him. Indomitable, totally undaunted, he was constantly pacing the cell, marching around, smoking
one cigarette after another.62 It seems that it was Broniewskis narcissism
that saved him. Even in prison, he was always a poet. Suering from insomnia, he would not let the others sleep either. He would toss and turn,
leap out of bed, grab one of his friends by the hand, and begin to recite
poetrysometimes his own, sometimes Polish Romantic poetry of the

8 8 a f u n e r a l f o r f u t u r i s m

previous century. Wat was resentful; he wanted to sleep. But he admired

his friend: Broniewski was a poet in the good sense of the word, who
absolutely refused to descend from that mode dexister that is the poet:
poetry in any circumstance.63
Wat and Broniewski were not together for very long. The Miesicznik
Literacki prisoners were moved upstairs to Centralniak, Warsaws central
prison, where they now found themselves in separate cells with real workers, real communists. The KPP members were experienced at spending
long periods of time in prison; they used the time to rest from their
work on the street, and to solidify their Marxist education. Polish prisons
served as universities for communists, who were extremely organized and
disciplined about their time there. Wat was struck by their phenomenal
memory for quotations and statistics, and speculated that some of them
must have had Talmudic education in their childhood.64 The communists
maintained a rigid schedule of lessons, discussions, and lectures. They
knew that Miesicznik Literacki had joined them in prison, and from the
larger-than-life revolutionary writers they harbored various expectations.
Communist discipline, however, did not come easily for Broniewski and
Wat, both fellow travelers unused to Party rules of behavior. Broniewski
was neither very interested in the lessons nor eager to take part in them.
He was busy translating Gogol. Young workers in the cell could not understand why Broniewski, an intellectual, would not want to participate; a
delegate had to raise the matter with him twice.65 Wat was willing to give
lectures as requested, but this, too, was not without its problems. The
prisoners had books, including one by Bukharin. Wat was unimpressed
by the Bolshevik theoretician and struck by his overly simplied philosophy. When Wat began to polemicize condescendingly against the text, the
workers sensed that something was wrong, and Wats role as a lecturer
was quickly put to an end.66 On another occasion, Wat upset the commune
leader by refusing to share his food packages according to the communes
mandatesthat is, he said he would share, but at his own discretion, and
not that of the commune. The commune leader appealed to Broniewski
to use his inuence on his friend, and Broniewski obligingly smuggled
a letter to Wat chastising him and accusing him of being a communist
for 1,200 zotys a month.67
Despite these tensions, prison was a positive experience. While Wat
and Broniewski were reluctant to submit to commune discipline, they

a f u ner al for futur ism89

were full of aection for the workers. The workers, Wat noticed, did not
reciprocate that aection, though on the whole relations were good.68
Broniewski had a talent for making contact with people, and impressed
others with his ability to forge a relationship with a young semiliterate
worker. He found a common language with the prison guard as well, and
would sit on a table in the corridor, reciting his poetry to the aging guard
with a big belly who sat and listened with tears in his eyes. The singing
of poetry set to a melody was a popular prison ritual among communists,
and Broniewski sang to his fellow communist cellmates his 1929 poem
Bezrobotny (Unemployed). Unemployed became a favorite, and Broniewski became a legend as a poet who captured the prison experience
for communists.69
In the communist tradition prison was a rite of passage. Before this
moment, Wat had been plagued with insecurity, with guilt for not having
been imbued with the true spirit of the moment, for carrying within himself the legacy of poetry, of bourgeois decadence. It was only in prison that
he was given an opportunity to become worthy; he saw his imprisonment
as a coming of age, a potential liberation from his fear of contaminating
the cause with his intellectualism:70 But this was also a certain baptism,
a knighting. ... I consoled myself that I would come out of it not as
a broken, abby intellectual but as a manly, courageous revolutionary.
Spirits were high and the revolutionary writers found prison so interesting that there really was no time to think about ourselves. Those were
lively days.

c h a p t e r five

Entanglements, Terror, and the

Fine Art of Confession
Bruno Schulz would come to visit us ... Andrzej, a small child at
that time, having remained with us for a little while, gazed with
curiosity at our guest and suddenly left for the bathroom. He
returned after a while with a fairly large piece of wood and, having
approached me, said: Mommy, beat me! ... And this because, in
connection with that wonderful writers drawings, he was regarded
in Warsaw as a masochist ... Was it some kind of magnetic uids?
Telepathy? or perhapssimplythe whimsical act of a child?
Ola Watowa

miesicznik liter acki was no more. Janina Broniewska called the

editorial oces of Wiadomoci Literackie to tell them her husband was in
prison and would not be coming to work. The director at the oce took
the news graciously, proposing that Janina Broniewska ll her husbands
position in the interim. She accepted, although not without some nervousness. Her new boss was supportive, promising not to be overly demanding
in Broniewskis momentary, as they called it, absence.1 The situation
was indeed temporary. Jan Hempel was the rst to be released. He was
seriously ill when Miesicznik Literackis editorial board was arrested, and
after negotiations through an attorney was released on the condition that
he leave Poland. The Party gave its assent, and Hempel departed Warsaws
central prison for Moscow.2 This communist rite of passage had concluded for the others within some two months time. On 8 November
1931, Broniewskis grandmother wrote to him from Pock. She had been
overjoyed to nd his letter, after having given up all hope that he would
leave the sanatorium. She hoped her grandson had learned his lesson
and would henceforth be more careful in his activities and his choice of
company. Perhaps now he would, at long last, nd his way to God.3 The
experience did elicit a certain faith in Janina Broniewska: from this period
of her life she took the ability to insert proofreaders marks and a faith in
friends who appear and prove loyal in times of real crisis.4
90

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r or, and confession 9 1

Wat returned from prison to nd his favorite sister, Ewa Chwat, in the
hospital; she died the following day. His maid went to work for Tadeusz
Boy-eleski, the famous literary critic a quarter-century older than Wat
who was Irena Krzywickas lover.5 Miesicznik Literacki no longer existed,
and Wat began to search for work. Who would employ him with the
label ydokomuna (Judeo-Bolshevism) attached to him? In the end, Wat
was introduced to Jan Gebethner, the owner of a publishing house, and
Gebethner hired Wat as editor of the literary division. Wat raised the publishing house from the groundmaking only one mistake: he rejected
Witold Gombrowiczs manuscript Ferdydurke, which subsequently became
a literary sensation. Gombrowicz came to Caf Ziemiaska, and Wat did
not like him.6 Gebethner became Wats friend and defender against rightwing, National Democratic attacks.7 Wats life resumed. He saw Witkacy
again, they went drinking. Witkacy stared at Wat, uncomprehending.
How could a person stand eight weeks in prison? Later when Wat visited
Witkacy in Zakopane, the older writer kept grabbing his head and saying, Aleksander, how could you stand it? Eight weeks! We talked about
a hundred dierent things, but he kept interrupting: How can a person
stand eight weeks in prison?8
Wat had no certainty that this was the conclusion of his prison experience. Following his release in autumn 1931, Wat was subject to frequent
searches, particularly before workers holidays such as May Day. At times
the police ocers conducting the searches would appear to be scrutinizing
Wats books with genuine interest. One policeman in particular stayed
in Wats mind, as a former half-intellectual; he was impressed with the
selection of books and asked questions about the authors. He behaved
so well that Ola Watowa invited him to sit down with a book over a cup
of tea. Other times the tone was less pleasant, and books would y onto
the oor. Once Stawar happened to be visiting, and at a certain moment
xed himself in one spot on the oor and stood there for a long time. Ola
Watowa became annoyed that he was getting in the way of the men conducting the search, and told him to sit down somewhere. Afterwards he
berated her for that, as he had been standing on an illegal publication.9
In 1933 the police found illegal publications in Adam Wayks apartment. He was arrested and detained for three weeks under suspicion
of cooperation with a communist organization. Then he was released.10
Broniewski and his wife were also subjected to more frequent searches.

9 2 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o n fession

One day in December 1932 Janina Broniewska was at home when, among
the police functionaries conducting the search, there appeared for the rst
time a female ocer in heavy make-up, red nail polish and bleached
curls.11 This time she and her husband were both taken to prison. Janina
Broniewska was released the following morning, and Broniewski not more
than a day later. This was, though, the beginning of the end of her career
as a schoolteacher, even though she refused to submit her resignation.
She went to Kalisz to visit her mother and contemplate a new profession.
And what now? she asked, Begin life all over again? How, where?12 Yet
she did begin anew, nding her second career as a childrens author.

the road e a s t
While Wat and Broniewski endured police searches and threats of arrest,
some of their friends had escaped from what they spoke of as fascist
Poland, heading east into the depths of the Soviet Union. Miesicznik
Literacki had strengthened contacts with the USSR, and now Wat and the
others were frequently invited to receptions at the Soviet embassy in Warsaw, where no one spoke about politics and everyone threw themselves
greedily and unceremoniously upon the caviar.13 The gatherings were of
enormous importance because to us those were people from over there,
Wat wrote, Russia, a gigantic country, savage, neglected for hundreds
of years, where a new life for humanity was to be built, where humanity
would be organized on ideal foundations.14
Notwithstanding his enthusiasm for prison stays in the company of
authentic workers, Witold Wandurski, once released on bail in 1928, had
crossed the Polish border illegally. He traveled to Berlin, Gdask, and
Moscow before settling in Kiev, in Soviet Ukraine, where he directed an
amateur Polish workers theater.15 In an introduction to a Russian edition of Broniewskis poetry, Wandurski described his now faraway friend
as a revolutionary lyricist. Yet the introduction was neither uncritical
nor devoid of a certain condescension. Wandurski reected back upon
Broniewskis past in Pisudskis Legions and traced Broniewskis journey
from Polish patriotism to socialist patriotisma trajectory Wandurski
described as typical for the better representatives of the central European
intelligentsia from bourgeois backgrounds who have become fellow travelers of proletarian literature. Moreover, Broniewskis evolution remained
incomplete, imperfect: Broniewski did not fully embrace the ideology

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r or, and confession 93

of the revolutionary proletariat. He did not possess the philosophy of

dialectical materialism. In the poet the idealist-romantic struggles with
the materialist-revolutionary.16
Wandurski was not alone in heading east. As a result of I Burn Paris,
in May 1929 Bruno Jasieski was arrested in France and escorted to the
German border. He stayed in Berlin for several days before sailing on to
Leningrad, where he arrived on 21 May. His reception upon disembarking
was grandiose: a delegation of writers awaited him at the train station. At
the Arch of Triumph a crowd of several hundred had gathered to greet
the Polish revolutionary who had been deported from bourgeois France.17
Among the crowd was the Hungarian writer Antal Hidas, the husband
of the Hungarian communist leader Bla Kuns daughter Agnes. Hidas
watched Jasieski step o the train carrying a small suitcase, pursued by
a policeman, moved and confused by the delegation awaiting him. A voice
from the crowd announced: the Soviet constitution guarantees to every
revolutionary persecuted in his own homeland or in another country the
right of asylum.18 A Russian literary newspaper wrote of the arrival of
Bruno Jasieskithe most dangerous enemy of the bourgeoisie and the
most faithful friend, the most devoted ghter of the working class.19 It
was one of many such articles. Attracting the most attention was the laudatory piece by M. Zhivov, the Russian translator of both Jasieskis poetry
and eromskis The Spring to Come. Zhivov used Jasieskis biography
to expose the suering and persecution to which revolutionary writers
were subjected in the highly civilized countries of the West. Zhivov
presented the twenty-nine-year-old Jasieski as a proletarian writer engaged in the struggle against fascism in literature, the victim of bourgeois
literary critics beginning with eromski, the victim as well of the police
in his own country, where he was denied opportunities to publish and
eventually forced to emigrate to a life of poverty and suering in Paris.
While idealizing Jasieskis biography and praising his work, Zhivov also
acknowledgedechoing Wats self-criticism of Polish futurismthat
in Jasieskis conclusions one sometimes feels anarchistic tendencies.
He was condent, though, that a stay in the Soviet Union and collaboration with Soviet proletarian writers would help Jasieski to cast o this
tendency.20
Not everyone appreciated Jasieskis enthusiastic welcome. On 7 June
1929, Stanisaw Ryszard Stande composed a letter, addressed to Jasieski

9 4 e n ta n gl e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

but sent to the KPP section of the Comintern, protesting Zhivovs portrayal
of Jasieskis persecution in Poland and his leading role in Polish proletarian literature. Stande axed, moreover, the signatures of Jan Hempel,
Witold Wandurski, Wadysaw Broniewski, and Andrzej Stawar. Jasieski
replied in a thirteen-page typed letter to the KPP section of the Comintern,
which did not neglect to counterattack his Polish comrades. He denied
the charge of self-advertisement. He attached a statement by Jan Hempel in which Hempel denied that he had authorized Stande to use his
name, as well as a statement by Zhivov to the eect that any inadvertent
distortions in his article were his own error and responsibility, not those
of Jasieskiwho had in any case arrived only on the day that the article
was published and had not been involved in its composition.21 Jasieski
continued, in a lengthy account of his publishing history in Poland, to
defend Zhivovs statement: it was true that the doors of publishing houses
in Poland had been largely closed to him. It was only with the assistance
of Comrade Barbusse in France that he had been able to nd a French
publisher for I Burn Paris.22
The second half of Jasieskis response acquired a more insidious
character. If Wandurski had at times been condescending, Jasieski
was vicious. He denied having falsied the history of Polish proletarian
culture in the interest of self-promotion. His poetry readings had been
organized under the slogan of a battle against bourgeois culture. This
was true despite the fact that this battle was an impotent battle, due to
insuciently taking into account political battle and being cut o from the
daily revolutionary battle of the working masses. Jasieskis and Sterns
work may have been anarchistic, but it was an expression of protest against
religion, against bourgeois art and culture; here Jasieski admitted that
Stern was indeed presently a panegyrist of Pisudski and a neo-Catholic,
but reminded them that at that time Stern had been a lampooner of the
bourgeoisie and an antireligious poet. Moreover, back then Stande had
been appearing publicly with mystical and religious poets like Jzef Wittlin
and Comrade Broniewski was appearing with the loyally-submissiveto-Belweder and aestheticizing group Skamander. Jasieski did not stop
there. He returned to Standes original letter, quoting the sentence directed at himself: You know well, that a whole series of people from the
rst years of independencenot only those signed below ... were creating the
foundations of proletarian culture in Poland, they went with the live word

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r or, and confession 95

to the labor unions, to the factories, to the mines and to other reservoirs
of proletarian masses.
Standes claim was the point of departure for Jasieskis counterattack:
Who among the comrades who signed the letter was creating
the foundations of proletarian culture and went with the live
word to unions and mines from the rst years of independence? Passing over Comrade Hempel, whose signature, after
all, was axed to the letter without his consent and knowledge,
and who perhaps with the greatest justication could sign under that sentence, even Comrade Stande, being a Party member from the rst years of independence, in those rst years in
the realm of superstructure cannot boast that he was creating
the foundations of proletarian culture. His poetic appearances
from those times in one front with the mystics Wittlin and Stur
cannot in any way be regarded as foundations of proletarian
culture. Comrade Stande joined his literary activity to a certain
extent to the class movement only considerably later. Comrade
Broniewski in the rst years of independence was a Legionnaire and a Pisudskiite and as a writer was not yet present.
Until the time of my departure from Poland, that is, until 1925,
he was taking his rst literary steps under the wings of the
loyally-submissive-to-Belweder group Skamander, publishing
in their publications and appearing at their literary evenings.
His rst romantic lyrical poetry, published by the bourgeois
publishing house Czarski, likewise cannot in any way qualify
as foundations of proletarian culture. In this period, when
all of bourgeois criticism, beginning with eromski, ending
with the last literary hack, qualied my literary activity (too
atteringly after all) as Bolshevism in literature, when the
police, possessing, apparently, a better sense of smell than you,
dear Comrades, broke up my poetry readings (Warsaw, Nowy
Scz), banned me from public appearances (Lww), removed
me via administrative means from some districts (Nowy Scz),
claiming in their order that my (literary!) activity on the terrain
of the given district was undesirable in the interest of the
Polish Republic, at that same time the co-author of your letter

9 6 e n ta n gl e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o n fession

and alleged creator of proletarian culture from the rst years

of independence, Comrade Broniewski, was welcomed by
bourgeois criticism (Pannenkowa) almost enthusiastically
as a talented new pupil of the aestheticizing Skamander, he
was even for a certain time the editor of the Belweder-court
Wiadomoci Literackie (standing in for Grydzewski). Others
may, but Comrade Broniewski should not be signing himself
under the number of those before whom the doors of publishing houses were essentially closed. He took the rst steps
of his creative work under the protective wings of favorable
bourgeois criticism, he had at his disposal the bourgeois publishers of the Skamandrites, at a time when none of us could
even dream about a publisher for poetic works.
Whoever else of those comrades signing the letter were
creating the foundations of proletarian culture from the rst
years of independence? Was Comrade Wandurski, who not
long before my departure from Poland in the same Wiadomoci
Literackie, in an interview given to the editors, announced
to everyone his critical attitude to the October Revolution,
attesting that his most recent play could never be performed
in the USSR because the censors there would not permit it,
standing in the pose of a martyr, the spirit of the eternal
revolutionary, persecuted on both one side of the barricade
and the other?23 ...
For this reason your sentence directed at me claiming that
at that time I was not among you is amusing in its pompousness. Likewise at that time, in the rst years of independence,
neither were you, Comrade Broniewski, nor you, Comrade
Wandurski, nor you, Comrade Stawar, not in the mines, not
in the factories, nor in the communist party. Your connection
with the revolutionary movement at that time was just as
indirect as mine.24
Jasieski was relentless. He reminded his critics that even while his
early work might have borne the character of anarchistic rebellion, he
had always stood for unconditional armation of the October Revolution.
Moreover, as far as he was concerned, during his entire time in Poland

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r or, and confession 97

no groups of proletarian writers as such even existedThree Salvos appeared only in November 1925, three months after his departure. In the
meantime Broniewski and Stawar were attacking him in Dwignia and
in the bourgeois Wiadomoci Literackie, claiming that in his long poem
about a rebellious peasant hero, A Word about Jakub Szela, Jasieski was
apotheosizing Szela, who was in fact an agent of the Austrian imperial
authorities.25 Despite this, Jasieski continued, when years earlier Anatol
Stern had criticized the authors of Three Salvos, Jasieski had stood in full
solidarity with Broniewski, Wandurski, and Stande. That current articles
in the Soviet press overlooked the latters contribution to Polish proletarian
literature in favor of aggrandizing Jasieskis own role was not Jasieskis
fault. If, of course, he were to write his own article for the Soviet press he
would never usurp for himself a monopoly and would rather place his
own name clearly together with theirsdespite his hesitations regarding
some of their work. This was, after all, not a time to quarrel over small
dierences when in Poland there were so few in their camp at all. Rather
than bickering over who was rst, Jasieski suggested, they might all
benet from submitting their literary work to harsh Bolshevik criticism
in the interest of in the re of discussion ridding ourselves of rudiments
alien to the ideology and psyche of the proletariat, which we inherited
from the class we all came from, and which often manifest themselves
in an improper, un-Bolshevik approach to matters.26
Perhaps Wandurski, Stawar, and Broniewski had agreed to have their
names signed under Standes letter, perhaps they had not. In either case,
Jasieskis reply was potentially devastating, at a moment when accusations among communists were not taken lightly. In the Soviet Union, the
purges had already begun. Across the border in Poland, it was true that
Stern continued to struggle to negotiate his Marxism, his Catholicism, and
his Polish patriotism. His lengthy 1934 poem Pisudski portrayed his
eorts to reconcile his feelings about the poverty and suering he saw in
Poland with both his nostalgia for the romantic tradition of the socialist
patriots and his awareness that this era had passed. So it was that little
remained of Pisudski the socialist. In spring of 1930 Pisudski arrested
some hundred oppositional parliamentary deputies and imprisoned them
in a camp in Brze; the November 1930 elections were fraudulent. In
Pisudski Stern wrote of being told by Cezary Baryka, the young protagonist of The Spring to Come, that communism could be created now just as

9 8 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

it could at another time; to win independence for a second time, however,

would be much harder. I want to ght only in liberated Poland, Stern
wrote. Yet in the last stanza he returned to both The Earth to the Left and
Mayakovskys Left March:
Enough already.
The past of your dreams returns.
Our hand will not quiver like a leaf
the hand that raised the lever of Polish freedom.
To the left, leader of Poland!
If you want to go together with the Poland of labor
to the left!!27

creating p o l i s h s ov i e t c u l t u r e
Stanisaw Ryszard Stande had in truth been among the very rst in Polish
literary circles to devote his work to the communist movement. He had
joined the Communist Party of Poland just after the First World War; his
own prison initiation came a full decade before the arrest of Miesicznik
Literackis editorial board.28 By September 1931, when his friends were arrested, Stande was no longer in Warsaw. In 1931 he and his second wife
Zoa Warska moved to Moscow, where they lived with Warskas father,
the legendary Polish communist leader Adolf Warski.29 Initially Stande did
not envision his stay as permanent; in late 1932, he wrote to Broniewski
that his poor health had delayed his return to Poland.30 Whatever his
original intentions, Stande, like Jasieski, came to play an active role in
Soviet cultural politics, participating in the poetry section of the Soviet
Writers Union, traveling to literary gatherings in areas of Soviet Ukraine
and Belarus with large Polish populations, publishing poetry and Polish
translations of Russian literature, and devoting much time to work in the
International Association of Revolutionary Writers.31 Among Standes
projects was the Polish-language monthly Kultura Mas (The Culture of
the Masses).
Kultura Mas had actually come into being some two years before
Standes arrival under the supervision of Bruno Jasieski. Upon his arrival
in Moscow, Jasieski had immediately joined the Russian Association of
Proletarian Writers and acquired a Russian wife, the obese journalist Anna
Berzi, even as his rst wife, Klara Arem, was en route with their infant

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 99

son to join him in Russia. In June 1929, Jasieski, as the editor of Kultura
Mas, disseminated a call for Polish writers in the Soviet Union to contribute to the magazine; he called as well for criticism of the rst issues
insuciencies.32 In addition to Jasieski, Hempel and Wandurski were
among the papers main contributors. That the venture was jeopardized
by a scarcity of suitable authors emerged from Jasieskis letter of June
1929 to Broniewski and Stawar in Warsaw, pleading with them to send
him material.33 Jasieski inaugurated the paper with a daring article about
linguistic revolution, a tendentious call for self-criticism among Poles in
the Soviet Union who were corrupting Polish with Russicisms. Poles active
in the Soviet Union must not lose their connection either with the working masses in fascist Poland or with the Polish peasant masses in the
Soviet Union, Jasieski argued. He insisted that the task of the moment
was the weeding out of Soviet Polish; the replacing of Russian socialist
expressions with Polish ones; and the vigorous enforcement of the entire
process. Kultura Mas, Jasieski promised, would do its part.34
From Kiev, Wandurski donated his own prolic thoughts regarding
the creation of Polish proletarian culture. A 1929 issue included his characteristically long-winded article Lets Make a Polish Revolutionary Film.
After all, according to Wandurski, Polish lmmakers possessed splendid,
rsthand material in the Polish proletariat, presently striding in the rst
ranks of the revolutionary avant-garde of the capitalist West. He cautioned
potential revolutionary lmmakers to avoid literature in the cinema,
as such was the road to kitsch. Most importantly, lms should be optimistic and include a revolutionary happy ending, a phrase Wandurski
invoked in English. He returned to the language of joy and optimism that
had colored his letters to Broniewski several years earlier, and suggested a
lm about the International Organization for Aid to Revolutionaries that
would bear the title Lets Have the Courage to Look Joyfully!35 A second
article by Wandurski, published in early 1930, told of his new Polish theater, barely ve months old, founded from the old Teatr-Studium in Kiev.
Given that this old theater was allegedly artistic but in essence snobbish
and anti-Soviet, everything had to be built anew, an enormous task, but
one for which he was prepared, having drawn upon the examples of the
Ukrainian and Jewish theaters. A Soviet Polish theater possessing the
strength to battle for cultural revolutionthis we do not yet have, Wan
durski wrote, But we will. Whatever conditions may be, this must be a

1 0 0 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

revolutionary theater, worker-peasant, proletarian in content, Polish in

form (language, style, culture, emotions).36
In a 1931 essay for Kultura Mas about Polish proletarian literature,
Stande revisited the Polish literary scene of the 1920s, presenting an alternative narrative to the one by Zhivov that had so angered him. In
the early years of independence, he began, both the intelligentsia and a
certain segment of the working class had been ensorceled by illusions
about newly independent Polandillusions Stande perceived as purposefully cultivated by Pisudskis Polish Socialist Party so as to strengthen
the bourgeois state. In Standes telling of the story, prior to 1925 it was
not possible to speak of any proletarian cultural movement, but only of
individual activists. Stande emphasized the role of Hempel; he wrote
of Three Salvos, Dwignia, and the graphic artist Mieczysaw Szczuka,
who had died tragically in the Tatra mountains during Dwignias short
life. Stawar, in Standes reading, came into his own as a Marxist critic
in Dwignia, and Stanisaw Wygodzki, among others, began his poetic
career there. Moreover, Stande wrote, nally the excellent prose writer
Aleksander Wat crossed over to our group from the petty bourgeois camp.
Much of the second half of the article was devoted to the recently deceased Miesicznik Literacki, which represented a new epoch in Marxist
literary thought. While, Stande wrote, a higher force in the form of
fascist censorship did not permit us to develop that discussion further in
the direction of deepening self-criticism, this should not diminish the
accomplishments of Miesicznik Literacki: its reportage competition, its
battle against fascism, its development of ties with Ukrainian and Jewish
proletarian writers. Unlike Jasieski, Stande remained openly attached
to his pre-Soviet life. While submitting our errors and insuciencies to
self-criticism, he concluded, it is nonetheless necessary to emphasize
the enormous achievements that this period brought.37
The emphasis on culture socialist in content and Polish in form bore
dangers. By the beginning of the decade, Stalin had consolidated his power
in the Soviet Union, and Jan Hempels 1933 self-criticism on behalf of
the paper was saturated with conspicuously Stalinist language. Hempel
cited Stalin from the Sixteenth Party Congress to the eect that the entry
into socialism had not meant that national languages were dying out and
merging into one common language, but rather just the opposite: national
languages and cultures were further evolving. Moreover, the theory that

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 101

posited the melting together of all nations into one great Russian nation
was a chauvinist, anti-Leninist theory. Hempel went on to criticize Kultura Mas for not having succeeded in gathering around itself a group of
writers and activists who would ignite battle on the Polish cultural front.
What exactly this Polish cultural front would consist of was a delicate
question; and Hempel considered the papers earlier declaration that the
development of Polish socialist culture in the Soviet Union would be
possible only with the victory of the Revolution in fascist Poland as an
opportunist error. Although this erroneous view had been recanted and
its leading representatives had publicly acknowledged their error, Hempel
made clear this should not be understood to mean that these views had
been fully overcome.38
The Soviet korenizatsiia campaign to indigenize communist culture
coexisted uneasily with accusations of bourgeois nationalism. Even for
the most disciplined communists, the shifting Party line was dicult to
follow; and korenizatsiia proved to be a double-edged sword. By late 1930,
Bruno Jasieski, under pressure, had signed a self-criticism confessing
to nationalist deviation. Now he gave up the editorship of Kultura Mas
to become more and more a Russian writer and cultural gure. Wandurski, too, was accused of nationalist opportunist inclinations. Unlike
Jasieski, however, Wandurski refused to sign a declaration of repentance, until threats of expulsion from the Communist Party and other
repressions forced him to relent.39 By late 1932 Wandurski could apparently no longer endure Soviet life. When Wadysaw Daszewski traveled
to the Soviet Union as an ocial representative of Polish scenography,
Wandurski went to see him in Moscow, desperate to nd a way back to
Poland. Daszewski put Wandurski in contact with the military attach at
the Polish embassy.40

mannequins a n d t a d z h i k e ag l e s
Jasieskis resignation from the editorship of Kultura Mas was symbolic of
his break with the Polish world and immersion into the Soviet one. Sovieti
zation, even writing in Russian, came easily to him. In 1930, Jasieski
played a leading role at the World Congress of Revolutionary Writers
in Kharkov as the accuser of Henri Barbusse, the editor of the French
paper Monde, who had been his patron and protector in Paris.41 In May
1931, now two years after his arrival in Russia, Jasieski published an

1 0 2 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

a utobiographical essay, revisiting his childhood, not neglecting to confess

to his petty bourgeois origins, and describing his father, a provincial
doctor who lived his entire life twenty-ve miles from the nearest railway
station and oered free care to impoverished peasants. Jasieski had entered university in Cracow in 1918, that wonderful year when independent
Poland burst forth from the ruins of the Habsburg and Hohenzollern
monarchies, blown up by the dynamite of the October Revolution.42
Jasieski traced his literary trajectory from his rebellious youth to his
communist commitment. His rst works, which appeared in 19191920,
still bore traces of formal searchings, as a result of the intentional
vulgarity of his treatment of the sacred and untouchable ideals of inde
pendence, national culture, religion, and the cult of war. He added, however, that the following year he condemned these same works in poetic
self-criticism. He considered his 1922 A Poem about Hunger to be the
rst meaningful work in postwar Polish literature hailing the social revolution. It was while translating articles by Lenin that he had become acquainted with the theory and practice of class war. In retrospect, he saw
the years 19241928 as a time of internal creative crisis, a time when he
believed that writing in the old way was erroneous, but when he did not
yet know how to write in a new way. Jakub Szela was his rst step on
the path to proletarian literature. Thereafter, his need for engagement
in battle led him to abandon poetry for prose, the result of which was I
Burn Paris. Here in the Soviet Union he had recently written Bal maneke
nov (The Mannequins Ball), a grotesque play about contemporary social
democracy in the West. He had been moved to write it, he explained to
his readers, by the lack of cheerful plays in our revolutionary repertoire
that would allow the proletarian viewer to spend two hours engaged in
healthy laughter at his enemies.43
That same year, 1931, The Mannequins Ball appeared in Russian. The
play was set in Paris, and began in a fashion house during the mannequins
ball. A tango played in the background; mannequins whirled about the
stage and discussed rapidly changing fashions. Theres a rumor atchested gures wont be in vogue next year. Women with well-developed
busts are coming back into fashion again. If thats true, then well all be
tossed on the scrap heap next year, said a female mannequin.44 They
spoke disparagingly of their human counterparts: I dont believe theres

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 10 3

anything to be learned from humans. Ive seen more than enough of all
those dandies who frequent our workshops. Theyre all only worthless
copies made in our image! I feel like bursting out laughing when I look at
those twisted monstrosities. ... I simply cant understand why our clothes
should be given to them. No matter what you do, on them everything will
always look ghastly.45
The mannequins festivities were interrupted by the intrusion of
Ribandel, a bourgeois socialist leader on his way to a party thrown by an
auto manufacturer. Ribandel had wandered into the mannequins ball by
accident, having followed a female mannequin there, unaware that she
was not a woman. The appearance of the uninvited guest was not pleasing
to the mannequins, who decided that Ribandels head should be cut o.
They did so with a pair of scissors, and afterwards drew lots for the head.
The happy winner donned the human head and proceeded to the auto
manufacturers ball in Ribandels place while Ribandel, headless, wandered away in blind pursuit of his severed head. It was in the mannequinimpostors encounter with Ribandels world that Jasieskis expos of
bourgeois society emerged. Although Ribandel carried all the correct
cardshe was a member of the League for the Protection of Human and
Civil Rights, the French Socialist Party, and so forthhe was nevertheless
inextricably wedded to the decadent bourgeois world. The play concluded
when the headless Ribandel had nally found his way to the ball. His
impostor rushed towards him: Please, heres your head! Take it. Take it
quickly! Ive had enough of it! I was tempted for nothing! When I won the
head, I was happy. I thought Id found a treasure. To hell with your head!
Now I know what you need it for! We made the right decision to cut o
that bad apples head. But whats the use? Can we cut o all your heads?
There arent enough scissors. And its really not our business. Others are
coming who can do a better job than we could.46
The Mannequins Ball was communist theater woven from futurist and
absurdist elements, at a moment when the Party had begun to dictate the
proper form of communist literature. On 21 September 1933 the play had
its world premiere in Prague, but it was never performed in the Soviet
Union during Jasieskis lifetime. It was seen by Soviet critics as too fantastical and too little realist, despite a generous introduction by Anatolii
Lunacharsky, one of the main theoreticians of socialist realism, who wrote:

1 0 4 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

Once you have accepted the mirror of the fantastic held up by the author,
you will grasp how curiously, originally, delectably and sarcastically it
reects the bourgeois-socialist world.47
Jasieski defended his play, even while engaged in recanting other
ideological stances he had recently embraced. In a June 1932 letter to the
executive Comintern committee on the restructuring of the International
Association of Revolutionary Writers, Jasieski oered a lengthy confession of his earlier errors. Having recanted two years earlier his right-wing
nationalist deviation, now he regretted not having fought harder against
left-wing deviations and specically not having cooperated suciently
with the broad masses of the petty bourgeois intelligentsia. I regard as
one of the most serious errors committed by the leadership of the International Association of Revolutionary Writers and by myself personally, he
wrote, the breaking of ties with signicant groups of writers and artists
friendly towards the socialist enterprise. He regretted as well having been
so quick to place Barbusse in the social-fascist camp. Nonetheless he
tried to justify himself: at the time when he wrote the resolution against
Barbusse, Barbusses magazine Monde was publishing articles reviling
the French Communist Party as a party of prevaricators and schemers and
Mondes political line was almost entirely in accord with that of French
social fascism. He admitted responsibility for his error. As the only
communist from the leadership of the International Association of Revolutionary Writers, he wrote, I participated in the French revolutionary
movement and should have demonstrated much more farsightedness in
this matter; furthermore, I should have taken under consideration the
amplitude of the oscillations of French petty bourgeois fellow travelers
who, departing to the right, can suddenly turn to the left. Much of the
rest of this lengthy letter was devoted to accusation. The object was Stande
and his opposition group in the International Association of Revolutionary Writers, who had leveled unfounded, undocumented reproaches
against Jasieski during his stay in Tadzhikistan.48
Jasieski did not shy from taking the oensive in Soviet literary
politics. He found socialist realism too constricting and insuciently
inventive. At the All-Union Congress of Writers in September 1934, in
an implicit defense of The Mannequins Ball, he counterattacked Soviet
writers for their stylistic and aesthetic conservatism, for the reticence of
their imaginations: I accuse our literature of being too timid, too em-

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 10 5

pirical in following on the heels of reality. ... I raise my voice in a toast:

to bold invention, erected on the material of living reality, but not afraid
to step across into tomorrow, full of the unexpected.49 Jasieski argued
for the expansion of Engelsian realismthe typical individual in typical
circumstancesand accused Soviet writers of having limited themselves
too much to stereotypical circumstances, the result of which had been
schematism and ossication. This is why, Jasieski related, our worker,
after reading another book about new building, impatiently asks, This
is the new book? But Ive already read it!50 The following year, at the
Congress of Soviet Writers in Minsk, Jasieski was still ghting to salvage
elements of his futurist past: I accuse our literature of a lack of courage
in making use of artistic fantasy, he declared, arguing that, by following
reality too empirically, in fear of being accused of creating ction, Soviet
writers impoverished their reality. In April 1935 he spoke at the Writers
Union in praise of Mayakovsky, whose inuence on writers emerging
from a petty bourgeois milieu was so enormous in reactionary Poland
and whose books were explosive material for us. In an article in a Russian literary newspaper, Jasieski wrote: Almost all of the revolutionary
Polish poets went crazy over Mayakovsky. He added, And not only the
revolutionary ones.51
Bruno Jasieskis own daily life was not devoid of fantastical elements.
While on vacation with his second wife Anna Berzi in the Caucasus, he
encountered some boys who were playing with eagle nestlings. Afraid that
the boys would exhaust the little birds, Jasieski bought the eagles from
them. He originally thought he would take them to Moscow and give them
to the zoo, but then he grew attached to them. Mayakovskys onetime lover
Lilia Brik was astounded to nd Jasieski calmly sharing his work space
with the birds, wholly undisturbed by their constant squalling.52 When the
Polish writer Zygmunt Nowakowski returned from a visit to Moscow, he
told Jarosaw Iwaszkiewicz that when he had had dinner with Jasieski,
a chained eagle had joined them in the dining room.53 That evening took
place in December 1933. Nowakowski was invited to a dinner party with
the gaunt Jasieski and his wife, a fat, ugly, monstrously neglected Russian woman. She did not take part in the conversation, she was busy in
the kitchen. Any personal animosity notwithstanding, Stanisaw Ryszard
Stande was there as well. The party was wonderful, Nowakowski wrote,
recalling the lavishness with some suspicion:

1 0 6 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

The table was actually straining from the dishes, the silver, and
the crystal. Glasses with the monogram of the last Russian emperor caught my attention. Caviar, beluga or sterlet, and other
specialties. There was no need to freeze the alcohol, a ringing
frost penetrated the room. Frost and lth. The host was dressed
in a way impoverished beyond any expression, although he
must have put on his best clothes. He looked like someone
who was afraid of something. His eyes ew around in all directions, his hand shook when he poured the drinks. We could
see our breath when we spoke. I glanced in the direction of
the stove. A spiders web enveloped the iron doors. Jasieski,
a character and an eccentric, was undoubtedly talented. ...
He had written I Burn Paris, a spoof not without force and fantasy. Our conversation faltered. My hands were sti, and at a
certain moment I was overcome by the desire to say to my host:
Comrade Jasieski, youre burning Paris, but why are you not
burning anything in the stove? I didnt say it, because I had
come to feel sorry for the poor man. The dishes, the food, and
the liquor were of an eminently elegant, and even theatrical,
nature. Apparently it was important to someone, some agents,
that Polish writers be convinced of how a writer in the Soviet
Union lives. Hence the caviar and the crystal. I couldnt help
feeling that as soon as we left, someone would appear who
would immediately take away all that remained of the food and
drink, who would pack up the dishes and silver, and poverty
and hunger would reside in the apartment as they had before.54
Jasieski resented that his Polishness had apparently been forgotten in Poland.55 Yet after his resignation from the editorship of Kultura
Mas and his confession to nationalist deviation, Jasieski did become,
increasingly, a Russian writer and a Soviet cultural gure. He became,
moreover, immersed in frequently vicious Soviet literary politics. In Moscow, the Hungarian writer Antal Hidas grew close to Jasieski, whom he
described as a multilingual internationalist, a very thin man married to
an obese enthusiast. Together, Jasieski and Hidas became involved in a
conict with the newspaper Pravda under Lev Mekhliss editorship. The
conict originated in the question put to participants at the 1930 Writers

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 10 7

Congress in Kharkov: What is your opinion about war preparations? Hidas

and Jasieski decided to give the responses to Pravda. The papers editors
rejected the material; and Hidas and Jasieski proceeded to write a letter to
Stalin with accusations against the editorial board. Mekhlis pleaded with
them to withdraw the letter, but they refused. Mekhlis was very persuasive and Hidas would have relented had his friend not been unwavering.
This time the two writers were victorious; Stalin took their side and the
responses appeared not only in Pravda, but also in Izvestiia. Hidas told of
how Jasieski, having become the hero of the day, berated his friend for
having had doubts. As they say, Hidas concluded his story, we became
fashionable. Soon the two men were invited to speak everywhere from
universities to factories and military bases.56
Jasieski also became engaged in the Sovietization of Tadzhikistan,
Tomasz Dbals having involved him in the project of a Central Asian musical theater troupe during his Paris days. Jasieski made his rst trip to
Tadzhikistan in 1930; various trips followed during the next several years.57
In a June 1931 article he spoke of the International Association of Revolutionary Writers decision to send writers to Tadzhikistan to write about
the blooming of proletarian culture.58 In January 1935 Jasieski made a
speech at the Tadzhikistan Party Congress framed by the motif that the
Russian proletariat had rescued Tadzhikistan from the soldiers boot of
British imperialism. Jasieski characterized Soviet rule in Tadzhikistan
as salvation from national annihilation, and argued that Soviet power
had given far more to Tadzhikistan than the republic had given the Soviet
Union in return. What Tadzhikistan owed the Soviet Union, moreover, was
quite specic: cotton. The speech ended on an agitators note far removed
from the sphere of culture: the people of Tadzhikistan owed it to the Soviet
Union to work harder, to resist bourgeois thoughts, to grow cotton for
the Union.59 In 1936 Jasieski seems to have been dispatched to Tadzhikistan as an agitator for higher cotton production. Late that year he gave a
speech to students from Tadzhikistan studying in Moscow praising the
Tadzhik kolkhozniki for having been the rst in the Union to fulll the
cotton plan for the second time. They were victorious, Jasieski emphasized, because they had promised the great socialist homeland that they
would be, and because it was impermissible to deceive the homeland that
surrounded the Tadzhik nation with such maternal love and care. I am
proud, Jasieski told the students, to wear the symbol of this wonderful

1 0 8 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

republic on my lapel. I am proud to have sung the praises of the wonderful Tadzhik nation and its innumerable possibilities at a time when all of
our country still knew so little about the new socialist Tadzhikistan in the
process of being born. But I am prouder still that all of my writings pale
before the living reality of todays Tadzhikistan.60

life after m i e s i c z n i k l i t e r a c k i
Following Wats release from prison, a communist acquaintance told him
that Stande would be traveling west from Moscow and wanted to meet
him in Berlin. Wat was told to go to Upper Silesia, to a place not far from
the German border where a certain miner would be waiting for him. Wat
was to cross the border in a workers clothing. In the end, Ola Watowa
dissuaded him from making the trip, fearing it would be too dangerous
so soon after his release from prison. It may also have been that the prospect of the trip was insuciently compelling; Wat saw Stande in part as
a poser, a dandy of communism. It was Stawar who counted most for
Wat intellectually. Moreover, in the years following his imprisonment, Wat
began to have doubts about communism. During Miesicznik Literackis
existence, Stalin had not existed in Wats mind, yet now, in the early 1930s,
the specter of Stalinism was palpable. Nevertheless, Wat remained in close
contact with the Party. He even acquired a personal Party instructor, the
protg of Irena Krzywickas father-in-law, the famous Marxist sociologist
Ludwik Krzywicki. Wats tutor was Jakub Berman.61
In the 1930s, Jakub Berman was charged with working with Wat
to ll the void in the Marxist literary press following the liquidation of
Miesicznik Literacki. The legendary monthly conspicuously lacked a successor. In April 1933 Tadeusz Peiper tried to organize socialist writers, but
his eort failed to result in anything signicant.62 The literary vacuum
was apparent. In a 1935 letter, a socialist from Wilno wrote to Broniewski
lamenting the impasse of the proletarian poets: It is high time for
the old team of Dwignia and Miesicznik to set to work ... we want
you to jump on Wat, Stawar, and possibly others, such as, for example,
Wasilewska. ... We have in mind in particular the old and tested avantgarde of Miesicznik, Dwignia, for you are the ones responsible for the
decline of our literary criticism and creative production and the obligation
to catch up and overtake weighs on you.63 Nineteen thirty-ve saw the
ocial Comintern decision to embrace a broad, left-wing alliance against

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 10 9

the growing threat of Nazism. During the rst two years of the Popular
Front there were numerous attempts to start up a new magazine. Berman
instructed Wat as to how far we can go in terms of concessions. At
moments, plans for collaboration with the less radical left-wing activists
came close to being realized, then faltered on the question of the Soviet
Union. Jakub Berman explained to Wat that the Party was in favor of a
noncommunist, wide-ranging, tolerant publicationwith one exception:
there would be no provocations vis--vis the Soviet Union. And Wat
agreed. Whatever ominous news might be arriving from Polands eastern
neighbor, the homeland of the proletariat had to survive.64
Negotiations between the KPP and the PPS over establishing a Popular Front publication continued, despite the PPSs ambivalence regarding
cooperation with the communists. At a certain moment in 1936 talks broke
down as a result of the appearance of the newspaper Oblicze Dnia (The
Face of the Day), edited by Wanda Wasilewska and named after her novel
about strikes in Cracow, a novel that had already acquired an almost cultlike status on the Left. Wasilewska, still formally a PPS activist, was by 1936
already known as a crypto-communist; and Wat sensed that the PPS felt
betrayed by the fact that the communists were publishing a paper without
them, and moreover under the cover of a supposed PPS activist.65 Janina
Broniewska made her journalistic debut in Oblicze Dnia with an article
based on her discussions with recently released political prisoners about
the changing political climate in Poland. They were optimistic; they felt
that they were no longer alone.66 Neither Broniewska nor Wasilewska had
joined the KPP, but both were moving closer to the Soviet Union.

the specter o f t ro t s ky i s m
Even the most radical Left was far from monolithic. While Wat was being
guided by Jakub Berman, two of the former contributors to Miesicznik
Literacki had made dierent choices. Isaac Deutscher, close to Yiddish
circles as well, had always comprised a category unto himself. He used
to stay with the journalist Bernard Singer and his wife, who would host
parties where they served vodka and herring on newspaper and the women
sat on the laps of men who were not their husbands. At one such evening
Wat watched in rage as Deutscher pulled Ola Watowa onto his lap. Wat
whisked his wife away; and Deutscher called him a petty bourgeois harboring foolish prejudices.67

1 1 0 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

Wats attendance at such gatherings was an ephemeral phenomenon.

The question of Leon Trotsky had been a problem for the KPP for most of
the 1920s, and now Deutscher was one of the rst of their crowd to defect,
to become openly antiStalinist, a supporter of Trotsky. Wats relationship
with Deutscher came to an end one day when Deutscher appeared at Wats
apartment, asking to borrow some books by Lenin. Wat had acquired the
books during the time of Miesicznik Literacki; he had been given them
for free, they were gifts sent from Russia. He said no to Deutscher: How
could he give him books he had received as gifts from Russians to use
against them? Deutscher was enraged and called Wat a petty bourgeois.
Wat ordered him out of the apartment. After that they saw each other once
after Wat had spent a night in prison; Deutscher had also been in prison
and at seven in the morning, they met in the oce of the investigating
magistrate. Of course, Wat said, we talked with each other as if nothing
had ever happened.68
Andrzej Stawar, too, rejected Stalinism. He began to publish a paper named Pod Prd (Upstream) for which he wrote several exhaustive,
academic treatises on topics such as Bonapartism and fascism, Soviet
bureaucracy, and Leon Trotsky. Pod Prd was the venture of a tiny group of
anti-Stalinists; Stawar solicited Wats participation, but Wat was reluctant.
I didnt want to do anything against the Soviet Union, he explained, I
regarded Stalin as terrible, someone doing horrible things, but that was
the only proletarian state! Stalin would pass, but the homeland of the
proletariat would remain. And, well, one could not aid the enemies.69 Yet
Wat had doubts, and so he provided some vague assistance, reading over
articles, making some suggestions, but he would not write for Pod Prd.
In 1932 Isaac Deutscher was expelled from the KPP for his role in
forming the Trotskyite opposition.70 When the show trials of Old Bolsheviks began in Moscow in 1936, Deutscher was among those unpersuaded
by their confessions. In August, just after the death sentences of Lenins
comrades Lev Kamenev and Grigorii Zinoviev, Deutscher published under
a pseudonym The Moscow Trial, a pamphlet denouncing the trial as
falsity and absurdity.71 Deutscher was not directly involved with Pod Prd
since the magazine was somewhat critical of Trotsky as well as Stalin,
although he did join Stawar in a subsequent 1937 publication titled Nurt
(Current).72 Pod Prd was sold openly, and not conscated; nonetheless
the costs for Stawar were high. In the Party he was boycotted, excom-

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 111

municated. His closest friends refused to greet him. Stawar had been
Wats teacher in Marxism, and it was known that the two remained close;
people suspected Wat of writing under a pseudonym for Pod Prd.73 Nor
was Wat Stawars only pupil. Janina Broniewska recalled her master in
Marxisms betrayal with bitterness: And one day a true wall arose among
those closest to us. Our most principled sectarian, our mentor, the one
guarding Wadek from all eromszczyznas, undergoes an evolution. He
convertslike a woman of loose morals falling into religiosity in her old
ageto Trotskyism. Janina Broniewska and Wanda Wasilewska viewed
this defection as particularly insidious, as anything written against the
Soviet line could be easily exploited by the Polish government, moving
ever more to the right in the 1930s, in particular after Pisudskis death
in 1935. They even suspected that the government had been intentionally
smuggling Pod Prd into the communist-lled prisons as anti-Soviet propa
ganda. Broniewskas own relationship with the Marxist literary critic who
had once upon a time confessed his love to her ended sadly. One day in
her Warsaw neighborhood of oliborz she unexpectedly ran into Stawar
on her way home from Wasilewskas apartment:
Spontaneously or out of old habit we greeted one another,
warmly even. But I could not maintain that instinctual intimacy for long and I asked him brusquely:
Whats with your recent preoccupation with water?
And why? he scowled.
Pod Prd, Nurt. But grist for whose mill here in our country? In this system and under this regime? I navely asked
so seasoned an erudite and politician. ... And so I parted with
my old political and personal friend for good. In the park in
oliborz there grew up between us a symbolic barricade.74
Aleksander Wat remained in contact with the Party leadership until
1936, although relations had grown cooler. That year Jerzy Borejsza
approached him. Borejsza had joined the KPP in 1929, having passed
through a socialist Zionist phase and later a fascination with Spanish anarchism, before returning to Poland from a stay in France enchanted with
communism.75 Now he invited both Wat and Stawar to a meeting.76 Among
the others invited was Borejszas brother, Jacek Raski, a KPP member
who had spent his student years in the socialist organization ycie (Life)

1 1 2 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

together with Jakub Berman.77 At the meeting Wadysaw Daszewski and

Jerzy Borejsza announced the project of creating a Popular Frontinspired
Democratic Club. In the end, however, Wat and Stawar decided not to
participate. As Wat later learned, the Party regarded him as a sympathizer,
a fellow traveler, not one of us, but decent, progressive. Wat only voiced
his doubts and criticisms in private conversations; he put nothing against
the Party in writing. In 1935 Wat even co-authored a Popular Front call to
writers, whose other signatories included Wadysaw Broniewski, Wanda
Wasilewska, Leon Kruczkowski, Jerzy Putrament, and Adam Wayk.78
Yet the following year Wat did not even receive an invitation to the 1936
Congress of Cultural Workers in Lww.79

sonimski p ay s a v i s i t t o r u s s i a w i t h t wo f r i e n d s
The Skamander poet Antoni Sonimskis relations with old friends on
the Left suered as well after his trip to the Soviet Union in 1932. The
book Sonimski published in excerpts in Wiadomoci Literackie upon his
return was among his best. Structured in short episodes in the spirit of
his feuilletons, Moja podr do Rosji (My Trip to Russia) was written with
Sonimskis characteristic sharp edge. The story began on the train heading east, where Sonimski was accompanied by his (imaginary) friends,
The Enthusiast and The Skeptic. Sometimes his friends argued, sometimes one conceded, sometimes one or the other stayed behind in the
hotel room. The author was self-reective in his conversations with them;
he embarked on the trip with the awareness that he carried with him the
enormous baggage of all the information about Russia he had absorbed
in Poland. Had he been deceived by bourgeois propaganda? By Soviet
propaganda? By both? Sonimski asked himself sincerely, Am I going to
the country of Red terror, or to the state of living socialism, of which we
have all dreamt since childhood?80
When Sonimski reached the Soviet border, he was joined by a (real)
interpreter, a superuous one as he spoke Russian, but one who had
been ordered not to leave his side nonetheless. So did the threesome
become a foursome. In his attempt to extricate himself from this very
nice woman, he learned how the government took pains to prevent tourists from seeing anything unpleasant. Sonimskis entire trip became a
struggle to see what life is actually like, to peer behind the curtains.

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 11 3

Sonimskis perspicacity, his ability to see contradictions, ambiguities,

nuances, tormented him now. For long days, he wrote, I was persecuted in Moscow by the memory of those eyes that I saw in the Museum
of the Revolution in the photograph from the times of famine in 1922.
They were the eyes of a peasant man and woman condemned to be shot
for the crime of cannibalism. Those eyes had an expression of complete
calm and well-being. He could not believe the claims of Soviet writers
that they worked in freedom. When I would speak with writers, he
related, they would always answer me that self-criticism does exist in
the Soviet Union, that self-criticism is alive and vigilant; or they would
answer that they had complete condence in the governments policies
and didnt feel any need to ght. Unfortunately, I cant believe that. Just
beneath the surface of Sonimskis skepticism about true conditions for
Soviet writers was the specter of Mayakovskys suicide two years earlier. I
remember, Sonimski wrote, how in Warsaw at a party for Mayakovsky,
Boy[-eleski] had a drink with the enormous Mayakovsky. Boy winked
at him, and Mayakovsky smiled. Mayakovsky didnt know any language
besides Russian, and Boy knows all languages with the exception of Russian, and so they could either rub noses and slap one another on the
shoulders, or smile. This has its own meaning, even if the world does not
attach sucient weight to the smiles of poets.81
Though Sonimski never parted with his skepticism, it was in this
book that he revealed most poignantly how much he would have liked
to believe, how much his heart was with socialism. He wished for the
great experiment to succeed, and yet he saw that the two eggs fed to all
schoolchildren each day were imaginary and suspected that the emperor
could be naked. He noted the ubiquitousness of nave self-praise, yet was
touched by the ubiquity of faith in socialism. As he rode the train back to
Poland, he reected upon what he would say, aware of the responsibility
that each word he would write about the Soviet Union carried. He wasso
uncharacteristicallyuncertain about expressing his opinion. What will I
answer to the simple question: how is it in Russia? he asked, No, I cant
answer that question. I dont have the courage to judge. His two comrades, The Skeptic and The Enthusiast, sat beside him as the train rolled
towards Warsaw and conversed among themselves: In the imbalance of
todays worldthe Enthusiast saysthe existence of the Soviet Union is

1 1 4 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

the only hope for all the injured and exploited. ... Thats validanswers
the Skepticbut is there not being born in the world a new fear of impassioned class fanaticism? Bolshevism has provoked hatred.82
My Trip to Russia ended with Sonimskis arrival at the Warsaw train
station. As he waited for a taxicab, he told the porter that he had just returned from Russia, and the porter asked him how it was there:
In this quiet, discrete question there is much condence,
that particular condence that people from the proletariat have
in relation to Party comrades. I admit that this atmosphere of
community appeals to me, I feel like telling him something
that would bring us still closer together, something that he
wants to hear from me. I know, Im certain, that if I were to
say to him: Its good there, comrade, he would carry my suitcase lightly and quickly into the taxi and would smile farewell.
Finally I say:
Its dicult to say in a few words. Both bad and good.
Now I know what the porter carrying my suitcase thinks of me.
He thinks of me as an enemy. There are no intermediary positions. Whoever is not with us is against us. With a feeling of
choking loneliness I ride through the city.83
The painful implications of his answer were not only imagined. In an
August 1932 letter to his sister in Poland, Jan Hempel wrote from Moscow:
Supposedly, Sonimski has been writing some kind of monstrous lies
in Wiadomoci Literackie.84 Sonimskis life in Warsaw was not the same
afterwards. Two years later, in 1934, he wrote, Since the time of My Trip
to Russia Ive been on the blacklist of Soviet ocials. Every so often they
invite all the literati and feed them caviar and as punishment I have to
stay home.85

polish ch iva l ry a n d r e vo l u t i o n a ry r u s s i a
Wadysaw Broniewski was contemplating his own trip to Russia. The impulse was as much personal as ideological. Notwithstanding his marriage,
the romantic poet had long been surrounded by candidates for the role of
muse. The previous year, after Janina Broniewskas teaching career had
been abruptly ended by her brief stay in prison, she had gone to Kalisz
to visit her mother and contemplate a new career. When she returned,

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 11 5

f igure 9 Wadysaw Broniewski, Jarosaw Iwaszkiewicz, and Antoni Sonimski

(left to right). From a 1933 postcard series; courtesy of Muzeum Wadysawa
Broniewskiego and Muzeum Literatury imienia Adama Mickiewicza.

there were rumors oating about that her husband had been seen with
a certain girl ... supposedly a student.86 In the end Broniewski told his
wife himself, in a letter asking for her patience while he sorted out his
feelings. He expressed no such confusion, however, to his new, young
love, Irena Hellman, to whom he sent a letter on Wiadomoci Literackie
stationery in March 1933:
Beloved and naughty Irenka! Summon some courage and
come here. In truth I cannot say Dont be afraid, I wont eat
you (this is precisely what I feel like doing!), but following
your arrival I can promise you nothing other than happiness.
Yours and mine. ... And so do not think, in particular do
not philosophize during the nights, do not forbid yourself
anythingyouth, beauty, lovethis is the highest philosophy.
When you come, we will go on walks together from early
morning, somewhere around the Vistula, because its from
this direction that spring comes. We will speak only about silly
things, and so about our lives, about love and death, about
how the grass grows, from where the wind blows and why
I have fallen in love with you like a schoolboy from the 6th
grade. ... Im simply drunkon you and on spring. Your
W.(ariat) [crazy one]87
Janina Broniewska, the liberated woman, put no obstacles in the way
of the new couples being together. Instead she returned to Kalisz, to her

1 1 6 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

mother, who comforted her that being unemployed, homeless, alone was
only a passing crisis. When Janina Broniewska reappeared in Warsaw,
she refused to humiliate herself by clinging to her husband. One day she
received an unexpected visit from Irena Hellmans mother. The bourgeois
Jewish merchants widow was appalled by her daughters romance with
a goy, and moreover a Bolshevik in her opinion, and sought out Janina
Broniewska as her natural ally. Yet far from embracing this alliance, Broniewska assured the mother that she had nothing against her husbands
relationship with Irena Hellman and on the contrary thought that, to the
extent it was serious, it should be made ocial.88
If Janina Broniewska made all attempts to avoid what she considered
scenes reminiscent of romantic melodrama, Broniewskis inclinations
took him in the opposite direction. In November 1933, Irena Hellmans
brother, at the behest of his mother, challenged Broniewski to a duel.
Broniewskis young lover herself appeared rather unaected by this. She
wrote to Broniewski in a light, joking tone, her Polish interspersed with
Russian, that she had fallen in love with a charming general, and he with
her. He came for tea and went for walks with her. When she told him that
she was a student of law, he responded: Of course, of course, law by all
means, but personally I wish for you that you marry as soon as possible.
She was prepared to take oense. Is sexual longing the dominant expression on my face?, she asked. But the general added: For you see, of any
hundred women only one is a true womanthe rest are the female sex,
but you are just such a woman. She was coquettish in her writing. Yet
a moment of scholarly seriousness came when she spoke of Sonimskis
columns in Wiadomoci Literackie, and about how, upon reading them, she
saw that he wrote of the Soviet Union exactly what she felt as well. She was
pleased and grateful that there was at least one more impartial person
who thought as she did, as her boy, it seems, is of another opinion. Yet
this reasoned sobriety took on an almost perverse implication as she wrote
just as lightly of the upcoming duel: Is that aair with my brother worrying you so? My dear little son, on that subject, unfortunately, I can advise
nothing, but it is not worth becoming worried and anxious over. I know
youre living with the feeling that something unpleasant lies in wait for
you, but after all, it will pass, you only have to struggle through this one
week. To be sure, what idiocy this is! Ive been continually tense because of
this, particularly now its eminently irritating to memoreover, I tremble

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 11 7

for you, at the thought that he might do you some kind of injury.89 In
the end this regression to nineteenth-century drama did come to pass.
The duel took place on 16 November 1933, ending with minor wounds to
both participants.90
Broniewskis aair with Irena Hellman proved to be temporary. His
infatuation passed, and this became only the rst of Janina Broniewskas
various wanderings, separations from and reconciliations with her prodigal husband. Through it all, she proved herself to be the stronger one in
her unconventional marriage. The eects on her own life were not exclusively adverse, and the following year she began to come into her own as
a writer and an activist. On 7 March 1934 she made her literary debut in
a childrens magazine, signing her rst published story with her maiden
name. The choice was self-evident. She wanted that beginning to belong
to herself alone; she did not want to be in the shadow of a famous poet.
Her assertion of independence was facilitated by Broniewskis decision to
escape from Warsaw for a time in the direction of the Soviet Union. In his
absence, Janina Broniewska was once again engaged as his replacement
at Wiadomoci Literackie.91
When Broniewski returned to Warsaw in May 1934, he bore gifts of
folk art for his wife and daughter.92 He also published a long article in
Wiadomoci Literackie about the Ukrainian segment of his trip, beginning
with reections on his last visit to Ukrainefourteen years earlier as a
soldier in the Polish Army, ghting against the Bolsheviks. He had oered
a cigarette to a Bolshevik prisoner of war. The boy took the cigarette and
inquired as to when he was going to be shot. Broniewski was surprised:
prisoners of war were not shot, and why was he asking?
Right after I was captured I said that I was a communist
and they should shoot me. They brought me here. So lets end
this right away.
Calm downI repeatwe dont shoot prisoners of war.
Youll go to a prisoner of war camp and sit there until the end
of the war, and thats all.
The young prisoners attitude is one of undisguised distrust.
Where are you from? I ask.
From Kharkov.
An intellectual?

1 1 8 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

No, a worker.
Of course hes lying. He looks like hes in the seventh grade.
And whats going on in Kharkov?
Well, were building.
What are you building?
Everything. A new life. Socialism.
Well and hows it going?
Its going well. But it must be admitted that now youve
done us quite a sound injury.93
Broniewski oered him another cigarette. Now, fourteen years later, the
former soldier in Pisudskis Legions revisited the land where life was
socialist in content and Ukrainian in form. Just two years earlier several million peasants had starved to death during the famine in Ukraine.
Now Broniewski mentioned the famine only in passing, attributing it to
the kulaks battle against the Soviet authorities, believing it was the rich
peasants who had decided to starve their neighbors. If he did see hunger
in Ukraine in March 1934, he did not write of it. Instead he wrote of the
young poets and translators eager for news from the West; of factories
where one-quarter of the workers were girls; of banners praising workers
who exceeded their quotas. He read his poetry aloud, and his listeners
were touched that a foreign poet had feelings similar to their own about
the accomplishments of socialism in places like Dnieprostroi and Magnitogorsk. In Soviet Ukraine, in the peoples certainty, their faith, he had
found something magical. As in his love letters of almost a decade earlier,
Broniewski remained a romantic. Wat, though, was disconcerted by news
of the famine, and felt a more ominous side of his friends enthusiasm for
Soviet Ukraine: When he came back, I asked him about various things,
including the famine in the Ukraine and collectivization, mentioning
that the press had reported that ve million peasants had lost their lives.
And he said, Yes, thats right; its being talked about a lot. ... And so I
said to WadzioI remember this exactly; there are moments in life you
dont forgetSo, is that the truth? He whisked his hand disparagingly,
dismissing the subject; what did those ve million muzhiks mean to him.
He didnt say it, but that gesture!94 Adam Wayk insisted this was impossible, that Broniewski could not have had so little regard for the lives of
ve million peasants, that Wat had misinterpreted his gesture.95

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 11 9

Broniewski had also traveled to Moscow. Stande was away from the
city at the time of Broniewskis arrival, but promised that his wife and
friends there would arrange everything for him.96 Jasieski sent a letter
from Tadzhikistan; bad feelings over Standes letter to the Comintern seem
to have passed. If Broniewski had indeed knowingly signed his name to
that letter, all had now been seemingly forgiven, and Jasieskis letter was
warm. Now that both poets had found themselves in the socialist homeland, Jasieski switched to the informal mode of address. He had a request:
when Broniewski returned to Warsaw, would he stop into Jasieskis publisher there and check on Jasieskis manuscript Czowiek zmienia skr (A
Man Changes His Skin)?97 During Broniewskis stay in Russia Jan Hempel
wrote to his sister: We have here now Broniewski, who has been very well
received by Russian writers. He traveled to Ukraine and saw Dnieprostroi,
the great coal mine, afterwards he traveled to the Caucasus to Tiis and
admired the wonderful blossoming of Georgian national culture. At the
moment hes visiting Moscow factoriesthe great automobile factory,
textile factories, enormous chemical plants. ... Broniewski is undoubtedly
the most gifted of the revolutionary poets in Polandits only a pity that
as a person hes very weak.98 Hempel felt ambivalently towards the poet
who had been his companion in cell number 13, and who had secured for
him the collaboration of the avant-garde ten years earlier. Another letter to
his sister, written in August 1934 when Broniewski had already returned
to Poland, revealed both Hempels romanticization of Soviet reality and
his critical feelings towards Broniewski:
You who are there in the old world cannot even conceive of the
fullness of the life we live here in every, absolutely every realm
... I recall the arguments of various bourgeois smart alecs who
contended that under socialism stagnancy and routine would
reign. In reality a whole new world is unfolding before us,
a world of joyous (joyous because necessarily victorious, even
while dicult) battle, a world built anew with our hands, with
millions of hands and minds directed by a common will, consciousness, deliberately cultivating a new life. For the rst time
in human history man has begun to consciously create his
own history. ... People coming here from capitalist countries
often see only the external accomplishments: the enormous

1 2 0 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

factories, the new agriculture, new cities arising in the wilderness. Yet how seldom do they see the birth of the new man who
is creating it all. This new man grows here with every step
new, young, he looks daringly into the future, perfectly aware
of his own strengths and aspirations, deeply and powerfully
conscious of the fact that he is building the whole of the new
world with his own hands. For example Broniewski, who
was here a few months ago, did not see, did not perceive that.
He saw only external things, things it is impossible not to
see, which even the biggest bourgeois dullard could not miss.
Amidst his enthusiasm, Hempel admitted one qualication: Of course,
as Ive written to you more than oncethere are darker sides of this battle
as well. Like every great battle, this one is mortally dicult, it demands
sacrices, great sacrices that can seem to some who are shortsighted to
cloud the horizon.99

the first t o g o
Broniewskis trip to the Soviet Union took place in the period just following Stalins consolidation of power, as purges of enemies of the people
gained momentum, especially in Soviet Ukraine. Following his declaration
of repentance for nationalist-opportunist errors, Witold Wandurski was
arrested on 11 September 1933, some six months before Broniewski arrived.
Wandurskis subsequent testimony for the Soviet security apparatus was
an extensive, fabricated confession of his Polish national sentiments and
his engagement with Pisudskis fascist Polish Military Organization.
The ritual of elaborate, self-agellating confession was already in place;
Wandurski repeated himself over and over again. The testimonya joint
creation by Wandurski and his interrogatorswas damning to Tomasz
Dbal, Bruno Jasieski, Wadysaw Broniewski, and even Wandurskis
schoolmate, Julian Tuwim.100
In the interrogation chamber, Wandurski recounted his biography as
a story of the struggle between his nationalist inclinations and his communist sympathies. The story went like this: throughout his student years
he had been exposed time and time again to Polish nationalist circles. His
rst contact with Pisudskis Polish Military Organization had come in
1915; two years later in Moscow, he was pulled into a publication founded

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 121

by a professor who gathered around himself counterrevolutionary elements. After Wandurski was arrested unexpectedly in August 1920 by
the Kharkov Cheka, he spent ve weeks in a camp where he lived among
Poles in an atmosphere of extreme nationalism. He was eager to return
to Poland, to see Poland in its new independence. Encountering Polish
soldiers upon crossing the border, he was lled with national pride. The
rst year of Wandurskis stay in Poland was one of the confused searchings of a disillusioned Pisudskiite. In 1922 he became friends with the
former Legion captain Broniewski, who told him of his earlier work for the
Polish Military Organization and his participation in the Polish-Bolshevik
War on the side of Polish forces occupying Ukraine. Broniewski continually tried to dissuade his new friend from joining the Communist Party;
Wandurskis parents and younger brother did the same, they called him
a traitor to his homeland. Wandurski vacillated; even as he read Marx,
Engels, and Lenin, his communist convictions were being shaped by a
Party member who had once belonged to the Polish Military Organization,
a Party member in whose psyche remained much of his previous patriot
ism. Wandurskis own sentiments and convictions inclined him towards
social revolution, but within the framework of Polish independence. It was
with these predispositions that he joined the KPP in 1923. Afterwards he
remained conicted; he oscillated between his ties to the proletariat and
to Polish nationalism; he was constantly under the inuence of Polish
fascists and petty bourgeois writers such as Julian Tuwim and Leon Schiller. When Wandurski was periodically arrested for communist activity, the
counterintelligence ocers who arrested him would try to persuade him
to break with communism. He would meet with a member of the KPP
Central Committee in Gdask, who praised Pisudski and all connected
with Polishness and noble descent. This comrade criticized Wandurskis
literary work, calling it kacapski (a pejorative slang for Russian) and
advised Wandurski to pay less attention to Soviet literature, to learn more
from eromski. When the invitation to the Soviet Union came from Tomasz Dbal, this comrade from Gdask and others encouraged Wandurski
to accept; he could exploit his position there to strengthen Polishness in
the Soviet Union.
Wandurski continued: leaving Poland had not been easy, he had felt
the loss of something very close to him. Once in the Soviet Union, he
became possessed by impulses of national self-defense against Soviet

1 2 2 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

proletarian culture, impulses encouraged by Dbal and Jasieski, impulses on behalf of Polish fascism of the Belweder school, impulses aimed
towards realizing Polands imperial aspirations towards Ukraine. In the
external appearance of his Polish theater in Kiev he declined to cultivate
a Soviet style in favor of a bourgeois one. He avoided plays with Soviet
themes, citing as an excuse the political immaturity of his actors. He
popularized, albeit in the form of caricature, the gure of Granddad
Pisudski. In directing the theater, all of his eorts aimed to spread the
idea of Polish nationalism, to facilitate Polish expansion in Ukraine. Under the inuence of Dbal and Jasieski, his work in the theater took on
a more tangible shape, it endeavored to spread ideas of Polish nationalism and bourgeois-aristocratic inuences among the Polish population in
Ukraine. Accused of nationalist deviation, Wandurski was removed from
his position in the theater in Kiev. In late September 1931 he moved to
Moscow, where, the following year, in November 1932, the Polish painter
Wadysaw Daszewski told him that the Polish military attach wanted
to meet with him. Wandurski agreed; they met in Daszewskis Moscow
hotel room. The Polish colonel reminded him that they had been high
school students together in d. He wanted to tell him about the Polish
Military Organizations work in Kiev, he wanted to know if Wandurski
would continue his work on behalf of the Polish Military Organization,
on behalf of Polish nationalism.101
On the basis of his fabricated confession, Wandurski was sentenced
to death on 9 March 1934, while Broniewski was visiting Ukraine. On
1 June 1934 Wandurski was shot, just after Broniewski had returned to
Warsaw.102 Wandurskis friends had learned earlier that his Polish theater
in Kiev had come under attack for nationalist opportunism.103 Now news
of his arrest reached Warsaw.104 Broniewski, it seems, was largely silent
for a time. Then one evening in autumn of 1934, at an expensive Warsaw
restaurant named Adria, he and Mieczysaw Grydzewski were sitting with
Jasieskis Polish publisher when an unfavorably predisposed poet-satirist
approached their table. The inebriated satirist began to taunt Broniewski
about Wandurskis arrest. A scene broke out; Broniewski ordered the uninvited guest to leave the table. The now-public scandal did not conclude
there in Adria. The satirist published a poem-lampoon titled Do poetykomunisty (To the Poet-Communist), referring to Wandurskis imprisonment and including the refrain and what do you have to say about that,

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 1 23

Mr. Broniewski. On 21 November 1934 Broniewski responded with his

own poem Prztyczek smalonemu dubkowi (A Jab at the Bullshitter),
a crude satire of a conversation with his antagonist.105

a friendship b e t w e e n wo m e n
When Broniewski set o for his Soviet adventure, Janina Broniewska
stayed in Warsaw and threw her energy into her new career at the publications section of the Polish Teachers Union. It was there in 1934 that she
met Wanda Wasilewska, already a prominent activist in the left wing of
the Polish Socialist Party and the author of The Face of the Day. This novel
was for Broniewska a book we nished in one sitting. ... A revolutionary
book of those times, written from the workers center itself, in an empathic
language, a language as authentic as life itself.106 Wasilewska herself had
already attracted much attention. While still in her twenties, she was active
in organizing women for socialist causes. In 1932 she wrote to her mother
of her experience speaking in Cracow: In truth it seemed to me that my
hair was rising on my head, that I must be in ames. It was something
simply extraordinaryI experienced a moment of such happiness, such
as one must feel when in ecstasyThe hall gave me an unprecedented
ovation ... I felt simply, physically, as if something were emanating from
melike re. It was strange, but wonderful.107
Before she was a socialist activist chain-smoking and drinking endless
cups of black coee, Wanda Wasilewska was a child enamored of the
countryside and of little Antek, her rst proletarian playmate who mesmerized the ve-year-old Wanda with his charisma.108 She was, from her
adolescence, a woman of great passionsfor Poland, for social justice,
and above all for a man named Janek who was her rst love. In the diary
she kept as a teenager she exalted in masochistic fantasies of lying at his
feet and licking o the dust that clung to his boots, of feeling his spurs
digging into her esh until she bled.109 Because I believe in you, she
wrote in her diary, speaking to Janek, And for me you are the highest
essence, you are my master, my ruler. If you were to so order, I would
fulll anything. Even the worst humiliations, injuries, I would bear with
a smile if you so much as wanted that.110
Wanda Wasilewska was the daughter of Leon Wasilewski, independent
Polands rst minister of foreign aairs and one of Jzef Pisudskis closest
friends in the PPS. The rst of May was a holiday for her family from her

1 2 4 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

earliest childhood.111 As a child in Cracow she was ensconced in political

circles insisting on both Polish socialism and Polish independence, and
hating Russia in any and all of its political incarnations. She was close to
her fatherby her own account, as well of those of her sister, she was his
favorite among his three daughters. When abandoned by her rst love in
1921, while still a teenager, it was to her father whom she cried:
Janek, despite his solemn promises, has not appeared at all, I
dont even know what to think. And Im terribly sad. ... Daddy,
do you know that now it occurs to me, its a terribly bad thing
youre not with us. In fact its as if you didnt exist at all. ...
And sometimes I feel like going to say something to my adored
Daddyand he isnt here. For you dont even really know me.
And I think that it cant be that way. Im growing up and going
out into the world and youll always be something so terribly
far away. As if, if you were here, perhaps I would be dierent
as well. Im going to waste and nothing will become of me.
In truth Id like to die. Please dont be angry at me for writing
such foolish things, but I feel so terrible that I really dont
know where to begin.112
While Wanda Wasilewskas self-eacing romance with Janek was long,
their engagement was short. In May of 1923 she wrote in her diary that
the royal prince has gone, and that a chapter in her life had ended. 113
Before long she married another man and gave birth to a daughter; soon
afterwards her young husband died. A short time after his death, she met
the bricklayer Marian Bogatko, an authentic worker with whom her
courtship began during a kayaking trip on the Vistula river. Wasilewska
was a weak swimmer, and after their kayak overturned, Bogatko, quite romantically and heroically, saved her from drowning.114 At the age of fteen,
Wanda Wasilewska had written in her diary that she judged being a mans
lover to be more noble than being his wife.115 It was a view she now returned to, and soon Bogatko (for whom, she conded to her mother, she
felt much more than she ever had for anyone before) had become her lover
and partneras well as her secretary. In 1933 she sent a long letter to her
mother, justifying her decision to continue living with Bogatko without
a wedding and insisting that she rejoiced in the absence of formalities.
How good that there had been no marriage. For once, nally, Wasilewska

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 125

wrote to her mother, Im a person and not someone elses appendage

... even though Marian and I share the same values [of equality], on my
side there would be the minus that I am a woman, and as a result would
always be the other one, and not myself.116 Wanda Wasilewska and Marian
Bogatko married only in 1936, and then only to secure a spousal visa for
Bogatko so that they could travel together to the Soviet Union. They paid a
visit to a Calvinist parish in the town of Leszno. The pastor was displeased
by their attitude: When the pastor requested some kind of declaration
of religious aliation, and we were very much in a hurry, he grew angry
and in the end, exasperated, asked: I dont understand what your point is
herea wedding or the documentation? I answered: The documentation,
exclusively. Then he gave up on everything, we had mortally oended
him, but he did issue us the marriage certicate, and limited the whole
ceremony to some abbreviated rituals.117
When Janina Broniewska wrote of the day she met the extraordinary
Wanda Wasilewska, she began with Wasilewskas clothing. It was late autumn as one small, purely feminine detail indicated: Wanda Wasilewska
was wearing a blue wool dress, buttoned tightly under her neck, with
a Scottish-style checkered collar. They spoke little that rst day, or for
the next few days. Wasilewska seemed as if inaccessible. As time passed
Janina Broniewska learned it was only Wasilewskas shyness that made
her sometimes seem arrogant, and then began a friendship that quickly
grew in intensity. Soon they could not endure a single day without each
other.118 The two women would walk through Warsaws northern district
of oliborz incarnating themselves as various feminine types, drawing
their models from conversations overheard on the streets, on buses and
trams. Sometimes Marian Bogatko would accompany them, and would be
at once a bit proud and a bit irritated when passersby would recognize his
wife and whisper: Look, look, theres Wasilewska! Oooh, sweet. Sometimes a crowd of enthusiasts would follow her, and Bogatko would begin
to mock themand at once to mock Wasilewska: yes, yes, sweetness herself! Their tsadik in a skirt. Jasia, next time were going out by ourselves.
Let her collect her laurels on her own. And Broniewska would come to
her defense: Its tough, Marianek. Jealousy is devouring me as well, but
what can we do, but be the courtiers of our sweet queen.119
There were risks as well as accolades. Julian Tuwim once said to the
two women: How I envy both of you. Youre not afraid, whereas Im

1 2 6 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

mortally afraid.120 Yet it was not quite true that these women had no
fear. During Wasilewskas interrogations in the 1930s, Janina Broniewska
would wait for her, drinking black coee in a neighboring caf for hours,
barely alive with anxiety, waiting to see if her friend would return, or
if she would nd her in prison.121 When the telephone rang there would
always follow the question: to take a toothbrush or not? Take it, just in case,
Broniewska would say. And sometimes Wasilewska would and sometimes
she would not. On other occasions the game went further: Do you have
money for a droshky? Wasilewska was asked. This was a standard question put to those arrested: Could they pay to take a cab to prison? I dont
want a droshky, she answered, I want to walk through the city under
the policemans bayonet. Let there be a whole scene.122
Wasilewska never did spend any time in prison.123 She remained,
moreover, close to her father: My relationship to him was not a hundred
percent, but rather a thousand percent positive. When he died I was already an adult, and my comrades, communistswhose relationship to
him was quite well denedcame to me with bouquets for Wandas father. They knew what the death of my father meant to me.124 Yet she did
not cry at his funeral. On the day of Leon Wasilewskis death in December
1936, Marian Bogatko called Janina Broniewska to tell her the news, to tell
her they would be there soon. When they arrived Wasilewska sat down on
the couch, Janina Broniewska passed her an ashtray, matches, cigarettes,
and watched her light the rst one. Broniewska and Bogatko waited in
vain for a normal reaction, tears, despair manifestedbe it even in a
way most typical of a woman.125
The death of Leon Wasilewski was Wanda Wasilewskas tragedy, yet at
once her liberation, for she would not make an open political break with
him during his lifetime. His death allowed for her unabashed radicalism.
In autumn 1937 Wasilewska and Broniewska led a sit-down strike in the
Polish Teachers Union. Tension with the government had been mounting,
particularly within the publications department of the Teachers Union,
threatened with searches and purging of its socialist-sympathizing sta.
It was Bogatko who rst voiced the idea, in response to his wifes question that morning: and what happens if it turns out that the curator is
in the building? Bogatko answered almost nonchalantly, in that case
youll have to enact a sit-down strike. When that evening the two women
called their husbands to say that they would not be coming home, as they

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 127

were busy occupying the building, it was only with diculty that Marian
controlled the note of satisfaction in his voice. Wadysaw Broniewski,
too, was enthusiasticand refused when requested by a colleague, a Polish writer supportive of the government, to try to persuade his wife to
come home. Moreover, from her husband, Janina Broniewska learned
that the strike was even being discussed on the upper level at Caf
Ziemiaska. Its patrons and waiters sent pastries to the Teachers Union
building.126
Wanda Wasilewska had shattered her ties to the Polish government.
Leaving domestic life and care of the children to their husbands, she and
Janina Broniewska shared a mattress in their oce during days and nights
of little sleep.127 On the very rst day, the KPP activist Szymon Natanson
came to Wasilewska. She consulted with him, but would not accept any
open assistance from the KPP. She did not want to provide the Polish government with a pretext for declaring the strike illegal.128 The Polish prime
minister, infuriated, called the women two rabid broads. While they considered this a self-evident compliment, they refrained from falling into
megalomania.129 The revolutionary career of the two rabid broads was
only beginning. They were prohibited from returning to work, told that
because of their convictions they could not be editors of a publication for
children.130 Moreover, there was the problematic matter of Broniewskas
communist-sympathizing husband. Before long, the women decided on
a hunger strike to protest their exclusion from the Teachers Union.131
Not long afterwards, they traveled to Wilno to testify at the trial of Henryk
Drzewicki and Stefan Jdrychowski, two young communist activists. It was
the rst time Broniewska had met Jdrychowski in person, but without
a moments thought I added him to the list of very close friends. The
women were condent that History would vindicate them. After they had
returned to their hotel, Wasilewska said to Broniewska apropos of the
sentences the young men received, Four years, who knows who by then
will be the accused and who the judges?132

the congres s o f c u l t u r a l wo r k e r s
In May 1936, Janina Broniewska sent her husband and her best friend o
to Lww for the Congress of Cultural Workers. The communist-driven
gathering of intellectuals was a celebration of the Popular Front, coming at a time when the KPP exerted much inuence among the Polish

1 2 8 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

i ntelligentsia.133 Broniewska herself stayed in Warsaw with her daughter

Anka and impatiently awaited Broniewskis report.134 When the 16 and 17
May congress had concluded, not only his wife, but also all of Warsaw
received Wadysaw Broniewskis report in Wiadomoci Literackie. Topics
of discussion at the congress had included fascism, prison camps, antisemitic attacks, the burning of books, and the relationship of fascism to
culture. When Broniewski read his poem Zagbie Dbrowskie (The
Dbrowski Basin), in response to the poems concluding line, are you
ready?, the whole hall resounded with we are ready!135
As Broniewski then described it, writers, artists, and cultural activists,
Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians all gathered in an atmosphere of sincere
brotherhood and solidarity.136 In multiethnic Lww, the congress proclaimed the Lefts desire that the cultural needs of all Polands nationalities be met.137 Among those receptive to this call was Julian Stryjkowski,
trilingual in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Polish, who had spent most of his life
in an east Galician Jewish shtetldevout, enclosed, impoverished. He
had been a young, impassioned Zionist, before he was cast out of the
Zionist youth organization Shomer by boys who did not like him.138 Now
he embraced Marxism, and listened to Wasilewska greet the congress with
the words: I bring greetings to Ukrainian Lww in the name of Warsaw.139 Wanda Wasilewskas expressed sympathy for ethnic minorities
in the Polish state was sincere. She was also in close contact with Jewish
Marxist movements; and among her interlocutors in these Popular Front
years were Jakub Bermans Marxist Zionist brother Adolf Berman, the
communist Micha Mirski active on the Jewish street, and the Bundist
leaders Wiktor Alter and Henryk Erlich.140 Now Wasilewska was the queen
of all the nationalities at the Congress. It was a time when communists in
Poland were speaking of a Western Belarus with a capital in Wilno, and a
Western Ukraine with a capital in Lwwto be attached to the neighboring Soviet republics.141
Nationality was subordinate to class at the congress, however. Wasi
lewska, speaking about proletarian literature, emphasized its conscious
tendentiousness, Broniewski wrote, It is literature in the service of an
idea, in the service of working-class interests, obliged to vigilance, the will
of battle, faith in victory.142 Afterwards Wasilewska wrote of those two days
as an ecstatic experience of mass hysteria. When she moved towards the
podium, the whole hall, several hundred people, rose and shouted Long

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 129

Live Wasilewska. In a letter to her mother, she wondered whether she

would ever be able to live up to their expectations:
Lww was something so wonderful, that I dont know if I will
experience two such days ever again. Days of mass hysteria,
elation, brotherhood, some kind of complete ecstasy. All of
Lww was set in motionthe whole city took part in all kinds
of ceremonies and festivities. Its a good thing I dont suer
from megalomania, because it would have gone to my head.
They went crazy over everyone, but with me they overdid it in a
way that surpassed all boundaries. In the rst place I was welcomed very enthusiastically at the congress, the proceedings of
which lasted until Saturday evening. But afterwards it was even
worse. At the authors evening everyone was received in such
a way as in general occurs nowhere. But when I came up to the
podium, the entire hall, several hundred people, stood up, and
for a good ten minutes shrieked, stamped their feet, applauded
and cried out: long live Wasilewska. It was the same at the ceremony, the same on the streets, in front of the theater. ... The
Leagues speech was on Wednesday, and I was given an ovation
ten times as boisterous as the rst time, when you were there.
Its beginning to become problematic. Marian had to cause a
scene on the street with a crowd of Jewish girls who were running after me so as to touch my coat like a rabbis gabardine.143
Aleksander Wat was not the only one not to receive an invitation to this
ecstatic gathering. Antoni Sonimski did not receive one either, and wrote
the following month in Wiadomoci Literackie that he had learned of the
congress from Broniewskis article. Himself rejected, Sonimski was not
predisposed to be generous. The average reader, he wrote, might seriously think that some kind of literary elite gathered in Lww. In reality, apart from a few communist-leaning writers, there was no one from
among the more serious representatives of literature. Why, for instance,
had Julian Tuwim and Tadeusz Boy-eleskiand himselfnot been
invited? Sonimski asked.
I must admit that this lack of condence is mutual. Independent or leftist writers were not invited for the same reasons that

1 3 0 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

Ukrainian socialists were not, because it was made clear to

them that at the congress it would be impermissible to speak
against the dictatorship in the Soviet Union. How can I have
condence in a congress whose chief concern was supposed to
be the matter of freedom of speech and conscience as well as
the battle against terror and oppression, when that very congress began by not allowing socialists to speak, apparently in
fear of oending Comrade Maksim Gorky. Its therefore pos
sible in the local theater building in Lww, with the permission
of the Polish authorities, to protest against concentration
camps and brutal political terror [in Poland], but its not permissible even to mention that in the Soviet Union there are
also concentration camps and brutal political terror. If one
of the fundamental principles of culture is supposed to be tolerance and freedom, then the Lww congress was a quite miserable and unfortunate parody.144

the specte r o f fa s c i s m
Despite the spirit of the Lww congress and the warm relations at Wanda
Wasilewskas gatherings, it was a time when for Polish Jews of the Left,
and for Poles of Jewish origin, a dual Polish-Jewish identity was becoming increasingly uneasy. As the promising 1920s became the depressed
1930s, the inuence of right-wing National Democratic ideology increased.
By the time of Pisudskis death in 1935, little remained in the regime he
had set in place of his former socialist, federalist, multiethnic vision. The
Poland of the late 1930s saw a numerus clausus and ghetto benches at the
universities, campaigns for economic boycotts against Jews, and increasing right-wing violence.145
On the twin subjects of antisemitism at home and the specter of fascism from the West, no one was more perceptive than Antoni Sonimski,
the son of a secular Jewish father and a deeply religious Catholic mother.
For Sonimski, the legacy of his father was the value of secular enlightenment.146 He wrote with an uncharacteristic warmth and admiration of
his grandfather, his fathers father who had escaped from the ghetto, an
autodidact who became a Renaissance man. For Sonimski, his grand
fathers biography vindicated his own cosmopolitanism. I dont know if
my grandfather was a good Jew or a bad Jew, Sonimski wrote of him,

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 131

but he was a magnicent person.147 In 1923, Sonimski had returned

from the Middle East to write a poem about an elderly Polish Jew he had
met by the Jaa gates during his travels in Palestine. The old man longed
only to return to Warsaw.148
Sonimski was a liberal who very much felt himself to be a Pole, a
Varsovian, a cosmopolitan. The unassimilated Polish Jews of the interwar
years had few critics outside the right-wing camp harsher than he. In a
vicious 1924 article Sonimski began: One of the cardinal and most characteristic traits of Jews is their disregard for the most sacred conquests of
the human spirit. Jews show a lack of regard for everything: they mutilate
the language they speak, they disregard the purity of speech, body and
heart, yet at the same time they inexplicably overvalue the signicance
of money. Jews, in Sonimskis observation, scorned physical labor; they
were a nation producing nothing, engaging instead in trade, playing the
role of intermediaries.149 It was one of Sonimskis sharpest attacks on the
Jewish community in Poland, but far from the only one. In a 1934 column
he praised a journalists reportage about the Polish Jewish community;
the journalist had written of the barbarity of the Jewish ghetto and the
need for Jewish self-criticism.150 Precisely now, Sonimski wrote, is an
excellent time for Jews to seek out some of the causes of antisemitism, in
order to modify somewhat their relationship to the world. Why, Sonimski
asked, did the Jewish intelligentsia not ght against the backwardness,
the obscurantism of Hasidism? He proposed that Jews initiate their own,
proper antisemitic action, refuting the anticipated counterargument:
But in this respectas Ive already mentionedthere is the
argument that now is not the time. When then, will that time
nally come?thanks to the Jewish God its already lasted a
couple of thousand years. The English, the French, other nations have attentively reined in their nations mistakes, some
nations have had revolutions, others have had great satirists
and iconoclasts. But the Jews could not, it was not time for the
reason that at a given moment the Assyrians didnt like them,
the Egyptians or the Spanish were angry at them ... and so
still greater courage in self-criticism is necessary, its necessary
for the Jewish intelligentsia to ght to raise young Jews as residents of Europe and for the Zionists in their new homeland

1 3 2 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

to wean themselves from the cheder, from the Talmud and the
rabbis, which is an older and more dangerous enemy to them
than Hitler.151
Sonimski was also one of the ercest opponents of right-wing anti
semitism, and his indictment of the obscurantism of Jewish tradition did
not at all imply a disregard for the danger of Nazism. Adolf Hitlers victory
in the 1933 German elections was the focus of many of Sonimskis weekly
columns for the remainder of the decade. In 1933 he wrote that the Polish
National Democrats love for Hitler is very touching. The same year he
took fascist stupidity as one of his pet themes: We often hear such an
opinion about Hitler: But he must be a wise person, if he came to power
or: There must be something in his program, if people are listening to it.
Nonsense, nothing of the sort. Let us tell ourselves once and for all, that
an ordinary fool, a completely ordinary idiot can be a dictator. He went
a step further: if there existed among his readers acquaintances such an
idiot, they were cautioned to keep in mind that he could become their future ruler, and they should thus be careful to treat him appropriatelyof
course, appropriately badly.152
Few were spared in Sonimskis feuilletons, and Sonimski was not at
all uncritical of what he saw as demagoguery of the Left. In a column following the 1934 Seventeenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Sonimski sketched the ominous implications of the absence
of discussion following Stalins speech. What did it mean that after Stalin
spoke the only response was Long live the great Stalin!?153 Sonimski was
moreover a skeptic about the cultural level of the so-called masses and a
traditionalist with respect to literature. I must with sadness assert, he
wrote in 1934, that I am a pessimist as to the understanding and feeling
of poetry by even the most class-conscious proletariat.154 The proletariat
was no more immune from Sonimskis criticism than was his own circle.
Both the former and the latter included not a small number of snobs and
graphomaniacs in Sonimskis opinion.155 This stance naturally made him
unpopular more than once among his own friends. Janina Broniewska
was unforgiving; her husband was more generous. When in 1935, during
a conversation with Wanda Wasilewska and Marian Bogatko, Broniewska
recalled Sonimskis column about the terror in Russia, she was inter-

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 133

rupted by her husband. The good-natured Wadek told her to calm down,
that yes, Sonimski had said some stupid things in his column, but that
had been several years earlier. Bogatko remained skeptical that Sonimski
had undergone any kind of evolution.156 Moreover, despite the vicious ad
hominem attacks of the Miesicznik Literacki period, Sonimski and Wat
did not remain permanently estranged. Hostility passed, and friendship
resumed.157
As Hitler consolidated power in Germany, Sonimski relaxed his
indictment of Jewish obscurantism in the face of increasingly virulent
antisemitism. In a 1936 column Sonimski mocked the right-wing Polish
publicist Stanisaw Piasecki: Mr. Piasecki claims that Jews invented communism. If one considers the fact that Jews invented capitalism as well, it
could seem that in relation to us their accounts are all squared. We could
likewise add that Jews also invented Christianity, but lets not complicate
Mr. Piaseckis ideological situation, which is already so complicated as it
is.158 The mocking of absurdity became a favorite motif of Sonimskis
columns. After the Italian futurist-turned-fascist Marinetti announced
that war is beautiful, because harmonious force blends with goodness,
Sonimski wrote: If that is too little for you, consider this argument by
the Italian fascist: War is beautiful, in as much as rie shots, cannonade,
pauses of silence, and the scents and odors of putrefaction symphonize
with one another. Imagine that someone you knew were to say: Im glad
that your child is ill, because a childs illness is beautiful, since the scent
of medications harmonizes with the scent of cyclamen and alpine shots.
What would you say in response? Likely, that hes a lunatic and given that,
he can kiss yours. But that would be a mistake. Dont let the lunatics kiss
you, because today the lunatics are biting.159 It was not Sonimskis only
such acerbic analogy. It would be much more convenient if Jews were
not people but coee, he wrote the same year, Theres too much coee,
so coee is thrown into the sea. There are too many Jews, so throw the
Jews into the sea. The Jews would thus increase in value, and every countrys ambition would be to possess the greatest quantity of Jews. Those
searching for primitive solutions, Sonimski acknowledged, suer in a
very particular way when it comes to Wiadomoci Literackie. They desire,
they dream that Wiadomoci Literackie would be Bolshevik, so that it would
be possible to catch the editor during the night taking money from Stalin

1 3 4 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

by the gate. They want the publication thats uncomfortable for them to
be Jewish, to publish poor writing and bad poems. How pleasant that
would be!160
Sonimski was still inclined to downplay the seriousness of the anti
semitic threat. In 1936 he wrote of having met an old Polish Jew in America who asked him if the Jews in Poland were suering very much. In
response Sonimski explained to him that the situation was really not so
terrible. In his view the Jewish-Polish conict was primitive and stupid, and the Jews themselves were lacking in self-preservation instinct
and unable to speak, walk, to live together in a human way. What then
would be the solution? In a bad marriage, Sonimski pointed out, when
the couple cannot go their separate ways, they have to try to organize their
lives in the most tolerable way possible. My comparison is a bit grotesque,
but the Jewish minority in Poland is a bit like the Jewish wife, whose husband, when he gets plastered, pummels her in the head. Of course a
man should not beat his wife, Sonimski acknowledged, but it was the
case that in such a bad marriage it was generally best that a husband and
wife, simply through mutual avoidance, see each other as little as possible.
Even so, he considered the ghetto benches at the university in Lww to
constitute a great injury to students of Jewish origin who felt themselves
to be Poles. He supported the Polish students who responded by sitting
together with the Jewsleaving the National Democrat hooligans to
sit separately.161 In 1937 he proposed a more concrete solution for making a bad marriage tolerable. The Jewish question in Poland could most
democratically be solved, in Sonimskis most programmatic assertion,
by making it possible for some Jews to be Jews in Palestine and others
to be Poles in Poland.162
By the late 1930s it was the fascists who were most often the objects
of Sonimskis ridicule and disgust. In 1937 he posed to his readers the
question: If such an enormous majority of the nation is Judaized and
communized and the rest is composed of Masons, Germans, and Ukrainians, then where are the real Poles?163 The subject of another column
that year was how often one heard today Are you a Pole? A quarter-Pole?
Can you prove your Polishness?164 In autumn 1938, Sonimski discussed
an essay published in a Wilno paper in which someone had thought up
a wonderful way to distinguish a Jew from a non-Jew: one need only ask
the person whose identity was in question his opinion about Hitlerfor

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 135

Jews were lled with hatred towards Hitler. While an Aryan might also
not like Hitler, the Wilno author explained, the Aryan possessed a certain
objectivity on the subject; he was able to acknowledge Hitlers intellectual
merits. A very good method, Sonimski commented, and perhaps that
same method could be applied in case there is any doubt as to whether
one is speaking with an idiot or not.165
By the time of Kristallnacht in November 1938, Sonimski had relented
in his criticism and stood in solidarity with Jews, imperfect as they might
be. He wrote of the burning of synagogues in Germany, and of how so
many German Jews were loyal and patriotic German citizens. After the
Moscow trials it might have seemed that the imaginations of cruel people
could not manage to come up with anything more, he wrote, but its
turned out that Bolsheviks, just like Nazis, constantly require new thrills
of cruelty, and their imagination in that direction is inexhaustible.166 In
one of Sonimskis last columns for Wiadomoci Literackie, he wrote of
the elegant Warsaw caf named Swann after Marcel Prousts protagonist, where there had recently appeared the sign on the coatroom Aryan
premises. Jews were no longer allowed in Swann; the caf was among
the rst in the city to introduce an Aryan code. Now he wrote of the irony
that Proust himself was not an Aryan and his character Swann was a Jew!
The crazy aesthetes who opened the caf and named it after a Proustian
hero obviously had not read Proust, Sonimski concluded. If they had they
might have noticed the absurdity that Swann himself could not have gone
into Swann for a cup of tea.167

j ewishness a n d i t s d i s c o n t e n t s
In 1937 Sonimski devoted one of his columns to right-wing protests
against the use of Tuwims poetry in Polish schools, on the grounds that
a Jew should not be teaching Polish children.168 Like Sonimski, Tuwim
felt a profound ambivalence about his Jewish origins. In a 1935 interview
with Broniewskis former lover Irena Hellman, Tuwim described the milieu in which he was raised as tolerant and progressive; there were
no so-called Jewish traditions in his home, he had grown up free and
unconstrained.169 The verses he wrote while still in secondary school,
however, allude to the fact that even this unconstrained upbringing did
not free him from insecurities about his identity, that he was haunted by
his origins from the very beginning of his literary career. In a lamenting

1 3 6 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

poem dedicated to Witold W. (most likely Wandurski), Tuwim told his

Aryan friend at once of his mythologized genealogy as a Jew, and of his
love for Poland. There ows in me semitic blood / Hot blood, passionate
blood, he wrote. Yet the passion contained in that blood was a passion
for Poland: Oh Aria! how I love you! / Oh sun-Poland! My land! 170 A
second poem, Tragedia (Tragedy), drew like the rst on juxtapositions
of archaic and modern language and described the conict between his
Jewishness and his love for Christian Poland as the narrators greatest
tragedy. A repetitive duality and a sense of the yoking of contradictions
emerged in the perfect masculine rhymes.
My greatest tragedythat I am a Jew,
And have come to love the Aryans Christ-like soul!
That at times by some inner gesture something bursts
And recalls the ancient heritage of the Race
That at times with a sudden, primal reex something
Rebels in my blood, wildly, unconsciously
And semitic blood battles with an other Spirit,
In the gales of future ages, in the enormity of thought!
And then I am proudI, an aristocrat,
Son of the oldest peopleof the embryo of messianism!
And I am shamed, that I am the blood brother
of a vile, enslaved nation of cowards with no home!171
Later, in his 1918 poetry collection, Tuwim wrote of Jews as tragic,
nervous people who do not know what homeland means.172 In a 1924
interview Tuwim described how, despite the fact that the Jewish question lies in my blood, from the time of his childhood, subconsciously
I attached myself with my entire soul to Polishness. As in his school
days, however, the Jewish problem remained a source of melancholy, a
tragedy, in which I myself am among the nameless actors.173 Most often
in interviews he only reluctantly agreed to speak about his Jewishness.
Once, in 1927, he expressed the opinion that Skamander had only hurt
relations between Poles and Jews: Culturally and emotionally I regard
myself as a Pole, yet I realize that there exist fundamental dierences
between myself and my friends who are Aryans. The embryos of that

f igure 10 Julian Tuwim with his dog, 1930. Courtesy of Muzeum Literatury imienia
Adama Mickiewicza.

1 3 8 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

dierence lie in bloodI feel them in my temperament, which is more

organic than the Polish temperament. I am a semite and Ive never denied
that. ... I do not believe in assimilation, it is not possible. Its dicult
to foresee how relations will take shape. I dont belong to those who are
excessively optimistic. Ive suered much myself as a result of my Jewishness. I consider that I and my friends of Jewish origin from Skamander
have only inamed Polish-Jewish relations.174
By the mid-1930s, Zionism seemed to Tuwim to be the only solutionbut not for himself. Nor did he wish to discuss this; he wanted to
talk about poetry.175 In a 1935 interview for the Zionist-leaning newspaper
Nasz Przegld, Tuwim oended the interviewer with his criticism of the
Polish Jewish community. Why, the interviewer asked, in such a dicult
time for Jews, was Tuwim criticizing them? Tuwims answer was strikingly
reminiscent of Sonimskis: since there had never been a time in human
history when the Jews had not been persecuted, such logic would dictate
there would never be a time when criticism was permissible.176 Towards
the traditional Jewish community of his hometown of d, Tuwim felt
more repulsion than kinship: Terribly many black Jewish uniforms.
Those who wore them used a hideous, rattling speech, again half German.
... It is high time, gentlemen, to cut o those long overcoats and side
curls, but also to learn respect for the language of the nation among
whom you live. The black Hasidic rabble has remained in my memory
from the d of times past like a nightmare.177 When questioned about
his reaction to right-wing denials of his Polishness, Tuwim answered that
his Polishness was my private aair, deeply and fundamentally resolved
in my conscience.178
Mieczysaw Braun, Broniewskis old friend from d, reacted dierently to the climate of rising antisemitism. After 1926, his poetry was forced
to compete for time with his new career as a lawyer; throughout the late
1920s his ties to Warsaw literary life grew weaker. In 1929 he ceased contributing to Wiadomoci Literackie, although he maintained contact with
the PPS and its paper Robotnik (The Worker), where his poems continued
to appear until 1931. Braun drifted away, but did not entirely disappear,
from the world of letters. Like Tuwim, he was a devotee of Esperanto, a
language in which he saw hope for the end of national antagonisms.179
Yet he departed from the paths taken by those like Tuwim and Sonimski
in his public embrace of a dual Polish-Jewish identity. In a 1929 article in

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 139

Nasz Przegld, Braun lamented the inaccessibility of Yiddish literature for

Polish readers and pleaded for more translations into Polish. In literature,
the universally human realm of art, Braun saw hope for an ark of the
covenant between nations, who, while longtime neighbors, barely know
each other by name.180 Yet Braun felt himself to be a Polish poet, even as
the antisemitism of the mid-to-late 1930s cast the identity of Poles of Jewish
origin into question. For a writer, Braun argued, language was identity,
and a Jewlike himselfwriting in Polish was a Polish writer.181
It was the late 1930s when Aleksander Wats seven-year-old son Andrzej learned what the word Jew meant. One day the boy returned from
a walk with his nanny and quite cheerily reported, You know, Mommy,
theyre breaking the shopkeepers windows. The shopkeeper was a poor
Jewish woman who sold candy and avored soda water. When Ola Watowa
asked why he was so happy about this, the boy answered, Because Jews
are terrible, theyre ugly and theyre dirty. It was to be his rst lesson in
his own Jewishness. Wat began the conversation like this:
Is mommy ugly?
No, shes pretty.
Is mommy dirty?
No, shes not dirty.
And in the end: Do you love mommy?
He answered: Yes, very much.
Well, you should know that your mommy is a Jew. And
so, do you love your mother? My little Andrzej reected upon
that, hesitated a moment, and said: I would love her even
more if she werent a Jew.182
One day Ola Watowa ran into Jarosaw Iwaszkiewicz on the street. He
was disappointed because Irena Krzywickahis close friend, and a Jew
herselfhad recommended to him a wonderful bookbinder on witokrzyska Street, but Iwaszkiewicz could not become his customer because
the bookbinder was a Jew. There was a slogan current at the time: each to
his own with his own aairs.183 Iwaszkiewicz, though, was much more
complicated than this. At Ziemiaska he would gibe at Grydzewski, You
Jew-boy!184 Yet he was very close to Grydzewski, as he was to Sonimski
and Tuwim. In 1933, Tuwim began a multilingual letter to Iwaszkiewicz,
who was in Copenhagen at the time:

1 4 0 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

Oh you Goy, you good, handsome youth!

But is he really a goy? Without any, even if far removed,
admixture of that Jewish blood which has poisoned our old
Aryan, Nordic world for us?
Forgive the fact that Im beginning this letter with such
a doubt, but you have no idea how sensitive Ive become on
this point. On dit, que le Pape mme ... Horreur! Enn ...
si son Matre et Chef ... Mais laissons! [They say that even
the pope ... Horror! In the end ... if his Lord and Boss ...
But lets leave that!]185
It was a time when all of the writers were somehow engaged with the
Jewish question in Poland. In response to a 1937 Wiadomoci Literackie
questionnaire about antisemitism, the ostracized Andrzej Stawar distinguished between sporadically arising distaste towards Jews and programmatic militant antisemitism. The latter he saw, in Marxist terms, as a
relatively recent construct of fascism, a reactionary myth prophesying
that the nations economic problems could be transformed into a national
renaissance through the battle against Jews. In his Marxist reading, Polish
antisemitism aimed to deect attention from the workers movement and
to weaken class consciousness.186 Wanda Wasilewska composed an equally
long response to the questionnaire. Like Stawar, she saw antisemitism
through the lens of class conict. She harbored as well a conviction of
the natural goodness of the masses. In search of evidence for such a
conviction, she set out on a journey to discover whether antisemitism
existed in Polandthat is, antisemitism that was real, essential, owing
from the depths and embracing the broad masses. Notwithstanding her
near-drowning incident of several years earlier, now she and Bogatko
embarked on a kayak trip through the eastern Polish provinces, stopping in villages and seeking out antisemitism. What they found were
Polish, Jewish, and Belarusian children playing happily together. Moreover, Wasilewska claimed a visit to the countryside served to debunk the
stereotype of the Jew as petty merchant: outside of the cities she found
Jews engaged in hard, manual, productive labor. There was, of course,
some antisemitisma Jewish boy who took them to a place where they
could stay for the night would like to go to high school in a nearby town,
but recognized that this was impossible because he was a Jew. In his own

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 1 4 1

village, though, among his neighbors, he did not feel his otherness. For
Wasilewska, here was the truth of Polish antisemitism: everything was
harmonious on the ground, in the countryside, where relations were
authentic; antisemitism was a foreign import from the oppressing class.
It was the rich who exploited them whom the peasants truly resented.187
Janina Broniewska was just as principled, albeit less romantic; like
Stawar, she saw antisemitism as right-wing propaganda aimed at diverting attention from the true problem of class. For her antisemitism was a
weapon of those on the other side of the red barricade; and she wrote
resentfully of hearing Dont buy from the Jews throughout the 1930s,
as if Jewish competition were responsible for the intensifying economic
crisis.188 She and Wasilewska resolved to take their daughters, Anka and
Ewa, on vacation to Medem, a Jewish sanatorium, so as to immerse the
girls in a completely Jewishand socialistatmosphere among the children of Bundists. On her deathbed Broniewskis Catholic mother put some
money in her daughter-in-laws hand, saying Take this, Jasieka, take it,
its for Anka for that strange, but perhaps good, vacation.189

the terror
An atmosphere of hostility and suspicion was intensifying to the east as
well. Despite Witold Wandurskis damning 1933 testimony, the NKVD
came for Bruno Jasieski only four years later. After Tomasz Dbal and
two other Polish acquaintances in the Soviet Union were arrested in 1937,
Jasieski wrote a series of letters berating himself for insucient vigilance. On 5 February 1937 he wrote to the Soviet Writers Union that he
had just learned of the arrests and considered it his obligation as a Party
member to present a complete history of his relations with the accused.
He elaborated:
Shortly after my arrival in the Soviet Union in one of the
articles (about language) I committed an error. I wrote that
the language used by the Polish population in the Soviet Union
is quite impoverished, and that our Soviet Polish press and
Soviet Polish literature should be drawing from the repository
of language spoken by the worker and peasant masses in
Poland. On this basis I advanced the false conclusion that it
is not possible to build Polish (in form) socialist culture in the

1 4 2 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

Soviet Union without organic ties to the life of the revolution

ary masses in Poland. Having become aware of my error, I
retracted everything in the press. I should have already at that
time reected upon why Dbal, who seemed to be an old and
tested comrade, did not point out that error to me at once,
and also committed it himself.190
It had been a dicult, but well-learned lesson in vigilance, Jasieski
concluded.191
When in April 1937 there followed an article in Pravda denouncing
him for his ties to supposed spies and traitors, Jasieski wrote to Stalin
a pleading, yet arrogant self-defense, in which he attributed the accusa
tions against him to his accusers desire to avoid self-criticism. The
letter began:
It would go against my conscience to take up your time with
personal matters. Yet the Party rightly demands from us, Soviet
writers, the creation (especially for the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of October) of politically timelyand artistically solidliterary works. Since the time of the publication of
my last novel, A Man Changes His Skin, three years ago, I have
been working on my next book directed at the enemies of the
peoplethe Trotskyites and their master, German fascism.
In this work two worlds will stand in opposition to one another
the world of communism and the world of fascism. Against
this background I am attempting to portray the conspiratorial
methods of the Gestapo and their agents in our country,
Trotskyite traitors. ...
Neither the Writers Union nor anyone else has helped me
in my work. I would only wish, however, that they would not
hinder me. Unfortunately, one of the comrades entrusted with
literary matters, Comrade P[avel] Iudin, conceives of his task
entirely dierently. In the 23 April issue of Pravda in the article
Why It Was Necessary to Liquidate RAPP, Comrade Iudin
equated me with the Trotskyite [Leopold] Averbakh, an enemy
of the people, putting forth strange reproaches shameful to
me as a communist.192

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 1 43

Jasieski questioned Iudins motivation and inquired provocatively about

who stood to benet from the accusations against him:
To whom would it be important to increase the camp of Trotsky
ite traitors at the cost of entirely untainted communist writers
who have never been politically connected with Trotskyite bandits, who have never shown any deviations from the Partys
general line? Comrade Iudins unfounded reproach can have
only one resultdesistance from creative work. Now I will be
forced to put the novel aside and occupy myself with searching
for published evidence of the fact that I have never belonged
to the Averbakh group, I will have to dig through old magazines, recall conversations of ve years ago with individual
comrades, give reports and explanations at dozens of meetings.
You yourself understand that in such conditions it is impos
sible to continue work on the novel. In connection with that
I will not succeed in completing, before the twentieth anniversary, my work designed to mobilize the people to battle against
their enemies and their enemies helpers.193
Despite his certainty of tone, very shortly after sending this letter
Jasieski reconsidered his situation. In a second letter to Stalin dated
just three days later, he recanted both his self-defense and his attack on
Iudin. He had learned the art of self-criticism well. Now he told Stalin
that having thought through the entire history of my acquaintance with
Averbakh once more, I have come to the conclusion that the criticism
is rightful and deserved. He realized only now that he had been an instrument in the maneuvers of Trotskyites: You have taught us to have
the courage to confess fully to our errors, but I am ashamed to confess
to them before you.194 I will do all that I possibly can to help our party
eradicate from the literary milieu the decaying roots of averbakhovshchina.
I am convinced that the injury done to literature by being at the time a
tool in Averbakhs schemings is less than the advantages I can give to
the Party by working as a writer. I believe that the Party will not repudiate me for the delayed, but sincere, worthy-of-a-Bolshevik confession of
literary-political errors.195 Jasieski now faced an even more serious accusation. To Stalin he wrote, Unfortunately, in the article in Pravda there

1 4 4 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

was presented another, terrible political reproachof a connection with

the spy Dbal.196 Now Jasieski pleaded for Stalins support: I turn to
you now, as the proposal to expel me from the ranks of the Party is being
considered. All of my work as a writer has been work in the service of the
Party. My last novel, about which I wrote to you, was directed precisely
at enemies of the peopleTrotskyites and their Berlin masters. I have
withdrawn the novel from print. I am not able to publish it, being thus
accused. You understand the full horror of the situation in which I nd
myself. Only you can avert such a great punishment, disproportionate to
my oenses. Help! All of my life, all of my literary talent I will devote even
more powerfully, more decidedly to the battle against the enemies of the
people and to the Party!197 The same day Jasieski wrote to the editor of
Pravda that the harsh criticism was truthful and legitimate; that he was
submitting an exhaustive and frank criticism of his errors; and that he
would like to publish a self-criticism in Pravda acknowledging the justness of the criticism against him and telling of the lessons he had drawn
from that criticism.198
A few days later, on 2 May 1937, Jasieski wrote to Nikolai Yezhov,
head of the NKVD, asking that his alleged connections with the spies
Wandurski, Averbakh, Dbal, and others be investigated as quickly as possible. With respect to Wandurski, Jasieski wrote, it was widely known
in literary circles that this individual led a erce battle against me.199
Jasieskis situation was ever more bleak, particularly after the arrest of
his former wife Klara Arem. He had had no contact with her for seven
years, but he understood well that her arrest would be counted towards
his guilt. In his next paragraph, Jasieski set out the central line of what
was simultaneously his self-defense and his self-criticism: An enormous
oense towards the Party was the fact that I did not demonstrate sucient
vigilance vis--vis camouaged traitors, and I maintained friendly contacts
with unmasked traitors, the likes of T[omasz] Dbal. ... Yet all of that does
not give anyone the right to place me in one camp with Polish spies.200
This was only the beginning of Jasieskis letter-writing campaign.
On 3 May he wrote to the Soviet Writers Union, acknowledging news
of his former wifes arrest; he had been notied by a neighbor who had
asked that he take care of his son in Klara Arems absence. This time
Jasieski distanced himself from Arem even more emphatically: In the
course of the past seven years I have not maintained any contacts with

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 1 45

K.H. Arem-Jasieska, and I was forced to break o any acquaintance with

her due to the scandal that she dealt to me after the divorce. K. H. AremJasieska has married on several occasions since that time (for example
she was living with some German, an actor) and involved herself in circles
entirely unknown to me. My connection to her was limited to sending
alimony for the support of the child, my presently eight-year-old son, on
whose upbringing I did not even have any inuence as the result of the
hostile inclinations of his mother.201 In the same letter he described his
relations with Wandurski, which, he now claimed, had never been very
close: In Poland I did not know W[itold] Wandurski, member of the
Communist Party of Poland, who was revealed to be a provocateur and
spy. I met him only once at the premiere of his play in Cracow in 1923 or
1924. About Wandurskis communist convictions I knew nothing at the
time; I regarded him simply as one of the formally leftist Polish writers.
Our acquaintance was completely incidental. ... I met Wandurski for the
second time in 1929 in Berlin, where I spent a week after my rst deportation from France. Wandurski was there as a member of the KPP, who, with
the Partys agreement, had escaped from prison across the border before
his trial.202 He had never liked Wandurski, Jasieski insisted. If their relations had been cordial it was only because Jasieski had understood him
to be a devoted member of the Party and a literary colleague and felt it his
obligation to have proper relations with him. Wandurski, however, had not
reciprocated the gesture and had even unleashed an active campaign
against Jasieski in the International Association of Revolutionary Writers.
Moreover, while living in Jasieskis apartment during Jasieskis stay in
Tadzhikistan, Wandurski had signed over Jasieskis food stamps to himself. Jasieski now returned to the subject of Stanisaw Ryszard Standes
1929 letter of protest against Jasieskis self-advertisement. Now, though,
Jasieski omitted Standes name entirely, placing the blame instead on
Hempel, Wandurski, and Broniewskidespite Jasieskis warm correspondence with Broniewski, and despite Hempels having denied signing Standes letter: After my arrival in the Soviet Union, when in many
articles the Soviet press presented me as a leading Polish revolutionary
poet, W. Wandurski, J. Wilak [Hempel] (later arrested by the NKVD), and
W. Broniewski (who today has transformed himself into a leftist-bourgeois
writer still living in Poland) turned to the Polish section of the Executive
Committee of the Communist International, and if I remember correctly,

1 4 6 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

to the editorial board of Izvestiia, with a protest against the undeserved

praise I received as a Polish proletarian writer.203
Jasieskis rm tone in this letter notwithstanding, both he and his
wife Anna Berzi knew that his situation was growing ever more dire.
In May 1937, Berzi wrote two desperate letters to Stalin, pleading with
Stalin to see that Jasieskis case be properly investigated so that the truth
of his innocence could be revealed. Berzi was a journalist, yet the style
of her pleas was less sophisticated and more obviously desperate than
that of her husband. She began: Comrade Stalin! You speak often, and
more than others, about respect for living people. And so neither the
writer Bruno Jasieski nor Ihis wife, nor anyone from our family is an
immortal. We are all alive, we want to live and work.204 On 31 July 1937
Jasieski was arrested.
During interrogations on 15 September Jasieski signed a long and
self-agellating confession of Polish nationalism and conspiratorial activity on behalf of the Polish Military Organization, which in reality had not
existed since the end of the Polish-Soviet War:
q u e s t i o n : Towards what goal would it be helpful for ve Polish spies

to bring an honest revolutionary worker into the Party? It is known

to the investigators that at the moment when you entered the AllUnion Communist [Bolshevik] Party, you were a member of the
Polish Military Organization!
a n s w e r : When I emigrated from Poland in 1925, I did not break all
my contacts with the petty bourgeoisie world from which I came. ...
I had not overcome Polish nationalist inuences.
q u e s t i o n : And what more?
a n s w e r : Doubtlessly for these reasons Dbal, whom I met in person
in 1929, pulled me into work in the Polish Military Organization. ...
q u e s t i o n : On what concretely was your activity as a Polish Military
Organization member based?
a n s w e r : From the moment of my nomination as editor of the Polish
magazine Kultura Mas, together with the Polish Military Organization member Dbal, I began to propagate in the pages of that paper
Polish nationalist ideas, in particular the damaging and counter
revolutionary idea about the impossibility of building a Polish
socialist culture in the Soviet Union in the absence of ties with

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 147

the ethnographically Polish masses. I similarly developed these

ideas on the pages of the Kievan Proletariacka Prawda [Proletarian
Truth], in articles devoted to the Polish proletarian theater, in which
I praised the Polish theater of the provocateur Wandurski. I conducted these activities in the years 19291930 directly under the
leadership of Dbal, who, as editor of the central Polish newspaper
Trybuna Radziecka, supported and popularized nationalist ideas.205
Several days later Jasieski recanted his testimony. In a letter to Yezhov dated 21 September 1937, he said, Having been broken morally
and physically after uninterrupted standing treatment, in a ood of despair I signed my name to testimony dictated to me in which I confessed
to crimes that I never committed. I hoped for this price to buy myself
death, since life deprived of the states condence is unthinkable for me.
... If you are convinced of my guilt (I am unable to oer proof of my
innocence)shoot me. This method, although I do not deserve it, will be
an entirely legal form of the Soviet states self-defense against enemies. I
ask for this unrepiningly. Do not allow me to suer further. This is my only
and nal request. I truly have no more strength left.206 On 2 October 1937,
Jasieski wrote a similar letter to the NKVD. He accused himself of a lack
of vigilance, and stated that he should be punished harshly for this. Yet he
insisted he was innocent of the other crimes attributed to him, particularly
that of belonging to the Polish Military Organization. He repeated what
he had written to Yezhov: Having been broken morally and physically
(two days of uninterrupted standing treatment), in a moment of despair
I confessed to crimes I did not commit. I hoped that for this price I would
buy myself a speedier shooting, as I cannot and I will not live with the
undeserved stamp of spy and enemy of the people.207 Jasieski wrote at
least one more letter to a Soviet magistrate, in which he stated again that
under torture he had signed his name to false confessions. He emphasized
that he made no accusations about improper interrogation techniques, as
he regarded these techniques as just given the enormity of the suspected
crimes; once again, he expressed his willingness to be shot.208
In January 1938, from his prison cell, Bruno Jasieski composed his
last literary work. It was an autobiographical testimony. He wrote of his
youth, of Mayakovsky: Being under the strong inuence of the ideas of the
October Revolution, absorbed predominantly through the prism of the rst

1 4 8 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

years of Russian Soviet literature after the revolution (above all Mayakovsky), I expressed in my poems rebellion against the bourgeois state,
against bourgeois religion, bourgeois morality, bourgeois art, while not
yet knowing exactly with what I intended to oppose them. ... It was not a
coincidence that my favorite poet was the pre-Revolution Mayakovsky, his
poems of the rst years of the Revolution, reecting the total destructive
and purifying force of October.209 Jasieski wrote of his Polish years, his
Parisian years, and the past decade in the Soviet Union. He had last seen
Jan Hempel on the street in 1936; Hempel complained to him then of
miserable material conditions and asked him for a recommendation to a
Soviet magazine where he wanted to publish some articles about Polish
literature. Jasieski never gave the recommendation. He wrote of Standes
now former wife, Zoa Kubalska (Warska), who had once been his translator and more recently had taken an active part in his expulsion from the
Party.210 In conclusion he revealed his present feelings: It was only the
NKVD authorities who opened my eyes, and helped me to understand my
guilt, to perceive the full depth of the muck in which I was wading about
like a blind man. I am grateful to the NKVD authorities for the fact that,
thanks to the methods applied to me, they helped me to regain my sight
and are helping to wash away all of the lth that has clung to me since I
came into contact with the criminal gang of spies and villains.211
So was Wandurski only the rst of many. His demise in 1934 seems
to have given rise to only limited forebodings in the intervening years.
On 6 December 1936, Jan Hempel wrote to his sister in Poland, We
have lived to see the realization of what humanitys best minds have been
dreaming of for a thousand years. I couldnt not share with you that great
joy pulsating through all of us.212 On 19 January 1937 Hempel was arrested. He subsequently shared the fate of other KPP activists. The arrest
and execution of the man who was a grandfatherly gure to his younger
comrades in Polish prison was symbolic of the impending fate of Polish
communists. The same year they came for Stande as wellas they did
for his now former wife Zoa Warska, her rst husband, and her father
Adolf Warski, Rosa Luxemburgs longtime comrade. The NKVD informed
Zoa Warskas teenage son from her rst marriage that his family had
been sentenced to the gulag without the right of correspondence.213 When
the Moscow show trials began, the KPP leadership in Poland expressed
solidarity with the death sentences. In the course of 1937 almost the entire

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 149

Politburo of the Central Committee of the KPP was arrested by the NKVD.
Alfred Lampe was among the only survivors of the Party leadership; he was
in Polish prison at the time.214 For Polish communists in the 1930s, Polish
prison was often the safest place to be. Jakub Bermans name appeared on
a Comintern list of suspected spies and provocateurs, but Berman kept
his distance from the Soviet Union and in this way survived as well.215 In
1938, the Comintern, with Stalins permission, dissolved the Communist
Party of Poland on charges that it had been inltrated with spies and
provocateurs. Stanisaw Ryszard Stande was arrested and shot around
the same time that Jasieski was writing of him in prison.216 Jasieskis
rst wife Klara Arem was shot on 19 January 1938. Their son was turned
over to a Soviet childrens home.217 Jasieskis second wife Anna Berzi
was arrested in 1938 and sent to the gulag. As for the young futurist poet
of long ago, by nature an enfant terrible, strolling around Warsaw and
Cracow in his elegant clothes, with a monocle in his right eye and a cane
with a silver handle in his hand, he was executed in a Stalinist prison on
17 September 1938.218

parting
In Warsaw life continued. Wadysaw Broniewski nally drove his wife
away. This time, Janina Broniewska wrote, it was essentially three
strikes and youre out. I didnt appear at Ziemiaska, for the rst time
my indignance had not yet abated.219 She moved with her daughter Anka
into an apartment in a two-story house in oliborz. Before long, Wanda
Wasilewska and Marian Bogatko took to playing matchmakers, presenting
Janina Broniewska with their communist friend Romuald Gadomski. After so many partings and reconciliations, in late spring of 1938 Broniewski
received a letter from his wifes lawyer informing him that she had applied
for a separation.220 Broniewski, too, was engaged in another romance by
that time, with the widowed actress Maria Zarbiska, who had a young
daughter close to Ankas age. Zarbiska was devoted to Broniewski, but
terried of his growing attachment to alcohol.221 In the meantime, Gadom
ski moved into Janina Broniewskas apartment; only then did she tell
Broniewski of her new relationship. He was quiet on the other end of the
telephone. Later Broniewska learned from Maria Zarbiska how he had
responded. Whats happened to you? his new love asked when he put
down the receiver, why are you so shaken?

1 5 0 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

Do you know what Jaka did to me? She informed me that

she has a husband! And hes a wonderful person!
For a moment now I wasnt able to catch my breath,
Marysia told me. Then with diculty I got hold of myself
and nally I asked very sweetly: Wadeczku, and to whom
are you telling this? It didnt register immediately. Male logic,
isnt it?222
The story did not end there. When Janina Broniewskas landlord began
to search for a tenant for the downstairs apartment, she invited her exhusband and his new wife and stepdaughter to move into the house in
oliborz. When Zarbiska worried that her Catholic father would not
be happy with the arrangement, particularly since Broniewski had never
obtained an ocial divorce, Janina Broniewska oered to talk to him. She
found the elderly man to be charming and full of gallantry, despite his
awareness that she was also living in sin, and with a man who had spent
ve years in prison for illegal communist activity. Janina Broniewska was
persuasive; Zarbiskas father accepted the unconventional household.223
Soon the two couples and their children were living under one roof, and
the two women became close friends.

as news re a c h e d wa r s aw
Antoni Sonimski was among the rst to grasp the grotesqueness of the
show trials. In 1936 he wrote of the Moscow trial against the Trotskyites as
one of the most terrifying events of their times: History does not know a
case where sixteen old and hardened revolutionary activists demanded the
death sentence for themselves and spit mud at their many years of activity.
The words that one of the most famous communist leaders, Kamenev,
declared, are not words from this world: The sentence such as will befall
me will not be an expression of cruelty but evidence that everything has
its boundaries, even Soviet generosity. For that reason I hold in contempt
all cries about the cruelty of the sentence executed on me.224 Sonimski
reminded his readers of the Inquisition, when under torture the accused
would admit to sexual relations with the devil. Six months later he wrote
of the protocols of the Moscow trials as the script of a play whose author
obviously did not fear criticism about the scenarios verisimilitude.225
On April Fools Day of 1937, Sonimski signed his name to his most

e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r, and confession 1 51

daring satire yet. Stalin, Emperor of the Proletariat was a full-page

ctitious reportage in Wiadomoci Literackie, decorated with large photographs, of Stalins coronation as emperor of the proletariat, king of the
bourgeoisie, and the grand prince of technical experts and the intelligent
sia.226 Sonimskis criticism only sharpened as the trials continued:
No one fools Stalin. They killed Kirov. It was known that these
were right-wing elements, White Guardists, the sons of former
tsarist ocials, professors, and decaying intellectuals. Eighty
such former people were sentenced to death. But the wise
Stalin discovered right after the executions that it was the
Trotskyites who did it. Stalin would have certainly absolved
them from guilt, but they themselves at all the trials confessed
to the crimes and pleaded for a death sentence. Stalin is not
only wise, he is also good. He refuses nothing to Soviet citizens, even death. One of them, in the courtroom, suddenly
began to deny [the charges]. They took him back to the cell,
and by the next day he confessed to everything. They didnt do
anything to him. They only told him not to worry Stalin.
The essay concluded with a P.S. For gentlemen-idiots and editors of some
publications: The sentence Stalin is not only wise but also good is used
ironically. It is to be understood in the contrary sense.227
Others in Warsaw were less outspoken, yet no less disconcerted.
Wadysaw Broniewski experienced the purges, and in particular the death
of his friends, painfully. He turned more and more to vodka. Aleksander
Wat, too, could not accept the accusations.228 In later years he dedicated a
few lines in a poem to Jasieskis death, in a stanza reminiscent of their
shared futurist past with its oddly juxtaposed, somewhat nonsensical verb
tenses:
Like on the Blondel, for two francs, arrogant Bruno
he clasped the glass, bangs his horse-like head,
downs the drink, sets it down, ah, gud beer, he smacked his
lips, he is falling down, he will die in the tortures
of the gulag in the far, oh so far away, North. Poor woodcutter.
Let us say
a bedtime prayer for him.229

1 5 2 e n ta n g l e m e n t s , t e r r o r , a n d c o nfession

As the thirties drew to a close, the literati continued to gather. Wat and his
wife Ola continued to keep an open house, full of guests and alcohol.230
But he was haunted by an absolute premonition that Ola, Andrzej, and
I would die horrible deaths, that Poland would go under.

chapter six

Autumn in Soviet Galicia

A poet of the revolution

should perish in the Soviet slammer?
History, why this is tactlessness,
one of us is behaving like a child!
Wadysaw Broniewski, A Conversation with History

a l e k s a n d e r wat wa s n o t alone in his foreboding of catastrophe.

The 1930s had seen the emergence in Wilno of a circle of young catastro
phist poets drawn to metaphysics and irting with Marxism, among whom
were Jerzy Putrament, Stefan Jdrychowski, and Czesaw Miosz. In their
poems they expressed a sense of impending disaster on a cosmic scale.
Then came the catastrophe itself. On 23 August 1939, the Popular Front
vaporized: Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop signed the
Nazi-Soviet nonaggression treaty. Shortly afterwards, Wat saw Wadysaw
Daszewski at Caf Ziemiaska. Daszewski had spent much of the previous few years in Lww, working at a theater there. Yet he had remained
close to his Warsaw friends. He wrote letters to Broniewski, asking him
to send greetings to the beautiful and the ugly sex with whom were acquainted and especially with whom we are more intimate.1 Daszewski
was also close to the Skamander poets, and now Wat was struck by his
schadenfreude in anticipating his friends reactions to the imminent Nazi
attack. The scenic designer was rubbing his hands together. Theyll shit
their pants, youll see. Sonimski, Tuwimtheyll shit their pants in fear,
he told Wat.2
This was among Wats last visits to Caf Ziemiaska. Daszewskis
malicious prediction foreshadowed the end of Skamanderand the end
of the era when a Polish poet could write And in the spring, let me
153

154 a u t u mn i n s ov i e t g a l i c i a

see springnot Poland. Now everyone waited for the fall. It came on
1 September 1939. As the rst German bombs fell on Warsaw, Wanda
Wasilewska and Janina Broniewska appeared at the door of the Military
Scientic-Educational Institute; they wanted to oer their services to the
anti-German cause. They found open doors and an empty building, save
for stacks of paper strewn about on the oor along with index card les
of all those who had volunteered to assist with anti-Nazi propaganda. 3
Shortly afterwards, the two women ed Warsaw, heading east. Wadysaw
Broniewski, too, set out in this direction. Despite his very respectable
military record, the poet, now in his early forties and moreover known
as a communist, was not mobilized. Undeterred, he volunteered, and
on 7 September set out on a bicycle in search of his regiment. After he
had traversed the route from Warsaw through Lublin and Tarnopol to
Lww, he checked into a hotel and, wearing his military uniform, awaited
his assignment.4 He had come too late. On 12 September Broniewski
found his regiment; ve days later the Red Army invaded eastern Poland.
The Polish military was taken by surprise; the order was given not to
resist.
Wanda Wasilewska and Marian Bogatko left Warsaw in September;
together with the Bundist leader Wiktor Alter, they soon found themselves
in the Volhynian town of Kowel.5 In late September, the Ukrainian communist playwright Oleksandr Korneichuk broadcast a radio appeal in the
name of the new Soviet authorities, calling to Lww Polish writers and
artists whom the war had tossed to the east, promising them material
assistance and favorable working conditions. Among those he invited
by name were Wanda Wasilewska, Wadysaw Broniewski, and Julian
Tuwim.6 Wasilewska learned of the invitation from a politruk, a Soviet
political ocer, who found her in Kowel. The ocer instructed her to
present herself to Korneichuk or Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev. She had,
at the time, absolutely no idea who Khrushchev and Korneichuk were,
but was too embarrassed to ask the politruk. Compliantly she departed by
train for Lww.7
During the rst days of the Luftwaes bombing of Warsaw, Wat
continued to go to work at Gebethners publishing housewhere the
Gestapo soon came looking for him as one of the members of the Polish
intelligentsia to be shot. Ola Watowa and their young son Andrzej hid in
the basement during the hours Wat spent at work. On the sixth day of the

a u t u m n in soviet galicia 1 55

war, they ed Warsaw in two cars with Wats sister and brother-in-law.8
Somewhere in the eastern borderlands of Poland the two cars lost one
another. Wat traveled on to the Volhynian provincial capital of uck, in
search of his family. It was there that Wat had his rst experience of the
Soviets occupying eastern Poland. uck was full of the stench of boots
and birch tar, of sweaty feet and cheap tobacco, and to Wat the Russians
resembled oriental barbarians, Asia at its most Asian.9 He did not ee
uck immediately though, instead wandering amongst the cafs, handing
out hundreds of cards saying that Aleksander Wat was searching for his
wife and son. In this way they nally found one another in Lww, where
Watowa was staying rst with the Lww writer and PPS activist Halina
Grska and later with the poet Jzef Wittlins mother.10

a cosmopoli t a n c i t y
It was a time when many among the Polish intelligentsia were arriving
in Lww, a cultural center of more than 300,000 people, a cosmopolitan
city with a mixed population of Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews. Like Warsaw,
Lww had been bombed by German aircraft on 1 September; eleven days
later the Germans began a direct assault on the city.
Within another week the Red Army had arrived, the Germans ceded
the area to their Soviet allies, and by the time Wat was reunited with his
family there, Polish Lww was rapidly becoming Soviet Lvov. Russian writers arrived as war correspondents, including Viktor Shklovsky, who was
full of appreciation for the citys baroque architecture. Shklovsky knew of
Wat from Mayakovsky, and was very warm to him, although reluctant to
speak about politics. Wat met Shklovskys fellow war correspondents as
well. All of them were looking for Wanda Wasilewska. Apparently Stalin
had insisted that she be found.11 The eagerly awaited Wasilewska arrived
before long, the most exalted among thousands of refugees eeing into a
city that had become a chaotic juxtaposition of anarchy and Soviet totali
tarianism. Ola Watowa experienced the Sovietization of the city as a regression into ancient times, an incursion of the barbarians.12 Wats friend
Adolf Rudnicki, the younger Polish-Jewish prose writer, saw the city as
an eastern bazaar lled with refugees in grotesque clothing, combinations of peasant sheepskin furs and urban raincoats. It was a place where
even the most thick-skinned felt how dicult it was to live without ones
mother.13 Wat, too, experienced newly Soviet Lvov as a city ensconced in

156 a u t u mn i n s ov i e t g a l i c i a

fear. Moreover, it was a city whose beauty had now been drained from it,
and Wat mourned its prewar incarnation, which had had none of the
grayness of Warsaw. To Wat interwar Lww had always been a colorful,
exotic, European city.14
For the friends of the late Witold Wandurski, Bruno Jasieski, and
Stanisaw Stande, the avant-garde poets who had become fellow travelers, it was in this cosmopolitan European city that they had their rst real
encounter with communism in power. Very quickly they discovered that it
bore little resemblance to the Marxism of Caf Ziemiaska. And they were
all scared to death. Julian Stryjkowski titled his autobiographical novel of
this time and place Wielki Strach (Great Fear). The story began with Artur,
a young Jewish intellectual, a devoted communist and a former political
prisoner, who found his way to Lvov in the early months of the war. He
soon encountered Leon, his cousin Rachelas ex-husband. Leon the oppor
tunist greeted Artur the nave believer warmly, and chastised Artur for
addressing him formally: Youre calling me mister? Who the hell today
says mister? After all Ive always been a [communist] sympathizer, dont
you remember, my dear? After their meeting Artur reected:
Hes the son of a rich merchant. A Zionist activist. A sympathizer? Perhaps. How is it connected? Among the Jewish in
telligentsia anything is possible. Even if its abnormal. The
whole nation is abnormal. Abnormal conditions. Flowing borders. Not on earth, but rather somewhere in the air. Like with
Sholem Aleichem: luftmensch, luftgesheft. He was also once a
shomer. In high school he wore a gray shirt with a scout badge
on the sleeve. The best of the communist youth, the best
of the Komsomol came from the ranks of shomer. First he
read Herzls Old-New Land, Max Nordaus Paradoxes. And
then Bukharin. On one side Zionism, on the other materialism. For a long time he resisted. Bukharin prevailed. This
was before [Bukharin] was unmasked as an imperialist spy.15
Arturs reections on Leon recalled his own biography, and he began to
feel increasingly guilty: he was himself not more than one degree of separation removed from Zionism. He had failed to reveal everything in his
own Party autobiography: his older brother had gone to Palestine as a
Zionist, a kibbutznik. His mother was in Palestine as well. Artur fell

a u t u m n in soviet galicia 1 57

asleep that night having resolved that the next day he would confess like a
Bolshevik ... to petty bourgeois remnants, to nationalist sentiments. Yet
the next day he hesitatedand in the end made no such confession.16
Stryjkowskis nave Artur saw newly Soviet Lvov as a place of chaos
and inversions. Nonetheless his faith remained intact, he believed there
must be good reasons, solid explanations for the violence and the terror.
A face made insane with fear, Stryjkowski wrote, How is it possible?
In the center of the city there is a hunt for a man. Red Army soldiers for a
Red Army soldier. A Polish soldier never ed from his own patrol. A Polish
patrol never shot at their own soldier. In capitalist Poland. There must be
terrible reasons to have to ee from your own.17 Wat saw Lvov as a kind
of hedonistic, anarchic inferno. The red light district became the center
of black-market trade in hard currency, gold, and diamonds.18
And there was antisemitism. Stryjkowskis Artur was scandalized by
antisemitic jokes and suggestions by Ukrainian communists that Russia
would turn over German comrades of Jewish origin to Hitler. When Artur
was handed a Polish pamphlet titled Death to ydokomuna! he destroyed
it. Later, when a Soviet acquaintance explained to Artur that he was a Jew,
not a Pole, Artur responded:
Im both one and the other.
How is that possible? Half and half?
Both one and the other.
Funny. Here each person holds onto his own nationality.
A Ukrainian is a Ukrainian, a Tatar a Tatar.19
Stryjkowskis Artur was not alone among those yet to understand the
role nationality would play during this war. Not long after the deluge of
refugees hit Lvov, the ood reversed itself: mass registrations to return
to the German-occupied zone began. Wasilewska was astonished to see
even Jews applying en masse for repatriation to German-occupied Polish
lands.20 Wats younger brother was among those Polish Jews who made
the decision to return to Warsaw. Wat himself remained in Lvov and attempted to assimilate the new reality. He felt there was no going back.
For me, he told, those years between the wars had been a stage set,
with dummies made of plywood and cardboard.21
The Nazi-Soviet nonaggression treaty still obtained; once it had invaded eastern Poland, the Soviet Union did not consider itself to be at war.

158 a u t u m n i n s ov i e t g a l i c i a

It was Poland alone that was decimated and occupied. The Soviet Union
declared the purpose of its presence in the eastern territories to be that of
assisting the Belarusians and Ukrainians oppressed by Polish rule, and
held that Poland would never rise again. Local Soviet authorities pressured
Polish communists to recant their critical position towards the MolotovRibbentrop agreement. At the Polish-language communist newspaper
Czerwony Sztandar (Red Banner), Soviet authorities requested that the
newspapers sta members come forth with self-criticism of their initially
unfavorable position towards the pact.22 Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, arrived to oversee a Soviet-style
election campaign culminating in October elections to the new Peoples
Assembly of Western Ukraine. Among the successful candidates was Halina Grska, who had befriended Wat and his family; Wat described her
as a sentimental socialist, a pure soul, terribly elegiac; everything pained
her, every act of injustice in the world.23 Once in existence, the assembly
promptly asked that Western Ukraine be incorporated into the Soviet
Union. The assemblys meeting was held in the Grand Theater; and from
the gallery Wat watched as Halina Grska abstained from voting.

the writer s fa l l i n t o l i n e
Soviet authorities quickly set about the institutionalization of culture in a
city overowing with refugees. One of those charged with organizational
duties was the young Polish writer from Lvov, Aleksander Dan, a friend
of Jzef Wittlin, and rumored to be connected to the NKVD.24 Dan took
a special interest in Wat. He adored Ola Watowa and Andrzej and was
full of friendship for his colleague. It was from Dan that Wat learned
that the Ukrainian dramatist Oleksandr Korneichuk had been entrusted
with organizing literary life in the city. Dan further assured Wat that he
understood the precariousness of his position as a fellow traveler whose
relations with the Party had cooled, and that they should go together to see
Korneichuk at the Hotel George. We waited for a long time in front of his
room, his suite, Wat described, then out came two very good-looking,
ample-bottomed girls, and a little while later he invited us in. He was
wearing silk pajamas, acquired in Lww of course, and a lot of cologne.
He had the charm of a waiter.25 Korneichuk struck Wat as possessing the
kind of beauty alluring to homosexuals, masculine, but at once servile,
sweet-scented.26 They spoke little that day. Korneichuk told Wat that he

a u t u m n in soviet galicia 1 59

had heard about him and would be glad if Wat would join the board of
the Writers Union.
From room 31 of the Hotel George Korneichuk ruled over cultural
life in Lvov. There were two lists on his desk: communists and noncommunists, respectively, with whom he intended to initiate cooperation. The
second list included Wanda Wasilewska and Tadeusz Boy-eleski. Very
soon, still in early autumn, there was a meeting called of the literary Left.
Wat was elected to chair the meeting; he listened as Korneichuk told them:
You dont trust us, I know that, and I dont require any trust from you in
advance. Have a good look at us. We have time; take a year or two. If you
like it, wonderful; if not, tough. Its up to you. But meanwhile, well give
you conditions in which you can live, work, and observe us in action. We
wont put any pressure on any of you; we wont use any propaganda on
you. Youll judge for yourselves. You should take your time. Why rush?
There shouldnt be any rush.27 By late October, the Writers Union of
Polish, Ukrainian, and Jewish writers was operating with an organizational board including Aleksander Dan, Halina Grska, Boy-eleski,
Broniewski, and Wat.28
The Writers Club was located on the rst oor of a palace, once the
property of Count Bielski. The count still lived upstairs with his beautiful wife, whose lovers were rumored to have perished in duels over
her hand.29 Bielskis palace was both a haven and a trap for Wat and his
colleagues. The NKVD did much recruiting there; the Stalinist security
apparatus was ubiquitous in the Writers Union, as elsewhere in Lvov.30
Broniewski kept away from the Writers Club, saying he preferred not to
see his old friends and colleagues in that place.31 One day Boy-eleski
and Wat were taken aside there and told to sign a resolution expressing
satisfaction at the incorporation of Western Ukraine into the Soviet Union.
Both grew pale; they were made to understand that the consequences
would be harsh if they declined. Boy-eleski turned to Wat, asking him
what they should do, but Wat was at a loss as well. They were granted a
fteen-minute grace period to make their decision. In the end, both Wat
and Boy signed their names.32
The Writers Union was not the only Polish cultural institution recon
gured by the new Soviet regime. A Polish Theater was established in autumn 1939 with Broniewski as literary supervisor and Daszewski as scenic
designer. The Ossolineum, which was a library, museum, and scholarly

16 0 a u t u m n i n s ov i e t g a l i c i a

publishing house founded in the nineteenth century, was reincarnated

under Jerzy Borejszas supervision; Tadeusz Peiper and the once avantgarde poet Julian Przybo found positions for themselves there.33 Relations
were tense between Wasilewska and Borejsza, whoJerzy Putrament
noticedwas perpetually unkempt: His clothing always covered with
dandru, unshaven, with a cigarette dangling from his lower lip. His
hair in disarray. His hand in his pocket.34 Wat had met the former catas
trophist poet Putrament several years earlier, in the mid-1930s, when
Putrament had traveled to Warsaw from Wilno with the idea of beginning
a Warsaw-Wilno publication. Now in Lvov they began to see each other
more often.

inside cze rwo ny s z t a n d a r

When Julian Stryjkowskis protagonist Artur put his mother on a boat
to Palestine, he waited until the last moment to tell her that she was going alone, that he would stay in Poland. After the Nazi invasion, when
in Lvov Artur encountered Leon the onetime Zionist, now opportunistsympathizer, Leon quickly asked him where he was working. When Artur
answered nowhere, Leon oered him a job at the newspaper Czerwony
Sztandar, where Leon was administrative director. The editorial oces of
the newly formed Polish-language Soviet newspaper became the setting
for much of the rest of the novel and its themes of navet, terror, and
antisemitism. Czerwony Sztandar was Stalinist in both form and content.
Gone was the wild, experimental Marxism of the 1920s, the proletarian
poetry of Dwignia, the Talmudic polemics of Miesicznik Literacki. Czer
wony Sztandar drew upon a codied Stalinist idiom and underscored that
Polands fall was irrevocable.35 A declaration of the Polish writers support for the incorporation of Western Ukraine into Soviet Ukraine was
published in November 1939. It was signed by Jerzy Borejsza, Wadysaw
Broniewski, Tadeusz Boy-eleski, Aleksander Dan, Halina Grska, Aleksander Wat, and Adam Wayk, among others. Broniewski was ill at the
time, but someone else had signed his name.36
Czerwony Sztandars sta included Adam Wayk and Julian Stryjkow
ski. At the urging of Aleksander Dan, who insisted it would be the safest
place for him, Wat accepted a position at Czerwony Sztandar as well; he
shared an oce with Wayk.37 The atmosphere in the editorial oces
was macabre. Anyone could denounce anyone at any time; anyone could

a u t u m n in soviet galicia 1 61

become his co-workers executioner. In the proofreading room Wat was

overcome with a terror-laden obsession that he would overlook errorsin
particular the fatal error of misspelling Stalin as Sralin (Shitlin).
Stryjkowski shared this obsessionand in the end was red for a proofreading error, albeit a less deadly one: he inadvertently reduced the anniversary of the founding of the Red Army by one year. For an error involving
Stalins name, Stryjkowski could have been shot.38 Everything was treated
with deathly seriousness. Wat was largely silent, sitting hunched over with
his coat around his shoulders as if he were perpetually cold. At moments
he would smile sadly, Stryjkowski wrote, and then he would look at you
with eyes full of cruel knowledge.39
For Ola Watowa as for all of them, Lvov was a place of great fear. She
was certain that most of those working at the paper did not believe in
communism. Perhaps, she thought, Wayk and a few others remained
believers, but they were the exceptions; the others hoped that employment there would save them from persecution.40 Stryjkowski arrived at
the newspapers oces barefoot, hungry, homeless. He wanted to survive.
Yet it was not only desperation, but also communist faith that brought
him to Czerwony Sztandar.41 Wayk, who nine years earlier had kept his
distance from Miesicznik Literacki, now was full of faith. He concluded
his poem Do inteligenta uchodcy (To the Intellectual-Refugee) with
the ecstatic line The past will fall o you and what remains will be the
primitive form of the new man!42 In a New Years article Wayk wrote in
Czerwony Sztandar: We welcome the year 1940 as the beginning of a new
epoch for us, as incentive and training for free and happy work. ... Our
fortune-telling: the irrefutable certainty, based on Marxist knowledge, that
we are champions of an idea coming to embrace the entire world.43
Aleksander Wat was disgusted with himself. He wrote no poetry about
Stalin, but he lied. He was terried for his family, and he pretended he
had regained his faith in communism. Awaiting arrest, he in the meantime told lies, in cafs, conversations, union meetings, saying that I was
a communist 100 percent, that now I understood everything, that Stalin
was a wise man.44 Among these acts of dissimulation was a panegyrical
article about the new Soviet woman, liberated from her oppression by
the Bolshevik Revolution: Daughters of urban and provincial poverty,
today delegates to the Supreme Soviet, directors of factories, pilots, engi
neersleading representatives of the millions of fully valued, equally

162 a u t u m n i n s ov i e t g a l i c i a

enfranchised Soviet women. Among them are women who grew up in the
gloom and destitution of the tsarist times, treated like dirt by their parents,
husbands, lawmakers, women whom October made conscious, educated,
made equal in rights with men, inspired with the revolutionary will to
build and brought forth in the rst ranks of the daily battle for socialism.45
Wat also joined in the condemnation of prewar Poland: Autumn 1939 was
the last autumn of autocratic Poland, oppressing classes and nations. This
autumn not only leftist, but all respectable writers ed from the shame
and infamy of their country, becoming refugees in socialism, as the poet
S. Kirsanov said.46 This oppressive Poland Wat contrasted with a glowing portrait of Soviet Lvov, where the observer is struck by the mental
state of those who frequent the cafsjoyful greetings, sparkling eyes,
an unrestrained tone. He wrote of the militant and often noble tradition of Polish leftist literature, a literature that had developed in adverse
conditions and despite the ceaseless persecution of Marxist periodicals.
He told of his attempts to extend the life of Miesicznik Literacki by preparing an issue in Warsaw, registering it in Lww, printing it in Pozna, and
sending it back to Warsaw. He spoke as well of Broniewski, Wasilewska,
and Grska, of Przybo and Stern, the former futurist and translator
of Mayakovsky. Perhaps it was in retaliation for Wayks faith that Wat
mentioned Wayk critically, as the author of one of the most beautiful
collections of Polish pure poetry who more recently had been composing prose that was somewhat obscure and far removed from life.47
This may well have been an article that the editors touched upa few
sentences excised, a few adjectives added, a few words changed. Nonetheless, Wat felt ashamed. Poland was undergoing a tragedy, he later said,
and there I was taking the grand tone.48
At least once Wat engaged in formal self-criticism. It was during a
purge of Czerwony Sztandars sta. A group of two or three arrived at the
editorial oces, one of them a good-looking redhead but a forbidding
girl.49 Aleksander Dan was left untouched; the others remained, as ever,
under suspicion. Everyone was seated in a certain room; each was required
to tell his life story. I played it like an actor, knowing that I was playing
for my life and Olas, Wat described. He performed inner surgery: I
played it like an actor, splitting myself in two. ... Like a guillotine. And
then he spoke: yes, he had said in the past that there was terror in the
Soviet Union, that everyone lived in fear, but now that he was among

a u t u m n in soviet galicia 1 63

Soviet people himself, now that he spoke with them every day, he saw
how wrong he been. How could anyone even imagine that there was terror here, when the city was full of lively, spontaneous, fearless people?
Afterwards he went home to Ola, bathed in sweat. Apparently the inner
surgery had been ecacious. Yes, yes, one of the communists on the
editorial board said to him, your self-criticism was convincing, but you
left out one thing you shouldnt haveyour friendship with Stawar.50 In
this way Wat knew that in the cafs and in the Writers Union his friendship with Andrzej Stawar was still being discussed. Notwithstanding his
performance, Wats position was not secure. By January of 1940, his coworkers in the editorial oces were afraid to speak to him. There were
signs he would be arrested, that Broniewski would be, too. Wat learned
quickly that in the Soviet Union these things could be sensed in advance
because a void forms around a person.51

the poet wh o m o u rn e d t o o m u c h f o r wa r s aw
Wadysaw Broniewski, against the wishes of Czerwony Sztandars editors,
declined to join the newspapers sta. Such a decision made him still more
vulnerable. Our beloved Wadeczek is a great revolutionary poet, some
said, but why doesnt he want to work with us in our proletarian publication?52 Broniewski, the most deeply attached to the legacy of nineteenthcentury Polish patriotism, experienced the fall of Poland the most painfully. He drankand wrote poetry. And for a time he was honored by
the new authorities. Wat wrote of him as the favorite of the working
masses, the bard of the Polish peoples battle and suering, and at once
a subtle, innovative lyrical poet.53 Dan, too, published a laudatory article.
In [Broniewskis] poetry, Dan wrote, we see the Polish reality that, until
recently, we experienced in all of its sordidness and baseness: abuse by the
counterintelligence service, mass murders in the city and in the village,
cruel oppression of the Ukrainian and Jewish masses, the suppression
of any kind of instinct for political independence. Broniewskis poetry
hastened with words of encouragement to every place where the man of
labor suered and fought.54
That autumn Broniewski wrote to M. Zhivov, now his own Russian
translator, We are all suering very much from the destruction and cruel
fate of Poland. We hope that within a short time the conditions of inter
national politics will change in such a way that we will return to Red

164 a u t u m n i n s ov i e t g a l i c i a

Warsaw.55 Zhivov was not alone in his eagerness to see Broniewskis latest
work. Czerwony Sztandar also requested new poems from Broniewski; he
gave them olnierz polski (The Polish Soldier), written in September
1939 and beginning with the line that had already become well known in
the cafs: With his head lowered, slowly / goes the soldier from German
bondage.56 The Soviet Union was still allied with Nazi Germany, and
Czerwony Sztandar rejected The Polish Soldier.57 Witold Kolski, who had
worked with Broniewski and Hempel on Nowa Kultura in the 1920s and
was now one of Czerwony Sztandars editors, reproached Broniewski for
his independent position during the time of Dwignia and Miesicznik
Literacki and attacked him for what he was now writingand what he
was now not writing.58 But Broniewski, unable to adjust to the new reality,
would not be silenced. There oated about Lvov a second poem, Syn
podbitego narodu (Son of a Conquered Nation):
Son of a conquered nation, son of an independent verse,
Of what, how can I sing, when my home lies in debris,
in ruins?
September as the tank rolled through my fatherlands breast,
And my hand defenseless, defenseless my fatherland.
I will return to that land, I want to save her, to deliver her
From there I want to set the worlds heart aame by the re
of a poem
I want socialism to grow with the concrete from Warsaws
ruins,
I want St. Marys bugle-call to rustle with the red banner.
Beautiful, proud Warsaw, glory to your ruins,
I want to count, and to kiss your suering bricks.
Give me your hand, Belarus, give me your hand, Ukraine,
Give me your hammer and sickle, independent, for the road.59
Now Broniewski wandered the streets of Lvov, dazed and enraged, drinking
vodka and reciting his poetry on every possible occasion.60 He stubbornly
refused to accept the incompatibility of his communist sympathies and his
Polish patriotism. In the background an atmosphere of terror continued
unabated. But Broniewski was not predisposedor not ableto hide
his doubts; he had never been known for his diplomatic grace. Moreover,

a u t u m n in soviet galicia 1 65

Wat told, he was still raving on about a Soviet Poland and singing songs
like Moskva moya, Moskva moya (Moscow, my Moscow). He had all that
inside him at the same time, meaning that his emotional experiences were
in a frenzy before he intellectualized them: a patriot, Poland, Polands
defeat, the Soviets, their friendship with the Germans, not being allowed
to read anti-German patriotic poems.61
Broniewski had heard nothing from his family. Then the Soviet authori
ties intervened with their allies, the Nazis, to allow Wanda Wasilewskas
family to leave German-occupied Poland and reunite with her in Lvov.
Permission was granted for ve people, but Wasilewskas mother refused
to leave, and Franciszek Bogatko, Wasilewskas brother-in-law, likewise
declined. There were now extra spaces on the pass, and Broniewskis wife
Marysia Zarbiska and her daughter Majka were invited to accompany
Wasilewskas daughter Ewa to Lvov.62 In this way Broniewski was reunited
with his wife and stepdaughter, and at a holiday celebration Majka was to
recite her stepfathers childrens poem Lotniczka (The Girl-Pilot). The
verse, however, was rejected by the censors for its patriotism, particularly
that implicit in the last stanza:
Ill dare to y over mountains and sea,
for a moment above oliborz to be,
There I want to see our little place,
of which today remains but a trace,
There I want to see my own city,
always most dear, though no longer so pretty.
The censors demanded that Majka leave out this last passage. Broniewski insisted that she recite either the whole piece or nothing at all.
Majka was loyal to her stepfather: she appeared on stage, and stood in
silence.63

the scene o f t h e c r i m e
Broniewski ignored warnings; he continued, as he always had, to recite his
poems, which circulated by word of mouth, and easily found their way into
anticommunist hands. His friends, including Soviet communists, were
concerned about him. This was so, as Wasilewska understood, because of
his psychological makeup, his relationship to alcohol, the irresponsibility
of some of his declarations, which we didnt take seriously, but if someone

166 a u t u m n i n s ov i e t g a l i c i a

wanted to take them seriously, literally, it could bring unpleasant consequences. There were omens his position was precarious, and it seemed
to some who knew him that Broniewski signed his own sentence. 64
There was talk of trying to take him away from Lvov to Moscow as soon as
possible, as Wasilewska and others believed that in Moscow everything
would be okay, but in Lvov some kind of misfortune could result.65
Some kind of misfortune did result. It happened January of 1940,
when autumn had passed and it was already winter in Lvov. Wat remained
unusual among his friends in his lack of taste for vodka. He did not often
go to bars, but now in Lvov he went out every so often with Daszewski.
They had been very close during the period of Miesicznik Literacki. Now
Daszewski was director of the Polish Theater and Wat told him openly
that he wanted to extricate himself from Czerwony Sztandar and asked
Daszewski to nd him a job at the theater. This never came to pass. Instead, one evening in Lvov, when Wayk was visiting with Wat and his
family, Daszewski appeared at the doorstep. He seemed to Ola Watowa
to be very excited, and said that he had spoken to the militia chief about
arranging for his wife to cross the border from the German zone to Lvov.
He regretted that they had not spent more time together thus far, and told
them it was nally time to get together and talk, that he was planning a
party at a restaurant and intended to invite all of their Warsaw friends. Wat
protested: they did not go out at night. Daszewski insisted. It had already
been arranged, he told them.66
On the evening of the party the featured author at the Writers Union
was the young poet Leon Pasternak, who as a boy had worshipped Broniew
ski and dreamt of being invited to join the Skamandrites table on the
platform at Caf Ziemiaska. Now he was an adult, a poet in his own
right, and the room of the poetry reading was lled to capacity. People
stood in the hallway because all the seats were taken. Among those in the
corridor waiting for the reading to conclude were Ola Watowa, Marysia
Zarbiska, and Sterns wife, Alicja Sternowa. Daszewski found them
there and reminded them about his party, inviting them to go in his car,
saying their husbands would follow. At that moment Tadeusz Peiper appeared. Daszewski was pleased to see him, and told Peiper he had heard
that Peiper had written a play before the war, which Daszewski was now
interested in producing in Lvov. Peiper, excited, wanted to run home at
once to retrieve the manuscript, but Daszewski restrained him, and invited

a u t u m n in soviet galicia 167

him to the restaurant, saying they would talk there. Downstairs a black
limousine with a chaueur awaited them. Ola Watowa was astonished by
the car; she asked Daszewski where he had acquired it. He told her his
friends had lent it to him, and she should get in. She did.
The atmosphere in Lvov was not conducive to parties, and Wat remained unenthusiastic about Daszewskis invitation. He persuaded Wayk
to join him, although Wayk had been likewise reluctant: it seemed to
him Daszewski had not really invited him. They prepared to leave. Then
Aleksander Dan, pale, found Wat and grabbed him. He begged Wat not to
go. But it was too late. Ola was already at the restaurant waiting for him,
and it was their thirteenth anniversary. Outside the winter sun was bright.
Snow was falling; it melted quickly onto the streets of Lvov. There was a
warm, gusty wind drying the sidewalks; early spring was in the air. On
the second oor of an abandoned apartment, the restaurant was spread
through an enormous three or four rooms, and Daszewski had arranged
for a large table in a private room. Ola Watowa sat down next to Marysia
Zarbiska, and Zarbiska next to Daszewski, who played the host, moving about and asking his guests what they desired, ordering vodka and
hors-doeuvres. When Watowa reminded him that no one had very much
money, he quieted her, telling her not to worry. Broniewski had not been
at the poetry reading; and when he appeared at the restaurant, he was
greeted with applause. He had already been drinking.
Ola Watowa began to drink as well. She was petite and it required
little alcohol to lift her mood. Broniewski began to make jokes, and her
apprehensions about the evening dissipated. She turned to Daszewski,
You know, you were right, its nice to be here.67 Then the doors to the
private room opened and an unfamiliar couple walked in. The man was
tall and bald and seemed to Ola Watowa unearthly and gorilla-like. His
expression struck Wat as caustic. The bald mans date was an attractive
blonde actress from the Polish Theater with a promiscuous reputation.
She was heavily made up and wore long black gloves and a black hat with
a large brim. Ola Watowa, in her mind, named her Marlene Dietrich.
The couple walked silently to a small table in the corner and sat down.
Daszewski stood up, approached them, exchanged a few words, and then
returned to his own table. This was a well-known Soviet art historian who
wanted to become acquainted with Polish writers, he told his friends.
Everyone agreed.

168 a u t u m n i n s ov i e t g a l i c i a

The couple sat down at one end of the table, a door covered by a curtain behind them. It was impossible to hear very well over all the talking.
Ola Watowa listened as a Polish poet active in the peasant movement
attempted to begin a conversation with the actress, whom he seemed
already to know. Wat supposed that there must have been some kind of
unfriendly exchange between Broniewski and the Soviet art historian,
because a moment later Wat saw Broniewski clenching his teeth and
the peasant movement activist leaning in front of the Russian man and
saying something to the actress. Leon Pasternak noticed that Broniewski
had become enraged; Broniewski stood up and made a gesture with his
hand, as if to shield the actress from attack. At that moment, the peasant
poet got a st in his face from the art historian, who revealed himself to
be quite strong, whisking away the tablecloth and sending bottles, plates,
and food ying o the table. The yanking away of the tablecloth served
as a signal; now several NKVD ocers ew into the room and hurled
themselves at Daszewskis guests. Pasternak looked on as one of them, a
drunken giant, grabbed onto the arm of the chair, swerved to the back,
and thrust himself onto Wadek. ... The squeal of women, screams, on
some faces blood. Above me a table leg whistled, the tops of the tables
were ying, bottles under legs, pieces of glass. Everyone in everything.68
Broniewski and Peiper struggled with their attackers on the oor. Wat
was hit in the jaw; one of his teeth came loose and blood poured from
his face. He fell over.
In minutes the entirety of the private room was demolished. There
were broken windows and broken glasses, the smell of spilled alcohol. Ola
Watowa crawled to her husband under the ying bottles; she poured water
on him and pulled him out into the larger room, where she sat him down,
half-conscious, at a table; she wet a napkin and wiped his face. Pasternak
and his wife soon found Wat in the next room with a handkerchief in his
mouth, and brought him a glass of water. Wats hands were shaking, there
were tears in his eyes. He showed Pasternak his teeth, which were loose
in his gums. Pasternaks wife took a handkerchief from her purse, wet
it with water, and told him to put it on his lips. At a certain moment the
doors to the private room opened and Daszewski came out. It was time to
get out of there, he told Wayk. Ola Watowa ran to Daszewski and asked
him what was happening. He did not say a word. The cloakroom clerk was
ready with his coat and hat; Daszewski took them silently and opened the

a u t u m n in soviet galicia 1 69

doors leading to the stairway. Ola Watowa hung onto him, calling out to
him. Daszewski remained silent. He ran down the stairs and she followed.
On the stairs two rows of NKVD ocers stood with bayonets in their ries.
They let Daszewski pass, but pushed her back into the restaurant. She
ran then to Wayk, who was already wearing his coat, preparing to leave,
and told him that Wat was not well and needed help. Wayk gave his coat
back to the cloakroom attendant and went to Wat.
In the foyer a crowd of people pushed its way towards the exit. The
NKVD began to check documents, allowing some people to leave, detaining others. Pasternak went to retrieve his coat from the cloakroom attendant; he argued for Wats as well. He tried to convince the attendant he
would bring her the ticket in a little whileand then gave her a big tip.
When Pasternak returned from the cloakroom, he found only the waiters
sweeping up, and his wife, who told him that Wat had been called into the
other room by an ocer. They ed, leaving Wats coat on a chair.
Outside gas lanterns colored the snow blue. Ola Watowa, Marysia
Zarbiska, and Tadeusz Peipers girlfriend were among the women who
waited on the sidewalk. Walking in knee-deep snow, Pasternak and his
wife found a good observation point by a narrow gate; there they watched
the customers as they left the restaurant. And then no one was coming
out any longer. After some time had passed the black limousine that had
taken the women to the restaurant approached, and Wat, Peiper, Stern,
and Broniewski were led outside. Soon afterwards the black car departed,
now with those arrested as its passengers, to Zamarstynw prison.69

a call for v i g i l a n c e
Wayk believed that Daszewski was innocent, that he must not have under
stood the consequences of his invitation.70 Nevertheless, the die was cast,
and Wayk was among those who abandoned Ola Watowa and would
cross the street when they saw her. It was a time of great fear for all of
them, and no one came to visit her. She went to see Aleksander Dan, who
looked at her in terror and turned her away. One evening the prose writer
Adolf Rudnicki did appear, unannounced, leaving without a word after
a few minutes, and she could feel how much courage this took. She was
visited as well by a former classmate, who once upon a time had fallen in
love with her at a school performance. His was an unrequited love, an
amusing youthful love with tears. When the classmate, now married,

17 0 a u t u m n i n s ov i e t g a l i c i a

found out what had happened, he came to Watowa to tell her in parting
that she was the only woman he had ever really loved. One day another
man came to her as well, a stranger who approached her on the street
and whispered to her to go to the nearest gate. There he said that he knew
about the arrests, and that she had been left alone with a child and no
means of support. He asked her to accept a thousand rubles from him,
which she would doubtlessly repay when Wat was released from prison,
and refused to leave until she had taken the money. He was someone
who had once played in the orchestra at the Warsaw cabaret Qui pro Quo,
where he had known Wat.71
Soon after the arrests, the editorial secretary at Czerwony Sztandar
pushed towards Stryjkowskis ctional alter ego Artur the issue of the
newspaper with a feuilleton by Konarski. Among others, Artur said,
Broniewski had been arrested. In fact almost the entire feuilleton by the
former member of the Central Committee was devoted to him. The great
proletarian poet revealed to be a masked traitor, a double agent, an ocer
of Pisudski. In a conversation with one of his co-workers at the newspaper, Artur confessed he never would have believed that those arrested
were traitors. In response he was told that the enemy masked himself. It
grew quiet around the empty chair of the arrested poet.72
Stryjkowskis Konarski was Witold Kolski, an editor at Czerwony Sztan
dar, a KPP activist and former political prisoner in interwar Poland. Kolskis
article Crush the Nationalist Reptiles! appeared in Czerwony Sztandar
three days after Wat, Broniewski, Peiper, and Stern were taken to Lvovs
Zamarstynw prison. It was the time of the intensication of the class
struggle and the call for heightened vigilance and ceaseless unmasking of
servants of capital, Trotskyite-Bukharinite agents of counterrevolution,
and nationalist instigators. Kolski wrote of the arrests of a group of de
praved persons who had been passing as revolutionary writers. Their
moral depravity and drunken orgies had been the backdrop against which
they had conducted their counterrevolutionary activities:
The entire past of these people points to the fact that they did
not come to Soviet soil in order to, together with workers, peasants and the intelligentsia, honestly and earnestly work for the
communist cause. ... Not for this reason did Broniewski come
here, the Legionnaire captain, the ocer of the Second Depart-

a u t u m n in soviet galicia 1 71

ment (military counterintelligence) from the times of the

war of White Poland against the Soviet republic, an inveterate
alcoholic. ... Not for this reason did Stern come here, who
in gentlemens Poland began his career with the counter
revolutionary Jasieski in a literary group spreading the rot
of decaying bourgeois cultureand ended it as the writer
of hurrah-nationalist Polish lms in honor of Pisudski. Not
for this reason did Wat come here, who conducted Trotskyite
agitation in Warsaw, nor Pajper [sic], pursuing to the end
degenerate, anti-peoples literary activity.73
In a conversation with his cousin Rachela, the voice of morality and
clear-sightedness with whom Artur, at this point in Stryjkowskis novel,
was now having a romantic relationship, Artur noted that the Soviet powers had not hesitated to arrest the revolutionary poet Broniewski. Their
conversation continued:
Konarski called the scene by its name in his feuilleton.
Thats slander. Do you prefer slander to lying? Rachela sat
down and hugged her arms around her knees.
Was Broniewski not Pisudskis ocer?
Youve gone crazy!
Those are facts!
And all of his poetry doesnt count?
What counts is his political past, and its not possible to
completely liberate yourself from that. Unfortunately!
What kind of past? Whats wrong with the fact that he was
in the Legions? After all I heard that even Wanda Wasilewska
was angry about Konarskis article.74
Wanda Wasilewska was indeed angry. She learned of the arrests at six
oclock the following morning. Shortly afterwards she left Lvov for a trip
east, believing there had been some kind of drunken scene but not knowing exactly who had been arrested, and believing it all to have been a misunderstanding that would clear itself up within twenty-four hours. The story
about the arrests having been the result of a drunken brawl was spread
for a long time, despite the fact that witnesses unambiguously described
to Wasilewska that the scene was entirely provoked, from beginning to

172 a u t u m n i n s ov i e t g a l i c i a

end. She learned concretely that some people had been brought to the
restaurant on purpose, so as to be arrested.75 She was upset further, upon
returning to Lvov, to discover that Jerzy Putrament and two of his Polish
colleagues were collecting signatures for a petition condemning those
arrested. Wayk was terried, but he refused to sign.76
Wasilewska tried to calm Marysia Zarbiska and Ola Watowa, reassuring them that it had undoubtedly been a mistake and their husbands
would be released. She promised to do everything possible. And she did.
The process drew out indenitely, beginning with interventions with local
authorities and continuing in Kiev and Moscow. She spoke to Stalin, who
called Beria and asked him to investigate the matter. She spoke then to
Beria for a long time; it was their rst conversation. He told her that his
apparatus was searching for Broniewski, but that his name did not appear in the Soviet prison registry; since he could not be found, it was not
possible to release him. He promised Wasilewska they would continue
to search.77

wanda was i l e w s k a , m a n o f s t at e
Now, after the arrests, Wasilewska took over Broniewskis job as literary
supervisor of the Polish Theater.78 She remained no less passionate a believer in the Soviet system, and Wat was among those who had no doubt
her passion was authentic. As for me, he wrote, I saw Wasilewska; I
spoke with her. The air was full of lies; many of the old communists were
lying, but I am absolutely certain that she was sincere.79 Wasilewska
came to occupy an exceptional place in Lvov; this was the moment of her
extraordinary rise to power. She had never been a member of the KPP;
all through the interwar years she had remained a PPS activist. Now this
made her all the more worthy of the Soviets trust: the previous year Stalin
had dissolved the Communist Party of Poland, and Soviet functionaries
were often suspicious of former KPP members.80 Stryjkowski saw that
within Wasilewska, the daughter of a liberal socialist, there remained
very many authentically humanitarian remnants. She and Wat had never
been close, but Wat respected the fact that in the Soviet Union, amidst
fear and terror, she behaved very decently and maintained rm moral
principles and Kinderstube.81 She did what she could to help her friends
and colleagues, and it was a time when she could do very much. From
Stryjkowskis point of view, [h]er signature meant nearly as much as

a u t u m n in soviet galicia 1 73

did Stalins.82 On one occasion, as a train lled with Poles about to be

deported into the Soviet interior was departing, Wasilewska ran onto the
railway platform and pulled Boy-eleski, the literary historian and essayist Jan Kott, and two Polish painters o the train.83 She promised to do
all she could for the two Bundist leaders Wiktor Alter and Henryk Erlich,
her former comrades from the Popular Front years, upon their arrests in
1939, and in the next few months was at least successful in learning and
relaying the news that they remained alive.84
Wasilewskas position during this period was inseparable from the
personal relationship she developed with Stalin. Rumors circulated that
they were lovers. Her novels had been published in Moscow before the
war, and Stalin was favorably predisposed towards her before they had
even met. When Wasilewska was responsive to Korneichuks summons
by radio and, once in Lvov, revealed herselfdespite her PPS pastto be
very clearly on their side, she was immediately taken under special Soviet
care. It was early winter of 19391940 when Wasilewska met Stalin for the
rst time. She had gone to Moscow with her former KPP liaison Szymon
Natanson and inquired as to how one went about making an appointment
with Stalin. She was told to put her request in writing. Wasilewska was
from Cracow; unlike her Warsaw friends, she had not been educated in
Russian. It thus fell to Natanson to write the letter, saying that Wasilewska
was requesting a personal meeting as she had many matters to see to
on the terrain of Western Ukraine. Wasilewska signed it. Afterwards she
received a phone call informing her that Stalin had received her letter
and would see her; he wanted to know how long she would be staying in
Moscow. She waited. Then, on the day she was set to depart to Lvov, the
same person telephoned with the message that Stalin had asked to see
her and a car was on its way. Wasilewska brought her luggage with her.85
Upon seeing Wasilewska in person, Stalin oered her tea and cigarettes
and remarked how much she looked like her fatheradding, Your father
worked against us, and you are with us, with the communists. Dialectics.86 He inquired about her impressions regarding the mood among
Poles. A war with Germany would come sooner or later, he told her.87
In March 1940 her position was heightened further by her election
to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. These spring elections saw
Wasilewska again drawing upon the oratorical talent that had made her
so valuable in PPS circles before the war. In a meeting with voters at the

174 a u t u m n i n s ov i e t g a l i c i a

end of the same month, Wasilewska expressed how moved she was to be
part of the Soviet Union:
Just six months ago the Red Army was a legend and a dream
for me. Just six months ago it was something far away,
unreachable.
And now Im standing among them. Im speaking to them.
Im listening to their wordswords about the Soviet Union,
about the international brotherhood of the Soviet nations.
And its dicult for me to speak. And I feel stupid because
tears are falling from my eyes, because my voice is stuck in my
throat. Theythe soldiers of the Red Armyare the ones who
are to vote for me. Smiling youthful faces, comrades, young
comrades, who have grown up under the red banner, for you
cannot understand what it is for me, for a person hunted and
persecuted, a person who for years has observed the most appalling aspects of the dismal life of slaves, to stand here among
you, and for you to express words of condence to me, for you
to smile warmly at me, to squeeze my handyou, to whom I
owe freedom and life and a homeland, your homeland and
mine, the homeland of the worldwide proletariat.88

a very brie f s t ay i n lvov

Marian Bogatko did not experience newly Soviet Lvov with the same euphoria as his wife. Unlike Wasilewska, Bogatko had doubts. He was indiscreet in his comments about Nazi Germany, which at this time was treated
with ocial respect as a Soviet ally. People saw him as withdrawing, as
reluctant to cooperate with her, as a potential obstacle in her work.89 After he and Wasilewska returned from their travels to Moscow and Kiev,
Bogatko pointed out to his wife that she saw only what was shown to her,
whereas he saw the workers poverty, their despair, and their hopelessness.
He saw apartments it would be dicult to dene as habitable for humans,
he saw people without food, without clothing, without shoes. Wasilewska
grew enraged; she refused to allow such conversations in her home. 90
But the former bricklayer felt, as Ola Watowa understood him, that as a
proletarian in a proletarian statethat is, in a country that theoretically
belonged to himhe could say everything he was thinking.91

a u t u m n in soviet galicia 1 75

Wat and Broniewski were friendly with Bogatko, whom Wat described
as a fantastic athlete, a truly handsome young man, always game for anything. He was intelligent, quick, with a sense of humor, strong, cheerful.
He believed that Wasilewska loved Bogatko very much. One afternoon,
after Bogatko and Wasilewska had returned from Kiev, there was a mass
rally in Lvov. Wasilewska was speaking about her recent trip; and Wat went
with Broniewski and Bogatko:
It was the usual bombasthappy life, everything is rosy, all the
clichs that were ever used in the press. But she spoke with real
passion, re. A tough, dry, big-boned woman, with a broad, at
face, large powerful eyes; her gestures were passionate.
Afterwards Bogatko said to me and Broniewski, Lets go to
a bar. And so he dragged us to a bar; he drank like mad. And
just imagine, in a bar full of Soviet ocers, Bogatko started
telling us all sorts of other things right after that meeting, his
voice booming, Remember when you go to Kiev, as soon as
you get to Kiev, when you take your rst step o the train, grab
onto your bags with one hand and your cap with the other, or
theyll snatch it right o your head.92
Wat and Broniewski trembled from fearbut laughed at the same time.93
Bogatko later complained of being followed by intelligence agents, and
conded to someone that he had plans of returning to German-occupied
Warsaw, even if he had to go alone.94
Bogatko never did return to Warsaw. One day in April 1940 unknown
perpetrators rang the doorbell of the villa where Bogatko lived with
Wasilewska and her daughter Ewa. He opened the door. The visitors shot
him. Another resident of the villa heard the perpetrators telephone their
superior afterwards to say that the order had been carried out.95 Bogatko,
wounded, was taken to the hospital, where a Polish friend, a doctor, was
not allowed to see him. Within a short time he was dead.96 Some believed
that Bogatko had died from a bullet intended for Wasilewska; the ocial
account attributed the assassination to Ukrainian nationalists. When Wat
learned of Bogatkos death from a Ukrainian prisoner who joined their
cell, he had no doubt it was the work of the NKVD. He believed it to be a
message sent to Wasilewska so that she would have no illusions. Point
de rveries.97

176 a u t u m n i n s ov i e t g a l i c i a

Nikita Khrushchev had been assured, even before he met her, that
Wasilewska would understand the Soviet position and would be on their
side; and he was very intrigued as to who she could be. When Wasilewska
nally did appear in Lvov, it was in a short sheepskin coat and ordinary
shoes, looking like a simple woman, although she had come from noble
Polish stock. She never betrayed the slightest shame for her PPS past or
for her father, and Khrushchev became an admirer of Wasilewska, and
in particular of her honesty and directness. I heard myself, he wrote,
how she said very unpleasant things straight to Stalins face. Despite
that he listened to her, and afterwards invited her many times for ocial
and unocial conversations, for social lunches and dinners. Wasilewska
had such character!98 Given his fondness for her, Khrushchev was very
disturbed to learn that their Chekists had killed her husband:
It was an accidental killing, as they admitted to me honestly.
Yet I was shaken. Wanda Lvovnas husband belonged to the
PPS, he had working-class roots, although he was less active
than she was. Immediately the question emerged: How will
this matter be reected in Wasilewskas relationship to us?
Will she not think that we did away with her husband for some
kind of political reasons? Dierent things can come into ones
head in the aftermath of such a tragedy. I told my Ukrainians,
Korneichuk and Bazhan: explain to Wanda Lvovna honestly
how it happened, dont hide anything. ...
We told Wanda Lvovna the whole truth and asked for her
understanding. Wasilewska believed that there had been no
premeditation in this case and she continued to work actively,
and to be well disposed towards us.99
Wanda Wasilewska did continue to be well disposed towards Khru
shchev and the new Soviet order. Not only did she forgive Soviet authorities for the accidental murder of her husband, but she also seemed to
recover from the trauma in good time. Before long she took Oleksandr
Korneichuk as her lover, and later her husband. Marriage to a man who
was a Ukrainian playwright and Soviet dignitary brought her still deeper
into the Soviet life she now embraced. Czerwony Sztandar published an
account of Wasilewskas speech given several months later, in September
1940 when she had already become a delegate to the Supreme Soviet: In

a u t u m n in soviet galicia 177

the most simple words Wasilewska speaks of the great happiness our
Red Army has brought us, of the happiness of stepping onto the open
road leading upwards, towards the sun. In powerful, masculine words,
she challenges her listeners to now, after a year of freedom in work has
passed, perform an honest accounting of their own consciousness and
ascertain if they have always worked and are working with such passion
and dedication as the epochal signicance of our day demands.100
The tall, thin woman with dark circles under glistening eyes became
a man of state.101 She continued to smoke endless cigarettes and took
energetically to the role of representing the Poles to Stalin. He told me,
she later recalled, this sentence I remember perfectly: everyone must
understand that sooner or later we will go to battle with the Nazis and
then the Polish cadres can play a large role.102 This was during her second
meeting with Stalin, when they had a long conversation about every
thing possible, including the status of Polish communists from the nowdissolved KPP and interventions in the matter of Poles who had been
arrested. With respect to the partyless Polish communists, Wasilewska
found a partner in Alfred Lampe, a high-ranking KPP member who had
spent much of the interwar years in Polish prison. She met him for the
rst time only in Lvov, in 1940, when he came to her and said it was necessary to raise the issue of the former KPP members. He hoped to gather
the dispersed Polish communists and rebuild the party, or in some way
reinstate them as communists. The result was a letter to Stalin co-authored
by Lampe and Wasilewska in her Lvov apartment. In the letter they said
nothing about a separate Polish party, but rather inquired about the possibility of accepting Polish communists into the All-Russian Communist
Party. It was not Stalin, but Khrushchev who replied, with an invitation
to breakfast at his apartment. There he told her that Comrade Stalin had
received her letter and regarded it as just that Polish comrades should be
accepted into the All-Russian Communist Party.103
Wasilewska, in her newfound role as man of state, did not neglect
her work in the cultural sphere. On 17 September 1940, Jerzy Borejsza,
Tadeusz Boyeleski, Aleksander Dan, Halina Grska, Julian Przybo,
Jerzy Putrament, Adolf Rudnicki, Wanda Wasilewska, and Adam Wayk
were among the Polish writers who joined the Union of Soviet Writers
of Ukraine as a symbolic gesture on the rst anniversary of the Soviet
takeover of the eastern borderlands.104 Some six months later, in March

178 a u t u m n i n s ov i e t g a l i c i a

1941, a new Polish newspaper, Nowe Widnokrgi (New Horizons) made its
debut in Lvov. By now the intensive Ukrainization campaign had begun
to wane, and Soviet cultural policy towards the Poles had softened.105 The
result was a literary and journalistic endeavor that diered signicantly
from Czerwony Sztandar, and a statement by the editorial board appearing
in the rst issue bore much less of a Stalinist tone: We who live in the
Soviet Union are guardians of that which is best and most wonderful in
the Polish nation.Our publication is to serve Polish culture, its preservation and evolution.106 Wasilewska, Boy-eleski, Przybo, Rudnicki,
Janina Broniewska, and Szymon Natanson were among the papers editors
and contributors.107 Bruno Schulz received a special letter inviting him
to work with Nowe Widnokrgi. He responded with confusion, But what
can I possibly write for them? Im more and more persuaded of how far
I am from actually existing life and how little Im oriented in the spirit
of the times. Somehow everyone has found a place for themselves, but
Ive remained stranded. It comes from a lack of exibility, from a certain
uncompromising attitude, which I do not laud. In the end, Schulz did
send Nowe Widnokrgi a story about the hideous little son of a shoemaker,
but it was rejected. Supposedly one of the members of the editorial sta
told Schulz, we dont need Prousts.108
Nowe Widnokrgi published much poetry. It was decided that a new
Polish translation of Mayakovskys Left March was needed since the
revolutionary poem had originally been translated by the decadent bourgeois liberal Sonimski. It fell to Wayk to undertake the new version.109
Wayks own poem Biograa (Biography) was a response to the success of
Wasilewskas and Lampes appeal to Stalin. It spoke about the verication
processes now taking place for former KPP members applying for membership in the All-Russian Communist Party. Wayk, who had never
belonged to the KPP, rendered empathetically the tragedy of the partyless Polish communists who yes, had committed errors and were guilty
of insucient vigilance, but who had paid their dues in Polish prison,
suering for the Revolution, and who remained sincere and desired more
than anything to redeem themselves:
He pushed aside the prison wall, but how to bear
the burden, still weighing on his heart,

a u t u m n in soviet galicia 179

that he failed to see betrayal in time, that he had

the dignity of Ludwik, but not the vigilance of Feliks?110
Ludwik Waryski was a pioneer of Polish socialism; Feliks Dzieryski
was the founder of the NKVDs predecessor, the Cheka.

a conversat i o n w i t h h i s t o ry
When I heard the key grind in the lock, Wat told, I knew that this was
the last grind of the lock, Judgment Day.111 In his cell Wat fell asleep
and dreamt of being surrounded, about to be arrested. He awoke in a
sweat to nd himself already in prison. The nightmare of waiting was
over. The black limousine that had carried him away from the restaurant
on the snowy January evening of Daszewskis party had delivered him to
Zamarstynw prison in Lvov, where he now found himself, together with
twenty-seven companions, in an eleven-and-a-half-square-meter cell. He
hoped that Wasilewska would manage to free them. There was also the
possibility that a war between the Soviet Union and Germany would come;
at night the prisoners listened for the tanks. In the meantime, Wat began
the process of socialization into his cell. Unlike in Warsaws Centralniak,
in Zamarstynw there was no inspiring solidarity among communists imprisoned by an anticommunist regime. Those in Wats cellcommunists
and anticommunists alikehad been imprisoned by the workers state.
One day a one-armed, right-wing activist, a former student thug, arrived
in their prison cell. As in Centralniak, here, too, Wat had the status of an
intellectual and was called upon to give lectures. On this day he was lecturing about Russian poetry, about Mayakovsky. The right-wing prisoner
grew suspicious; he accused Wat of being a provocateur. Wat was enraged
and tried to strike him, but the man defended himself with his single,
terribly strong arm.112
In prison Wat was tormented: an old and close friend had betrayed
him, delivered him into the hands of the NKVD. Something else tormented
him as well: he would never see Ola again, and he had not said goodbye to
her.113 Now he descended into a period of obsessive guilt and self-reproach,
xating on one memory from his childhood that caused him the most anguish: on one bright summer evening, he had jeered at a young student of
Talmud. As he mocked the boy with peyes and a yarmulka, he saw through

18 0 a u t u m n i n s ov i e t g a l i c i a

the window the boys mother, lying in bed, dying. It was unforgivable. Now
Wat began a period of intensive contemplation of the kind of religious
faith he had mocked as an adolescent. Unlike the communists who were
his prison companions in Warsaw, many of his cellmates in Zamarstynw
were traditional, religious people, Roman Catholics and Ukrainian Greek
Catholics. In their prison cell, they sang prayers and hymns to the Virgin
Mary. Wat was moved by the Ukrainians faith, which seemed to him
beautiful, pure, without obscurantism. Yet this community of believers
excluded Wat, and his alienation tormented him. He envied them their
faith, but found within himself no belief in Gods existenceapart from
the sense that he had been rejected by God for failing to believe in His
existence. His only faith was in this rejection.114
In addition to prayer, the empty hours in the cell were lled with the
killing of copious lice, who behaved most manically after the prisoners
had gone to the baths, perhaps out of anger for having been disturbed.
The prisoners crushed the lice at rst with disgust and then later out of
habit and with pleasure, great pleasure. It almost became a delight, like
vodka, alcohol. The culture of lice-killing fostered a certain technical
prociency. The prisoners began to participate in contests to see who
could kill the most lice. Tallies were kept with great accuracy; the prisoners would write the days date and the number of lice killed on the wall of
their cell. From time to time the number would surpass four hundred. The
most attentive of the lice killers was a young man, a Ukrainian peasant
with a beautiful voice, one of the ugliest people Wat had ever seen, who
resembled a gnome, an earth spirit. He was small, with a nose that was
long and lumpish at the same time. One eye was higher than the other;
one looked to the right, one to the left; one was large and the other small.
His mouth was distinctly crooked, but only one half of it. An extremely
pointed jaw, which looked like a beard. The gnome-like peasant was a
passionate animal lover whose love for animals failed to preclude killing
them. On the contrary, his own lice were insucient for him, and he
begged the other prisoners to let him kill their lice as well. His interactions
with the lice became quite sophisticated. Wat, suering from insomnia,
often heard the peasant playing a game of interrogation with his lice during the night: Confess! What assignment did the Gestapo give you? He
retraced the entire course of his own interrogation with the lice. He was
in no hurry to kill them.115

a u t u m n in soviet galicia 1 81

For Ola Watowa and Marysia Zarbiska lice acquired great sentimental value. Shortly after the arrests, they managed to learn that Wat and
Broniewski were being held at Zamarstynw. They received permission to
send food and a change of underwear, and after waiting for a long time at
the prison gates, their turn came; they delivered their packages and picked
up their husbands dirty undergarments. At home Ola Watowa unpacked
the bundle and saw lice and blood stains on the shirt hems: Lice, which
persecuted him, yet at once lived together with him, so very recently had
been with him, had nourished themselves on his blood. ... And Marysia
Zarbiska calls me and says: Ola, I found lice in Wadeks shirt! And I
said: Me too, me too! Our joy. ... We were both moved. In the bundle of
dirty clothes Watowa found socks as well, with pieces of watolina (padding)
inside. She read the watolina as a code, and her imagination began to
play: socks, so legs. Legs walk. Watolina. Wat goes to Olina (this is what
he called me, he was Ol, and IOlina). And so he was probably telling
me that he would return before long. Wat will return to Olina.116 The
watolina inside Wats socks, however, told a very dierent story.
Not long after the arrests, perhaps still in January, when the prisoners
from the next hall were walking to the latrine, Wat heard Broniewskis
voice. He stood by the door of his cell and whispered, Wadek, have you
heard anything about my family? The answer came: they would talk
tomorrow. The following day, on his way back to his cell from the latrine,
Broniewski whispered to Wat that he had left a note for him by one of
the toilet handles. There Wat found it, pasted to the toilet with a piece of
bread. Written in the note was the prison alphabet. Wat went back to his
cell, and Broniewski began tapping on the wall. Wat was a novice, but
one of his cellmates, a young mathematician, mastered the code quickly.
And so Wat and Broniewski chatted through the wall, the mathematician
serving as Wats interpreter. Naturally Broniewski, like Wat, had heard
nothing of Wats family, but he did have some thoughts about their case.
Later that day when the guard visited their cell, another cellmatean impassioned communist convinced that his arrest was the sole exception to
an otherwise perfectly rational systemtold the guard that two prisoners
had been engaging in illegal conversations with someone in the next cell.
Confronted with the accusation, the young mathematician panicked. It
was not he, but Wat who was guilty, he told the guard. Wat confessed: he

182 a u t u m n i n s ov i e t g a l i c i a

had heard Broniewskis voice through the wall and had hoped for news
of his family.117
A day later, Wat was brought to the punishment cell, a small cubicle
with a glassless window where he nearly froze to death. He tore material
from his coatwatolinato pad his socks. For ve days and ve nights
Wat walked around his cell in circles, so as not to freeze. Broniewski was
in the adjoining punishment cell, and Wat was in awe of his friends
endurance: Wadzio was incredibly brave, enormously strong, a young
eagle. But that wasnt the only reason I admired him. I walked about
my cell in circles, intellectual style. But Broniewskiand I envied him
thismarched like a soldier, beating time, and singing all those Legion
songs. He sang the whole time; he sang for ve days and nights. ... And
so I felt like a miserable weakling. Broniewski had shown me how to retain
human dignity, strength, and ghting spirit. ... back then, compared to
Wadzio Broniewski, a full person, I felt like a worm. I never saw anyone
bear himself better, with more dignity, than Broniewski did then.118 The
admiration was hardly mutual. Through the wall Broniewski told Wat
that he had nothing but contempt for him for confessing. Broniewski had
confessed to nothing.119 It was a moment when he rose to the occasion; he
refused to be broken. Moreover, as in Centralniak, in Soviet prison, too,
Broniewski did not cease to be a poet. To his daughter Anka he wrote a
letter from prison in verse, telling her
On traces of exiles I step
and must carry the burden of poetry
to that far bank of my years.120
The romantic poet composed as well a bitterly sarcastic poem about the
vagaries of History, now conceived as a capricious woman, amused by
baboonery, smiling half jeeringly.121

interrogat i o n s
In prison interrogation, Wat attested, Broniewski conducted himself
wonderfully, uncompromisingly, deantly.122 During his February 1940
interrogation in Lvov, the former Legionnaire behaved with remarkable
composure. He answered questions about his past in Pisudskis Legions
in detail, matter-of-factly. He responded matter-of-factly as well when ques-

a u t u m n in soviet galicia 1 83

tioned about his correspondence in Lvov: he had received one letter from
Wanda Wasilewska and two from his wife Marysia Zarbiska, which
had reached him via Janina Broniewska in Biaystok. He gave truthful
answers in Russian. When asked how and when his wife had come from
Warsaw to Lvov, he told his interrogator that on 12 December 1939 she
had come on a pass acquired by Wanda Wasilewskas family from the
German authorities in Warsaw. When accused of having made declarations against the Soviet Union and the Red Army, Broniewski denied the
accusation with a monotone repetitiveness that mimicked the phrasing
of his interrogators question:
q u e s t i o n : The investigation is aware that while in Lvov, you grouped

around yourself nationalistically inclined and reactionary Polish

writers for the purpose of struggling for the restoration of the Polish
state. The investigation insists that you give truthful statements in
response to this question.
a n s w e r : That is not true. I did not group around myself nationalist
writers, and rather I revolved around communist-inclined writers
and I did not conduct any work harmful to Soviet power.
q u e s t i o n : With which writers living in Lvov did you engage in antiSoviet conversations?
a n s w e r : I never engaged in anti-Soviet conversations with writers
in Lvov.
q u e s t i o n : From which persons did you hear statements of dissatisfaction in relation to Soviet power?
a n s w e r : I dont remember.
q u e s t i o n : Say when and in conversations with which persons you
stated your dissatisfaction about the fact that your work was not
being published in the Soviet press here in Lvov.
a n s w e r : I dont remember.123
The NKVD interrogators collected testimony from others against him.
A Polish illustrator who had joined Jerzy Putrament in collecting signatures for the petition condemning the arrested poets gave the following
statement to the NKVD:
After the Red Army had come to Lvov in October 1939 Bro
niewski wrote a poem titled The Polish Soldier in which

184 a u t u m n i n s ov i e t g a l i c i a

he expressed sadness and regret that Poland no longer existed

as an independent state, that there were no longer soldiers
with eagles, that Polish soldiers sat and cried while looking
at other, foreign soldiers. Broniewskis poem The Polish
Soldier is saturated with Polish national patriotism and con
stitutes the logical continuation of his social patriotic poem
Bagnet na bro [Fix Bayonets]. Broniewski recited his poem
The Polish Soldier in a circle of Polish writers where I was
present as well. My wife, Wanda Wasilewska, Halina Grska
know about this poem. I know from having heard that Broniewskis poem The Polish Soldier was broadcast by French
radio from the city of Toulouse.
When questioned what he knew about Paitser [sicPeiper] the illustrator answered: Tadeusz Peiper brought futurism into Polish literature. I
know Tadeusz Peiper very little personally, but I am acquainted with his
writing. In an artistic book written by himthe novel Mam 22 lata [I Am
Twenty-two] he, Peiper, introduces heroes who break with socialism and
cross over to the camp of riemen and legions.124
Broniewski was interrogated primarily as a Polish nationalist and reactionary. Wat was interrogated simultaneously as a Trotskyite, a Zionist,
a Catholic, and a Polish nationalist.125 Among those who testied against
Wat was Jerzy Borejsza, and Wat attributed this in part to Borejszas resentment of the fact that someone like Wat, already for several years a
renegade, had been on the board of the Writers Union in Lvov. Wats
interrogator read him Borejszas deposition. Borejsza had testied that
Wat, in Lvov, had forbidden him to speak badly of their Polish literary
colleagues in front of the Soviets. Of course, Wat explained, that was
nonsense. I couldnt forbid him to do anything, but I had a conversation
with him, that means I said to him normally that whats caf bickering
in Warsaw could become a hatchet here in Lvov.126 Much more damning was Borejszas testimony regarding Miesicznik Literacki: he told the
NKVD that Wat had founded and edited the paper with Hempel, Stande,
Jasieski, and Wandurski, all later unmasked as Polish spies and executed
in the Soviet Union. While this one sentence alone was sucient for
him to have been executed, Wats investigators failed to pick up on it.

a u t u m n in soviet galicia 1 85

Wat speculated that his connections with these Polish communists who
had already been purged in the Soviet Union must have been too grave a
matter for his lower-level NKVD interrogator.127
Yet if there was a taboo on the subject in Wats case, it did not obtain
in Broniewskis. The specter of Jan Hempel emerged in Broniewskis interrogations; and Broniewski delicately alluded to his older friends death
through a shift in verb tense. This part of the interrogation began with a
discussion of Nowa Kultura:
a n s w e r : In the rst place, Jan Hempel served as editor of that journal.

Hempel, in my opinion, received orders from the KPP; moreover,

taking part in the journal was Witold Kolski (Cukier), who also revealed himself to be a member of the KPP. In the second place, we
published articles that were, in their content, in favor of the communist order. Moreover, in 1924, as a journal undesired by the Polish
government, after many conscations during publishing, it was
banned.
q u e s t i o n : How was it known to you that Jan Hempel and Witold
Kolski were communists?
a n s w e r : I personally had quite close comradely relations with them;
and they themselves spoke to me about their membership in the
Communist Party.
q u e s t i o n : Where are Jan Hempel and Witold Kolski presently?
a n s w e r : In 1932 Jan Hempel went to the Soviet Union and was in
Moscow; Witold Kolski is in Lvov and works in the editorial oces
of Czerwony Sztandar.
q u e s t i o n : What did you do following your work on the editorial sta
of the journal Nowa Kultura?
a n s w e r : At the end of 1924, I went to work as secretary of the editorial
sta of the journal Wiadomoci Literackie, where I worked until 1937.
At the same time I was engaged in translations of Russian literature
into Polish; and I also wrote poems and articles in journals. I began
to engage in poetic creation seriously in 1924, and already in January
1925 the rst volume of my poems, Wiatraki [Windmills], was published, in which my socialist radicalism was already then laid out.
q u e s t i o n : Be more precise, what kind exactly?

186 a u t u m n i n s ov i e t g a l i c i a

a n s w e r : Bourgeois critics praised my poems, but immediately they

dened them as a Bolshevik danger. In 1925 I became acquainted

with the poets Stanisaw Stande and Witold Wandurski, and by 1926
the three of us published a collection of revolutionary poems under
the title Three Salvos. In the same year I published a new volume
of my own poems, Dymy nad miastem [Smokestacks over the City].
Beginning in 1926, until 1931, I directed a workers theater in Warsaw, which put on agitational-propagandistic plays in the halls of
left-wing labor unions. In 1929 I wrote the poem Komuna Paryska
[The Paris Commune] and published it with illustrations by the artist
Wadysaw Daszewski; the book was conscated by Polish censors.128
During his interrogations, Broniewski was shown depositions against
him by Jerzy Borejsza, Jerzy Putrament, and the latters two fellow signature collectors.129 Broniewski was questioned, too, about his imprisonment
in connection with Miesicznik Literacki:
a n s w e r : Apparently they found out that I did not belong to the Com-

munist Party and they released me. I think that with respect to the
others as well they did not manage to prove their guilt.
q u e s t i o n : After being released, what did you occupy yourself with?
a n s w e r : After being released, I continued to write poems, and in 1933
I published a new volume of poems, Troska i pie [Care and Song],
from which the Polish censor expunged part of the poems as unde
sirable for the ruling circles of Poland. In 1934 I resolved to travel to
the USSR, after which, in summer of 1934, I published essays about
my excursion through the Soviet Union in the journal Wiadomoci
Literackie.
q u e s t i o n : What was the purpose of your trip to the USSR?
a n s w e r : To become acquainted with socialist construction and Soviet
writers in the USSR.
q u e s t i o n : Who arranged the trip to the Soviet Union for you?
a n s w e r : Wishing to go to the USSR, I personally turned to the Soviet
embassy in Warsaw, to Antonov Ovseenko, who knew me personally
and obtained permission. In addition, I turned to the editor of the
journal Wiadomoci Literackie, Mieczysaw Grydzewski, who helped
me obtain permission from the Polish authorities for a trip to the
USSR.130

a u t u m n in soviet galicia 1 87

Unlike Wat, Broniewski, and Peiper, Anatol Stern was freed after three
months.131 Wat guessed that Stern was pardoned for his moral disintegration, but Wayk disagreed. Stern himself believed that among those
things that saved him was that he had published Mayakovsky in Polish.
Moreover, Stern had had no contact with the now-dissolved KPP; he had
not been involved with Miesicznik Literacki. He was also the author of a
great number of interwar Polish screenplays, and in those lms there was
nothing anti-Soviet. Wayk believed that Sterns release was a tactical move
as wellthat is, to show the literary milieu in Lvov that not everyone who
was arrested would be found guilty.132 None of them really knew.

the steppes o f c e n t r a l a s i a
While in prison, Wat began to engage in a parapsychological ritual: he
would visit his wife and son during the night. This venture into shamanism grew increasingly potent, part of a bargain he imagined having made:
he could go home to them each night if he would return to prison in the
morning. Every night he would walk through the streets of Lvov, stopping
at 9 Nabielak Street where the concierge would open the gate for him.
He walked up the dark stairway and entered the apartment where Ola
and Andrzej were waiting. He would sit at the round table, drinking tea
with Ola on one knee and Andrzej on the other. He came to feel that he
had a doppelgnger, that one of him truly was present with them during
the night. Then one day in the spring he failed to reach them. It was 9
April. In his mind he entered the building, then the apartment, and found
there a void.133
Four days later, on the night of 13 April 1940, Ola Watowa and Andrzej
Wat joined over 300,000 Polish citizens who were deported into the Soviet interior.134 She did not hear the NKVD ocers when they entered the
room; her rst moment of recognition came when she saw ve of them
pointing bayonets at herself and Andrzej. One of them ordered her to
collect her things. She was indierent and did not care to pack, but one
of the ocers urged her to take everything, saying her husband would be
waiting for her where she was going. She and Andrzej were pushed into a
cattle car among some sixty other people, on a train that sat motionless for
three days before it departed. During that time Tadeusz Peipers girlfriend
made her way to Ola Watowas wagon, bringing sugar, a half-liter jug, and
a pillow, and begging the NKVD ocers to allow her to go with them, in

188 a u t u m n i n s ov i e t g a l i c i a

fear that Watowa would not manage on her own. Peipers girlfriend was
refused, and the train departed. The others trapped in the cattle car began
to whisper that Watowas husband was the editor of Miesicznik Literacki,
that Watowa was being sent with them as an informer. She protested and
pleaded: it was not true, she was not an informer, her husband was in
prison. The other Poles were not persuaded, and they hated her.135
After a very long trip the mother and son found themselves in the
steppes of Kazakhstan, near a remote settlement called Ivanovka, where
they nearly died of starvation. All of the deportees were forced to perform
hard labor; in the winter many among them froze to death and were buried
under the snow. Watowa was attacked and nearly raped. She and Andrzej
lived among other Polish deportees who were initially hostile to them; the
exception was Wanda Wasilewskas friend Stefania Skwarzyska, who
became Watowas friend as well as her teacher in Catholicism. It was
Skwarzyska who persuaded the other Poles that Watowa was not an informer, that she was telling the truth about her husbands being in prison,
that she was a victim just as they were. She taught Watowa prayers, and
wanted to baptize her in the river. Watowa was not ready for the baptism,
though, and in any case did not feel the need for formalities. Yet she did feel
something akin to faith; she was touched by the beauty of the steppe, and
despite the horric conditions she held onto a delicate, aesthetic appreciation for that beauty. For the rst time in her life she became a religious believer. Then, after three months, Wasilewska intervened and Skwarzyska
was sent back to Lvov. Ola Watowa and Andrzej were left alone.136
Letters did travel back and forth, and Ola Watowa corresponded with
Marysia Zarbiska, who sent news that Wat had been taken to Kiev on
9 August, that he was healthy, serene, and worried only about his wife
and son.137 Sending packages was prohibited, but Wasilewska arranged for
Watowa to receive a quilt that Halina Grska had bought for her. In the
end this gift from the two women saved her. On behalf of herself and the
Polish deportees, who now trusted her, Watowa wrote to Wasilewska of the
conditions in Ivanovka. Wasilewska answered quickly: she was requesting
that a commission be sent from Moscow. The commission arrived; its
members were given meat, grain and other giftsand sent away at once
to the nearest train station. Watowa wrote as well to Ilya Ehrenburg, whose
Polish translator Wat had been. In reply Ehrenburg sent her three hundred
rubles and a telegram: I talked to Wanda Wasilewska. We will do every-

a u t u m n in soviet galicia 1 89

thing necessary and possible to alleviate your fate.138 In December 1940,

upon her return to Lvov, Skwarzyska wrote to Watowa, reminding her of
their conversations and the prayers they had said together. Skwarzyska
was convinced that they would meet again, as they had not yet said all, in
Gods name, that they needed to say to each other: My very dearyou do
not depart from my thoughts; I constantly see your pale face bent over me
in farewell. ... I am especially present with my soul as you freeze. Where
will the strength come from to endure it? And yet I believe, I believe most
deeply that you will endure and that from the most secret garners of His
mercies God will give you some strengththat you will manage.139 And,
unlike many of their companions in the cattle car, she did.

a bed from g e n e r a l a n d e r s a n d t h e d e v i l i n s a r at ov
There was truth in the news from Marysia Zarbiska. Wat had been
taken from Zamarstynw, not to Kiev but to Moscow. During the journey
northeast, he was held briey in various prisons; he did not know where
he was going, if he was to confront the ghosts of people like Jan Hempel,
Adolf Warski, Stanisaw Ryszard Stande. His last investigator had said
to him, I didnt know you were such a big sh. Eventually Wat found
himself in the very center of Moscow, very close to Red Square, in the
infamous Lubianka prison, where in the prison latrines you could read
the plain human truth about Stalins Russiathere and only there.140
In Lubianka, Wat inherited his bed from General Wadysaw Anders, his
sister the actress Seweryna Broniszwnas onetime anc. On this bed
Wat wrote letters inquiring about his family to Stalinwho never answered them. Broniewski had been taken to Lubianka as well; he and
Wat did not see each other, but Wat surmised that if he had been taken
there, then Broniewski likely had been as well. Tadeusz Peiper, too, was
in Lubianka.141
Gone now were the religious feelings Wat had experienced in Zamar
stynw. Lubianka was an intellectuals prison, and Wat embarked on an
intense period of study and reection. In addition to rooms devoted to
torture, there was a library, and Wat returned to literature: letters by Tolstoy, Saint Augustine, and Machiavelli; the rst volume of Prousts Remembrance of Things Past.142 Broniewski, too, read over three hundred books
in Lubianka. He was most distressed by the lack of cigarettes; he had no
money for the prison canteen and was forced to rely upon the generosity

19 0 a u t u m n i n s ov i e t g a l i c i a

of his cellmates. This was of no help during the rst two months following his arrival in Lubianka on 22 May 1940, when he was in an isolation
cell.143 Wat had been spared Broniewskis attachment to cigarettes and
alcohol; rather what he came to part with in Lubianka was his lingering
attachment to avant-gardism in literature. The impetus to this farewell
was Evgeny Dunayevsky, one of Wats rst cellmates, who had a deep
interest in etymology:
The result of spending many months with a man who tracks
down the roots and history of each word, who re-creates a
certain historical and anthropological reality in the roots and
history of each word, was, at least for me, the sudden falling
away of the essence of avantgardismit began to fall away
from me once and for allall of what Marinetti had unleashed
with his slogan The liberated word: nihilism, linguistic materialism, the word as an object with which you can do as you
please. For me thats a basic distinction in poeticsin even
more than poetics, for what distinguishes the worldview of the
avant-garde writer and poet from the traditional or classical
view is precisely the concept of the word as a material thing.
Living close by Dunayevsky, I was pulled into his game, a wonderful game for killing time. But that game also caused a regression into feeling the biological connections of words on a
higher level, not a mineral, biological, or even archetypal level
but in connection to history, to the incredibly alive tissues of
human destiny, the destinies of generations, the destinies of
nations. And the responsibility for every word, to use every
word properly. And then, intuitivelyfor I realized all this only
later onI had an intuitive sense both of the responsibility
and of that which is perhaps the only thing that distinguishes
a poet from the others who speak the language: the poets task,
or mission, or instinct to rediscover not the meaning of each
word but only the weight of each word.144
Wats interrogators in Lubianka, in their attempt to inltrate the Polish leftist psyche, were extremely interested in Polish literature, and in
particular in Stefan eromski. Wat obligingly oered them his analysis
of The Spring to Come, which he could see was very much to their taste.

a u t u m n in soviet galicia 1 91

Now Wat and his interrogator began to have the sorts of conversations
Wat had once had in Caf Ziemiaska. Wat had grown up in the cafs,
he loved to talk about literature, and his hostility towards his interrogator melted. Then one day the interrogator with literary interests brought
Wat a copy of Nowe Widnokrgi. For Wat it was a wrenching moment, he
became consumed with a feeling of alienation, with the feeling that all of
his friends were having a party without him. It was winter then in Moscow,
but Wat pictured themWayk, Rudnicki, Boy-eleskisitting in summer cafs, debating, writing, chatting. Only Wat had been cast out.145
High culture sifted through the otherwise impenetrable walls of Lubianka. On Easter Sunday of 1941 the prisoners took their daily walk on
the roof, and Wat could hear Bachs Saint Matthew Passion playing on a
radio. Around that same time Wat acquired a new cellmate, Misha Taitz.
Taitz was the former deputy director of the Marx-Engels Institute and had
a phenomenal memory for quotations from Marx. Like Wat, Taitz knew
the Russian poet Semn Kirsanov. Wat and Taitz became close friends,
and now Taitz, notwithstanding having become an anarchist in prison,
replaced Stawar as Wats teacher of Marxism. Unlike Wat, Taitz was tortured in prison; he would return from these sessions with torture marks
on his legs and buttocks, and spoke of how coming back to the cell after
torture was like returning to a warm womb. Twice Taitz had signed a confession stating that he had been a spy for the Gestapo. And twice he had
later recanted. And so Wat would talk with his interrogator about Polish
literature and with his cellmate about Marxism.146
It was now 1941 and summer in Moscow. One day in June, Wat and
Taitz returned to their cell to nd that the windows had been painted
over in blue. The Germans had broken the nonaggression pact with the
Soviets. Operation Barbarossa had begun. Wat and Taitz waited. One day
the guard shouted at them to get their things. The doors to all the cells
were opened; prisoners streamed out into the corridors and down the
stairs, making way for the NKVD ocers to pass through the crowd. Wat
saw the ocers carrying as many les as they could hold, les marked
never to be destroyed. The day became still more remarkable when, among
thousands of people, Wat suddenly saw Broniewskiand then Tadeusz
Peiperon the stairs. Wat managed to reach Broniewski, and that evening
they were locked together in a tiny cubicle, where they spent the night
gasping for breathand talking. Broniewski had not forgiven Wat for

192 a u t u m n i n s ov i e t g a l i c i a

confessing to tapping messages in Zamarstynw, and Wat abandoned

hopes of trying to explain. Still, it was a warm reunion; the two men
embraced. Then Broniewski raised the issue of the more recent interrogations, Wats testimony, his depositions. He was not very pleased with Wats
behavior under questioning: Wat had confessed he had had anti-Soviet
conversations with Broniewski in Warsaw. Wat defended himself: all of
their colleagues had testied to that. The interrogators had insisted that he
name names, and it was impossible not to mention Broniewski, everyone
knew how much time they spent together. How could Wat claim they had
never spoken about the Soviet Union? But Wat had been prepared: when
his interrogator asked him what Broniewski had said during these conversations, Wat replied that Broniewski had taken a view opposite to his
own. Broniewski, resentful, was unpersuaded by Wats explanation. His
own interrogator had read him Wats deposition, and it had said only that
Wat had expressed anti-Soviet opinions, not that Broniewski had opposed
them. Unlike Wat, Broniewski when interrogated had denied everything.
Now Wat felt denigrated, lowly, contrite in the face of [Broniewskis] heroism, hishow to put itmanliness.147 That night in their airless cubicle
Wat and Broniewski spoke about how Poland would look in the future.
They envisioned a Poland with social justice for the working class, but
without Bolshevism. Broniewski was no longer a communist, and Wat
sensed that Broniewski no longer knew who he was.148
The next day they were taken south to Saratov, a warm and sunny
provincial town. As they pulled in to their destination, Wat and Broniewski
found Peiper in the column of prisoners. Nearby was the Bundist Henryk
Erlich, whom Wat and Broniewski both knew from Warsaw. Erlich was
pale and weak and could barely stand; Wat and Broniewski held him up
as they walked. When Peiper reached them he exclaimed that he had
wonderful news: he had seen Ola Watowa among the women prisoners!
Wat was skeptical; by then Peiper frequently perceived things that were
not there. Nonetheless, Wat began to work his way through the crowd,
asking if Ola Watowa were therebut received no answer. At a certain
moment one of the prisoners began cursing Stalin in a loud voice, and the
whisper came from the crowd: Thats old Steklov. Nakhamkes Steklov
was a hero of the Bolshevik Revolution, the longtime editor of Izvestiia, a
friend of Leninand a friend of Stalin right up until the moment of his

a u t u m n in soviet galicia 1 93

arrest. He was tall and very thin, and Wat was struck by his dignity, by the
humanity of his face, by his gentlemanly demeanor.149
Unlike in Lubianka, in Saratov the cells were large, holding some
hundred prisoners. Wat, Broniewski, Erlich, and Peiper stayed together;
and it did not take long before an intellectual club formed in the cell.
Peiper by this time suered from extreme paranoia and immediately told
Wat that in Cracow, Gestapo agents disguised as university students had
rented the apartment opposite his and had followed his every movement
from their window. In contrast to Peiper, the Bundist Erlich was calm and
objective; he accepted his fate. Soon he was taken away. Also taking part
in the discussions were another Bundist, a microbiologist, an ocer, and
a few other Russians. So there was a ne club with interesting, pleasant
conversation. ... The time passed pleasantly.150 Moreover, Wat was no
longer alienated from faith. The faith of the Ukrainians he had so envied
in Zamarstynw became his own only in Saratov. There Wat had a vision
of the devil, a vision with ourishes of vulgar laughter that kept approaching, then receding far away for a long time, a very long time. He insisted
that he saw the devil there, that he saw the devil vividlyand felt Gods
presence in history somewhat more vaguely. He became a Christian.151
In Saratov, Wat fell so ill that he was nally sent to the hospital, where
he met the famous Steklov who had been cursing Stalin. In the hospital
Wat asked Steklov the question that had been haunting him since the
Moscow show trials: Why did the Old Bolsheviks confess? Did they fear
torture? Steklov answered him: What was torture, after all, for them, the
heroes of the Revolution? They were all up to their elbows in bloodall
of them, without exception. From the very beginning. Torture was unnecessary, they all saw before them the long lists of their own crimes and
debasements. To confess to this or that no longer had any meaning. Wat
shuddered. The nurses came and their conversation ended. As they took
Steklov away, he shouted to Wat from the doorway,152 When you return
to Poland, tell people how old Steklov died!

c h a p t e r seven

Into the Abyss

Not only history, but the whole world, all of human life is divided
into before the war and after the war.
Julian Stryjkowski

i n a u g u s t 1 939 j a r o s aw Iwaszkiewicz saw Julian Tuwim in the

resort town of Zakopane, where Tuwim enchanted Iwaszkiewiczs daughters. Iwaszkiewicz, too, was charmed to see Tuwim against the backdrop of
the mountains, in a setting other than bourgeois. And suddenly Iwaszkiewicz, who had known Tuwim for some twenty years, was struck by the
whole uncanniness of his person, by Tuwims radiant, striking marks
of greatness. This was someone, Iwaszkiewicz wrote a few days later,
for whom there exists only one issue: poetry.1
Iwaszkiewicz had witnessed the very last moments when only poetry
mattered to Julian Tuwim. At the moment when Oleksandr Korneichuk
summoned Tuwim by radio, inviting him to Lvov, Tuwim was making his
way west. He, Sonimski, and their wives had left Warsaw on 5 September
and headed to the town of Kazimierz, on the other side of the Vistula
River, where Sonimski thought they could wait out the rst phase of
the war. Our reasoning, Sonimski described self-mockingly, was very
simple. Because, as was known, German tanks were made of cardboard,
they wouldnt be able to cross the Vistula, and if they were to try, theyd
come unglued.2 As they set out, Tuwim saw the rst plumes of German
bombs above the Polish capital.3 In Kazimierz, Sonimskis wife rented
a room, putting down a deposit of one hundred zotys. However, as the
supposition regarding the cardboard tanks quickly revealed itself to be less
194

into the a byss 195

than accurate, and the poets learned that Germans had already reached
Puawy, they left Kazimierz right away, forfeiting their deposit. Here the
Skamandrites parted ways, with the Tuwims nding a place in an automobile, and Sonimski, his wife, and Mieczysaw Grydzewski continuing
on in their rented wagon to the town of Krzemieniec. There they met
Stanisaw Baliski, a poet and friend, who was carrying with him a folder
of Adam Mickiewiczs letters, as well as the family jewelry. In Krzemieniec
Sonimskis wife rented another room, this time paying a fty-zoty deposit.
Within an hour they had already departed, again forfeiting the deposit.
At this time, the war still seemed to Sonimski to be from a story
book; he and his wife did not believe it would go on for very long. Even as
bombings pursued them from one town to the next, life in the provinces
continued in its slow, calm rhythm. Then suddenly Sonimski watched
as, as in a lm, everything sped up, began to whirl. ... The horses who
had broken away from the provincial carriages neighed plaintively ... barbers in white coats were almost oating in the air like in a Chagall painting.4 The friends continued on. When they approached the Romanian
border the local mayor ordered them to turn back. Their party went on to
Zaleszczyki, where Sonimskis wife did not even have time to lay down
a deposit. Instead they crossed the Zaleszczyki Bridge over the Dniester
River into Romania just a few hours before the Soviet armies arrived.
Sonimski left Poland with the faith that the western Allies would defeat
the Nazis quickly, and that he would return to Warsaw before long.5
Friends tried to persuade Tuwim to journey with them to Lww. He
demurred, in the end choosing a southeasterly route, listening to the
planes ying above him. Then Tuwim, too, saw the image from a Chagall
painting: some kind of cataclysm, a hellish bang, the clear sight of falling
bombshells, then roofs, doors, windows, shreds of some rather undened
objects or creations ying above us.6 People they knew, the car, their minimal baggage, everything perished in that hell, and Tuwim and his wife
Stefania were now alone, hitchhiking, feeling like beggars. They reached
the Galician provincial capital of Stanisaww, where they found the mayor
working day and night distributing border passes to refugees. They acquired passes, and on Tuwims forty-fth birthday crossed the PolishRomanian border. In a restaurant on the Romanian side, two civilians
unexpectedly approached him, saying, Mr. Tuwim? Come with us! The
two men had already collected, as it turned out, both his passport and his

196 i n t o t h e a b y s s

wife. They put Tuwim in a car; they were Polish ocers, they told him,
with orders to get him out of that town. Despite antisemitic accusations
that Tuwim was not a real Polish poet, the Polish government continued
to consider him a national treasure. The ocers dispatched Tuwim and
his wife to Bucharest, to the care of the Polish ambassador. In late September, after traveling through Yugoslavia and Italy, the Tuwims crossed
the French border.
The Tuwims were not alone in Paris. Sonimski, Lecho, and Gryd
zewski had made their way there as well. Sonimski was among those
who did not suspect what the war would bringdespite the warning of
a taxi driver, a Russian monarchist migr in Paris, who, upon hearing
Tuwim and Sonimski speaking in Polish, advised them to buy a taxi now,
as later it would be dicult.7 Being among the rst wartime emigrants,
the Skamander poets became the recipients of charitable contributions
and the centerpiece of social events. With Grydzewski once again as editor they regathered around Wiadomoci Polskie (Polish News), published
as a continuation of the prewar Wiadomoci Literackie. They found a caf
for themselves in Paris, the Caf de la Regence, and Sonimski observed
that it was this stay in Paris that nally satised Jan Lechos insatiable
hunger for snobbery. Lecho rented an apartment that Jean Cocteau had
once decorated, and where the Rothschilds and Paul Valry would drop
by to socialize.8 Also in Paris was Ilya Ehrenburg, who fell ill and kept to
himself; many of those who were once his friends chose to avoid him in
light of the Nazi-Soviet pact, as friendship was friendship, but politics
was politics. The exception was Tuwim, who embraced his Russian friend
when they met.9
That winter Tuwim was thinking only of Poland. Paris was alien to
him.10 He was plagued with vacuity and poetic impotence. In April 1940
from Paris he sent a letter to a Polish philosopher friend, describing the
pain of being unable to write:
And everything that the Great Idiot called humanity produces
in the world, all of the iniquity, rapes, wars, clamor, politics,
economic and social theories, etc., etc.,everything has its
cause in one thing: that they, that is, people, would like (and
cannot) To Become Closer, subconsciously they feel the need
to achieve the shortest (the most direct) path to happiness (the

into the a byss 197

nal goal of every being), and they have an intuition, the cads,
that poets somehow canand for that reason they idolize them
so and hate them at the same time. Creative work is in truth
an overcoming of death; better: a process of overcoming. And
thats no trivial source of satisfaction, my beloved Pan Bole
saw! And so when its not thereI come to resemble that
criminal gang to whom it seems that in building various Chi
cagos and ying in airplanes, theyre pushing the world forward (so-called progress). And the world and life are in their
deepest essenceimmovable. It is CONSTANCY. There are
two possibilities for coexistence in the world: with a woman
and with a deity. All others (states, nations, classes, races, and
other similar inventions)are no good.11

rio de janei ro , 1 9 4 0 1 9 4 1
Skamanders Parisian interlude was cut short. In June 1940 France fell to
the Germans, and the Skamandrites ed. Lecho was evacuated with the
Polish embassy to Spain and Portugal, and from there to Brazil.12 Tuwim
went to Bordeaux, where he received a visa to Portugal. In Lisbon he met
a Brazilian poet who, without waiting to be asked, escorted Tuwim to the
consulate and arranged for his Brazilian visa. Upon nding himself on
the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in Rio de Janeiro, Tuwim was dazzled;
he discovered there the incarnation of childhood dreams of the tropical
world.13 Moreover, Polish culture managed to reconstitute itself in this
alien tropical world, and the Polish migr community organized poetry
readings by Tuwim and Lecho.14 Yet it was in Brazil that Tuwim grew
aware of how completely he was the antithesis of cosmopolitanism. In
the paradise of Rio de Janeiro he longed only for Poland: How cruelly I
am cut o outright from that which is dearest to me, from that which is my
life, my blood, the essence of my creative work, of my self: from Poland!
What are my further intentions? Will I go, perhaps, to the United States?
Who can foresee what fate will bring? I know one thing: I must write! and
I want to return, to return as quickly as possible!15
In September 1940, Tuwim wrote to Kazimierz Wierzyski, who had
remained in Portugal for a longer time after the fall of France, describing
Rio de Janeiro as exclusively a beach-amusement and caf-strolling place.

198 i n t o t h e a b y s s

Lecho frequented these cafs, consuming enormous quantities of ice

cream and Brazilian pastries. Tuwim, in contrast, had lost his appetite.
The beauty of this city is so staggering that the scale is almost so great
as to be indescribable. Once here a couple of weeks, when youve seen
enough to be satiatedyou feel like vomiting, he wrote to Wierzyski.
Nothing happened in Rio de Janeiro. Tuwim spoke French to the Brazilians, and found them to be polite and good-natured, but not terribly
interesting. He began to think more about New York, where he imagined
life would be harsher and more dicultwhich would be preferable to
the lightness of Brazilian beaches, and the tropical atmosphere that was
alien and morose to our broken and sick hearts.16
There by the beaches Lecho and Tuwim indulged in literary rivalry.
After Lecho surprised Tuwim with a new poem, Tuwim locked himself
in his room, coming out only after he had written a few hundred verses of
Kwiaty polskie (Polish Flowers).17 The epic poem told of the pain of exile,
of longing for Poland, and of a dream of Warsaw dogs fullling canine
duty and wreaking vengeance on the Germans. My lot, Tuwim wrote,
was to receive
a Polish home. Thisis fatherland,
And other countries are hotels.
Warsaw was a heroic Troy, Cracow a distant, holy Mecca.18

the belaru s i a n ro u t e , 1 9 3 9 1 9 4 1
When Wadysaw Broniewski and Romuald Gadomski, Janina Broniew
skas past and present husbands, had set out for the front at the very beginning of the war, both had told heras they left her alone with ten-yearold Anka and pregnant with Gadomskis childthat she was so capable,
surely she would manage on her own.19 She did. Moreover, despite the
birth of her and Gadomskis child, Stanisaw, Janina Broniewska declined
to pursue a formal divorce from Broniewski. Principled and dogmatic,
she was also a ercely loyal woman. She explained her decision: Carrying
out such a simple, trivial formality would be worse than unfaithfulness in
marriage. It would be a disavowal of everything that joined us throughout
our lives. Solidarity, boundless condence in the sincerity and earnestness
of our shared convictions made it impossible to divorce a communist imprisoned in a Soviet prison.20 Broniewskis imprisonment she attributed

into the a byss 199

to his own navet in agrantly manifesting his Polish patriotism at an

inopportune moment. She blamed, moreover, not the Soviet Union but
rather his Polish colleagues in Lvov who had betrayed Broniewski and
acted as provocateurs in his arrest.21
Janina Broniewska, joined soon by Gadomski, spent the early stages
of the war in Soviet-occupied Biaystok, before moving east to Minsk.
On 17 September 1940, she was among those who joined the Union of
Soviet Writers of Belarus as a symbolic gesture on the anniversary of the
Soviet occupation of eastern Poland.22 Like Western Ukraine, Western
Belarus had been annexed to a Soviet republic. In Minsk Janina Broniew
ska directed the literary department of the Polish-language newspaper
Sztandar Wolnoci (Banner of Freedom), and was now transformed from
a fellow-traveling author of childrens stories to a serious communist journalist.23 In spring 1941 she began a correspondence with the elderly Feliks
Kon, veteran of the nineteenth-century Polish Marxist party Proletariat.
She addressed Kon with reverence, telling him that for us, for Poles,
you are precisely the most real embodiment of the tradition of the Polish
revolutionary movement. She asked two things of him: an article about
Proletariat, and an honest appraisal of Sztandar Wolnocis insuciencies
and shortcomings.24 When Kon wrote to her with words of praise for the
newspaper, the editorial sta was ecstatic, but Broniewska answered with
self-criticism: Yet it is still not the newspaper that it should be, on this
quite peculiar Polish terrain, where everyday life [byt]that is to say, the
systemhas changed so fundamentally in the course of less than two
full years, while consciousness has remained from ages pastwhich is
to say, as it was shaped for years by capitalist Poland.25
Joining Janina Broniewska were Aleksander Wats onetime KPP liai
son, Jakub Berman, and Alfred Lampe. A member of the KPP Central
Committee, Lampe, like Borejsza and Stryjkowski, had come to the Communist Party from the ranks of the young Zionists. He was a veteran of
interwar Polish prison. When Polish authorities had tried to send him
to the Soviet Union as part of a prisoner exchange in 1924, Lampe had
refused, preferring to serve out his sentence in Poland so as to contribute
to the general awareness of citizens, and rst and foremost of the working
masses, that the state is a police regime.26 It was a fortuitous preference:
Polish prison was the safest place for a prominent Polish communist to
be in the 1930s. When the Nazis attacked Poland, Lampe escaped from

2 0 0 i n t o t h e a b y s s

prison, where he was serving yet another term, and headed east. By this
time the KPP no longer existed, the Terror of 19371938 had passed, and
Stalins purge of the Polish communists had begun to wane.
When in the summer of 1941 the German bombing of Minsk began,
Jakub Berman had no way of communicating with Broniewska and Lampe,
who were in another part of the city.27 The three were separated; Broniew
ska and Lampe together ed together the burning city. Once again they
headed east, towards the Soviet interior. Broniewska was full of admiration
for her companion. During their journey from Minsk southeast through
Russia, one could see plainly how in the most dicult conditions Alfred
was able to be a teacher, a tutor and friend of our commune, which was
packed into a single common room at the time. How much buoyancy
there is in that man worn out by imprisonments, how much warmth, how
much goodness. Ordinary human goodness. And how much patience.
Here, for us, Alfred Lampe is an ideological compass, the one who is able
to think in terms of political perspectives far beyond the present, by no
means easy, day.28 In the end they traveled for ten days before settling on
a state pig farm near the southern Russian city of Kuibyshev, just north
of Kazakhstan. There Broniewska and her daughter worked the elds,
with Anka suering from malnutrition.29 Jakub Berman arrived in the
city of Ufa, southeast of Kuibyshev, where he became an instructor at the
Comintern school, training activists who in 1942 would form a new party
for Polish communists, the Polish Workers Party.30

the road f ro m lvov, j u n e 1 9 4 1 a n d b e yo n d

The 22 June 1941 German attack on the Soviet Union was for Wanda
Wasilewska a perversely ecstatic moment; the end of Nazi-Soviet cooperation enabled her to reclaim her Polish patriotism. As soon as she learned
that there was a war, she presented herself rst thing in the morning at
the regional Party committee and asked what she could do. They gave her
a rie. This startled her, yet she took well to her new role, and proceeded
to move about Lvov with that rie, wearing a border guards cap that she
found by chance. When the Germans took Lvov, Wasilewska went on to
Kiev. There she was given a uniform, and she spent the two or three days
immediately thereafter working to evacuate people who had ed Lvov
further east. After three days, she, Oleksandr Korneichuk, and Mykola Bazhan formed their own group, working on propaganda and on preparing

into the a byss 2 01

materials for illegal organizations remaining on the evacuated territories.

Later she went to Saratov, where she found Stefan Jdrychowski, whose
trial she and Janina Broniewska had attended in Wilno, and the literary
translator and former KPP member Wiktor Grosz; they contributed to
broadcasts for the Saratov radio station.31
This was the moment when Wanda Wasilewska came into her own.
The PPS activist from Cracow who chain-smoked and drank endless cups
of black coee was now catapulted into a unique position; and the story
of the Poles cast into the Soviet Union during the Second World War was
largely a story of the extraordinary relationship Leon Wasilewskis daughter developed with Iosif Stalin. Now that Nazi Germany had invaded the
Soviet Union she could fully express her hatred for the Germans; now she
was free to devote all her talents to mobilizing people into battle against
the fascist enemy. She immediately took advantage of the dramatic alteration in international politics to publish the poems Broniewski had been
continually reciting in Lvov: A Polish Soldier and Son of a Conquered
Nation appeared in Nowe Widnokrgi that summer.32 She gave speeches
full of a grandiloquent faith. She embraced the ideal of Slavic brotherhood
and praised the Soviet Ukrainians, to whom she was innitely grateful
for having sheltered the Poles when the Germans attacked, for having
made from homeless refugees citizens with full and equal rights.33 Her
mastery of the language of propaganda was all the more potent for its
passionate sincerity. At a radio meeting in Saratov on 27 November 1941,
she spoke to her fellow countrymen in wartime exile: Poles! That call
resounds in our hearts with a loud echo. Liquidate all Germans, who have
fallen upon Polish land in an armed invasion. Have no mercy on the wild
beast drinking our blood, tormenting women and children, raping young
girls, murdering the best sons of our Fatherland. She concluded with a
rallying call arming the new international alignments: Long live the
Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the United States of America! Long live
nations ghting for freedom! Long live victory!34
Jerzy Borejsza, director of the Ossolineum, was by chance in Kiev
when the Germans attacked the Soviet Union. It was now too late to return;
he remained in Kiev and enlisted in the Red Army.35 Julian Stryjkowski, together with a group from Czerwony Sztandar, also ed Lvov in the direction
of Kiev. On the road they met the red-haired communist who was the wife
of Witold Kolski, the man who had written the scathing feuilleton against

2 0 2 i n t o t h e a b y s s

the arrested writers. Kolskis wife was returning to Lvov with her small
child; she could go no farther, she told them. Stryjkowski pleaded with
her not to go back and oered to carry the child, but she was determined.
She insisted that something must have happened to her husband since
he had not come for her, and was convinced that he would be looking for
her in Lvov. She asked Stryjkowski, if he were to see Kolski rst, to tell
her husband where she had gone.36
In Kiev Stryjkowski did in fact nd Kolski, who was one of the few
Polish communists who had been honored with acceptance into the
All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). When he had been in Kiev
not more than a day, Stryjkowski encountered Wasilewska. He and an
acquaintance were walking along the street when a car stopped, and
through an open window Stryjkowski saw a familiar face: it was Jerzy
Borejsza; Wasilewska was sitting next to him. The car stopped, Borejsza
greeted them and said that things at the front were not bad. He was
headed to the cinema. The car drove o and turned down a side street,
and Stryjkowskis companion suggested that Borejsza had only wanted to
show them that he was in a car with Wanda Wasilewska.37

new york, m i d -1 9 4 1 m i d -1 9 4 2
Kazimierz Wierzyski did join Julian Tuwim and Jan Lecho in Brazil, but
their tropical interlude was brief. With the help of Wierzyskis goddaughter, a painter and sculptor now married to the American ambassador, they
all obtained visas to the United States.38 The Skamandrites arrivals in New
York coincided approximately with the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union
and, in its wake, the resumption of diplomatic relations between the Soviet
Union and the Polish government-in-exile in London. The Nazi-Soviet
nonaggression pact was no more, and now from New York in late August
1941, Tuwim sent a telegram to Ilya Ehrenburg conrming his friendship,
his love, and his faith.39 Not all the Skamandrites shared Tuwims feeling
of solidarity with the Soviet Union. In September 1941, Tuwim wrote to
his sister that he was avoiding Lecho, as he was more generally avoiding
the right-leaning branch of the Polish migr community.40 After their
long years together in Poland, now in exile the poets saw their relations
poisoned by politics. That November Tuwim wrote to his sister that with
Lecho and Wierzyski he now shared only old jokes; it was dicult for
him to talk to his old friends about what was important to him now. More

into the a byss 2 03

and more Tuwim gleaned the impression that they saw the Poland of the
future as being ruled by a center-right group of colonelsas had been
the case after Pisudskis death, during the last half-decade before the war.41
By the end of that winter, Tuwim saw his friends less and less and felt that
they were avoiding him as well. Its dicult, he wrote, Ive placed
my bets on an entirely dierent world than they have, I openly voice my
battle for that world, exposing myself to the opinion of being a Bolshevik.42 Until early 1942 the exiled Skamandrites nevertheless remained
close, as they had a tacit mutual agreement not to speak of politics. On 22
May 1942, however, Tuwim and Lecho spoke by phone about the death
of Tadeusz Boy-eleski, who had been shot by the Nazis in Lvov the
previous July. Following that conversation Tuwim wrote to his sister: It
was our rst conversation on the topic of Russia and fascism! Our rst!
Several minutes long. And already we began to ght.43 One week later
Lecho sent Tuwim a letter, severing all relations due to Tuwims blind
love for the Bolsheviks.44
If Tuwim was hurt by the estrangement from his old friends, he
said nothing of this. In June 1942 he wrote to Jzef Wittlin, Im doing
nothing, despairing over the loss of talent, reason, humor, youth, health,
homeland, library, and the possibility of practicing alcoholism with impunity. He added, Have you been seeing our friends the fascists? With
regret Ive found that I do not miss them.45 He wrote similarly to his
sister in July:
For me the break with Leszek [Lecho] was rather a relief,
because I cannot stand insincere situations. Lately our entire
friendship has resided in the connection of memories and in
perpetual fooling around with jokes and anecdotes. A friend
that must be something deeper. In an essential friendship
more deeply concealed chords must harmonize. And in me,
after long years of suppression, there occurred a reeling storm
of feelings, instincts, and momentum of a social, societal,
universal natureand that (nally! nally!) I became aware
of the poverty-stricken, narrow categories of thought by which
the milieu that I came fromand the subsequent milieu in
which I grew upoperates, and so I havent felt the absence
of those people for even a moment.46

2 0 4 i n t o t h e a b y s s

alma-atam o s c ow k u i by s h e v, s u m m e r 1 9 4 1
spring 1 9 4 2
While Julian Tuwim, Jan Lecho, and Kazimierz Wierzyski sat in Brazilian cafs, their friend Wadysaw Broniewski sat in Soviet prison. For
Broniewski, it was the period of his imprisonment after Lubianka that he
found most dicult; the heat and the vermin in Saratov were unbearable.
Finally he was formally sentenced: to ve years exile in Kazakhstan, where
he was to work on a kolkhoz. On 24 July 1941 he was taken from Saratov
to Alma-Ata. Two weeks later, there in the Kazakh capital he was released
from prison; 562 days after Daszewskis ill-fated party he began his forced
labor in exile.47 That same day, 7 August, he wrote to Janina Broniewska
in Moscow: Jaka! I have a feeling that youre in Moscow. A short while
ago I got out of jail and Im going to Semipalatinsk for ve years of exile
from the date of my arrest. I dont know anything about my family. Write,
telegraph. ... Im healthy, in good spirits, bursting with energy. About
my experiences, my impressionsanother time. I thought about Anka
constantly and as a rule every evening before falling asleep. Ive sent a
telegram to Wanda. Terribly ragged and bald. Kisses to everyone.48
The outbreak of the Nazi-Soviet war bore heavily on the fates of the imprisoned Polish poets, and the telegram he sent to Wanda Wasilewska that
day was a fortunate one. The Soviet Union now joined the Allies. Broniew
skis telegram arrived just after Polish Prime Minister Wadysaw Sikorski
and the Soviet ambassador in London, Ivan Maiskii, had signed an agreement providing for the amnesty of Poles in the Soviet Union and the creation of a Polish army. On this occasion Wasilewska was called back from
the front to Moscow, where the Soviet Central Committee asked her if there
was anyone who, in her opinion, needed to be released right away, even before the ocial announcement. She immediately mentioned Broniewski.
The next day she received a phone call notifying her that Soviet authorities
were very worried because they had not been able to nd Broniewski. And
with joy, Wasilewska related, I dictated the address, because the morning
of that same day Id received a telegram from Wadek: Telegraph whats
[going on] with my family. The very same day Broniewski was freed.49
Broniewski quickly left Kazakhstan for Moscow; when he arrived on
20 August, Wasilewska was already gone.50 The following day he wrote
again to Janina Broniewska, whom he had by now located on the pig farm
outside of Kuibyshev.

into the a byss 2 05

Beloved Jaka!
They let me out of jail on the beautiful day of 7 August in
the beautiful city of Alma-Ata and from there, now no longer
as a prisoner, I went to Semipalatinsk to sit out the three and
a half years remaining for me in exile. I was there, but only
for three days and I hadnt even managed to get to the Novaia
shulba kolkhoz, when I was summoned by telegraph from
Moscow. I would guess that here the telegram I sent to Wasi
lewska on the 7th helped ... and so since the evening of the
20th Ive been in Moscow. But Im writing here everything
beginning from the end. ... Well so, speaking in the broadest
of terms, it was dicult, it cant even be compared with 1931,
absolute isolation, a very harsh regime, no favors. ... I was
constantly thinking that somehow you would get me out, but it
turned out that the intervention of History was more eective.
Prison had been miserable, but now it was in the past and in retrospect
that whole period seemed to Broniewski quite preposterous. At the conclusion of his interrogations, Broniewski related, he learned of the fantastical wretched things that Jerzy Borejsza and others had said about him
in their depositions for the NKVD. He could say much about all of this,
but that would come when they spoke in person. Leave the pigs to their
own fate, he told her, and come to Moscow. He sent kisses to his former
wife and her new husband, and wanted to know: did Anka now have a
little brother or a little sister?51
Four days later Broniewski sent another letter. He had been in Moscow for ve days and still had no plan as to how to support himself; at
the moment he was under the care of the NKVD, who had given him
two thousand rubles as part of the amnesty agreement. The day before
he had met with General Wadysaw Anders, whose bed Aleksander Wat
had inherited at Lubianka, and who was now to lead the Polish army being organized as part of the Sikorski-Maiskii agreement. The simplest
thing to do, he wrote, would, of course, be to enlist in the army, but
Im still vacillating and I dont know in what way I could most eectively
serve the common cause. As youve gured, Im not an enthusiast of
Sikorskis camp, but theres no choice. He was also uncertain as to how
the Polish authorities would react to his oer to serve, given the Polish

2 0 6 i n t o t h e a b y s s

governments unfavorable predisposition towards communism and his

own communist past. Moreover, physically he was still weak and unable
to walk very far; his hair was beginning to grow back, although there was
still nothing to comb.52
Broniewski did not vacillate for very long. That day he went to visit
Ilya Ehrenburg. By the next day, Broniewski had come to a decision to
enlist in the Anders army.53 He was anxious to see his family, especially
Anka. In yet another letter from Moscow to Janina Broniewska, he wrote
that if coming to Moscow with the children was too dicult due to air
raids, she should leave the children with a friend in Kuibyshev and come
alone.54 He wrote separately to Anka, in a letter full of patriotic concern
for her Polish education:
You know that every evening around ten, when Id laid down
to sleep, I thought about you, about Marysia and little Marysia
[Marysia Zarbiskas daughter Majka] and about everyone
close and dear to us and I fell asleep only when I had recalled
to myself some shared experience, for example our trip in the
Tatras two years ago, or the stay in Zakopane with the Marysias.
Right now I dont feel like thinking or writing much about my
imprisonment, when we see each other, there will be something to tell. ... My dear, for almost two years we havent seen
each other, you must have grown, developed. What have you
read, what have you thought about? Write in detail. In prison
I thought very often how good it would be if I had the chance
to point you towards and explain to you some books by erom
ski, Prus, everything that connects us with our hearts to the
land weve left by force, the land we so love and long for. Well,
Anula, well be there most likely in a year.55
Broniewski, among all his friends, had proven the most resilient in
prison. He left Saratov full of energy, eager to ght for Poland. He left
Saratov in some way still a believer in socialism. On 27 August 1941 he
volunteered for the Anders army, although he understood that an army of
exiled Poles returning from Soviet labor camps would not be an auspicious
place for a well-known communist poet. While waiting to receive a reply,
Broniewski worked as a cultural attach at the Polish embassy in Kuiby-

into the a byss 2 07

f igure 11 Wadysaw Broniewski with his daughter Anka in Kuibyshev, 1941. Courtesy
of Muzeum Wadysawa Broniewskiego.

shev.56 In October 1941 he received a Polish embassy summons to join

Polish Army troopsbut as a war correspondent, not as a soldier.57 After
wards he made his way back to Kuibyshev, where the streets were lled
with exhausted Poles dressed in rags, returning from labor camps and
not at all favorably disposed towards the Soviet Union or towards communism.58 There he shared a mattress with Anatol Stern, who had made his
way to Kuibyshev after his release from Soviet prison in September 1940.
Stern enlisted in the Anders army, and began to work with the armys
lm crew.59 Finally, in March 1942, Broniewski received a communication
from the man who had almost become Aleksander Wats brother-in-law,
Wadysaw Anders, addressing him as a captain and summoning him to
report for duty.60 Becoming a soldier again was the fulllment of a prison
wish: that September of 1941 Broniewski had written a poem in which he
told of hearing shots red outside his Moscow prison cell, of wanting to
steal a rie, of wanting to ght.61

2 0 8 i n t o t h e a b y s s

london, s u m m e r 1 9 4 0 s u m m e r 1 9 4 2
After the fall of France to the Nazis, Mieczysaw Grydzewski, Antoni
Sonimski, and Sonimskis wife sailed across the Channel for the shores
of England. There Sonimski encountered Polish activists from across the
political spectrum, including Stanisaw Grabski, who in his youth had
been the editor of the paper Robotnik (The Worker) in Berlin, but who
later had left the socialist camp and joined the National Democrats. In
England, Sonimski asked Grabski why he had departed from socialism.
The elderly professor, who was growing deaf, put his hand to his ear and
asked, from what? Why did you depart from socialism? Sonimski
repeated. From socialism? Grabski answered, I dont remember. It
was an answer, Sonimski believed, that painted the mood in London
quite well.62
Now far away in England, Sonimski read Broniewskis poem about
hearing the shots red outside as he sat in his Moscow prison cell. So
nimski, always invested in his ironic distance, was now moved to senti
mentality. In a poem addressed to his friend, Sonimski wrote of how it
would be Broniewskis poetry and Broniewskis rie, his rebelliousness
and his romanticism, which would raise the spirits of the weak oneslike
Sonimski himselfwho had ed. In exile Sonimski had found new
sympathy for Broniewskis leftist faith, and wrote that Broniewskis voice
would remain everywhere where Poland will be, where socialism will be.
It would be thanks to Broniewski and others like him that Poland would
rise again on the ruins of Warsaw, on the ashes of mourning. Sonimski,
the iconoclast and liberal, now made a choice to align himself with socialism; from London he sent greetings to Broniewskis Moscow.63
The sardonic Sonimski had one great love, and it was for Warsaw.
In London he published a collection of wartime poetry titled Alarm. The
title poem, which enjoyed unusual popularity in Nazi-occupied Poland,
Sonimski had written in Paris in autumn 1939; it ended with the words
I sound an alarm for the city of Warsaw. May it endure!64 In 1942 he
composed a long poem titled Popi i Wiatr (Ashes and Wind), mourning his ruined home. He wrote of the waiter who lazily shued about in
an empty Caf Ziemiaska, and of the impossibility of reconciling himself
to the fact that in his city there remained only ashes, ruins, and the sound
of the wind. Sonimski, the prodigal son, would not even be able to return
and bow [his] head before the former threshold of [his] home. In 1942,

into the a byss 2 09

Sonimski foresaw that Warsaw would be burnt to ashes before any of

them would see their city again.65
Scattered across the globe, the Skamander poets learned that exile
need not bring solidarity. The Polish emigration mirrored all of Europe
in its Manichean divisions: Polish migrs were split between the Right
and the Left. Through the two decades of interwar Poland, the Skamander
poets had willfully resisted the spiraling ideological polarization. Now
the space for being unengaged truly no longer existed. So in London did
Sonimski cast his lot with the Left, which did not go unnoticed. He was
seated at the podium for a poetry reading at a Polish military encampment in Scotland when one soldier stood up and demanded that Antoni
Sonimski be erased from the program for insulting the national youth.
This spurred a dozen cries of away with him!after which there followed silence. Sonimski took the rejection well, even nostalgically. I
cannot say, he wrote, that this scene caused me particular distress, it
reminded me of my homeland, of the prewar years, and I even felt something like aection.66
Sonimskis relationship with Mieczysaw Grydzewski and the circle
around Polskie Wiadomoci deteriorated. In September 1941 Grydzewski
wrote to Tuwim of the newspapers diculties; its subsidy had been withdrawn and Grydzewski had been forced to raise the price. Yet Grydzewski
was convinced that the paper would survive. After all, he reminded Tuwim, as Rabbi Ben Akiba had said, it has all already been.67 Grydzewski
added that his relations with Sonimski were not good, their Parisian
dierences having deepened still further.68 At the same time, not fully
understanding Tuwims increasing dogmatism, Grydzewski wrote to him,
My dear ones, how much I miss you and regret that you didnt come here;
this pertains to Leszek [Lecho] and Kazio [Wierzyski] as well.69
The feeling was not mutual. The tension between Grydzewski and
Tuwim centered around the Soviet Union: Grydzewski was critical of
Stalinism, while Tuwim placed his hopes for Polands future on an alliance with the Soviets. If there is such slavery, hunger, stench, cruelty,
and the worst of everything there, then why and for what are they ghting
so furiously? Tuwim wrote to Grydzewski.70 The editor thought otherwise. He did not agree with Tuwim, and now he was more forthright.
But youll doubtlessly forgive me, he wrote in a January 1942 letter,
ifrepaying frankness with franknessI tell you in advance that your

2 1 0 i n t o t h e a b y s s

letter is saturated with the climate of Merkuriusz [a right-wing journal]

rebours: there you had ydokomuna, here you have a fth column. For
the anti-Russian sulking in Polskie Wiadomoci I take full responsibility.71 Responding to Tuwims refusal to publish in Polskie Wiadomoci,
Grydzewski stood behind his paper:
As I learned later, your telegram regarding not publishing
in Polskie Wiadomoci was prompted by a change in opinion
about the National Democrats. ... Im not speaking about
aesthetic-opportunist considerations, but after all the endeks
[National Democrats] are dying just as are others in the battle
against the Germans, theyre dying just like others on Polish
battleelds. ... Does that truly have no meaning?
I have to tell you that in a certain sense I admire the vitality of your reactions: you have the time and the temperament
today to remember the endeks, ozon, to remember that Mac
kiewicz doesnt consider you a Polish poet, etc., to remember
that there was antisemitism in Poland (in the end not so many
wrongs were done to the Jews) and similar things.
As far as Polskie Wiadomoci is concerned ... it will always
be accessible to people from all camps, without inspecting
their party cards.72
Grydzewski must have been aware of Tuwims openly critical attitude towards him and his migr circle in London; he had heard that Sonimski
had published in Robotnik (The Worker) some damnations about Polskie
Wiadomoci that Tuwim had expressed in a private letter.73 Even so, the
optimist Grydzewski nourished hopes that their dierences would pass;
perhaps he failed to recognize the depth of Tuwims resentment.
Sonimski found himself isolated in London just as Tuwim did in
New York, and for similar reasons. The common experience was not lost
on either of them, and Tuwim clung to Sonimski from across the ocean.
In July 1942, now a year since Nazi Germany had gone to war against the
Soviet Union, Tuwim wrote in a long letter to his old friend from Pod Pika
dorem and Caf Ziemiaska: Thank you, my dearest Toleczekmore
beloved than at any other time in lifeand in a certain sense the only
one! Other friendships have utterly boiled to death in the kettle of war,
while my feelings for you, attachment to our shared past, a similarso I

into the a byss 2 11

thinkview of the future, attitude in the presenthave grown and (forgive this little word) fortied themselves. Believe me, that I, on American
soil, am equally as alone as you are in London (as far as old friendships are
concerned). Leszek [Lecho], as you most likely know, has cut o relations
with me. With Kazio [Wierzyski] I barely, barely maintain strained relations. Tuwim insisted to Sonimski, as he had to his sister, that he was
not hurt by the loss of his old friends: But do not judge that this solitude
is painful to me. On the contrary: it gladdens me and rather solidies the
fact that nally, nally a distinct line of partition has emerged. In the
past you didnt want to believe that the barricade has only two sides. Do
you believe it now?And after all, as compensation I have new friends,
people Ive met here: strong, noble, and uncompromising where the nal
goal of battle is concerned. ... As far as Mietek [Grydzewski] and his coworkers go, that gang doesnt concern me at all.74 As for Sonimski, he
was either more vulnerable or more confessional than Tuwim. The alienation was painful for him and the loneliness he felt in London the most
bitter he had ever experienced. He was plagued with the thought that he
had left himself behind in Warsaw. In that city, he wrote, remained my
literary output, my reader, my signicance, my sense of existence. ... In
Warsaw the streets and the cafs knew me, here I was an indistinguishable passerby, here I could garner only sympathy.75

kazakhstan, n ove m b e r 1 9 4 1 j a n u a ry 1 9 4 3
Unlike Wadysaw Broniewski, who was among the very rst to be released
in the amnesty, Aleksander Wat was freed only in November 1941. Just
before his release, his hair was shaven one more time. He emerged from
prison a skeleton, emaciated, his skull visible, his eyes seeming huge.
Now he joined a new category of people in a country in which, as a Soviet
maxim held at the time, there were only three categories: those who were
in prison, those who are in prison, and those who will be in prison.76 In the
hospital someone had told him that his family had most likely been sent to
Kazakhstan, and advised him to go to the NKVD in Alma-Ata and inquire
about their whereabouts. At the Saratov railway station it appeared that all
of Russia was on the move. Urks, as the Soviets called orphaned childthieves, wandered about the station waiting for an opportunity to steal,
everyone lived on the oor, in one spot Wat saw a woman being raped.
No one paid the scene any attention. He learned from another Pole there

2 12 i n t o th e a b y s s

that Wasilewska and Wayk were in Saratov making some speeches. They
would have welcomed himand potentially been a tremendous source
of help in nding his family. But the thought of seeking them out did not
even come into Wats mind. He was headed for Kazakhstan.77
In the meantime, Ola Watowa and Andrzej had abandoned their barracks in Ivanovka after the amnesty and set out for nowhere, heading
south. Eventually they found themselves on the state farm Antonovka,
where they had hoped to nd food, but where there were only cotton
elds and more starving people. In Antonovka they lived in a room with a
woman and her elderly mother, who maintained a strict domestic regime.
Ola Watowa stole bits of bread and cabbage from the old woman to feed to
Andrzej and in the evenings read Tolstoy to her by the oil lamp. Only once
did the old woman show generosity, on the holiday of the pig slaughter,
when she invited her tenants to join the family for a feast. Invited as well
were two men, no longer sober when they arrived. At a certain moment in
the festivities, with their hosts encouragement, the men began to dance.
As they drank more they began to court Watowa; she excused herself and
went to bed, but the men followed and tried to join her there. Terried, she
jumped onto the oor, and the drunken men began to chase her around
the room. The old woman looked on and laughed.78
At the enormously crowded Saratov railway station, a Polish Jew
named Krakowski was aboard a freight train waiting to depart when the
doors opened and a man was pulled into his wagon. The mans appearance
contrasted strikingly with the surrounding backdrop: he was wearing a
fur coat with an otter-fur collar and ... a bowler hat.79 Wat was unable to
support his own weight, he slid down onto the oor. Krakowski and his
traveling companions adopted him. During the journey Wat told them
the story of his imprisonment, he told them of his coexistence with lice,
their habits and psychology. Then, at one of the railroad junctions, Wat
decided to depart. Krakowski and his companions attempted to dissuade
him; he was too weak to set out alone in search of his family. Wat was
insistent. He got o the train.80
Wat found himself in the Kazakh town of Dzhambul, where he went
to the baths, looked at himself in a cracked mirror, and cried. Doctors
there examined him and told him that he had two weeks left to live. At that
moment he was undisturbed by the news. Two weeks seemed a long time,
and in any case he was focused only on reaching Alma-Ata and nding

into the a byss 2 1 3

his family. By the time Wat arrived in the Kazakh capital, it was winter in
Kazakhstan, and Wat was enchanted by the ice-covered poplar trees, which
seemed to glisten with diamonds. A Polish delegation had already been
established there, and Wat was introduced to its head, Kazimierz Wicek.
The delegation sent him to a doctor, who, in contrast to the doctor in
Dzhambul, told Wat that he could survive, but that he was suering from
a vitamin deciency and needed food. Neither food nor housing was to be
found easily. Wat spent his rst day in Alma-Ata wandering the streets,
searching for a place to sleep. In the end he reached the delegation hotel
where many people were spending the night in the lobby and there was
no place left to sit. He noticed a statue of Lenin with his arm outstretched,
and curled up in a small hidden corner behind the revolutionary leader.
At one point during the night Wat awoke; documents were being checked
and as a former prisoner he had no right to be in the Kazakh capital. Wat
remained unnoticed, however. Lenin had sheltered him. The following day
he went to the NKVD where he approached a small window and inquired
about the whereabouts of his family. Within ten minutes he received an
answer: In September Ola Watowa and Andrzej Wat had arrived on a state
farm in the Semipalatinsk province; later they had left to go farther south
with the other Polesbut it was unknown to where. Now Wat wrote some
two hundred postcards to all the Polish delegates in the former Soviet
Union, seeking news of his family. He wrote to Wasilewska, as well as
to Broniewski, who was at the Polish embassy in Kuibyshev. Broniewski
replied that someone had seen Ola Watowa around Chimkent, that she
had gone to see the delegate there, who had given her two hundred rubles.
This was all Broniewski knew.81
Wat later remembered this period in the Soviet Union as one in which
his sense of national identity grew stronger: he became more of a Jew and
more of a Polish patriot. Yet this was also the time in his life when he was
most closely integrated into Russian circles. This began with Mayakovskys
friend, the literary theorist Viktor Shklovsky, whom Wat had last seen
in Lvov in the autumn of 1939. When Wat ran into Shklovsky in AlmaAta, Shklovsky asked him no questions. Neitherit seemed to Watdid
Shklovsky want to hear anything, he was only glad to see Wat and said that
his whole group of friends was there and Wat could join them. When Wat
was wandering about the city, not strong enough to work on a kolkhoz and
knowing he could be deported at any moment, Shklovsky found him again

2 14 i n t o t h e a b y s s

and hid him in his own hotel room. There Wat met Shklovskys circle:
the novelist and playwright Konstantin Paustovsky, the humorist Mikhail
Zoshchenko and his young wife, the screenwriter Mikhail Shnaider, and
the lm director Sergei Eisenstein. Eisenstein appeared to Wat to be a
fantastic person in a demonic sort of way. His eyes. When he looked at
you, you knew you were being photographed. But he did that with his
soul; it wasnt just physical.82
Wat was the only Pole. Despite his history, so closely intertwined
with Russian literature, Wat remained in some sense a foreigner within
Shklovskys circle. About Soviet communism Shklovsky said nothing.
From Shklovsky and his friends Wat learned that in polite society one
did not speak about socialist realism. Rather, they spoke of art, of lm and
literature, and of Wats experiences in prison. They all knew, of course,
what went on in Soviet camps and prisons, but they seemed to nd Wats
way of relating the experience particularly interesting. Wat talked to them
as well about his conversion to Christianity in Saratov prison, a story that
captured Zoshchenkos attention. On one occasion Zoshchenko pushed
Wat to dene his faith more clearly, asking Wat if, at this very minute, he
truly believedin the divinity of Christ, the resurrection, the immortality
of the soul. Wat was unable to answer.83
Around New Years of 1942, Wat nally received an answer to one of the
many letters and postcards he had sent from Alma-Ata. The reply was from
a doctor, an embassy delegate, telling Wat to write to a certain woman in
Kazakhstan. Ola Watowa had received no news of her husband. By this
time she had sold her last possessiona worn-out pelissefor a bit of
our, a piece of bread, and a small quantity of animal fat. It was January of
1942; she was sitting at a wooden table, reading Tolstoy to the old woman,
when a sixteen-year-old boy appeared at the doorway. He did not come in,
he only stood by the door, holding up an envelope. Watowa recognized her
husbands handwriting; the boy asked what she would give him for the
letter. She took all of the pieces of atbread she had baked for dinner and
gave them to him, and he left her with the letter written to his mother, the
woman whom the doctor had suggested Wat contact. The letter was dated
18 January 1942; Wat wrote that he had been amnestied on 20 November
1941 and knew only that his family had been deported from Lvov in April
1940 and had moved south after the amnesty. He begged the woman to

into the a byss 2 15

tell him everything possible, even if the worst had happened; he promised
to repay the cost of telegrams and enclosed a return envelope, giving the
address of the Polish delegation in Alma-Ata and signing Aleksander Wat
(Chwat), writer from Warsaw.84
Ola Watowa immediately sent a telegram. Receiving it extricated Wat
from his numbness. He felt himself coming alive again. Alma-Ata was
transformed: I began to see colors, to hear, to smell, to see women, to
smell women.85 In his long response to his wifes rst telegram he told
her, Only now can I look at women (to the devil with all you women) and
children without sharp aversion.86
I never knew how much I loved you and one of my worst
suerings was the fact that I couldnt tell youour awful partingmy stupor at the time, that whole nightmare of our 13th
anniversary! I know, Ive guessed, what youve in fact experienced, and with fear I think about what kind of state Ill nd
both of you inbut the most important thing is that well be
together, that the worst has passed. I will never forget that you
were able to save yourself and our sonI cannot live without
you both. I will be considerably better, wiser, more loving to
both of youI will not so foolishly ruin your life and mine. I
suppose Ive changed quite fundamentallyIve actually experienced a strange period of some kind of second maturation,
a second coming into beingbut well speak much about that.
He told her about Mayakovskys friend Viktor Shklovsky, and about how
Mayakovskys stories of Wat served him well in Alma-Ata with his Russian
friends. He told her of how Shklovsky had taken him in despite the risk,
how he had taken care of Wat like a child. Wat was desperate to see his
family, he was also insecure. I am not asking about anything, he wrote,
nothing can diminish my love for both of you. Maybe youve stopped
loving me? He signed the letter always, until the end of life regardless
of anything, Yours Ol.87
She had not stopped loving him. On 24 January Ola Watowa wrote
to her husband, My Beloved, My Dearest, My Only One. She wrote
more the following day: How to nd words to express to you what I
feel at this moment. ... Andrzej is healthy. I love him rst of all for the
reason that he is yours and for you, with all my strength, force of will,

2 16 i n t o t h e a b y s s

faith, and suering I did everything that was in my power and beyond
my powerso as to return him to you to love with that little part that he
has as well from me. ... I regret nothing, not a moment of suering in
the course of these two years, if only these years have not left any painful
scar on you.88 It was a quixotic hope. A week later, on 1 February 1942,
she sent another letter, this time after having received his: Ol. What to
call you! My loved one, my dear one!You are my Fate, my Destiny, my
Life. I give thanks to Providence for that. I laughed and cried, reading
your letter. That uncertainty, that perhaps my heart had changed, and
yet you oer me all of yourself, all of yourself for the rest of our lives. Ol.
I was perhaps never as much yours as in the course of these two years.
You did not leave me for even a moment. You were pulling the oxen on
the drag-rake with me, and when it seemed to me that I would fallyou
and Andrzej called out that you needed me.89 They discussed how to nd
one another. Traveling was dicult, and Wat concealed the fact that he
did not have the strength to go very far. It was winter in central Asia and
hundreds of miles divided them. Finally they reached a decision: Ola and
Andrzej would go to Alma-Ata. They set out.
The journey from the south to the Kazakh capital was not an easy
one. On a freezing winter night, assisted by sympathetic strangers who
helped them to make the necessary bribes, the mother and son boarded
an overcrowded train. The air was thick, in semiconsciousness they began
to look for a place to sit, and Watowa tried to comfort her son, telling him
that now everything would be okay, that they would see his father soon.
When he heard her speaking in Polish, a man on the train turned to her,
and in that moment she noticed the Polish uniforms of Polish soldiers.
It was the Anders army. One of the soldiers pulled Andrzej onto his lap
and told Watowa that they were saved, there was an army, Anders. The
celebratory atmosphere in that overlled wagon moved her to tears. The
journey to Alma-Ata lasted two days and two nights, but they were joyous days, days of being fed and cared for by Polish soldiers, of singing
patriotic songs.90
So in March 1942 did Ola Watowa nally reach Alma-Ata. There on
the outskirts of the city, she came to a small wooden house, to a dirty room
where the corpse of a small child dead of scarlet fever lay. She found an old
man with a lit pipe and a woman with a handkerchief tied around her head

into the a byss 2 17

standing by the stove. She asked about Aleksander Wat. Without a word,
the old man nodded his head towards the right, and there in the middle of
the second room Ola Watowa saw her husband, writing something. They
were both much changed. When she had last seen him getting into the
black limousine in front of the restaurant in Lvov he had been thirty-nine
years oldyoung, strong, with dark hair and sparkling eyes. Now he had
gone gray, and she saw standing before her a haggard old man. Under
his unbuttoned shirt she saw a large black cross. Wat looked at his still
young wife and saw a sixty-year-old woman, her skirt riddled with holes,
she herself completely ravaged.91
During the night they lay down and whispered to each other of their
experiences of the past two years, with the faith that now that they had
found each other, nothing bad could happen to them any longer. Wat sent
a letter to Krakowski, the man who had adopted him on the train ride from
Saratov to Dzhambul, saying that he had found his family, and that his
wife had revealed herself to be a courageous, capable, and truly wonderful
woman.92 Wat brought Ola to meet his Russian friends, the writers who
had been evacuated from Moscow as the result of the approaching front
and who now gave her a very warm welcome, the kind only Russians can
give.93 Viktor Shklovsky brought her rice and took her and Andrzej, who
had tuberculosis, to see a doctor. And so she joined their group, the Russian intellectuals she saw as slaves, threatened with prison or the gulag
at every moment.94 It seemed to Wat that the Poles and Polish Jews now
in the Soviet Union, however unintentionally, treated the Soviets as subhuman, as oriental, barbarian. Wat was very attached to his own Russian
circle, a pocket of space where the otherwise predominant condescension
and resentment between Poles and Russians ceased to obtain. Shklovsky
and his friends were well educated in philology, and Wat found the level of
their conversation to be much higher than that at the Skamandrites table
at Caf Ziemiaska. Moreover, even in wartime Kazakhstan, they were
quite stylish. It was Mayakovsky, dead for over a decade, who had inducted
Wat into this circle, and a newspaper editor as well as a Georgian author
writing about Mayakovsky attempted to persuade Wat to write down his
reminiscences about his Russian futurist friend, oering to pay him well.
Wat refused. He refused even to speak of Mayakovsky, he could not bear
anything that had drawn him to communism in his youth.95

2 18 i n t o th e a b y s s

This period in Alma-Ata was a happy, but nonetheless unstable one.

Wat had neither work nor permission to live in the city. Finally the Polish
delegate Kazimierz Wicek told Wat that he would be able to employ him,
but as a delegate in the distant town of Molotovobad. Wat agreed; and the
family set out for the long journey. Yet when they arrived it quickly became
apparent that things would turn out badly; moreover the doctor there told
Wat that the altitude in Molotovobad was dangerous to his health. Wat
sent a telegram to Wicek, saying that he and his family were returning
to Alma-Ata. Wat wrote as well to Shklovsky, telling him of the beauty of
the landscape in Molotovobad, and asking Shklovsky if he could nd him
work in Alma-Ata. Shklovsky promised to try, but was not very hopeful,
especially since Wat, as a former prisoner, would not get ocial permission to remain in the Kazakh capital.96
On the train heading back to Alma-Ata, the familys luggage was stolen; they returned with nothing. When Wat went to the Polish delegation,
he learned that a package had come for him, together with fteen hundred
rubles. Wat suspected that the delegation had also received instructions
to employ him in Alma-Ata, because soon he began working there as a
school inspector and interpreter. Gifts and supplies began to arrive from
England and the United States. Wat found some used clothing among
the gifts coming from abroad and took an elegant tan suit for himself
and a winter coat for Ola. One day while Wat was working at the delegation, among the Poles who arrived emaciated and in rags there appeared
the fervent communist prisoner at Zamarstynw who had informed the
prison guard that Wat had been talking to Broniewski through the cell
walls. Now he looked at Wat in terror. Wat told him to leave.97
This time of Wats employment in the delegation and the arrival of
gifts from abroad was a respite from wartime hunger and the threat of
starvation. He, his wife and son lived with a wonderful Russian family in
Alma-Ata, whose son was a year older than Andrzej. The two boys became
close friends and avid readers, in particular of an old copy of The Count
of Monte Cristo the family had in the house. The boys would retreat into
separate rooms and write each other letters: Dear Count, Dear Marquis. Wat foresaw, however, that the reconciliation between the Soviet
and the Polish governments was drawing to an end and feared what would
follow. He wrote to Broniewski, asking him to try to nd a place for Wat
in the army: Wadek, get us in too, because well die here when the army

into the a byss 2 19

leaves. Broniewskis reply was not promising: The atmosphere in the

Anders army was not good. Wat would be unhappy there.98

the middle e a s t , s p r i n g 1 9 4 2 a n d b e yo n d
When Broniewski had reported for service on 14 April 1942, he was assigned to the Sixth Infantry Division. He was happy to be ghting for
Poland at last. The same week he wrote to his daughter, I feel good in a
uniform and in general as if I had rid myself of all worries with the exception of those about you and what will happen with you. I have beautiful
cavalrymans pants, but so tight that theyre pushing my stomach all the
way into my throat. The tunic, on the contrary, is too big and bulges out in
the front, as if I were pregnant.99 Broniewskis initial enthusiasm proved
ephemeral. Unlike during his days in Pisudskis Legions, in the Anders
army Broniewski was without close friends; moreover, the other Polish
ocers bore hostility towards him for his communist past and continued
leftist views. On 17 May 1942, after just one month in the army, he wrote
to his daughter that he was lonely, that he had failed to become close
to the ocers, and that he was doing much reading but no writing, as
the days were taken up by military exercises and demonic heat and the
evenings were without light. In late summer Broniewski was evacuated
with the Anders army to the Middle East. Two days before his departure
from the Soviet Union, on 17 August 1942, he wrote to Anka that this
would be his last letter from his present location; he was setting o into
the distant world. He begged her to remember her country and to read
Polish literature. Keep warm, my daughter! he wrote, Your mother
wont let anything happen to you, and after the war well meet in oliborz.
Remember everything I spoke to you about before my departure, love
your country and your father. Read Polish books, look for them in used
bookstores and try to speak pure, proper Polish.100
At a banquet in Iran, Broniewski recited a poem expressing his longing to return home to Warsaw; to hear the crickets chirping in oliborz;
to see the Polish ag waving on the ruins of the castle.101 In December
1942 Anders called Broniewski for a meeting and proposed that, given the
hostility of various ocers towards him, he accept a long-term military
leave. Broniewski would go to Jerusalem to work at the Polish Information
Center established there that year. He accepted, and traveled to Jerusalem
via Baghdad, Damascus, and Haifa.102 He had fared better than Janina

22 0 i n t o t h e a b y s s

figure 12 Wadysaw Broniewski at the editorial oces of the Polish newspaper

W Drodze in Jerusalem, 1943. Courtesy of Muzeum Wadysawa Broniewskiego.

Broniewskas second husband. Soon after his own enlistment Romuald

Gadomski was arrestedmost likely as a Soviet agent or communist
inltratorand sent to prison in Palestine. It was only with diculty that
Wasilewska managed to get him released.103
In Jerusalem Broniewski found more favorable company than he
had among the army ocers, and the following six months were prolic
ones for him. On 30 May 1943 he wrote to Anka, telling her that his last
months in the army had been unpleasant and full of insults, that he had
been released on a two-year leave as of February and had reached Jerusalem twelve days later. His immediate future was unclear: an acquaintance
in the Polish London government had promised to try to arrange for
Broniewski to come to London, but it was unknown what would come of
that. Another possibility would be to return to the army when the time
came to go to the front; he had asked this of Anders, he did not want to
miss the ghting. For the moment, however, Broniewski was happy in
Jerusalem, writing well, giving readings, and publishing a new volume of

into the a byss 221

poetry to come out simultaneously in Jerusalem and in London. Moreover,

in Palestine he had met many Polish Jews he had once known in Warsaw;
they had brought volumes of his poetry with them from Poland, and thus
he had texts for his own poetry readings.104
As for Palestine itself, Broniewski was not enchanted by religious
Jerusalem:
Some kind of meddlesome market-stall atmosphere of all
confessions, obtuse and purposeless fanaticism. Christs grave
is wholly uninteresting, only Via Dolorosa has a bit of character thanks to the fact that its remained an alley where, like
two thousand years ago, there reigns squalor, hubbub, and
commerce, something like Mia Street at home. And this is
precisely the authentic background of the tragedy from two
thousand years ago, which our own time has surpassed a
million times over. How many political prisoners do we have
today who are crucied one way or another? My daughter,
I dont believe much in progress. The Wailing Wall is a bunch
of old stones, which at one time constituted the foundation
stones of Solomons Temple. Jews come there and sob in
tensively. Tedium.105
Nor was he very impressed with the more modern Tel Aviv, largely the
work of Polish Jews, which he described to his daughter as something like
several oliborzes taken together, but shoddier and without character.106
Broniewskis heart was with the kibbutzniks, the socialists, the idealists.
He told Anka of his visit to a kibbutz, a socialist agricultural collective,
something like a kolkhoz. Socialism amidst capitalism did not seem
constructive to him, yet he nonetheless felt sympathy and admiration
for the kibbutzniks. About Zionism more broadly he remained uncertain.
He told Anka: Jews here speak in Hebrew and when one hears children
speaking in that antiquated, dead language, children who dont know
how to speak in any other language, one believes that they will grow up
to be the future creators of culture and the Jewish state. After all, the
devil knows, because there are twice as many Arabs here as Jews, and its
unclear how everything will turn out after the war.107
If Broniewskis time in Soviet incarceration had disillusioned him
about communism in practice, his experience in the Anders army had

222 i n t o t h e a b y s s

repelled him from the anticommunists as well. In an interview published

in Tel Aviv in 1943, Broniewski was asked if his time in prison had altered
his leftist views. He answered unequivocally: There is no prison that can
induce a renunciation of ideals. It seems to me that I have not changed
at all as far as my views are concerned. Given that I found myself there
under lock and key, then something must have changed there. In liberated Poland I will continue to ght for the realization of social postulates,
renouncing absolutely nothing. The preliminary condition, however, for
changes in the Poland of the future is the battle for her liberation, for her
independence. I am ready at any moment to devote my life to that.108 In
Jerusalem in 1943 Broniewski remained as he had been in Lvov in 1939:
committed to both Polish patriotism and socialism, persuaded that the
two couldand wouldbe reconciled.

kuibyshev, 1 9 4 2
After Broniewskis release from prison, he and Wasilewska made eorts
to move Janina Broniewska from the pig farm where she had been working near Kuibyshev.109 Wasilewska was concerned about all of her colleagueseven those she did not particularly likeand she was especially
concerned about Janina Broniewska. She sent vitamins from the front.110
Then in March 1942, Alfred Lampe surprised Broniewska with news that
he and Wasilewska were reincarnating Nowe Widnokrgi, which had ceased
publication in summer 1941. Now Lampe told Broniewska to come with
him to Moscow to discuss the details with Wasilewska. Janina Broniewska,
modestly, asked how she would be useful. She felt only too well the whole
distance between us despite our personal friendship. Alfred is our brain,
our political-ideological teacher. A member of the Central Committee of
the KPP. He reassured her, telling her not to talk nonsense, that he would
feel better having her along. With one smile, she wrote, he silences
my fuss. He has a very particular smile. With such a smile one can put a
person back on his feet. Well, and so he did. Were o.111
It was cold in Moscow, although it was already April. Janina Broniewska walked with Wasilewska through the city as the sidewalks began
to freeze over with ice. I cling to Wanda, Broniewska wrote,
Now we walk along arm-in-arm in unison. We look like a very
aectionate married couple. Wanda has her hair cut short, she

into the a byss 223

has a fur cap, a military trench coat and the badges of a colonel.
A very handsome and stately colonel. And suddenly we pause
on the icy Moscow sidewalk.
This dialogue follows:
i : Why, just think, Dziuka, why think ...
wa n d a : ... if someone had told us so three years ago

in Warsaw ...
i : that you would be wearing the uniform of a Red Army
colonel ...
wa n d a : ... that I would be walking with you with
this ladies kerchief on my head along the streets of
Moscow ...
b o t h o f us at once: ... What life manages to think
up ... 112
Very quickly an editorial sta for the new Nowe Widnokrgi was gathered
in Kuibyshev. Wasilewska was the formal editor-in-chief and would y in
from time to time from the front, while Lampe fullled the actual functions of chief editor. Broniewska worked alongside Lampe; the whole
sta was squeezed into two small rooms and worked from early in the
morning until late at night.113 Lampe quickly made contact with Jakub
Berman in Ufa.114
The rst issue of the new Nowe Widnokrgi appeared in May 1942.115
The paper had been transformed. Now no longer a literary monthly directed at the intelligentsia, the Kuibyshev Nowe Widnokrgi was a biweekly
social-political newspaper intended more broadly for Poles living in the
Soviet Union. By this time Polish-Soviet diplomatic relations had resumed
and there was a Polish embassy in Kuibyshev; Nowe Widnokrgi needed
to strike a delicate balance between Polish patriotism and pro-Soviet partisanship. The newspaper also served as a center for correspondence and
communication among Poles dispersed throughout the Soviet Union. The
editorial sta received large numbers of letters, and Stefan Jdrychowski
and Broniewska as a rule answered all of them, privately by post.116
The role Janina Broniewska now played far exceeded anything she had
done in interwar Poland. She adapted well. Like Wasilewska, Broniewska
wore her hair short during the war. One day in May 1942, during the rst
weeks of the reconstituted Nowe Widnokrgi, she was looking at herself

224 i n t o t h e a b y s s

in the mirror when her daughter Anka, unhappy with her mothers
appearance, said, Mom, you dont have to make yourself look older than
you are. That hairyoure a veritable nun. Broniewska, however, was
of the opinion that this wartime elegance would have to do and set o
for the editorial oces.117 No longer was Anka left home alone with her
much younger brother Stanisaw; her mother had acquired a third child
as well: Wasilewskas daughter Ewa, whom Wasilewska had given her
friend as a wartime deposit before setting o again to the front.118 Broniewska, for her part, bore no resentment of her politically inferior position; on the contrary she subordinated herself to Wasilewskas instructions
with enormous aection. There in Kuibyshev in 1942, Broniewska knew
nothing about what was happening in Poland. She assumed there were
comrades carrying out the antifascist war at home, but she did not know
their names or even their pseudonyms. She understood that Wasilewska
and Lampe must know, but willingly conformed to their implicit, internal
discipline and never asked more questions than were appropriate. The
womens closeness did not suer. From the front Wasilewska sent letters,
and Broniewska wrote of the friends separation then: And who knows,
if once again in some kind of mystical way we didnt feel ourselves beside
each other, as during those wanderings along Marszakowska Street of
long ago?119
Wasilewska and her husband Korneichuk did come to Kuibyshev for
a month during the summer of 1942. Stalin desired from the couple some
literary works about the war, and both were obliging. There in Kuibyshev
in July, Korneichuk wrote the play Front (The Front), and Wasilewska wrote
the novel Tcza (The Rainbow).120 The Rainbow, despite its hurried composition, came to play a signicant role as literary propaganda for the Soviet
side. A lm was quickly made and shown with great success both in the
Soviet Union and abroad. After its premiere in New York, Wasilewskas
old friend from Cracow, the economist Oskar Lange, sent telegrams of
congratulations.121 The novel was set in a Ukrainian village where the
men had already gone o to ght, and the women and children were left
alone to experience the brutality of the German occupation. It was a story
of the solidarity, patriotism, and superhuman will of the peasants who
refused to collaborate regardless of what was done to them. The Rainbow
was not pure socialist realism; it relied more on a certain unadulterated
sentimentality, facilitated by an omniscient narrator who delved into the

into the a byss 225

minds of not only the heroic peasants, but also the Germans and in particular the leading German ocers Russian whore-collaborator, Pussy.
The work was very much the imaginative embodiment of Wasilewskas
speeches, and a reection of the purity of the Manichean universe she
inhabited. Yet it was in some sense a feminist story as well, portraying
the loyalty of the women and children to their men in battle, but above
all showing how the peasant women emerged as the greatest heroes, the
ones who were strongest and most self-sacricing, who could endure and
survive the worst hells. In the end, it was these women and children who,
together with the returning Red Army and Soviet partisans, liberated the
village.122 When The Rainbow won the Stalin Prize, Wasilewska donated
her prize money to fund a Soviet airplane. She asked that the airplane be
named Warsaw. Stalin sent her a note, promising that her wish would
be granted.123

warsaw unde r g e rm a n o c c u p at i o n
Jarosaw Iwaszkiewiczs own instances of prewar antisemitism notwithstanding, during the war he devoted himself to hiding Jews in and around
his home in Stawisko, just outside of Warsaw. Iwaszkiewiczs wife Anna
secured false documents for those in hiding. She knew someone in the
community who drank with the Germans. The Iwaszkiewiczes paid
him, he bought vodka, and the German ocer stationed there stamped
the documents. Of Annas wartime activities Iwaszkiewiczs daughter
said, My mother was very courageous, although my father would say
that with women this isnt courage, but only a lack of imagination.124 In
his own wartime journal, Iwaszkiewicz devoted much space to reminiscences. On 29 November 1943, he wrote in his diary on the anniversary
of Skamanders debut:
Today twenty-ve years have passed since the opening of
Pikador! Tuwim, Wierzyski, Lecho are in America, Sonim
ski in London, I am alone in this pitiable castle. What fates
have awaited, persecuted, oppressed us during these twentyve years. The beginning was a true revolution. Poetry, to the
street!my friends called out. Not I, I was always cautious. ...
Im curious if they, there, this evening, are remembering this
anniversary? Are they reecting upon it, did they remember?

226 i n t o t h e a b y s s

How many things separated and separate usbut how many

connect us! That day long ago, 29 November 1918, joined us.
A far-away dayyet memorable, vivid, a day that still ows
with the blood in our veins. It was good, that beginning!125
News of Iwaszkiewiczs friends was intermittent and scattered. Soon
after the January 1940 arrests of Wat, Broniewski, Peiper and Stern, the
story appeared in an underground song in Warsaw.126 The news of the arrests was not the only thing to travel back to Warsaw from Lvov. Marysia
Zarbiska and her daughter Majka returned as well. It was not an auspicious decision: in 1943 Zarbiska was arrested by the Germans and sent
to Auschwitz.127 Mieczysaw Braun, Broniewskis old poet friend from
d, had also ed to Lvov during the rst months of the war, but returned
in January 1940 to the German zone, where his wife had remained, and
spent the early months of the occupation in Warsaw. In autumn 1940 the
Nazi authorities ordered all Jews in Warsaw to move to a segregated area
of the city. Irena Krzywicka made the decision not to go; Tadeusz Boyeleskis wife took her in until she had found another place to live in
hiding. In July 1941, Krzywicka was awakened by a mans footsteps. She
got out of bed, but no one was there. She felt a premonition then: her
lover had died. And in fact he had. The Nazis had arrested Boy-eleski
in Lvov and shot him.128
After the Germans ordered all Warsaw Jews into the ghetto, a friend
oered to hide Braun in his apartment in the Mokotw district, but Braun
declined. He and his wife both went to the Warsaw ghetto. With each passing day conditions in the ghetto grew worse. The streets were lled with
emaciated children begging for food and the corpses of those who had
starved to death. Braun worked in the post oce and continued to write
poetry. He sent letters to friends on the other side of the wall, letters in
which he wrote about Polish literature, about Joseph Conrad, Adam Mic
kiewicz and Stefan eromski.129 In early 1942, Braun fell ill with spotted
typhus. He died in the ghetto in the rst days of February.130
In the Warsaw ghetto together with Braun were Jakub Bermans two
brothers, Mieczysaw and Adolf, both Zionists. The outbreak of the Second
World War was the moment when Adolf, the youngest brother who had
once been part of Wasilewskas Popular Front gatherings, came into his
own. During the initial bombardment of Warsaw, he dragged children

into the a byss 227

out from under the fallen debris and found food and shelter for them.
When the ghetto was formed, he organized housing, food kitchens and
underground schools. The moment when the news reached the ghetto
of the German attack on the Soviet Union was a magical one for Adolf
Berman. Now the anguish of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact had passed and
he watched as orthodox Jews prayed for the Red Army to save them from
the Nazi hell. When the dissolved KPP was reconstituted as the Polish
Workers Party in the Soviet Union, the Polish-Jewish communist Jzef
Lewartowski arrived in the Warsaw ghetto to organize left-wing activists
there. Adolf Berman joined him at once.131
In January 1943, Mieczysaw Berman was gassed in Treblinka, together with his wife.132 He was not the rst one in the Berman family to
die in the gas chambers. His father, his sister Anna, who was a beautiful
and quiet Germanist, Annas husband, and their six-year-old daughter
had gone with earlier transports.133 By January 1943, Adolf Berman was no
longer in the ghetto. In September 1942, he and his wife Basia had managed to cross to the so-called Aryan Side.134 There they established contacts
with the Armia Ludowa (Peoples Army), the Polish communist partisans,
as well as with the Armia Krajowa (Home Army), the anti-Nazi Polish
underground associated with the government-in-exile in London.135 His
liaison with the Home Army was the young Catholic activist Wadysaw
Bartoszewski, recently returned from Auschwitz, where he had been imprisoned early in the war. Now the young Catholic patriot and the older
Marxist Zionist joined together in the creation of the egota, the Home
Armys Council for Aid to the Jews.136
egota had no contact with the Jewish Combat Organization that was
preparing for an uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, as that was the responsi
bility of a dierent branch of the Home Army.137 Adolf Berman, however,
lled multiple roles and maintained contacts on behalf of the Jewish Combat Organization with the communist underground as well. He thereby
placed himself in an ethically and logistically problematic position amidst
two rival undergrounds, which at this moment were already on the verge
of a civil war. The Peoples Army wanted a communist Poland; the Home
Army feared that Soviet occupation could follow Nazi occupation. Adolf
Berman could have been shot by the Home Army as a traitor. He never
spoke of his communist connections to Bartoszewski, but the younger
man suspected his involvement: But I knew and it very much disturbed

228 i n t o t h e a b y s s

me, internally, that [Adolf ] Berman most likely was working with the
communists in the anti-Nazi underground. ... Well, I explained it to myself by reasoning that the Jews were in such a desperate situation that they
were looking for contacts absolutely everywhere possible. But I have to say
that it bothered me. It was never said openly, but of course various things
are known that are not spoken of openly.138 Adolf Berman was bold and
idealistic, perhaps nave, unquestionably energetic and determined. He
believed in the solidarity of those who were on the side of good. He was
a fool, said Marek Edelman, a Bundist commander of the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising. Edelman added: You cant dance at two weddings at once.139

moscow, 1 9 4 3 1 9 4 4
In January 1943, Wanda Wasilewska and Alfred Lampe sent a letter from
Kuibyshev to Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet commissar for foreign aairs.
Some kind of central organization to coordinate Polish aairs in the Soviet
Union was necessary, they told him. The letter pointed to the anti-Soviet
tendencies predominant among many Polish groupings and argued that,
given the various institutions at the disposal of the reactionary and antiSoviet Polish emigration, a counterweight to these forces was needed in
the form of an organized center of pro-Soviet, progressive elements.
Wasilewska and Lampe further noted that many Poles in the Soviet Union
had experienced repression and were not favorably disposed towards the
Soviet Union, and that even many Poles who had not undergone repression did not possess equal rights in the Soviet Unionthey were not
accepted into the army or for work in war industriesand were bitter towards the Soviet government. Given this, Lampe and Wasilewska argued,
the need for a central coordinating body was all the greater.140
A few weeks later, in late January 1943, Wasilewska and Korneichuk
were on their way from Saratov to Stalingrad when they were suddenly
called back to Moscow. Wasilewska was unhappy about the summons.
In November 1942 the Soviet army had gone on the counteroensive in
Stalingrad; by late January 1943 General Paulus, despite Hitlers orders,
was preparing to surrender, and Wasilewska wanted to be with the Red
Army at this moment of triumph. When the couple arrived in Moscow
Korneichuk was told that Stalin was waiting to see him. When Korneichuk returned from that meeting, he told Wasilewska that Stalin had
asked him whether she was willing to go to all lengths to help us with

into the a byss 229

the Polish question? Korneichuk was surprised that Stalin would even
feel he needed to ask. The answer was obvious: absolutely. Then Stalin
told him that it would likely soon come to a decisive conict between the
Polish government in London and the Soviet Union, and in that situation
Wasilewska would be able to do very much. Conversations with Stalin
and Molotov followed about establishing a new publication to be named
Wolna Polska (Free Poland), which should not appear to be the initiative of
only a few people, but rather such as to attract all of the Poles in the Soviet
Union. Given this, it was necessary to create an organization behind the
publication. Stalin suggested the name Zwizek Patriotw Polskich (Union
of Polish Patriots). Wasilewska was dissatised. She explained to Stalin
that the word patriot was quite compromised in Polish by its association
with nationalism. But Stalin reassured her: every word could be imbued
with new content. By this time, there were some Polish communists already in Moscow; a large group remained in Kuibyshev, and Wasilewska
made the decision to move the whole editorial sta of Nowe Widnokrgi
to Moscow so as to create a large editorial center there.141
So in March 1943 did Janina Broniewska pack her things and set o
for Moscow.142 There Nowe Widnokrgis editorial oces found a new home
in a couple of old rooms near the square named after Feliks Dzieryski.
Initially there were two editorial oces and two editorial stas, one for
Nowe Widnokrgi and one for Wolna Polska, but given that the same people
were writing for both papers, the distinction was less than clear.143 By the
time Broniewska arrived in Moscow, the rst issue of Wolna Polska had
already appeared, including a statement by the Union of Polish Patriots
announcing its task of gathering all Poles on Soviet lands to ght for
an independent, democratic Poland liberated from the Nazi yoke.144 The
international context was changing quickly. On 25 April 1943 the Soviet
Union severed diplomatic relations with the Polish government in London. The pretext was the massacre in the Katy forest of some 15,000
Polish ocers, including Irena Krzywickas husband. The Soviet Union
insisted the massacre was the doing of the Germans; the Polish government suspected the Soviets.145 Three days later, Wasilewska gave a radio
broadcast announcing the break in diplomatic relations and declaring
that General Sikorskis government-in-exile did not represent the Polish
nation.146 She maintained that the severing of diplomatic relations did not
equal a change in the relationship of the Soviet government to Poles as a

230 i n t o t h e a b y s s

nation or to Poles in the Soviet Union. The question of whether or not they
would return to Poland, she announced via radio, would not be decided
by this or that passport or by this or that piece of paper, but rather by their
attitude, their behavior, their participation in the battle against fascism.
The reference was a particular one: there was a large group of Poles who,
even under coercion, refused to accept Soviet passports.147
It was the time of Wanda Wasilewskas unparalleled power. Jerzy
Borejsza arrived in Moscow in late June 1943 and joined Wolna Polskas
editorial sta only with great reluctance. He had come to Moscow as
an ocer in the Red Army, and was deeply oended to learn that now
Wasilewska would be his superior and would decide in what capacity
he was needed.148 Stalin granted Wasilewska much freedom in decisionmaking, and not everyone was happy with her decisions. In April 1943, as
the Nazis undertook the nal liquidation of the Jewish quarter, the Jewish
Combat Organization began an uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, aided by
Wasilewskas old friend from Popular Front gatherings, Adolf Berman.
While communist partisans in Warsaw supported the Jewish resistance,
Wolna Polskas priorities were elsewhere; the paper published nothing. An
editor at Wolna Polska, however, broke down and told Julian Stryjkowski
of the Jewish uprising. Stryjkowski was stunned: As a communist I did
not feel myself to be a Jew. A communist is not a Jew. The death from one
day to the next of any nation would be a shock. But what happened in War
saw returned my Jewishness to me.149 Stryjkowskiunknown then as a
writerhimself had joined the newspapers small circle after making his
way to Moscow. He slept in a collective hotel room for the editorial sta,
where he met Tadeusz Peiper. Having been released from prison in the
wake of the amnesty, Peiper was now writing for Wolna Polska.
Stryjkowski soon had the occasion himself to meet Wanda Wasilewska,
the great personality with a very complex psyche towards whom he felt
a respect tinged with awe.150 The occasion was not an auspicious one. It
was the evening of the All-Slav Congress in Moscow, and Stryjkowski was
proofreading the next issue of Wolna Polska, which had to be ready early
for the congress opening. A Russian journalist had written a feuilleton for
Wolna Polska under the pseudonym The Observer, taking advantage of
the fact that writing for the Polish newspapergiven the attempt to build
a broad coalition of Poles dispersed throughout the Soviet Uniongave
him more freedom of expression than he would have otherwise had in the

into the a byss 23 1

Soviet press. At this moment a signicant battle was expected in a certain

area. Until this time there had, however, been silence on this topic. The
Observer took advantage of this silence in a feuilleton where, like a chess
player, he foresaw the movements of the German and Soviet forces. The
censor removed the article. Stryjkowski, however, who had been awake all
night frantically trying to prepare the issue for the printer in time, failed
to recall the censors decision. A scandal resulted: all the delegates to the
Congress had now read the text that was to have been censored. Now in
terror Stryjkowski waited for the verdict. His superior, Wiktor Grosz, came
to him then to say that Wasilewska would talk to him on Thursday, that
he should only listen to her and say nothing.151
Thursday came. Wanda Wasilewska, Julian Stryjkowski wrote, in
the uniform of a Soviet colonel, stood behind the desk, tensed, tall, slim,
masculine, severe, with an oblong face and a long nose, and small eyes
with black-rings from lack of sleep, and I on the other side of the desk
small, pale, with a strong determination to be silent, to behave decently,
with dignity. They stood opposite one another. A long moment passed.
Wiktor could not endure it and hid behind a curtain like
Polonius in Hamlet.
Wanda lit a cigarette. Apparently she didnt know how
to begin. It was one of the human moments in her life.
The mass orator began with diculty. She was unnerved.
She hesitated.
I waited calmly. I was in a better situation than Wanda
Wasilewska, the second person after Stalin. I knew from
Wiktor that I wasnt under any threat. With her beautiful alto
voice, with which she seduced men and crowds at meetings,
she called out:
You idiot, dont be a fool. Get out of there!
Wiktor, shamefaced, abandoned his hiding spot.
As a former teacher, Wanda Wasilewska took advantage
of that intermezzo to assume a mentorial pose, deprived of
Soviet pedagogical sweetness. For a moment there was a waft
of Austro-Hungarian Cracow and the home of the foreign
aairs minister, Wandas father, the Pisudczyk, the scholar
Leon Wasilewski. I didnt take advantage of the moment to call

232 i n t o t h e a b y s s

out: Wanda, my friend, I, too, was a teacher like you, a Polonist

like you, an Austrian subject like you. So much connects us!
We were born in the same year!
Are you, my comrade, aware of what you have done?
Actually, what you did not do? she corrected herself as if
she were a pedagogue confessing to an error.
I looked at Wiktor. Should I say something or not?
Wiktor nodded his head.
Yes, I confessed with the contrition of a grammar school
pupil.
And the potential threat to you?
I didnt look at Wiktor and I was silent.
Its better that you didnt know.
How could he have known? Wiktor unexpectedly
intervened.
Wanda aimed a harsh look at him.
I didnt ask you. But such a chatterbox as you could have
told him.
I myself didnt know, Wiktor defended himself. If I had
said it, it wouldnt have been anything bad, anything against
the Party.
Wiktors presence served me like a lightening rod. Wandas
anger was directed against him.
You can ...Wanda controlled her perturbation with
dicultyplease, dont waste time, writego sit and write
your own satirical feuilleton. The last one didnt make me
terribly ...
Wiktor left.
Wanda lit a second cigarette. Now it was coming to me.
So you, comrade, didnt understand the potential threat to
you. ... If what happened to you were to happen to a Soviet
comrade ... it would end dierently, completely dierently. ...
But our attitude to comrades is one of li ...
litoci [mercy], I nished in spirit.
Liberalism, Wanda Wasilewska nished her sentence.152

into the a byss 233

new york, 19 4 3 1 9 4 4
The courage Julian Tuwim had so admired in Wanda Wasilewska and
Janina Broniewska became his only on the other side of the Atlantic. Now
on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Julian Tuwim became an engag
poet in a way he had never been in Poland. In March 1942, the Polish
communist Bolesaw Gebert invited him to a celebration in Detroit on
the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Polonia Association there.
Tuwim and his wife refused to stay in a hotel; they wanted to stay with a
real worker, and so accepted the hospitality of a proletarian immigrant
from Warsaw who worked at an auto factory. There in Detroit Tuwim
spoke of how moved he was to have forged a new union with the working
class. I am a child from d, from the great factory city of d ... and
so in fact I was formed and I grew up in the atmosphere of the Polish
proletariat, he told the Polish workers in Michigan. He told them as well
that they would ght together against fascism for a new, better world, a
world raised from the ruins by their own hands. When he had nished
speaking, some twelve hundred people gave the poet in exile a standing
ovation. Afterwards Tuwim told Gebert, This was the rst time in my
life that I, a child from d, spoke to workers and they understood me.
They trust me and value my poetry. This is a great joy.153
In early 1943 the news reached Tuwim that the Polish Bundist leaders
Henryk Erlich and Wiktor Alter had been put to death in Soviet Russia.154
In March Grydzewski sent Tuwim a telegram from London: I await your
article or poem concerning Alter and Erlich.155 Grydzewski waited in vain.
Tuwim refused. In April 1943 he wrote to his sister in London, Like you, I
experienced and experience painfully the aair of Erlich and Alter (I dont
believe that theyre guiltyand I dont believe that theyre not guilty; a
lovely situation from the point of view of reason and conscience; but such
times have come that one has to live with absurdities even of this kind).
He added that neither this aair nor others could shake his deepest conviction, that only and exclusively on Russia, on agreement, on friendship
with Russia ... does our national future depend. Given this, he asked
that she convey to Grydzewski that he would write neither a poem nor
an article about the Bundists, and told her to remind his former editor of
what the Polish Renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski had once written:

234 i n t o t h e a b y s s

Nieze czasem zamilcze, co czowieka boli,

By nie zna nieprzyjaciel, e ci ma po woli.
At times it is not bad to be silent about what pains one
So that the enemy does not know that he has you in his
power.156
As Tuwim became estranged from his old friends, he sought out new
ones on the left side of the barricade. In a June 1944 letter to a Polish
socialist worker who had emigrated to the United States in 1902, Tuwim
revisited his own political history, reecting on his youthful enchantment
with Pisudski and the tragedy of Poland:
The more I reect upon the events and spirit of that period
of the period when Pisudski, openly or covertly, dominated
the more Im ensconced in wonder that we, contemporaries,
allowed ourselves to be so dazed and asphyxiated by the romantic uids that Pisudski radiated. I openly confess that I,
too, for a long time belonged to the asphyxiated ones. Many
reasons played into that, among others: an intoxication with
independence, an emotional wading in various historical falsehoods taken in by my generation, the terric ballast of poetry
and mysticism, which we, most unnecessarily, accepted from
the nineteenth century, instead of freeing ourselves of itthat
is, placing it where it belonged: in the sphere of artistic, literary
jewelswe deluded ourselves and others that we were some
kind of singularity in history, that we had some such historical
missions, destinies, and similar bagatelles. It was as if
Pisudski were the embodiment of all these turbid and hollow
(speaking as one does in Warsaw) ideas.157
Tuwim drew nearer as well to the economist Oskar Lange, an old
friend of Wasilewska who was now an American citizen, and who, in
April 1944, paid a visit to their mutual friends in Moscow. Stalin had not
been in favor of the visit. Lange was an American suspiciously close to
American president Franklin Roosevelt, and Stalin did not trust him.
Wasilewska, however, did, and was insistent. In the end Stalin relented
and acknowledged afterwards that Wasilewska had been right. When
Lange returned to the United States, he brought with him a letter for

into the a byss 235

Tuwim from Janina Broniewska.158 Tuwim was very happy to receive it;
his heart was very much with his old friends who were now in Moscow.
After the Red Armys victory at Stalingrad in February 1943, the war had
turned. Now it was the Soviet Union that was on the oensive, pushing the Germans back westwards. In late July 1944, as the Red Army
approached Warsaw, Tuwim sent a telegram to Ehrenburg in awkward
English: Three years ago during the darkest hours of the heroic struggle
of the soviet people I sent to You and to russian writers words full of faith
in future victory over the teutonic barbarians stop Today in the bright
hour of fulllment when the indomitable Red Army approaches the very
heart of Poland and brings the liberation of my people I share with You
the immense joy when the right cause triumphs over the evil one stop.159
In 1943 Polish Prime Minister Sikorski had died in an airplane crash in
Gibraltar. Stanisaw Mikoajczyk of the Polish Peasant Party succeeded
him, and the following year planned a trip to Moscow in spite of the
absence of diplomatic relations. In August 1944, Tuwim wrote to Oskar
Lange that whatever the outcome of Mikoajczyks trip to Moscow, the
London government would soon cease to have a deciding voice. Tuwim
was condent that rather it was Warsaw who would decide, and so most
likely our friends. At the same time, speculating about the future composition of the Polish government, he bemoaned the fact that Lange was
an American citizen and so would be unable to hold any leading oce in
Poland. As for himself, he added, In all likelihood I dont need to explain
to you that personally Im not considering any post or oce. For four
reasons: 1) I dont know how to; 2) I dont like to; 3) I cant; 4) I dont want
to. Moreover: I will return to the homeland at the rst opportunityand
to the highest ocethe oce of poet.160
In December 1944 Tuwim, clinging to those of his old friends who
now found themselves on his side of the red barricade, sent an emotional letter to Sonimski in London. Tuwim thought often of Sonimski
and believed that alliances between the London government and rightwing Polish migrs must have removed any remnants of illusions
Sonimski might have had about the socialism of London socialists and
the democracy of National Democrats. As for Tuwim, he called these
forces, in a satirical twist on the nineteenth-century Polish insurrectionary
slogan for your freedom and ours, those battling for your fascism and
ours.161 For Tuwim the war years were a time of redening his loyalties

236 i n t o t h e a b y s s

as well as his identity. In 1944 his open letter My ydzi polscy (We, Polish
Jews), addressed to my Mother in Poland or her most beloved shadow,
was published in Tel Aviv. The essay, written under the spell of the news
of the Holocaust, began:
And at once I hear the question Where does the We come
from? A question to a certain extent justied. Its posed to me
by Jews, to whom Ive always explained that Im a Pole, and
now it will be posed to me by Poles, for an illustrious majority
of whom I am and will be a Jew. So here is an answer for the
former and the latter.
I am a Pole, because it so pleases me. This is strictly my private aair, of which I have no intention of rendering to anyone
an account, or explicating, explaining or justifying. I do not divide Poles into indigenous and nonindigenous, leaving that
to indigenous and nonindigenous racists, to native and non
native Nazis. I divide Poles, like Jews, and like other nations,
into the wise and the stupid, the honest people and the criminals, the intelligent and the obtuse, the interesting and the
boring, the injurious and the injured, gentlemen and nongentlemen, etc. ...
I could say that on the political level I divide Poles into
antisemites and antifascists. Because fascism is always antisemitism. Antisemitism is the international language of
fascists.162
For Tuwim writing from New York in the wake of the Holocaust, being a
Pole was neither an honor, nor a source of pride, nor or a privilege. Its
the same with breathing. Ive yet to meet anyone who is proud of the fact
that he breathes.163 Having titled his letter We, Polish Jews, Tuwim went
on to list the reasons for his Polishness: because he was born, and grew
up, and rst fell in love in Poland, in Polish; because poetry came to him
with Polish words; because when he died he wanted to be buried in Polish
soil; because he took from Poles some of their national faults; because
his hatred for Polish fascists was greater than his hatred for fascists of
other nationalities.
He anticipated a response: Good. But if a Pole, then in that case
why We, Jews? He answered: it had to do with blood.164 No, he defended

into the a byss 237

himself, this was not racism. The blood that made him a Jew was not the
blood of genetic kinship that ran in his veins but rather the spilled blood
of millions of innocent people. It was from this position that he now
spoke to the Jews: Accept me, Brothers, to that honorable brotherhood
of Innocently Spilled Blood. To that community, to that church I want,
beginning today, to belong.165 He wrote of a Poland where the Star of
David sewn on the armbands worn by Jews in the ghetto would become
one of the highest distinctions, awarded to the bravest Polish soldiers.
The murder of Polish Jewry had made Tuwim a Jew. So with pride, he
wrote to his mother, no longer living, with mournful pride we will bear
that rank, eclipsing all othersthe rank of Polish Jewwe, who miraculously and arbitrarily have remained alive. With pride? Let us say rather:
with contrite and biting shame. Because it fell to us for your suering,
for your glory. He revised, at the end, his original title: And so perhaps
not, he wrote, We, Polish Jews, but rather We, Specters; we, Shadows
of our murdered brothers, Polish Jews.166 The great Polish poet Julian
Tuwim, who in his youth had been repulsed by black Hassidic rabble,
had come to communism and to Jewishness together.

moscow, jan u a ry 1 9 4 3 m ay 1 9 4 4
The Union of Polish Patriots was largely Wasilewskas creation, the product of the unusual relationship she had developed with Stalin. She had a
special telephone, a direct line to Stalin, and she was the Polish milieus
only personal contact with the Soviet leadership. Jakub Berman supposed
that despite Wasilewskas sense of mission, she must have been somewhat disconcerted by the fact that she, a former PPS activist, was taking
the place of KPP members. She was at least aware that some Polish communists resented her for this reason. Jakub Berman was not among them;
he was grateful she was able to do so much. In her own mind Wasilewska
built her relationship with Stalin on the principle of partnership.167 As to
how Stalin perceived their relationship, and whether he genuinely liked
Wasilewska, Jakub Berman reected with some laughter: Presumably
he liked his daughter, but as to Wanda, its hard to say. The familiarity
that grew up between them required a lot of moral courage on Wandas
part, and she had that courage, perhaps to a greater extent than did KPP
members, since she wasnt used to the extremely strict discipline that was
deeply rooted in Polish communists, sometimes restricting their freedom

238 i n t o t h e a b y s s

of expression. But in my opinion Stalins positive attitude towards Wanda

owed from his sense of realism; Stalin was very calculated in his actions,
and he valued people who were useful and necessary to him.168 Jakub
Berman was chosen as secretary of the domestic section of the Union of
Polish Patriots, and he grew very close to Wasilewska. When asked if he
had been Wasilewskas lover, Jakub Berman answered obliquely, Who
knows, perhaps that was the case. That, however, is not the point.169
In Moscow, Janina Broniewska lled the role of female butler during
long gatherings over much coee with Lampe and others at Wasilewskas
Moscow apartment.170 In spring 1943, during one of these meetings, they
discussed the possibility of forming a Polish army division to ght alongside the Red Army.171 In April Wasilewska sent a respectful, albeit assertive letter to Stalin in which she insisted that the time has come when
the creation of a Polish army unit has become simply a necessity.172 The
decision came that same month. Jerzy Putrament and the others were
at Wasilewskas apartment when the telephone rang. Wasilewska went
into the next room, the others listened to her responses in Russian: Yes,
yes, yes ... tomorrow at one. Yes, I understand. Well, yes, of course you
understand what this means to me. When she returned to her guests
she was changed. She told them there had been a decision. A moment
of silence followed. Then Putrament stood up, went over to Wasilewska,
and kissed her on the cheek. There was joy in the room. They would have
their own army division.173
Thereafter things moved quickly. Only two weeks after the break in
Polish-Soviet diplomatic relations Julian Stryjkowski was proofreading the
announcement of the creation of the First Division of the Polish Army.
The Union of Polish Patriots was ecstatic. Jerzy Putrament and Adam
Wayk exchanged their pen for a rie and joined the Polish division.174
Wasilewska quickly assumed the role of commander, giving orders to her
best friendwhich Janina Broniewska happily followed. Soon she was
awakened in the middle of the night by the telephone. Wasilewska was
calling: Jasia? Youll make a sketch of the regulation military uniform
by tomorrow. The Polish one. Exactly Ill make the sketch. Yes, sir,
Broniewska answered. Before long Wasilewska called again, asking her
for two sketches of a military banner with the text First Division in the
Name of Tadeusz Kociuszko on one side and the slogan For Our Freedom and Yours on the other. Wasilewska ordered her friend to hurry.175

into the a byss 239

By the time the rst congress of the Union of Polish Patriots was held
in Moscow on 910 June 1943, the Polish army division was already in
existence. Wasilewska and her colleagues summoned Poles dispersed
throughout the Soviet Union, locating sympathizers by drawing on the
les of letters written to Nowe Widnokrgi. The Union of Polish Patriots
cast its net widely, turning as well to Poles who had never even been
communist sympathizers. These included the Zionist leader Emil Sommerstein and the Polish Peasant Party delegate of the London government
Andrzej Witos, who joined the Union of Polish Patriots after Wasilewska
extracted him from a Soviet prison camp.176 Notwithstanding her own
dogmatism and uncompromising character, this Popular Front ethos was
what Wasilewska did best.
The lack of news from the home front tormented her.177 When Wasi
lewska opened the rst congress by speaking of how the Germans were
destroying all that is Polish, she herself knew little of the Nazi occupation
in Poland. She never believed that her loyalty to the Soviet Union could
compromise her Polish patriotism. When she addressed the congress, she
called on Poles in the Soviet Union to help the Polish homeland:
At home a bloody battle is going on, and were living as if on
the margins of events. The homeland must have asked itself
the question: What are the Poles in the Soviet Union doing for
us? When will the Polish army appear on the eastern front?
This state of aairs was the basis on which the Union of Polish
Patriots was born. People were aware that it is not acceptable
to stand on the sidelines when the nation is ghting for its
existence. We also want to work and ght. It would be to our
shame if we were to wait until other people brought us freedom. The Union of Polish Patriots has come into being to
organize all Poles on Soviet territory. The Union turned to the
Soviet government with the request to create a Polish armed
force. The Soviet government has given its approval and is
giving us all the means to create an army. The Union of Polish
Patriots should work in such a way as to preserve the good
name of Poland. We should develop Polish culture. We have
Polish children, who should return home as Poles.178

24 0 i n t o t h e a b y s s

Wasilewska emphasized the need for loyalty to the Soviet Union, Polands
greatest friend and defender. She told participants in the congress: None
of usneither today nor in the futuremay forget for a moment that the
Soviet Union gave us the opportunity to participate in the armed battle
against the German invasion and the possibility to preserve Polish culture,
today being bloodily and mercilessly exterminated on Polish lands.179
The gesture was not unappreciated. Stalin sent a telegram, thanking
Wasilewska for relating to the Soviet government so warmly and with
friendship.180
It was actually Alfred Lampe, according to Stryjkowski, who was the
ideological brain of the Union of Polish Patriots and who represented a
more Polish line than Wasilewskas.181 During the early months of the organization that was their mutual creation, Wasilewskas relationship with
Alfred Lampe grew strained. Whatever their dierences might have been,
they reconciled in November 1943, and she told him then that her life
had been much poorer as a result of his absence from it. They kissed and
embraced, happy that their separation had ended.182 But the reunion was
short-lived. The following month, on 10 December 1943, the phone rang
in Wasilewskas Moscow apartment. She heard that she was to come right
away, that Lampe had died: So I, like a crazy person, ew over there and
when I got upstairs Lampe was lying dead on the bed with Rka [Lampes
wife] lying next to him, shouting in a wild voice: Summon Wanda, he has
to live! It seemed to her that if I were to come, it would revive him. When I
appeared, he was without any doubt dead, but she grabbed me by the hand
and shouted: He died, do something, he has to live!183 Lampe was only
forty-three years old. Two days before, Janina Broniewska had thought he
only looked a bit paler than usual. For Broniewska, Lampes tragedy was
that of Moses: after having led the masses to the Promised Land, he was
not permitted to enter himself. At the moment, she wrote in the days
following Lampes death, I cant think about, I cant even grasp with my
imagination the whole brutal truth: that he, hedidnt live to see it. He
didnt live to see what he fought for throughout his entire life.184

ili, soviet k a z a k h s t a n , 1 9 4 3 1 9 4 4
In Alma-Ata just prior to the collapse of Polish-Soviet diplomatic relations,
the situation of the Polish delegation grew ever more precarious. After
the Anders army had evacuated the Soviet Union in spring and summer

into the a byss 24 1

of 1942, delegates of the Polish London government were arrested. On

the street Wat pretended not to recognize Viktor Shklovsky and his other
Russian friends, so as not to place them at any greater risk. Then came
the news of the victory at Stalingrad, a celebration for everyone, and a cele
bration of Stalin even for those who hated him. For Wat and his Russian
friends it was a transcendent moment, truly a period of love for Stalin.
Shklovsky shed tears.185 Whatever else Stalin had done, he had now dealt
the Nazis a defeat. In February 1943, amidst this ecstasy, Wat and his
family were forced to leave the Kazakh capital. They set out for the town
of Ili, some fty miles northeast of Alma-Ata.
In a workers settlement overgrown with weeds, little huts made of
manure and clay stood on dirt and sand. At the end of town, by the river,
there was a small building that served as a library, club, and hospital. The
towns inhabitants lived surrounded by cows, camels, and criminals; there
was constant hunger. Womenexhausted, starving, dyingwould come
through Ili as they returned from the gulag. Ili was a Kazakh town, but
had become a settlement for Polish refugees, almost all of whom were
Jews. They were shtetl Jewsorthodox, religious. The women seemed to
Ola Watowa to be stronger than the men.186 Wat wore on a string around
his neck a brown bakelite cross he had received from the Polish delegation. Nor did he hide the fact that he was a Jew, and he might have been
persecuted as a heretic who had betrayed his people. The dynamics were
otherwise; these were orthodox Jews harboring great Polish patriotism
who wanted very much to return to Poland, and Wat, a representative of
the Polish London government, was received very warmly there. He began
to study shoemaking with a Jew from Radom, an old communist full of
nostalgia for Poland, even with its antisemites.187 In Ili Wat fell gravely
ill with typhus and was put in the small hospital by the river. When it
seemed to be the end he struggled to whisper to Ola, promise that when
you manage to get back to Poland, youll take my ashes with you. I dont
want to rest in this cursed land.188
Wat did not die in Ili. He recovered and left the tiny hospital. Then in
March 1943 the news reached Ili that the NKVD was engaged in a campaign to force Poles to accept Soviet passports. Wat was skeptical about
the Union of Polish Patriots; he suspected that both its formation and the
passport campaign were part of a plan to turn Poles into Soviet serfs, and
he began to organize the PolesPolish Jewsin their settlement to resist.

242 i n t o t h e a b y s s

The rst meeting took place at the home of the shoemaker, the Jewish
communist from Radom.189 Wat, the assimilated cosmopolitan, the Polish
communist turned Catholic, became for the rst time in his life a leader
among Polish Jews. He became their instructor in resistance; he incited
them to rebel, and they listened to him. When summoned by the NKVD,
they were to bring along a bag with those things that would be most essential in a camp. He taught them not to engage in any conversations
that could only be used against them. When asked if they would accept
the passport, they were to answer with a simple no. When asked why,
they were to say only, because were Polish citizens. When it was Wats
turn, his interrogator Colonel Omarkhadzhev, a handsome Mongol,
indicated that he knew who Wat was and alluded to his past as the editor
of Miesicznik Literacki. Then the colonel asked suddenly, In as far as Im
not mistaken, you were a communist? Wat answered: A communist? ...
Perhaps. But that was so long ago that I dont remember at all.190 He and
the others went to prison, where Wat was threatened but not beaten. He
was told that if he continued to refuse, he would be sent to a camp where
he would dieand why did he not just accept the passport? It was, after
all, his interrogators argued, only a piece of paper. Wat, who had once
upon a time fallen in love with Mayakovsky, the author of a celebratory
poem about his Soviet passport, refused. It was hot in the Kazakh prison
cell, and Wat took o his shirt, revealing his cross. I was the leader of
those pious Jews in prison, Wat described himself, me, a Jew with a
cross around his neck.191
Then they came for Ola Watowa. She said goodbye to her eleven-yearold son and was taken to prison. Well, so tell us, the NKVD ocers
asked, why dont you want to accept a Soviet passport? Is it some kind
of shame? She answered them: For a simple reasonIm a Pole, a
Polish citizen. And Im certain that in an identical situation you would
do the same thing. For none of you would accept Polish citizenship, it
would be equivalent to a betrayal of your homeland. At that one of them
shouted at her: What a clever girl! She was taken to a cell in a transit
prison where criminals and prostitutes were held before being sent to the
camps. The door to the cell closed behind her. Inside the other women
prisoners forced her and the young Polish woman who was with her to
strip naked. They took the clothes for themselves and began to beat the
young woman. Ola Watowa watched and waited for her turn. Then they

into the a byss 243

urinated on her and beat her as well. She heard the screams of the men
being beaten in the other cells, they were calling out for help, and she
recognized the voice of the old shoemaker from Radom.192
In this way the Polish Jews of Ili were broken. The next day the women
submitted. One of the NKVD ocers who had been particularly sympathetic to Ola Watowa now handed her the Soviet passport and said, You
see, citizen, I was right. And so the Poles left the Kazakh prison with
Soviet passports, but not Wat. If he had been weak in prison earlier, he
was no longer. This was his heroic moment. Upon returning to Ili, Ola
Watowa learned that her husband was still in prison. She went to see
Colonel Omarkhadzhev, who explained to her that a man as intelligent
and educated as her husband, a poet, a writer, could be a professor at the
university in Moscow and not living in poverty in Ili. Why was he resisting? Why was he inciting the others to resist? The colonel instructed her to
impart reason to her husband: if he were only to accept the passport, everything would change right away. The family could go live an intelligentsia
life in Moscow. Otherwise he would be sent to the gulag. Omarkhadzhev
added that the Union of Polish Patriots, too, had given orders for Poles
to accept the passports.193
In prison with his head shaven, Wats ascetic appearance frightened
the superstitious Kazakh gatekeepers. One of them wanted to know if he
were a sorcerer and asked that he not cast spells on them, the gatekeepers, because they were not the guilty ones. When the guard turned the
key in the lock behind him, Wat faced Valentin, the cells leader. Valentin
was large, strong, and beautiful. He looked at Wat as he prepared to beat
him. At that moment, Wat suddenly asked this man if he believed in God.
Valentin shouted back angrily: Why was he asking? And Wat answered:
I know that youre supposed to beat me, to beat me as long as I dont
take the Soviet passport. So, if you believe in God, I beg you, beat me so
well and so eectively, that I dont suer for too long, that it doesnt last
for too long. Because I wont take the Soviet passport. In the cell the
others waited for their leaders verdict. Then Valentin aggressively pushed
the other prisoners out of his way and moved towards his place under
the window. He made his announcement: no one was to touch this man.
In the weeks and months that followed Wat grew close to Valentin, an
experienced criminal who had managed to escape from other camps and
prisons with great ingenuityand great suering. They told one another

244 i n t o t h e a b y s s

the stories of their lives, as well as stories from literatureStendhals The

Red and the Black, O. Henry stories that Wat had translated in Poland.
Valentin, whose specialty was holding up freight trains, had read Gorky,
Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. He and his fellow prisoners knew Pushkins poems by heart, and at night they would sing Esenins poem Pismo materi
(Letter to my Mother)in addition to simulating sounds of beatings so
that nothing would be suspected.194
In the meantime, Colonel Omarkhadzhev had given Ola Watowa permission to visit her husband so as to persuade him to accept the Soviet
passport. When she arrived she found Wat pale, with a shaven head and
eyes that seemed larger. He embraced her and told her softly not to worry,
that he was not being hurt there, that she should keep this a secret. He
was thin, his complexion was gray, but he bore no signs of beatings or
torture. He radiated, rather, calm, goodness, aection. She told him about
her visit with Omarkhadzhev, about what he had oered and what he
had threatened. And that was all. She made no pleas nor did she ask for
a reply to Omarkhadzhevs oer. Wat felt at that moment that she had
given him the greatest proof of her lovein not trying to persuade him,
in leaving him the freedom of choice. Three months later, Wat was told
he was being sent to a camp. He said goodbye to the other prisoners and
to Valentin, giving him his familys address in Ili. Yet when he was taken
from his cell, he was instead given back his original Polish documents
and released. It was afternoon when Wat, with a long beard, appeared at
his familys mud hut in Ili. His hair had grown back and was still more
grayed, his complexion was sallow, but once again he seemed calm, happy.
He had not accepted the Soviet passport. At the doorway of his home he
held up the documents they had given him upon his release: on them was
the stamp of the Polish government in London.195 He did not know why
or how he was released, if it were perhaps out of deference to the legend
of Miesicznik Literacki, or if one of his old friends in the Union of Polish
PatriotsWanda Wasilewska or Jakub Berman or Adam Waykhad
saved him.196
One day some time after Wats return from prison, Ola Watowa saw
a tall, broad-shouldered man with a powerful, well-proportioned head
and a very expressive, almost beautiful, masculine face standing at their
doorway.197 He was dressed elegantly in a dark suit and shiny black shoes.
One arm, heavily bandaged, was in a sling. The man inquired calmly if

into the a byss 245

Aleksander Wat lived thereand in the next moment spotted Wat himself and shouted his name with joy. Wat was stunned. He jumped up,
ran towards the man and kissed him on both cheeks, calling out to his
wife that this was Valentin, Valentin! Upon hearing this she ran towards
him as well, squeezing his hand with enormous gratitude, while young
Andrzej looked upon the scene with fascination. Valentin told them that
he had, of course, escaped from the prison and had gone to his woman,
who helped him prepare for further travels. To facilitate this he had stolen
moneyand a Bolshevik Party cardfrom an NKVD ocer. Now Valentin casually pulled a huge clump of money from under his clothing and
gave it to Ola Watowa, telling her to go to the market and buy anything
she wanted for all of them.
They spent a miraculous, celebratory day together, the four of them.
Valentin had a plan about heading to the front and turning himself over
to German captivity, from where he would eventually make his way to
Poland and begin a new life as an honest manalthough, of course,
he might have to do a bit of stealing there in the early stages, because
how else would he get the money to open a restaurant and begin a clean
life? They gave Valentin the address of Wats sister, the actress Seweryna
Broniszwna; they gave it to him without hesitation, knowing that Valentin had his own moral code. When the day drew to an end, they accompanied him to the train station. There Valentin listened for the train
coming from a distance, glancing from time to time at Wat and his wife
with a look of something approaching tenderness. They were all silent.
Then at a certain moment, Valentin suddenly got up; without realizing
what was happening, they watched him jump across the fence and towards
the tracks. He stood then on the platform, and they watched as he drew
signs of farewell in the sky with the ame of his lit cigarette. They looked
on until his train disappeared into the horizon.198

the eastern f ro n t , 1 9 4 3 1 9 4 4
Stalin spoke well to Khrushchev of Wasilewska. Khrushchev became ever
more her great admirer, and welcomed the news that the formation of
the Polish army division had been entrusted to her.199 Stefan Jdrychowski
felt similarly. Wasilewska, he observed, possessed an uncommon gift
of eloquence and a powerful, broadly resonant but at once soft and
pleasant-sounding voice; her appeals to Poles in the Soviet Union and

246 i n t o t h e a b y s s

now in the Polish Army had enormous persuasive force. She was a
born leader.200 Perhaps once she became a colonel in the Red Army she
made a conscious eort, with her hair cropped short and a mans army
uniform, to eect a masculine appearance. It was only in part eective. A
Polish streetcar driver was among the soldiers in the Polish army division.
Wasilewska was their superior, and they were to report to her, yet in fact
a strange situation developed: the boys would melt before her gaze, take
o their hats, and kiss her handin the best tradition of Polish gallantry.
The former streetcar driver was terried to see himself submit to the same
impulseand nd himself kissing the hand of his superior ocer.201
Wasilewska was tremendously invested in the Polish division; the Polish Army was above all her creation, her child. It was she who authored
the soldiers oath, an oath that included the promise of loyalty to the Red
Army and the Soviet Union. She explained: You cant forget that people
came crying, they kissed the ries. And from whom did they get them?
From the Soviet Army.202 In August 1943 she wrote to Stalin begging for
permission to send the First Polish Division to the front on 1 September,
the anniversary of the Nazi attack on Poland. The training period would
not yet be quite over, yet the occasion was so important, so symbolic, as
to justify any prematurity, she argued.203 Stalin asked her: would they
ght honorably? It was a question, she later reported, I answered with
a thousand percent conviction: they would. And I said it in such a way
that the question would not be repeated. Stalin granted his permission
to send the Polish division to the front.204 Despite her faith in the troops,
Wasilewska regarded their commander, General Zygmunt Berling, with
undisguised distrust. She even refused to attend a party Stalin was hosting because Berling would be therea refusal that scandalized Molotov,
who insisted that one simply did not decline an invitation from Stalin. Yet
Wasilewska, on principle, did. The following day a Soviet daily newspaper
attributed her absence to illness.205 Jakub Berman found Wasilewskas
extreme attitude towards Berling rather unnecessary, and called it all a
bit typical of a woman.206
Wasilewska was not alone in her family in her enthusiasm for the
army. In June 1943, Wasilewskas daughter Ewa and Broniewskas daughter Anka, initially in secrecy from their mothers, volunteered for the Polish
Division. Anka was thirteen years old, but claimed she was sixteen; Ewa
was fourteen and a half but declared herself seventeen. The two mothers

into the a byss 247

went to General Berling and told him that despite the girls being under
age, they were not to be pampered. Moreover, Berling was not to reveal
that he was aware of the deception regarding their ages; they were to be
treated just like everyone else in the army and made to feel serious. She
and Wasilewska, Broniewska later swore, maintained complete neutrality with respect to their daughters subterfuge, even if only because our
nerves couldnt take it. If we were to have dared to express the slightest
doubt, those two little wasps would have stung us to pieces. And arent
there enough problems without that? When Anka said goodbye to her
mother she gave her a letter to send to her father, who was then in Jeru
salem, telling her, censor it as necessary! The point was well taken.
Ill most certainly censor it, Broniewska wrote, Not as a mother, but
as the Military Department. ... A letter going abroad. As if that were a
mere trie! In her letter to her father Anka wrote: We did 20 kilometers of marching during training. Regulation load30 kilograms. But I
prefer my hard soldiers lot to your oranges, lemons, and beauties of the
South. Ewa Wasilewska was similarly delighted to be in the army, yet
in the end their military careers were short-lived; Berling preferred not
to bear responsibility for them. The girls came home in September; and
Broniewska wrote: our two soldiers, their birth certicates unmasked,
have returned. They dont talk to us, they only hiss. ... [Anka] doesnt
talk to me and doesnt believe that I really did maintain a loyal neutrality
in this matter.207
Like her daughter and her best friend, Janina Broniewska was enamored of the army, anxious to get to the front, and jealous of the war correspondents already there. Nor were the two women the only ones from
literary circles who experienced this infatuation. The Union of Polish
Patriots boasted several uniformed poets, including Adam Wayk. Of the
diminutive poet carrying a large weapon it was said at the time there goes
the rie with his Wayk. Broniewska commented more gently that Wayk
tended not to distinguish himself as a particularly martial gure.208 Be
that as it may, he did nd his way to martial poetry. His verse-turnedmarching song abandoned all the obscurities of his old avantgardism for
the mobilizing refrain Set o, our First Corps! Tighten your belt / its
time to go, Wayk told his fellow soldiers; they were heading west.209
As an instructor in the Military Department of the Union of Polish
Patriots, Janina Broniewska soon had her opportunity to go to the front,

figure 13 Janina Broniewska as a war correspondent, 1944. Courtesy of Muzeum

Literatury imienia Adama Mickiewicza.

into the a byss 249

and she was ecstatic to be there. Early in her career as a war correspondent
she cited, at once ironically and with pride, the Polish proverb where the
devil cant manage, he sends a woman.210 Her time at the front was the
time of her most fervent faith and unabashed exaltation. She experienced
the joy that followed Stalingrad and an enchantment with the bravery of
her comrades, Polish soldiers ghting alongside the Red Army. In February 1944 she recorded an episode from the brigade headquarters at the
front: The loader of the rst section of the rst battery of the artillery
brigade, loading a heavy shell into the breech of the gun said simply,
without particular grandiloquence: For Katy!211 She was enchanted as
well with taking orders from Wasilewska, and wrote lovingly of how the
soldiers at the front spoke of our Wanda, who had made them soldiers
and who would enable them to return to Poland. About this unusual absence of formality, Broniewska commented, Our Wanda? In such a
familiar manner? With no subordination? Without the appropriate titles?
Theyre not needed, for certain theyre not needed, especially as this [our
Wanda] is perhaps the title of the highest rank, considering the emotional
investment it contains.212

lublin, 1944 1 9 4 5
Stefan Jdrychowski, like Wasilewska, insisted that the Polish communists
in the Soviet Union had always taken the position that they could not
prepare ready-made solutions for liberated Poland, that they could only
assist. Moreover, Jdrychowski and Lampe, before his death, worried that
Wasilewska had taken too much upon herself, that the burden was too
great for one person.213 As soon as the news arrived of the existence in
Poland of the communist-run Krajowa Rada Narodowa (Domestic National
Council), the Union of Polish Patriots recognized it as Polands rightful
political representation and announced its readiness to subordinate itself
accordingly.214 On 22 July 1944, the Manifesto of the Polski Komitet Wyzwo
lenia Narodowego (Polish Committee of National Liberation), growing out
of the Domestic National Council, ocially called into existence the new
communist-dominated provisional government in Lublin. Warsaw remained under German occupation.215
On 24 July 1944, Janina Broniewska was riding with an army chaueur
when they crossed the Molotov-Ribbentrop border for the rst time. He

25 0 i n t o t h e a b y s s

looked at her and said, Poland. I nestle my face in his back, she wrote,
I blubber like any old woman. And Im not at all ashamed. Not even a
little. We kiss one other in turns. And do they have dry faces? No! Four
days later she visited Majdanek, the crematoria. I look, she wrote in her
notebook, and I understand nothing. Nothing of this nightmare pene
trates me. There is nothing human, nothing of man in that smoldering
corpse. Her horror mobilized her: No! No! No! We will not forgive! Nobody and nothing! ... Hatred is invigorating and beautiful. Her faith in
the revived Party, the avant-garde of the working class who would rebuild
a new Poland, was complete. Upon seeing Majdanek she and a woman
comrade spontaneously declared their faith in the iron laws of History.
Together they recited from memory the words of the early Polish Marxist
leader Ludwik Waryski from his 1886 declaration before a tsarist tribunal: We do not stand above history. We submit to its laws. We look at the
revolution to which we aspire as the result of the evolution of historical
and social conditions ...216
It was around this time that Tuwim, from New York, sent a long letter
to Janina Broniewska, who had once kissed him on the forehead for his
help in extricating Wayk from Polish prison. The letter was lled with
longing and nostalgia, as well as much guilt that he had not shared their
fateand their battlein the Soviet Union.
Beloved Janeczka!
. . . My dear! Where to begin? Likely from the fact that Im
anxious to be with you. More than once Ive thought to myself
that from the beginning I should have been with you and should
have taken an active part in the realization of that zavetnaia
mechta [dream of dreams] of my life that is Polish-Soviet
friendship. It was necessary then, on 5 September 1939, to go
to Pisk, not to Kazimierzthen I would have doubtlessly
shared with you all of the fortunes and adversities of ight and
wanderings, perhaps I would have suered more physically
(which for an aging and not terribly strong fellow would be
a dicult matter), but all those potential hardships and di
culties, even dangers, would have meant that I would have
found myself there where my rightful place is: between Moscow and Warsaw, not along the Hudson River. ... I know that

into the a byss 25 1

the smoke from res and the stench of corpses is now blowing
from those parts, but there are aromas as well, such a freshness of old, beloved elds and of new times, which nothing in
the world can replace. My ight from Warsaw and everything
that followed from it was chance, surprise, the result of favorable or unfavorable coincidences. These carried me rst to
Paris, later to Portugal, next to Rio de Janeiro (miracle of mir
acles!), nally to New York. It might have just the same carried
me to London (thank you, dear God, that it didnt!), to
Calcutta, or to the African hamlet of Kidugale Njamba. But it
ought to have, I repeat, thrown me to Russia.
Tuwim told of his isolation in New York, an isolation provoked by his
fanatical faith that it will not be Hitler who goes to Moscow but Stalin
who goes to Berlin. He told Broniewska that all those who hated the Soviet Union had begun to look at him strangely; among Polish migrs in
the United States he had become a traitor and an agent of Stalin. At
the same time his ties with the working class were growing stronger. He
told Broniewska that in autumn 1941 he had gone to Detroit and Chicago
on the invitation of workers unions. I have to praise myself, he wrote,
I was received enthusiastically and I read my poems, I gave speeches. I
began to publish my work in the publications of our friends, and I sent
a telegram to Polskie Wiadomoci in London that they should not dare to
publish even a word of mine. And so the accusations that he was an agent
of Moscow acquired still more force. He told her of the historic letter he
had received from Jan Lecho in spring 1942, cutting o relations with
him, and of how Kazimierz Wierzyski had done the same. Yet he had
found in New York a small group of people, gathered around Oskar Lange,
who shared his views. Tuwim also discussed methods by which he and
like-minded people in the United States might be able to help his friends
in Moscow. He was full of energy and anxious to contribute to the cause,
all the time acutely awareand pained by the factthat he was so far
removed. Dear friends! he wrote in conclusion, Im writing this letter
to Janka Broniewska, but its for all of youfor you, who in Moscow and
Lublin are raising Poland from the ruins and laying the groundwork for
Her new life.217

252 i n t o th e a b y s s

Even as the communist government in Lublin was taking shape and

Wasilewska was beginning to make trips into newly liberated Polish territory, she was becoming ever more Soviet. At a meeting in Lublin to
establish a plan for agricultural reform, she encountered opposition from
Andrzej Witos, the Peasant Party activist whom she had extracted from Soviet prison and brought to Moscow. Wasilewska wanted to reach a resolution quickly, and Witos was stalling for time. When they took a short break
for lunch, someone said something about the weather, and Wasilewska
turned to Witos, I wonder how the weather is in the Autonomous Soviet
Socialist Republic of Komi during this season? Afterwards Witos sat in
silence, interpreting the question as Wasilewskas suggestion that she
could send him there again, back to the gulag, if need be. According to
Wasilewska, it infuriated her that someone she had personally extracted
and made into an activist was behaving in such a waythus the need to
remind him of his debt towards the leftist movement. Thenceforth the
debates over agricultural reform resolved themselves quickly.218
As the war reached its end, Khrushchev, who had become good
friends with Korneichuk and Wasilewska, turned to her and said, In a
short time we wont be seeing each other so often. Why?she was surprised. Because of your obligations. Youll certainly move to Warsaw and
youll come to Kiev more rarely. No!she was a decisive personNo,
nooo! I wont go there. She told him she would move permanently to
Warsaw only when Poland became a Soviet republic. Insofar as that did
not happen, she had nothing to do there. Khrushchev, however, was unpersuaded, believing that the true explanation was her reluctance to leave
Korneichuk.219 With Stalin she had a similar conversation. They were at
the Kremlin with various spicy foods on the table before them, including
a small, green, very hot pepperwhich Wasilewska particularly liked. At
a certain moment Stalin turned to her:
Well so, maybe its been enough of this Ukrainian citizenship? He approached the table, poured a glass for me and
for himself with the words: Come, lets toast. And the glass
shook in my hand. Why is your hand shaking so?
It seems to me that you understand perfectly why. In the
rst place, I have Soviet, not Ukrainian citizenship, and in the
second place, are you of the opinion that I havent deserved it?

into the a byss 253

What are you talking about? Do you want to become

a Soviet citizen?
That must be clear to you.
That means that you want to be active on a worldwide
scale?
No. I want to be active on the scale of the Soviet Union.
That means on a worldwide scale, and not only on a Polish
one. Well, so thats very good. In any case its better for us.220
In May 1945, when a friendship agreement was signed in Moscow
between Poland and the Soviet Union, Wasilewska was present as a guest,
not as a participant, having decided to remain in the Soviet Union. When
a group photograph was taken, Wasilewska moved aside, considering that
she had no reason to gure there. Her time as a Polish leader had come
to an end. Stalin, however, thought otherwise. He asked: And where is
Wanda? Maybe others can, but when theres talk of an agreement with
Poland, we cant do it without Wanda. So did Wasilewska appear in that
photograph, although she was no longer a Polish representative, but rather
a Soviet guest.221

warsaw, aug u s t o c t o b e r 1 9 4 4
On 1 August 1944 the Polish Home Army, under orders from the Polish
government in London, began the uprising in Warsaw for which they
had waited throughout the long years of the war. Much of the city had
not existed since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of spring 1943. Now as he
watched the rest of the capital go up in ames, Jarosaw Iwaszkiewicz
wrote in his diary: I didnt like the old Warsaw. But in the course of these
few years, when Ive seen her so stubborn and so strong, Ive come to love
her entirely dierently and entirely anew. He paced his home without
strength, unable to do anything: Everything is burning and perishing.
People are coming, constantly telling the same story in an innitely terri
fying and monotone way. And its impossible to help them, one has to
only listen to those helpless, shapeless words, give them a hand, be glad
that theyre here, that theyre returning from there. ... How many similar
to them will no longer ever come again.222
Stanisaw Mikoajczyk, the prime minister of the Polish government in
London, knew that the Home Army was encountering unfriendly responses

254 i n t o t h e a b y s s

from the Red Army, and that some Home Army soldiers had been arrested
and even shot by the Soviets upon revealing themselves.223 He came to
Stalin anyway, because both Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt
wanted him to do so; the Soviet Union was, after all, their ally. Mikoajczyk
appeared in Moscow in late July; when Stalin nally met with him on
3 August, he assured Mikoajczyk that a Soviet oensive on Warsaw was
planned for three days later.224 In Moscow, it was Mikoajczyk who told
Wasilewska of the uprising. She was shocked. At the same moment, according to the Soviet government, there was no uprising, and when she
asked Stalin, he told her he had received no news of anything like that.
Mikoajczyk, on the contrary, was beaming when he told Wasilewska that
in two or three days Warsaw would be liberated, in two or three days they
would all be in Warsaw. Wasilewska felt otherwise; she was angry and
distraught and told him that this was a monstrosity, that he had lost Warsaw.225 Jakub Berman insisted that he and others in Moscow that August
made repeated requests that help be sent to Warsaw, but to no avail.226
Janina Broniewska, far away in Lublin in August 1944, wanted so much
to be able to tell her friend in person that their oliborz was in ames.
Our city is burning, she wrote, Our city, the most dear in the world.
In a ring of Nazi encirclement. You can neither reach it nor save it. Who
began this battle? Without armored units, without guns, without aircraft,
without a plan of attack?227
In the course of the two months of August and September 1944,
Warsaw was reduced to ruins. The Red Army sat in Praga, just on the
other side of the Vistula River, and did not come to the citys aid. After two
months, the Home Army surrendered to the Germans, and the Germans
set re to what remained of the city. Warsaw, and with it Caf Ziemiaska,
was burned to ashes. In November Iwaszkiewicz wrote in his diary, I
cannot think about the fact that Warsaw is no more. Such an enormous
chapter departing together with her, such a mass of experiences! Warsaw
was not beautiful. And yet!228 Far away in the Middle East, Broniewski
learned by radio of the uprising. He wrote a poem addressing his city in
the vocative, calling her Warsaw alive above the ruins, speaking to the
city as to a lover: I lost my home, those near and dear, / my love lies in
the ruins there.229
On 17 January 1945, the Red Army crossed the Vistula River and took

into the a byss 255

the emptied Polish capital. The Nazi occupation of Warsaw was over. In
Lublin people cried on the streets and strangers embraced. Warsaw was
liberated. The next day Janina Broniewska ew from Lublin to Warsaw.
From the plane she could not even recognize the streets. There was nothing there. Here is a burial ground, she wrote, Here is Death. This isnt
Marszakowska, Wspna, Nowogrodzka. This is the most horrible dream.
Words have no place, no purpose. She returned to Lublin without having visited her old neighborhood in oliborz, having lost her desire to
go there. She concluded the notebook she kept as a war correspondent:
Warsawthe heart of our country. We will raise her from the dead, from
the ruins, from bits and pieces. She will rise and be wonderful, more
beautiful than she wasthe city of our love, the city of our dreams.230 Far
away in Jerusalem, Broniewski had received news of Marysia Zarbiskas
death in a Nazi concentration camp. In March 1945 he wrote to Anka of
his pain, This was the most heartfelt relationship in my erotic life, deeply
trusting, giving me tranquility of heart.231 In fact the news was false.
Marysia Zarbiska had survived Auschwitz. Following her arrest in 1943,
her extended family had given up her daughter Majka to an orphanage
in the provinces. Now, after Warsaws liberation by the Red Army, Janina
Broniewska found the daughter of her former husbands second wife and
brought Majka home to live with her and her own children.232
Wanda Wasilewska reached Warsaw a day later, when Janina Broniew
ska had already returned to Lublin. The day before a plane had come for
Wasilewska in Kiev, taking her back to Lublin, from where she and Jakub
Berman traveled to Praga; there they spent the night. It was only the next
morning, on 19 January, that together they crossed the pontoon bridge into
Warsaw. The city was still burning in some places; the rst of the citys
surviving inhabitants, expelled after the uprising, were just beginning to
return. The pilgrimage to her old neighborhood was a dicult one, and
at a certain moment she found herself unable to discern where she was in
the city that no longer existed. In the end she reached oliborz on foot. She
wrote of her impressions at the time: Before me a broken cityWarsaw.
Heaps of bricks, twisted iron rods, piles of stone, the remnants of walls
barely standing. That Warsaw that fought in 1939, that fought in 1944,
crushed, burned, torn, undaunted, unyielding, unbroken. People are already returning to the ruins. They dont cry. A smile brightens their faces.

256 i n t o t h e a b y s s

They knowthey will rebuild, raise up, revive, they will create just as
they foughtwith tenacity, endurance, clenched teeth, all the way until
victory.233 It was late at night when she and Jakub Berman returned to
Praga, walking across the pontoon bridge.234

c h a p t e r e i ght

Stalinism amidst Warsaws Ruins

The time of the aesthetes has passed.

Adam Wayk

in m a r c h 1945 j u l i a n Tuwim told a Polish journalist in New York,

In May it will be ve years since Ive come to America. But for me it has
been one long drawn-out day. I didnt live American life, I was sitting the
whole time on the suitcase that I will now take back.1 For the Warsaw
literati, the Second World War had been a time of dispersion. Now they
began to make their way home. Polands ashes were seductive. The repatriants found communism in power, encroaching Stalinism, and socialist
realism. For those who oered body and soul, poetry and prose to support the new regime, it was a time of unprecedented power over life and
death. Janina Broniewska was among the rst to return to Poland. She
was soon joined in Lublin by Jakub Berman, Julian Przybo, Jerzy Putrament, Jerzy Borejsza, and Adam Wayk. Jakub Berman remained rather
inconspicuous, ever the minence grise, Wanda Wasilewskas closest advisor. Jakubs brother Adolf, arriving from the west rather than the east, a
survivor of the Warsaw ghetto, became a representative to the Domestic
National Council. Wayk was among those who were uneasy about return
ing home. The nearer he came to his country, he wrote, the stranger he
felt, the more he feared returning to a city of ruins and memories, to
streets he had once loved.2 He wrote of gazing at his native city through
binoculars and recalling
257

258 s ta l i ni s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i n s

the years which were also your times,

people of not quite bad will
buried in my heart as if in a common grave.3
In late summer and autumn of 1944 a new Polish Writers Union
came into being in Lublin. At its August 1944 meeting, the union re
instated Wats membership in absentia.4 A new literary journal came into
being as well; the rst issue of Odrodzenie (Rebirth) included an obituary
of Witkacy, who in September 1939 had ed Warsaw, heading east. Later
that month, upon learning of the Red Armys invasion of eastern Poland,
he committed suicide. Witkacys was not the only obituary in this debut
issue; Odrodzenie also included obituaries of Halina Grska, Mieczysaw
Braun, Bruno Schulz, and other writers killed by the Germans. Alongside
the obituaries was an excerpt from Tuwims Polish Flowers, in which the
narrator asks to be allowed to clean the ashes and ruins of his homeland,
to raise his home from a cemetery.5
After the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, Wadysaw
Daszewski had attempted to make his way east. After a few weeks, however, he returned to Lvov. The city was by then under German occupation, and he soon realized he could not remain. He went into hiding in
the surrounding provinces until October 1941; then he managed to reach
Warsaw, where there were signs the Gestapo was looking for him. After
several days, Daszewski went to a small village. Making use of falsied
documents, he spent the next three years of the occupation in a shelter
for deportees. He worked with the intelligence of the Polish communist
partisans, making drawings of Germany army positions.6 Now in light of
the creation of the Polish Committee of National Liberation, Daszewski
reemerged from his incognito life in the provinces; he appeared in Lublin
and put himself at the disposal of the pro-Soviet Polish government. In
March 1945 he moved to d. There he joined the newly formed Polish
Workers Party and became the scenic designer at the Polish Military
Theater. The Stalinist years were creative ones for the man who had stagemanaged the arrests of his closest friends.7
The postwar cultural rebirthing of Poland, vigorous and animated,
took place against the background of an increasingly bloody Stalinist security apparatus, the Bezpieka. Between 1945 and the winter of 19471948
there was some space for leftist plurality, for the Popular Front ethos

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins259

revived in the Union of Polish Patriots. It was a space, though, existing

amidst terror and chaos. Jewish survivors returning from Nazi concentration camps were not infrequently greeted with violence by those (and
not only by those) who had assumed ownership of their property, and
the year 1946 saw a bloody pogrom in the city of Kielce.8 Moreover, a civil
war continued between communists and Home Army partisans; in the
east Ukrainian nationalist partisans continued to ght as well. Stalinism
proper triumphed in Poland in 1948 when the Polish Workers Party absorbed the Polish Socialist Party to form the United Polish Workers Party
(PZPR). An era of Stalinist terror followed, including the persecution of
Home Army gures, civilians associated with the Polish government in
London, and communists. Stanisaw Mikoajczyk was forced to ee the
country. In June 1951 the proceedings were broadcast over the radio of
the trial against the Home Army ocer Stanisaw Tatar and his gang of
conspirators and spies, in which the defendants read scripted confessions to the eect that they had worked for Anglo-American imperialists.
The Tatar trial defendants were not given death sentences, although death
sentences were handed down in many lower-level trials.9

wadysaw b ro n i e w s k i s a n d a n at o l s t e rn s
homecomi n g
Despite his popularity in Jerusalem, Wadysaw Broniewski was not eager
to settle there permanently. Neither did the Middle Eastern heat cure him
of his dependence on vodka.10 His friends were concerned about him,
including Polish friends who in June 1945 helped him to obtain a British
visa. It was too late. By this time, he had decided to return to Poland. In
August he wrote to them that he could not do otherwise, that further
emigration would mean further separation from his wife and daughter,
and further depression. Yet he was uneasy about the political situation
in Poland, and wrote to his friends in England, I am not enthusiastic
about the situation at home, yet I expect that Ill be able to live, to contribute to the rebuilding in one way or another and to write. ... After all,
I observe [in Poland] the animated activity of the great majority of our
writer friends.11
From New York Julian Tuwim wrote to Broniewski in Jerusalem.12 In
October 1945 Broniewski sent a reply from Tel Aviv, telling Tuwim that he

260 s ta l i n i s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i ns

was preparing to return to Poland. You must be aware of my fate during

this war? Broniewski asked. He summarized: So in January 1940, to
my amazement, I was arrested in Lvov and for 19 months I sat in prison,
mostly in Lubianka in Moscow. Afterwards for half a year I was at the
embassy in Kuibyshev, where (that is, in Kuibyshev) Jaka was, too, with
Anna [Broniewskis daughter]. In the spring of 1942 I entered the army.
With the army I went to Persia-Iran. I experienced various nasty things,
given that the pack of counterintelligence hounds regarded me as an
undesirable and dangerous foreign body, as a result of which I left the
army and came to Jerusalem.13 He was doing much writing, including a
novel in verse titled Bania z poezj (A Balloon with Poetry), which was to
be a kind of history of Poles in the war. He believed that only in Poland
would he be able to write more and well. The most important thing, he
told Tuwim, was that in July the news reached him that his wife Marysia
Zarbiska had survived Auschwitz. He had already received two letters
from her: she was now in d with Anka and Majka, working as an
actress in the theater there with great success. As for Janina Broniewska,
Broniewski wrote that she was in Warsaw and had dumped Gadomski,
but I dont know for whom. Broniewski gave Tuwim Zarbiskas address
and asked him to send a package to her.14
Tuwim shortly obliged. In November he wrote to Zarbiska of how
he had learned from Broniewski of her miraculous survival. How good it
is that youre alive and will continue to be Wadeks greatest happiness,
Tuwim told her. He wrote further, As soon as I learned that Wadek was
returning to the country, a huge stone fell from my heart. It was terrible
when my former friends, poets, were publishing an Andersonian weekly
in New York, they were waving Wadek about like a little banner, using his
name, reprinting his poems, etc. My blood boiled no less from the story of
Wadeks imprisonment. I dont know who those zealots are who issued
that moronic order, but they must not have known themselves what they
were doing. I am writing of that precisely in the name of my fervent friendship for the Soviet Union.15 Tuwim also made a sentimental request:
Would she go to Kociuszko Avenue 27 and nd out who lived on the rst
oor, in the apartment to the left from the front of the stairs? It had once
been the home of his parents. They used to sit on the balcony, he wrote,
and look out for their son, who from time to time would stop by d ...

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins26 1

for a couple of hours. For the son was very famous and very busy in the
capital, so he could never stay for long. Now I regret it.16
By February 1946, when Zarbiska wrote to thank Tuwim for the
letter, the gloves, and the other gifts he had sent, Broniewski had joined
her in d. They had last seen each other in January 1940, when Broniewski had been taken away from Daszewskis party in a black limousine.
Their reunion now after six years of separation was the most beautiful happy ending, she told Tuwim. She wrote of the d theater, of
the popularity of the literary cabaret in the style of the Warsaw cabaret
Tuwim had once written forin a word, people want to forget about
the war. She herself was not feeling well; after her return from Ausch
witz, she was afraid to be alone, as if beside me on the bed there were
constantly another corpse. In Auschwitz she had developed heart problems; now she was on vacation, resting. She promised that as soon as she
returned to d she would visit Tuwims childhood home. Majka and
Anka had already been there, they had wanted to see where the young
Tuwim had written his rst poems.17 Broniewski scribbled his own note
beneath Zarbiskas letter: Roll up your pants and get yourself across
that puddle of the Atlantic. You and your poems are very much missed
here. He added that upon his own arrival in November he had been
greeted with much pomp and circumstance. At his inaugural reading at
the House of Workers Culture young people waved ags and an orchestra
played the national anthem and the Internationale.18 As for their old city,
Warsaw looks terrible. You walk along those ruins and from time to time
you sob.19
Broniewski had enjoyed tremendous popularity among Polish-Jewish
migrs in Palestine. Polish Jewry was not foreign to him, and among the
most poignant acts of homage paid to the Jews who fought in the Warsaw
ghetto was Broniewskis poem appearing in Odrodzenie in spring of 1945.
ydom polskim (To the Polish Jews) was dedicated to the memory of
Szmul Zygielbojm, the Bundist representative to the Polish governmentin-exile who had committed suicide in London during the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising. Zygielbojms was a protest against the worlds passivity. I immerse my words in blood, and my heart in enormous tears, / a wandering Polish poet, for you, oh Polish Jews, Broniewski wrote. He sung the
heroism of the ghetto ghters: Sons of the Maccabees! you, too, know

262 s ta l i n i s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i ns

how to die, / to undertake without a shadow of hope, a battle begun in

September.20 Broniewski expressed the solidarity between Poles and Jews
who fell in battle against the Nazis, who were united now by Auschwitz
and Dachau, by blood spilled in the same war. He had come to feel part
of the Polish-Jewish community in Palestine.
Broniewski had also grown close there to Tuwims and Wayks friend,
the Polish-Jewish journalist Paulina Appenszlak.21 In her new homeland
in Palestine, Appenszlaks heart remained in Poland, with Polish literature, and she could not bring herself to penetrate the wall of the Hebrew
languageperhaps because it was too late, perhaps because it was not
worth it. I need to become conscious of the fact, she wrote to Broniewski
in 1946, that my world has perished, and that I perished together with
it.22 She was moved to hear from Broniewski following his return to
Poland, especially as she understood that friends in Palestine were reminders of an unpleasant period. As you probably know, she wrote, as
a rule your letters are published here. I defended myself as best I could,
justifying myself with the intimacy of the content, but in the end I relented and the excerpt about Jewish children in Zakopane found its way
into the Bulletin.23 Appenszlaks relations with Polish circles in Palestine
had cooled, as she lacked the strength to ght against all the negative
things that were being said about Poland. Moreover, she had no defense
when she heard the news of antisemitism there. It terries me a bit,
she wrote, that Ill never again come to Poland.24 Her daughter, studying at a Polish-Jewish school in Palestine, had never heard of Jan Lecho
or Kazimierz Wierzyskiand this saddened her. Instead Appenszlaks
daughter spoke constantly of Jerzy Putramentof whom Appenszlak
herself knew nothing.25 Appenszlak was not alone in missing Broniewski.
His old correspondent from prison, the then-aspiring poet Stanisaw Wygodzki, wrote to Broniewski from a west European hospital where he
was recovering from tuberculosis following his time in Auschwitz and
Dachau. Wygodzki was overjoyed to learn that Broniewski had returned
home to Poland, and that their correspondence, interrupted for so long,
could now resume. Wygodzki, the lone survivor among his family, had
plans to return to Poland in the spring.26
Broniewski had not been the only one of his circle to nd himself in
Palestine by way of the Anders army. In March 1946, Broniewski received
a letter from Janina Broniewskas now-former husband. Gadomski wrote

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins263

that he had received Broniewskis letter from Zakopane, which had evoked
a general mood of jealousy in Palestine, where there reigned sadness and
lethargy. Anatol Stern was there as well, and Gadomski wrote of Sterns
reaction to Broniewskis letter: he simply turned green, and not knowing
what to say he purchased two large shots [of vodka].27 In Palestine Stern
roamed about, coordinating the Palestinian branch of the communist
Union of Polish Patriots. His sympathies vacillated between Polish communism and Jewish nationalism, he identied himself sometimes as a
Zionist, sometimes as Polish as the occasion arises.28 In January 1948,
Stern wrote to Wat, his former futurist co-author; they had last seen each
other at the restaurant in Lvov on the evening of their arrests. Stern had
seen Peiper in Kuibyshev and Broniewski in Palestine, he told Wat. He
had not written to old friends, for fear of complicating his life, but now
he wanted to return to Poland, to Polishthe only language in which
he could think and write. He was afraid. He was afraid to return to the
enormous Jewish cemetery, afraid to nd himself amidst an image of
what had happened there that was still so fresh. Yet he wanted, and felt it
his obligation, to work for the new democracy in Poland.29 Almost three
years had passed since the end of the war; the Anders army no longer
existed and there were no longer any repatriation transports. Stern did not
have money for the trip, and turned to Jerzy Borejsza. Remembering our
warm and friendly relations in Lvov and knowing how you nurture literature at home, I would be greatly obliged and grateful to you if you were to
regard it as possible to endorse my request to the Ministry of Navigation
and in this way assist a Polish writer in returning and participating in
the common work of writers and artists in reborn Poland. Borejsza did
not ignore the letter; within that same year, Stern was home.30 He threw
himself into the new Peoples Poland. Yet the Party had not forgotten his
irtation with Zionism, and soon after his return to Poland, he became
an object of secret police surveillance.31

j ulian tuwim s ( a n t i c i p at e d ) h o m e c o m i n g
As the war reached its end, Tuwim waited anxiously in New York for his
opportunity to return to Poland, now as a decidedly engag poet. In July
1945, he wrote to Jzef Wittlin, an old friend of the Skamander poets,
urging him to return to Poland, too, and promising that no one in the
new Poland would force a literary agenda upon him, that these were only

264 s ta l i n i s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i ns

hostile rumors. Dont think that they dont want you at home, Tuwim
wrote, and rid yourself of the bad habit of pointless considerations about
your sins or guilt because of your absence during these six years. Tuwim assured Wittlin that nothing would be held against himneither his
absence during the war nor his failure to sign pro-Soviet and pro-Lublin
government declarations, nor even his having signed some anti-Lublin
ones. In Tuwims mind that was all over now and the important thing was
to return to their home and contribute to its reconstruction. Of course,
Tuwim qualied, as if as an afterthought, if you start to work against the
government, against its political orders and so forth or if you conspire
with fascist sons of bitches who are still, constantly conducting so-called
underhanded dealingsyoull go to prison.32
Tuwim corresponded prolically with old friends with whom he hoped
soon to be reunited. In September 1945, he wrote to Iwaszkiewicz, calling
him beloved and asking him to recognize what an enormous investment
of love, longing, brotherhood and many other feelingsentangled, unexpressed, inexpressible were contained in that word. This was true all the
more, Tuwim explained, as he had seen neither Lecho nor Wierzyski
for three years, nor was Grydzewski any longer communicating with
him. He was pained at having been away for so long; he had never managed to feel connected to America. Moreover, he was aicted by various
complexesof nonparticipation, absence, safety, satiety ... one
great complex of survival, mainly with a feeling of guilt (?) and sin (?)
towards the murdered Polish Jews. Tuwim believed that only his return to
Poland would free him from these feelings. In all of your eyes, as soon as
we see one another the rst time, he told his old friend, will be the verdict. Remember this! Tuwim added that he knewalthough no one had
told himthat he had lost his mother. He wanted no one to speak of this
to him, but asked Iwaszkiewicz if he wouldshould any grave existcare
for that piece of Polish ground until the time of Tuwims return.33
Tuwim was full of plans for his future in Poland. In December 1945
he wrote to Jerzy Borejsza that he was in the process of compiling a roguish and mischievous dictionary of Polish humor, satire, irony, sayings,
dialects, vulgarities, and so forth.34 Two months later, still from New York,
Tuwim wrote to Leon Kruczkowski, himself recently returned from long
years as a prisoner of war and now a leading gure in the Stalinizing
cultural sphere.35 While promising that nothing would alter his intention

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins265

to return to Poland, Tuwim wrote of how much news reaching him from
people returning to the United States from Poland upset him. Where is
the Polish Mayakovsky, Tuwim asked, even if only if in a pocket edition?
Where is that young, new bard of young, new Polish history? Yet what
disturbed him most was something else: The heaviest stone in my heart
is the news of antisemitism at home. I know who is doing this and why
it has lasted, but thats of small consolation.36
As for his host country, Tuwim had adopted the communist critique of
capitalist society; he saw the United States as an industry-obsessed society
for which even the war was an industrial phenomenon, actually without
any ideological roots. It was a business they had to do. The business was
doneand Hitler had ceased to be an enemy. Now the Americans were
setting o for the moon and had already calculated the cost in dollars of
a trip for one person. Macys will establish a branch of its Babylonian
enterprise there, Tuwim wrote in a letter to Sonimski, and the Coca-Cola
company (which spends more annually on advertisements than prewar Poland spent on new schools and hospitals) will sell its insipid wish-wash to
the Martians. Moreover, it will turn out that from the moon an atom bomb
is best aimed at the Kremlin.37 In January 1946 Tuwim wrote to Sonimski
of how emigration had aged him, and reminisced about the times, thirty
years earlier, when they had read their poetry to each another. The previous
year, even as the Germans were being driven from d and Warsaw,
Tuwim had become aicted with nervous disorders, with agoraphobia in
particular. Now he would spend days at a time lying in bed, rarely leaving
his apartment, and when he did it was only with his wife Stefania.38
In May 1946 the Tuwims sailed for London. They were there only for
two weeks, departing in early June on the ship lsk, which arrived at the
Polish port of Gdynia some four days later.39 When greeted by his friends
and various government representatives, Tuwim was so moved that he
broke into tears, unable to speak. Everythingthe people, the air, the food,
the coeeseemed inexpressibly wonderful to him. When asked when
he had decided to return to Poland, Tuwim answered that he had decided
before he had ever set foot in America; through all his wanderings he had
dreamt only of coming home. He passed along passionate greetings to all
of his fellow countrymen, and especially to the remaining Polish Jews.40
Now more than ever before Tuwim identied himself with Polish Jewry.
When he saw Iwaszkiewiczs wife, who had done much to save Jews in

266 s ta l i n i s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i ns

the days of Nazi occupation, Tuwim embraced her and said, Thank you,
Hania, for protecting my little Jews! To this she calmly replied: But my
Julek, those were my little Jews.41
Tuwim was embraced with open arms by the new government, who
provided him with an apartment in Warsaw, a paid secretary, a privileged
life.42 Of devastated Warsaw Tuwim said desperately to Jakub Berman, But
you will rebuild her!43 In October 1947 when a delegation of Soviet writers
came to Poland, Tuwim eagerly guided his friend Ilya Ehrenburg day and
night around the ruins of Warsaw, saying again and again, Lookhow
beautiful it is!44 Tuwim wanted to do his part; he threw himself into
the cultural rebuilding of Poland. When he had ed Warsaw in September 1939, he had buried a trunk full of manuscripts in the basement of
a building on Zota Street, home of the editorial oces of Wiadomoci
Literackie. Now, almost seven years later, he sought out his trunk. The
contents had been partially destroyed by moisture, but some things had
survivedin the company of a macabre escort: on top of the trunk lay
the corpse of a woman with her arm raised; a second dead woman lay at
the feet of the rst.45 In compensation, perhaps, for so much death, Tuwim
and his wife adopted a child, the six-year-old Ewunia, orphaned by the
war. Now, along with helping to rebuild the new socialist Poland, raising
little Ewunia became Tuwims greatest postwar passion.46 He embraced
parenthood and his new life in the city that had been burned to ashes;
even living amidst the ruins Tuwim insisted that no Rio de Janeiro could
ever compare, for him the most beautiful spot on earth was Warsaw.47 By
autumn 1947 Tuwim was among the directors at the New Theater, and
told an interviewer emphatically that there would be no SartresGod
forbid! in his repertoire. While Sartre had become very much a fan of
communism, Tuwim was not a fan of existentialism. To emphasize this,
he called over his new fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter, who obligingly
trotted towards Tuwim and onto his lap.
Ewunia, what is it you say, when does it become dreadfully
boring here at home?
Ewunia is embarrassed, she shakes her little head and is
silent.
Go ahead, say it Ewunia.Im asking as wellSay it
into her ear.

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins267

I lean forward, the little girl stands on her tiptoes and with
a warm, clean breath whispers clearly into my ear: Existentialism. And then she smiles playfully and is no longer in the
room. And so Ewunia in her own way resolves the problem
of Sartre.48

the homeco m i n g o f b ro t h e r s
When Wanda Wasilewska declined to return to Poland, she left open a
space in cultural politics, which required at least two men to ll. The rst
was Jakub Berman, who in 1949 found himself once again in Russia, this
time dancing with Molotov. They were dancing to Georgian music, which
Stalin especially liked, although he tended not to dance very much himself.
Surely, asked Bermans interviewer, you mean with Mrs. Molotov?
But no, Jakub Berman explained, Mrs. Molotov was not there, she had
already been sent to the gulag. It was Mr. Molotov with whom Jakub Berman was dancing, most likely a waltz, in any case something very simple
because Jakub Berman knew not the slightest thing about dancing.49 These
were the years when Jakub Berman, together with Bolesaw Bierut and
the economist Hilary Minc, formed a triumvirate of Stalinist leaders in
postwar Poland. Once the power behind the throne to Wasilewska, Jakub
Berman now played this role for the less extraordinary Bierut. To this he
added the position of postwar dictator of cultural policy in the harshest
years of socialist realism. As he had once done in the role of KPP liaison
in the interwar wars, Berman now again personally reached out to writers,
attempting to inuence them via every conceivable means. He cultivated
personal relationships. I tried to create an atmosphere in which they
would be eager to work, to be active, he said, And I succeeded.50
Yet Jakub Berman had no illusions about the precariousness of his
own position. It was Khrushchev who soon after the war cautioned Bierut
about his choice of advisors, mentioning rumors of dissatisfaction with the
ethnic composition of the Party leadership: Berman and Minc were both
Jews.51 In 1948, an anticosmopolitan campaign initiated in the Soviet
Union coincided with the formation of the state of Israel. After having
supported the creation of a Jewish state in the period 19441947, Moscow
changed its position when Israel failed to place itself in the communist
camp. Despite his warm gestures in Moscow, Stalin regarded Jakub Berman

268 s ta l i n i s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i ns

as a cosmopolitan.52 Moreover, Jerzy Putrament informed a Soviet ocial

that the younger brother, Adolf, was compromising the older one, Jakub,
with his Zionism, that their relations had become tense.53 Jakub Berman
was well aware that he was an ideal candidate for the role of a Polish
Rudolf Slnsk, a leading Czech communist of Jewish origin executed
after a 1952 show trial in Prague. That year Wanda Wasilewska, having
learnedperhaps through Khrushchevof Stalins desire to prepare a
trial on the model of the Slnsk aair and to liquidate Jakub Berman,
traveled from Kiev to Warsaw to warn him.54
The younger brother was indeed compromising the older one. Adolf
Berman was chairman of the Central Committee of Polish Jews during the
brief moment following the Second World War when the Zionist Left and
the Jewish communists found a point of unity. By late 1948, that moment
that passed. After the April 1948 ceremony unveiling Natan Rapaports
enormous granite monument on the fth anniversary of the Warsaw
Ghetto Uprising, Adolf Berman was accused of sabotage, of co-opting
the unveiling ceremony for a Zionist demonstration.55 In April 1949 he
was deposed from the chairmanship of the Central Committee of Polish
Jews by his communist comrades.56 That same year Wadysaw Bartoszew
ski, to whom Adolf and Basia Berman owed, in part, their survival, was
arrested for the third timeand now remained in prison.57 Jakub Berman
was familiar with such arrests; the security apparatus during the bloodiest years of Stalinism fell under his jurisdiction. He worked closely with
Jerzy Borejsza in the cultural sphere, and in his other role as overseer of
the security apparatus with Borejszas brother, the security ocer Jacek
Raski. Upon arriving in Lublin from the Soviet Union in September
1944, Raski had been proposed work in security. He advanced quickly
as a security ocer, particularly after coming to the conclusion that my
inhibitions must be the result of my intelligentsia character, of too little
militancy, of a lack of fortitude.58 His eorts to liberate himself from such
inhibitions were eective, and he became one of Jakub Bermans most
notorious charges. He had much support, including that of Tuwim, who
told him, In you I see the avenger of my mother.59
The second person succeeding Wasilewska was Borejsza, the Boss,
who dangled a cigarette from his lips, wore a trench coat and his shirt
unbuttoned, and aunted his closeness to Jakub Berman.60 Borejszas role
during the immediate postwar years granted him exceptional maneuver

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins269

ability, which he exploited, throwing himself into his various projects with
tremendous energy. Those in Lublin at the time remember him with red
eyes, full of energy and ideas, drinking great quantities of black coee.
Among his successes was the repatriation of many of the Ossolineum
collections from Lvov, which had been annexed by the Soviet Union.61 In
October 1944 in Lublin the publishing collective Czytelnik (The Reader)
was called to life.62 It was a collective in name only; it functioned rather as
a state enterprise and above all as Borejszas personal project. He wanted
to gather around him experts, cultural gures, and activists devoted to
literature, people who supported the states cultural politics, but were not
necessarily part of the state apparatus. Borejsza worked hard to recruit
the intelligentsias support for the new government, oering good jobs,
apartments, and stipends to go abroad. Moreover, it was Czytelnik that
took care of the otherwise homeless writers in the year or two just after the
war.63 Among Borejszas recruits was the antisemitic right-wing Catholic
politician Bolesaw Piasecki; Borejsza convinced Party authorities that if
they were to release Piasecki from prison he could serve a useful function
in organizing a loyal opposition. The Party agreed; Piasecki was released
with the understanding that he was to be part of a Catholic opposition but
a legal, constructive one that recognized the new government.64 Tuwim,
though friendly with Borejsza, devoted a rather unfriendly poem to this
bizarre irtation, symbolizing the relationship in their rendezvous In a
certain quiet caf / At the intersection of Stalin and Three Crosses.65
The communist-dominated but pluralist line Borejsza represented
was articulated in his 1945 article The Gentle Revolutionwhich began
with an unsigned letter that said Libert! Egalit! Fraternit! and noted
that the current situation in Poland was reminiscent of the Jacobins, with
only the guillotine for the bourgeoisie missing. Borejsza responded to the
unknown author: there would be no guillotine. Theirs would be a gentle
revolution. It had come late, but was the richer for having learned from
the experiences of others. Its gentleness made it no less decisive: Politi
cal and social reactionaries have lost the battle for Poland and that loss
is complete and nal. Among the intelligentsia there followed a division
into a small groupwhich is and will most likely remain ensconced in
reactionary prejudicesand the enormous majority, which clearly realizes
that the path of broad reforms opens for Poland the window to Europe. We
can and we must cease to be a musty, provincial, egocentric, out-of-the-way

270 s ta l i n i s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i ns

locality of snobs imitating foreign countries. We can and we must achieve

an independent expression of our national culture, as we have achieved
an independent path to great social and political reforms. The task of
achieving that independent expression fell to the progressive intelligentsia.
State control and coercion in the cultural realm would undoubtedly not be
necessary; the character of reborn Poland and the composition of social
forces would naturally give impetus to a literary transformation. In short,
Borejsza promised a gentle revolution in the cultural sphere, a revolution
protecting open discussion, a revolution devoid of any mandate to follow
the Soviet model, a revolution respectful of Polish culture.66
Yet this space for pluralism lasted for only a short while. In October
1947 the Central Committee of the Polish Workers Party passed a resolution concerning Czytelnik, accusing the institution of failing to adapt to
the new conditionsthat is, failing to recognize the Partys consolidation
of power. Czytelniks methods of inuence, which in the earlier period had
played the role of neutralizing hostile milieus, presently on more than
one occasion have started to become a riverbed of reactionary ideological
inuence on the non-Party masses reading Czytelniks publications.67
The resolution called for Czytelnik to expand Party cadres in leading positions; increase political control over periodicals; and in general shift to
the left. Czytelnik was attacked as well for growing above the Party; for
adopting Western press models; for pseudo-neutralism; for the programlessness of which Wat had once accused the Skamander poets in
Miesicznik Literacki.68
Now under attack, Borejsza crossed over to a hyper-leftist position.
He played, Wayk observed, a very complicated game.69 It was a game
with high stakes. Borejsza desired to provide some kind of fantastic evidence that he was one with the new, postgentle revolution era. The idea
came to him in the middle of the night, in the editorial oces of Czytelnik:
he would organize a world congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace
in the city of Wrocaw, in the new territories postwar Poland had acquired
from Germany.70 And so it came to pass. In August 1948 Borejsza gathered some ve hundred participants from forty-ve countriesincluding
Ilya Ehrenburg, Julien Benda, Paul luard, and Pablo Picassoin the
newly Polish city of Wrocaw. The French participant Dominique Desanti,
a correspondent from LHumanit, described Borejsza at the congress:
Corpulent, excited, feverish, with blue eyes and an oblong glance, with

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins27 1

wiggling ears and a face prematurely lined with wrinkles. ... Heavy in
the hips, with disheveled hair, taking o his rimless spectacles time after
time in order to wave his arms, holding the glasses in eshy ngers, he
simply dissolved in one big smile. A person knowing no rest, capable of
everything with the exception of maintaining calm.71
Iwaszkiewicz and Tuwim, who had not even been invited to the Lww
Congress twelve years earlier, now appeared as decidedly engag poets on the
correct side of the red barricade. Iwaszkiewicz, Borejszas co-organizer
who looked upon Borejsza as an eccentric, powerful, high-handed gure,
spoke at the congresss opening in a way he later thought overly idealistic,
perhaps overly mystical. Ilya Ehrenburg assured him that what he had said
was beautiful.72 Tuwim began his speech by expressing hopes of a political
nature: the participants at this congress must now see that Poland was
not separated from the rest of the world by an Iron Curtain. They had all
been able to travel there freely and express themselves on the most pressing topic: the threat of a new war to which fascist remnants were aspiring.
Tuwim spoke critically of the interwar years, when intellectuals had tended
to pass over political and ideological topics, and being apolitical passed
for a virtue of a writer, especially if he was a poet. The genocide of Polish
Jewry had aected Tuwim deeply, and he spoke explicitly of the impetus
for his politicization, of his reasons for embracing the Stalinist conception
of the writer as an engineer of human souls: After the ghastly years of
burning people in ovens, of breaking the tiny heads of infants on walls
and murdering defenseless peoplea new, vigorous consciousness must
embrace all of us, a new sense must direct our actions. It is not permissible for us, people of the mind and heart, to remain in a position of
neutrality, which is grist for the mill of people of the knife and st. The
enemy is unequivocal. Let our words be just as unequivocal. ... let us be
combative, revolutionary. Let our voice resound aggressively in defense
of peace. Let the resolutions of this congress leave no doubts as to where
these engineers of human souls can be found.73
Despite such articulate support by people of Tuwims stature, the
congress nearly ended in disaster. Leningrad Party leader Andrei Zhdanov
had received the Soviet delegates before they set out for Wrocaw. Jakub
Berman later speculated that Zhdanov must have given the delegates some
last-minute instructions, because the Soviet delegation arrived bristling
with tension and ery speeches, and was clearly putting pressure on us

272 s ta l i n i s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i ns

to support their hurrah-style attack on the Western countries.74 A speech

by the Russian novelist Aleksandr Fadeev, who during the war had sent
a very warm telegram to Tuwim, provoked a scandal. Fadeev spoke about
the threats to peace in the contemporary worldnamely imperialism in
general and American expansionism in particular. He saw the world, as
per Zhdanov, as divided into two camps: the antifascist, anti-imperialist
camp with the Soviet Union at its head, and the reactionary, imperialist
camp aspiring to a new war in the name of preserving the capitalist system.75 The French writer Desanti was there and listened to
lightning war against the decadence of literature and art in the
West; the appearance of the new man bringing socialist realism
and aligned with the position of the working class. Every intellectual worthy of the name should oppose that decadence. ...
Vercors, luard, Picasso, and I exchanged ironic glances: Ach,
those Soviets and their dogmas! We felt safe in our French
shell. Until suddenly: Sartre, that hyena writing on a typewriter, that vulture armed with a fountain pen ... Picasso
tears o his headphones, during which there resounds an
echo of scurrying. luard takes his o slowly and starts to note
something. Vercors and Lger remain motionless. For me
its a shock. ... I see Borejsza alone, walking with a lowered
head. When he reaches me, he says: This is it, theyve
smashed my congress to pieces.76
Aldous Huxley submitted a declaration of protest, walked out of the congress, and left for London. Jakub Berman made the decision to censor
parts of some speeches in the Polish press.77
On the day of Fadeevs speech, Jakub Berman was in Warsaw, where
he received a call from a despairing Borejsza. Berman spoke to Bierut, and
then left by car for Wrocaw. Once he had arrived and surveyed the situation, he telephoned Molotov, applying the principle, well knownto speak
parabolicallyin the Catholic world, of appealing from an ill-informed
pope to a well-informed pope. The conversation was a dicult one, but
Berman sensed that Molotov might be of a dierent opinion than Zhda
nov, and tried to persuade him that breaking up the congress would be
detrimental to the communist cause. Afterwards Ilya Ehrenburg gave a
speech that mitigated much of the tension provoked by Fadeevs. We do

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins273

not want to emphasize what divides us, Ehrenburg told the congress, on
the contrary, we are searching for what could unite us.78 Following the
congress in Wrocaw there was an elegant reception in Warsaw, where the
men were dressed in dark suits and Pablo Picasso was among the guests.
It was late August in Warsaw and the French poet Paul luard grew hot,
he took o his jacket, and later his shirt, and proceeded to parade around
with the naked, wonderful torso of an athlete.79

aleksander wat s h o m e c o m i n g
Aleksander Wat, at the wars end still in Soviet Kazakhstan, had not been
forgotten in Poland. In January 1945, as the Red Army approached Warsaw
and the war drew to an end, Wat wrote to Iwaszkiewicz from Kazakhstan,
pleading with him to learn the fate of his sister, the actress Seweryna
Broniszwna.80 Unlike Wats younger brother, who had returned from
Lvov to Warsaw to be murdered in the Holocaust, Seweryna Broniszwna
had survived the war and remained in Poland. Nearly two years then
passed before Wat himself received hopeful signs of returning to Poland.
Paradoxically, it was Ola Watowa and their son Andrzej, who had relented
and accepted Soviet passports, who received permission to leave the Soviet Union sooner than did Wat. That the family was eventually repatriated together owed much to Adam Wayk, who published an open letter
calling on the Ministry of Art and Culture to assist the Writers Union
in bringing one of its members back to Poland. In the letter, Wayk did
not dissimulate regarding Wats lack of sympathy for communism or his
recently adopted Catholicism; Wayk only insisted that the issue was not
ideology but rather a writer of exceptional intelligence who, far away in
Central Asia, was dying of heart problems and homesickness.81
In 1946, some six and a half years after they had ed Warsaw, Wat
and his family left the village of Ili. As they traveled through Alma-Ata to
Moscow in rags, people asked from which camp they were returning. In
Moscow they were cared for by the Polish embassy; and Wat took Andrzej
to see Lenins body at the mausoleum.82 Finally they acquired their papers
and boarded a train heading west. It was a train lled with Poles, who cried
when they crossed the Polish border. Wat and his wife did not realize how
Warsaw would look; they knew neither that it had all been destroyed nor
what had happened to their families. They only knew, from a newspaper at
the Moscow Polish embassy, that Wats sister Broniszwna, whose former

274 s ta l i n i s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i ns

ancs bed Wat had inherited at Lubianka prison, was performing at the
Polish Theater. In those rst moments Ola Watowa saw how my Warsaw
was no longer, how something irrevocable had come to pass and how, like
two halves of a cracked nut, the old life and the new life now approaching
would not merge.83 Wat felt more hopeful; after his years in the Soviet
Union, he saw Poland as a land of freedomand the ruins of Warsaw as
the price of that freedom.84
Wat had been in Warsaw for only a few days when Borejszas secretary came looking for him. Borejsza, who had given damning testimony
against Wat to the NKVD in Lvov, now greeted his old colleague warmly.
He was full of proposals for their work together: Wat could be a minister,
an editor, could ll any position he liked. Wat demurred, saying he was
too tired from the journey to make any decisions. When he returned from
Czytelnik and related his conversation with Borejsza to Ola, she sensed an
ominous subtext, and proposed that they escape across the border. It was
a spontaneous, unrealistic sentiment; after nearly seven years of exile they
had nally returned to Warsaw and were too exhausted to contemplate any
further wanderings. In the end, Wat declined Borejszas oers. Rather, he
immediately publicized his break with communism by making contact
with noncommunist, Catholic literary circles. Borejsza understood the
message and issued no further invitationswith the exception of one to
the Wrocaw conference.85 The precariousness of the situation Wat had
consciously entered was mitigated somewhat by a chance happening: Wat
ran into the director of the State Publishing Institute, who immediately
oered him a job. Wat responded by telling him to rst ask Jakub Berman,
who would certainly not agree. But Wat had misjudged his Party tutor of
times past; Jakub Berman did grant his permission, and Wat began to
work as the chief editor at the State Publishing Institute.86
Wat was among the beneciaries of Borejszas gentle revolution.
He was, for a time, not cast out of the literary world even though he protested when called comrade.87 In 1947 Wat traveled with the Polish PEN
Club to Zurich, where he spoke about the moral catastrophe the war had
wrought in Europe. It was dicult, Wat told the PEN Club congress, for
Polish writers to say what Leonhard Frank had said after the First World
War: Der Mensch ist gut. He asked that the delegates not be surprised
when Polish writers now asked: and what is the West? After all, what had
just come from the West but gas chambers and crematoria? The division

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins275

into West and East was in any case a false and sinister one, Wat said. He
went on to speak of the remarkable rebuilding occurring in Poland despite
the enormous destruction, and of the moral responsibility felt by Polish
writers. He told the writers gathered in Switzerland: Do we, writers, have
the right to approach people with words of despair, discouragement, catastrophism? Because what does he want, the ordinary Polish person? Only
that the world not obstruct him in his peaceful and constructive, in his
European, work. Despite everything and everyone I want to arm my own
optimism: man is good. And if one is again deluded, that is an illusion that
brings humanity closer to the ideal of the common good. Our obligation as
writers is to assist him in that hope. Because the cause of the writer is the
cause of moral responsibility for the future. Wat added that never before
had Polish literature been so animated and multivalent, never before had it
contained such a mosaic of worldviews and literary forms. Now in Poland
there was Catholic literature, Marxist literature, existentialist literature,
and so forth; now realists coexisted with avantgardists.88
The previous year, shortly after their return to Poland in April 1946,
Wat and his wife had gone to d for a Writers Union conference.
Leon Schiller, with whom Wat had worked on his rst socialist theatrical
production in the 1920s, was putting on plays at the theater there, and
Daszewski was designing the sets and costumes. After one performance
Schiller invited the Wats to dinner. He asked Wat to try to understand
Daszewskis role that fateful evening in Lvov, to believe that Daszewski
had failed to realize what he was being used for at the time. Schiller believed that Daszewski had been told only that there would be a Soviet art
historian at the restaurant who wanted to meet some Polish writers, and
that if he arranged a meeting the authorities would help bring his wife
to Lvov. Broniewski had forgiven their artist friend, but Wat had not. He
remained haunted by the image of Daszewskis ying out the door of the
restaurant that January evening.89 Following the Writers Union conference Ola Watowa decided to remain in the city for a few days. In d after
Wats departure she was invited to dinner at a restaurant where she saw
Daszewski, pale, moving towards her. He told her that he had to speak with
her, but her host warded him o, guiding her to a table where Broniewski
was gesturing to them. Daszewski, like a robot, followed them. Before
they had even sat down, Broniewski called out with laughter, Ola, lets
hope that Lvov doesnt repeat itself for us here! Yet even then Daszewski

276 s ta l i n i s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i ns

did not leave them. After dinner he followed Ola Watowa in silence as
her host escorted her back to her hotel. In the hallway Daszewski again
insisted that he had to speak with her. She silently refused.90

adam way k s h o m e c o m i n g
Among the ventures Jerzy Borejsza initiated in Lublin was the literary
newspaper Odrodzenie. In December 1945 the weekly printed a picture of
a very tanned Broniewski who had come home to Poland.91 There followed
shortly the beginning of A Balloon with Poetry, telling of the house with a
garden in oliborz that was no more.92 There were no strict divisions into
those who were and those who were not Party members, and the rst few
years of the weeklys existence saw varied contributions by Putrament,
Stryjkowski, Wygodzki, Krzywicka, Wayk, Stawar, Wasilewska, Tuwim,
Przybo, Peiper, and Stefan Jdrychowskis friend from their student
days in Wilno, Czesaw Miosz. It was understood from the beginning
that Odrodzenie could not be a revival of Wiadomoci Literackie; the latter
belonged to an era closed forever by the war.93 Wiadomoci Literackies
cosmopolitan legacy was nonetheless felt in the new paper. The editors
published Vladimir Mayakovsky, Ilya Ehrenburg, Julien Benda, and Karel
apek. Czesaw Miosz contributed translations of poetry by Pablo Neruda
and various African-American authors. There was nostalgia, too, for Caf
Ziemiaska, which had perished with the rest of the city. A satirical cartoon in Odrodzenie pictured a woman ascending the stairs to the upper
level of Ziemiaska where the Skamander poets sat. The caption read:
In its time a greater attraction than doughnuts with gold coins was our
then young Parnassus upstairs at Ziemiaska. Perverse Iwaszkiewicz,
passionate Wierzyski, unkempt, daydreaming Lecho, elegant Tuwim
with his birthmark, oh, how the gures of these rising stars of our literature impressed ladies young and old! We women feel a violent need to
revive such a new upper level in Warsaw.94
Soon after he had arrived in Poland, in November 1944 on the pages
of Odrodzenie, Adam Wayk oered a recantation of the futurism of times
past. In our times, he wrote, respect for cultural traditions is spreading
among perhaps even the whole of the intelligentsia. It is simply impossible in todays intellectual atmosphere to imagine such a manifestation
against tradition as futurism once was. He was certain that this respect
for tradition would not impede artistic progress; in this new society he

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins277

saw artistic tendencies moving towards unity.95 At the First Congress of

the Polish Writers Union, which took place in Cracow in late summer of
1945, Wayk spoke about the cultural ideologies of interwar Europe: their
dening trait was being cut o from life. Now the war had demonstrated
that being cut o from life would have fatal results.96
Wayk soon became the central gure in a second literary paper that
coexisted with Odrodzenie, a less gentleand less compromisingalternative. Unlike Odrodzenie, Kunica (The Forge) made little attempt to unite
Party and non-Party writers, and made no pretense of embracing pluralism. This became still more true following the Tito-Stalin split of 1948,
when the Party took an increasingly hard line towards culture. Now on the
pages of Kunica Wayk played out his new postwar role as terroretician
of socialist realism, Jakub Bermans closest ally on the editorial sta.97 He
retold the history of the avant-garde for the benet of those too young to remember, and explained that the thrill of discarding all formerly obtaining
rules about literature was the thrill of remaking the world. Wayk did not
go as far in belittling his avant-garde years as he might have; his younger
colleague Jan Kott suspected this was because Wayk never could have
renounced Apollinairehe would sooner have slashed his own veins.98
Despite himself, Wayk harbored a lingering attachment to Apollinaire,
he saw in the French avantgardists writing the brilliant introduction to
almost all of innovative poetry. Yet Wayk qualied: words were only a
substitute for people, avantgardism in literature a substitute for revolution.
In a word, Wayk concluded, unable in the realm of art to carry through
battles for upheaval in social life, [the avant-garde] enacted upheavals in
the forms of art.99 Mayakovsky was the exception. His poetry stood as an
example of great revolutionary passion, he had understood the strength
of words and the responsibility a writer must bear for them.100 Wayk took
an accordingly hard line on responsibility. During a roundtable discussion
with Andrzej Stawar, Jan Kott, and other Kunica writers, Wayk spoke out
against expressionism and the amorphous ones, those whose writing
was shapeless. Naturally, Wayk remarked, we will shoot them with
machine guns. One of the other Kunica writers was quick to answer that
in such a case the rst bullet would hit Wayks own heart.101
Julian Przybo, the former avant-garde poet who in the interwar years
had kept his distance from Warsaw, now became the focus of a literary debate.
Przybo unhesitatingly accepted the postwar political reality, considering

278 s ta l i n i s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i ns

himself a leftist and progressive. He saw himself as a bearer of the Revo

lutionyet the gift he bore was not necessarily well received by those
who saw the future of communist literature not in a continuation of the
avant-garde, but rather in a return to realism. Przybo opposed Wayks
self-annihilating theory about the backward, obscurantist, reactionary
character of the avant-garde. At the center of their polemic was the notion of comprehensibility. Przybo came under attack for his failure to
embrace realism, for the insucient comprehensibility of his work to
the masses.102 For his part, Przybo was skeptical about the Partys slogan
of universalizing culture. In a December 1945 article in Odrodzenie,
Przybo defended himself, criticizing the slogan poetry for everyone as
hyperbole, as equivalent to the slogan everyone into the ranks of the Polish army! Children, the elderly and handicapped were not called to serve
in the army, Przybo argued, just as poetry was not written for illiterates.
He continued: Lowering oneself to the tastes of the reader is the poets
downfall.103 Socialist convictions notwithstanding, Przybo maintained
the elitist position that aesthetic tastes were always the privilege of a small
number.104 The times were against him. In 1946 Andrei Zhdanov gave a
policy-setting speech about the Soviet journals Zvezda and Leningrad, castigating the poet Anna Akhmatova as well as Wats friend from Alma-Ata,
the Freud expert Mikhail Zoshchenko.105 The following year, in November
1947, Bierut gave a radio speech in Wrocaw, which eectively announced
a radical policy change in culture: now the mandate came to follow the
previously rejected Soviet model. This was the beginning of the end of
Borejszas gentle revolution, and Przybo was dispatched to a diplomatic
post in Switzerland.106
As the cultural climate was transformed, the Ministry of Art and
Culture organized a January 1948 seminar on the former noble estate of
Nieborw, in an eighteenth-century palace decorated with Greek vases
and family portraits.107 The ministry wanted to introduce younger writers
such as Wiktor Woroszylski and Tadeusz Borowski to the older generation, to Wat, Stawar, and Iwaszkiewicz.108 At Nieborw, Wat spoke out
against overly simplistic oppositions in literaturesuch as that between
optimistic and defeatist categories. He opposed the idea that all literature should be adapted to the connes of realism, and insisted that
literary style was a much more complicated matter. The danger, Wat
elaborated, lies in something else as well. Socialist realism in particular,

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins279

which makes use of the schema good versus evil, reaction versus progress,
and creates a positive (chosen) and negative (condemned) hero, reinvokes
a Christian eschatological schema.109 In the end, the seminar revealed a
generational conict, with the radical young writers attacking the liberalism of the older writers and their sympathy for modernist trends such as
cubism and postsurrealism.110 The young generation launched a frontal
attack, throwing insults by calling this one a symbolist and another one
a passisteonce a favorite accusation leveled by the avant-garde of the
1920s, which the older writers themselves represented.111
The Sovietization of the literary sphereand the battle against bourgeois aestheticismcontinued. In September 1948 Zhdanov appeared on
the front page of Odrodzenie with the declaration that Soviet writers took
pride in accusations of tendentiousness.112 Borejsza, chastised for his liberalism and cosmopolitanism in cultural policy, composed a gentle negation of his gentle revolution.113 Broniewski, the revolutionary poet, neither
opposed nor embraced Zhdanovs mandates. Rather he spoke somewhat
abstractly about how, on one hand, commissions for creative work derive
from society, from the working massesyet on the other hand, the poet
must experience that content internally and not simply write to order; he
must reach the same consciousness himself as opposed to producing on
demand. About socialist realism Broniewski remained ambivalent: it was
a good thingwhich had its dangers.114 At the 1949 Polish Writers Congress in Szczeci, socialist realism was formally mandated in Poland.115
Now the once avant-garde poet who loved Apollinaire, Wayk with the
ugly little face, became our little Zhdanov. Like Zhdanov, Wayk was
harsh, dogmatic, and not without malice.116 He had assistance from Jakub
Berman, who at that time personally took everything into his own hands,
he dragged everyone to Central Committee meetings and enforced the
style of socialist realism.117
The year 1949 saw the clear politicization of Odrodzenie. In December
1949 Borejsza organized a special issue in commemoration of Stalins
seventieth birthday, including Mayakovskys poem 1917 in Wayks translation and a drawing of Picasso holding a glass with the inscription A ta
sant, Staline!118 The centerpiece was Wadysaw Broniewskis Sowo o
Stalinie (A Word about Stalin), an eclectic poem of nine parts in dierent
meters, bearing no traces of any resentment Broniewski might have harbored after his time in Soviet prison. A Word about Stalin began with

28 0 s ta l i n i s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i ns

an image of the nineteenth century. The century of Marxs Communist

Manifesto, of steam engines, of the defeat of the Paris Commune was
now dying out like a gas lantern. Revolutionthe locomotive of history, / Marx said, Lenin enacted, Broniewski wrote. The fth section
continued:
The train of history rushes forward,
the century-signal ashes
The Revolution does not need glory,
it does not need noisy metaphors,
it needs an engine driver,
which is He.
Broniewski wrote of Stalins name as the hope of a new world being born
as the old world burst like an atom. He returned then to Poland:
In my land
millions of graves
through my land
passed a re,
through my land,
passed ill fortune,
in my land
was Auschwitz.
Yet the unhappy land where Warsaw lay was being rebuilt: Warsaw, cruelly
destroyed, raises its blood-stained bricks all the more quickly with the
name of stalin.119 This birthday issue devoted to Stalin was among
Odrodzenies last. In 1950 Odrodzenie merged with Kunica to form Nowa
Kultura (New Culture); these were now dierent times.
In February 1950, Jakub Berman expressed further thoughts on the
socialist realist mandate: the deepening of Marxist consciousness among
writers was resulting in progress, yet Polish literature remained burdened
by the the omnipotence of spontaneity.120 Reports reaching Berman
suggested that resistance to the Party line in culture was fading, that the
old worldview was no longer on the ideological oensive. Aleksander
Wat was the exception. He alone, in a quite perdious way, creating the
supercial appearance of intellectual depth, attempted to proer an idea
of the catastrophic state of contemporary Polish literature, polemicizing

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins28 1

against the Marxist thesis about the class and ideological causes of a certain crisis of literary creation.121 In fact Wat was not on the ideological
oensive; he was withdrawing from cultural life.122
In July 1950, Adam Wayk gave a speech at the Fifth Congress of
the Polish Writers Union, held in Warsaw for the rst time after the
war. He began by announcing two tasks: the battle for world peace and
the reshaping of the country. Wayks wartime reeducation in the Soviet
Union revealed itself; he spoke in the Stalinist language of the people,
building, objective, concrete, errors, bourgeois, and consciousness. There could be no objective evaluation of art apart from its social
and ideological function, he emphasized. In the battle for the future, he
said, ... every truth is passionate and political. The true intellectual and
moral value of a literary work can be appraised in accordance with its force
in mobilizing to battle for peace and for the future. The secret of socialist realisms mass appeal was its ability to provide the people with the
constructive and formative truth that they desire.123 Now Wayk passed
judgment on his friends and colleagues in good Stalinist style, handing out praise and condemnation: recent poems by Tuwim, Sonimski,
and Iwaszkiewicz, and certain poems by Miosz, attested to the progress
made in the development of ideological-political consciousness since the
Szczeci congress. Following a postwar transition period during which
his poetry was weak, Broniewskis ideological and emotional ties to the
developing new reality had led to a new blossoming of his artistic potency.
Wayk did not fail to articulate his own self-criticism, replete with the
motif of insuciencies, regarding his 1949 essay collection W stron
humanizmu (In the Direction of Humanism). Kunica had published a
review speaking of the important role these essays played in preparing
the ground for socialist realism. Wayk, however, was quick to point out
that his essays played only a limited role, and even then not a consistent
one: I failed to see suciently clearly the perspectives for the evolution of
literature in Peoples Poland. I failed to appreciate the value of innovative
Soviet literature. In characterizing the literature of the imperialist period,
I failed suciently clearly or suciently precisely to connect the ideological processes occurring in the womb of the bourgeoisie with the concrete course of the class war. As a consequence I did not appreciate the
decisive inuence of that battle on the formation of declining bourgeois
ideologies.124

282 s ta l i n i s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i ns

The years following the Szczeci congress were years of socialist realism and Stalinist court poetry, a new genre bearing few traces of the native
Polish proletarian poetry of the late 1920s. Broniewski was far from alone
in writing a poem for Stalin. Wayk composed his own, comparing the
wisdom of Stalin to a wide river that watered the steppes and the tundra,
bringing forests and wheat and leaving gardens in its wake.125 The younger
generation was now discovering Mayakovsky in a way all but divorced from
the Russian poets futurist origins. In a January 1950 piece in Odrodzenie,
Wiktor Woroszylski wrote of how Mayakovskys poetry is and will be
the natural, classical poetry of the new society. Those who, in defense
of cultural tradition, dismissed Mayakovsky as being un-Polish and
unrepeatable were only anti-Soviet nationalists and bourgeois cosmopolitans.126 Borejsza responded to Woroszylski, criticizing his insistence that
Mayakovskys form was the only suitable one. Woroszylski, Borejsza wrote,
had forgotten Broniewski, and forgotten about Polands own heritage of
revolutionary poetry.127 Some ten days after Borejszas article appeared,
Tuwim wrote to a fellow poet and essayist, saying that they needed to talk
about the unimportance of lyricism in the project of the socialization of
minds and in general about the exceedingly limited inuence of poetry on
transformations of historical signicance in humanitys history. Tuwim
added, I write this without a shadow of irony, bitterness or regret. On
the contrary: with some joy. ... I believe in ghting songs with drums,
trumpets, with a whole orchestra (such is the ingenious Mayakovsky).
... But Mayakovskyin truth thats once in a hundred years, or perhaps
longer still.128
In 1952, Wat made an exception to his withdrawal from cultural life
and spoke out against socialist realism at a Writers Union meeting. He felt
that someone had to speak, and that the obligation fell to him because of
his own accounts to settle: so many among the Party leadership had been
formed by Miesicznik Literacki, now Wat had to redeem himself, to pay
for his sins of times past. Jerzy Putrament responded to Wat with hostility,
concluding his own speech in Russian: when the bear is grumpy, you give
him a bat on the head and then hell shut up. Another Party writer added
that everyone was united with the exception of one enemyAleksander
Wat. Woroszylski grew enraged as he listened to Wat say things completely unacceptableso much so that he resolved to travel to the Soviet
Union so as to gain more knowledge to ght against Wats heresy.129 None

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins283

of Wats friends spoke out in his defense. He returned home from the
meeting feverish and chilled.130

tuwims hom e c o m i n g ( a s a n e n g ag p o e t )
Tuwim, absent during the whole of the war, was deeply aected by it. The
war, and above all the Holocaust, had made him a Polish Jew, a supporter
of communism, an activist, and an engag poet in a way he had never been
before. In the spring of 1947 Stanisaw Wygodzki, who had once written
desperate letters to Broniewski from prison, was in a Warsaw caf when
he saw Tuwim sitting by the wall, looking at him uncertainly. They had
met before the war, when Wygodzki, before his days in Auschwitz and
Dachau, had looked quite dierent. Tuwim did recognize him, though.
He stood up and called out the name of Wygodzkis hometown, Bdzin!
The younger poet was moved to tears. Tuwim asked him, Do you know
what they did with my mother? Wygodzki was silent. They threw her
from the window onto the pavement.131 After the war, Tuwim published
a poem in Odrodzenie about his mothers grave in the d cemetery, the
Polish grave of my mother / of my Jewish mother.132 When he returned to
Poland from New York, Tuwim began to sponsor a provincial elementary
school library near d through a fund in memory of his mother. He
became intensely interested in the children there; he asked that they write
to him with detailed descriptions of the area: the pharmacy, the houses,
the woods, the smells. He sent them books and told them of the horrors
of fascism, of his mothers death at the hands of Nazi bestiality, and of
his hopes for the new Peoples Poland.133
Tuwim wrote a poem to the Soviet nation, speaking of the Revolution
as an eternal beauty, and of Stalin as an immortal hero.134 He published
excerpts from his American notebooks: Political disengagement has become for me a concept equivalent to unmusicality: Ia poet!cannot
understand it.135 Poland without social revolution: a childless mother.
You cant make an omelet without breaking eggs.136 He raised his voice
in literary politics as well. In an autumn 1947 open letter to the poet
Konstanty Gaczyski, Tuwim wrote of the responsibility of the poet. He
condemned Gaczyskis recently published verse for its careless praise
of saints and sinners alike. We, poets, Tuwim wrote, are not permitted today to go around the world with our eyes closed and fall into a
blissful Franciscan state of love and forgiveness for all. Leave that to the

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hypocrites. He continued on a very personal note: Because you should

know, Konstanty, that sixteen months after my return to Poland I am
full of such banalities like faith, hope, love for the noble, hatred for the
villainous, youthful (for old age) optimism, in such degrees as I never
experienced during my youth. You will perhaps ask, how do I distinguish
the noble from the villainous? The sinners from the saints? I distinguish,
my friend. It happened slowly and with diculty. Until it happened decisively, without any vacillation, once and for all. It happened over the grave
of my Mother, murdered by the fascists. They were sinners, Konstanty,
terrible sinners.137
Nearly two decades after he received a kiss from Janina Broniewska for
his intervention upon Wayks arrest, Tuwim intervened with the security
apparatus on behalf of one of the sinners: the poet Jerzy Kozarzewski,
an ocer in the Home Army and the great-grandson of the poet Cyprian
Norwid. He was arrested in September 1945, and sentenced to death.
Kozarzewskis wife Magdalena, whose family had aided Tuwims mother
during the war, turned to Tuwim with a plea for him to intervene with
President Bierut on her husbands behalf. Despite his newly acquired
political dogmatism, Tuwim was shaken and did not refuse her. To Bierut
he wrote that this matter was perhaps the gravest he had ever experienced
as it involved saving the life of a personin fact of six people, as Tuwim
did not neglect to plead on behalf of those sentenced together with Koza
rzewski. He had agreed immediately to Magdalena Kozarzewskas request,
he told Bierut, because how could he have responded otherwise?
I agreed, although I breathe hatred for the ideology of the condemned; although their crimes are obvious to me; although
I know that as a result of their activity hundreds of people have
perished and are perishing. I even know that if they were to
catch methe one intervening on their behalfthey would
murder methey themselves or their supportersmercilessly, because for them Im a Jew and a Bolshevik. Whatever
else one can suspect me of, one cannot suspect me of sympathy for the condemned. But with that much greater passion,
with that much greater fervor, I come to you, a person to a
person, a Pole to a Pole, a democrat to a democrat, and I plead

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins285

with you to spare the life of Kozarzewski and the ve other

c ondemned.
Tuwim spun a web of philosophical arguments. His intervention was the
intervention of a poet, and what, after all, is the predestination of the
poet in that nal, most essential meaning of that word? It is the doing
of good. That good is sometimes called beauty, sometimes knowledge,
sometimes truth. Moreover, he was intervening on a poets behalf. The
bullet that would kill Kozarzewski, Tuwim wrote to Bierut, would ricochet and strike the heart of every Polish poet. He reminded Bierut of
what Dostoevsky had once written: if the salvation of humanity were to
depend on a single childs being put to death, we would have to relinquish
that salvation. These were not children, Tuwim acknowledged, and they
should be punishedbut not with death, death would only grant them
dignity, transform them into martyrs. In conclusion Tuwim added that
Magadalena Kozarzewskas family had aided his mother during the occupation, despite the fact that they knew neither his mother nor Tuwim
personally. They helped her for the reason that my Mother the Jewess
gave the world a Polish poet, he wrote. Tuwims request was granted. The
death sentence was commuted to ten years of imprisonment.138
His humanitarian defense of Kozarzewski notwithstanding, Tuwim
now identied unambiguously as a political poet. When in 1949 the leftwing Chilean poet Pablo Neruda paid a visit to Poland, Tuwim wrote a
long letter welcoming the Latin American visitor:
Dear poet!
We are sons of dierent races, of dierent continents,
dierent histories; dierent are our languages, our customs;
for me your homeland is an exotic countrydoubtlessly to
the same degree that Poland is exotic for you. ... And yet,
when I learned that Pablo Neruda had come to Warsaw, my
heart beat with more fervor, more joy from being so moved
just as if upon the news of the arrival of someone close and beloved whom I had not seen for a very long time. Why? So much
seems to divide us, we dier so much between ourselves, and
so where is the source of so much joy at your arrival? Is it only

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that we both represent that odd tribe that is the poet? No, not
for that reason. The cause is other: what joins us a hundred
times more than divides us lies in one qualication, which
up to this time has passed for prosaism, yet which in the
essence of the matter resounds with beautiful poetic content:
a common political path, a path of conscious, decisive, and
ideologically explicit battle for a new, more beautiful life of
humanity. More beautiful by a complete justice, violated until
now at each step by greedy people, beasts of prey wreaking
injury on millions of paupers. More beautiful by the complete
defeat of all those who in their own interest are ready to burn
and murder three-quarters of the earth, if only on the remaining one-fourth they would live well.
Tuwim spoke to Neruda as one fellow-traveling poet to another, writing
of how they were united by their faith that wherever in the world a cry
of pain was heard, it would no longer pass without an echofor Neruda
in Chile, luard in France, Broniewski in Warsaw, Venclova in Lithuania
would sound the alarm through their poetry. Because we, poets, Tuwim
concluded, in former times roaming around the world in solitude, today
have become one great family, one great community of brothers, calling
to one another not only by name, not only by the singing of words (whose
beauty and charm I do not at all reject)but above all by the slogans of
the battle we are waging and will wage to its victorious end.139

janina bro n i e w s k a s h o m e c o m i n g
In the summer of 1946, Wasilewska formally brought the era of the Union
of Polish Patriots to a close, instructing her comrades and colleagues
not to forget those who extended to us a fraternal hand, who helped us,
who took care of us, whoand how wisely and deeplyunderstood our
longings, dreams, desires, and battle. She paid tribute to the memory
of those who did not live to return to Poland, to Alfred Lampe who had
given them so much.140 In October of that year Bolesaw Bierut wrote to
tell Wasilewska that she had been awarded a Grunwald medal for all of
her work on behalf of Poland.141
Wasilewska became a permanent Soviet citizen. Khrushchev recalled
that her daughter Ewa, who after the war went to university and worked

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins287

at a library in Moscow, once came to her mother and said to her: I found
Grandpas books and I ordered them all to be removed to the basement.
Theyre blatantly anti-Soviet.142 Wasilewskas own career expanded to include Soviet opera. In the late 1940s she co-authored with her husband Kor
neichuk a libretto in Ukrainian for Konstantin Dankevichs opera Bohdan
Khmelnytsky. The opera, telling the story of the seventeenth-century Cossack rebel leader, was simultaneously a socialist and Ukrainian nationalist
one, drawing attention to the heroic struggle of the Ukrainian peasants
against their Polish aristocrat landlords as well to the eternal friendship
of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples. A chorus announced: O, do not
rejoice, mighty Poles, that you have bound and chained us. Soon you too
shall die. The hour of vengeance is close upon you!. ... O, do not boast,
that you have crucied the Ukraine. The libretto included a feminist
subplot in which Solomiya, the daughter of a Ukrainian killed by Polish
lords, took up her fathers saber to deliver Ukraine from bondage. At the
conclusion of the libretto, the hero Bohdan declared: Great Russia! Our
great brother! Accept our deepest respects, our thanks, and our eternal
love! Henceforth we shall be invincible with you at our side!143
In 1947 the American writer John Steinbeck visited Soviet Ukraine,
where he received an invitation to lunch from Korneichuk and Wasilewska,
a Polish poetess who is known in America. He described their home as
pleasant with a lovely garden of vegetables and owers. Wasilewska served
lunch on a vine-shaded porch: It was delicious, and there was a great
deal of it. There was a vegetable caviar made of eggplant, a sh from the
Dnieper cooked in a tomato sauce, strange-tasting stued eggs, and with
this an aged vodka, yellow and very ne. Then came strong, clear chicken
soup, and little fried chickens, rather like our Southern-fried chicken,
except that they were dipped in bread crumbs rst. Then there was cake,
and coee, and liqueur, and last Korneichuk brought out Upmann cigars
in aluminum cases.144
It may well have been her friendship with Wasilewska that catapulted
Janina Broniewska from being the wife of a revolutionary Polish poet to
being an activist in her own right. After the war, she became the secretary
of the Party circle in the Writers Union.145 The 1950 evaluation in her Party
le noted that Comrade J. Broniewska holds her own in a Bolsheviklike manner.146 In addition to her political career, following her return to
Poland Broniewska had three children under her carethe third being

288 s ta l i n i s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i ns

Broniewskis stepdaughter Majka whom Broniewska had found in an orphanage when Marysia Zarbiska was in Auschwitz. Zarbiska soon after returned, but she had only seemingly survived Auschwitz. In 1947, she
died. Now Janina Broniewska, together with her new husband, General
Leon Bukojemski, again took in Majka. When she was unable to attend
one of Majkas school conferences she sent Bukojemski in her place. He
hesitated, asking how he was to explain his relationship to Majka to her
teacher. Broniewska replied that it was very simple: Majka was the daughter of his wifes rst husbands second wife and her rst husbandand
with that she set o to a Party meeting.147
In 1947, Janina Broniewska became the editor of the new magazine
Kobieta (Woman). The eccentric disjointedness of Kobieta included wild,
colorful covers with illustrations combining socialist realism and the aesthetics of American suburban housewives. Articles such as The Demon
stration of Polish Women on Behalf of Peace, Leningrad in Battle,
There Can Be No Victorious Battle for Socialism without the Participation
of Women, and Soviet WomenThe Avant-garde in the Battle for Peace
were juxtaposed with columns such as The Art of Laundry, How to
Cook, and Cosmetics in a Womans Life.148 Wasilewska and her nowgrown daughter, Ewa, received Kobieta in Kiev, and wrote enthusiastically
to the editor: All of us are living according to Kobieta. Ewa has already
tried all the cosmetic suggestions, Ive enriched my culinary knowledge.
... were all dressing according to Zuzannas prescriptions.149 Kobieta
was to be short-lived however; the venture was liquidated at the end of
1949, with the last issue dedicated to Stalins seventieth birthdayand
including a picture of his mother.150 Ewa Wasilewskas feelings were communicated by her mother: How to live now without weekly instructions
about dressing, eating, washing out stains, and so forth?151
Janina Broniewska was not entirely content that her closest friend
had chosen to remain far away. Despite that, their friendship remained a
remarkable one. They had become each others family. Broniewska kept
a room in her postwar home, furnished with Wasilewskas furniture, always ready for her friends arrival. Julian Stryjkowski, after his rst awkward meeting with Wasilewska in Moscow, subsequently saw her more
than once at Janina Broniewskas villa. In postwar Warsaw, Stryjkowski
noted, Wasilewska still had that same gloomy and lofty facial expression

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins289

she had had in Moscow.152 After returning home to Kiev from a visit in
1947, Wasilewska wrote to her friend, I have to tell you, despite the fact
that I had thought that I was already a complete miednik i cynik [hardened and cynical], it was very dicult for me to leave, not in general,
but to leave all of you in particular.153 In a letter written the following
summer Wasilewska asked Broniewska to give a gentle hug from her to
Anka.154 Janina Broniewskas daughter was pregnant; and two months
later Wasilewska sent a letter addressed to Dearest Grandma:
I understand that Warsaw is being rebuilt at an accelerated
tempo. I understand that factories are rising and ports are expanding at lightening speed. But explain to me by what means
you were able to master nature, or human nature, so as to produce children with such incomprehensible speed? How can it
be done so that one isnt yet pregnant in May, yet in September
has already borne an infant? If you clarify that mystery for
me, who knows, maybe I, too, in my older years will want to
be a macia-heroiniaat such a pace its completely realistic. . . .
I only worry about our baby linens for newbornsby
November when I should be able to deposit the gifts personally
at the feet of the heir to the throne, they couldall the more
so as where you are children will probably grow as well at some
unnatural rateturn out to be too small. Let me know if by
November the little one has already become a writer, doctor,
or engineer so that instead of diapers I can bring a typewriter,
dentists chair, or a small Eiel tower. Moreover, before you
relate everything to me in person, dont torment my womans
soul but write how everything happened. How much does she
weigh, how did Anka feel, how does she feel, her little head,
little legs, in general everything.155
On that September day, as she was preparing to send this letter, Wasilewska
received a letter from Broniewska in Warsaw, and so immediately began a
second one herself, again lamenting her distance. Jasieczka, she wrote,
if only it were possible to go to the airport, get on a plane, and be at your
place just in time for lunch. ... I wouldnt have to think it over for even
a moment.156

290 s ta l i n i s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i ns

antoni s o n i m s k i s h o m e c o m i n g
Jarosaw Iwaszkiewicz saw Antoni Sonimski in 1945, when Sonimski
came to Poland for the rst time after the war. Sonimski, the Iwaszkiewiczes, and Irena Krzywicka were among the prewar friends who met for
dinner at Warsaws Hotel Polonia, which stood out alone among the ruins,
amidst the lingering smells of burning and decaying bodies. They spoke
about those who had been taken to Auschwitz, about those who had been
killed, about Krzywickas lover Boy-eleski. And every so often Sonimski
or the others who had been absent during the war would ask: Why? Shot
for what? These were questions that testied only to their fundamental
lack of understanding, and they saddened Iwaszkiewicz. After the dinner,
which lasted late into the night, Iwaszkiewicz together with his wife and
Irena Krzywicka retired to a communal room in the hotel. Many people
were sleeping on plank beds, they chose one for the three of them near
the window. Iwaszkiewicz could not sleep. He lay awake between his wife
and Krzywicka, and they began to whisper to one another:
I have the impression, I said, that what we experienced
during the occupation, the Warsaw uprising, the months after
the uprising, the months of an empty Warsaw, its weighed
upon our dispositions, our characters, on that which is called
the soul, a burden that cannot be cast o. Its a hallmark distinguishing us from all others. And that moment of dierence
will always remain a triing, but essential element between
us and them. We are marked for the ages.
Im afraid that its a very big dierence, said Krzywicka.
It will probably balance out someday, my wife consoled us.
Perhaps, I said.157
And perhaps Sonimski felt this dierence as well. Despite his formal repatriation to Poland in 1946, he soon returned to London, where
he served rst as chairman of the literary section of UNESCO and then
as director of the Polish Culture Institute.158 In 1949 Tuwim wrote tauntingly to his old Skamander friend, suggesting that Sonimskis correspondencesparse yet lled with vulgarity, nonsense, and other foolishness at odds with the beautiful and lofty creative work of the illustrious
poetmight well become a collectors item.159 The following year Tuwim
sent Sonimski a similarly jocular letter. I dreamt of you, Tuwim wrote,

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins29 1

With regret I arm that you have many objections as to my character

and abilities; yet you were enchanted by my beauty and you expressed that
quite passionately. But this, too, wasnt very pleasant. He asked when his
friend was nally planning to return to Poland, as Ewunia often asks:
when is that silly uncle coming from London?160
Sonimski returned permanently only in 1951. That same year Czesaw
Miosz, who had been serving as Polish cultural attach in Paris, defected
from Peoples Poland. Now Sonimski wrote a vicious open letter to his
fellow poet, the former catastrophist from Wilno:
You agitate against the planned work encompassing the ever
broader Polish masses, you strike a blow against the building
of factories, universities, and hospitals, you are an enemy of
workers, peasants, and the intelligentsia, who for the rst time
in the history of our country have stood in battle to cast o
the harm and exploitation of the capitalist system. You are an
enemy of our workers and peasants sons, who ll the schools
of higher education, who crave learning and work, you are the
enemy of the architects and bricklayers who are rebuilding
the capital, of engineers who are working out plans for new
factories, of Party workers who are ghting against ignorance.
... Each Polish success, each stage victoriously overcome,
each new factory, new collective, each good book by a Polish
writer evokes your hatred. You feel joy at every adversity that
the ravaged country encounters on the path to socialism.
That Miosz had once upon a time been a progressive who included
revolutionary slogans in his literary repertoire made his betrayal all
the more hateful. Sonimski, the satirist who had harbored no illusions
following his 1932 visit to the Soviet Union, now had mastered Stalinist
discourse:
You are an enemy of our present, but what frightens you most
is our future. You know that the fulllment of the six-year plan
will make a great and strong socialist country of Poland. You
dont want every person in Poland to have work, bread, and
education. You dont want hundreds of new factories and hospitals, dozens of new universities and laboratories to arise in

292 s ta l i n i s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i ns

this land, you dont want the works of the great writers of the
world to reach the working masses in hundreds of thousands
of copies, you dont want the liberation of your own nation
from the capitalist yoke.
What do you want? What is your program? Lets be honest.
You want only one thing. You want war. A war more terrible
than all past wars. On the new corpses of millions of children,
women, and men, on the new ruins of cities today rebuilt do
you rest your hopes. Those bloody calculations bear various
names, but you most often and most willingly call them patriotism. And so your patriotism desires the domination of
reactionary neo-Nazi Germany over Europe, your patriotism
aspires to the loss of half of the territory of the Republic and
to the delivering of the whole of the Polish population into
the vassalage of industrial barons, Junkers and Nazis.
At times you give your bloody schemings the name crusade
of freedom. What kind of allies do you have in this crusade?
By now you sit down at one table, although at the far end,
barely tolerated, with yesterdays executioners of the Polish
nation. Your allies are the Nazi ghosts restored to life, the
black Spanish Falanges, the dark reactionary forces of the
entire world paid and armed by American capitalists.161
In the pages of the migr Paris journal Kultura (Culture), Miosz
published his reply. His open letter to Sonimski was pained, reective,
and patronizing. Miosz began with the observation that Sonimskis attack on him was composed in the tradition of the Moscow show trials,
and reminded his attacker that there had been a time when Sonimski
himself had been indignant at the servility of Russian writers who shouted
on cue kill him! Now Sonimski was fullling the same role, and Miosz
would have had nothing to say to him were it not for his past as a poet. I
will answer you, Miosz wrote, in a way deserved by the old poet from
Pikador, and not the author of feuilletons in the Polish version of Pravda.
You were never a communist, Miosz continued:
When Polish communists were rotting in prisons, you sat in
the caf and wrote weekly chronicles for small-town liberals.
When those liberals were dying in front of ring squads and in

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins293

gas chambers, you were in London. And you were in London

when Polish communists were then rotting in Soviet prisons
and when they forgave those prisons, when they took upon
their own conscience the deportations organized by Russians,
the destruction of Warsaw, the plannedunder the disguise
of wartime operationsburning of cities and the pillaging of
factories in the western territories; they took it upon their own
conscience in the name of their own ideal. And now you have
chosen orthodoxy by the force of facts that you yourself did not
create and that you did not want.
Miosz speculated that Sonimskis conversion to orthodoxy had its
source in a fear of his own emptiness. He reminded Sonimski of who
he had once been, of what he had once written. Your voice sounded more
sincere, Miosz told him, when you wrote:
Our people! they cry glibly
Our people are as stupid as a block.
I prefer lemonade with ice
On a hot summers day.
Miosz added that he hoped Sonimski, in attacking him, had improved
his situation in Warsaw, for Miosz wished him well. He further reminded
Sonimski of what someone they both knew had once said: If you have
to be in hell, then be the devil pushing the souls into the boiling tar, and
not a poor soul who is sizzling in the tar. So push them into the tar, Antoni. Push them into the tar and may you have for that price a moment
of pure aesthetic delight in your apartment adorned with books. But the
taste must be bitter to you when you remind yourself of your past as a
humanist.162

miesicznik l i t e r a c k i s h o m e c o m i n g
Adam Wayk, whose open appeal had brought Wat home to Poland, was
convinced that Wat returned as a believing Catholic. Wayk had not been
misled: in 1953 Wat and his wife were secretly baptized at a small church
on Piwna Street.163 Wayk had thrown himself into communism, and he
and Wat saw each other only rarely. Twice they found themselves together
abroadonce in 1949 in Weimar for the bicentennial of Goethes birth,

294 s ta l i n i s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i ns

and once in Venice for a PEN Club congress. Away from Poland, they
had occasion to talk. Wat told Wayk of how he had become religious in
prison. Wayk asked no questions, but was struck by Wats mysticism, his
God-searching. In East Germany, Wat concluded his speech, in German,
with an obligatory toast in honor of Stalin, and the next day told Wayk
that West Berlin radio had seized upon that toast and reminded Wat of
his time in Stalinist prison.164
The legacy of Miesicznik Literacki, which had once brought Jakub Berman and Wat together, remained with Wat in Stalinist Poland. Although
he had given signs upon his return of not being with them, the Party
did not entirely reject him, and rather people like Jakub Berman hovered
in the background as his protectors. In 1948, at the last reception Wat
attended at the palace of the Council of Ministers, a stranger approached
him and said: What, dont you recognize me? But I was in the editorial
oces of Miesicznik Literacki so many times. That was an incredibly
memorable period for me! Those were my beginnings. Miesicznik Literacki introduced me to the world of communism. And he looked into my
eyes with such aection that it would have felt stupid to say that I didnt
recognize him.165 From Putraments memoirs Wat learned that Putrament had dedicated a poem to him, or rather to Aleksander Wat, editor
of the legendary Miesicznik Literacki. And Wat supposed that this cast
light on Putraments persecution of him as a renegade, that this was a
case of disappointed love. Yet despite the constant evidence of the power
of Miesicznik Literackis legacy, Wat never invoked that history to his
advantage. In Russia, in Soviet prison, he had acknowledged Miesicznik
Literacki as his greatest sin.166
Perhaps then it was in partial atonement that Wat wrote the poem
Imagerie DEpinal in memory of the show trial deaths of Rudolf Slnsk,
Lszl Rajk, and many others:
The executioner yawned. From his axe blood was still dripping.
Oh dont cry, little one, no need for tears, heres a lollipop.
He took her in his arms. Stroked her. And she stared at
the head.
At the eyes no longer seeing. At the mute lips.
It was the head of her father. Later, embalmed,
washed, it was put on a pole and attractively painted.

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins295

With that pole the little girl marched in a parade on a crowded

sunny road,
under her school banner:
In the name of happiness for alldeath to enemies.167
Wat ceased going to May Day parades, after having attended almost all of
them in the prewar years. Only once did he make an exception, when it
seemed that he might be arrested. Janina Broniewskawhom Wat rather
dislikedblushed with pleasure at seeing him there. She took him by the
hand and pushed him towards the front, until Wat found himself in the
rst row with Broniewska and Wayk. Broniewska held one of his hands,
someone else held the other, and they paraded him in front of Bierut and
Jakub Berman.168
Janina Broniewska was happy to march together with Wat. She was
dogmatic and fearless; but many others avoided Wat in the Stalinist years.
Broniewski was another exception; he came to see Wat and spoke openly
of his late friends Jan Hempel, Stanisaw Ryszard Stande, and Witold
Wandurski, executed by the Soviets.169 Alongside his generous poem about
Stalin, Broniewski wrote a poem about Wandurski:
Wandurski taught me how I should write without compromise,
which poems were worse, and which were better.
Witold, if you appreciate only horseradish with mustard,
dont come to Ziemiaska, because Ill pepper the pastries.170
Broniewskis alcoholism made him an increasingly dicult guest. Once
he stopped by the Wats apartment unannounced and demanded vodka.
They did not refuse him; in the end it grew late, Broniewski had drunk
too much to go home, and Ola Watowa made a bed for him. He refused
to accept pajamas, insisting that he slept naked. Then, naked, he began to
y around the apartment, chasing their fat maid, who ran away from him,
snickering.171 Broniewski, prone to drunken phone calls in the middle of
the night, on another occasion telephoned Wat and said, Dont think,
Aleksander, that Im such a swine as everyone thinks I am.172
Andrzej Stawar was also often at Wats apartment. He had made his
way back to Poland after having spent the war in Hungary. Upon his return
to Warsaw, he unexpectedly encountered Irena Krzywicka in the corridor
of a government building in Praga. They had been very close in the 1920s,

296 s ta l i n i s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i ns

and Stawar was so moved to see her now that his hands began shaking.
Their friendship began anew.173 For a time after the war, during the gentle
revolution, the editors of Odrodzenie and even Kunica could publish his
writing, but that time came to an end. The Party was watching him, and
had not forgotten that Stawar was a former Trotskyite connected to Isaac
Deutscher and Wiktor Alter, that he had published Pod Prd and written
for Nurt.174 The younger writer Jan Kott was among the representatives
of Kunica who took Stawars case to Jakub Berman. Berman had little
sympathy for the former Miesicznik Literacki author. Let him get down
on his knees, he told Kott, and take back all the lies he has spread about
us.175 Stawar refused. He moved about in silence, unobtrusively. His own
writing remained unpublished, although after some time had passed Berman allowed him to publish translations under a pseudonym so that he
could support himself.176 When he was without an apartment, he lived at
times with the Wats, at times with Irena Krzywicka.177
The Wats also received visitors from the younger generation of writers. At the height of the Stalinist era Tadeusz Borowski would come to
talk about his own schizophrenia, his profound disenchantment, his excessive zeal as a communist, his fanaticism as a means of destroying
himself.178 Once in 1950 Tadeusz Borowski was visiting when Stanisaw
Wygodzki telephoned, distraught, and asked Ola Watowa if he could
come by right away. Life had not been easy for the poet who had been so
enthralled by Broniewski and Wat when he was a young man sitting in
prison and writing proletarian verse. In August 1943, while on a transport
to Auschwitz, Wygodzki had poisoned his wife and daughter to spare
them the gas chambers.179 Now a friend of Wygodzki, whom Wygodzki
had persuaded to return to Poland from Israel, had taken his own life in
Wygodzkis home. Wygodzkis new wife sat beside him and pleaded with
her husband not to cry. Suddenly, listening to this, Borowski ew into a
passion and Ola Watowa listened as he shouted: What are you sniveling
to me about, control yourself, if were here now together, its only because
there in Auschwitz we took bread from the dying who no longer had the
strength to raise a piece of bread to their mouths. We didnt cover them
with blankets! We took their blankets, because we knew that they would
no longer need them. It was largely their deaths that rescued us from
ours, it was over their corpses that we left Auschwitz. Your friend killed
himself, he lacked the strength and patience to ght and the desire to bear

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins297

human generosity, to accept kindness, in which he had long ago ceased

to believe. He didnt have the strength to go out into the jungle in which
weve already struck roots and made ourselves comfortable.180 The following year Borowski turned on the gas burners in his apartment and
inhaled until he was dead. For Wat Borowskis suicide was reminiscent of
Mayakovskys, perhaps in their disillusionment, their disgust with themselves, their betrayed love.181
Following Borowskis suicide, and not long after the 1952 Writers
Union meeting at which Putrament attacked him, Wat fell seriously ill.
He was in the hospital in March 1953 when Stalin died. Ola Watowa went
to visit him and found a group of doctors and nurses gathered in front
of Wats room, where the hospital workers had made a little chapel of
mourning for Stalin, with candles, owers, and a large portrait. A young
doctor had donated three meters of black material, which her husband
had brought for her from a trip abroad.182 On the small calendar he kept
on the table by his bed Wat wrote nally.183 It was a dicult time for Ola
Watowa. One day she walked away from a visit to Wats doctor with tears in
her eyes. It was winter, and she was walking quickly home when she was
stopped by Jakub Bermans wife, who noticed that she was upset. Watowa
told Guta Berman about Wats illness, and Guta Berman said at once that
this had to stop, that something had to be done so that Wat could spend
the winter in southern Europe where it would be warmer and better for
his health. Ola Watowa then applied to the Ministry of Health for permission for the trip. When she did, it was clear Jakub Berman was backing
her request. Memories of his days as Wats Party liaison, of Miesicznik
Literacki still held meaning for Jakub Berman.184

j erzy borejs z a s d e p a r t u r e
In August 1948, Jerzy Borejsza went directly from the Wrocaw congress to
a Central Committee plenum where a resolution opposing right-wing and
nationalist deviation was passed and Wadysaw Gomuka was removed
from his leading role in the Party.185 The era of the gentle revolution was
then formally closed. Borejsza embodied the accusation of supporting cosmopolitanism in culture, and he quickly acquiesced, oering self-criticism
of his mechanical, undialectical approach to the arrangement of class
forces in Poland, and even accommodating culture of a petty bourgeois
type. He confessed further to prolonging the period of neutralization

298 s ta l i n i s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i ns

of the petty bourgeoisie without boldly and courageously advancing elements of socialist culture, as well as to justifying liberalism in relation to
snobbish intellectuals becoming snobs and to allowing pseudo-Marxist
voices to reach the press.186 In 1948 Borejsza was removed from the directorship of Czytelnik; he took over the editorship of Odrodzenie, but was
no longer invited to the most prestigious cultural events.187 The Wrocaw
congress was his last great success, despite the fact that it nearly collapsed
in the spirit of the Cold War. By 1949, he was no longer the same person.
At the beginning of that year he was involved in a serious car accident.
Then he fell very ill with stomach cancer. By the time Odrodzenie dissolved
in 1950, the period of Borejszas glory had passed. The accusation of rightwing deviation hung over him. A younger writer on Odrodzenies editorial
sta said of his boss: The new time was not his time. It was the time of
his brother, not but his. That wonderful Polish communist outlived his
day. He was cast aside. Condemned.188
In April 1950, in an angry, desperate letter to Bolesaw Bierut, Borejsza
demanded to know all the accusations and complaints against him and
insisted that he be given the opportunity to defend himself. He requested
permission to travel to Moscow, the capital of every communist, so as to
gather the evidence to refute all the denunciations against him. He had
spoken to Jakub Berman and declared his withdrawal from all creative
work, including his lm project, as work of such importance could be
done only by someone who enjoyed the condence of the Partywhich,
as upset him deeply, he did not have at the moment. Moreover, Berman
had informed him that he was being removed as general secretary of the
Committee for Peace due to some objections by the Soviet and French
delegations and more generally due to certain of his disturbing character
traits. He protested against being deposed from the leading position in
a movement that had been his own brainchild. I was, I am, and I will
remain to the end of my life, Borejsza told Bierut, a disciplined member
of the Party, submitting to each pertinent Party authority. If I commit errors, I have the right to demand criticism.189
Antoni Sonimski saw Borejsza for the rst time after the war in 1951.
When Sonimski asked after Borejsza at Czytelnik, he was told that it
was best to look for him early in the morning, by four or ve a.m. he was
already awake and drinking coee. When Sonimski found him, Borejsza

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins299

told Sonimski that he needed his help in saving Stefan eromski. Borej
sza wanted to continue to publish eromski, but the young hardliners
were opposed, and Borejsza could not bear to see his right to publish the
old master revoked; for him eromski was for Poland what Tolstoy was
for Russia. Sonimski did not entirely understand what was going on, he
had only recently returned to Poland. He agreed, however, to write something supportive of eromski. Then Borejsza told Sonimski that Stawar
had fallen into disgrace. Sonimski was confused: I understood only one
thing, that in general things were dierent from how I had imagined
them, dierent from how my British friends had explained them, and
completely dierent from when I had rst visited the country in 1945,
when the harpoon of return struck my heart and stayed tethered there for
a few years. When Sonimski arrived in 1951, it was still the case that some
activities in the cultural sphere began with Borejsza. What Sonimski
did not understand was that Borejsza himself then, unfortunately, was
already coming to an end.190
Jerzy Borejsza died the following year. Putrament was asked to
speak at his funeral, which took place on a day that was sunny but cold.
Jakub Berman and other leading Party gures were there, as was all of
Czytelnik.191 Despite Tuwims sarcastic comments about Borejszas oppor
tunistic alliance with the antisemite Piasecki, Tuwim wrote a warm poem
to the cultural activist upon his death: Jerzy! There were no red roses! /
Red roses were missing from Warsaw! The poems refrain told of how
the author was unable to nd red roses to place on the grave of his communist friend. In their place he would put a word: battle, faith.192 After
Borejszas death, Jacek Raski said that his brother had never been
a true communist in the Stalinist sense because he was insuciently
capable of hatred.193

skamanders d e p a r t u r e
Following his return to Poland, Julian Tuwim received an unsigned letter
from a Polish Jew, a KPP activist from the interwar years who had spent
long years in Polish prisons, who was a veteran of hunger strikes and beatings from Polish counterintelligence. Now the Polish-Jewish communist
was broken and bitter. He longed for Poland even as he felt Poland reject
him, and posed obsessively the question of why he had been cast out:

30 0 s ta l i n i s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i ns

Why must I emigrate from my country? Why is there no place

for me here? In this country to which I devoted the whole of
my youth. I want to emphasize that I bear no resentment towards the government. Unfortunately, even an appropriate
stance by the Polish government towards the Jewish question
could not change the nature of the problem. The nation has
been poisoned with the venom of hatred and does not want us.
It was not by coincidence that the Germans chose Poland as
the site of the murders and executions of millions of innocent
victims. As is presently revealed, here were the most favorable
conditions, for no other nation would have tolerated it. . . .
And even today, when my decision to leave has reached
maturity, even today at the very thought of what must follow
there swells in me a cruel, terrifying pain. Why?
Why must I leave the country in which I was born and
in which I grew up, whose language is my mother tongue, to
which I dedicated so many of the most beautiful years of my
life and with the thought of which I have lived through the past
several, dicult years of war. Why must I throw away everything and go out into terrible wandering in the unknown.194
Julian Tuwim, perhaps at a loss as to how to answer, gave the letter to
Adolf Berman. And Adolf Berman took it with him in 1950, when he left
Warsaw for Israel. He had maintained hopes of solidarity with his communist comrades until the very end.195 In 1952, now far away in Tel Aviv, Adolf
Berman saw his relations with his Israeli Marxist Zionist party MAPAM
become unstable in the wake of the Stalinist show trials in eastern Europe. His life, like that of his brother, was shaken by the Slnsk trial in
Prague. MAPAM leader Mordechai Oren was put on trial in Prague for
his connection with Slnsk. While most of MAPAMs Central Committee insisted on Orens innocence, Adolf Berman, now a member of the
Israeli Knesset, refused to take an anti-Soviet line against the Czechoslovak
Communist Party.196 Soon afterwards, Adolf Berman broke with MAPAM.
In time he became a member of the Israeli parliament representing the
Communist Party of Israel.
Following his brothers emigration to Tel Aviv, and even after his
brother was the bearer of his own Communist Party card, Jakub Berman

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins3 01

was largely silent. He was then at the height of his career. And potentially
the next in line to be purged. From New York Chaim Finkelstein, a friend
of all the Berman siblings since before the First World War, wrote to Adolf
Berman in response to the news of Jakub Bermans successful political
career: Its understood that Im happy about the news that Jakub has
acquired a higher rank. But Im afraid that my pleasure doesnt originate
from the same source as does yours. For me this was only a conrmation
that Jakub is still managing to survive, because truth be told, what kind
of a life is it and how much value do those oces have, if even a man
of Jakubs merit and position does not have the right, or the courage, to
write to his brother?197
Others did write. In 1951, Adolf Rudnicki sent a letter to Adolf Berman to discuss the translation of his stories into Hebrew. Rudnicki was
not entirely happy in the new Poland. When they worked together on
Kunica, Rudnicki had told Jan Kott that they were digging their own
graves.198 Now he wrote to Adolf Berman, I denitely should have been
born in a dierent time. He sent news of their mutual friends: Wayk
was translating Pushkins Eugene Onegin.199 In a second letter Rudnicki
asked Berman and his wife not to forget the old Warsaw friends they had
left behind at home.200 Tuwim wrote as well, sending greetings not only to
Adolf Berman, but also to all the citizens of Israel who ght for a cause
close to my heart: the cause of peace and liberation from the bonds of
American capitalist gangsterism.201
Wayks translation of Eugene Onegin tormented Tuwim, whose
engagement with Russian culture long predated his engagement with
Soviet-style communism. If his attitude towards the Soviet Union was
born in the war, his relationship to Russian literature was lifelong. He
translated Mayakovsky as well as Pushkinand was extremely proprietary
in this role. When Wayk embarked on the translation of Pushkins Eugene
Onegin, Tuwim was much oended. In the middle of the night he would
awaken his wife to point out to her one of the hundreds of imperfections
in that much-resented translation.202 In spring of 1948 he was touched to
receive an invitation to Moscow from the Soviet Writers Union.203 It was
Tuwims rst trip to the Soviet capital, and Ilya Ehrenburg felt Tuwims
great enthusiasm as they sat in a restaurant and Tuwim spoke of all he
wanted to see there. That evening, however, Tuwim fell ill and was taken
to a hospital.204

30 2 s ta l i n i s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i ns

Now, so many years after Pikador, Stalinism was destroying the ties
of the Skamander poets. After the war, Iwaszkiewicz, once a diplomat
for the interwar Polish government, became an activist for Borejszas
movement of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace, a representative in the
Sejm, the author of a poem dedicated to President Bierut, and a leading
gure in the Polish Writers Union.205 Less passionate and dogmatic than
Tuwim, Iwaszkiewicz did maintain contact with his old friends on the
other side of the red barricade. In 1947 he visited Grydzewski in London.
Afterwards, from Paris in July, Iwaszkiewicz wrote to Grydzewski that he
was glad he had not read Grydzewskis newspaper before his visit, for then
he might not have spoken so sincerely with him in London. Iwaszkiewicz
wrote to his former editor of the unusually injurious and disregarding
relationship to my person to which you many times gave expression on
the pages of Wiadomociwhether it was you or your dogs, its all the
same. Iwaszkiewicz reminded him that nothing negative about Grydzew
ski had ever appeared in Iwaszkiewiczs own publication in Warsaw, that
on the contrary Iwaszkiewiczin the hope that Grydzewski would decide
to return to Polandhad tried to lay the groundwork for his return with
favorable references to the legacy of Wiadomoci Literackie. Now Iwaszkiewicz was saddened that the gesture had not been reciprocated, that
Grydzewski had been so unjust in relation to his old friend, and he
thanked Grydzewski only for having kept from Iwaszkiewicz what he truly
thought of him during their visit in London. Now at least Iwaszkiewicz
would have the good memories of their time together there.206
In response Grydzewski denied having expressed disregard towards
Iwaszkiewicz, and justied what was written in Polskie Wiadomoci: any
kind of public engagement inevitably generated criticism.207 Iwaszkiewicz
responded that he remained glad they had reestablished contact after
having lost touch during the wartime years.208 Their correspondence continued in this spiritlled with tension, ambivalence, and sadness. Both
clung to this remnant of Skamanders legacy. Later that year, in November
1947, Iwaszkiewicz wrote that it was with true pleasure that I receive
letters from you from time to timeIm glad that, despite everything,
you write to me.209 Grydzewski then asked him: Why the despite everything? He insisted that their old friendship had greater meaning than
any present dierences.210 Nevertheless, their relationship remained
unstable. After Grydzewski sent Iwaszkiewicz a criticism of his recent

s ta l i n i s m a m i d st war saws ruins3 03

work, Iwaszkiewicz responded, The last package opened my eyes to the

whole of your relationship to me and my work over many years. ... I feel
very sorry for you, and for myself, because at one time I considered you a
friend.211 Grydzewski replied: he did not understand what criticism of
this or that work has in common with friendship.212
Jan Lecho never returned to Poland. Sonimski sensed that despite
this decision, Lecho had never been able to reconcile himself to life in
exile: He, who wrote, And in springlet me see spring, not Poland
had her constantly before his eyes in the summer, and in the fall, and in
the winter.213 Lecho had severed ties with Stern and Wat as well as with
Tuwim; and his broken relationships with old friends haunted him in New
York.214 In 1950 Lecho wrote of Sonimskis recent work, Its astounding
that someone can reach so high, and later become so entangled in a web
of lies and so poetically lame.215 Most painful to Lecho was his break
with Tuwim. In January 1950 he wrote in his diary, Everything between
myself and Tuwim is broken forever with the exception of poetry. In this
will be his pardon.216 Lecho remained, despite everything, enchanted by
Tuwims poetry. Late in 1951 he wrote in his diary, Im not at all indierent
to the fact that the name Leszek has remained on the pages of Polish
Flowers. My accounts with Tuwim are not at all settled by the fact that
I am not speaking to him and until death do not want to speak to him.
There is between usstill another matter existing on a higher level, a
Romantic poet would say among the stars.217
In 1952 Lecho sent an excited letter to Stanisaw Baliski, who had
ed Warsaw in September 1939 with Mickiewiczs letters: Lecho had
miraculously recovered almost his entire library from Paris, including
his correspondence. I want you one day to see, to read, what not only
Tuwim and Sonimski, but also Broniewski, Przybo, Kruczkowski, once
wrote to me, he told Baliski.218 On November 29, 1953, the thirty-fth
anniversary of Skamanders debut at the caf Pod Pikadorem, Lecho
wrote in his diary:
The rst evening the hall was full, which after all wasnt di
cultit was a small room, just for such performances, and
immediately it was a true triumph, the feeling that something
successful, almost a necessity, had happened. How much separated me from Tuwim and Sonimski was revealed only a few

30 4 s ta l i n i s m a m i d s t wa r s aw s r u i ns

years ago. At that time we could recite poetry, speak of mischief, and tell jokes for whole days and not hit upon those
dierences, which perhaps did not then exist. I think that
I yielded to them and they to methat we tried to adapt to
one another so as only not to ruin for ourselves the occasion to
recite poems and mock everything and everyone. Sonimski
once wrote about our meeting: And from that time on we
spent ten years together with breaks for sleeping and writing
poems. And he was exaggerating very little.219
In 1952 Tuwim sent Aleksander Wat and Ola Watowa a telegram on
the occasion of the twenty-fth anniversary of their wedding on Hoa
Street, at which, Tuwim reminded them, he had been a witness.220 Soon
afterwardsafter they had known each other for so many yearsTuwim
asked Wat to drink Brderschaft with him, to shift from the formal to the
informal mode of address.221 In November 1953 Tuwim came to Iwaszkie
wiczs lecture on Tolstoy at the Writers Union. Afterwards they went for
drinks at the Hotel Bristol, where they reminisced about the Iwaszkie
wiczes post-wedding breakfast held there so many years ago. It was their
last conversation.222 Julian Tuwim died the following month, in December
1953, almost before his friends had noticed his failing health. His nal
words were written on a napkin in the restaurant where he collapsed: For
the sake of economy, please turn out the eternal light: I may need it some
day to shine for me.223 Upon Tuwims death Leon Kruczkowski gave a
speech saying that as much as Tuwim loved, he also hated: ugliness, indolence, the spiritual nihilism of bourgeois society, domestic obscurantism,
and the cosmopolitan oligarchy of capital.224 When in New York Lecho
learned of Tuwims death, he wrote in his diary,225 May the Polish ground
rest lightly over you, Julek, the Polish ground you so poorly, so foolishly,
but still truly loved.

c h a p t e r n ine

Ice Melting

It calls to me, summons with a soft song

from behind a branch, as if from behind bars
Swollen with tears, trembling with anger
My own voice from many years ago.
Antoni Sonimski

s ta l i n d i e d i n m a r c h 1953; in Moscow people were smothered in

the mob desperate to say goodbye. The death of Stalin was the beginning
of the end of Stalinism. As early as July 1953, the Central Committee of
the United Polish Workers Party voiced its concern about cases of a lax
attitude towards the violation of legal regulations in prisons.1 There was
talk as welland pressure from Moscowabout reducing the number of
comrades of Jewish origin in high-prole positions.2 Jakub Bermans own
expulsion was a gradual one. In 1954 the security apparatus was removed
from his supervision; Berman believed it was Khrushchev who decided
that in allowing him to be the scapegoat for the Stalinist era, discord could
be mollied. Bolesaw Bierut agreed to the Kremlins suggestion that, in
the interest of preserving appearances, Jakub Berman be made deputy
premier. It was a deceptive promotion; everyone understood that.3
In February 1956, Jakub Berman traveled to Moscow with Bierut for
the Communist Party of the Soviet Unions Twentieth Congress. On the
evening of 24 February 1956, Khrushchev gave his secret speech concerning the cult of personality and brutal violations of revolutionary
legality that had prevailed under Stalin. An era had now come to an
end. The session was closed, foreign guests were not invited, but Bierut
did receive a paper copy of Khrushchevs address. He had already been
ill, the congress exhausted him, and now he was devastated. Afterwards
305

30 6 i c e m e lt i n g

Berman returned to Warsaw, leaving behind Bierut, who was too weak to
travel. At home in Warsaw, Bermans comrades attacked him in the wake
of Khrushchevs revelations of crimes and excesses. Disconcerted by
the potential reverberations of Khrushchevs speech, Bierut phoned often
from Moscow. Berman tried to reassure him that although the situation
was a dicult one, it was not catastrophic. Then came another phone
call. BierutBermans ally, patron, and friendwas dying. Berman left
Warsaw at once to say goodbye, but upon his appearance in Moscow, the
doctor refused to allow him into the patients room. When he arrived for
the ceremony at the House of Soviets where Bieruts con was displayed,
Jakub Berman was given a seat in a distant row, and he understood that
this was the end for him.4

vomiting s e awat e r
Even before Khrushchev spoke, Adam Wayk had pulled the curtain on his
own performance. Jerzy Borejsza was already dead. As was Wayks rival
translator of Pushkin, Julian Tuwim, as were Witold Wandurski, Stanis
aw Ryszard Stande, and Bruno Jasieski. When Apollinaires translator
turned terroretician of socialist realism began the revolt against his own
reign, he did so with an impassioned bitterness. Poemat dla dorosych
(A Poem for Adults), which Wayk published in Nowa Kultura in August
1955, was a eulogy for a lost Poland. Its motif was the unrecognizability
of Warsaw; its tone was one of dislocation; its refrain: give me a piece of
old stone / let me nd myself again in Warsaw. The long poem opened
with the narrators inadvertently jumping on the wrong bus and nding
himself on an unfamiliar street:
I returned home
like one who had gone out for medicine
and returned after twenty years.
My wife asked, where have you been.
My children asked, where have you been.
I was drenched in sweat, silent like a mouse.
The lost narrator grew increasingly harsh. He spoke of vultures of abstrac
tion who devour our brains, of language reduced to thirty incantations,
of a lamp of imagination extinguished. The narrative topos in A Poem

ice melting 3 0 7

for Adults was drawn from an old fable: the emperor was wearing no
clothes. Wayk said this not triumphantly, but with disgust:
Fourier, the dreamer, charmingly foretold
that the sea would ow with lemonade.
And does it not?
They drink seawater,
and cry out
lemonade!
They return home furtively
to vomit.
to vomit.
Wayks rhythm was relentless. Dislocation transposed itself into lies,
lies into persecution, persecution into tragedy. The narrator began to tell
stories of the victims of these illusions, of the girl expelled from art school
for want of socialist morality: She poisoned herself a rst timeand was
saved. / She poisoned herself a second timeand was buried.5
Wayks was a despondent appeal. His arrogant tone only thinly concealed self-disgust. A Poem for Adults was in some way a continuation
of the communist genre of self-criticismin this case one articulated as if
collectively, on behalf of the Party. For in the end Wayk did not here break
with the Party; and the entire poem would have been a dierent one were
it not for the nal stanza demanding a redress of grievances and concluding with the lines: we appeal every day, / we appeal through the Party.
Wayk armed his loyalty to Lenins original revolution in a verse written
several months later, in late 1955, and concluding with the stanza:
From medieval eyes,
from medieval ears,
from medieval noses,
from medieval minds,
from medieval methods
the Party will free the current of revolution
and become as Lenin saw it.6
It was the editor in chief of Nowa Kultura who made the decision to
publish A Poem for Adults. He paid for that with the loss of his position,

30 8 i c e m e lt i n g

as he knew he wouldafter all, as he remarked to a friend, I was the

sous-chef in this kitchen.7 It was a scandal for the Party leadership, and
a scandal for Jakub Berman in particular, this betrayal by Wayk, the
hitherto loyal cultural ideologue. Berman was indignant.8 The result was
ferment, and the writers were divided. Some attacked Wayk for vulgar naturalism, the dark alter ego of realism. Leon Kruczkowski accused Wayk of irresponsibility, duplicity, a betrayal of his vocation. In
Kruczkowskis reading, A Poem for Adults overowed with contempt
for man, it presented half-truths, which were worse than lies.9 Wat felt
otherwise. That summer Wat was sitting on the steps of the palace in
Nieborw with a Party ocial hovering nearby, when someone brought
him the issue of Nowa Kultura with Wayks A Poem for Adults. Wat
recited the poem with a certain delicate pleasure. When he had nished,
a colleague remarked that it was a crime to be wasting such theatrical
talent.10 In September Jakub Berman intervened, calling a meeting with
various writers; in the Partys nocturnal traditionand predilection for
long meetingsit lasted from six in the evening until two in the morning. Someone inquired why the recent rehabilitations of KPP leaders
purged by Stalin had occurred in silence, as if in secret. Another writer
spoke about the crimes of Borejszas brother Raski; many of the writers defended Wayk and his ferment-inducing poem. Jakub Bermans
violently theatrical concluding speech failed to provoke the reaction he
desired.11
Wayk had been made editor in chief of the literary magazine Twrczo
(Creativity) in 1950. At the end of 1954, he was replaced by Iwaszkiewicz,
who made use of Stawars recent rehabilitation to solicit his contributions for Twrczo. Stawars good graces in the Party remained, though,
somewhat precarious; Iwaszkiewicz still needed Jakub Bermans permission, and so sent someone from his editorial board to persuade him. The
editorial board member found Berman sitting hunched up behind his
desk under Stalins portrait in a deteriorated state, his former dynamism
absent. In the end Berman gave his permission, on the condition that
Stawar include a self-criticism in his rst article. Yet Stawar did nothing
of the sort, and Iwaszkiewicz published him regardlesswith impunity.12
The Party continued to consider Iwaszkiewicz among the unproblematic
ones.13
So even before the Twentieth Party Congress did the ideological atmo-

ice melting 3 0 9

sphere begin to depart from what it had been only a few years earlier. Jakub
Bermans statement on cultural policy in January 1956 announced that a
climate of freedom was a necessary precondition for literary development,
and that the Party wished to avoid interfering in the minutiae of literary
creation, in favor of limiting itself to a more general ideological inuence.14
In April 1956now safely after Khrushchev had spoken rstAntoni
Sonimski published For the Restoration of Citizens Rights, calling for
the democratization of public life. His criticism of the hitherto prevailing
climate was severe: The persecution of critical thought at the beginning
of the Renaissance or later, in the 17th and 18th centuries, appears virtually
idyllic when compared to the times we have recently lived through. Yet
Marxism itself he exculpated. It was not Marxism, but rather the departure
from Marxism that bore responsibility for the oppression of the Stalinist
years. Nor was the Revolution itself to blame, for in the 1920s the Soviet
Union had cultivated innovations in the cultural realm. Sonimski blamed
rather the doctrine of socialist realism for destroying two decades of art
and literature. His tone remained a mediated one, he did not return to the
sharpness of his interwar feuilletons, yet there were shadows here of the
sarcasm that had once won his weekly column in Wiadomoci Literackie
so many readers: The 20th Congress, which contributed so signicantly
to cleansing the poisoned atmosphere, has unfortunately brought us little
in the eld of literature. The salvation of literature was seen there to lie in
decentralization and in sending writers out into the eld. I would gladly
send a few of our writers to the devil, but I do not think they would return
from their travels through hell bearing Dantes tercets.15
After A Poem for Adults appeared, Wayk walked around repeating Ive been in an insane asylum.16 Existentialism with its premise
that existence precedes essence and its insistence on free choiceand
therefore a potentially innite, and devastating, responsibilitymade its
way into Marxist literary circles.17 At Jean-Paul Sartres invitation, Jan Kott
put together an anthology of texts from the so-called Polish Thaw for an
issue of Les Temps Modernes, opening with Wayks A Poem for Adults.
As 1956 came to an end, Kott and Wayk were among those who came
together with the idea of beginning a new literary monthly called Europa.
The Party was unhappy about this. When it refused to consent to Europas
existence, Kott and Wayk returned their Party cards.18 Upon learning
of this, Julian Przybo condemned his colleagues who had betrayed

31 0 i c e m e lt i n g

figure 14 Adam Wayk. Caricature by Julian ebrowski;

courtesy of Muzeum Literatury imienia Adama Mickiewicza.

the Party and communism by leaving the Party. Broniewski, too, was
harshalthough he himself had always remained a fellow traveler and
did not even have a Party card to (not) return.19 The following year Przybo
turned in his own Party card.20

the one ca s t o u t
When Jakub Berman returned to Poland after Bieruts funeral, he asked
that he be allowed to submit his resignation from the Politburo.21 His
gesture of resignation was seemingly generous: he oered himself as the
one to absorb the blame for the Stalinist era so that the Party could remain
strong. Yet his own self-criticism was a qualied one, and there were limits
to the recriminations he was willing to accept. He reminded his comrades
that Stalin had aspired to his liquidation, that it was only Bieruts loyalty
that had protected him. Moreover, even though he was in a particular situation, he had done all he could to assure that Poland was spared the show

ice melting 3 11

trials that had occurred in other Peoples Democraciesand in this he

had succeeded. There had been no such trials of Wadysaw Gomuka and
Marian Spychalski; there had been no death sentences in the Tatar trial.
The thousands of others tortured and executed he only alluded tohe was
guilty above all, he said, of having placed too much trust in his comrades
working in security, of not having suspected the methods employed in
Polish interrogation chambers. Yet it had never been he who orchestrated
the dirty tricks that had been played there, Berman insisted. He asked
that his resignation be accepted unanimously, as he did not want to be the
cause of divisiveness among the Party leadership. I would like, Berman
added in conclusion, to devote the rest of my life to the cause of the Party,
regardless of where and in which position I am working.22
It was, perhaps, the issue of cadres that nally coalesced the consensus
against Jakub Berman. It was he who had been responsible for security,
he who had poorly chosen those who worked under him. It was he who
had allowed the violent and undoubtedly sadistic Raski to direct the
security apparatus; and he who had allowed Raskis brother Borejsza
to become a cultural dictator. Allusions arose to Jakub Bermans past, his
origins, his lling of the security apparatus with communists of Jewish
descent. One of his comrades had rst raised the issue the day before, in
Bermans absence: All of the leading positions Berman lled with Jewish
comrades, and not only with old, good comrades. ... I gazed at the gure
of Comrade Berman, a Jewish intellectual from a bourgeois family who
did not grow up in revolutionary conditions.23 In the end the Central
Committee accepted Jakub Bermans resignation.24 Stefan Jdrychowski
spoke to Berman during a break in the plenum, and Berman told him that
he was not worried about himself, he was worried only about the fate of
socialism. Jdrychowski assured him that his departure would not mean
the end of socialism.25 Now cast out, Jakub Berman was also ostracized.26
The exception was Janina Broniewska. She did not abandon her wartime
comrade.27
Jakub Berman was made an editor at a publishing house. It was
not an atypical solution. In March 1954 Raski was removed from his
position in the security services, and then appointed director of the State
Publishing Institute. Yet in Raskis case, his editorial career was shortlived, and later that same year he was arrested. His self-criticism under
interrogation was, like Jakub Bermans before the Central Committee, a

31 2 i c e m e lt i n g

qualied one. He admitted that he had beaten people, but insisted that he
had always been faithful to the Party. Raski was found guilty and sent
to prison.28 Such was not the case for Jakub Berman, who was removed
from the government but never arrested. Yet this was not the end, and for
Jakub Berman the worst was still to come. In June 1956 the government
violently suppressed workers demonstrations in Pozna. In October,
Wadysaw Gomuka, who had been silently released from house arrest
in December 1954, became general secretary of the Party. On 18 May 1957
the Central Committee of the PZPR, now led by Gomuka, decided to
revoke Jakub Bermans Party card. This he could not bear. He had never
neededor perhaps even wantedto be in the spotlight, but he did need
to belong to the Party. In an appeal to the PZPR he acknowledged that
he understood the need for the sanctions against him, but he could not
accept the loss of his Party card. I cannot reconcile myself to the thought
of exclusion from the Party, he wrote, to which I have been joined for
34 years. I did commit errors, but from the time I became a communist
I have lived only with the desire of serving our cause.29

the vindic at i o n o f s p e c t e r s
The expulsion of people such as Jakub Berman was accompanied by rehabilitations of the Terrors victims. The slow, bureaucratic process of
returning disgraced and executed comrades to favor began after Stalins
death. After Gomuka assumed Party leadership, the PZPR even made
informal overtures to Isaac Deutscher in London, inviting him to return
to Poland after nearly two decades. Deutscher agreedon the condition
that he be allowed to deliver a series of lectures, to be collected as a book,
on Polish communism. The matter was then dropped.30 Many of those
in prison, in particular communists, were released. In the Soviet Union
posthumous rehabilitation commenced even before Khrushchevs February 1956 speech. It was only then that Adolf Warskis grandson, Zoa
Warskas son Wadysaw Krajewski, understood that his father, his mother,
his grandfather, and his onetime stepfather, Stande, had not been sent to
camps without the right of correspondence. They had been executed. For
nearly two decades after their executions, he had waited for someone to
return.31 He was not the only one who had waited. In March 1956 Standes
daughter from his rst marriage, Olga, wrote to the Partys Department of
History asking if, in the wake of her fathers rehabilitation, they had any

ice melting 3 1 3

information about his fate. She hoped perhaps somewhere he remained

alive. From what I know, she wrote, the news of his death isquite
justiedbut only a conjecture.32 She received the following reply: Esteemed Comrade! The Department of History of the Central Committee of
the PZPR ... communicates with deep regret that we have been ocially
informed of the death of Comrade Stanisaw Ryszard Stande. Your father
was rehabilitated in full posthumously.33
Jan Hempel, Witold Wandurski, Stanisaw Ryszard Stande, and Bruno
Jasieski were all restored to favor. In December 1955, a Soviet military
prosecutor produced a statement regarding Jasieskis execution, having
investigated the case at the request of Anna Berzi, who was then still herself in the camp where she had been sent following Jasieskis arrest. The
document revisited the original NKVD protocols of Jasieskis arrest on
31 July 1937 and his subsequent interrogations, noting that Jasieski was
sentenced on 17 September 1938 under article 58 for having been brought
by T. Dbal into the conspiratorial terrorist and diversionary Polish Military Organization. His execution by shooting took place the same day. The
report cited Jasieskis retraction of his confession, in which he insisted
he had never been connected with the Polish Military Organization and
was guilty only of not having seen in Dbal a Polish spy. He asked to be
shot not as a Polish spy but as someone not deserving the condence of
the Soviet government. In the course of the reinvestigation, no objective
evidence was found to conrm Jasieskis guilt. Further, a 1955 security
apparatus investigation regarding the cases of Adolf Warski and other Polish emigrants in the Soviet Union found that the NKVD had conducted
the original investigations in cardinal violation of the principles of socialist legality; that those arrested had been subjected to beatings, sleep
deprivation, and other such methods; and that given these circumstances
the results of Jasieskis interrogation could not be regarded as evidence
of his guilt and the 17 September 1938 verdict should be annulled.34 In
Moscow on 14 February 1956 a death certicate was belatedly issued for
Jasieski, incorrectly dating his death 20 October 1941; the line after cause
of death remained blank.35
Bruno Jasieskis rst wife Klara Arem had been shot on 19 January
1938. Following the arrest of his parents, Jasieskis eight-year-old son
Andrei was sent to a childrens home. In time he ran away, changed his
name, and found work as a stoker on the Trans-Siberian railway, eventually

31 4 i c e m e lt i n g

becoming an engineer.36 In 1957, after the Twentieth Party Congress and

his fathers rehabilitation, Andrei Iasenskii joined the Communist Party.
Some time later he wrote to Khrushchev, enclosing the last stanzas written by his father. Having been convicted by false accusations, Iasenskii
wrote, [Bruno Jasieski] wrote these verses full of the clear faith of a
communist in the vitality and force of the idea of Marxism-Leninism,
full of love towards the Soviet Union, his second homeland. This poem
by my father is a worthy conclusion to his path as a writer-communist. I
believe further that the voice of those who perished innocently, but who
preserved to the end a devout faith in the Party, in communism, can today
have a positive meaning.37
In late 1955, the Soviet Writers Union invited Anatol Stern to Moscow in
the role of Mayakovskys friend and translator.38 There Stern met Maya
kovskys muse, the famous Lilia Brik, who years earlier had become a
close friend of Anna Berzi. Stern had arrived at a fortuitous moment:
only several days before Berzi had returned to Moscow after a seventeenyear stay in a gulag in Komi, a southeastern region of European Russia.
It was through Lilia Brik, in December 1955, that Stern met Anna Berzi.
She remained passionately devoted to her late husband, to the restoration
of his memory and his work. She showed Stern the prosecutors letter
regarding Jasieskis rehabilitation; Stern copied it by hand.39 When he
returned to Poland, he wrote a poem to his former futurist friend, now
no longer living for almost two decades: And so perhaps you curse none
of your travels, / nor the maddest of your rebellious dreams.40

the fortu n e s o f f r i e n d s
In 1938 Marysia Zarbiska had written to Wadysaw Broniewski that
vodka was the only rival she feared for his love.41 She did not lose him then,
yet her fears were prescient. Only after the war was Broniewski truly lost to
alcohol. In the fall of 1954, Broniewskis daughter Ankaherself already a
lmmaker and the mother of a young daughter named Ewadied tragically. Anka had been her fathers greatest, most enduring love, and her
death broke Broniewski in a way that prison had not. Seeing Broniewski
in 1957, one of his young admirers from the interwar years found him
no longer the same person. The Broniewski he now saw was tired and
ill, his voice broke and his hands trembled as he read his poems, there

ice melting 3 1 5

were deep wrinkles on his sunburnt face, his nose was more conspicuous. Only the hat with the wide, wrinkled brim was reminiscent of prewar
times.42
In March 1956 the literary scholar Stefan kiewski wrote to Broniew
ski, enclosing something Broniewski had asked him for: the unpublished
material given to delegates at the Twentieth Party Congress in Moscow
concerning the cult of personality. kiewski asked that Broniewski
read it. He wrote then, with respect to Broniewskis plans to republish A
Word about Stalin: Of course I have no reservations about your decision to publish your poem about Stalin. It is in essence one of your most
beautiful verses. But given the present moment do you yourself want to
publish it? Its a very dicult and complicated decision. Act in such a way
as to be persuaded that youre lying neither to yourself nor to others.43
In the end, Broniewski decided to withdraw his poem from the coming
edition of his collected works. To an audience in Wrocaw, Broniewski
explained that he had written that poem honestly, with the knowledge of
Stalins merits, and that he had now withdrawn it because he had not
supposed that alongside such a contribution of labor, blood, and energy,
so many people could have incurred an undeserved death, and this is
irrevocable.44
The twentieth anniversary of the 1936 Congress of Cultural Workers
in Lww came and went. Leon Kruczkowski, as president of the Writers
Union, collected material for the commemoration.45 Broniewski remembered 1936 as a magical year, the time of Popular Front cooperation, and
recalled the Congress as a magical moment, when Poles, Ukrainians, and
Jews came together and crowds of workers ruled the streets.46 Broniewskis
heart remained with the Marxism that had preceded that congress, above
all the Marxism of the 1920s. When a book of his poetry appeared in Russian translation, he wrote in the introduction that Mayakovskys poetry
had made of him a socialist poet. Mayakovskys verse Pot-Rabochii
(The Poet-Worker) had become Broniewskis own life program and poetic
program, it had completed his hitherto supercial education in Marxism.47 After the war he spoke time and time again of Hempel, Stande,
Wandurski, and Jasieski, he could not reconcile himself to their lives
having been wasted.48 He wrote about them warmly, about the days in the
1920s when they had all just met and were absorbed in creating workers
theater. In November 1959, when Broniewski received a telephone call

31 6 i c e m elt i n g

from a representative of the Institute of Party History interested in gathering material about Hempel, Broniewski recalled the brief time in 1924
when they had worked together on Nowa Kultura. Hempel had asked him
then why he had not joined the KPP, and Broniewski had answered, because Im afraid. Hempel was surprised: after all Broniewski had been a
soldier, he had faced death. Why now, when he was already ideologically
attached to the Party, would he suddenly become afraid? And Broniewski
had replied: Im afraid of you.49
Broniewski avoided black coee because it was not good for his heart,
but wrote only with a cigarette, most often by night.50 He was not the only
one. Wasilewska, too, remained an incurable chain-smoker. When, following an operation in the late 1950s, her doctors forbade her to smoke, she
fell into a helpless state, unable to sleep, to write, to eat.51 Moreover, life far
away from Warsaw was dicult for her. She was grieved by Tuwims death,
and pored over every article about him that reached her from Poland. One
of these was an essay in Nowa Kultura by Adolf Rudnicki, who wrote of
the miserable weather on the day of the funeral, the snow that soaked his
beret, and the people in Zakopane who approached the con only out of
curiosity. Most painful to Wasilewska was Rudnickis description of how
Zakopane received the death of the poet expressionlessly. He moreover
confessed that he himself had not liked Tuwims language, that he had
found in Tuwims poetry a constant striking of the pedal, noisiness, lack
of nuance, coarseness of feeling. It was only three weeks after Tuwims
death that Rudnicki reread Tuwims poetry, and nally understood it,
nally understood whom Poland had lostand now belatedly brought a
branch of lilacs to Tuwims still-fresh grave.52
Wasilewska was enraged, and sent a letter to Nowa Kultura saying she
did not believe Rudnicki:
Perhaps it was the case that Rudnicki was not moved. ... I
didnt see Zakopane at the time of Tuwims death. But I did
see the hall lled with people at the Writers Union in Moscow
thousands of kilometers from Zakopane, people far away,
people of a dierent nationality shed real tears. The majority
knew Tuwim only from (unfortunately) bad translations, and
they found in themselves authentic emotion and authentic
tears, and felt in their hearts authentic mourning because

ice melting 3 1 7

thousands of kilometers away an authentic poet died. And in

Zakopane, in Poland, Poles found onlyas Rudnicki carefully
emphasizescuriosity? I very much fear that the author has
transposed his own feelings onto the whole. I dont believe it,
its not true that people could stand and stare curiously in the
face of a corpse in which song and blaze congealed. People
speaking the language out of which the deceased conjured up
colors and sounds like few before him. People living in the
country that the one who died loved with a passionate, violent,
choking love. And I very much doubt whether not everyone
knew to whom they were paying respects. ... Tuwim was too
unusual, he too much contrasted with the general background,
he too much distinguished himself to be able to pass by and
live among people unnoticed, to not draw the attention of even
the most indierent.
For Rudnicki himself Wasilewska expressed only pity that he did not experience what was given to his generationto be dazzled by the splendor
of Tuwims poetry. Her wrath was directed rather against Nowa Kultura.
What Rudnicki had written was entirely permissible for a private journal
entry, for memoirs, or even for publicationnot in a year, but perhaps in
ten years, and certainly in twenty. But not today, Wasilewska wrote. In
the house where the deceased lies a certain tact obliges even those who
are indierent. An atheist entering a church takes o his hat so as not
to oend the feelings of others. In this case the beret was taken o only
upon leaving the church.53
Neither did Wasilewskas attachment to Janina Broniewska diminish as the years passed. In late summer of 1954 Wasilewska wrote to
Broniewska of how acutely she felt the passing of time and the coming
of old age. Four years earlier, in response to her friends reections about
aging, Wasilewska had insisted that what she had to do in life remained
still before her.54 Now her energy had faded. She fell into a depression.
She had been feeling more or less as were you on a certain day when
I laid you on the sofa and fed you teawhich is to say, without a single
drop of strength. As to the rest, do you ever have attacks of dark melancholy? But so dark, like coee in the stomach of a black man on a dark
night? If so, then multiply that ten times and youll more or less be able

31 8 i c e m elt i n g

to imagine how it looked. ... In a word, at the beginning of the summer

I had something that in medicine is called a nervous breakdown, towards
which for my entire life I have felt deep disgust and disbeliefand yet
it exists.55 Soon afterwards Wasilewska turned fty. Jakub Berman and
Bolesaw Bierut sent warm birthday wishes; Berman wished her hoards
of fat grandchildren and many good books to come. 56 Wasilewska did
continue to write, including a long introduction that year to the Russian translation of Janina Broniewskas war correspondents notebook.57
The two women visited each other, and worried about each other in each
others absence. After one of Broniewskas trips to Kiev, Wasilewska wrote
to her friend complaining that her visit was terribly short and pleading
with her, take care of your precious health, for without me, who will drag
you to the doctor.58
Despite painful moments, Wasilewska continued to write with all the
passionate faith in the Revolution she had always had; she wrote ecstatically of the peasants who now ate in their own restaurants, of pig farms
where not a single worker had anything less than a secondary school edu
cation. Because Ive seen, she wrote to Broniewska in 1955, Ive seen
with my own eyes how hundreds and thousands of people are living in
the epoch of communism and not on the moon, but a mere thousand
kilometers from Kiev. ... What to do with this, because even so no one
will believe you and will say that youre an old, blinded, crazy woman.59
She discovered two other passions during her postwar life in Kiev. The
rsta rediscoverywas her childhood love of shing.60 The second
was her adoration for her young grandson, Piotr, whom Ewa Wasilewska
often left under her care. When he was away with his mother in Moscow,
Wasilewskas letters to Broniewska reveal her despair at his absence.61

skamande r l o s e s a p o e t
The Skamander poets had been the darlings of Polish readers in their
youth; it seemed to their colleagues that this need to shine never left
them. Sonimski was no exception.62 Hethe most irreverent of all of
themcould not fade into the backdrop of postwar literary life, just as
he had not been able to reconcile himself to life in exile. In 1956, in the
atmosphere of emergent freedom brought by the Thaw, he was elected
president of the Polish Writers Union. In memoirs published a year later,
he wrote of the Thaw as justifying his decision to return to Poland: I dont

ice melting 3 1 9

know what is still to come, what fate will bring us, but I do know that the
decision to return home was the right one. It was worth agreeing to small
compromises, experiencing humiliations and disappointments so as to
live and ght in Warsaw.63
Sonimski was now harsh on those of his literary colleagues whom
he considered servile, whose work in previous years he compared to that
of ring squads. Kruczkowski was resentful, and in December 1956 sent
Sonimski a letter accusing him of hypocrisy, and reminding Sonimski
that he had declined to make such strong statements during the years
when doing so would have been an authentic act of courage. Perhaps,
Kruczkowski suggested, those who would like to persuade their colleagues that they had been the righteous of Sodom might exercise a bit
more modesty.64 As recently as 1954 Sonimski had written a poem bemoaning the historical woe of the peasantry and exalting Bierut and the
coming of the new, better world. Like others, he, too, had written in the
Stalinist years of the victorious rhythm of history, of the May Day parades and the red bannersalongside the puddles of blood and the ashes
that burned bare feet.65 A fellow writer marveled: How is it possible to
unite in oneself nobility and intelligence with courtliness and compromise, tossing the compromise up into the air like a delicate cane with a
handle made of elephant tusk.66
Sonimskis reign as Writers Union president was short. Within three
years after the Thaw had begun, the Party had grown disconcerted by the
ferment it had generated. Once again the climate began to change.67
After the Ninth Congress of the Polish Writers Union held in Wrocaw
in December 1958, the Party decided to quell the revisionist tendencies
within the union. Those in the Europa group were to be treated as political opponents, all eorts were to be made to circumscribe their inuence
on loyal writers.68 In 1959, Sonimski was replaced as president by the
more placid Iwaszkiewicz, whom the Party saw as less inclined to direct the
Writers Union against the Party leadership.69 In 1956, when in Italy Wat
saw Mieczysaw Grydzewski for the rst time after the war, Grydzewski lamented Iwaszkiewiczs new incarnation, believing him a swine for having
suddenly become a regime poet when he had never even been a communist before the war. In Grydzewskis mind, it was something else for someone like Broniewski who had been a prewar communist, but for Iwaszkiewicz it was inexcusable. Wat thought otherwise, and told Grydzewski

320 i c e m e lt i n g

so: I convinced him that he was committing a fundamental error. Iwaszkiewicz was always a court writer, he had always been in well with the
government, with those on top, with the elite, he was an elitist. And it
can be understood that when the government changed, he continued to
be in with the elite. But Broniewski, the bard of the proletariat, the revolutionary, has absolutely no right to be following such a regime, seeing
how the proletariat is so horribly exploited.70 It was nonetheless painful
for Grydzewski, who wrote to Iwaszkiewicz in March 1956, What does it
mean, that we wont be able to understand each other? You wont make
me believe, will you, that youve changed, because I havent at all.71 Some
six weeks later Grydzewski wrote to Iwaszkiewicz again, asking: What
does it mean, that Kazio [Wierzyski] and Leszek [Lecho] wouldnt want
to see you? Thats certainly an unjust supposition. After all it wasnt I who
broke with Julek and Antoni, but they with me.72 Such was the case. Yet
in 1957, when Wierzyski saw Sonimski in Tokyo, Sonimski told him in
parting, All the same, tell Grydz that I send my greetings.73
It was painful for all of them. Upon hearing in 1954 that Sonimski
had had a heart attack, Lecho wrote in his diary, What else did he expect, going to Warsaw two years ago when it was already clear what was
going on there? I know one thingif he had stayed here, I would have
given him regularly something from my pension. And after a couple of
years I would have forgiven him that Bolshevik UNESCO, which after
all was in the style of his previous life.74 For Lecho those bombastic
and insincere verses Sonimski had written in the Stalinist years were
Sonimskis falsetto voice, the falsetto they had found so oensive on
many occasions sitting around the table at Ziemiaska, when Sonimski
would announce to them some hundred-year-old novelty.75 It was only in
late 1954 that Lecho nished his poem to his other great onetime friend,
the poem he had begun upon Tuwims death:
I see your gray hair and your sharp face,
And your hand, like an oar, contrasts with consciousness
So here you dream by night, ill-fated Cagliostro,
By the empty streets of a Warsaw not your own.
Your senses kidnapped by the gale eternal
You want to inhale from new streets the time of dead scents
Amidst the lights of new lanterns shining down on them

ice melting 32 1

With a crazed look you raise up the shadow of bygone

buildings.
And you cry, because you hear the rain falling from an
old gutter
And yourself not yet believing that no one forbids you
You, innocent oender, reach out your hand in the dusk
To the helping hand extended, once again, from afar.76
It was just after one-thirty in the afternoon on Friday, 8 June 1956,
when Jan Lecho, the Skamander poet, threw himself from a twelfth-oor
window of the Hudson Hotel onto the Manhattan sidewalk. He died at
once. A week later from New York, Wierzyski wrote to Grydzewski in
London, describing how Lecho had been in a depression for the past few
months; he had applied for American citizenship, but the process was not
going smoothly: Lechos le included testimonies regarding his homosexuality.77 The suicide softened Iwaszkiewicz, who wrote to Grydzewski
as soon as he heard: Yesterday evening the news reached me of Leszeks
tragic death. ... At such moments one forgets about what divided usand
remembers what once connected us, and there was much that connected
us. Once, before the war, Iwaszkiewicz had written Grydzewski a letter
about Lecho. Grydzewski had kept the letter in his archive, and now
Iwaszkiewicz was grateful that the archive had burned. Whatever Iwaszkiewicz had said in that letter, he was thankful it was no more.78 He and
Grydziewski continued to correspond. Two and a half years later, in November 1958, Iwaszkiewicz wrote to Grydzewski on the fortieth anniversary of their rst appearance at Pikador. He recalled it with tears.79

nostalgia
In Tel Aviv in 1953, Adolf Berman was pained by the news of Tuwims
death. In February 1954, Rudnicki wrote to Adolf Berman, mentioning
his article about Tuwim; he was certain it would reach Berman in Israel.
Rudnicki added news of others Adolf Berman had known: You left behind
at home a few people who remember you warmly, among themWat has
unfortunately been seriously ill for a time now; a second child, a son, was
born to Kott ... Wayk with the ugly little face has written a screenplay
... In the coming days we will be celebrating the 60th birthday of our
emissary for peaceIwaszkiewicz; Sonimski is not feeling well due to his

322 i c e m e lt i n g

heart, hes resting now in Ciednocinek; lately the hearts of many people
are causing trouble.80
In June 1956, Adolf Berman resumed a correspondence with his old
friend Micha Mirski, a KPP activist on the Jewish street during the
interwar years, and in the postwar years one of those who had attacked
Adolf Berman most harshly for nationalist deviation.81 The occasion was
the twentieth anniversary of the Lww congress, when Adolf Berman and
Mirski had been among a group of Wasilewskas Jewish interlocutors who
had created a subsidiary Front of Progressive Jewish Culture. Now Adolf
Bermans tone was nostalgic; he addressed Mirski in the second person
plural form used among comrades and reminisced about their visits with
Wasilewska and Wiktor Alter in the years before the war: Dear Comrade
Mirski! Twenty years ago, in 1936, we met for the rst time. As you remember, this was during the time when together we created the Progressive Cultural Front. In my consciousness it is as if it had happened in a
former life, before the bloody deluge. Yet it happened and it had its own
meaning. Do you remember our visits together to Wanda Wasilewska, to
Wiktor Alter. . . .82

leave-takin g
In the 1950s Wat told Stawar, somewhat in jest, Listen, I really owe all
this to you. Youre to blame; you got me into communism. With his characteristic grimace of contempt, Stawar answered that Wat would have
ended up there anyway.83 On New Years Eve of 1954 Stawar presented Wat
with a complete collection of the short-lived Miesicznik Literacki dedicated
To Olek, In memory of the shared sins of our youth. On the rst page
of the rst issue Wat scribbled the corpus delicti of my degradation ...
in communism, by communism.84 He did not recover from his illness.
With the help of his old friends who were now in positions of power,
people such as Iwaszkiewicz and Jakub Berman, Wat began to spend
more time abroad, in warmer west European climates. In 1955 Iwaszkiewicz arranged to send him to France as a special correspondent for
Twrczo and Nowa Kultura.85 For the next few years he and Ola Watowa
moved between France, Italy, and Warsaw; as Wat became disengaged
from Polish literary politics, he began to write again after a hiatus of
decades, preoccupiedlike Hannah Arendt, Theodor Adorno, and Max
Horkheimer, like so many intellectuals of their generationwith Nazism

ice melting 323

and Stalinism, with the question of where history had gone so wrong.
He was now convinced that the past was always more powerful than the
future. He reected on the origins of the German impulse towards unity,
and began work on a novel about totalitarianism.86 At variance with a
communist policy that insistently divided Germany into two entities and
carefully distinguished between good and bad Germans, Wats premise
was the guilt of the whole German nation.87
Wat thought as well of how Hitler had beneted from Stalins example,
from the idea that in the interest of the happiness of all, the enemies must
die. Yet in the case of Stalinism, whoever was included in the rst part
of the formula would eventually nd himself in the second; the enemy
came from the inside. Wat belonged to those who believed in Stalins
uniqueness, in Stalinism as a phenomenon of modernity unprecedented
in history. None of the other conquerors in history had ever plowed as
thoroughly, as deeply as did Stalin the lives, psychology, ways of thought of
hundreds of millions of people (even his enemies), no one had ever seized
their entire existence in all its forms. Wat reected on Stalins biography, on his studies at an Orthodox seminary, where Stalin had found his
atheisman aggressive atheism that could only be a variation of fanatical
religiosity, that could only be hatred towards God, the father. The Orthodox
seminary was set amidst the inuence of Islam, and Wat hypothesized an
Islamic inuence on Stalinism, the Islamic fatalism that could lie beneath
Stalins calmness towards the chopping o of heads.88
That Stalin forbade the reading of Dostoevsky was, Wat speculated,
an attempt to eace the traces that reading the Grand Inquisitor in his
youth must have left on him. Wat returned more than once to the great
Russian writer, to Dostoevskys idea that if there was no God, then all
was permissible, and the only dignied gesture was suicide. Throughout
these writings, Wat struggled with the existence of God, he vacillated
between Christianity and existentialism. If there was no God, then every life was pointless. If there was, then none was. If there was no God,
then everything was permissiblebut each person must discover that
for himself. It was all a matter of desire, of choice; Wat could accept the
existence of God or reject it. It was a choice between the crucix and
nothingness. He chose guilt. He believed that between life and death there
was a third state, a state of dying that was his own present existence, and
perhaps as well the existence of the contemporary world. If so, then what

324 i c e m e lt i n g

he suspectedthat his illness had a demonic etiologywas true, and it

was exorcists he needed to cure him. He tried something of the sort in a
visit to Padre Pioa healer, stigmatic, mysticbut after the visit Wats
illness was no less present.89
In his writings Wat meditated as well on his friends, on their shared
past. He remembered that in Lvov, on the eve of his arrest, Borejsza had
greeted him so ostentatiously, with such strange warmth. He wrote of
how Wayk, after Wats many attempts to persuade him, had been brave
enough to give Wat a short book review for Miesicznik Literacki, signing
it with a pseudonym; of how Sonimski, after vacillating, signed a protest
against the Polish government, while Tuwim could not be convinced,
citing his friendship with Colonel Wieniawa-Dugoszowski. He wrote as
well of Pisudski, whom he had so much opposed, and yet that dictators
unusual ... personal charm had aected Wat as well.90 He wrote of how
Tuwim, as much as he was an innovator, had nurtured infantile dreams
of nding a treasure or a cloak of invisibility, and had harbored an oldfashioned conception of the devil, failing to grasp the demonism of contemporaneity.91 He wrote of Broniewski, whose poetry was so tied to his
soldierly self: Lyric poetry begins when the platoon leader said, fall out,
when it was possible to sit down in the grass, roll a cigarette, absorb the
sound of the trees, the rippling of the cornelds, the song of the oriole.
Here is still a place for a soldiers humor and a soldiers smile. B.s poetry
... is written on that principlea sharp march and a resta break in the
eld, in the woods. A soldier unies the world just like a criminal, like a
primitive: oursthe enemy. Lyric poetry unies the world, identifying it
with itself.92 Wat reected as well on Broniewskis degeneration. It was the
degeneration of a great revolutionary poet, now lying naked on the grass,
two empty half-liter bottles beside him, telling the young writers: To hell
with Wayk. When I die, write on the tombstone: Here lies someone who
said to hell with everyone and everything.93
In April 1956, Wat, himself disengaged from Polish literary politics, dedicated a poem to his friends who had worked to bring about the
Thaw:
And so you pump your own blood
into the dark chimera of illusion

ice melting 325

and sing to her Hallelujah,

and adorn her in scarlet and gold.
Now strong, as you are weak, she
jumps onto Jagganaths cart.
So does history, facetious,
play the jester to you.94
In 1957 Wat returned to Poland from France. It seemed to him that Iwaszkiewicz and his friends from Twrczo, who had been so supportive in
facilitating his stay abroad, had now grown cold. Ill and feverish, he
wondered aloud to Ola Watowa about the source of their rejection. She
could not bear her husbands pain, and that very dayChristmas Day of
1957sent a bitter letter to Iwaszkiewicz. From the moment when I read
your rst stories, she wrote to him, I became an adoring admirer of your
talentand Ive always wanted to believe that great talent goes together
with greatness of heart.Yet everything now denies that.Your (incomprehensible to us) embittered silenceabsence of any kind of interest
in a man as severely tried by fate as Aleksander. Has that one ugly vessel
lled with bile and haughtiness really managed to infect with distaste you
and the rest of our friends from Twrczo who were so recently full of
goodwill towards Aleksander.95
On New Years Day Iwaszkiewicz answered generously, if defensively,
forgiving her for her peculiar New Years greetings, and assuring her he
understood that Wats long-lasting illness and its recent complications had
been upsetting her, that this was the only way he could understand her
unjust words. Yes, Wat had been severely tried by fate, but alas, so had
so many people. Of course I am guilty of coolness or neglect in relation
to him, I admit my guiltyet this is not a reason for you to accuse me
and the whole editorial sta of Twrczo of bile and haughtiness. You
know well that I possess neither haughtiness nor bile. He was condent
that in time she would see things dierently, that she would regret what
she had written. In any case, he assured her, she need not worryhe had
already forgotten it, already forgiven her.96 A week later she wrote to Iwaszkiewicz a second time, now in an entirely dierent tone, sincerely full of
joy at the forgiveness for which she had not even asked. I knew that you

326 i c e m e lt i n g

would understand and forgive, she wrote, Only one thing astonished
me, that yousuch a beautiful man(and you know this well!)could
have thought for a moment that in writing, an ugly vessel ... , I could
have had in mind you! She did regret her impulsive angry words. It had
been her husbands pain that she could not endure.97
Paradoxically, Wats sense of his old friends coldness came at the
moment when the poems Wat had begun to publish in 1955 and 1956
after decades of silence had been chosen for Nowa Kulturas prestigious
literary prize. Wat was then in the hospital. It was Sonimski who telephoned close to midnight with the news that the jury had unanimously
chosen his recent collection of poetry as the best book of 1957. Wat had a
high fever, Ola Watowa repeated to him what Sonimski had said, which
sounded then in my ears like the sound of the waves of a faraway sea,
pleasant and refreshingbut not me, not mebut someone foreign, a
stranger, although one evoking sympathy.98 At least one person did not
think the recipient to be worthy of sympathy. Julian Przybo believed
Wat had been undeserving, and said as much in the literary press. Wat
was irritated and immediately replied in a short feuilleton describing
Przybo as an intellectually vacant poet with a hollow imagination; when
it appeared, Iwaszkiewicz and the editorial sta of Twrczo sent Wat
owers.99 Wat was not alone in having been oended by Przybos attitude
towards his colleagues. In addition to the owers for the feuilleton, Wat
heard from many friends who wanted to congratulate him on the literary
award. Sonimski sent a note saying, I love you very much.100 Wat also
received a letter from Stanisaw Baliski in London, who was ecstatic that
Wat had been chosen and disconcerted only by the fact that in the press
report Wat had been called a poet of the older generation. Had they all
really grown so old? I had wanted to write something cheerful in this
letter, Baliski continued, but I cannot, nothing comes out, only something tightens in my throat when I think about you, about Warsaw, about
so many things, people; and the present and the past become entangled
and in that entanglement I sometimes feel lost ...101
It was a time for reminiscences. Later that year, in 1958, Stanisaw
Wygodzki published a memoiristic essay about Miesicznik Literackihow
it had disappeared quickly from kiosks, had been passed from person to
person, had been smuggled into prisons.102 It was a nostalgic piece; the

ice melting 327

figure 15 Wadysaw Broniewski at his family home

in Pock at the end of the 1950s. Courtesy of Muzeum
Wadysawa Broniewskiego.

despair beneath the nostalgia emerged from a letter his wife had written
to Ola Watowa the year before: Im experiencing now a period of much
sadness. Even in the camp I didnt feel so hopeless. For then I believed in
some kind of better future. Do you know how life now looks in our country? The worst thing is that Im unable to resuscitate even a bit of faith and
hope for change. Together all of it is a monstrous nightmare. I see abso
lutely no possibility of life here either for myself or for our children. And
Stasiek [Wygodzki] cant imagine life outside of Poland. I understand him
well, but Im unable to reconcile myself to that. Im passing over the issue
of antisemitism, which is very painful, but I believe that its necessary

328 i c e m e lt i n g

to give the children some kind of truth, to teach them what is good and
what is evil, and in our conditions this is completely impossible.103 In July
1959 Aleksander Wat and Ola Watowa left Poland permanently.104

aging
Tadeusz Peiper had grown old. The young Peiper of Cracow had worn a
black beard like a Spaniard. Now the Peiper sitting at a caf in the summer
of 1957 was an old man, thin, graying, unshaven.105 In fact they had all
begun to age. The xation on the future that had been their motif and their
passion in the interwar years had faded. Now they were drawn more and
more to painful, nostalgic reection on the past. In 1957 Stern and Wayk,
together with two colleagues, published an anthology of Mayakovskys
poetry, translated by Jasieski, Stande, Broniewski, Sonimski, and themselves, among others. In his introduction, Stern reminded his readers
that Mayakovsky and Revolution were one. He added, And if to her he
devoted at times even his own poetry, he did this as a man who was ready
to do anything his beloved demanded of himeven at those times when
he sees her claiming that to which she has no right and that which she
should not demand.106 Wat, who in his days as the editor of Miesicznik
Literacki had written of Polish futurism as the crooked mirror in which
Caliban looked at himself with a grimace of abomination, now returned
to the same metaphor to describe the peculiarity of his century: Caliban,
upon seeing his own face in the mirror, fell in love with himself.107
Such was, perhaps, the case. The war and the Stalinist era had broken all of them, each in dierent ways. Wat could not free himself from
his prison experiences.108 Broniewski had forgiven Daszewski; he had
accepted Daszewskis explanation that he had only invited them to meet a
man whom he thought was a Soviet art historian, that he had not known it
was an organized provocation. Broniewski even forgave Putrament when,
in the wake of 1956, he came to Broniewski to try to explain his behavior
in Lvov; but he could not forgive Putraments rewriting of that story in
his memoirs.109 Yet Broniewskis generosity did not save him from alcoholism. Wasilewska descended into a depression she never had known
possible, Wat into an agonizing, relentless illness. Lecho took his own
life. Jakub Berman was reduced to begging for his Party card back. From
this generation Isaac Deutscher, now for many years far away in emigra-

ice melting 329

tion in England, was one of the very few who remained hopeful. For the
Trotskyite who had once wanted Ola Watowa to sit on his lap, 1956 was
a resurrection of the spirit of the interwar KPP almost twenty years after its violent dissolutionand perhaps a resurrection of something of
Rosa Luxemburgs old tradition as well. Of the Thaw, the Polish October,
Deutscher wrote,110 Nothing in nature perishes.

c h a p t e r ten

The End of the Aair

The lapses in our conversations are mostly the result of the pain
killers I have to take to be able to talk with you at all. And Im afraid
theres yet another danger here: I could easily slip into confessions.
Confessions of an ex!
Aleksander Wat

the year after the Party expelled Jakub Berman, Antoni Sonimski
went to see a screening of a Russian lm based on a play by Mayakovsky.
Jakub Berman was sitting in one row, Wadysaw Gomuka in the next.
The photographers were forced into tricky maneuvers, so as not to accidentally include the now purged Berman in their photographs of the
Party leadership.1 When the Central Committee passed its resolution to
expel Jakub Berman, it had included a provision allowing him to appeal
for the return of his Party card after three years had passed.2 And so he
did. In a letter to General Secretary Wadysaw Gomuka on 9 May 1960,
Jakub Berman pleaded for his Party card back. In the course of these
three years, he wrote to the man whose imprisonment he had overseen,
I have felt, as in the years preceding, indissolubly joined to the Party, to
the Partys daily eorts. ... I beg to be accepted back into the Party, so
that in the ranks of the Party I can serve the cause that is the essence of
my entire life.3

death in p a r i s , i n wa r s aw, i n k i e v
Wadysaw Broniewski continued to drink heavily and to live nocturnally.
In the early 1950s, during one of Broniewskis late night phone calls to
Aleksander Wat, Broniewski asked, Listen, you have an inuence on
Edward [Stawar], why doesnt that fool submit self-criticism? After all he
330

t h e end of the affair 33 1

could write, he could write about me. No one is able to write about me.
Only Stawar. He could live peacefully. The point was for him to write that
idiotic self-criticism, theyre not demanding anything more from him.
And he says to hell with the self-criticism.4 Such was the case. Stawar
declined to issue self-criticism. Having been cast out of the literary world
during the Stalinist years, he was allowed to return only in 1955. His work
was again published; he occasionally appeared at the literary cafs in a
trench coat, his mustache closely trimmed.5 These were better years for
him, yet by the end of the decade he was ill and would spend months
at a time at the writers retreat in Zakopane. In late 1960 he was given
permission to go to the West to gather material for a book on aesthetics.
Wat and his wife were in Italy in late spring and summer of 1961, and
Stawar was anxious to see them. Wat was in no state to travel, but he was
alarmed at the news of his friends poor health: Stawar had lost over twenty
pounds.6 A Polish embassy representative came to visit him, but Stawar
declined the embassys oers of assistance. In a letter dated 25 July 1961,
Stawar wrote to Wat that the following day he was leaving for Paris and he
believed they would manage to meet there.7 He went to the Paris suburb
of Maisons-Latte, home of Jerzy Giedroycs migr monthly Kultura.
There he spoke to Giedroyc about Trotskyism; in some way Stawar felt
himself to be a Trotskyite still.8
Stawar had gone to Paris to publish his collection of essays. He did
not intend to remain abroad, he wanted to die in Warsaw. In this he failed.
Shortly after Stawar posted his letter of 25 July, Jerzy Giedroyc called Wat
to tell him that Stawar was in the hospital, dying. But Wat was too ill to
go out that day, and afterwards it was too late. The man who had once
professed his love to Janina Broniewska in the glow of a Warsaw lantern
died in Paris in August 1961. His body was cremated. He never had the last
conversation with Wat that he had so hoped for; instead the Wats arrived
at the airport in Paris in time to see the urn with Stawars ashes being
loaded onto a ight to Warsaw.9 In Poland Jerzy Putrament organized
Stawars funeral. He sent to the airport three young writers who, after
some searching, found the urn with Stawars ashes in the storage area for
unclaimed packages, in a small box marked Duty-Free. Stawar was given
a state funeral, with a military band, Party delegates, and a prestigious
burial site at Powzki cemetery; Putrament spoke of Comrade Stawar,
the model Marxist writer and activist, faithful to the Party to the very end.

332 t h e e n d o f t h e a f f a i r

The whole funeral, wrote Jan Kott, was like a nightmare from which
we could not wake up.10
Five years later, in a long article for Radio Free Europe, Wat wrote of
how his friend had remained a believer in communisma dierent communism from the one that existeduntil the very end. For all that Wat
himself spoke out against the Partys cultural policy in the Stalinist years,
Stawars silence during that time, his quiet refusal to give self-criticism,
was for Wat an act of greater courage.11 It was only after his death that
Stawars Pisma ostatnie (Last Writings) were published in Paris; and thus
Stawars ashes reached Warsaw before his last book. These last writings
were actually a collection of articles and essays he had published years
earlier, some of them in Pod Prd in the 1930s. In Wats understanding,
Stawar had published them now so that the Party could not, after his death,
appropriate him as one who had been theirs. Like Kott, Wat believed this
state funeral with a military bandorchestrated by someone Stawar could
not have respectedwas exactly what his friend had not wanted.12
Wadysaw Broniewski had also fallen ill. His face now appeared
tired and old, he was rarely sober, he coughed and spoke with diculty.13
Suering from insomnia, time and time again he awoke his friends in the
middle of the night and insisted they listen as he recited his poetryas he
had insisted years earlier in the prison cell in Centralniak. When the doctors told Broniewski he had cancer of the larynx, he was reluctant to accept
the diagnosis. Until the very end, without dissimulating Broniewski remained in the Partys good graces. Broniewski, whom Janina Broniewska
called the prodigal husband, and Wat called the prodigal son, was also,
as Wat put it, the only one of their original circle to die in odore sanctitatis.14
The Ministry of Art and Culture sent him gifts. This was in contrast to the
Partys generosity towards Stawar after his death, which came to an abrupt
end when news of his Last Writings and his close relations with Kultura
reached Warsaw.15 Some two months after Stawars death, Broniewski
wrote to the Minister of Art and Culture thanking him for the kind words
and the abundant gifts, and adding that they were presumably in place of
owers for Stawars grave. With respect to the latter, Broniewski wrote,
I have certain ideas and would gladly converse with you on that subject.16
Broniewski, who was vain and self-absorbed and unfaithful to his wives,
had proven very loyal to his friends. In 1960 he published an anthology
of his Polish translations of foreign poetry titled Moje przyjanie poetyckie

t h e end of the affair 333

(My Poetic Friendships), including Pushkin, Mayakovsky, Brecht, Esenin,

and Pasternak.17 The poems he wrote of his own in these last years were
among his most moving, especially those to his daughter Anka, whose
deathhe wrotehad left him an orphan. He wrote of how he thought
of her before he fell asleep and when he awakened; of how he no longer
knew how to write, because she was not there; of how she surpassed any
lover and was always rst in his heart. In the end, he awaited death to be
with her. In November 1961 he wrote of how he had brought a pansy from
Ankas grave to his hospital room, and of how he would now like to die.
Three months later, on 10 February 1962, he did.18
In London, Mieczysaw Grydzewski gathered information for a memorial article about Broniewski for Wiadomoci; he wrote to Wat asking
about the circumstances of his and Broniewskis 1931 imprisonment, about
Miesicznik Literacki.19 Wat answered in detail: Broniewski had been a
burdensome, egotistical cell mate, but he had conducted himself fantastically well under interrogation. Wat added, Overall, of the rst seven
revolutionary writers, four (Hempel, Wandurski, Stande, Jasieski) were
murdered over there. Now Stawar and Broniewski have died suddenly in
rapid succession, there remains only myself, sick, wrecked, but for a long
time now the most radically cured of that degeneration.20 Wat wrote, too,
of how Broniewski had died in a sorrowful state of moral and intellectual
deterioration, yet reminded those who were listening of how that valiant
poet had behaved more admirably in occupied Lvov than had any of their
friends and colleagues.21
Like Wat and Grydzewski, the surviving Skamander poets wrote of the
former Legionnaire. Iwaszkiewicz spoke of Broniewskis eternal Polish
ness. Nothing, Iwaszkiewicz wrote, is more sad or more moving than
the Polishness of those poems.22 Wierzyski, for a long time now an
migr in the United States on the other side of the red barricade, wrote
his own poem about the death of this Polish poet who had once been his
friend. They had broken only after the war, when Broniewski had decided
to return to Poland. Now Wierzyski forgave the romantic everything and
wrote of his ex-friends individualism, his integrity, his rebels honor.23
Janina Broniewska mourned for her former husband. In writing her
memoirs, she placed before her the letters Broniewski had written to her
during their courtship. The letters were yellowed, brittle, too intimate
for publication. Yet through them she called back to life those bygone

334 t h e e n d o f t h e a f f a i r

years: The dead returning to life. Dead? And perhaps everything that has
passed behind us in life isnt dead at all?24 She mourned as well for their
daughter. When Anka had died tragically in 1954, Janina Broniewska had
followed Wasilewskas example upon her father Leon Wasilewskis death
of almost twenty years earlier, and did not cry at her daughters funeral.
She was disgusted at the behavior of Broniewski, who ung himself,
choking with sobs, at Ankas con.25 Now when Wasilewska would come
to Warsaw, they would visit Ankas grave as well as the grave of Leon
Wasilewski. During one of these visits to the cemetery Wasilewska divided
her enormous bouquet of owers. She said in a warm voice, without that
frigid restraint she had had that day of her fathers death: Take these,
Jasieczka. Theyll be from Grandpa for our Ania.26
When Wasilewska was not in the room Janina Broniewska kept for her
friend in her Warsaw home, she shared with Korneichuk an apartment in
Kiev and a dacha just outside the city, where she continued to write and
participate in the government as a Soviet deputy. In March 1963 she traveled to Latin America, where Fidel Castro took her shing.27 Yet nothing
Wasilewska did in the postwar years could compare to her extraordinary
role during the war. Now her time had passed. In the 1960s, she began
to devote more time to memoirs and reminiscences; she confessed to
the painful shyness she had always felt when meeting new people and
to the absence of imagination in her literary work. She was only able to
write of what she herself had seen and heard; this was, she believed, both
her weakness and her strength.28 Khrushchevs revelations about Stalin
mitigated neither her nostalgia nor her idealism. In a 1963 article on
the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Kociuszko Division she
wrote of the intimate, homemade way the division had come into being;
its founding was one of the happiest moments of her life, and she now
described that time as a crazed but beautiful one, a time when everything
was happening as if in a feverish dream.29 Until the very end that essential
contradictionharsh dogmatism and extreme sentimentalityremained
in her.
In 1964 Wanda Wasilewska traveled to Warsaw to record her memoirs
for the Institute of Party History. There she told her interviewers that she
had never been inclined towards leadership, that during the war she had
played the role she did because she was able toand others were not.
She understood that as much as she tried, some communistsmembers

t h e end of the affair 335

of the then-dissolved KPP who had devoted themselves for years to communism and to the Soviet Union, who had long prison terms behind
themwould resent that it was she whom the Soviet leadership trusted,
she who had become their necessary intermediary. She had done what
she could.30 Wanda Wasilewska did not live long enough to authorize
the transcripts of her memoirs; in July she died unexpectedly in Kiev. In
Warsaw, the Party leadership sent telegrams of condolences to Korneichuk; Janina Broniewska led a delegation to Kiev for the funeral.31 On 31
July 1964, a hagiographic obituary of this brave daughter of the Polish
nation whom the Soviet nation joyously accepted into their family appeared in Izvestiia. It was signed by, among others, Nikita Khrushchev,
Ilya Ehrenburg, and the two men whom Khrushchev had sent in 1940
to ask for her understanding concerning her husband Marian Bogatkos
murder: Oleksandr Korneichuk and Mykola Bazhan.32

i n parisian e x i l e
Living abroad in west European exile, Aleksander Wat fell into bouts of
self-hatredthe theme of le moi hassable (my detestable self) appeared
again and again in his diary from those years. His thoughts returned to
his earliest childhood, his enthusiasm for drawing, and his shock when
one daywhen he was no more than two years oldhe saw a human
face emerge from the lines he had drawn on a piece of paper. At that time
the human face was what he most fearedyet upon seeing this image
on the paper, his fear of faces melted, or rather turned against himself.
Now he was struck by the fact that he could produce a human face at will,
and so did the threat transpose itself into an internal one. Wat struggled
as well with questions of identity. At moments he felt he wasand had
always beena Jew, a Polish-speaking cosmopolitan. At other moments
he felt strongly that as a Polish poet, his homeland was his language, and
he belonged in Poland, where his father and his fathers fathers were
buried.33 In 1963 he wrote in his diary, In the end Ive found myself in
a ne place: not at home, not with the emigrationin a void.34 He felt
isolated, and closer to those back in Poland who supported the communist
regime than to the migr Poles who shared his anticommunism. When
Sonimski visited Paris in November 1963, Wat was terribly happy to see
him. For with those who had attacked him as an enemy of the people
during the Stalinist years, he shared a history, a long intimacy.35 With

336 t h e e n d o f t h e a f f a i r

respect to Jerzy Giedroycs migr journal Kultura, Wat was reluctant to

contribute to anything that would engage him in politics per se, and rm
in his refusal to be portrayed as someone who had converted from communism, to be used as anticommunist propaganda, or to contribute to
any political manifestos. In any case, he believed that Kulturas inuence
would penetrate further if the journals pages remained free from politics
in the strict sense of the word.36 If Wat spoke often about himself, his own
story as the last of the group around Miesicznik Literacki who remained
alivehe explained to Giedroycit was because he wanted to illuminate
the tragic fate of his generation of communist intellectuals; if he spoke
of his experiences in prison, it was to show that his reections on communism were the results of rich personal knowledge.37 On the pages of
Kultura Wat fullled an Old Bolsheviks nal request: he told the story of
how old Steklov died.38
In Parisian exile, Wat maintained correspondence with many who
were still in Poland. Now his interlocutors included Adolf Rudnicki and
Wiktor Woroszylski; the latter, who had been among Wats harshest critics during the Stalinist era, was now full of aection and admiration for
the Watsand committed to reviving the legacy of Mayakovsky.39 Wat
himself wrote long, reective letters, which he would sometimes revise
before sending, or sometimes not send at all. He was now among the last
of his generation, and his thoughts turned more and more to his friends,
both those who were still in Poland and those who were no longer living. Wat reected on how Jasieskis perfect memory for poetry impeded
his talent; how Wasilewska was impassioned and blind, but always full
of authentic concern for her colleagues; how Przybo was brutal, arrogant, simplistic; how Janina Broniewska and Leon Kruczkowski hated
WaykWayk, whose beautiful wife was killed by Nazis and Polish szmal
cownicy, who believed in the inexorable march of History, who in the
Stalinist years had tried to save Wat by portraying him as a lost nineteenthcentury liberal not possessed of full reason.40 Wat thought about Iwaszkiewiczs dualityhow the Jarosaw who was so deeply rooted in nature and
darkness had so long coexisted with the master of his court at Stawisko,
the Polish ambassador, the poet laureate, the Writers Union president.
There were moments when Wat had the impression still that he was
among Witkacys old aunts, in the times when that same Jarosaw seemed
to me a (perverted) simpleton from Ukraine.41 Wat reected, too, about

t h e end of the affair 337

the purity of Tuwims love for words, and how this was, perhaps, connected with his adoration of one leader after another: rst Pisudski, then
Stalin. Sonimski remained for Wat, as always, youthful and charming
and quick in his humor; gentle but at moments malicious; courageous but
self-absorbed, desirous of constant admiration. This need, Wat felt, was
the tragic aw of all of the Skamander poets, spoiled by their early fame.
Wieniawa had befriended Tuwim, the lion of the Warsaw salons; the
American ambassador had paid a visit to the twenty-year-old Lecho. They,
not the futuristsWat feltshould have been the poetic avant-garde, but
the beau monde ruined them. As for Mayakovsky, Wat thought of how
his Russian friend had realized the slogan of poetry to the streets, but
the streets had never understood him.42
There was someone else whom Wat could not forget. This was the
man who, in the cell they shared in Lubianka, had taught him so much
about Marxism. In 1965 the Russian poet Semn Kirsanov, the friend of
Wats cellmate Misha Taitz, came to Paris with a Soviet writers delegation.
Wat invited himself to the reception, he wanted desperately to learn from
Kirsanov what had happened to Taitz. Wat was gentle, he did not speak of
Lubianka or of prison, he said only that they had a mutual friend, a wonderful, brave person, and that for twenty years Wat had wanted to learn of
his fate. Yet though Wat spoke in half-words, as Russians do, Kirsanov
felt the ominousness of the question; he insisted he knew nothing, only
that cruelty had been ubiquitous in the world. In the end, he would say
only that Misha Taitz was no longer aliveand that Wat should not poke
his nger in other peoples wounds. Wat defended himself: the wounds
were his own.43
Even as the war receded further into the past, Wat continued to live
ensconced in the nightmare of his encounter with totalitarianism. In his
diary, his notes, his poetry, he revisited over and over his time in prison,
the twenty-eight prisoners squeezed into an eleven-meter cell, the counting of the lice, the shouting of the interrogators, the torturing of Taitz. He
revisited time and again his near-death in Kazakhstan, in Ili, his desperate
wish not to be buried there, in the ground of Bolshevism. That he himself
had come to Marxism before Stalinism was of no consolation to him. Wat
was convinced that Stalin was not an aberration, that Stalinism was an
inescapable consequence of Lenin and Leninism. During his time in the
Soviet Union, nearly everyone in his family had died in the Holocaust, and

338 t h e e n d o f t h e a f f a i r

this haunted him now as well. He had lived in a time and space dened
by Stalinism and Nazism and now was consumed by the attempt to make
sense of both of them. For Wat, the essential distinction between Bolshevism and Nazism was not in the quantity of the crimes but rather in the
fact that the Germans had chosen Hitler, had supported him, had reaped
the benets of his rule; in contrast the crimes of Bolshevism fell upon
its own Russian nation, a nation enslaved by a handful who had usurped
power. He was deeply convinced that, on the contrary, never before in
history had a whole nation borne such concrete, irrefutable guilt as did
the Germans.44
In 1962, Adam Wayk came to Paris. There he and Wat sat in a caf
and spoke about Stalinism. I didnt know, Wayk said.
You, you didnt know?! You, who were in Russia for ve
years?!
I believed!
You believed, after everything that you saw with your own
eyes, the suering and the humiliation of the working people,
the boorishness and the villainy and the haughtiness of the
elite?!
I suered from a splitting of the self.45
Wat believed this. He became increasingly preoccupied with the relationship between knowing and believing, between knowledge and faith. These
questions haunted him both in his relationship to communism and in his
relationship to God. For Wat the memory of his experience in communism, in communist prison, was intimately connected to his experience
of religious faith. It was in Soviet prison that he had become a believer.
In the beginning, in Zamarstynw, he had not known how to pray, he had
sat alone, trembling, crying, while the others in his cell prayed. Then in
Saratov he had seen the devil, understood the devil in history, and felt the
demonic nature of communism.46
Now in France some two decades later, he had lost that faith. In the
same poem in which he wrote of Taitzs being tortured, Wat spoke to the
God whose presence he no longer felt:
And now again I dont see you, dont hear you
Yet suddenly an echo of that bygone breath jostles me

t h e end of the affair 339

when the wind will wander to a hanging olive branch

when I wander, somber, inside my somber recollections.47
Yet Wat was uncertain about Gods absence as well; he wondered if he
could truly be an unbeliever given that he had once, in Kazakhstan and
afterwards in Poland, believed so completely. Even in his unbelief he continued every night to say the prayer he had learned from the Ukrainians in
Zamarstynw. He feared the nothingness that was the alternative to faith
and understood Christianity as the antithesis of Stalinism. For Christianity
had as its premise a negative philosophy: man was in essence evil and only
circumstances, conditionsLove, Mercy, Sueringmade him good.
The inversion of that philosophythat man was good and only conditions rendered him evilwas Stalinism. Wat saw no third path. And so
he continued to vacillate between belief and its absence, between desire
and failure to believe. The same fearof nihilism, of nothingnessthat
had once propelled him from futurism to Marxism now returned. To
my friendthe Catholic, he wrote in his diary in October 1963, You
place me before the alternative: the crucix or nothingness. But when,
being on the crucix, one sighs into nothingness? Only into nothingness?
Exclusively? And not into such nothingness that one will no longer ever
be, but into such nothingness that one never was.48 Jzef Wittlin now
reminded Wat of the night in 1929 when they had been walking along
the Seine in Paris, and Wittlin had told Wat that in the end, Wat would
become a Catholic. Yet the materiality of Catholicism pushed Wat away.
He could only believe in a metaphysical Christianity; the personhood of
God, the resurrection of bodies, the transguration all repelled him. So it
was through Christianity that Wat began to return to Judaism. More and
more he felt a part of his Jewish ancestry, felt that what was Jewish could
not be alien to him. The fate of his ancestors who had been persecuted by
the Catholic Churchthe mandate to remember their sueringnow
began to separate him from Catholicism. Yet even as he felt an increasing
sense of closeness to his forefathers, the great rabbis, he returned to both
the dialectical thinking of Marxism and the language of the futurists, believing Judaism to be pass, a religion that had done its part and ended
in Christianity.49
Even in his uncertainty about faith, Wat was deeply persuaded that
he was possessed by demons, that his illness was a punishment for his

340 t h e e n d o f t h e a f f a i r

sins: for not having loved his mother; for having been the force behind
Miesicznik Literacki; for having lied during those months in Lvov. At once
he had a sense of having been blessed by fate, in particular with Ola, whose
presence he saw as proof of Gods intervention in his life. Even as they
both aged, she continued to be the object of his most intense idealization,
the embodiment of all that was good, beautiful, and pure. She was also
the obstacle to his desired suicide, for Wat believed he would not be at
peace after his death if she were to despair. He believed as well that they
were so completely joined to each other that as long as one of them lived,
the other could not cease to exist, even in death. Again and again in Paris
in the 1960s, he relived in his mind the day in the prison in Alma-Ata
when the NKVD oblast chief had brought Ola Watowa from Ili to tell her
husband that the Polish ambassador had been expelled from Kuibyshev
and there was no one to help him now, that his situation was hopeless,
that he must accept the Soviet passport. She had asked him: Would he
take the passport? And when he had answered no, they began to talk
about something else. She did not ask a second time, although she knew
his answer most likely meant his death in the gulag, and her own and
their sons death in Kazakhstan. It was the highest moment of our love,
Wat wrote, on that Russian porch, the enormous, littered courtyard of
the Third Division, the detention barracks, I was brought there from the
bandits dungeon, it was sunny, I was blinded by the glare and blinded by
the beauty of Ola, so wretched, so hunted, and so calm.50 He prayed that
if his illness caused him to forget all else that had happened in his life, let
him not forget that one moment in Alma-Ata in April 1943.51
These were the years when Czesaw Miosz became one of the most important gures in Wats life. Their relationship was at times a dicultand
for Wat a painfulone. Miosz became in some sense Wats patron, and
Wat was enormously grateful, and yet often hurt by what he felt as Mioszs
condescension, his disregarding attitude towards Wat as a poet.52 On one
occasion in Paris Miosz introduced Wat to an American poet, telling the
American that Wat was a good poetthen after a short pause adding, I
think so.53 Wat was intensely sensitive; at times he felt that Miosz held
somethingphilosophically, perhapsagainst him.54 It was Miosz who
arranged for the Wats to come to Berkeley on a fellowship. In his letters to
Wat from California, Miosz wrote that America was something entirely

t h e end of the affair 34 1

dierent, inexplicable in any terms available to Europeans. Because were

so peculiar, Miosz wrote to Wat, that sometimes an American Jew can
understand us, but even so, only to a small extent ... I know cases of
people who ed from America because there are no cafsand this is a
symbolic formulation of something deeper.55 Miosz was didactic and at
times chastising in his directions to Wat as to how to proceed with arranging their trip. Do not try to make yourself sound like a scholarMiosz
instructedscholars are those who dont know how to become writers.
Above all Miosz insisted that Wat not think aboutand at all costs not
voicethe possibility of staying longer than a year.56
In the end the formalities were successfully arranged; Wat was hopeful that the climate in California would alleviate his illness, and he looked
forward to interacting with the students at Berkeley. In December 1963 the
Wats arrived in California. Their initial experience was an almost euphoric
one; the Slavicists at Berkeley gave them a very warm welcome, the young
women were drawn to Watowa, they treated her like an older, attractive
sisterperhaps because, Wat speculated, despite their beauty and energy
they had lost something of the feminine in themselves, something they
saw in this older woman.57 Wat was charmed by the young, bright graduate students who surrounded him with interest.
Yet this was a capriciously ephemeral interlude, lasting no more than
a few weeks. Miosz cautioned the Wats not to importune, not to do anything that would lead anyone to fear they might try to stay in the United
States permanently. Wat felt as if struck; he sensed that Miosz felt their
presence at Berkeley as a burden to himself. Wat was hurt by Miosz, but
hurt more by his sense of being rejected by those around him. He met
with a Polish migr who worked at the Hoover Institute at Stanford,
and realized that many among the migr community saw in him only
ydokomuna. He sensed that others at Berkeley feared Wat would try to
nd a way to stay in the United States, and so treated him coldly; their
fears humiliated him. In any case, he did not see a life for himself in the
American professoriate.58 His initial impression had been an idealized
one; the same young people who had been so embracing and attentive
disappeared from his and Ola Watowas lives; their curiosity having been
satised, their interest now waned, they avoided him when they passed
on the street. He began to see American intellectual life as something professionalized in a way it was not in Europe; it was a career like any other.

342 t h e e n d o f t h e a f f a i r

Even the young man working on a dissertation on the Russian poetess

Marina Tsvetaeva now avoided him, passing over Wats oer to provide
him with material about Tsvetaevas suicide. As Wat watched the students
turn the other way, he began to understand not only the superciality of
their initial warm reception, but also their fear of being contaminated
by someone like himself who would surely not manage to make a career
in America; he felt the division of American society into the losers and
the successful ones. He reected on his own choices, how he had bypassed success, how he could have remained free in Lvov had he written
an exhaustive self-criticism and a poem about Stalin, how he could have
been vice minister of culture in communist Poland had he been more
obedient, less dicult.59 Now I, too, am a loser, he wrote in his diary six
months after having arrived in Berkeley.60
The sense of being boycotted and ostracized was all the more painful
as it was reminiscent of the worst years of Polish Stalinism. He remembered how he would come to the Warsaw Writers Union and no one would
speak to him. The fault was his own, though, he wrote in a letter back
to Paris; he suered from an undoubtedly pathological hypersensitivity.61 To Miosz he wrote despairingly some two months into his stay at
Berkeley, asking why peoples relations to him had changed so suddenly,
asking what he had done wrong and reminding Miosz that he had earlier
asked him what kinds of behaviors were taboo in America, what he should
avoid doing or saying. Miosz had answered that there were no taboos,
that Wat should only act naturally, should be himself. Now an anguished
Wat wrote to Miosz asking, Perhaps this is fundamentally true and its
just my nature and naturalness that repel people here?62
Against the hopes of Wats doctors and friends, Berkeleys psychological and meteorological climate only caused his illness to worsen. He
was in constant pain and unable to write. It was at this point that Miosz
performed his greatest act of generosity: he oered himself as Wats interlocutor in speaking about his past. Miosz turned on a tape recorder;
they began to talk. Miosz, whose friendship had often been a dicult
one for Wat, revealed himself to be the ideal listener. He was intensely
interested, and familiar with Wats otherwise obscure references. As for
Wat, he was deeply convinced that his illness was of demonic origin, that
it was induced by communism, by guilt, and he came to see their dialogue
as an act of exorcism and Miosz as the exorcist. Guilt was the motif of

t h e end of the affair 343

their long conversations, and Wat speculated that it was his burden as
a Jew that caused him to perceive the world through the prism of guilt
and punishment.63 He returned obsessively to Miesicznik Literacki as his
greatest sin: the corpus delicti of my degradation, the history of my degradation in communism, by communism. It was in a communist prison
that I came fully to my senses and from then on, in prison, in exile, and
in communist Poland, I never allowed myself to forget my basic dutyto
pay, to pay for those two or three years of moral insanity. And I paid, and
paid.64 In revisiting thosethe most blind and fanaticalyears, Wat
had only one moment of comfort: he picked up the issue of Miesicznik
Literacki with his eulogy to Mayakovsky and saw that no, thank God, he
had not reproached his Russian friend for his suicide.65 When a person
who cant swim is in the water, Wat told Miosz, the worst thing for him
to do is to ail around. And I kept moving. Enormous History, a mighty
machine, and I had stuck my little foot in.66 In June 1965 the Wats returned to Paris, and Ola Watowa began to transcribe the tapes.67

the koakow s k i a f fa i r
Adolf Rudnicki sent news to Wat of his old friends in Warsaw. Sonimski
had now begun to return to the role of acerbic commentator he played in the
interwar years, publishing feuilletons again in a journal called Szpilki (Needles). These were, Rudnicki wrote to Wat, sad and lamentableSonimski
hasnt changed but the world has changed. People speak badly about those
feuilletons, becausehow can they be good, you yourself know best that
they cant be. I feel sorry for Antoni, although better that he write bad
feuilletons and in some way feel needed than that he do nothing.68 The
knowledge of having colluded with the Stalinist regime was particularly
painful for Sonimskinot because the regime had betrayed Marxism,
but because he had betrayed his own self-identication as the iconoclastic
critic who held nothing sacred, who feared oending no one, who always
stood aside. His poetry now, like Wats, revealed inuences of existentialism and an irony now turned against himself as well.69 His 19631965
poem Sd nad Don Kichotem (Judgment on Don Quixote) ended:
Because I was fainthearted once,
Because I once lacked courage
And kept silent against my conscience,

344 t h e e n d o f t h e a f f a i r

I wish to be naked when I die.

I wish to throw the oppressive burden o my chest
And I prefer to lie in oblivion,
In ashes and wayside dust,
Rather than on a tall catafalque
In the church of your false gods.70
In the spring of 1964, Sonimski, together with Rudnicki, Wayk, and
others, signed the Letter of the Thirty-four to premier Jzef Cyrankiewicz,
demanding a liberation of cultural policy and a relaxation of censorship.
The Party reacted by not allowing the signatories to publish or to leave
the country.71 Sonimski was unintimidated, he was coming into his own
again. In 1929 he had written in one of his weekly columns of how he
disliked being addressed you Skamandrites, of how he disliked being
addressed as one of a group, of how he felt himself to belong to no collectivity.72 Now he returned to his ethos of individualism and irreverence.
The hopes for a kinder, freer, more prosperous Marxism inaugurated
with Jakub Bermans departure and Gomukas ascension to power had
not been realized. The following year at the 1965 Cracow congress of
the Polish Writers Union Sonimski spoke about the liquidation of the
cultural accomplishments brought by the Polish October. In particular,
he protested the Partys liquidation of both the discussion group Klub
Krzywego Koa (the Crooked Wheel Club) and the periodicals Przegld
Kulturalny (Cultural Review), Nowa Kultura, and Po Prostu (Simply), and
its replacement of these with a single journal called Kulturawhose contributors consisted entirely of writers whom the rest of the literary community did not hold in especially high esteem. He had not come there
to complain about his own situation, Sonimski noted, on balance Im
somehow managing and with full gratitude must say that my poetry was
published twice in very beautiful editions, so as a poet Im exculpating
myself, but as a writer of feuilletonsI must say franklyI wouldnt want
to write feuilletons for Szpilki, because the aair of the 34 has placed me
in such high moral esteem in society that it wouldnt behoove me to write
for Szpilki. Sonimskis old sarcastic tone had returned; he went on to
name those among the Writers Union members who were not writing
for Kultura, a long list of essentially anyone of any importance, including
himself, Rudnicki, Wayk, and Woroszylski. Sonimski noted further that

t h e end of the affair 345

it seemed even Iwaszkiewicz, president of the Writers Union, was not

writing for Kulturaat which point Iwaszkiewicz asked him to please
remember himself. This was precisely what Sonimski had done.73
Sonimski was not the only one creating diculties for the Party. In
early 1966, a group of Party members including Karol Modzelewski and
Jacek Kuro were convicted in closed trials and imprisoned for circulating false information detrimental to the State. One of those convicted,
Ludwik Hass, was a prewar communist who had spent seventeen years
in the Soviet gulag for Trotskyism. Upon his release in 1957, he returned
to Poland and, still a convinced communist, joined the Party. When Hass
was brought into the courtroom, he and his co-defendants raised their
handcued sts in a communist salute and sang the Internationale. Now
from London, the man who had once thrown parties where herring was
served on newspaper, and women sat on the laps of men who were not their
husbands, sent an open letter to Gomuka. Isaac Deutscher broke his selfimposed stance of nonintervention in Polish politics with a defense of Hass
and his comrades who were, Deutscher pointed out, perhaps among the
last in Poland who continued to nurture such a sincere faith in Marxism.74
Revolt was now coming from within. In the realm of irreverence,
Sonimski had some competition from a younger Marxist philosopher
named Leszek Koakowski, who at this point in his ideological evolution
was committed to a reformed Marxism. In October 1966, Koakowski
gave a lecture at the University of Warsaw; the occasion was the tenth anniversary of the Polish October. Koakowski revisited the rare feeling of
national unity present in 1956and went on to describe the abysmal state
of the country ten years later. He began by speaking about lawlessness,
a salient term during the Polish October, when it became possible to talk
about laws being so abstract and all-encompassing that it could be applied
rather arbitrarily against anyone at any time. This resulted in laws being
regarded as an instrument of repression, which in turn provoked a general
contempt for lawsomething that ten years later remained a source of
demoralization. This was only the beginning of Koakowskis litany. He
went on to note the countrys material poverty, its low rate of housing
construction, its miserable automobiles, and its high rate of infant mortality. Party representatives were chosen on the principle of negative selection, according to which fawning, cowardice, absence of initiative, [and]
willingness to eavesdrop were qualifying factors. At least in the Stalinist

346 t h e e n d o f t h e a f f a i r

period, Koakowski suggested, the ideological sincerity of so many in the

Party apparatus worked against this particular kind of negative selection.
The result of the present negative selection, continued feeling of lawlessness, and material poverty was a spiritual pauperization, an absence
of hope in the face of the failed promises of October. Poland continued
to be a country in which there were no free elections, no freedom of
association, no freedom of criticism, no freedom of information. Here
Koakowski adopted a Sonimski-like tone: The very word freedom has
become suspicious. Its true that in the Stalinist period the word freedom
was incredibly fashionable, it was quite widespread and indicated more or
less the same thing as the absence of freedom. In this respect the situation now is perhaps simpler. In the law about higher education from the
Stalinist period there are words about the freedom of scholarship. In the
law passed after 1956 that expression is no longer there.75
Six days after Koakowskis lecture, on 27 October 1966, the Central
Commission for Party Control passed a resolution to expel Koakowski
from the PZPR for taking a position against that of the Party; propagating revisionist concepts; negating the leading role of the Party in cultural policy; aspiring to turn the Party intelligentsia and youth against the
Partys leadership; and endeavoring to weaken the existence of socialist
democracy from a liberal-bourgeois position. In a letter to Gomuka written the following month, Koakowski appealed for his Party card back,
insisting that criticism of phenomena that opposed the ideals of socialism was his right and obligation as a Party memberand that moreover
the disastrous social results of deceitful acts in cultural and political life
will not be removed by applying repression to those who reveal them.76
He was not the only one to protest. A few days earlier the Politburo had
received a letter from fteen writers, including Julian Stryjkowski and
Wiktor Woroszylski, asking that Koakowski be reinstated in the Party.
Adolf Bermans and Wanda Wasilewskas friend Micha Mirski endorsed
their protests.77
Koakowski was not reinstated. On 21 January 1967 Julian Stryjkowski
returned his Party card, enclosing a letter noting that his own views were
similar to those of Party members who had been expelled or who had left
voluntarily.78 Stryjkowski had for some time been waiting for the right
moment; his book Czarna ra (The Black Rose), published in 1962, was
his farewell to his communist past.79 Among those who did not resign,

t h e end of the affair 347

and were not prepared to part with the past, was Janina Broniewska.
At a Writers Union meeting held that February of 1967 she protested
Koakowskis demand at the December 1965 Writers Union congress that
all of Wadysaw Broniewskis work now be publishedincluding those
poems composed during his stay in Soviet prison. Koakowskis point had
been unambiguous. And when I say the complete works, he had told
the congress, I have in mind the complete works.80 Broniewska called
this proposal evidence of Koakowskis uncommon impudence and rare
impertinence, and a case of exploiting the tragedy of a great poet for
personal political aims. She reminded those present that this same great
poet had later written a poem about Stalinand had done so with full
sincerity, in the absence of any opportunistic aimsand that later Broniew
ski had been hurt by those now allegedly his friends, who for a long time
maliciously reproached him for that poem.81

reflections o n a f u t u r i s t yo u t h
In the 1960s, Anatol Stern wrote a hagiographic book about his old futurist
collaborator, the same one who, in 1928, had insisted to Broniewski that
Stern had no right to speak for him. In the book, Stern described Bruno
Jasieskis battle with God, a battle often taking the form of a bitter grotesque, but one intimately connected with the tragic rebellion of romantic
poetry.82 Stern wrote of the inuence of Apollinaire and Mayakovsky, and
even Stefan eromski, on Jasieskis work. At the center of Sterns text was
his desire to present a certain narrative of their shared past, to show that
Polish futurismin contrast to Skamanderhad contained within itself
a revolutionary impulse from the outset, that while Marinetti had wanted
to awaken his nation with a cult of strength, and the French futurists had
declined political engagement, the Polish futuristslike their Russian
counterpartshad declared rebellion in the name of social justice. These
immature currents admittedly took time to develop, but were nonetheless present from the beginning. In this sense, Sterns polemic was, in
a sense, with the very object of his hagiography; the author insisted that
Jasieskis own criticisms and recantations of his early work later in his
life were often misguided and excessively harsh, that Jasieski himself
did not always appreciate his own contribution. In an article on Jasieskis
stay in Paris, Stern revisited a letter Jasieski had sent from France in November 1926. Traveling is a disease, Jasieski had written then, which

348 t h e e n d o f t h e a f f a i r

has always consumed me and from which I will surely die. Now Stern
speculated: Had Jasieski been able to see into the future and learned what
awaited him in ten years, would he have come home to Poland? Or would
Jasieskis fanatical nature not have allowed for a change in itinerary even
if he were to have had forebodings of the tragic ending?83
Stern had solicited Wats contribution to his work on Jasieski, but
Wat had declined. Stern was disappointedhe envied Wat his memory,
which preserved details so much better than Sterns own. Their common
prehistoric literary youth was being distorted by other literati, not only
by enemies, but, still worse, also by friends. Stern was unable to correct all the false information on his own; nevertheless he was determined
to proceed. If he were not to do so, Jasieskis memory, the memory of
yet one more great and uncompromising artist, and at once a person so
vehement and passionate, that he himself condemned his own work to
destruction when it ceased to satisfy him would perish.84 Even in his sixties, Stern continued to be moved by the memories of their futurist antics
of long ago. Whatever happened to those times, he wrote to Wat, when
everything was settled beyond appeal with one short Yes?85
In 1965 Stern wrote a letter to the regime journal Kultura whose existence Sonimski found so objectionable. In it he attacked the author of a
recent book dismissingin part in Tadeusz Peipers namePolish futurism in general and Sterns work in particular as mockery and short-lived
rabble-rousing.86 Stern was enraged, and cited at some length Peipers
interwar writings attesting to Peipers respect for Stern and his then collaborators and to Peipers appreciation of futurisms literary innovations.
This open letter came at a time when Stern was lamenting that the censors were not allowing him in his book in Polish futurism to write about
Watwho had defected to the West and betrayed socialism. I received
that news with quite some contentment, Wat wrote to the object of Sterns
attack, in the rst draft of a letter he later softened before posting, perhaps I will nally detach myself from the importunate tandem: Stern-Wat,
Wat-Stern. Wat continued to harbor some sentiment for Stern, but felt
compelled to give his ownunkind yet at once nostalgictestimony:
Peiper (like Witkacy) regarded Stern as the misfortune of an
innovative movement. He reproached him for self-promotion,
for the complete absence of any kind of aesthetic principles

t h e end of the affair 349

and scruples, for ostentatiously vulgar tawdriness. These arent

Peipers exact words, but the sense is the same, my memory isnt
bad, which Stern has learned on more than one occasion. So
much for judgment.
Both Peiper and especially Witkacy pressured me to break
with Anatol. Witkacy placed me before the alternative: either
him, or Stern. I chose Stern for those very reasons that estranged them, the aesthetes: with Stern I had marvelous fun,
renedly intelligent literary, philosophical, intellectual hooliganry. Today that means nothing to anyone, too much of that
is everywhere, but in 1920, 1921, 1922, in Poland! Two kids
(Jasieski joined later and brought ... dandyism la Severia
nin), the only ones in Poland at that time, mocking absolutely
everything, and above all poetry. And without todays taste for
assault, it wasnt a discharging of aggressive instincts as it is
today, as it was then among the dadaists. It wasnt the result of
social resentments (or of despair, as it was among those others)
as it was for Gombrowicz. Pure disinterested mockery. In this
lay the whole value, sense and harbingership of so-called Polish
futurism, because the rest, all of it, was a wretched imitation
of what had been already been done for a couple of decades
abroad (plagiaristic character). That pontical fool understands nothing of that.
Wat did not disparage this period in its entirety; as in his memoirs of
futurism in Miesicznik Literacki, here, too, his judgment remained an
ambivalent one. He thought Stern foolish to have passed over in silence
their only truly original achievements: their prefaces to GGA and A JewBoy of Letters, Sterns strikingly forthright sensualand sexuallongings
in his early poetry. But even though Stern and I had untimely and apt
intuition (of antiliterature), he wrote, we were kids and we ourselves got
lost in it. Wat added about his one-time futurist co-author, alluding to the
intentional misspellings that the futurists had once delighted in: he was
already back then pontical, butthenit added charm to his impudence. But a 67-year-old Kingg of New Art!its a sorry sight. Its dicult
today to imagine the freshness and luster of the boasting intelligence, the
wit he had then.87

350 t h e e n d o f t h e a f f a i r

Wat was also disappointed by Wayks memoirs of the avant-garde.88

Wayk, Wat felt, had written of him in these memoirs as if they had encountered each other for the rst (and last) time at a futurist poetry reading. In a letter to Miosz in 1966, Wat contested this perception: Wat had
known Wayk since they were fteen and ten years old, respectively. At
that time Wat was at Wayks home almost every day with Wayks older
brother Tristan, Wats closest friend from school, who along with one of
Wayks sisters, stood out for their beauty in that family of exceptionally
ugly faces. Wayks brother Saul [Wagman] was writing Zionist poetry;
Wayks older sister was engaged to an ugly medical student; on summer
evenings she would irt with Wat on the balcony. Their father was a
frightful Jew, Wat continued, everyone feared him, fortunately he rarely
left his oce, in the hallway characters from Secrets of Nalewki would
meet, he was not a notary, as the ocial biography goes, but a clandestine
advisor, a trickster; their home was nouveau riche, absolutely Jewish, but
also with all of the pluses of having been highly intellectualized: in the
salon abstract discussions, judgments of Raskolnikov, Russian Jewish
students, admirers of Volynskii, Merezhkovskii, and Blok. There were
no goys. I knew Adam Wayks friends from schoolnot a single goy.
Wat attributed Wayks mystication of his family, his rewriting of his
past to include only gentiles, to the need for respectabilit so endemic to
the Polish-Jewish intelligentsia.89

the last o f t h e s e ve n
On Friday, 29 July 1967, Ola Watowa went into the room where her husband was sleeping, took him in her arms, and said to him, Ol, wake up!
His head was turned to the side, he was cold and calm. It was only then
that she saw the notebook and two sheets of paper by his feet. On the rst
Wat had written in large letters DO NOT SAVE ME. On the second he
had written a letter to hermy life, my everythingpleading with her to
forgive him this crime, and above all not to save him and not to despair.90
Early that evening he had swallowed forty tablets of Nembutal. He was
buried in France, in the cemetery in Montmorency. Miosz, Wierzyski,
Grydzewski, and Stern were among those who sent letters and telegrams
to Ola Watowa. Iwaszkiewicz wrote to Wats sister, the actress Seweryna
Broniszwna, of his and Wats half-century-long friendship.91 Ola Watowa
struggled not to despair. Some six weeks after Wats death she wrote to

t h e end of the affair 35 1

a friend, I look into the eyes of my friends, searching for conrmation

that I did what I could to be a comfort to Aleksander, that I did everything possible to the best of my strength. And Im horribly tormented.
For after all its always possible to do more, more. And that very much
pains me now.92 In a letter to Broniszwna, Ola Watowa copied several
passages from Wats last notebook, and asked her sister-in-law to share
them, discreetly, with those among Wats close friends who were still in
Poland.93
The last notebook had been lled largely in May; Wat had been prepared to depart since then. In its pages he said goodnight and goodbye to
his wife over and over again; begged their son Andrzej not to be broken
by his death; and pleaded with everyone to take care of Ola. He told of
abominable pain, of nights of torture, of relentless vegetation in Hell,
and begged them to think that his pain was now over, pain whose depths
even Ola could not have understood. He insisted he would remain present in them, and that he would not have peace after his death if they
were to despair. For eleven years everything selsh in him had demanded
death, only Ola and Andrzej had prevented him from succumbing, he had
wanted to be with his wife for as long as he could.
In other pages, in a handwriting decipherable by few besides Ola
Watowa, Wat mixed poetry and prose in a kind of stream-of-consciousness
prose poem evoking traces of his I from One Side and I from the Other Side
of My Cast-Iron Stove from nearly half a century earlier. He sketched as well
several versions of a poem titled Zejcie (The Descent), reecting on his
descent into death. His memory he compared to a bombarded city, but he
insisted that what he remembered he remembered faithfully. His mind
wandered over the rabbinic commentators and Kabbalists who were his
ancestors; he wrote of beginning to read Shakespeare at the age of ve;
of discovering Nietzsche when he was still a child, because his father, the
Kabbalist, read German philosophy. His had been a large household full
of both books and visitors, as his father was very tolerant and his mother
adored young people. His parents loved one another, and they all loved the
theater, especially his mother who would sing I, I the beautiful Helena.
He had not been a good son to his mother, who loved her children as only
Jewish mothers were able to love, but he was there in the last week of her
life, when she was dying of cancer. His nanny Anusia used to take him
secretly to church. On Passover Wat would open the door, looking out on

352 t h e e n d o f t h e a f f a i r

figure 16 Aleksander Wat and Ola Watowa, early 1967. Reproduction by the Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

the dark stairs for the prophet Elijah, and watch greedily as a drop of wine
disappeared from the full silver jug. His father would end the seder with
the words next year in Jerusalem. He spoke with his father rarely, they
understood each other without words. When his father died it was already
the beginning of the war, Wat had ed Warsaw without saying goodbye,
now his father asked as he lay dying, Olek, Olek, where is Olek? His
uncle, the ascetic, went to Palestine; his brother and sister-in-law died in
Auschwitz. From the age of eight Wat was a Darwinist and an adamant
atheist, and would tease his nanny Anusia that people were descended
from apes, and she would answer him, then go, my little son, and climb

t h e end of the affair 353

treesAnusia, who had been killed by the Germans and whose body lay
in a common grave, after their family had always promised her a Catholic
funeral with many crosses. In Kazakhstan the only book he had had with
him was The Imitation of Christ, which some wise person had sent from
London for the Polish refugees. It was magical that he had become an
authority to the Jews in Ili, that he had raised them up in rebellionto
their own great detriment. A merchant in Ili, a religious Jew, had shyly
proposed that Wat say kaddish for his father on the Jewish New Year, and
on a small piece of paper the merchant had written out for Wat the Jewish prayer of mourning in Polish transliteration. Wat felt he had reached
the height of his religious unity, his sense of Christianity as the religion
of his Jewish ancestors. When he and Ola returned to Warsaw in 1946,
they were both ready for baptism, having come to this separately, during
their two years apart, and yet mysteriously together. Now as he was dying
his faith had left him, he knew he would be buried neither in a Christian
cemetery in Israel nor in Warsaw, and he felt the bitterness of dying in
a foreign land.94
Wat returned now to his rst poetic work, I from One Side and I from
the Other Side of My Cast-Iron Stove, written in a trance-like state of high
fever in January 1919, and taken to the printer without ever having been
read. He had written nothing before then, no poetry, only short philosophical essays in German, and Cast-Iron Stove bore traces of his reading
of Kierkegaard. It was a psychoanalytic confession of a troubled soul;
the young Wat had intended to take his own life, by the age of twentyve at the latest. Now he asked, Is it so that a young poet was the seer
of his own future fate, a prophet to whom were given words he was to
understand only in his old age, as his long life came to a close? Now he
corrected some grammatical mistakes, some words that the printer had
misread. Miosz had shrunk from Cast-Iron Stove, had said to him, but
thats art nouveau. Wat had been wounded, that piece remained close to
him. Now Wat defended Cast-Iron Stove, its subtle tricks, its innovations,
its detaching of poetic discourse and poetic syntax from rational discourse
and logical syntax, its pushing of syntax to its nal limits, beyond which
there was only gibberish; its yoking of individual sentences and words, not
on the basis of logical continuity or associations, but through an eruption
or invasion in the course of normal speechin a state of the eclipsing
of consciousness. Cast-Iron Stove was not pure nonsense, Wat now

354 t h e e n d o f t h e a f f a i r

insisted: it was not the obscuring of meaning, but rather the casting of
a beam of light on things dark by their nature.95
The erratically written pages of the last notebook told a remarkable
love story that had lasted nearly half a century. Olas love was, for Wat,
the one source of purity in his anguish-laden life. He did not believe he
had ever deserved her.96 Now in his nal pages he wrote poetry to her, for
her, about her:
The faithfulness and devotion of [my] wife
make sublime our
male debacles . . .
The purity and devotion of [my] wife
sancties existence.
On the last page, he wrote to her as if already from beyond the grave,
telling her he was better now, saying goodnight. To his daughter-in-law,
Andrzejs wife Franoise, Wat left in the pages of his last notebook a
letter in French. In it he spoke mostly about Ola, about her extraordinary strength of soul, about the miraculous way she had saved Andrzej
in Kazakhstanand had saved Wat from the seductions of power, glory,
and money. She accepted the loss of us all, Wat wrote in reference to
that April day in 1943 in the Alma-Ata prison, when honesty, dignity
demanded this sacrice. Wat feared that Franoise had misunderstood
his wife, and begged his daughter-in-law to raise his grandchildren with
love and respect for their grandmother; to do everything in her power to
prevent her husbands falling into despair; and to ensure that Andrzej
watched over his mother. I beg you, Wat wrote, I demand, I admonish
you, for the love of Godand thank God you are a believerto never lack
the supreme respect you owe to your mother-in-law, which she deserves
entirely. He concluded, Farewell, my dear ones, farewell. May you all
be happy. See to it that my wife, my light, has a sweet old age, and that
my memory does not haunt you.97

the last c h i l d r e n t o b e e at e n
Stawars were not the only ashes to be brought back to Warsaw. In Octo
ber 1964 another urn arrived, this time not from Paris but from Moscow.
Some twenty years after Alfred Lampes death, the ashes of the man who
long before had come to Polish communism from the young Zionists

t h e end of the affair 355

were brought to Warsaw for a funeral at Powzki cemetery.98 Wasilewska,

whom in December 1943 Lampes wife had summoned in desperation to
revive her husband, was no longer living. An era of Polishand PolishJewishMarxism was reaching its end. Polish communism was being
domesticated in a way the old KPP vanguard had never anticipated. Like
Wat, Broniewski, Stawar, and Deutscher, Wanda Wasilewska did not live
to see the anti-Zionist campaign of March 1968. Jakub and Adolf Berman, however, did. Even as he became Israeli, Adolf Bermans emotional
ties to Poland never faded. In the spring of 1962 he became absorbed in
planning memorial celebrations for Broniewski.99 In late 1963 he wrote
enthusiastically of a successful evening in Israel devoted to the memory
of Stefan eromski.100 Now in his old age, Adolf Berman would encounter a world that no longer had a place for those such as himself who had
remained throughout their lives committed to Jewishness, to Polishness,
to Zionism, and to Marxism.
In 1967 the outbreak of the Six-Day War became the pretext for purging the Polish military of ocers of Jewish descent. In November 1967,
a theater director staged Adam Mickiewiczs play Dziady (Forefathers
Eve); students attended the performances in large numbers, some cheering at those parts protesting the tyranny of the Russian tsar. In January
1968 the government forced the play to close. The Polish Writers Union
protested, as did the students.101 The communist authorities claimed the
demonstrations were incited by Zionist conspirators and responded with
brutal repression against the student protesters. Wadysaw Broniewski
and Janina Broniewskas granddaughter, nineteen years old and in the
last trimester of her pregnancy, was among those students chased by
troops in riot gear. When she returned home, her grandmother warned
her that she and her young husband, like the other students involved
in the protests, were merely pawns in a complicated political shoving
match in the Politburo. Janina Broniewska herself stood aside; her era
of revolution had come to an end. When one of her granddaughters
friends was arrested in March, Broniewska took into her home his infant
daughter and young wife, who had been evicted from the room where she
lived following her husbands arrest.102 The Party purged the universities
and its own ranks; at the University of Warsaw, the philosophy department was forced to close for lack of instructors. Leszek Koakowski was
among those expelled. There followed a collusion of the weltanschauung

356 t h e e n d o f t h e a f f a i r

of the antisemitic Right with the communist Party, and the popularization
of a theory of a Nazi-Zionist conspiracy. Newspaper cartoons depicted
U.S. President Lyndon Johnson joining the anti-Polish campaign led by
American Zionists; Nazis saluting Israeli tanks; and Israeli occupiers of
the Gaza Strip reading the works of Adolf Eichmann and thinking, One
should prot from experience.103 In the same speech in which he spoke
about opening the borders in order that those who regard Israel as their
homeland could leave Poland, General Secretary Gomuka cited Antoni
Sonimskis 1924 article On the Petulance of Jews as evidence of both
Sonimskis antisemitism and his lack of Polishness. Gomuka quoted
what Sonimski had written some forty-four years earlier, With my hand
on my heart I must confess that I have no national feelings at all. I dont
feel like either a Pole or a Jew. Such cosmopolitans, Gomuka went on to
announce, should avoid the kind of work for which national armation
is indispensable.104 Sonimski, for his part, was outspoken in defending
the studentsas he had been increasingly outspoken in various protests
throughout the decade. In former times this was calledydokomuna.
Now theres appeared the new concept ydoantykomuna (Jewish antiBolshevism), he commented.105
Jakub Berman, now suspected of involvement with a group espousing
Zionist-revisionist views, had become object of secret police surveillance.
A forged transcript dated April 1945 was circulated in which he allegedly
spoke of how the Jews now had the opportunity to take state power into
their own handsnot overtly, but rather from behind the scenes by
assuming Polish names and concealing their Jewish origins.106 In 1969
Jakub Berman retired from his position as editor at a publishing house.
That year Micha Mirski sent a letter to the Polish Writers Union saying
that he was endeavoring to leave the country and asking that he be removed from the list of members of the United Polish Workers Party.107
In 1963, when Tygodnik Powszechny (The Universal Weekly) agreed to
publish the initial results of Wadysaw Bartoszewskis questionnaire about
Poles who had helped to hide Jews during the Nazi occupation, Bartoszew
ski decided to conduct the research under a name taken from the title of
Sonimskis poem Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej (He is from my homeland).
This was the title under which Bartoszewskis book was published in 1967.
It sold out quickly; when the publisher requested permission for a second
printing, state authorities demanded that Bartoszewski change the title. By

f igure 17 Antoni Sonimski and his wife in Warsaw; photograph taken by a security
service informant, November 1966. Courtesy of Instytut Pamici Narodowej.

358 t h e e n d o f t h e a f f a i r

then it was 1968, Sonimski had contributed to a protest by Polish writers

and had himself become a target of Gomukas attacks. Sonimski, his
work, and even his titles were now on a blacklist.108 Bartoszewski spoke to
Sonimskiby now they had become friends; Sonimski told Bartoszew
ski to change the title and publish the book, but Bartoszewski refused,
for him it was a matter of principle. In the end the publisher supported
the author against the censors, and when the book reappeared in print in
October 1969 it was with the same titleand on the dedication page the
poem He Is from My Homeland, ending with the stanza:
He who opens his heart to all is
French when France suers is
Greek when the Greek nation withers from hunger.
He is from my homeland. He is a human being.109
It was the rst sign of Sonimskis return to print, somewhatas Bartoszewski wrotethrough the back door.110
Adolf Berman was among the contributors to He Is from My Homeland.111 In October 1968, during a trip abroad to Austria, Bartoszewski
wrote to Adolf Berman, expressing his pain and regret at the antisemitic
campaign of 1968 being conducted under the pretext of a battle against
Zionism. Nothing, he wrote, could shock him any longer.112 Ten months
later Bartoszewski wrote again from abroad, this time from London, returning to the same theme: I am getting in touch once again, taking
advantage of the occasion of being abroadthat which its possible to
write from Poland is not at all worth writing, and that which its necessary to writeis not possible to write. I send you heartfelt expressions
of remembrance and greetings together with expressions of my deepest
shame for what the communists who rule Poland are doing.113
In 1970, Adolf Bermans onetime student from before the war, Aleksander Masiewicki, contacted his former teacher after many years. Masiewicki, a Polish communist since his youth in the 1930s, was now, in
the wake of the anti-Zionist campaign, a Polish-Jewish migr in New
York. In his letter he told Adolf Berman the story of the day he returned
his Party card. It was a beautiful, sunny morning, 13 March 1968. On that
day Masiewicki looked at himself in the mirror and saw the face gazing
back at him as one of a man who in moment would take his own lifeor
hurl a bomb. It was then that he came to a Party committee meeting:

t h e end of the affair 359

In silence I placed before [the committee secretary] my Party

card together with a declaration composed earlier on a sheet of
paper saying the following: In connection with the campaign
being conducted by the Party concerning student activities, a
campaign unworthy of the great traditions of our Party and
hence villainous, I ask that you remove my name from the list
of members of the PZPR. I submitted my resignation and signature and without a word left the room of farewells in deep
silence. I felt then a tremendous relief, the nightmare that had
throttled me for many years departed. Already long ago I had
entertained the thought of nally tearing from myself that
burning shirt of Deianeira, I lived in unceasing conict with
my conscience which was choking me with disgust. The decision was a dicult one, as it meant self-annihilation, the negation of my entire life. Yet now that this was behind me, I felt
absolutely indierent as to the consequences. I could not have
acted dierently. I called my wife. I said: You can congratulate
me! She did not ask what for, at once she understood. For a
moment she was silent, then she spoke: If youve made your
decision, then good. Now its my turn!114
Adolf Berman reproached Masiewicki then for his negativism, for abandoning his faith; and Masiewicki partially concurredfor it was true that
he no longer harbored illusions that the utopia they had fought for and
dreamed of their whole lives would ever come about.115 I have my doubts,
he concluded to his former teacher, as to whether history goes on.

Epilogue

It will be like going from one room to another

like moving to another apartment
like a transfer to a neighboring town
like a journey across the ocean
like a ight to another planet
It isnt so, there will be no comparison
Neither the fate of Odysseus nor the fate of a great outcast
was I given.
Adam Wayk

wadysaw b artoszewski was in prison between 1949 and 1954,

while Adolf Berman, his old partner in egota, was apparently silent. Yet
by the time Bartoszewski was elected a senator in Poland in the 1990s,
he spoke of Adolf Berman with nostalgia rather than bitterness. Whether
he attributed Bermans silence to communist loyalty or tragic impotence,
Bartoszewski accused him of nothing: I never expected that he would
stand on his head or that he would change my fate in Poland. Yet even to
his brother I never would have turned for anything. I regard his brother
as responsible for the deaths of thousands of people: my friends and acquaintances, strangers, decent people.1 Only once did Bartoszewski meet
Adolf Bermans brother Jakub in person. It was years after Bartoszewskis
imprisonment and Jakub Bermans expulsion from the Party. There were
many times when [Adolf ] Berman came to Poland during the 60s and
70s. And even after Poland had broken o diplomatic relations with
Israel, he still came (as a trusted comrade), he would stay in a hotel, he
always called me, we always saw each other. But he never invited me to
see his family, although I knew he was in contact with them. Once he
arranged to meet with me at some kind of performance or event at the
theater. I saw him in the foyer, he was standing with his brother Jakub.
And so I hesitatedthey were talking to each other, as family, I had no
place there. But he ran over to me and said, Panie Ludwiku (as he called
360

epilogue 361

me until the end of his life), allow me to introduce my brother.2 The two
men shook hands in silence.
In an interview conducted shortly before Jakub Bermans death in
1984, Teresa Toraska asked Jakub Berman about the communists postwar persecution of egota, and specically about Bartoszewskis long
imprisonment. How was it possible that his brother said nothing then?
He only spoke about it many years later, Jakub Berman answered her.3
Toraska was on the other side of the red barricade, a member of Solidarity and the underground, bitterly resentful of the communist regime.
When in the winter of 19811982 Toraska resolved to contact Jakub Berman, Poland was under martial law and Toraska was in a state of despair.
What she demanded from Jakub Berman was an explanation: Why had
he done what he hadand caused so much suering?4 Beginning in
the summer of 1982, Toraska visited Jakub Berman every Tuesday. He
was absolutely aware, Toraska recalled, that this was his last conversation about the past. ... He was absolutely aware that he was speaking
to history.5 A curious respect grew up between them, transcending her
viciousness and his condescension. Time and again she reminded him
that he was hated in Poland. Berman was unustered. He had not done
what he had to be loved; he even accepted that he had been deleted from
the encyclopedia following his expulsion.6 This was, after all, a revolution
and not a tea party.
Jakub Berman understood that the end of his life was near, and to
the very end believed that communism would prevail, that it would bring
people a better lifeeven if he would no longer be there to see this.7 In his
unpublished memoir of the 1948 Wrocaw congress that had been Jerzy
Borejszas last great act, Berman wrote in 1978 of how lingering in his
memory were the shadows of the congresss participants, their unfullled
hopes, their dilemmas and their passions. He wrote down then some lines
from Ilya Ehrenburgs poetry:
But the long day was not lived in vain
I was able to make out the evening star.
I lived so much, but not to the end
I didnt see enough, didnt love enough.8
By then, few of his generation remained. Mieczysaw Grydzewski died

3 6 2 e p i l o g u e

in London in 1970. When the editor of a Warsaw newspaper refused to

publish Grydzewskis obituary, Sonimski called it a scandal: Grydzewski,
the devoted editor, had never even involved himself in politics, the government should have nothing against him.9 Not long afterwards, Sonimski
gave Bartoszewski a copy of his book Jedna strona medalu (One Side of
the Coin) with the dedication To him who is from my homeland.10 By
this time Sonimski had become the grand old man of the political opposition. He was continually at odds with his old friend Iwaszkiewicz, still
president of the Writers Union, whose eternally reconciliationist posture
towards the Party Sonimski found odious. Instead, he turned to younger
generations; among his most frequent interlocutors in the last decade of
his life were Bartoszewski and Adam Michnik. By this time Sonimski
was under constant surveillance by the Ministry of Internal Aairs. He
was not terribly disconcerted. After all, he said, Im no longer young,
what can they do to me?11
Among Sonimskis last dissident ventures was the December 1975
Letter of the Fifty-nine, whose signatories included Leszek Koakowski
and Julian Stryjkowski (and, the following month, Adam Wayk), protesting projected amendments to the Polish constitution that would have formalized the leading role of the Party.12 In January 1976 Sonimski gave an
interview to Les Nouvelles Littraires in which he chastised French writers
for their silence, accusing them of navet and a willful refusal to recognize the reality obtaining in the communist bloc. Bitterly Sonimski recalled how in 1956 Sartre had not wanted to see Polish writers break from
socialist realism, for fear this would weaken the socialist camp against
the United States. Freedom for him, every limitation for us! Sonimski
told his French interviewer. He believed that because French intellectuals
enjoyed freedom, they left others to their own fate, and insisted that for
the soul no borders exist, that intellectuals must speak up regardless
of the danger.13 Now Czesaw Miosz, the object of Sonimskis vicious
attack in 1951, published an open letter telling Sonimski that he had
read his truthful and acrid interview with a feeling of pride.14 Later
that same year Sonimski presented Bartoszewski with a second gift: the
original version, complete with the censors marks, of his memoir Alfabet
wspomnie (An Alphabet of Memories).15 It was among Sonimskis last
acts. In summer of 1976 he died of injuries suered in an automobile
accident. Jarosaw Iwaszkiewicz and Jakub Berman were among some

epilogue 363

eight hundred mourners at the July funeral held at a neglected Catholic

cemetery; after Sonimskis body was lowered into the ground, the mourners sang Poland has not yet perished.16 Six years later, Bartoszewski
published the censored fragments of Sonimskis Alphabet of Memories
in a Catholic journal.17
As for the others, Iwaszkiewicz remained president of the Polish Writers Union all through the 1970s. His wife Anna, the heart of their court at
Stawisko for half a century, died in late 1979. Iwaszkiewicz soon followed
her to the grave.18 This was the year of Wayks seventy-fth birthday. Jakub
Berman, so infuriated at Wayks A Poem for Adults a quarter-century
earlier, wrote to him now: For decades your writing has been interwoven
with the path of my life and my pursuits, consonantly or disconsonantly,
but always evoking response and reection.19 Berman wished Wayk a
quick return to good health. This was not to be. Wayk died in August
1982, nine months after the Party and the military had subdued the Polish
labor movement Solidarity by imposing martial law. After Wayks death,
Julian Stryjkowski told a younger writer of his days working with Wayk
at Czerwony Sztandar in Lvov: After Wats disappearance, Wayk waited
for his turn. ... I was glad that he survived. In all the long years of our
friendship I never told him that.20
Writing to her sister-in-law Seweryna Broniszwna just after Wats
suicide, Ola Watowa described her husbands last notebook: Everything
written by hand, despite his suering he wanted to preserve everything
that lived in him until the last moment. All of the faiths and disillusionments of our existence. I desire now only one thing: to manage to preserve
whats there, what he wrote up to his last moment.21 She did manage. It
was this dedication that dissuaded her from her own thoughts of suicide;
her life without her husband felt empty and devoid of meaning, it was
only a shadow of a life, as she wrote to Broniszwna.22 She lived in memories. When in May 1973 Iwaszkiewicz gave a poetry reading in Paris, Ola
Watowa was overcome by a longing for the past. The following day she
wrote to him in a ush of emotion:
Memories assailed me. Your presence, Witkacy, who bestowed
his friendship upon Aleksander, his visits to us, his portraits of
myself and Aleksanderunfortunately lost during the war
his death. ... Your home in Stawisko, your melodious voice ...

3 6 4 e p i l o g u e

I hadnt then yet met Aleksander and like a typical schoolgirl,

very shyly but spontaneously, I began to talk to you about the
beauty of Panny z Wilka [The Young Women of Wilko], about
Brzezina [Birchwood]. . . .
So many memoriesall now imbued with pain, with regret,
with longing for Aleksander.
I show to the world a smiling face. Ive learned here always to answer: a va, a va, although its so lonely and dicult,
so without hope for meas it will be now until the end of my
life and one so feels like departing and only Aleksanders un
organized paperswhich Im suering over, trying to decide
what to keep and what to throw out so as not to do him injury
give me no right to depart. And also my Andrzej.
In April I turned 70. Time has suddenly contracted and
the feeling of guilt increases. Which is good. A feeling of guilt
leavens an authentic perception of our life, our relationship to
people, to the world and its issues. And perhaps for that reason
those several nal verses concluding your poem in the March
issue of Twrczo so aected me:
Why has Golem entered my home?
Why is Mr. Hyde sitting at my desk?
Why is a demons funeral taking place outside my window?
And you end:
It all must be destroyed
Let there be a quiet beach and the complete absence of
questions.
No questions.
No questions? Is it so?23
For Ola Watowa, questionsthings unsaidremained. She regretted
having refused to talk to Wadysaw Daszewski that evening in d, she
regretted having never learned what Daszewski had to say. In the last
notebook, Wat had urged his wife to write her own story. When in her
old age, many years after his suicide, she did, she began: Everything that

epilogue 365

is most important in my life is connected to Aleksander.24 She wrote that

she would get goose bumps whenever she thought of how she might not
have been at that drama school ball, she might never have met him, and
her life would have been wasted.

Conclusion
does history go on?
All the demons took them all
demons took them all
demons took them all
Until from laughter monkeys fell
From the astral carousel.
Julian Tuwim

w h i l e t h e p o l i s h av a n t- g a r d e was all but forgotten, its Russian

counterpart, to which it was so closely tied, long received sympathetic
attention as a casualty of the Bolsheviks. As the era of East European communism came to a close, however, some studying the relationship between
the avant-garde and Stalinist culture began to question the formers presumed innocence. The Russian artist Boris Groys indicts the avant-garde,
even while empathetically conveying its philosophy: If the avant-garde
followed Nietzsches maxim to the eect that what was falling should still
be pushed, it was only because it was deeply convinced that the fall could
not be broken. The avant-garde regarded the destruction of the divine
work of art that had been the world as an accomplished and irreversible
fact whose consequences had to be interpreted as radically as possible if
any compensation were to be made for the loss. It was the avantgardists
who rst recognized the navet of the notion that art is independent of
power. It was they who created the precedent for conceiving of art as the
will to power, they who were the rst to be enraptured by the violation of
thresholds and the pursuit of liminality. Later, Groys argues, Bolshevik
elites formulated socialist realism in the name of the masses, having
come to socialist realism through the avant-garde. The Stalinist era then
consummated this fundamental avant-garde demand that art cease rep366

conclusion 367

resenting life and begin transforming it by means of a total aestheticopolitical project.1

The fatal step was thus not the imposition of Marxism per se, but
rather the leap from art as representation to art as transformation. The
Bolsheviks realized the implications of such a crossing, but it was the
avantgardists who rst transgressed the boundary. Mayakovsky was often quoted as saying that art was not a mirror to reect the world, but a
hammer with which to shape it. Art as representing life came to be seen
by both the avantgardists and the Bolsheviks as a bourgeois aesthetic, a
stark contrast to the revolutionary aesthetic of art as building life. It was
the avantgardists who rst embodied the drive to separate space like time
into the old and the new, with a beginning in black chaos, at absolute
zero, where God was dead. For Groys, Stalinist aesthetics were the logical
culmination of the program the avant-garde had set in motion: Stalinist
culture both radicalizes and formally overcomes the avant-garde; it is, so
to speak, a laying bare of the avant-garde and not merely a negation of it.
Moreover, the Russian avant-garde was complicitous in the appropriation
of its ideas by the Bolsheviks, since the central issue to these artists was
the unitary nature of the politico-aesthetic project.2
In June 1965 Stefan Kordian Gacki, once the editor of the avant-garde
Almanach Nowej Sztuki, wrote to Aleksander Wat from the United States.
He had been reecting on the causes of what Wat had called the sinking
into the sand of their generation:
I agree with your evaluation: we were kids, we lacked craftsmanship, patience. ... But literary shortcomings and personal
faults dont explain in full what happened. The fascinating
question remains: Where did we get an intuition of todays
man? What inclined so many to search for salvation in the
womb of reactionary Moscow? The answer must embrace the
fact that Poland at that time strayed from the remainder of the
West in its understanding of social problems, in science and
technology, and in imagination. But even thatwhile fascinating for us, and perhaps as well for historians of those times
would not adequately justify taking up (by myself as well) this
question at this moment. ... In other words, it seems to me

3 6 8 c o n c l u s i o n

that the conict between ourselves and Skamander from the

1920s (and everything connected with it: the role of poetry,
its scope, its vision of the world) is to this day unresolved.3
How was it that this generation of avant-garde poets of the early 1920s
became the revolutionary Marxists of the late 1920s? How did they make
the leap from radical nihilism and radical contingency to radical utopian
ism and radical determinism? They bore some of the qualities of their
west European counterparts, the generation of 1914 who harbored the
conviction that they represented the future in the present.4 The future
was everything because the old world, they deeply believed, was spiraling into an irrevocable abyss. A philosophy of despairwhat Wat called
that entire ballast of weltschmerzpenetrated Polish futurism, as did
the poets painful awareness of their alienation from, and ostracism by,
the amorphous masses.5 At a moment of historical optimism and faith
in national self-determination, the young avantgardists were deeply persuaded that life could not continue as it hadbut they embraced this
conviction more with a sense of impending catastrophe than with hope
for a hereafter. Ultimately their nihilism proved unbearable, their belief
in radical contingency existentially unsustainable. Wat came to see his
inability to endure nihilism as the fatal weakness that propelled him towards communism.6 Adolf Warskis great-grandson Stanisaw Krajewski
writes of Wat and his contemporaries: They found themselves in a void,
without footing, because they had already undermined everything. But
that emptiness, anarchy, senselessness, they could not endure, and just
then they made the jump from the kingdom of freedom to the kingdom
of necessity.7 The catastrophism of the 1920s arose from this sense of a
void, an abyss of nothingness, the degeneration of civilization; the simultaneous utopianism and catastrophism of the 1930s arose from a sense
of impending horror, the rise of fascismand of Stalinism. Wat and his
friends engagement was a desperate ight from their nihilism, a revolt
against it, and yet at once a desperate attempt to sustain a state of dizzying
liminality. Together with the inability to endure nihilism and contingency
was a certain impulse towards transgression, a desire to maintain the
headiness of it all, to remain on the edge, hovering at the thresholdonly
now with a certainty as to what fantastic things would materialize on the
other side.

conclusion 369

Wat believed that the choices were few, and it is true that as the inter
war years wore on the spectrum of choices appeared ever more circumscribed.8 In a polarizing political spectrum, the Right was becoming more
radical, the Left was becoming more radical, and the center was rapidly
disappearing. For Poles of Jewish origin, there was no place on the
Right. Yet such a pragmatic conceptualization perhaps fails to capture the
zeitgeist, the existential imperative to make a choice, to take some decisive
action as a means of realizing oneself. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht invokes
the German word Tat for such direct action in the 1920s: Taten do not
emanate from principles of legitimacy or from generally acceptable reasons. ... The individual strength of those who act lies not in rationality,
but in their determination to do whatever they intuitively encounter and
identify as an absolute, fated obligation. Once they make such eminently
subjective decisions, the agents subjecthood, paradoxically, is absorbed
in an overwhelming ow of vitality.9 Revolution, as Witold Wandurskis
correspondence with Wadysaw Broniewski of the 1920s expressed so
forcefully, was above all a grasping at self-actualizationthat this was to
be achieved through self-negation made it no less true.
Remembering how, at a party in the 1920s, her husband watched
as Isaac Deutscher pulled her onto his lap, Ola Watowa wrote, So that
drama, as they say, of a communist began very early, some kind of maso
chistic self-annihilation, in the name of what?10 Her observation of maso
chistic self-annihilation speaks not only to the role of Marxist intellectuals
vis--vis the proletarian revolution, but also to Slavoj ieks observation
about the diering natures of Stalinist and fascist totalitarianism: After
the Fascist Leader nishes his public speech and the crowd applauds,
the Leader acknowledges himself as the addressee of the applause (he
stares at a distant point, bows to the public, or something similar), while
the Stalinist leader (for example, the general secretary of the Party, after
nishing his report to the congress) stands up himself and starts to applaud.
This change signals a fundamentally dierent discursive position: the
Stalinist leader is also compelled to applaud, since the true addressee of
the peoples applause is not himself, but the big Other of History whose
humble servant he is.11 The distinction is a meaningful one. The Frankfurt School theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer attempted to
draw a line between Enlightenment and totalitarianism. Inherent in the
Enlightenment, they maintained, was the sacrice of the self to the self,

3 7 0 c o n c l u s i o n

the surrendering of subjectivity as a means of achieving subjectivity.12 A

Marxist understanding of the fulllment of subjectivity is oneness with
objectivity, with the grand narrative, with the momentum of History. For
the poets of Caf Ziemiaska and their friends, the desire to become one
with History was at once the fulllment of their narcissism, their altruism,
and their self-hatredall extreme, sincere, inextricably intertwined.
Their rendezvous with Marxism was not simplyor not onlyan
extension of the liberalism and the leftism that might seem a natural
emanation of their cosmopolitanism. For in opting for Marxism they opted
for determinism, and hence a radical transformation of responsibility, a
wholly dierent moral standpoint from that of an intellectual in a contingent world. Now as Marxist intellectuals they were to play out in a
particularly poignant way the tension between telos and subjectivityor
rather, between fate and individual agencyinherent in their experience
of modernity. The burden of responsibility was all the heavier because
of the enormous role of intellectuals, and the extraordinary resonance of
poetry, in their world. When Jakub Berman wrote in 1980 that Tuwims
poetry would continue to accompany them all, he was very much correctas were Tuwim and his friends when they sat in Caf Ziemiaska
and truly believed that the world moved on what they discussed there.13 In
a sense, it did. Wats recantation of futurism on the pages of Miesicznik
Literacki was a step towards the communist art of self-criticism, which
the poets would eventually embrace. The preoccupation with criticism
and self-criticism that emerged on the pages of Miesicznik Literacki was
something they learned before socialist realismand something much
more fundamental to their Marxist consciousness.
The communist ritual of self-criticism reveals Marxisms origins in
the rationality of the Enlightenment on one hand, and in modernitys
emphasis on linear temporality on the other. When Robespierre declared
that we have raised the temple of liberty with hands still withered by the
irons of despotism, he encapsulated a problem that would be fundamental to Marxism as well: how was it possible to move from the old world to
the new world when the makers of the new world were always already
contaminated by having been born into the old?14 The Marxist intellectuals
in Poland, as elsewhere, were aicted with a subjectivity a priori made
impure by their origins in the bourgeois world. Self-criticism responded
to this existential condition of revolution and revolutionariesan ex-

conclusion 371

istential condition these intellectuals felt with particular intensity. This

new language of self-criticism was predicated on the condemnation of
the subjective in favor of the objectiveand in fact self-criticism tended
to be directed at ones failure to recognize objective truth, that is, a failure to align oneself with the inevitable direction of History. If their early
self-hatred was expressed in a drowning confusion, self-criticism was its
complement: a confession of past uncertainty as sin, spoken from the
position of having achieved that certainty. That constant vigilance was
necessary in order to safeguard what was ostensibly an inexorable path
towards communism alluded to a fear that perhaps the iron laws of History were subject to some contingency after all.15
Self-criticism was one instance revealing the complicated interaction
between the individual and collective levels of the communist project.
Another such instance is what Jan T. Gross in his book on the Soviet
occupation of Polands eastern territories describes as the privatization
of the public sphere. Unlike Wats and Broniewskis rst experience of
prison in Warsaw in 1931, their rst experience of Soviet prison was one
of collaboration and betrayal. For those like Wat, Broniewski, Stern, and
Wayk, newly Soviet Lvov was their rst real encounter with communism in power, a communism much dierent from the one they had
imagined in Caf Ziemiaska and on the pages of Miesicznik Literacki.
Here was a communism in which close friends betrayed one another, a
communism not devoid of the grotesque. Gross contextualizes this new
form of engagement in a regime that believed that the population must
subdue itself and that with a little encouragement it generally would.16
He argues that the essence of Soviet totalitarianism in this case lay not in
the obliteration of the private sphere but rather in the privatization of the
public sphere. The result was a society in which everyone had immediate
access to the apparatus of the state and was encouraged to use it against
one another. Denunciations were integral because the real power of a
totalitarian state, Gross writes, results from its being at the disposal of
every inhabitant, available for hire at a moments notice. As a result the
distinction was lost between those responsible for and those subject to
public order.17 The eacing of the distinction between public and private
came together with the eacing of the distinction between victim and
oppressor. This period saw the great fall of people like Aleksander Wat,
Anatol Stern, Tadeusz Peiper, and Wadysaw Broniewski, and at once

3 7 2 c o n c l u s i o n

the great rise of Jerzy Borejsza, Adam Wayk, Janina Broniewska, and
Wanda Wasilewskawho herself was not protected from the murder of
her husband. No position was a stable one.
That a private space was never obliterated is revealed as well by the
surviving photographs of Wanda Wasilewska. In some she wears a colonels uniform, a mans tie, her hair cropped short. In another she is holding a cigarette, glancing back over her shoulder, looking beautiful and not
unlike a young Margaret Hamilton.18 After Wasilewskas death, Janina
Broniewska wrote, In my home there remain her books, her furniture,
and so very often I have the impression that she still lives. I know the beating of Wandas heart, I know her personal aairs. It was proposed to me
that I write her biography, but I couldnt do it. Shes just too close.19 Later
Broniewska would emphasize that family members, sisters, do not choose
one another, whereas theirs was a love by choice.20 In her memoirs she
referred often to the private language she and Wasilewska shared, with
phrases sometimes appropriated from their enemies and used mockingly;
their correspondence often reads as if encrypted. Theirs was a relationship
revealing that the private sphere, even under communist totalitarianism,
and even among communists, was never entirely eclipsed. These women
were comrades in political battle, but also intimate friends who spoke to
each another in a language clearly departing from a communist idiom
that was their public language.
The observation speaks as well to the young Wadysaw Broniewski,
who in the 1920s was writing proletarian poetry in a new language of
battle and letters to Janina Kunig in a language of premodern chivalry.
As with the two women, Broniewskis multilingualism ran deep. In fact
it is so that among all of these gures an internal polyphony of voices
never disappeared. Throughout his life, Broniewski maintained perhaps
four great passions: for women, for poetry, for Poland, and for socialism.
Their accompanying discoursesromantic and literary, patriotic, and
communistwhile sometimes distinct, nonetheless coexisted even in
the most improbable, and inauspicious, circumstances. So did Wats love
for his wife transcend all of his ideological choiceseven at the height
of his communist engagement, he rejected Isaac Deutschers accusation
that he was harboring foolish bourgeois prejudices and whisked Ola from
Deutschers lap. Theirs was a love story.
Janina Broniewska and Wanda Wasilewska embodied as well a seem-

conclusion 373

ingly improbable yoking of extreme harshness with extreme sentimentality. Both came to be despised in Poland as traitors who ushered Stalinism
into Poland, who sold their homeland to the Soviets. And so it was. Perhaps it is even true that Wanda Wasilewska was Stalins lover as well as his
condante. Yet this makes her relationship with Janina Broniewska no less
moving in its undying aection, no less persuasive in its claims of loyalty.
I kiss you (in our younger years one would write: a hundred thousand, a
million times), Wasilewska wrote to Broniewska from Kiev in 1948.21 It is
among the ironies of their circle and their times that the language of their
correspondence is reminiscent of a Victorian friendship between women
a pastiche of love, sensuality, sexuality, and romanticism in which all
those elements are no less poignant for being amorphous, entangled.22 To
neither one of these women should be ascribed an idealized Victorian-era
innocence (with respect to sexuality or otherwise), yet neither can they
be understood in monovalentor exclusively politicalterms. In her
relationship with Janina Broniewska, Wanda Wasilewska proved capable
of an unusual, and very sincere, loyalty and human aection. This excuses nothing, of course, yet it does oer another picture of those circles
and those times. Their friendship, moreover, revealed a space within the
Revolution for embracing the varied meanings of femininity. While Wanda
Wasilewska might have been masculine to her male comrades, she was
always a woman to Janina.
The stories of these two women and their friends reveal the complexity of human identity, and the extraordinary complexity of human relationships. For all of these gures, identity was not an essence, but rather
an ever-shifting process, a contingent choice, the contours of which were
continually in ux.23 A reality of underdetermination always obtained.
Like the Berman family, the families of both Stryjkowski and Wayk were
split between communism and Zionism, a potent testimony to the space
for making choices. Most of these intellectuals came of age in what was at
a minimum a Russian-Polish bicultural space, and most often a RussianPolish-Jewish tricultural space. This was true even for many of those not
of Jewish origin. Broniewski was quickly taken in by the Polish Jews
in Palestine; his identication with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was an
expression of his Polishness, a Polishness that contained a nontrivial
element of Polish-Jewishness as well. Wasilewska absorbed the Jewish
references around her, this was part of her milieu as a writer, a socialist,

3 7 4 c o n c l u s i o n

an activist, a Pole. Later she embraced a Soviet identity, an identity that

was sometimes more and sometimes less a Ukrainian one.
For all of them, notions such as Polishness and Jewishness were far
from monolithic and mutually exclusive; and the question of whether
writers like Julian Tuwim, Antoni Sonimski, and Aleksander Wat should
be read as Poles or read as Jews obscures the polyvalence and the
uidity of their sense of self. They identied in dierent ways and in
dierent roles at dierent moments in their liveschoices that at each
moment were contingent upon their memories of the past, their position in the present, their vision of the future. Stryjkowski grew up trilingual in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Polish; like so many others, he had been
a young Zionist before he became a communist, and he may well have
remained a Zionist had it not been for a personal rejection. In some way
Stryjkowski never recovered from having been cast out of his Zionist
youth groupby adolescent boys who sensed his homosexuality and felt
uncomfortable around him.24 Of his communist years Stryjkowski wrote
that he ceased to feel like either a Jew or a Pole, and became rather a
cosmopolitanwho defended himself against his doubleJewish and
Polishsentimentality.25
Tuwims coming to Jewishness converged with his coming to communism, while Wats longings to return to Judaism converged with his
sense that his engagement in communism was his greatest sin. Even as
he delved further into the religion of his ancestors, Wat employed the
same antisemitic epithet, gudaj (kike), that Wandurski had used with
Broniewski in the 1920s in reference to Wat and his friends.26 Tuwim,
having spent the interwar years unyielding in his conviction that he was
a Pole, became in wartime exile a Polish Jew longing to return to Poland.
He insisted that the blood eecting this solidarity was not the blood of his
own origins, but rather the blood spilled by those Jews who were murdered
in his country. In He is from My Homeland, Sonimski echoed this
identication with the one who suers. After the war he wrote a poignant
elegy to the Jewish shtetl that was no more, lamenting the destruction of
the same world whose existence he had assailed in the interwar years.27
To categorize gures such as Wat, Tuwim, and Sonimski as self-hating
Jews would obscure the extent to which their antisemitism was inseparable from their all-encompassing self-hatred, and the extent to which
this was inseparable from their narcissism. Adam Wayk called Wat the

conclusion 375

most disintegrated individual I ever met in my life.28 Perhaps this was

true, but it was also true that Wat was the most introspective of all of
them. At the end of his life, he wrote that he had never felt himself to be
a Polish Jew or a Jewish Pole, but rather had always been both a Pole and
a Jewtwo identities in which he had always taken pride, and of which
he had always despaired.29
As socialist realism shifted into the past, the coming of existentialismwith its insistence that existence precedes essenceinto literary
circles brought with it an increasing self-consciousness of the role of
choice. When Stern discovered the letter Barbusse had written in 1929
protesting Jasieskis expulsion from France, Stern wondered if Jasieski
had known of it. He wondered further: if Jasieski had known of it, would
he have softened his attack on Barbusse two years later at the writers
congress in Kharkov? Or by that time was there nothing that would have
restrained Jasieski in his pursuit of the idea to which he had given himself?30 Sterns wife, Alicja Sternowa, had similar thoughts. At times she
and her husband had been very poor, at times very rich, at times entirely
isolated, at times surrounded by friends. Our life is composed of individual artistic adventures, she wrote, everything in it conditioned by what
impassioned Anatol at a given moment.31 Wat, too, at the end of his life
described the moment of his engagement with communism in similar
terms: But you know, that was a certain central moment in my life, the
moment of choice that created all the consequences. ... But mine was a
pure choice, subjective, not especially conditioned by anything outside my
own will, my own outlook, my own sense of the world, my own spiritual
needs. Do you understand? It was a free, pure choice!32 Wayk agreed,
noting after Wats death that while fate had been harsh towards Wat, Wat
had done his part to assist fate.33 In turn, Wat remained unconvinced that
Wayks Stalinism was an exercise in self-delusion in the interests of either
comfort or opportunismsuch an explanation, Wat insisted, explained
nothing.34 This also held true for others. Among the communists I knew,
Wat related in his memoirs, were some of the most attractive people I
have ever met, people whose motives were incredibly pure. They made
their choice with intentions that were pureI would use that monstrous
distinctionsubjectively pure. Objectively, they made a choice for Stalin.35 After the war, while Wat suered from the memory of Miesicznik
Literacki as his greatest sin, Stanisaw Wygodzki described to Tadeusz

3 7 6 c o n c l u s i o n

Borowski the Miesicznik Literacki period as the most beautiful years of

his youth, years that belonged to Broniewski, to Stande, to Wat.36
In the end, the subjects of this book lived their lives ensconced in angst,
the creators as well as the victims of tragic fate. And here tragic must perhaps be understood in its nonclassical meaning of the 1920sthat is, not
as that which was preordained by the gods and wrought through the tragic
aws of heroes, but rather as the preservation of the beauty of a disastrous
action.37 They suered all the more painfully for their self-consciousness
of the tension between subjectivity and telos.38 They suered intensely
personally as well, by the force of their private relationships. Together
they experienced Mayakovskys 1927 visit as the ecstatic beginning of the
Revolution, the new worldyet in fact it was the climax, the beginning
of the end. For these writers, faith and betrayal referred not only to Marxist ideology, but more poignantly to Mayakovsky, the greatest of all their
loves. The choices they made to opt for Marxism framed their lives. They
were a particularly sad generation, pursued in their old age by a demon
of communism, who haunted their old city, burnt to ashes by Nazis and
now rebuilt with Stalinist architecture. All of them died consumed by their
pasts. Ultimately these poets were destroyed by Marxism, by the choices
they made to embrace Marxism. Their story contains no possibility of an
aesthetically pleasing ending. They did not become revisionist Marxists,
they did not try to sift through the layers of Stalin, then Lenin, and return
to Marx. They were too old, too crushed; this was left for the next generation, the generation of Leszek Koakowski.39 For the Polish generation
born at the n de sicle, the young avant-garde poets of the 1920s, after
Marxism there was nothing.
Years after Wat had taken his own life, when Ola Watowa had long been
living in Paris, she went to Warsaw and paid a visit to Adam Wayk, by
then an old man and the last of his avant-garde circle among the living.
Like Sonimski, Wayk had become the object of government surveillance.
In the 1960s and 1970s, informers noted that he corresponded with the
migr Poles in Paris who published Kultura; that he met with Leszek
Koakowski for coee; that he was somehow involved in Sonimskis dissident plots.40 This was all true, yet unlike Sonimski, Wayk was broken and
passive. Now as soon as Ola sat down in his apartment, Wayk hastened
to remind her that he had also once been a Stalinist. I know, I know,

conclusion 377

she answered.41 She had not forgotten. The guilt was not the only source
of pain. The Polish PEN Club had recently dedicated an evening to the
French futurist Apollinaire; Wayk had not been invited. I was the rst
one in Poland to translate Apollinaire, he told her, and they didnt even
invite me to say a few words.

notes

The following abbreviations are used in the notes.

AAN
Archiwum Akt Nowych, Warsaw
AABB
Abraham A. Berman Bequest, Diaspora Research Institute, Tel Aviv
ADH
Archiwum Dokumentacji Historycznej Polskiej Rzeczypospolitej
Ludowej, Warsaw
AM
Arkhiv Maiakovskogo, Moscow
AW
Archiwum Wschodnie, Warsaw
AWPB
Aleksander Wat Papers, Uncat MS Vault 526, Beinecke Rare Book
and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven
BJSW
Krzysztof Jaworski, ed., Bruno Jasieski w sowieckim wizieniu:
Aresztowanie, wyrok, mier (Kielce: Wysza Szkoa Pedagogiczna
im. Jana Kochanowskiego, 1995)
IPN
Instytut Pamici Narodowej, Warsaw
KWB
Feliksa Lichodziejewska, ed., Od bliskich i dalekich: Korespondencja
do Wadysawa Broniewskiego, vols. I and II (Warsaw: PIW, 1981)
LPP
Julian Tuwim, Listy do przyjaci-pisarzy, ed. Tadeusz Januszewski
(Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1979)
MB
Muzeum Broniewskiego, Warsaw
MieL
Miesicznik Literacki
ML
Muzeum Literatury, Warsaw
PAN
Archiwum Polskiej Akademii Nauk, Warsaw
RGALI
Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Literatury i Iskusstva, Moscow
RGASPI
Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsialno-politicheskoi Istorii,
Moscow

379

380 n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 3
TsDAMLM
WAS
WJT
WL
WWW
IH

Tsentralnyi Derzhavnyi Arkhiv-Muzei Literatury i Mystetstva

Ukrany, Kiev
Pawe Kdziela and Artur Midzyrzecki, eds., Wspomnienia
o Antonim Sonimskim (Warsaw: Biblioteka Wizi, 1996)
Wanda Jedlicka and Marian Toporowski, eds., Wspomnienia
o Julianie Tuwimie (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1963)
Wiadomoci Literackie
Eleanora Syzdek, ed., Wanda Wasilewska we wspomnieniach
(Warsaw: Ksika i Wiedza, 1982)
Archiwum ydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego, Warsaw

introduction
Epigraph: Aleksander Wat, My Century: The Odyssey of a Polish Intellectual,
trans. Richard Lourie (New York: Norton, 1988), 5. The English version,
beautifully translated by Richard Lourie, is signicantly abbreviated from
the original two volumes published in Polish. I will reference Louries translation when possible, and when citing passages not included in the English
version will use my own translations.
1. Adolf Warski, Stanowisko Ry Luksemburg wobec taktycznych problemw
rewolucji, in Wybr pism i przemwie, vol. II (Warsaw: Ksika i Wiedza,
1958), 149. Adolf Warski (18681937) was a co-founder of the Social Democratic Party of Poland and Lithuania as well as a leader of the interwar Communist Party of Poland (KPP).
2. Leszek Hajdukiewicz to Celina Budzyska, 23 February 1966, Cracow, 9889,
AAN. On introducing Warski to his future wife: Wadysaw Krajewski (son of
Zoa Warska), interview, 28 July 2003, Warsaw.
3. Wat, My Century, 293.
4. Julian Tuwim, Wspomnienia o odzi, WL 33 (12 August 1934): 11.
5. See Janusz Maciejewski, introduction to Mieczysaw Braun, Mieczysaw
Braun: Wybr poezji (Warsaw: PIW, 1979), 10.
6. See Brian Porter, When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics
in Nineteenth-Century Poland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 212.
On interwar Polish politics, see Antony Polonsky, Politics in Independent Poland: The Crisis of Constitutional Government (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972).
7. C. Budzyska, Stanisaw Ryszard Stande: Poetadziaaczkomunista,
9889, AAN; Wadysaw Krajewski (son of Zoa Warska), interview, 28 July
2003, Warsaw.
8. Copy of article by Antoni Sonimski for Jerzy Turowicz, editor of Tygodnik
Powszechny, postmarked 20 May 1975, in Operacyjne rozpoznanie Antoniego Sonimskiego, 19551976, 0204/1203/t-11, IPN.
9. Aleksander Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek (London: Polonia, 1986), 184.
10. On the Polish-Soviet War and its relationship to Pisudskis understanding of
the Polish nation, see Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland,
Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus 15691999 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).

n otes to pages 310 38 1

11. Mieczysaw Braun entered the army after completing secondary school in
1920; he was wounded seriously on 19 August 1920. Janusz Maciejewski,
introduction to Braun, Mieczysaw Braun, 13.
12. Quoted in Czeslaw Milosz, The History of Polish Literature (London:
Macmillan, 1969), 385.
13. Tony Judt, Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 19441956 (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1992), 38.
14. Isaac Deutscher, The Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays (London: Oxford
University Press, 1968).
15. I tell the story of the Berman brothers in more detail in Marci Shore, Children of the Revolution: Communism, Zionism, and the Berman Brothers,
Jewish Social Studies 10:3 (spring/summer 2004): 2386.
16. While Michel Foucaults name does not appear in the chapters that follow,
his observations about the nature of poweremanating not from a single
point downwards but rather omnipresent, radically dispersed, implicit in
all relationscomprise an ever-present subtext in my reading of the past.
I owe much as well to recent Soviet historiographythat which I would call
postrevisionist, embodying a kind of neototalitarian school synthesis of
Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucaultespecially that by Stephen Kotkin,
Igal Haln, Jochen Hellbeck, Eric Naiman, Peter Holquist, and Amir Weiner,
who examine the ways in which Stalinism ultimately was as creative (in the
nonnormative sense of the word) as it was repressive.
17. I owe much here to Mikhail Bakhtins notions of polyphony and dialogism.
18. See Arthur Koestler et al., The God that Failed, ed. R. H. S. Crossman
(London: Hamish Hamilton, 1950).
19. Julien Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals, trans. Richard Aldington
(New York: Norton, 1969).
20. Judt, Past Imperfect, 11.
21. Ibid., 38.
22. These pseudonyms refer to Jerzy Andrzejewski, Tadeusz Borowski, Jerzy
Putrament, and Konstanty Ildefons Gaczyski, respectively.
23. Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind, trans. Jane Zielonko (New York: Vintage
Books, 1981).
24. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning,
and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994).
25. Wat, My Century, 16.
26. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language,
trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 235.
chapter 1. once upon a time, in a caf called ziemiaska
Epigraph: Vladimir Maiakovskii, Oblako v shtanakh, in Vladimir Maiakovskii (Saint Petersburg: Diamant, 1998), 70.
1. Mieczysaw Grydzewski, Listy do Tuwima i Lechonia (19401943), ed. Janusz
Stradecki (Warsaw: PIW, 1986); Janina Broniewska, Maje i listopady (Warsaw:

382 n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 0 15

2.
3.
4.

5.
6.

7.
8.

9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.

18.
19.
20.

21.

22.

Iskry, 1967), 157; Ola Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze (Warsaw: Czytelnik,

1990), 13.
Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 13.
Czeslaw Milosz, The History of Polish Literature (London: Macmillan, 1969),
385386.
On Grydzewski see Antoni Sonimski, Alfabet wspomnie (Warsaw: PIW,
1975), 7072. On Tuwim and Esperanto, see R. B. [Roman Brandstaetter],
Rozmowa z Julianem Tuwimem, in Rozmowy z Tuwimem, ed. Tadeusz
Januszewski (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Semper, 1994), 2731,
from Gazeta Literacka 6 (15 March 1927).
WJT, 1416, 176, 435436, 446.
Aleksander Wats original surname was Chwat, later shortened to Wat.
Jarosaw Iwaszkiewicz, Listy z Ostrowa (Ostrw Wielkopolski: Muzeum
Miasta Ostrowa Wielkopolskiego, 1991), 22.
Jarosaw Iwaszkiewicz, Tolek, in WAS, 55.
Ibid., 58. On Sonimskis rst meeting with Jan Lecho: Antoni Sonimski,
Kroniki tygodniowe 19271939, ed. Wadysaw Kopaliski (Warsaw: PIW,
1956), 214.
Tadeusz Peiper, Zakoczenie, in Tdy Nowe usta (Cracow: Wydawnictwo
Literackie, 1972), 312.
Wadysaw Broniewski, Pamitnik 19181922 (Warsaw: PIW, 984), 280.
C. Budzyska, Stanisaw Ryszard Stande: Poetadziaaczkomunista,
9889, AAN.
Stanisaw Ryszard Stande, Anketa, 495/123/212, RGASPI.
WJT, 173.
WJT, 173.
Krzywicka, Nasza przyja trwaa p wieku, in WAS, 104.
Irena Krzywicka, Wyznania gorszycielki (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1998), 100101,
272.
Aleksander Wat, My Century: The Odyssey of a Polish Intellectual, trans. Richard Lourie (New York: Norton, 1988), 115116; Aleksander Wat, Dziennik bez
samogosek (London: Polonia, 1986), 183196.
Aleksander Wat, Mj wiek: Pamitnik mwiony, 2 vols. (Warsaw: Czytelnik,
1998), vol. I, 59.
Wayk, Przeczytaem Mj wiek, Puls 34 (1987): 53.
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Destruction of Syntax, Imagination without
Strings, Words-in-Freedom, Futurist Manifestos, ed. Umbro Apollonio
(New York: Viking Press, 1973), 104.
Aleksander Wat, JA z jednej strony a JA z drugiej strony mego
mopsoelaznego piecyka, in Poezje, ed. Anna Miciska and Jan Zieliski
(Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1997), 332.
Bruno Schulz (18921942) was among the most talented Polish short story
writers and visual artists of the interwar years. His stories reected life in the
Jewish quarter of his Galician hometown of Drohobycz/Drohobych (which

n o tes to pages 1 5 20 383

23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.

29.

30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.

39.
40.
41.
42.

belonged to the Austrian empire before the First World War and to Poland
in the interwar years, and is presently part of Ukraine). Schulz, a Polish Jew,
was murdered by the Gestapo in Drohobycz in 1942. Wat, Zeszyt ostatni,
Box 4, AWPB; Krzywicka, Wyznania gorszycielki, 272. See also Tomas Venclova, Aleksander Wat: Life and Art of an Iconoclast (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 4568; and Bogdana Carpenter, The Poetic Avant-Garde in
Poland, 19181939 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1983), 6475.
Stanisaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (18851939), known as Witkacy, was a novelist,
playwright, philosopher and painter. See Daniel Gerould, Witkacy: Stanislaw
Ignacy Witkiewicz as an Imaginative Writer (Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1981).
Wat, My Century, 208.
Krzywicka, Wyznania gorszycielki, 274.
Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 910.
Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 195; Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 5152.
Stefan Napierski, Ciekawy debjut poetycki, WL 39 (28 September 1924): 4.
See Czesaw Miosz, inne abecado (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1998),
69. Saul Wagman became a leading gure in the Polish-language Jewish
newspaper Nasz Przegld (Our Review).
Jerzy Jasieski, Wspomnienia o Brunonie Jasieskim, 1963, 15523/II, Dzia
Rkopisw Biblioteki im. Ossoliskich, Wrocaw. Also see Krzysztof Jaworski, Kilka przyczynkw do biograi Brunona Jasieskiego, Kieleckie Studia
Filologiczne 8 (1994): 4760.
Anatol Stern, Bruno Jasieski (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1969), 2324.
Piotr Mitzner, mier futurysty, Karta 11 (1993): 61.
Jan Brzkowski, Droga poetycka Brunona Jasieskiego, Kultura [Paris] 4
(April 1956): 100.
Wat, My Century, 5.
Cmentarz mojej matki, in Anatol Stern, Poezje 19181968 (Warsaw: PIW,
1969), 116118.
Stern and Wat, GGA, in Antologia polskiego futuryzmu i Nowej Sztuki, ed.
Helena Zaworska (Wrocaw: Zakad Narodowy im. Ossoliskich, 1978), 3.
Ibid., 56.
Ibid., 6.
D. Burlyuk, A. Kruchenykh, V. Mayakovsky, and V. Khlebnikov, A Slap in the
Face of Public Taste, in Russian Literature of the Twenties: An Anthology, ed.
Carl R. Proer et al. (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1987), 542.
On Sterns Nagi czowiek w rdmieciu: Adam Wayk, Dziwna historia
awangardy (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1976), 48.
Jarosaw Iwaszkiewicz, Ksika moich wspomnie (Cracow: Wydawnictwo
Literackie, 1968), 231232.
Anatol Stern, Poezja zbuntowana (Warsaw: PIW, 1964), 52; Wayk, Dziwna
historia awangardy, 54.
Peiper, Zakoczenie, in Tdy Nowe usta, 313314.

384 n o t e s t o p a g e s 2 0 25
43. Bruno Iasenskii, Aleksander Vat, and Anatol Stern to Vladimir Maiakovskii,
Warsaw, 1 July 1921, 2852/1/599, RGALI.
44. Zbigniew Jarosiski, Wstp, Antologia polskiego futuryzmu, lxix.
45. See Tadeusz Peiper, Miasto. Masa. Maszyna, Zwrotnica 2 (July 1922): 2331.
46. Quoted in Jarosiski, Wstp, lxxiv.
47. Bruno Jasieski, Futuryzm Polski (bilans), Zwrotnica 6 (1923): 177181.
48. Karol Irzykowski, Likwidacja futuryzmu, WL 5 (3 February 1924): 1.
49. Reprinted in WJT. Pod Pikadorem is spelled sometimes with a c and sometimes with a k. On this early period of the Skamander poets, see Wanda
Nowakowska, Lecho i Tuwimdzieje przyjani, Prace Polonistyczne 51
(1996): 237247.
50. WJT, 446448.
51. Quoted in Milosz, History of Polish Literature, 385386.
52. Stern, Bruno Jasieski, 15.
53. Stanislaw Baranczak, Skamander after Skamander: The Postwar Path of the
Prewar Polish Pleiade, Cross Currents 9 (1990): 331.
54. Wayk, Dziwna historia awangardy, 38.
55. See, for example, Nowy manifest Marinettiego, WL 18 (4 May 1924): 1; and
Wiktor Szkowskij, WL 21 (25 May 1924).
56. Tomas Venclova names Jan Lecho as the instigator in Aleksander Wat, 30. In
his own account, however, Wat speaks only of jeden z poetw przeciwnego
obozu, mocno juz wwczas zaawansowany w karjerze antyszambrowej
(one of the poets of the opposing camp, already powerfully advanced in his
career of dancing attendance). See Wat, Wspomnienie o Futuryzmie, MieL
2 (January 1930): 76.
57. The booklet made fun of Skamander as well as the futurists themselves.
A stanza in ydek-Literat begins Aleksander Wat / Komu imi skrad / Kto
spojrzy na niego / Ten widzi Mojszego. Anatol Stern, Wiersze zebrane, vol. I,
ed. Andrzej K. Wakiewicz (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1986),
525530.
58. See Julian Tuwim, Czyhanie na Boga, in Dziea, vol. I (Warsaw: Czytelnik,
1955), 45120.
59. Znamor [Roman Zrbowicz], U Juliana Tuwima, in Rozmowy z Tuwimem,
1621; from WL 5 (31 January 1926).
60. See Grzegorz Gazda, Tuwim i Awangarda, Prace Polonistyczne 51 (1996): 23;
and W. Majakowski, Obok w spodniach, in Tuwim, Dziea, ed. Seweryn
Pollak, vol. IV (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1959), 227253.
61. Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 180.
62. Jarosiski, Wstp, xxxix. The petition was published in early January 1920
in Kurier Poranny 3 (1920) and in Skamander 1 (1920).
63. Jarosiski, Wstp, xxxix.
64. The text is from taken from Sprawozdania stenograczne z posiedze Sejmu
Ustawodawczego, posiedzenie 332, 28 July 1922; quoted by Jarosiski,
Wstp, lxxv.

n o tes to pages 25 30 385

65. Jarosiski, Wstp, lxxv.
66. Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 187.
67. Stefan eromski, Snobizm i postp (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo J. Morkowicza,
1926), 1, 4, 73.
68. Broniewski, Pamitnik 19181922, 324.
69. Stanisaw Witold Balicki, ed., To jadb: Wspomnienia i eseje o Wadysawie
Broniewskim (Warsaw: PIW, 1978), 275.
70. Wat, My Century, 6.
71. Broniewski, Pamitnik 19181922, 27.
72. Balicki, To jadb, 6667.
73. Broniewski, Pamitnik 19181922, 38.
74. Feliksa Lichodziejewska, ed., Pamitnik Wadysawa Broniewskiego
19181922, Polityka 6 (6 February 1965): 1.
75. Broniewski, Pamitnik 19181922, 41.
76. 17 May 1919. Ibid., 96.
77. Citation from the manifesto Federalici by Jzef Rudolf Kustro. Feliksa
Lichodziejewska, ed., Pamitnik Wadysawa Broniewskiego 19181922,
Polityka 7 (13 February 1965): 1; Broniewski, Pamitnik 19181922, 9396, 214.
78. Broniewski, Pamitnik, 289.
79. Ibid., 267.
80. Feliksa Lichodziejewska, Korespondencja Wadysawa Broniewskiego z
Bronisawem Sylwinem Kencbokiem, Pamitnik Literacki 62:4 (1971): 155.
On eromski and Broniewskis generation, see Janina Dziarnowska, Sowo o
Brunonie Jasieskim (Warsaw: Ksika i Wiedza, 1978); Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I,
5253; Wodzimierz Sokorski, Wspomnienia (Warsaw: Krajowa Agencja
Wydawnicza, 1990), 18; Jerzy Zawieyski, Dobrze, e byli (Warsaw: Biblioteka
Wizi, 1974), 3856; Helena Zatorska, Spoza smugi cienia (Cracow:
Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1982), 1832; Jan Hempel, Szarzyzna, Dwignia
1 (March 1927): 814.
81. Lichodziejewska, Korespondencja Wadysawa Broniewskiego z
Bronisawem Sylwinem Kencbokiem, 162180.
82. Ibid., 188189.
83. Stanisaw Brucz (18991977) was a poet involved in the editing of Almanach
Nowej Sztuki together with Stern and Wayk. Broniewski, Pamitnik
19181922, 323. In the original Broniewski uses the diminutive Same
ydki. The phrase was edited out in the rst version of that passage of the
diary published in 1965: Lichodziejewska, Pamitnik W. Broniewskiego
19181922, Polityka 7 (13 February 1965): 9.
84. Lichodziejewska, Korespondencja Wadysawa Broniewskiego z
Bronisawem Sylwinem Kencbokiem, 197.
85. Ibid., 200201; Stern, Bruno Jasieski w Paryu czyli trzy portrety pisarza,
Kamena 2 (21 January 1968): 4; Wandurski, Majakowski i polscy poeci,
in Wodzimierz Majakowski, ed. Florian Nieuwany (Warsaw: Pastwowe
Zakady Wydawnictw Szkolnych, 1965), 278.

386 n o t e s t o p a g e s 30 37
86. Lichodziejewska, Korespondencja Wadysawa Broniewskiego z
Bronisawem Sylwinem Kencbokiem, 212213.
87. Ibid., 207213.
88. This and the following quote from Braun to Broniewski, d, 22 May 1923,
teczka Brauna, MB. The Latin phrase Surgunt indocti et rapiunt coelos!
translates as the unlearned men rise up and take heaven, and comes from
St. Augustines Confessions. Cloaca maxima means main sewer and originally referred to the rst actual Roman sewer, which drained into the Tiber
River.
chapter 2. love and revolution
Epigraph: Mieczysaw Braun, Moje osobiste zdanie o poezji, Nowa Kultura
9 (1 March 1924): 206207.
1. Braun to Broniewski, d, 22 May 1923, teczka Brauna, MB.
2. Bruno Jasieski and Anatol Stern, Ziemia na lewo (1924; Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1987). See also Poezja t. zw. Nowej Sztuki, WL 11 (16 March
1924).
3. Jasieski and Stern, Ziemia na lewo; reprinted in Antologia polskiego Futuryzmu i Nowej Sztuki, ed. Helena Zaworska (Wrocaw: Zakad Narodowy im.
Ossoliskich, 1978), 74.
4. Jan Wilak [Hempel], Anketa, 495/123/212, RGASPI. Also see Hempels column Dziesicioro przykaza beginning in Nowa Kultura 3 (15 August 1923);
and Hempel, Poszukiwanie boga, ibid., 1 (5 January 1924): 59.
5. Od Redakcji, Nowa Kultura 1 (1 July 1923): 12. The phrase the seed has not
fallen on stony ground is a reference to a parable by Jesus.
6. Aleksander Wat, Mj wiek: Pamitnik mwiony, 2 vols. (Warsaw: Czytelnik,
1998), vol. I, 31.
7. Grzegorz Lasota, Rozmowa z towarzyszem Broniewskim, Nowe Drogi 10: 5
(May 1956).
8. S. R. Stande, Z za kraty, Nowa Kultura 3 (15 July 1923): 7981; and
Mieczysaw Braun, Pieni o walkach, ibid., 6 (15 September 1923): 181182.
9. Wi-ski [Witold Wandurski], Scena robotnicza w odzi, ibid., 4 (15 August
1923): 103109.
10. Witold Wandurski, Upodobania estetyczne proletarjatu, ibid., 6
(15 September 1923): 173178.
11. Witold Wandurski, Do panw poetw, ibid., 15 (22 December 1923): 392.
Also see Antoni Sonimski, Do poetw-komunistw, WL 47 (22 November
1925): 1.
12. Aleksander Wat, Prowokator, Nowa Kultura 1 (5 January 1924): 17.
13. Ibid., 18.
14. Anatol Stern, Karnaway, ibid, 2 (12 January 1924): 39; Aleksander Wat,
Policjant, ibid., 3 (19 January 1924): 62; G. Apollinaire, Nieomylno,
ibid., 2 (12 January 1924).
15. See the review of Ziemia na lewo, ibid., 9 (1 March 1924): 212.

n o tes to pages 37 44387

16. Piotr Mitzner, mier futurysty, Karta 11 (1993): 63.
17. Mieczysaw Braun, Moje osobiste zdanie o poezji, Nowa Kultura 9 (1 March
1924): 206207.
18. B. K., Nieporozumienia literackie, ibid., 11 (15 March 1924): 255258.
19. H. K., Telefoniczna rozmowa z Wadysawem Broniewskim, 26 November
1959, 731, AAN.
20. Braun to Broniewski, d, 22 October 1923, teczka Brauna, MB.
21. Braun to Broniewski, d, 11 January 1924, teczka Brauna, MB.
22. Braun to Broniewski, 12 February 1924, KWB, vol. I, 115116.
23. Wandurski to Broniewski, d, 21 January 1924, A/2, MB.
24. Wandurski to Broniewski, May 1924, KWB, vol. I, 118120.
25. Wat, My Century, 3. Stefan Kordian Gacki was also the founder of the journal
F 24 and an avant-garde publishing house. See Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 24. See
also Barbara Stawiczak [Stanisaw Baranczak], Trzy zudzenia i trzy roz
czarowania polskiego Futuryzmu, Znak 304 (1979): 9951006; Nina Koles
niko, Polish Futurism: The Quest to Renovate Poetic Language, Slavonic
and East European Journal 1 (1977): 6477; Bogdana Carpenter, The Poetic
Avant-Garde in Poland (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1983),
167168; Jarosiski, Wstp, in Zaworska, Antologia polskiego Futuryzmu,
lxxxi.
26. The Russian poet Sergei Aleksandrovich Esenin, born in 1895, committed
suicide in 1925. Braun to Broniewski, 6 January 1925, d; KWB, vol. I,
143144.
27. Aleksander Wat, The Eternally Wandering Jew, Lucifer Unemployed, trans.
Lillian Vallee (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1990), 8. Also see
L. Pomirowski, Bezrobotny Lucyfer Wata, WL 10 (6 March 1927): 3; Witold
Wandurski, O rdach zatrutych, skorpionach literackich, o mechanicznym
witrjonie rewolucji i o znarowionym wyle, Dwignia 23 (AprilMay 1927):
4855; Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 86.
28. Janina Broniewska, Dziesi serc czerwiennych (Warsaw: Iskry, 1964), 66.
29. Pionierom, in Wadysaw Broniewski, Stanisaw Ryszard Stande, and
Witold Wandurski, Trzy Salwy: Biuletyn poetycki (Warsaw: PIW, 1967), 22.
30. Broniewska, Dziesi serc czerwiennych, 73.
31. Broniewski to Janina Kunig, 24 July 1925, teczka Broniewskiej, ML.
32. Broniewski to Janina Kunig, 26 July 1925, teczka Broniewskiej, ML; published in Barbara Riss, ed., O miocilisty pisarzy polskich (Warsaw:
Prszyski i S-ka, 1997), 179180.
33. Broniewski to Janina Kunig, 9 February 1926, teczka Broniewskiej, ML.
34. Janina Kunig to Broniewski, 3 March 1926, KWB, vol. I, 252253.
35. Krzywicka to Broniewski, 15 August 1926, KWB, vol. I, 300302.
36. Broniewski to Janina Kunig, 10 September 1926, teczka Broniewskiej, ML.
37. Broniewski to Janina Kunig, 10 September 1926, teczka Broniewskiej, ML.
38. Broniewski to Janina Kunig, 11 September 1926, teczka Broniewskiej, ML.
39. Broniewski to Janina Kunig, 11 September 1926, teczka Broniewskiej, ML.

388 n o t e s t o p a g e s 44 48
Poronin is a village northeast of Zakopane where Broniewski apparently
expected K to obtain an illegal abortion.
40. Halina Koszutska to Broniewski, 8 November 1926, KWB, vol. I, 312.
41. Jadwiga Lubowidzka was the third wife of Broniewskis grandfather
Lubowidzki, and Broniewskis godmother.
42. Jadwiga Lubowidzka to Broniewski, Pock, 19 November 1926, KWB, vol. I,
316317.
43. Broniewski to Janina Kunig, 27 December 1926, teczka Broniewskiej, ML.
44. Irena Krzywicka, Wyznania gorszycielki (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1998), 102;
Halina Koszutska to Broniewski, 28 December 1926. KWB, vol. I, 323324;
Janina Broniewska, Hipoteczna i Sandomierska, in To jadb: Wspomnienia i eseje o Wadysawie Broniewskim, ed. Stanisaw Witold Balicki (Warsaw:
PIW, 1978), 50.
45. See Wandurski, Majakowski i polscy poeci, in Wodzimierz Majakowski, ed.
Florian Nieuwany (Warsaw: Pastwowe Zakady Wydawnictw Szkolnych,
1965), 278; Broniewski, Kilka sw wspomnie: Z tradycji robotniczego
ruchu amatorskiego, in Wadysaw Broniewski, ed. Feliksa Lichodziejewska
(Warsaw: Pastwowe Zakady Wydawnictw Szkolnych, 1966), 125. Wandurski
was arrested as a Polish citizen during Pisudskis march on Kiev. Kilka
szczegw z biograi Witolda Wandurskiego, 25199, AAN; Wandurskis
NKVD le, M/III/56, AW.
46. Krzywicka, Wyznania gorszycielki, 102.
47. Wandurski to Broniewski, d, 7 July 1924, A/2, MB.
48. Wandurski to Broniewski, 12 February 1925, KWB, vol. I, 145.
49. Wandurski to Broniewski, d, 17 February 1925, MB.
50. Wandurski to Broniewski, d, 28 April 1925, MB. See mier na gruszy,
in Witold Wandurski, Wiersze i dramaty (Warsaw: PIW, 1958), 41215; and
Sensacyjna premjera Teatru im. Sowackiego: mier na gruszy Witolda
Wandurskiego: Wywiad Wiadomoci Literackich z autorem, in WL 5
(2 February 1925): 3.
51. Wandurski to Broniewski, d, [26 April 1925], MB; KWB, vol. I, 163.
52. Witold Wandurski, Jak policja dzka walczy z literatur, WL 23 (7 June
1925): 1.
53. Broniewski, Stande, and Wandurski, Trzy Salwy.
54. KWB, vol. I, 155.
55. Stanisaw Wygodzki, Ankieta czonkowska, 15191, AAN; WJT, 169.
56. Wygodzki to Broniewski, 3 December 1925, Bdzin, KWB, vol. I, 211214.
57. Wygodzki to Broniewski, 8 March 1926, Bdzin, KWB, vol. I, 254.
58. Wandurski to Broniewski, d, 4 November 1925, KWB, vol. I, 199.
59. Wandurski to Broniewski, d, 11 November 1925, A/2, MB.
60. Wandurski to Broniewski, d, 11 November 1925, A/2, MB.
61. Wandurski to Broniewski, d, 9 January 1926, A/2, MB; Wadysaw Broniewski, O twrczoci Sergiusza Jesienina: Po zgonie znakomitego poety,
WL 3 (17 January 1926): 3.

n o tes to pages 49 53389

62. Emphases in original. Wandurski to Broniewski, d, 22 January 1926, A/2,
MB; KWB, vol. I, 232238.
63. Gudaje in original. Wandurski to Broniewski, d, 22 January 1926, A/2,
MB.
64. Emphasis in original. Wandurski to Broniewski, 19 February 1926, KWB, vol.
I, 245246.
65. KWB, vol. I, 249.
66. Wandurski to Broniewski, d, 23 March 1926, A/2, MB.
67. Antoni Sonimski, Kronika tygodniowa, WL 23 (9 June 1935): 12.
68. Stalin later instructed Polish communists to condemn this strike as the May
error. On the May Error, see Isaac Deutscher, The Tragedy of the Polish
Communist Party, in Marxism, Wars and Revolutions: Essays from Four Decades, ed. Tamara Deutscher (London: Verso, 1984), 91127. Also see Gabriele
Simoncini, The Communist Party of Poland, 19181929: A Study in Political
Ideology (Lewiston: East Mellen Press, 1993); and M. K. Dziewanowski, The
Communist Party of Poland: An Outline of History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976).
69. Wandurski to Broniewski, d, 21 July 1926, MB.
70. Anatol Stern, Czyby mier poezji? WL 30 (25 July 1926): 1.
71. Antoni Sonimski, Historja Pikadora, WL 5152 (26 December 1926): 2.
Sonimski writes, Following the example of the Burliuks and Mayakovskys
we decided to open such a caf in Warsaw. And so the idea came from
Russia.
72. Julian Tuwim, Nasz pierwszy wieczr, WL 5152 (26 December 1926): 2.
chapter 3. a visit from mayakovsky
Epigraph: Wiktor Woroszylski, ycie Majakowskiego (Warsaw: Czytelnik,
1984), 534.
1. Wandurski to Broniewski, 15 April [1928], wizienie ledcze w odzi, MB;
KWB, vol. I, 386.
2. Wandurski to Broniewski, 15 April [1928], wizienie ledcze w odzi, MB.
Reference to Pawe Hulka-Laskowski, a writer, critic, translator and social activist whose position towards proletarian poetry was critical. See Wadysaw
Broniewski, Wczoraj i jutro poezji w Polsce, WL 4 (22 January 1928): 1;
and Pawel Hulka-Laskowski, O t. zw. Poezj proletarjack: Teorja a rzeczy
wisto, WL 7 (12 February 1928): 1.
3. Wygodzki to Broniewski, Bdzin, teczka Wygodzkiego, MB.
4. Wygodzki to Broniewski, Bdzin, 18 February 1927, teczka Wygodzkiego,
MB.
5. Wygodzki to Broniewski, Bdzin, 12 April 1927, KWB, vol. I, 348.
6. Wygodzki to Broniewski, Bdzin, 20 May 1927, KWB, vol. I, 351.
7. Wygodzki to Broniewski, Bdzin, 23 June 1927, KWB, vol. I, 357.
8. Wygodzki to Broniewski, Bdzin, 20 December 1927, teczka Wygodzkiego,
MB.

390 n o t e s t o p a g e s 53 58
9. Wygodzki to Broniewski, Bdzin, 9 January 1928, KWB, vol. I, 374376.
10. See Stanisaw Wygodzki, Zadania Poezji w Polsce dziejsiejszej: O zmian
frontu, WL 29 (15 July 1928): 1.
11. Anatol Stern, O zmian metod naszej krytyki, WL 31 (29 July 1928): 1.
12. Pawe Merlend, [wspomnienia o Broniewskim], 731, AAN.
13. Janina Broniewska, Dziesi serc czerwiennych (Warsaw: Iskry, 1964),
250253.
14. Ibid., 186.
15. Aleksander Wat, Mj wiek: Pamitnik mwiony, 2 vols. (Warsaw: Czytelnik,
1998), vol. I, 3941.
16. Redakcja, Untitled, Dwignia 1 (March 1927): 1.
17. Witold Wandurski, O rdach zatrutych, skorpionach literackich, o
mechanicznym witrjonie rewolucji i o znarowionym wyle, ibid., 23
(AprilMay 1927): 4855. See also Stanisaw Ryszard Stande, Towarzysz
and Plakat, ibid., 23 (AprilMay 1927): 2627; and Bruno Jasieski,
Zakadnicy, ibid., 5 (November 1927): 3234; Bruno Jasieski, Do prole
tarjatu francuskiego, ibid., 8 (July 1928): 2628; Witold Wandurski, Scena
robotnicza w odzi, ibid., 4 (July 1927): 1931.
18. Andrzej Stawar, Poezje Broniewskiego, ibid., 4 (July 1927): 35. Also see
Stawars review of Jasieskis Sowo o Jakubie Szeli, Dwignia 1 (March 1927):
44, and of Sterns Bieg do bieguna, ibid., 1 (March 1927): 4446.
19. Andrzej Stawar, Kryzys prozy, ibid., 23 (AprilMay 1927): 110.
20. Andrzej Stawar, Zachd w Polsce, ibid., 4 (July 1927): 1.
21. Broniewska, Hipoteczna i Sandomierska, in To jadb: Wspomnienia i
eseje o Wadysawie Broniewskim, ed. Stanisaw Witold Balicki (Warsaw: PIW,
1978), 63.
22. Broniewski to Broniewska, 25 April 1927, Warsaw, teczka Broniewskiej, ML.
23. Broniewska, Dziesi serc czerwiennych, 172174; Broniewska, Tamten brzeg
mych lat (Warsaw: Ksika i Wiedza, 1973), 199; Broniewski to Broniewska,
17 April 1928, Warsaw, teczka Broniewskiej, ML. ydokomuna is a virtually
untranslatable term referring to Jewish communism; the tendency of Jews
to become communists; or a Polish perception of a Jewish-Bolshevik
conspiracy.
24. Broniewska, Dziesi serc czerwiennych, 186.
25. Ibid., 186188.
26. See Isaac Deutscher, The Tragedy of the Polish Communist Party, in Marxism, Wars and Revolutions: Essays from Four Decades, ed. Tamara Deutscher
(London: Verso, 1984), 113.
27. Broniewski to Broniewska, 1 May 1928, Warsaw, teczka Broniewskiej, ML;
in Polityka 7 (12 February 1972): 6.
28. Witold Wandurski, Majakowski i polscy poeci, in Wodzimierz Majakowski,
ed. Florian Nieuwany (Warsaw: Pastwowe Zakady Wydawnictw Szkolnych, 1965), 277286.
29. The title was Prostoe kak mychanie (Petrograd, 1916). Julian Tuwim,

n o tes to pages 58 61 39 1

30.
31.

32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.

39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.

Majakowski po raz pierwszy, in Wodzimierz Majakowski, 290291;

from Odrodzenie 45 (1949): 2.
Wandurski, Majakowski i polscy poeci; Levyi marsh, in Vladimir Maiakovskii, Vladimir Maiakovskii (Saint Petersburg: Diamant, 1998), 139141.
Vladimir Maiakovskii, Ezdil ia tak, in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. II
(Kaliningrad: FGUIPP Iantarnyi Skaz, 2002), 82; Broniewska, Dziesi serc
czerwiennych, 156.
Broniewski to Broniewska, 13 or 15 April 1927, Warsaw, teczka Broniewskiej,
ML; Polityka 7 (12 February 1972): 6.
Wandurski, Majakowski i polscy poeci, 282.
Broniewski to Broniewska, 13 or 15 April 1927, Warsaw, teczka Broniewskiej, ML.
Maiakovskii, Poverkh Varshavy, in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. II, 90.
Wandurski, Majakowski i polscy poeci, 283.
Woroszylski, ycie Majakowskiego, 534.
Wandurski, Majakowski i polscy poeci, 283; Maiakovskii, Ezdil ia tak, 84.
The group Lef, or Left Front of the Arts, was formed in 1923 for the purpose
of joining revolutionary politics and progressive art. The group included the
literary gures Mayakovsky, Shklovsky, Nikolai Aseev, Osip Brik, Sergei
Tretiakov, the lmmakers Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov, and theater
director Vsevolod Meyerhold. Lef existed between 1923 and 1925; subsequently Novyi Lef came into being in 1927 and lasted until 1928.
Ola Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1990), 15.
Woroszylski, ycie Majakowskiego, 534.
Wandurski, Majakowski i polscy poeci, 284.
Stanisaw Ryszard Stande, Mj przyjazd do Moskwy, 1927, 245/2, AAN;
C. Budzyska, Stanisaw Ryszard Stande, 9889, AAN.
Wandurski, Majakowski i polscy poeci, 284.
Maiakovskii, Ezdil ia tak, 85.
Maiakovskii, Vladimir Maiakovskii, 139141; Watowa, Wszystko co najwa
niejsze, 16.
Broniewska, Dziesi serc czerwiennych, 157.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 16.
Aleksander Wat, My Century: The Odyssey of a Polish Intellectual, trans.
Richard Lourie (New York: Norton, 1988), 44.
Ibid., 44.
Copy of Broniewski, Dymy nad miastem, R5477 RD 5424, AM.
Copy of Jasieski, Sowo o Jakbie Szeli on display at AM.
Copy of Stern, Bieg do Bieguna, R5473 RD 5420, AM.
Copy of Wat, Bezrobotny Lucyfer, R5478 RD 5425, AM.
Copy of Wayk, Semafory, R5475 RD 5422, AM. See also copies of Wandurski
Nowa Scene Robotnicza: Utwory sceniczne Wadimira Majakowskiego, Iwana
Golla, Mieczysawa Brauna: To Vladimir Vladimirovich Maiakovskii the poet

392 n o t e s t o p a g e s 61 64
from the translator of his works 2 X 1923, 9241 RD 6267, AM; Stern, Anielski Cham: To Mayakovsky, the uncle of Polish futurism 14 V.27, R5474 RD
5421, AM; Wayk, Oczy i usta: To Vladimir Maiakovskiifrom the author 14
V 1927, R5476 RD 5423, AM.
57. V. A. Arutchev, Zapisnye knizhki Maiakovskogo, Literaturnoe nasledstvo 65
(1958): 384.
58. Vladimir Maiakovskii, Naruzhnost Varshavy, in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii,
vol. II, 88.
59. Wat, My Century, 2325, 4447; Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 1517.
In their memoirs Aleksander Wat and Ola Watowa write about a second visit
Mayakovsky made to Warsaw in 1929. Biographical sources on Mayakovsky
mention nothing about a second visit to Warsaw, nor do any of the other Polish poets. Mayakovsky was in Prague and Paris in 1929; he might have come
to Warsaw inconspicuously, or Wat might have met Mayakovsky this second
time when they were both traveling in western Europe that year. See also
Tomas Venclova, Aleksander Wat: Life and Art of an Iconoclast (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1996), 8083.
60. Wat, My Century, 4445. RAPP (the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers) eectively held dictatorial power in Soviet literary aairs between 1928
and 1932.
61. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 17.
62. Roman Jakobson, My Futurist Years, ed. Bengt Jangfeldt, trans. Stephen Rudy
(New York: Marsilio Publishers, 1992), 9192.
63. Francine Du Plessix Gray, Mayakovskys Last Loves, The New Yorker
(7 January 2002).
64. Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 143.
65. Wat, My Century, 24.
66. Wadysaw Broniewski et al., Co zawdziczaj pisarze polscy literaturom
obcym? WL 47 (20 November 1927): 3.
67. Anatol Stern, Poeta stu pidziesiciu miljonw: Wodzimierz Majakow
skij, WL 21 (22 May 1927): 2.
68. Wat, My Century, 46.
69. Jasieski to Broniewski, 18 March 1928, Paris, KWB, vol. I, 383384.
70. Jasieski to Broniewski, 22 April 1928, KWB, vol. I, 392.
71. Jasieski to Broniewski, 22 April 1928, Paris, KWB, vol. I, 392.
72. Quoted in Anatol Stern, Bruno Jasieski w Paryu czyli trzy portrety
pisarza, Kamena 2 (21 January 1968): 4.
73. Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 3334.
74. Quoted in Stern, Bruno Jasieski w Paryu, 4.
75. Pawe Merland, Relacja o Wadysawie Broniewskim, 731, AAN.
76. Julian Tuwim, Sowo o Kubie Rozpruwaczu, Cyrulika Warszawskiego 26
(1926). Also see Julian Tuwim, Sprawozdanie z ksiki Jasieskiego But w
butonierce, in Ksiga parodii, ed. Danuta Sykucka (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo
Artystyczne i Filmowe, 1985).

n o tes to pages 65 68393

77. Stern, Bruno Jasieski w Paryu, 4.
78. Quoted ibid.
79. Quoted ibid. Barbusse (18731935) was the editor of LHumanit and a
member of the Communist Party beginning in 1923.
80. Wat, My Century, 8.
81. Ibid.; Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 34.
82. On Morand see also Anatol Stern, Bruno Jasieski (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1969), 126138; M. Zhivov, Bruno Iasenskii (k ego priezdu v
Sovetskii Soiuz), Izvestiia 113 (21 May 1929), copy in 1861/1/13, RGALI.
83. Bruno Jasieski, Pal Pary (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1957). See also Nina Koles
niko, Bruno Jasieski: His Evolution from Futurism to Socialist Realism
(Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1982), 7485.
84. Jan Brzkowski, Droga poetycka Brunona Jasieskiego, Kultura [Paris] 4
(April 1956): 103.
85. See Antal Hidas, Wspomnienia o Brunonie Jasieskim, Literatura na
wiecie 11 (1975): 149167; Bruno Jasieski, Duma w Paryu, WL 7 (17 February 1929): 1. Barbusse was under the false impression that Jasieski had
earlier been deported from Poland. See Stern, Bruno Jasieski, 166. Also see
Krzysztof Jaworski, Bruno Jasieski w Paryu 19251929 (Kielce: Wydawnictwo Akademii witokrzyskiej, 2003).
86. Wat, My Century, 18; Julian Tuwim, Wieniawa, in Jarmark rymw, ed. Janusz
Stradecki (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1991), 139140. Jzef Beck (18941944) was
Polands minister of foreign aairs in the 1930s. Bronisaw Pieracki (1895
1934) was minister of internal aairs between 1931 and 1934. He was assassinated in 1934 by Ukrainian nationalists.
87. Wadysaw Krajewski, interview, Warsaw, 28 July 2003.
88. Wat, My Century, 2730.
89. Wat to Wittlin, 26 June 1965, [Berkeley]. Twarz zwrcony do mierci ...
Listy Aleksandra Wata do Jzefa Wittlina, Znak 43 (February 1991): 316;
Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 321.
90. M. K. Dziewanowski, The Communist Party of Poland: An Outline of History
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 96.
91. Wat, My Century, 1516.
92. According to Stande Dwignia was liquidated by the government after eight
issues. Stanisaw Ryszard Stande, Polska literatura proletariacka, Kultura
Mas 1 (1931): 2226. Reprinted in Krystyna Sierocka, Z dziejw czasopimien
nictwa polskiego w ZSRR (Kultura Mas 19291937) (Warsaw: Ksika i
Wiedza, 1963), 183190.
93. Wat, My Century, 19.
94. On Deutscher see Daniel Singer, Armed with a Pen, in Isaac Deutscher:
The Man and His Work, ed. David Horowitz (London: Macdonald, 1971),
1956; and Perry Anderson, preface to Deutscher, Marxism, Wars and Revo
lutions, ixx.
95. Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 25; Wayk, Przeczytaem Mj wiek, 5051.

394 n o t e s t o p a g e s 6875
96. Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 172.
97. Anatol Stern, Wiersze zebrane, vol. I, ed. Andrzej K. Wakiewicz (Cracow:
Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1985), 169171.
98. Ibid., 232.
99. Wat, My Century, 35.
100. Jakub Berman, Jakub Berman, 325/1, AAN.
101. Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 164.
102. On Shklovsky see Henryk Drzewicki, Etap Formalisty, MieL 1 (December
1929): 46.
103. Jerzy Szymaski, Pal Pary, ibid., 33.
chapter 4. a funeral for futurism
Epigraph: Aleksander Wat, Metamorfozy Futuryzmu, MieL 3 (February
1930): 126.
1. Antoni Sonimski, Kronika tygodniowa, WL 49 (8 December 1929): 4.
2. Ibid., 4. See also Kusownictwo Frazesw, MieL 2 (January 1930): 117119.
3. Aleksander Wat, My Century: The Odyssey of a Polish Intellectual, trans.
Richard Lourie (New York: Norton, 1988), 52. See also Antoni Sonimskis
Zakuty eb, WL 4 (27 January 1929): 5.
4. Metody przedrzeniania si P. Sonimskiego, MieL 2 (January 1930): 117.
5. Antoni Sonimski, Kronika tygodniowa, WL 2 (12 January 1930): 4.
6. Aleksander Wat, oso w majonezie, Liga Narodw i radosny cie krla
Stasia, MieL 9 (July 1930): 410412.
7. Shmoncesman zagranic: Co P. Sonimski widzia w Londynie, MieL 9
(July 1930): 421.
8. A jak o tem pisa w Wiadomociach Literackich, MieL 10 (July 1930):
421422. Also see WL 20 (1930).
9. Antoni Sonimski, Kronika tygodniowa, WL 27 (6 July 1930).
10. Natan Wistreich to Broniewski, 6 October 1930, Rzeszw, KWB, vol. I,
546548.
11. Janina Broniewska, Maje i listopady (Warsaw: Iskry, 1967), 10, 3537, 5354, 85.
12. Tuwim, Do prostego czowieka, 245/2, AAN; Julian Tuwim, Poezje, ed.
Tadeusz Januszewski (Wrocaw: Zakad Narodowy im. Ossoliskich, 2004),
347348; from Robotnik 305 (1929).
13. Broniewska, Maje i listopady, 96.
14. WJT, 166167.
15. Julian Tuwim, Pisma Proz, ed. Janusz Stradecki, vol. V of Dziea (Warsaw:
Czytelnik, 1964), 677.
16. Tuwim, Klasa robotnicza a literatura, in Rozmowy z Tuwimem, ed. Tadeusz
Januszewski (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Semper, 1994), 3233; from
Robotnik 29 (29 January 1928).
17. Tuwim to Broniewski, 21 February 1931, Krynica, LPP, 113; KWB, vol. II, 38.
18. Aleksander Wat, Wspomnienia o Futurymie, MieL 2 (January 1930):
6877.

n o tes to pages 76 85395

19.
20.
21.
22.

23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.

30.

31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.

Ibid., 7075.
Wat, Metamorfozy Futuryzmu, 122127.
Ibid., 122123.
Ibid., 125. Polish positivism: Jerzy Jedlicki, A Suburb of Europe: NineteenthCentury Polish Approaches to Western Civilization (Budapest: CEU Press,
1999); Norman Naimark, The History of the Proletariat: The Emergence of
Marxism in the Kingdom of Poland, 18701887 (Boulder: East European
Monographs, 1979); Stanislaus A. Blejwas, Realism in Polish Politics: Warsaw
Positivism and National Survival in Nineteenth-Century Poland (New Haven:
Yale Russian and East European Publications, 1984).
Wat, Metamorfozy Futuryzmu, 126.
Wat, Wspomnienia o Futurymie, 71.
Tadeusz Peiper, List do Redakcji, MieL 5 (April 1930): 278280.
Aleksander Wat, Odpowied Redaktora, MieL 5 (April 1930): 280.
Broniewska, Maje i listopady, 4748; Wat, My Century, 44; Ola Watowa,
Wszystko, co najwaniejsze (Warszawa: Czytelnik, 1990), 1617.
Aleksander Wat, Poeta Rewolucji Majakowski, MieL 6 (May 1930):
281288.
Wadysaw Broniewski, 14 Kwietnia, MieL 6 (May 1930): 289. Also see
Stanisaw Ryszard Stande, Majakowski, ibid., 288289, and Stanisaw
Wygodzki, Lewa Marsz, ibid., 289291.
Maiakovskii, Ezdil ia tak, in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. II (Kaliningrad:
FGUIPP Iantarnyi Skaz, 2002), 84; Maiakovskii, Poverkh Varshavy, ibid.,
92; Antoni Sonimski, Alfabet wspomnie (Warsaw: PIW, 1975), 134135; mg
[Mieczysaw Grydzewski], Prawda i Kamstwo, WL 13 (21 March 1937): 7.
Antoni Sonimski, Na mier Majakowskiego, WL 18 (4 May 1930): 1.
Aleksander Wat, Reporta jako rodzaj literacki, MieL 7 (June 1930): 330334.
Aleksander Wat, Jeszcze o reportau, MieL 10 (August 1930): 425.
Ibid., 426; see also Aleksander Wat, Literatura Faktu, WL 35 (1 September
1929): 1.
Wat, My Century, 5051.
Andrzej Stawar, O krytyce, MieL 2 (January 1930): 5765.
Wat, My Century, 57.
Stanisaw Ryszard Stande, O krytyk marksistowsk, MieL 5 (April 1930):
232.
Natan Wistreich to Broniewski, 6 October 1930, Rzeszw, KWB, vol. I,
546548.
Wat, My Century, 5051.
Ibid., 53.
Jan Trusz, Z dowiadcze pokolenia (Warsaw: Ksika i Wiedza, 1981), 22.
Wat, My Century, 55; Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 12.
Broniewska, Maje i listopady, 109.
Wat, My Century, 6061; Wat to Grydzewski, 2 March 1962, La Messuguire,
C-219, AWPB.

396 n o t e s t o p a g e s 85 9 0
46.
47.
48.
49.

Broniewska, Maje i listopady, 110.

Ibid., 112113.
Wat, My Century, 61.
Tomas Venclova, Aleksander Wat: Life and Art of an Iconoclast (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1996), 123.
50. Broniewska, Maje i listopady, 116117.
51. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 18.
52. Ibid., 18; Wat to Grydzewski, 2 March 1962, La Messuguire, C-219, AWPB.
53. Broniewska, Maje i listopady, 121123.
54. Antoni Sonimski, Kronika tygodniowa, WL 38 (20 September 1931): 4.
55. Wat to Grydzewski, 2 March 1962, La Messuguire, C-219, AWPB; Broniewski to Kochana Jasieko, Mario, Janko, teczka Broniewskiej, ML.
56. Wat, My Century, 67.
57. Emil Herbst, O Wadysawie Broniewskim, 14 March 1962, 731, AAN.
58. Wat, My Century, 67.
59. Broniewska, Maje i listopady, 141; Wadysaw Broniewski, Magnitogorsk albo
rozmowa z Janem, in Poezje zebrane, vol. II, ed. Feliksa Lichodziejewska
(Pock: Algo, 1997), 130131. On Magnitogorsk, see Stephen Kotkin, The Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1995).
60. Broniewski to Kochana Jasieko, Mario, Janko, teczka Broniewskiej, ML.
61. Wat, My Century, 66.
62. Ibid., 67.
63. Ibid., 6768.
64. Ibid., 68.
65. Emil Herbst, O Wadysawie Broniewskim, 14 March 1962, 731, AAN.
66. Wat, My Century, 6973.
67. According to Herbst Wat received a salary of twelve hundred zotys a month
as editor of Miesicznik Literacki. Emil Herbst, O Wadysawie Broniew
skim, 14 March 1962, 731, AAN.
68. Wat, My Century, 77.
69. Emil Herbst, O Wadysawie Broniewskim, 14 March 1962; Leon Kasman,
O Wadysawie Broniewskim, 14 March 1962; Lucjan Marek, O Wadysa
wie Broniewskim, 14 March 1962, 731, AAN.
70. Wat, My Century, 15, 6465. On communists in Polish prison, see Ja
Schatz, The Generation: The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Communists of Poland
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 128138.
chapter 5. entanglements, terror, and the fine art of
confession
Epigraph: Ola Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1990),
1314.
1. Janina Broniewska, Maje i listopady (Warsaw: Iskry, 1967), 116.
2. Aleksander Wat, My Century: The Odyssey of a Polish Intellectual, trans.

n o t es to pages 90 97397

3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

12.
13.
14.
15.

16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.

Richard Lourie (New York: Norton, 1988), 34; Jan Wilak [Jan Hempel],
Anketa, 495/123/212, RGASPI.
KWB, vol. II, 42.
Broniewska, Maje i listopady, 141.
Aleksander Wat, Mj wiek: Pamitnik mwiony, 2 vols. (Warsaw: Czytelnik,
1998), vol. I, 190.
Aleksander Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek (London: Polonia, 1986), 185.
Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 14.
Wat, My Century, 41.
Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 230; Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 19.
Untitled report, 26 March 1953, 0246/1031, IPN.
Broniewskipolice commissariat, document of house search, 12 October
1934; wezwanie Broniewskiego 17 October 1934, KWB, vol. II, 164165.
Broniewska, Maje i listopady, 164; Antoni Borman and Broniewski to Iwaszkiewicz, 16 December 1932, quoted in Stanisaw Witold Balicki, ed., To ja
db: Wspomnienia i eseje o Wadysawie Broniewskim (Warsaw: PIW, 1978),
435436.
Broniewska, Maje i listopady, 185.
Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 15.
Wat, My Century, 47.
Kilka szczegw z biograi Witolda Wandurskiego, 25199, AAN; also see
Marian Stpie, Polska lewica literacka (Warsaw: Pastwowe Wydawnictwo
Naukowe, 1985), 203.
Vitold Vandurskii, introduction to Bronevskii, Izbrannye stikhi (Moscow:
Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Khudozhestvennoi Literatury, 1932).
Photographs in Bruno Jasieski, The Mannequins Ball, trans. Daniel Gerould
(Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000); Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 35.
Antal Hidas, Wspomnienia o Brunonie Jasieskim, Literatura na wiecie 11
(1975): 150.
Piotr Mitzner, mier futurysty, Karta 11 (1993): 59.
M. Zhivov, Bruno Iasenskii (k ego priezdu v Sovetskii Soiuz), Izvestiia 113
(21 May 1929); copy in 1861/1/13, RGALI.
These attachments are described in Jasieskis letter, but are missing from
the le in the archives.
Bruno Jasieski to Sekcja KPP przy Kominternie, Moscow, 9 November
1929, 495/123/130, RGASPI.
See Witold Wandurski, Jak policja dzka walczy z literatur, WL 23
(7 June 1925): 1.
Jasieski to Sekcja KPP przy Kominternie, Moscow, 9 November 1929,
495/123/130, RGASPI.
The reference is to Stawars review of Sowo o Jakbie Szeli in Dwignia 1
(March 1927): 44.
Jasieski to Sekcja KPP przy Kominternie, Moscow, 9 November 1929,
495/123/130, RGASPI.

398 n o t e s t o p a g e s 98 1 0 1
27. Anatol Stern, Wiersze zebrane, vol. I, ed. Andrzej K. Wakiewicz (Cracow:
Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1985), 233244.
28. Stanisaw Ryszard Stande, Anketa, 495/123/212, RGASPI.
29. Standes Party anketa lists his date of arrival in the Soviet Union as 1932,
but it seems from other sources more likely that he actually arrived in 1931.
Zoa Warska, following a brief teenage rebellion during World War I
when she joined Pisudskis Polska Organizacja Wojskowa (Polish Military
Organization), joined the KPP in 1918. Wadysaw Krajewski, personal interview, 28 July 2003, Warsaw; Zoa Warska, Anketa, 495/123/212, RGASPI.
30. Stande to Broniewski, Moscow, c. 24 December 1932. KWB, vol. II, 48.
31. C. Budzyska, Stanisaw Ryszard Stande: poetadziaaczkomunista,
9889, AAN.
32. Quoted in Krystyna Sierocka, Z dziejw czasopimiennictwa polskiego w ZSRR
(Kultura Mas 19291937) (Warsaw: Ksika i Wiedza, 1963), 33.
33. Jasieski to Broniewski and Stawar, Moscow, 11 June 1929, teczka
Jasieskiego, MB.
34. Sierocka, Z dziejw czasopimiennictwa polskiego w ZSRR, 145149; Bruno
Jasieski, O rewolucj jzykow, Kultura Mas 1/2 (1929): 1113. See also
Bruno Jasieski, Twrzmy polski jzyk radziecki, Kultura Mas 2 (1930): 5.
35. Witold Wandurski, Krmy polski lm rewolucyjny, Kultura Mas 3 (1929):
2329; reprinted in Sierocka, Z dziejw czasopimiennictwa polskiego w ZSRR,
163177.
36. Witold Wandurski, Polska pracownia teatralna w Kijowie, Kultura Mas 1
(1930): 89; reprinted in Sierocka, Z dziejw czasopimiennictwa polskiego w
ZSRR, 178182. Also see Chronology of the Life and Work of Witold Wandurski (18911937) and Witold Wandurski, The Mass Amateur Theatre
Needs the Dramatist! The Dramatist Needs the Mass Amateur Theatre!
in Slavic and East European Performance 22:1 (winter 2002): 6174.
37. Sierocka, Z dziejw czasopimiennictwa polskiego w ZSRR, 183190; from
Stanisaw Ryszard Stande, Polska literatura proletariacka, Kultura Mas 1
(1931): 2226.
38. Jan Wilak [Hempel], Na polskim odcinku frontu kulturalnego, Kultura
Mas 1 (1933): 37; reprinted in Sierocka, Z dziejw czasopimiennictwa
polskiego w ZSRR, 202210. Kultura Mas published much from Poland,
including Julian Tuwim, Do prostego czowieka, 4/5 (1930): 100101;
Aleksander Wat, Pacystyczna literatura w Niemczech, 4/5 (1930):
2631; and Wadysaw Broniewski, Kongres w obronie kultury, 2/3 (1936):
9193. Also see Miesicznik Literacki, 4/5 (1930): 104; Wadysaw Broniewski, Jan Hempel, Stanisaw Ryszard Stande, Andrzej Stawar, Aleksander
Wat, et al., List otwarty do Midzynarodowego Zjazdu PEN Klubw w
Warszawie, 6/7 (1930); J. Sosnowicz, Sonimski w faszystowskiej
Rodzinie, 1 (1934): 5051.
39. Tomasz Dbal was also forced to sign such a declaration. Ministerstwo
Spraw Zagranicznych, Departament Polityczno-Ekonomiczny, Wydzia

n o t e s to pages 10110 7399

40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.

48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.

55.

56.
57.

Wschodni, Biuletyn Narodowoci, 26, 1931, I.303.4.1787, Centralne Archiwum Wojskowe, Rembertw, Poland. Timothy Snyder provided a copy of
this document. See also Stanisaw Stpie, ed., Polacy na Ukrainie: Zbir
dokumentw, pt. 1: Lata 19171939, vol. II (Przemyl: Poudniowo-Wschodni
Instytut Naukowy w Przemyle, 1998), 257301. On Soviet nationalities
policy under Stalin see Terry Martin, The Armative Action Empire: Nations
and Nationalism in the Soviet Union 19231939 (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2001); Ronald Grigor Suny, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1993); and Yuri Slezkine, The USSR as a Communal Apartment or
How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism, Slavic Review 53:2
(summer 1994): 414452.
Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 242243. Colonel Jan Kowalewski (18921965) was
the Polish military attach in Moscow.
Anatol Stern, Bruno Jasieski (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1969), 81.
Bruno Jasieski, Co w rodzaju yciorysu, Przegld Kulturalny 17
(26 April2 May 1956): 5; originally published in Russian in May 1931.
Ibid., 5.
Bruno Jasieski, The Mannequins Ball, trans. Daniel Gerould (Amsterdam:
Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000), 9.
Ibid., 11.
Ibid., 68.
Anatolii Lunacharsky, introduction to the 1931 Moscow edition, ibid., xxxi.
See also Nina Kolesniko, Bruno Jasieski: His Evolution from Futurism to
Socialist Realism (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1982), 120.
BJSW, 6773.
Quoted in Kolesniko, Bruno Jasieski, 117.
Quoted in Stern, Bruno Jasieski, 200201.
Quoted ibid., 223225.
Ibid., 10.
Mitzner, mier futurysty, 62.
Quoted in Krzysztof Jaworski, Kilka przyczynkw do biograi Brunona
Jasieskiego, Kieleckie Studia Filologiczne 8 (1994): 5758. See also Bruno
Jasieski, O znaczeniu i roli pisarza w Rosji sowieckiej, WL 28 (14 July
1935): 7. See also G. S. Smith, D. S. Mirsky: A Russian-English Life, 18901939
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 224, 314317.
See Bruno Jasieski, Ksika odarta ze skry, WL 26 (24 June 1934): 4.
On Jasieskis Polishness, see also Wojciech Orliski, Bolszewik z monoklem, Gazeta Wyborcza 303 (30 December 20001 January 2001): 18
(Gazeta witeczna).
Hidas, Wspomnienia o Brunonie Jasieskim, 149167.
A. Ia. Vishnevskii and B. A. Rudnitskii, Pod znamenem proletarskogo
internatsionalizma i edinstva, 9328, AAN; Iasenskii, Pismo Bruno Iasen
skogo, 9328, AAN.

4 0 0 n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 07 1 1 1
58. Bruno Iasenskii, Nash otvet kolonizatoram-imperialistam, 17 June 1931,
9328, AAN.
59. Bruno Iasenskii, Iz rechi Bruno Iasenskogo na V sezde sovetov
Tadzhikskoi SSR, 11 January 1935, 9328, AAN.
60. Bruno Iasenskii, Rech Bruno Iasenskogo na torzhestvennom zasedanii
Tadzhikskogo studenchestva v Moskve, posviashchnnom dosrochnomu
vypolneniiu Tadzhikistanom plana zagotovok khlopka, 1936, 9328, AAN.
61. Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 126, 157, 224227; Jakub Berman, Na marginesie
dyskusji wok projektu programu KPP w latach 19321933, Warsaw,
April 1974, 325/31, AAN.
62. KWB, vol. II, 6566.
63. Henryk Dembiski to Broniewski, Okoo, 10 December 1935, KWB, vol. II,
219.
64. Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 231232.
65. Ibid., 244245; Janina Broniewska, Tamten brzeg mych lat (Warsaw: Ksika
i Wiedza, 1973), 109113. Wasilewska was also a leading gure in the shortlived Dziennik Popularny, which existed between October 1936 and March
1937 and was co-edited by the KPP activist Szymon Natanson.
66. Na Wolnoci, reprinted in Broniewska, Tamten brzeg mych lat, 109113.
67. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 20; Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 12.
68. Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 230.
69. Ibid., 229230. See also O bonapartyzmie i faszyzmie, O biurokracji
sowieckiej, Planici i pastwowcy na lewicy socjalistycznej, and Historia
Trockiego, in Andrzej Stawar, Pisma ostatnie (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1961).
The other major gure in Pod Prd was Roman Jabonowski. Notatka
subowa dot. sprawy Janusa Edwarda i Jabonowskiego Romana-Jana krypt.
Literaci, Warsaw, 10 April 1954, 0298/200, t. 1, IPN.
70. Isaac Deutscher, U rde tragedii KPP, 1957, S V/7 K. 42, ADH.
71. See Isaac Deutschers The Moscow Trial, in Marxism, Wars and Revolutions:
Essays from Four Decades, ed. Tamara Deutscher (London: Verso, 1984).
72. Notatka subowa dot. sprawy Janusa Edwarda i Jabonowskiego RomanaJana krypt. Literaci, Warsaw, 10 April 1954, 0298/200, t. 1, IPN. The Party
succeeded in acquiring Jabonowskis testimony about these projects after
World War II. See Streszczenie sprawy kryptonim Literaci, Warsaw, 11
February 1953, 01224/1426 (microlm 12366/2), IPN. See also Daniel Singer,
Armed with a Pen, in Isaac Deutscher: The Man and His Work, ed. David
Horowitz (London: MacDonald, 1971), 54n.
73. Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 231.
74. Broniewska, Tamten brzeg mych lat, 2527.
75. Barbara Fijakowska, Borejsza i Raski: Przyczynek do dziejw stalinizmu
w Polsce (Olsztyn: Wysza Szkoa Pedagogiczna, 1995), 2731, 58.
76. Wat remembered the date as having been 1936; Stawars secret police le
gives the date 1938. Streszczenie sprawy kryptonim Literaci, Warsaw,
11 February 1953, 01224/1426 (microlm 12366/2), IPN.

n o t e s to pages 11 21 234 01
77. Fijakowska, Borejsza i Raski, 2731, 6869.
78. Aleksander Wat et al., Za porozumieniem, Lewar 11 (1935): 2; Venclova,
Aleksander Wat, 127.
79. Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 231239, 246247.
80. Antoni Sonimski, Moja podr do Rosji (Warsaw: Literackie Towarszystwo
Wydawnicze, 1997), 56. Originally published in WL in 1932.
81. Ibid., 125, 107108, 100, respectively.
82. Ibid., 132133.
83. Ibid., 138.
84. Jan Hempel, Listy do siostry, ed. Roman Rosiak (Lublin: Wydawnictwo
Lubelskie, 1961), 65.
85. Sonimski, Moja podr do Rosji, 140.
86. Broniewska, Maje i listopady, 175, 192.
87. Broniewski to Irena Hellman, 15 March 1933, Warsaw; in Barbara Riss, ed.,
O miocilisty pisarzy polskich (Warsaw: Prszyski i S-ka, 1997), 183184.
88. Broniewska, Maje i listopady, 194199; Jadwiga Weissenburgowa to Broniewski, Kalisz, 13 August 1933 and 28 August 1933, KWB, vol. II, 8083.
89. Irena Hellman to Broniewski, 13 November 1933, KWB, vol. II, 9197.
90. KWB, vol. II, 97.
91. Broniewska, Maje i listopady, 211213.
92. Ibid., 214.
93. Wadysaw Broniewski, W drodze do Dnieprogesu, WL 25 (17 June
1934): 3.
94. Wat, My Century, 8586.
95. Wayk, Przeczytaem Mj wiek, 50.
96. Stande to Broniewski, Moscow, 14 February 1934, KWB, vol. II, 114.
97. Jasieski to Broniewski, Tadzhikistan, teczka Jasieskiego, MB.
98. Hempel to Wanda Papiewska, 19 April 1934, MB.
99. Hempel to Wanda Papiewska, Kislovodsk, 11 August 1934, MB.
100. The Polska Organizacja Wojskowa was created by Pisudski alongside his
Legions during World War I and ceased to exist after the Polish-Bolshevik
War. On the POW as both reality and specter, see Timothy Snyder, Sketches
from a Secret War: A Polish Artists Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).
101. Protok przesuchania Witolda Wacawowicza Wandurskiego przepro
wadzonego 13 i 14 wrzenia 1933 przez Nacz. II sekcji Wydziau Specjalnego
OGPU Giendina, M/III/56, AW (mostly in Polish, partly in Russian); published in Maria Wosiek, ed., Zeznania Witolda Wandurskiego w wizieniu
GPU, trans. Ewa Rybarska, Pamitnik Teatralny 3/4 (1996): 487510.
102. Wosiek, Zeznania Witolda Wandurskiego w wizieniu GPU, 487.
103. Broniewska, Maje i listopady, 86.
104. Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 241.
105. Wadysaw Broniewski, Poezje zebrane, ed. Feliksa Lichodziejewska, vol. II
(Pock: Drukarnia Kujawska POLKAL w Inowrocawiu, 1997), 683684;

4 02 n o t e s t o p a g e s 123 1 27
Broniewski, Prztyczek smalonemu dubkowi, ibid., 281. wiatopek
Karpiskis Do poety-komunisty was originally published in Duby
Smalone, supplement to Kurier Poranny 320 (1934).
106. Janina Broniewska, Przedmowa do Utworw dla modziey W. Wasilew
skiej, in Wanda Wasilewska, ed. Helena Zatorska (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa
Szkolne i Pedagogiczne, 1976), 341344. See Jan Hempel, Oblicze dnia,
Wandy Wasilewskiej, Kultura Mas 1/2 (1935): 7173.
107. Wanda Wasilewska to Wanda Maria Wasilewska, 6 October 1932. Zoa A.
Wonicka and Eleonora Syzdek, eds., Listy Wandy Wasilewskiej, Zdanie 6
(1985): 38.
108. WWW, 33, 47; Wanda Wasilewska, Dziecistwo, in Zatorska, Wanda
Wasilewska, 111113.
109. 15 October 1919, Dziennik 19191924, 73/1/323, TsDAMLM.
110. 29 February 1920, Dziennik 19191924, 73/1/323, TsDAMLM.
111. WWW, 47.
112. Zoa A. Wonicka and Eleonora Syzdek, eds., Listy Wandy Wasilewskiej,
Zdanie 6 (1985): 3334.
113. 6 May 1923, Dziennik 19191924, 73/1/323, TsDAMLM.
114. Zoa Aldona Wonicka, O mojej siostrze, in WWW, 55.
115. 19 October 1919, Dziennik 19191924, 73/1/323, TsDAMLM.
116. Quoted in Wonicka, O mojej siostrze, 5556.
117. Wanda Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej, Z pola walki 1
(1968): 121122.
118. Janina Broniewska, Przedmowa do Utworw dla modziey W. Wasilew
skiej, in Zatorska, Wanda Wasilewska, 341344. Also see Broniewska,
Poprzez maje i listopady, in WWW, 95.
119. Broniewska, Tamten brzeg mych lat, 9697.
120. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej, 158.
121. Wanda Wasilewska, Przesuchania, Praca w Zwizku Nauczycielstwa
Polskiego, in Zatorska, Wanda Wasilewska, 148149.
122. Ibid.
123. See Adam Ciokosz, Wanda Wasilewska: Dwa szkice biograczne (London:
Polonia Book Fund, 1977), 47.
124. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej, 133.
125. Broniewska, Tamten brzeg mych lat, 191194.
126. Ibid., 199217.
127. Wasilewska, Praca w Zwizku Nauczycielstwa Polskiego, 140.
128. Broniewska, Tamten brzeg mych lat, 202203; Wanda Wasilewska, Historia
jednego strajku (Warsaw: Nasza Ksigarnia, 1950), 17.
129. Broniewska, Tamten brzeg mych lat, 230, 238.
130. Wasilewska, Historia jednego strajku, 163.
131. Broniewska, Tamten brzeg mych lat, 248253.
132. Ibid., 235237. On Jdrychowski, see Czesaw Miosz, abecado miosza
(Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1997), 130133.

n o t e s to pages 1 281 3 14 03
133. Wodzimierz Sokorski, Wspomnienia (Warsaw: Krajowa Agencja Wydaw
nicza, 1990), 64; see also Wasilewska to Broniewski, Warsaw, 13 August
1936, xf B 143, Muzeum Niepodlegoci, Warsaw.
134. Broniewska, Tamten brzeg mych lat, 124.
135. Jerzy Putrament, Poeta, jzyk, kraj, in Balicki, To jadb, 288. Wadysaw
Broniewski, Zagbie Dbrowskie, in Wadysaw Broniewski: Poezje
19231961, ed. Wiktor Woroszylski (Warsaw: PIW, 1995), 140142.
136. Broniewski, Kongres w Obronie Kultury, WL 24 (31 May 1936): 2; Leon
Kruczkowski, Wojna a przyszo kultury, Trybuna Robotnicza 3:21 (24 May
1936): 3.
137. Broniewski, Kongres w Obronie Kultury, 2; Rezolucja, Trybuna Robotnicza 3:21 (24 May 1936): 5.
138. Julian Stryjkowski with Piotr Szewc, Ocalony na wschodzie (Montricher:
Les Editions Noir sur Blanc, 1991), 2744.
139. Ibid., 94.
140. The Bund was a Jewish socialist Yiddishist (anti-Zionist) party/workers
movement formed in Vilna in 1897. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy
Wasilewskiej, 165; Adolf Berman to Micha Mirski, 10 July 1956; Adolf
Berman to Micha Mirski, Tel Aviv 22 August 1956; Adolf Berman to Micha
Mirski, Tel Aviv, 10 January 1959, 330/35, IH; Micha Mirski to Adolf Berman, Warsaw, 25 February 1959, P-70/59, AABB.
141. Wanda Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944),
Archiwum Ruchu Robotniczego 7 (1982): 393.
142. Broniewski, Kongres w Obronie Kultury, 2.
143. Wanda Wasilewska to Wanda Maria Wasilewska, 21 May 1936. Copy
provided by Eleonora Syzdek.
144. Antoni Sonimski, Kronika tygodniowa, WL 26 (14 June 1936): 6.
145. On interwar Polish-Jewish relations and antisemitism, see Ezra Mendel
sohn, Interwar Poland: Good for the Jews or Bad for the Jews? in
The Jews of Poland, ed. Chimen Abramsky, Maciej Jachimczyk, and Antony
Polonsky (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 130139; William Hagen, Before
the Final Solution: Toward a Comparative Analysis of Political AntiSemitism in Interwar Germany and Poland, Journal of Modern History
68:2 (June 1996): 351382; Joseph Marcus, The Social and Political History
of the Jews in Poland, 19191939 (New York: Mouton, 1983); Szymon Rudnicki, Ob Narodowo-Radykalny: Geneza i dziaalno (Warsaw: Czytelnik,
1985).
146. Antoni Sonimski, Listki z drzewa czarodziejskiego, WL 52/53
(26 December 1937): 21.
147. Antoni Sonimski, Wspomnienia, WL 36 (2 September 1928): 4.
148. Antoni Sonimski, Rozmowa z rodakiem, in Liryki najpikniejsze, ed.
Aleksander Madyda (Toru: Algo, 1999), 23.
149. Antoni Sonimski, O draliwoci ydw, WL 35 (31 August 1924): 3.
150. See Wanda Melcer, Dziecko ydowskie rozpoczyna ziemsk wdrwk,

4 0 4 n o t e s t o p a g e s 132 1 39
WL 14 (1934): 1; Wanda Melcer, Modzieniec ydowski wstpuje w wiat,
WL 22 (1934): 2.
151. Antoni Sonimski, Kronika tygodniowa, WL 23 (10 June 1934): 10.
152. Antoni Sonimski, Kroniki tygodniowe 19271939, ed. Wadysaw Kopaliski
(Warsaw: PIW, 1956), 333, 359.
153. Antoni Sonimski, Kronika tygodniowa, WL 17 (29 April 1934): 6.
154. Antoni Sonimski, Kronika tygodniowa, WL 13 (1 April 1934): 14.
155. Antoni Sonimski, Kronika tygodniowa, WL 10 (28 February 1937): 6.
156. Broniewska, Tamten brzeg mych lat, 7980.
157. Wat, My Century, 52; see also Krzywicka, Nasza przyjan trwaa p wieku,
in WAS, 106.
158. Antoni Sonimski, Kronika tygodniowa, WL 34 (9 August 1936): 5.
159. Sonimski, Kroniki tygodniowe, 471472.
160. Antoni Sonimski, Kronika tygodniowa, WL 44 (18 October 1936): 6.
161. Antoni Sonimski, Kronika tygodniowa, WL 1 (5 January 1936): 6.
162. Antoni Sonimski, Kronika tygodniowa, WL 5 (31 January 1937): 6.
163. Antoni Sonimski, Kronika tygodniowa, WL 49 (28 November 1937): 6.
164. Antoni Sonimski, Kronika tygodniowa, WL 20 (9 May 1937): 6.
165. Antoni Sonimski, Kronika tygodniowa, WL 45 (30 October 1938): 6.
166. Antoni Sonimski, Kronika tygodniowa, WL 49 (27 November 1938): 5.
167. Sonimski, Kroniki tygodniowe, 568570.
168. Ibid., 515.
169. Julian Tuwim, Rozmowy z Tuwimem, ed. Tadeusz Januszewski (Warsaw:
Semper, 1994); from Czas 131 (14 May 1935).
170. Pod bodcem wiekw, quoted in Janusz Dunin, Tuwim jako yd, Polak,
czowiek, Prace Polonistyczne 51 (1996): 88.
171. Dunin, Tuwim jako yd, Polak, czowiek, 89.
172. Julian Tuwim, ydzi, Wiersze, vol. I, ed. Alina Kowalczykowa (Warsaw:
Czytelnik, 1986), 247248; from Czyhanie na Boga (1918).
173. Januszewski, Rozmowy z Tuwimem, 1415; from Nasz Przegld 6 (6 January
1924).
174. Januszewski, Rozmowy z Tuwimem, 2526; from Dziennik Warszawski 34
and 35 (6 and 7 February 1927).
175. Ibid.
176. Ibid., 5355; from Nasz Przegld 46 (15 February 1935).
177. Julian Tuwim, Wspomnienia o odzi, WL 33 (12 August 1934): 11.
178. Januszewski, Rozmowy z Tuwimem, 5355; from Nasz Przegld 46 (15 February 1935). Also see Tuwims 1936 List do Przyjaciela-poety (aryjczyka, katolika i gazety polskiej wsppracownika) in Julian Tuwim, Dziela, vol. V, ed.
Janusz Stradecki (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1964), 691694.
179. Janusz Maciejewski, introduction to Mieczysaw Braun, Mieczysaw Braun:
Wybr poezji (Warsaw: PIW, 1979), 1722.
180. Mieczysaw Braun, Powie ydowska po polsku, Nasz Przegld 13
(13 January 1929): 8.

n o t e s to pages 1 39 1 454 0 5
181. Quoted by Maciejewski, introduction to Braun, Mieczysaw Braun: Wybr
poezji, 27; originally Pisarze polscy czy pisarze ydowscy piszcy po polsku albo pisarze polsko-ydowscy? Ster 16 (1937).
182. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 2021.
183. Ibid., 21; Irena Krzywicka, Wyznania gorszycielki (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1998),
326. Also see Krzywicka to Iwaszkiewicz, 23 December 1938, Zakopane, in
Riss, O mioci, 220221.
184. Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 252.
185. Ellipses in original. Goy here is a Russian word meaning Trojan; the
sentence is a paraphrased citation from an ancient Russian folk song, Ilia
Muromets i Solovei-Razboinik. Alexander Zeyliger researched this reference. Tuwim to Iwaszkiewicz, 14 June 1933, Warsaw, LPP, 29.
186. Andrzej Stawar, Jeszcze o Antysemityzmie, WL 22 (23 May 1937): 2. On
Wiadomoci Literackie and the Jewish question see Magdalena M. Opalski,
Wiadomoci Literackie: Polemics on the Jewish Question, in The Jews of Poland between Two World Wars, ed. Yisrael Gutman et al. (Hanover: University
Press of New England, 1989), 434449; Jan Bonski, Wiadomoci Literackie,
19241933: A Problem for the Poles, a Problem for the Jews, Gal-Ed on the
History of the Jews in Poland 14 (1995): 3948.
187. Wanda Wasilewska, Szukam antysemityzmu, WL 40 (26 September
1937): 3.
188. Broniewska, Maje i listopady, 145.
189. Broniewska, Tamten brzeg mych lat, 87.
190. BJSW, 85. All material, originally in Russian, from Jasieskis NKVD le is
from M/III/55, AW. Polish translations were published as a collection in
BJSW. I have translated the original Russian, in consultation with the Polish
version; page number references, however, are to the documents as they appear in Jaworskis collection.
191. BJSW, 87.
192. Bruno Jasieski to Stalin, 25 April 1937, BJSW, 8889.
193. BJSW, 9394.
194. The phrase i mne stydno here is written unclearly in the original Russian,
and so it is not possible to be certain whether the phrase was originally i
mne stydno or i mne nestydno. The dierence is between but I am
ashamed and so I am not ashamed, respectively. I concur with Jaworski
that the former is the more likely.
195. Bruno Jasieski to Stalin, 28 April 1937, BJSW, 95.
196. BJSW, 95.
197. BJSW, 97.
198. BJSW, 99.
199. BJSW, 102.
200. BJSW, 102.
201. BJSW, 105.
202. BJSW, 107110.

4 0 6 n o t e s t o p a g e s 146 1 5 1
203. BJSW, 107110.
204. BJSW, 119.
205. BJSW, 127128.
206. BJSW, 131.
207. BJSW, 132133.
208. BJSW, 135137.
209. BJSW, 141142.
210. BJSW, 178179.
211. Quoted in Piotr Mitzner, mier futurysty, Karta 11 (1993): 76.
212. Jan Hempel to Wanda Papiewska, 6 December 1936. Wanda Papiewska,
Jan Hempel: Wspomnienia siostry (Warsaw: Ksika i Wiedza, 1958), 146.
213. Wadysaw Krajewski, personal interview, Warsaw, 28 July 2003. See also
Wadysaw Krajewski, Facts and Myths: About the Role of Jews in the
Stalinist Period, special English issue of Wi titled Under One Heaven
(1998): 93108.
214. Ignacy Loga-owiski, Wspomnienia 1988, K. 193, ADH; Wat, Mj wiek,
vol. I, 124; A. Lampe, Avtobiograa, Moscow 1940, 250/1, AAN; Lampe
Alfredps. Alski, Marek, Nowak, 250/1, AAN.
215. The KPP list was kept in an updated Russian address book; 495/123/211,
RGASPI.
216. BJSW, 204.
217. Mitzner, mier futurysty, 76.
218. BJSW, 204; quotation from Daniel Gerould, introduction to The Mannequins Ball, xvii. A death certicate issued in Moscow in 1956, however,
gave the date of death as 20 October 1941, while leaving the cause of death
blank. Svidetelstvo o smerti II-A, No. 910123, Moscow, 14 February 1956,
1861/2/20, RGALI. The 1941 date seems unlikely to be accurate given the
information in the NKVD le.
219. Broniewska, Tamten brzeg mych lat, 270.
220. Tadeusz Tomaszewski to Wadysaw Broniewski, 31 May 1938, Warsaw,
KWB, vol. II, 291.
221. Maria Zarbiska to Wadysaw Broniewski, 30 December [1938], KWB,
vol. I, 326328.
222. Broniewska, Tamten brzeg mych lat, 287288.
223. Maria Zarbiska to Broniewski, Horochw, 8 April 1939, KWB, vol. II,
347350; Broniewska, Tamten brzeg mych lat, 302; Maria Zarbiska to
Broniewski, 10 April 1939, KWB, vol. II, 351354.
224. Antoni Sonimski, Kronika tygodniowa, WL 38 (6 September 1936): 5.
225. Antoni Sonimski, Kronika tygodniowa, WL 9 (21 February 1937): 6.
226. Antoni Sonimski, Stalin Imperatorem Proletarjatu, WL 14 (28 March
1937): 1213.
227. Antoni Sonimski, Kronika tygodniowa, WL 13 (20 March 1938): 6.
228. Wodzimierz Sokorski, Wspomnienia o Wadku, in Balicki, To jadb,
369; Sokorski, Wspomnienia, 66; Wat, My Century, 91.

n o t e s to pages 1 5 11 574 07
229. Aleksander Wat, Sny sponad Morza rdziemnego, in Poezje, ed. Anna
Miciska and Jan Zieliski (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1997), 103.
230. Closing quote: Wat, My Century, 89.
chapter 6. autumn in soviet galicia
Epigraph: Wadysaw Broniewski, Rozmowa z Histori, in Feliksa Licho
dziejewska, Broniewski bez cenzury 19391945 (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Spo
eczne KOS, 1992), 62.
1. Daszewski to Broniewski, Lww, 16 September 1934, KWB, vol. II,
159160.
2. Aleksander Wat, My Century: The Odyssey of a Polish Intellectual, trans.
Richard Lourie (New York: Norton, 1988), 87.
3. Helena Zatorska, ed., Wanda Wasilewska (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Szkolne i
Pedagogiczne, 1976), 57.
4. Agnieszka Cielikowa, Prasa okupowanego Lwowa (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo
Neriton, 1997), 77; Pawe Merlend, relacja, 731, AAN; Inglot, Spr o
Wrzesie w poezji polskiej lat 19391941 we Lwowie, Pamitnik Literacki 1
(1990): 206.
5. Jacek Trznadel, ed., Kolaboranci: Tadeusz Boy-eleski i grupa komunistycznych
pisarzy we Lwowie 19391941 (Komorw: Fundacja Pomocy ANTYK, 1998),
414; Shimon Redlich, Propaganda and Nationalism in Wartime Russia: The
Jewish Antifascist Committee in the USSR 19411948 (Boulder: East European
Monographs, 1982), 16.
6. Mieczysaw Inglot, Polska kultura literacka Lwowa lat 19391941: Ze Lwowa i o
Lwowie (Wrocaw: Towarzystwo Przyjaci Polonistyki Wrocawskiej, 1995), 23.
7. Wanda Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944),
Archiwum Ruchu Robotniczego 7 (1982): 345.
8. Ola Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1990), 2326.
9. Wat, My Century, 9899.
10. Ibid., 97.
11. Ibid., 106109.
12. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 30.
13. Adolf Rudnicki, Wielki Stefan Konecki, in ywe i martwe morze (Warsaw:
Czytelnik, 1956), 5859.
14. Wat, My Century, 104.
15. Julian Stryjkowski, Wielki strach (Warsaw: ANTYK, 1989), 62, 6869.
16. Ibid., 6869.
17. Ibid., 70.
18. Wat, My Century, 102.
19. Stryjkowski, Wielki strach, 138.
20. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 344; see also
Leon Pasternak, Aresztowanie Wadysawa Broniewskiego, Zapis 16 (October 1980): 109.
21. Wat, My Century, 123.

4 0 8 n o t e s t o p a g e s 158 1 6 1
22. According to Wasilewska, it was immediately evident that such a collective
declaration was out of the question and fortunately no one agreed individually to that kind of statement. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilew
skiej (19391944), 341; Janusz Kowalewski, Boy i Bartel we Lwowie w 1939
r., Kultura [Paris] 15 (1949): 121; Wat, My Century, 123.
23. Wat, My Century, 104105.
24. See Kowalewskis account in Trznadel, Kolaboranci, 245246.
25. Wat, My Century, 99100.
26. Aleksander Wat, Mj wiek: Pamitnik mwiony, 2 vols. (Warsaw: Czytelnik,
1998), vol. I, 275.
27. Wat, My Century, 99101; also see Kowalewski, Boy i Bartel we Lwowie w
1939 r., 119.
28. Cielikowa, Prasa okupowanego Lwowa, 71.
29. Pasternak, Aresztowanie Wadysawa Broniewskiego, 108; Wat, My Century,
124.
30. Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 304.
31. Pasternak, Aresztowanie Wadysawa Broniewskiego, 108.
32. Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 284.
33. Cielikowa, Prasa okupowanego Lwowa, 5759; Wadysaw Daszewski, Tea
tralne yczenia noworoczne, Czerwony Sztandar 62 and 63 (7 and 8 December 1939). See also Barbara Fijakowska, Borejsza i Raski: Przyczynek do
dziejow stalinizmu w Polsce (Olsztyn: Wysza szkoa pedagogiczna, 1995);
and Tadeusz Peiper, Pierwsze trzy miesice (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie,
1991).
34. Jerzy Putrament, P wieku: Wojna (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1964), 25.
35. Cielikowa, Prasa okupowanego Lwowa, 3391; Klementyna Pytlarczyk,
Sprawy kultury polskiej na amach lwowskiego Czerwonego Sztandaru
(wrzesie 1939czerwiec 1941), Biuletyn Informacyjny Studiw z Dziejw
Stosunkw Polsko-radzieckich 20 (OctoberDecember 1970): 3547; Grzegorz
Hryciuk, Kolaboracja we Lwowie w latach 19391941, Mwi Wieki 1
(January 1996): 3740.
36. Agnieszka Koecher-Hensel, Wadysaw DaszewskiProwokator czy oara
sowieckiej prowokacji? Pamitnik Teatralny 46:14 (1997): 256.
37. Julian Stryjkowski, Ocalony na wschodzie (Montricher: Les Editions Noir sur
Blanc, 1991), 103104.
38. Venclova, Aleksander Wat, 137; Trznadel (interview with Stryjkowski), Haba
domowa (Warsaw: Agencja Wydawnicza Morex, 1997), 175.
39. Stryjkowski, Ocalony na wschodzie, 103.
40. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 25.
41. Trznadel, Kolaboranci, 362363.
42. Inglot, Polska kultura literacka Lwowa, 381; originally Adam Wayk, Do inteligenta uchodcy, Czerwony Sztandar 38 (5 November 1939): 3.
43. Trznadel, Kolaboranci, 450; originally Adam Wayk, Radziecka choinka,
Czerwony Sztandar 84 (1 January 1940).

n o t e s to pages 1 6 11 664 0 9
44. Wat, My Century, 102.
45. Trznadel, Kolaboranci, 428; originally Wat, Kobieta radziecka, Czerwony
Sztandar 61 (5 December 1939).
46. Quoted in Inglot, Spr o Wrzesie w poezji polskiej lat 19391941 we
Lwowie, 213. Semn I. Kirsanov (19061971) was a Russian poet inuenced
by Mayakovsky.
47. Wats article reprinted ibid., 231233; originally Polskie sovetskie pisateli
in Literaturnaia Gazeta 67 (1939): 4.
48. Wat, My Century, 112.
49. Ibid., 103.
50. Ibid., 103104.
51. Ibid., 111.
52. Quoted in Trznadel, Kolaboranci, 326.
53. Wats article reprinted in Inglot, Spr o Wrzesie w poezji polskiej lat
19391941 we Lwowie, 231233; originally Aleksander Wat, Polskie sovet
skie pisateli, Literaturnaia Gazeta 67 (1939).
54. Article reprinted in Inglot, Spr o Wrzesie w poezji polskiej lat 19391941
we Lwowie, 229230; originally Poeta proletariatu, Czerwony Sztandar 54
(1939).
55. Lichodziejewska, Broniewski bez cenzury 19391945, 10.
56. olnier polski reprinted in Inglot, Polska kultura literacka wowa, 320.
57. Lichodziejewska, Broniewski bez cenzury 19391945, 1112. Leon Pasternak
wrote a poem about the rejection of Broniewskis poem. See Inglot, Polska
kultura literacka Lwowa, 399; published in Leon Pasternak, Pami (Warsaw:
Czytelnik, 1969), 3233.
58. Account of Jan Karol Wende cited in Inglot, Spr o Wrzesie w poezji polskiej lat 19391941 we Lwowie, 216. Also see Trznadel, Kolaboranci, 222.
59. Broniewski, Syn podbitego narodu, reprinted in Inglot, Polska kultura literacka Lwowa, 321. See also Inglot, Spr o Wrzesie w poezji polskiej lat
19391941 we Lwowie, 210; and Cielikowa, Prasa okupowanego Lwowa, 77.
60. See, for example, Jan Kott, Still Alive: An Autobiographical Essay, trans. Jadwiga Kosicka (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 150151.
61. Wat, My Century, 110. The song is most likely Moskva Maiskaia, by Pokrass
and Lebedev-Kumach, although Wat is slightly misquoting it: the chorus is
Strana moia, Moskva moia.
62. Trznadel, Kolaboranci, 414.
63. Wadysaw Broniewski, Lotniczka, in Lichodziejewska, Broniewski bez
cenzury 19391945, 13; copy in Broniewskis NKVD le.
64. Micha Borwicz, Inynierowie dusz, Zeszyty historyczne 3 (1963): 133.
65. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 352.
66. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 31; Wat, My Century, 117119; Wayk,
Przeczytaem Mj wiek, Puls 34 (1987): 4849. Accounts conict as to the
exact nature of the invitation. Wat wrote that he asked if it were perhaps
Daszewskis birthday, but Daszewski refused to reveal the occasion for the

4 1 0 n o t e s t o p a g e s 167 1 72
gathering. Wayk wrote that Daszewski told them from the beginning that
two people from Moscow, a lmmaker and a theater critic, were coming to
Lvov and wanted to meet Wat, Broniewski, and Peiper. Daszewski had been
asked to organize a gathering at the Intelligentsia Club, and he wanted to
know Peipers address. Wat expressed surprise that the Russians were interested in Peiper; Daszewski said they were interested only indirectly.
67. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 33.
68. Pasternak, Aresztowanie Wadysawa Broniewskiego, 111.
69. Story of the arrests reconstructed from four accounts: Watowa, Wszystko co
najwaniejsze, 3135; Wayk, Przeczytaem Mj wiek, 4849; Wat, My Century, 118125; Pasternak, Aresztowanie Wadysawa Broniewskiego, 105115.
Also see Borwicz, Inynierowie dusz, 134; and Koecher-Hensel, Wadysaw
DaszewskiProwokator czy oara sowieckiej prowokacji?
70. Wayk, Przeczytaem Mj wiek, 4950.
71. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 2829.
72. Stryjkowski, Wielki strach, 8594.
73. Witold Kolski, Zgnie gadzin nacjonalistyczn! reprinted in Mieczysaw
Inglot and Jadwiga Puzynina, Dokument politycznego egzorcyzmu
(W pidziesit rocznic aresztowania pisarzy polskich w Lwowie przez
NKWD), Polonistyka 42:8 (October 1990): 390391; from Czerwony Sztandar
104 (27 January 1940).
74. Stryjkowski, Wielki strach, 97.
75. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 346352.
76. The other two collectors of signatures were Bolesaw Piach and the illustrator
Franciszek Parecki. See Trznadel, Kolaboranci, 338; Borwicz, Inynierowie
dusz, 136137; Lichodziejewska, Broniewski bez cenzury 19391945, 2021;
Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 305; Wayk, Przeczytaem Mj wiek, 51; Czeslaw
Milosz, The Captive Mind, trans. Jane Zielonko (New York: Vintage Books,
1990), 152153. Putrament appears in The Captive Mind under the pseudo
nym of Gamma. Also see Jerzy Putrament, P wieku: Wojna, 23. Putrament
omits the episode of the petition in his memoirs and writes only of the
terror generated by the news of the arrests.
77. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 2835; Erwin Axer to Zbigniew Raszew
ski, July 1987, quoted in Agnieszka Koecher-Hensel, Wadysaw Daszewski
Prowokator czy oara sowieckiej prowokacji? 239240; Stefan Jdry
chowski, rozmowa z Grzegorzem Sotysiakiem, 17 February 1994, part II,
K.143, W/R 5, ADH; Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej
(19391944), 349350; see also Jan Karol Wendes account in Trznadel,
Kolaboranci, 224.
78. Koecher-Hensel, Wadysaw DaszewskiProwokator czy oara sowieckiej
prowokacji? 257.
79. Wat, My Century, 106108.
80. See Hryciuk, Kolaboracja we Lwowie w latach 19391941, 3740; and
Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 356357.

n o t e s to pages 1 72 1 784 11

81. Wat, My Century, 107.

82. Trznadel (interview with Stryjkowski), Haba domowa, 179.
83. Trznadel, Kolaboranci, 276.
84. Redlich, Propaganda and Nationalism in Wartime Russia, 16.
85. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 351.
86. Quoted in Mykoa Baan, Indywidualno zadziwiajca i niepowtarzalna,
in WWW, 217.
87. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 346.
88. Wanda Wasilewska, Spotkanie z wyborcami, Czerwony Sztandar 150
(21 March 1940); in Trznadel, Kolaboranci, 398.
89. Zoa Zotkowska, Wanda Wasilewska, 21 April 1973, 9599/t. 1, AAN;
Trznadel, Haba domowa, 179.
90. Adam Ciokosz quoted in Trznadel, Kolaboranci, 416417.
91. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 36.
92. Wat, My Century, 108109.
93. Aleksander Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek (London: Polonia, 1986), 218.
94. Adam Ciokosz quoted in Trznadel, Kolaboranci, 416417.
95. Ibid., 416417, 423; Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 36; Zoa
Zotkowska, Wanda Wasilewska, 21 April 1973, 9599/t. 1, AAN.
96. Zoa Zotkowska, Wanda Wasilewska, 21 April 1973, 9599/t. 1, AAN.
97. Wat, My Century, 108109.
98. N. S. Chruszczow, Fragmenty wspomnie N. S. Chruszczowa, Zeszyty
Historyczne 132 (2000): 119, 118,.
99. Ibid., 140.
100. Wielka demonstracja i wiec pracujcych Lwowa, Czerwony Sztandar 302
(18 September 1940); reprinted in Trznadel, Kolaboranci, 401402. Also see
Jan T. Gross, Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Polands Western
Ukraine and Western Belorussia (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1988), 142143.
101. Stryjkowski, Wielki strach, 147.
102. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 350.
103. Ibid., 351, 363364. On attempts to intervene with Stalin regarding former
KPP members, see also Jakub Berman, Interwencje na rzecz uwolnienia i
repatriacji kapepowcw oraz rehabilitacji KPP, Warsaw, September 1977,
325/31, AAN.
104. Bohdan Urbankowski, Czerwona msza, albo umiech Stalina (Warsaw:
ALFA, 1995), 65.
105. See Grzegorz Hryciuk, Kolaboracja we Lwowie w latach 19391941), 3740.
106. Quoted in Michai O. Gobaczow, ycie kulturalne Polakw w tzw. okresie
lwowskim (jesie 1939lato 1941), Z pola walki 1 (1986): 112; and Cielikowa,
Prasa okupowanego Lwowa, 93; from Nowe Widnokrgi 1 (1941): 36. On Nowe
Widnokrgi, see Wojciech leszyski, Okupacja sowiecka na Biaostocczynie
19391941: Propaganda i indoktrynacja (Biaystok: Agencja Wydawnicza Benkowski, 2001), 393394.

4 12 n o t e s t o p a g e s 178 1 87
107. Cielikowa, Prasa okupowanego Lwowa, 92; Wasilewska, Wspomnienia
Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 358359.
108. Quoted in Cielikowa, Prasa okupowanego Lwowa, 9293.
109. Putrament, P wieku: Wojna, 48. Both Sonimskis and Wayks translations
appear in the collection Wodzimierz Majakowski, Poezje, ed. Mieczysaw
Jastrun, Seweryn Pollak, Anatol Stern, and Adam Wayk (Warsaw:
Czytelnik, 1957).
110. Wayk, Biograa, Nowe Widnokrgi 4 (1941): 36; reprinted in Inglot, Polska
kultura literacka wowa, 384385.
111. Wat, My Century, 129.
112. Ibid., 123126, 158164; Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 25.
113. Wat, My Century, 121125.
114. Ibid., 137138, 154.
115. Ibid., 132133, 136.
116. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 39.
117. Wat, My Century, 159160.
118. Ibid., 160161. See also Wat to Grydzewski, La Messuguire, 2 March 1962,
C-219, AWPB.
119. Wat, My Century, 161.
120. Quoted in Inglot, Polska kultura literacka Lwowa, 325326. Janina Broniew
ska later used the ending phrase Tamten brzeg mych lat as the title of one
volume of her memoirs.
121. Broniewski composed Rozmowa z Histori in Zamarstynw prison in
May 1940.
122. Wat to Grydzewski, La Messuguire, 2 March 1962, C-219, AWPB.
123. Vladislav Antonivich Bronevskii, NKVD interrogation protocol, 12 February
1940, Lvov, M/III/5, AW; copy at MB. In Russian.
124. Frantishek Paretskii [Franciszek Parecki], deposition for the NKVD, M/III/5,
AW.
125. Wat, My Century, 113, 148.
126. Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 279.
127. Wat, My Century, 63, 195196. See also Herminia Nagerlerowas account of
her interrogations regarding Wat, Broniewski, Jasieski, Stande, and Wandurski in Trznadel, Kolaboranci, 303304.
128. Vladislav Antonivich Bronevskii, NKVD interrogation protocol, date missing, M/III/5, AW; copy at MB. The page that follows is missing from the
NKVD le.
129. Lichodziejewska, Broniewski bez cenzury, 22.
130. Vladislav Antonivich Bronevskii, NKVD interrogation protocol, date
missing, M/III/5, AW; copy at MB.
131. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 35.
132. Wayk, Przeczytaem Mj wiek, 50.
133. Wat, My Century, 155156; Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 10.
134. Hryciuk, Kolaboracja we Lwowie w latach 19391941, 3740; Wat, My

n o t e s to pages 1 88 1964 13
Century, 110, 156. On these deportations, see Gross, Revolution from Abroad,
Jan Tomasz Gross and Irena Grudziska-Gross, War through Childrens Eyes:
The Soviet Occupation of Poland and the Deportations, 19391941 (Stanford:
Hoover Institution Press, 1981); Katherine Jolluck, Exile and Identity: Polish
Women in the Soviet Union during World War II (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 2002).
135. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 3942.
136. Ibid., 4168.
137. Ibid., 6768.
138. Quoted ibid., 66.
139. Stefania Skwarzyska to Ola Watowa, [Lvov], 4 December 1940, 11, AWPB.
140. Wat, My Century, 175.
141. Ibid., 248.
142. Ibid., 189, 234.
143. Broniewski to Broniewska, Moscow, 21 August 1941, teczka Broniewskiej,
ML.
144. Ibid., 219220.
145. Ibid., 223225.
146. Ibid., 238263; Aleksander Wat, mier starego bolszewika, Kultura
[Paris] 12 (1964): 37.
147. Wat, My Century, 266268.
148. Ibid., 264269; Wat, mier starego bolszewika, 2731.
149. Wat, My Century, 271273; Wat, mier starego bolszewika, 2934; on
Erlich also see Wat to Grydzewski, La Messuguire, 2 March 1962, C-219,
AWPB.
150. Wat, My Century, 276.
151. Ibid., 291.
152. Wat, mier starego bolszewika, 3738; Wat, My Century, 297299. Also
see Aleksander Wat, La mort dun vieux bolchvik: Souvenirs sur Stieklov,
Le Contrat Social 7 (1963).
chapter 7. into the abyss
Epigraph: Julian Stryjkowski, Ocalony na wschodzie (Montricher: Les Editions
Noir sur Blanc, 1991), 137.
1. Jarosaw Iwaszkiewicz, Notatki 19391945, ed. Andrzej Zawada (Wrocaw:
Wydawnictwo Dolnolskie, 1991), 9.
2. Sonimski, Wspomnienia warszawskie (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1957), 96.
3. Meleniewski, Odyseja Tuwima, Rio de Janeiro, 27 August 1940, in Julian
Tuwim, Rozmowy z Tuwimem, ed. Tadeusz Januszewski (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Semper, 1994), 71.
4. Sonimski, Wspomnienia warszawskie, 98.
5. Ibid., 96101.
6. Meleniewski, Odyseja Tuwima, 7172.
7. Antoni Sonimski, Alfabet wspomnie (Warsaw: PIW, 1975), 241242.

41 4 n o t e s t o p a g e s 196 2 0 1
8. Ibid., 120; Wanda Nowakowska, Lecho i Tuwimdzieje przyjani, Prace
Polonistyczne 51 (1996): 240.
9. Ilia Erenburg, Tuwim Jestem, in WJT, 438.
10. Ibid.
11. Julian Tuwim to Bolesaw Miciski, Paris, 3 April 1940, LPP, 192.
12. Stanislaw Baranczak, Skamander after Skamander: The Postwar Path of the
Prewar Polish Pleiade, Cross Currents 9 (1990): 336.
13. Meleniewski, Odyseja Tuwima, 7273.
14. Nowakowska, Lecho i Tuwimdzieje przyjani, 241.
15. Meleniewski, Odyseja Tuwim, 74.
16. Tuwim to Wierzyski, Rio de Janeiro, 10 September 1940, LPP, 73.
17. Nowakowska, Lecho i Tuwimdzieje przyjani, 241.
18. Julian Tuwim, Polish Flowers, in The Dancing Socrates and Other Poems,
trans. Adam Gillon (New York: Twayne, 1968), 4450.
19. Ewa Zawistowska, personal correspondence, Greece, 23 December 2000.
20. Janina Broniewska, Maje i listopady (Warsaw: Iskry, 1967), 235.
21. Ewa Zawistowska, personal correspondence, Greece, 13 May 2001.
22. Bohdan Urbankowski, Czerwona msza, albo umiech Stalina (Warsaw: ALFA,
1995), 65.
23. On Sztandar Wolnoci, see Wojciech leszyski, Okupacja sowiecka na
Biaostocczynie 19391941: Propaganda i indoktrynacja (Biaystok: Agencja
Wydawnicza Benkowski, 2001), 389392.
24. Janina Broniewska to Feliks Kon, 11 April 1941, Minsk, 135/1/264, RGASPI.
On Proletariat see Norman Naimark, The History of the Proletariat: The
Emergence of Marxism in the Kingdom of Poland, 18701887 (Boulder: East
European Quarterly, 1979).
25. Janina Broniewska to Feliks Kon, 5 May 1941, Minsk, 135/1/264, RGASPI.
26. Alfred Lampe to Ministerstwo Sprawiedliwoci Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej,
31 March 1942, Biaystok, 250/1, AAN. See also Lampe Alfredps. Alski,
Marek, Nowak, 250/1, AAN.
27. Teresa Toraska, Oni (Warsaw: Agencja Omnipress, 1990), 2526; Jakub
Berman, 325/1, AAN.
28. Janina Broniewska, Z notatnika korespondenta wojennego, 2 vols. (Warsaw:
Iskry, 1965), vol. I, 27.
29. Ibid., 27; Ewa Zawistowska, personal correspondence, Greece, 13 May 2001.
30. Jakub Berman, 325/1, AAN; Jakub Berman, Epizod grudniowy na
przeomie 1943/1944, Warsaw, April 1973, 325/31, AAN.
31. Wanda Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej, (19391944),
Archiwum Ruchu Robotniczego 7 (1982): 372374; Jerzy Putrament, P wieku:
Wojna (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1964), 64 [photograph].
32. The poems appeared in Nowe Widnokrgi 7 (1941). See Feliksa Lichodziejewska, Broniewski bez cenzury: 19391945 (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Spoeczne
KOS, 1992), 12; and [Jakub Berman], O prbach utworzenia Batalionu pol-

n o t e s to pages 201 20 74 1 5

33.

34.
35.

36.
37.
38.

39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.

skiego w czerwcu-lipcu 1941 r. dla walki z hitlerowskim najedc, 325/31,

AAN.
Przemwienie na wiecu mieszkacw Kijowa, 4 September 1941, in Wanda
Wasilewska, O woln i demokratyczn: Wybr artykuw, przemwie i listw,
ed. Zbigniew Kumo et al. (Warsaw: Wojskowy Insytut Historyczny im.
Wandy Wasilewskiej, 1985), 34.
Wasilewska, Odezwa polskich dziaaczy demokratycznych w ZSRRuczestnikw wiecu radiowego w Saratowie, 27 November 1941, ibid., 3638.
Barbara Fijakowska, Borejsza i Raski: Przyczynek do dziejw stalinizmu w
Polsce (Olsztyn: Wysza Szkoa Pedagogiczna, 1995), 89; Putrament, P
wieku: Wojna, 82.
Julian Stryjkowski, Wielki strach (Warsaw: ANTYK, 1989); To samo ale inaczej
(Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1990), 241246.
Stryjkowski, To samo ale inaczej, 245261.
Stefania and Julian Tuwim to Irena Monique Wiley, 5 July 1940, Brazil;
Wierzyski to Irena Monique Wiley, 11 July 1941, Forest Hills, New York;
Wierzyski to Irena Monique Wiley, 18 July 1941, Forest Hills, New York,
zbir Moniki Wiley, 151, Instytut Bada Literackich, Warsaw.
Erenburg, Tuwim Jestem, 439.
Tuwim to Irena Tuwimowa, 12 September 1941, LPP, 6061.
Tuwim to Irena Tuwimowa, 15 November 1941, LPP, 69.
Tuwim to Irena Tuwimowa, 23 February 1942, LPP, 69.
Tuwim to Irena Tuwimowa, 12 September 1941, LPP, 6061.
Lecho to Tuwim, 29 May 1942, New York, LPP, 43n.
Tuwim to Jzef Wittlin, New York, 5 June 1942, LPP, 251.
Tuwim to Irena Tuwimowa, 25 July 1942, New York, LPP, 6061.
Broniewski to Broniewska, Moscow, 21 August 1941, teczka Broniewskiej,
ML.
Broniewski to Broniewska, Alma-Ata, 7 August 1941, teczka Broniewskiej,
ML.
Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 375.
Ibid.
Broniewski to Broniewska, 21 August 1941, Moscow, teczka Broniewskiej,
ML.
Quoted in Lichodziejewska, Broniewski bez cenzury, 2930.
Quoted ibid., 30.
Broniewski to Broniewska, Moscow, teczka Broniewskiej, ML.
Quoted in Lichodziejewska, Broniewski bez cenzury, 28.
Ibid., 30.
Wadysaw Anders to Broniewski, 21 March 1942, Kuibyshev, M/III/5, AW.
Emil Herbst, O Wadysawie Broniewskim, 14 March 1962, 731, AAN.
Grayna Pietruszewska-Kobiela, Pejza dramatyczny Anatola Sterna
(Czstochowa: Wysza Szkoa Pedagogiczna w Czstochowie, 1989), 11.

4 1 6 n o t e s t o p a g e s 20 7 2 1 4
60. Wadysaw Anders to Broniewski, Zawiadczenie, Kuibyshev, 21 March
1942, M/III/5, AW.
61. Wadysaw Broniewski, Droga, Moscow, September 1941, 245/6, AAN;
published in Bogdan Czaykowski, ed., Antologia poezji polskiej na obczynie,
19391999 (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 2002), 50.
62. Sonimski, Wspomnienia warszawskie, 109.
63. Antoni Sonimski, Pozdrowienia dla Wadysawa Broniewskiego, 20 April
1942, 245/6, AAN; published as Pozdrowienia dla autora Drogi in Czay
kowski, Antologia poezji polskiej na obczynie, 51. Czaykowski gives the date as
November 1941, the archival copy is dated April 1942.
64. Wadysaw Bartoszewski, Mj Sonimski, in WAS, 1617; Antoni
Sonimski, Alarm (London: M. I. Kolin, 1940).
65. Antoni Sonimski, Popi i wiatr, in Poezje (Cracow: Czytelnik, 1951),
312330.
66. Sonimski, Wspomnienia warszawskie, 111.
67. Mieczysaw Grydzewski to Julian Tuwim, London, 14 September 1941.
Grydzewski, Listy do Tuwima i Lechonia (19401943), ed. Janusz Stradecki
(Warsaw: PIW, 1986), 62.
68. Grydzewski to Tuwim, London, 14 September 1941. Ibid.
69. Grydzewski to Tuwim, London, 14 September 1941. Ibid., 60.
70. Quoted in Grydzewski to Tuwim, London, 30 January 1942. Ibid., 6667.
71. Here fth column refers to the fth item in Soviet identity documents,
which contains the holders nationality.
72. Grydzewski to Tuwim, London, 30 January 1942. Grydzewski, Listy
do Tuwima i Lechonia (19401943), 6667. OZON, Obz Zjednoczenia
Narodowego, was a right-leaning formation organized on a military
model following Pisudskis death in the interest of uniting the nation
around a central leader and the military. It existed between 1937 and
1942.
73. Grydzewski to Tuwim, London, 30 January 1942. Ibid., 68.
74. Tuwim to Sonimski, New York, July 1942, LPP, 213214.
75. Sonimski, Wspomnienia warszawskie, 114.
76. Jan T. Gross, Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Polands Western
Ukraine and Western Belorussia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988),
144.
77. Aleksander Wat, My Century: The Odyssey of a Polish Intellectual, trans.
Richard Lourie (New York: Norton, 1988), 124125, 307309.
78. Ola Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1990), 6871.
79. Ibid., 71; Aleksander Wat, Mj wiek: Pamitnik mwiony, 2 vols. (Warsaw:
Czytelnik, 1998), vol. II, 245248.
80. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 7172.
81. Wat, My Century, 305318.
82. Ibid., 319.
83. Ibid., 320325.

n o t e s to pages 215 2234 17

84. Ibid.; Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 73.

85. Wat, My Century, 328.
86. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 76; copy of letter in 11, AWPB.
87. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 7477.
88. Ibid., 77.
89. Ibid., 78.
90. Ibid., 82.
91. Wat, My Century, 329330; Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 83; Wat
and Watowa to Kochana Pani, Alma-Ata, 17 June 1942, C-194, AWPB.
92. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 7172.
93. Wat, My Century, 330.
94. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 85.
95. Wat, My Century, 328345.
96. Ibid., 335337.
97. Ibid., 162. Despite their own connection to the delegation, Wat and his
wife were very critical of this Polish outpost that did much for many Poles
who had been cast into the Soviet Union against their will; they accused
the delegation of corruption, favoritism, and incompetence. See Watowa,
Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 8586. See the polemic with Wicek: Wat, My
Century, 339341; Jacek Trznadel, Gosy do wspomnie Aleksandra Wata,
Puls 33 (spring 1987): 7076; Kazimierz Wicek, W Alma-Acie, w Moim
wieku ... , ibid., 5869.
98. Wat, My Century, 345347.
99. Quoted in Lichodziejewska, Broniewski bez cenzury, 34.
100. Quoted ibid., 3640.
101. Broniewski, Mniejsza o to, in Lichodziejewska, Broniewski bez cenzury, 43.
102. Lichodziejewska, ibid., 43.
103. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 392.
104. Lichodziejewska, Broniewski bez cenzury, 4447.
105. Quoted ibid., 4647.
106. Quoted ibid., 4647.
107. Quoted ibid., 47.
108. Quoted ibid., 38.
109. Ewa Zawistowska, personal correspondence, Greece, 13 May 2001.
110. Wanda Wasilewska to Janina Broniewska, 25 January [1942 or 1943]. Copy
provided by Ewa Zawistowska.
111. Broniewska, Z notatnika korespondenta wojennego, vol. I, 28. Also see
Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 379.
112. Broniewska, Z notatnika korespondenta wojennego, vol. I, 3132.
113. Ibid., 3233; Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej, 379; Stefan
Jdrychowski, rozmowa z Grzegorzem Sotysiakiem, 17 February 1994, part
II, K. 143, W/R 5, ADH.
114. Lampe Alfredps. Alski, Marek, Nowak, 250/1, AAN.
115. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 376.

4 18 n o t e s t o p a g e s 223 227
116. Stefan Jdrychowski, O dziaalnoci ZPP, 3 June 1980, and Zwizek Patriotw Polskich, 25 May 1972, JI/2, ADH; Putrament, P Wieku: Wojna, 146.
117. Broniewska, Z notatnika korespondenta wojennego, vol. I, 35.
118. Ibid., 44. See also Wasilewskas letters to Broniewska during this period
from late 1942 and early 1943 in Helena Zatorska, ed., Wanda Wasilewska
(Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne, 1976), 175176.
119. Janina Broniewska, Tamten brzeg mych lat (Warsaw: Ksika i Wiedza, 1973),
263264.
120. Wanda Wasilewska to Bolesaw Drobner, Kuibyshev, 7 July 1942, 216/31,
AAN; Putrament, P Wieku: Wojna, 151152; Oleksandr Korneichuk, Front
(Moscow: Voyennoye Izdatelstvo Narodnogo Komissariata Oborony Soiuza
SSR, 1942).
121. Stefan Jdrychowski, rozmowa z Grzegorzem Sotysiakiem, 17 February
1994, part II, K. 143, W/R 5, ADH.
122. Wanda Wasilewska, The Rainbow, trans. Edith Bone, ed. Sonia Bleeker
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1944).
123. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 430.
124. Maria Iwaszkiewicz-Wojdowska and Wodzimierz Susid, Azyl w Stawisku,
Midrasz 11 (November 2000): 28. See also Watowa, Wszystko co
najwaniejsze, 21.
125. Iwaszkiewicz, Notatki 19391945, 101102.
126. Wat, My Century, 120.
127. Lichodziejewska, Broniewski bez cenzury, 2728.
128. Irena Krzywicka, Wyznania gorszycielki (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1998), 361369.
129. Jerzy Zawieyski, Dobrze, e byli (Warsaw: Biblioteka Wizi, 1974), 133.
130. Janusz Maciejewski, introduction to Mieczysaw Braun, Mieczysaw Braun:
Wybr poezji (Warsaw: PIW, 1979), 32. On the Warsaw ghetto, see Barbara
Engelking and Jacek Leociak, Getto Warszawskie: Przewodnik po
nieistniejcym miecie (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo IS PAN, 2001).
131. Adolf Berman, Blok Antyfaszystowski (Ze wspomnie), trans. Stefan
Bergman, Biuletyn ydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego 23 (1980): 79.
132. Yitzhak Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising, trans. and ed. Barbara Harshav (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1993), 240, 463n.
133. Jakub Berman, Wspomnienia, 19491982, 325/33, AAN.
134. Adolf Berman, Zagada Getta ydowskiego w Warszawie, 302/209, IH;
Basia Temkin-Bermanowa, Dziennik z podziemia, ed. Anka Grupiska and
Pawe Szapiro (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Ksikowe Twj Styl and ydowski
Insytut Historyczny, 2000); Emanuel Ringelblum in his Polish-Jewish
Relations during the War (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1992)
describes Adolf and Basia Bermans lives on the Aryan Side.
135. Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory, 348349.
136. Wadysaw Bartoszewski, 75 lat w XX wieku: Pamitnik mwiony (8),
Wi 40:9 (September 1997): 143.

n o t e s to pages 227 2354 1 9

137. Ibid., 141.
138. Wadysaw Bartoszewski, interview, Warsaw, 23 December 1997. Also see
Bartoszewski, 75 lat w XX wieku: pamitnik mwiony (8), 141142; and
Wadysaw Bartoszewski to Ber Mark, 23 March 1958, 566, IH.
139. Marek Edelman, personal interview, d, 3 December 1997.
140. Lampe and Wasilewska to Molotov, 3 January 1943, Kuibyshev, in
Wasilewska, O woln i demokratyczn, 5253.
141. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 383.
142. Broniewska, Z notatnika korespondenta wojennego, vol. I, 6770.
143. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej, (19391944), 387.
144. Broniewska, Z notatnika korespondenta wojennego, vol. I, 6770. Wolna
Polska appeared as a weekly between 1 March 1943 and 15 August 1946.
Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej, 380382; Wasilewska,
Zadania Zwizku Patriotw Polskich w ZSRR, in O woln i demokratyczn,
111113.
145. Soviet sources have long since made clear that the Polish ocers were
murdered by the Soviets.
146. Wasilewska, Przemwienie radiowe do Polakw w ZSRR, 28 April 1943,
O woln i demokratyczn, 5455.
147. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 382.
148. Ibid., 387.
149. Stryjkowski, To samo ale inaczej, 348.
150. Stryjkowski, Ocalony na wschodzie, 161.
151. Stryjkowski, To samo ale inaczej, 352356.
152. Ibid., 357358.
153. Bolesaw Gebert, Tuwim w Nowym Jorku, in WJT, 223227.
154. Erlich committed suicide in Soviet prison. See Gertrud Pickhan, That
Incredible History of the Polish Bund Written in a Soviet Prison, Polin
10 (1997): 247272.
155. Grydzewski to Tuwim (in English), London, 22 March 1943. Mieczysaw
Grydzewski, Listy do Tuwima i Lechonia (19401943) ed. Janusz Stradecki
(Warsaw: PIW, 1986), 71.
156. Julian Tuwim to Irena Tuwimowa, 14 April 1943, New York. Ibid., 72.
157. Tuwim to Stanisaw Barski, White Plains, New York, 8 June 1944, in Piotr
Chrzczonowicz, Nieznana korespondencja Juliana Tuwima z dziaaczem
robotniczym, Archiwum Ruchu Robotniczego I (1973): 341347.
158. See Oskar Lange, Conversations with Wanda Wasilewska, III-309/276,
PAN; Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944),
399400; Teresa Toranska, Them: Stalins Polish Puppets, trans. Agnieszka
Kolakowska (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), 233; Tuwim to Irena Lange,
White Plains, 2 July 1944, III-309/280, PAN; Tuwim to Broniewska, New
York, 6060, AAN.
159. Tuwim to Erenburg, New York, 24 July 1944, LPP, 269.
160. Tuwim to Lange, White Plains, 4 August 1944, III-309/280, PAN.

42 0 n o t e s t o p a g e s 235 242
161. Tuwim to Sonimski, New York, 12 December 1944, LPP, 215218.
162. Julian Tuwim, My, ydzi polscy (Tel Aviv: Universum, 1944), 3.
163. Ibid., 3.
164. Ibid., 4.
165. Ibid., 5.
166. Ibid., 6.
167. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 371;
Toranska, Them, 216217; Stefan Jdrychowski, O dziaalnoci ZPP,
3 June 1980, JI/2, ADH; Stefan Jdrychowski, rozmowa z Grzegorzem
Sotysiakiem, 17 February 1994, part II, K. 143, W/R 5, ADH.
168. Toranska, Them, 217.
169. Teresa Toraska, Oni (Warsaw: Agencja Omnipress, 1990), 147.
170. Wodzimierz Sokorski, Wspomnienia (Warsaw: Krajowa Agencja Wydaw
nicza, 1990), 98; Broniewska, Z notatnika korespondenta wojennego, vol. I,
187.
171. Broniewska, Z notatnika korespondenta wojennego, vol. I, 90.
172. Wasilewska to Stalin, April 1943, in O woln i demokratyczn, 7778.
173. Putrament, P wieku: Wojna, 164165.
174. Stryjkowski, To samo ale inaczej, 349351.
175. Broniewska, Z notatnika korespondenta wojennego, vol. I, 9294.
176. Wasilewska initially believed that Andrzej Witos was his brother, the Polish
Peasant Party leader Wincenty Witos, but seemed content even when the
misunderstanding became clear. Stefan Jdrychowski, Zwizek Patriotw
Polskich, 25 May 1972, JI/2, ADH; Stryjkowski, To samo ale inaczej, 340;
Toranska, Them, 237; Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej
(19391944), 384395.
177. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 389.
178. Wasilewska, Przemwienie na I zjedzie Zwizku Patriotw Polskich,
Moscow, 9 June 1943, in Wasilewska, O woln i demokratyczn, 6163.
179. Ibid., 8283.
180. Broniewska, Z notatnika korespondenta wojennego, vol. I, 144145.
181. Stryjkowski, Ocalony na wschodzie, 163164.
182. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 399.
183. Ibid., 426427.
184. Broniewska, Z notatnika korespondenta wojennego, vol. I, 209210; Gruppa
Tovarishchei, Alfred Lampe, Pravda 309 (17 December 1943), copy in
250/1, AAN.
185. Wat, My Century, 352.
186. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 87100.
187. Wat, My Century, 359360.
188. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 88.
189. Ibid., 103.
190. Wat, My Century, 113114; Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 104.
191. Wat, My Century, 360.

n o t e s to pages 243 25442 1

192. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 109111.
193. Ibid., 112113.
194. Ibid., 114119.
195. Ibid., 115116.
196. Aleksander Wat, . . . Jak upir staj midzy wami i pytam o rdo
zego ... , Na Antenie 4:43 (6 November 1966): 1; Watowa, Wszystko
co najwaniejsze, 116119.
197. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 120.
198. Ibid., 120124.
199. N. S. Chruszczow, Fragmenty wspomnie N. S. Chruszczowa, Zeszyty
Historyczne 132 (2000): 144.
200. Stefan Jdrychowski, Na pierwszej linii spraw polskich, WWW, 174.
201. Jan Karakiewicz, Wyrosa do rangi ma stanu, WWW, 140.
202. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 430.
203. Wasilewska to Stalin, August 1943, in O woln i demokratyczn, 8889.
204. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 388.
205. A Soviet news brief to this eect was published in Pravda on 14 March 1944.
Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 394397.
206. Toranska, Them, 229.
207. Broniewska, Z notatnika korespondenta wojennego, vol. I, quotations at 136,
138, 159, respectively; Ewa Zawistowska, personal correspondence, Greece,
28 June 2001.
208. Broniewska, Z notatnika korespondenta wojennego, vol. II, 125. See also Jerzy
Giedroyc, Autobiograa na cztery rce (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1994), 186.
209. Adam Wayk, Marsz I Korpusu, 245/6 AAN.
210. Broniewska, Z notatnika korespondenta wojennego, vol. I, 229.
211. Ibid., 256.
212. Ibid., vol. I, 4445; vol. II, 78.
213. Stefan Jdrychowski, O dziaalnoci ZPP, 3 June 1980, JI/2, ADH.
214. Stefan Jdrychowski, Zwizek Patriotw Polskich, 25 May 1972, JI/2,
ADH.
215. See Krystyna Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland,
19431948, trans. John Micgiel and Michael H. Bernhard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
216. Broniewska, Z notatnika korespondenta wojennego, vol. II, 151, 179, 180, 188.
217. Tuwim to Broniewska, New York, 6060, AAN.
218. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 404.
219. Chruszczow, Fragmenty wspomnie, 158.
220. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 418.
221. Ibid., 418.
222. Iwaszkiewicz, Notatki 19391945, 113114.
223. Edward Raczyski to Anthony Eden, 28 March 1944, Stanisaw Mikoajczyk
collection, 31, Hoover Institution Archive, Stanford.
224. Most Urgent to President Raczkiewicz and Vicepremier Kwapiski,

422 n o t e s t o p a g e s 254 259

9 August 1944, Mikoajczyk collection, 34; Edward Raczyski to Sir Orme
Sargent, 16 August 1944, Mikoajczyk collection, 32, both Hoover Institution
Archive, Stanford. See also Stanisaw Mikoajczyk, The Rape of Poland (New
York: McGraw Hill, 1948); Stefan Korbonski, Fighting Warsaw: The Story of
the Polish Underground State, 19341945, trans. F. B. Czarnomski (New York:
Funk and Wagnalls, 1956); and Jan Ciechanowski, The Warsaw Rising of 1944
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974). For a colorful account of
the uprising, see Norman Davies, Rising 44 (London: Macmillan, 2003).
225. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 412414.
226. Toranska, Them, 247.
227. Broniewska, Z notatnika korespondenta wojennego, vol. II, 201.
228. Iwaszkiewicz, Notatki 19391945, 114.
229. Broniewski, Warszawa, in Lichodziejewska, Broniewski bez cenzury, 53.
230. Broniewska, Z notatnika korespondenta wojennego, vol. II, 260, 262.
231. Broniewski to Anka Broniewska, 15 March 1945, quoted in Lichodziejewska,
Broniewski bez cenzury, 56.
232. Sawomir Kdzierski, personal correspondence, Warsaw, 7 December 2000.
233. Wasilewska, Reeksje z pobytu w wyzwolonej Warszawie, O woln i
demokratyczn, 152154.
234. Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944), 419.
chapter 8. stalinism amidst war saws ruins
Epigraph: Adam Wayk, Pozycja artysty (Uwagi oglne), Odrodzenie 89
(12 November 1944): 67.
1. Grzegorz Jaszuski, Julian Tuwim w maju wyjeda do Polski, New York,
March 1945, in Julian Tuwim, Rozmowy z Tuwimem, ed. Tadeusz Januszewski
(Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Semper, 1994), 7577.
2. Quoted in Krzysztof Teodor Toeplitz, Adam Waykpoeta i historia,
Gazeta Wyborcza 45 (22 February 2002).
3. Adam Wayk, Sketch for a Memoir, in Postwar Polish Poetry, ed. Czeslaw
Milosz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 54. From Wayks
Szkic pamitnika.
4. Adam Wayk, Troska o czowieka, Kunica 3 (14 January 1946).
5. Julian Tuwim, Modlitwa, Odrodzenie 1 (3 September 1944): 1; Jerzy Putrament, P Wieku: Wojna (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1964), 277292; Jacek Natanson, Tygodnik Odrodzenie (19441950) (Warsaw: Pastwowe Wydawnictwo
Naukowe, 1987), 1819.
6. Agnieszka Koecher-Hensel, Wadysaw DaszewskiProwokator czy oara
sowieckiej prowokacji? Pamitnik Teatralny 46:14 (1997): 269.
7. Ibid., 269.
8. See Jan Tomasz Gross, Upiorna Dekada: Trzy eseje o stereotypach na temat
ydw, Polakw, Niemcw i komunistw, 19391948 (Cracow: TAiWPN Universitas, 1998), 93113.
9. See George H. Hodos, Show Trials: Stalinist Purges in Eastern Europe,

n o t e s to pages 259 264423

10.
11.

12.
13.
14.
15.

16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.

22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.

31.
32.

19481954 (New York: Praeger, 1987), 135154; Andrzej Paczkowski, Poland,

The Enemy Nation, in Stphane Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 363393.
Krystyna Domaska to Broniewski, 12 April 1945, Krystyna Domaska,
MB.
Broniewski to Stefania Zahorska and Adam Pragier, 18 August 1944
[sic1945]. Quoted in Feliksa Lichodziejewska, Broniewski bez cenzury:
19391945 (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Spoeczne KOS, 1992), 60.
Tuwim to Broniewski, 1945, LPP, 114.
Broniewski to Tuwim, Tel Aviv, 8 October 1945, do Tuwima, MB.
Broniewski to Tuwim, Tel Aviv, 8 October 1945, do Tuwima, MB.
Tuwim to Zarbiska-Broniewska, New York, 16 November 1945, LPP,
115116. The Andersonian weekly was Tygodnik Polski, published by Jan
Lecho, Kazimierz Wierzyski, and Jzef Wittlin between 1943 and 1947.
Tuwim to Zarbiska, New York, 16 November 1945, LPP, 115116.
Zarbiska and Broniewski to Tuwim, Zakopane, 10 February 1946, do
Tuwima, MB.
Lucjan Marek, O Wadysawie Broniewskim, 14 March 1962, 731, AAN.
Zarbiska and Broniewski to Tuwim, Zakopane, 10 February 1946, do
Tuwima, MB.
Wadysaw Broniewski, ydom polskim, Odrodzenie 14 (4 March 1945): 2.
Appenszlak to Broniewski, Palestine, 11 December 1946, z Palestyny, MB.
Paulina Appenszlak (Appenszlakowa) was the editor of the Warsaw-based,
Polish-language Jewish womens weekly newspaper Ewa: Tygodnik (192833);
an advocate of contraception and womens reproductive rights; and the wife
of Jakub Appenszlak, one of the editors of Nasz Przegld. See Ewa Plach,
Feminism and Nationalism on the Pages of Ewa: Tygodnik, 1928 to 1933,
Polin 18 (2005).
Appenszlak to Broniewski, Palestine, 11 December 1946, z Palestyny, MB.
Appenszlak to Broniewski, Palestine, 2 April 1946, z Palestyny, MB.
Appenszlak to Broniewski, Palestine, 20 May 1946, z Palestyny, MB.
Appenszlak to Broniewski, Palestine, 5 July 1946, z Palestyny, MB.
Wygodzki to Broniewski, 7 November 1945, rne, MB.
Gadomski to Broniewski, Palestine, 12 March 1946, z Palestyny, MB.
Appenszlak to Broniewski, Palestine, 7 September 1946, z Palestyny, MB;
Appenszlak to Broniewski, Palestine, 25 January 1947, z Palestyny, MB.
Stern to Wat, 6 January 1948, A-4, AWPB.
Stern to Borejsza, Tel Aviv, 14 February 1948. Quoted in Barbara Fijakowska,
Borejsza i Raski: Przyczynek do dziejw stalinizmu w Polsce (Olsztyn:
Wysza Szkoa Pedagogiczna, 1995), 163.
Stern was suspected of Jewish nationalist activity; extant informers reports
on Stern date from 1951. See Sterns le: 01178/1319, IPN.
Tuwim to Wittlin, Toronto, 31 July 1945, LPP, 255257.

424 n o t e s t o p a g e s 264268
33. Tuwim to Iwaszkiewicz, New York, 14 September 1945, LPP, 3741.
34. Tuwim to Borejsza, 12 December 1945, LPP, 4546.
35. Kruczkowskis correspondence to his wife during his years as a prisoner
of war survives at ML.
36. Tuwim to Kruczkowski, New York, 9 February 1946, 1067/7, ML.
37. Tuwim to Sonimski, New York, 4 February 1946, LPP, 227228.
38. Tuwim to Sonimski, New York, 17 January 1946, LPP, 222225.
39. LPP, 232.
40. Tuwim, Rozmowy z Tuwimem, 7981; from Z. S., Powrt do kraju jest
najwikszym szczciem, Rzeczpospolita 158 (9 June 1946).
41. Iwaszkiewicz, Trzydzieci pi lat, in WJT, 453.
42. Stanislaw Baranczak, Skamander after Skamander: The Postwar Path of the
Prewar Polish Pleiade, Cross Currents 9 (1990): 340.
43. Lucyna Tychowa [daughter of Jakub Berman], personal interview, 25 August
2003, Warsaw.
44. LPP, 266267.
45. Tuwim, Rozmowy z Tuwimem, 8589; from Maria Szczepaska, Najpik
niejsza ze wszystkich miast jest Warszawa ... Julian Tuwim o swej pracy
pisarskiej i teatralnej, Dziennik Literacki 3 (1421 November 1947).
46. Tuwim to Leopold Sta, Warsaw, 31 August 1947, LPP, 282.
47. Tuwim, Rozmowy z Tuwimem, 8589.
48. Ibid., 8589.
49. Teresa Toraska, Oni (Warsaw: Agencja Omnipress, 1990), 4950. Jakub
Berman remembered the year as having been 1948, but it must have been
1949, as only then was Molotovs wife purged.
50. Teresa Toranska, Them: Stalins Polish Puppets, trans. Agnieszka Kolakowska
(New York: Harper and Row, 1987), 269270; see also Jakub Berman,
Zagadnienie pracy partyjnej wrd inteligencji (referat wygoszony na konferencji inteligencji PPR w Bydgoszczy 2 marca br.), Nowe Drogi 2 (March
1947).
51. N. S. Chruszczow, Fragmenty wspomnie N. S. Chruszczowa, Zeszyty
Historyczne 132 (2000): 172.
52. Toraska, Oni, 135.
53. T. V. Volokitina et al., eds., Sovetskii faktor v vostochnoi Evrope 19441953, vol.
II: Dokumenty (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002), 198. See also V. Z. Lebedev to
A. Y. Vyshinskii, Warsaw, 10 July 1949 in T. V. Volokitina et al., eds, Vostochnaia Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskikh arkhivov 19441953, vol. II (Moscow:
Sibirskii khronograf, 1998), 172178.
54. Jakub Berman, Wspomnienia, 19791982, 325/33, AAN; Toraska, Oni,
146147. On the Slnsk trial: Ji Pelikn, ed., The Czechoslovak Political Trials, 19501954: The Suppressed Report of the Dubek Governments Commission
of Inquiry (London: Macdonald, 1970); and Heda Margolius Kovly, Under
a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 19411968, trans. Franci and Helen Epstein
(Cambridge: Plunkett Lake Press, 1986).

n o t e s to pages 268 272425

55. Sprawozdanie z obchodu 5-ej rocznicy powstania w Gehtcie [sic] Warszaw
skim, 29 April 1948, 295/IX-407, AAN; CKP Prezydium, Protocol 56, 10
June 1948, 303/11, IH; CKP Prezydium Protokol 57, 16 June 1948, 303/11,
IH, Warsaw; Dyskusja, 25 October 1948, 295/IX-407, AAN. For more detail
see Marci Shore, Jzyk, Pami i Rewolucyjna Awangarda: Ksztatowanie
Historii Powstania w Getcie Warszawskim, 19441950, Biuletyn ydowskiego
Instytutu Historycznego 188:4 (December 1998): 4461.
56. CKP Prezydium Protok 21, 13 April 1949, 303/16, IH.
57. Wadysaw Bartoszewski, interview, Warsaw, 22 December 1997; see also
Toraska, Oni, 143, 328.
58. Quoted in Fijakowska, Borejsza i Raski, 184185.
59. Ibid., 189.
60. Jan Kott, Still Alive: An Autobiographical Essay, trans. Jadwiga Kosicka
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 172173.
61. Fijakowska, Borejsza i Raski, 112, 152153.
62. LPP, 376; Natanson, Tygodnik Odrodzenie (19441950), 25.
63. Kott, Still Alive, 174; Toranska, Them, 144; Fijakowska, Borejsza i Raski,
114, 125.
64. Fijakowska, Borejsza i Raski, 118133.
65. The reference here is to Caf Ujazdowska, ironically located at the corner of
the street then named Aleje Stalina (Stalin Avenue, formerly Aleje Ujazdow
skie) and Plac Trzech Krzyy (The Square of the Three Crosses); quoted ibid.,
131132n. See the dissertation by Mikoaj Kunicki, The Polish Crusader: The
Life and Politics of Bolesaw Piasecki, 19151979 (Stanford University,
2004).
66. Jerzy Borejsza, Rewolucja agodna, Odrodzenie 1012 (15 January 1945): 1.
67. Quoted in Fijakowska, Borejsza i Raski, 122.
68. Natanson, Tygodnik Odrodzenie (19441950), 142.
69. Adam Wayk, quoted ibid., 148.
70. Fijakowska, Borejsza i Raski, 141.
71. Quoted ibid., 142.
72. Quoted in Jakub Berman, Wok Kongresu Intelektualistw we Wrocawiu
w obronie pokoju (2528 sierpnia 1948), Warsaw, June 1978, 325/32, AAN.
Iwaszkiewiczs recollections of the Wrocaw congress were published in Odra
(February 1978).
73. Julian Tuwim, Nadzieje i yczenia, Odrodzenie 35 (29 August 1948): 3.
74. Toranska, Them, 290291.
75. Fijakowska, Borejsza i Raski, 144. Fadeevs telegram: Tuwim to Broniew
ska, New York, 6060, AAN.
76. Quoted ibid., 144145. On Borejsza during this period, see also Czesaw
Miosz, abecado miosza (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1997), 6970.
77. Toranska, Them, 290291; Jan Kott, Still Alive, 174; Jakub Berman, Wok
Kongresu Intelektualistw we Wrocawiu w obronie pokoju (2528 sierpnia
1948), Warsaw, June 1978, 325/32, AAN.

426 n o t e s t o p a g e s 273 277

78. Quoted in Jakub Berman, Wok Kongresu Intelektualistw we Wrocawiu
w obronie pokoju (2528 sierpnia 1948), Warsaw, June 1978, 325/32, AAN.
79. Ola Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1990), 153.
80. Wat to Iwaszkiewicz, Alma-Ata, 18 January 1945, ML.
81. Wayk, Troska o czowieka; Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 126.
82. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 129.
83. Ibid., 132.
84. Aleksander Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, ed. Krzysztof Rutkowski (London:
Polonia, 1986), 162.
85. Juliusz Starzyski to Wat, 20 August 1948, A-5, AWPB.
86. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 135136.
87. Ibid., 138; Wat to Borejsza, 12 March 1947, quoted in Fijakowska, Borejsza i
Raski, 160; Natanson, Tygodnik Odrodzenie (19441950), 135136; Iwaszkiewicz to Wat, 13 August 1947, Stawisko, A-86, AWPB.
88. Aleksander Wat, Przemwienie Aleksandra Wata na zjedzie P.E.N.
Clubw, Odrodzenie 23 (8 June 1947): 1.
89. Aleksander Wat, My Century: The Odyssey of a Polish Intellectual, trans. Richard Lourie (New York: Norton, 1988), 120121; Koecher-Hensel, Wadysaw
Daszewski, 241.
90. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 3638.
91. See Odrodzenie 5657 (2330 December 1945): 16.
92. Wadysaw Broniewski, Bania z Poezj, ibid., 1 (6 January 1946): 7.
93. See Wiesaw Pawe Szymaski, Odrodzenie i Twrczo w Krakowie
(19451950) (Wrocaw: Zakad Narodowy imienia Ossoliskich Wydawnictwo PAN, 1981), 67.
94. Maja Berezowska, Na grce w Ziemiaskiej, Odrodzenie 20 (18 May
1947): 8. One of the owners of the interwar Caf Ziemiaska once began an
advertising campaign announcing that one in every so many doughnuts
(pczki) would contain a gold coin.
95. Adam Wayk, Pozycja artysty (Uwagi oglne), ibid., 89 (12 November
1944): 67.
96. Quoted in Grzegorz Woowiec, Nowoczeni w PRL: Przybo i Sandauer
(Wrocaw: Wrocawska Drukarnia Naukowa PAN, 1999), 34. See also the
response by Zbigniew Biekowski, Pierwszy oglnopolski zjazd literatw
in Odrodzenie 44 (1945).
97. Natanson, Tygodnik Odrodzenie (19441950), 114115, 213; see also Adam
Wayk, Kilka sw o metodzie, Kunica 4:39 (26 September 1948): 1;
Adam Wayk, Niedobry Klimat, ibid., 3:42 (20 October 1947): 2.
98. Kott, Still Alive, 186.
99. Adam Wayk, U rde nowatorstwa w poezji, Kunica 1:12 (18 November
1945): 23.
100. Adam Wayk, O waciwe stanowisko, ibid., 5:10 (12 March 1950): 1.
101. Pawe Hertz, Jan Kott, Andrzej Stawar, Ryszard Matuszewski, and Adam
Wayk, Rozmowy Kunicy, ibid., 3:1 (7 January 1947): 67.

n o t e s to pages 278 28 1427

102. See Woowiec, Nowoczeni w PRL, 3960.
103. Emphasis in original. Julian Przybo, Na linii poetyckiej, Odrodzenie
5657 (2330 December 1945): 14.
104. Julian Przybo, Upowszechnienie czego? ibid., 26 (30 June 1946): 12.
105. Andrei Zhdanov, Zhdanovs Speech on the Journals Zvezda and Leningrad,
trans. Felicity Ashbee and Irina Tidmarsh (Royal Oak: Strathcona Publishing, 1978).
106. Woowiec, Nowoczeni w PRL, 6570; Natanson, Tygodnik Odrodzenie
(19441950), 134.
107. Tadeusz Borowski, Studium Literackie w Nieborowie, Po Prostu 2
(115 February 1948): 6; Kott, Still Alive, 191.
108. Czesaw Miosz, Zaraz po wojnie: Korespondencja z pisarzami 19451950
(Cracow: Wydawnictwo Znak, 1998), 387.
109. Quoted in Borowski, Studium Literackie w Nieborowie, 6; see also Aleksander Wat, Antyzoil albo rekolekcje na zakoczenie roku, Kunica 4:6
(8 Feburary 1948) and 4:7 (15 February 1948): 35, 9.
110. Zbigniew abicki, Kunica i jej program literacki (Cracow: Wydawnictwo
Literackie, 1966), 39.
111. Jacek Trznadel (interview with Zbigniew Herbert), Haba domowa (Warsaw:
Agencja Wydawnicza Morex, 1997), 203.
112. Andrzej danow, Na pierwszej linii frontu ideologicznego (wyjtki z
przemwie), Odrodzenie 38 (19 September 1948): 1.
113. Jerzy Borejsza, Na rogatkach kultury. Gociniec i py przydrony, Odrod
zenie 48 (28 November 1948). Quoted in Natanson, Tygodnik Odrodzenie
(19441950), 180.
114. Broniewski, O zamwieniu spoecznym i socrealimie, in Wadysaw
Broniewski, ed. Feliksa Lichodziejewska (Warsaw: Pastwowe Zakady
Wydawnictw Szkolnych, 1966), 160161.
115. Rezolucja Zjazdu Literatw w Szczecinie, Odrodzenie 5 (30 January 1949):
1. On socialist realism see also Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as
Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
116. See Trznadel, Haba domowa, 285; Miosz, Zaraz po wojnie, 370; Woowiec,
Nowoczeni w PRL, 21; Artur Sandauer, O sytuacji pisarza polskiego pochodzenia ydowskiego w XX wieku (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1982), 6061.
117. Wayk quoted in Natanson, Tygodnik Odrodzenie (19441950), 148.
118. Fijakowska, Borejsza i Raski, 151.
119. Wadysaw Broniewski, Sowo o Stalinie, Odrodzenie 5152 (21 December
1949): 3; Wadysaw Broniewski, Wadysaw Broniewski: Poezje zebrane, vol.
III (19461962), ed. Feliksa Lichodziejewska (Pock-Toru: Algo, 1997),
5056.
120. Jakub Berman, Rola i zadania pisarza socjalistycznego, Odrodzenie 9
(26 February 1950): 12.
121. Uwagi (na marginesie Zjazdu Literatw) (dla tow. Bermana), 18 July 1950,
325/13, AAN.

428 n o t e s t o p a g e s 28 1 287
122. Wat, Zeszyt ostatni, 4, AWPB.
123. Adam Wayk, Perspektywy rozwojowe literatury polskiej (referat
wygoszony na V Zjedzie Zwizku Literatw Polskich), Nowa Kultura 14
(2 July 1950): 1.
124. Adam Wayk, Referat na Zjazd Literatw, 325/13, AAN. See also Uwagi
(na marginesie Zjazdu Literatw) (dla tow. Bermana), 18 July 1950, 325/13,
AAN.
125. Quoted in Andrzej Roman, Paranoja: Zapis Choroby (Warsaw: Editions
Spotkania, 1989), 9596.
126. Wiktor Woroszylski, Batalia o Majakowskiego, Odrodzenie 5 (29 January
1950): 67.
127. Jerzy Borejsza, O niektrych zagadnieniach kultury socjalistycznej i o
niektrych bdach, Odrodzenie 1112 (19 March 1950): 35.
128. Tuwim to Mieczyaw Jastrun, 30 March 1950, LPP, 421422.
129. Trznadel (interview with Woroszylski), Haba domowa, 121.
130. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 138139.
131. Stanisaw Wygodzki, Bdzin! in WJT, 170171.
132. Julian Tuwim, Matka, Odrodzenie 50 (11 December 1949): 1.
133. Franciszek Strojowski, Poeta i dzieci, WJT, 296307.
134. Julian Tuwim, Do narodu radzieckiego, Wiersze 2, ed. Alina Kowalczykowa
(Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1986), 344.
135. Julian Tuwim, Z notesu, Odrodzenie 48 (27 November 1949): 4.
136. Julian Tuwim, Z notesu amerykaskiego, ibid., 13 (30 March 1947): 4.
137. LPP, 405407; from Julian Tuwim, List do K. I. Gaczyskiego, Przekrj
135 (9 November 1947): 11. Gaczyskis Pochwalone niech bd ptaki was
published in Przekrj 132.
138. Tuwim to Bierut, 30 August 1946, in Piotr Chrzczonowicz, Nieznany list
Juliana Tuwima do Bolesawa Bieruta, Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis 2011
(1998): 123129. Wat recalled that despite Tuwims success, the security apparatus told him in the future he should not interfere in these matters. Five
years later, however, in 1951, Tuwim did indeed interfere again on behalf of
the same Polish poet, now appealing for Kozarzewskis early release. This
time, however, Tuwim appealed not to Bierut but rather to Jacek Raski,
writing that, although he saw Kozarzewski as an enemy, he could not deny
Magdalena Kozarzewskas plea in the name of his late mother and live
with his conscience. Wat, Mj wiek: Pamitnik mwiony, 2 vols. (Warsaw:
Czytelnik, 1998), vol. I, 223; Fijakowska, Borejsza i Raski, 189190.
139. Tuwim to Pablo Neruda, 1 July 1949, 1067/7, ML.
140. Wanda Wasilewska, O woln i demokratyczn: Wybr artykulw, przemwie
i listw, ed. Zbigniew Kumo et al. (Warsaw: Wojskowy Instytut Historyczny
im. Wandy Wasilewskiej, 1985), 157160; from Wolna Polska 31 (15 August
1946).
141. Bierut to Wasilewska, 9 October 1946, Warsaw, 73/1/348, TsDAMLM.
142. Chruszczow, Fragmenty wspomnie, 119.

n o t e s to pages 287 295429

143. Konstantin Dankevich, Bohdan Khmelnytsky: Ukrainian Opera in Four
Acts (n.p.: Musicart International, 1964). Daniel Shore helped with this
reference.
144. John Steinbeck, A Russian Journal (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), 85.
Gabriella Safran pointed me to this source.
145. Spis czonkw Koa Literatw PPR, 257/5, AAN; Natanson, Tygodnik
Odrodzenie (19441950), 130.
146. Lucjan Rudnicki et al., Ankieta [J. Broniewskiej], 31 March 1950, 730,
AAN.
147. Ewa Zawistowska, personal correspondence, Greece, 6 January 2001.
148. See Kobieta 1 (October 1947) to 105106 (December 1949).
149. Wasilewska to Broniewska, 24 July 1948, quoted in Wanda Wasilewska, ed.
Helena Zatorska (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne, 1976),
180.
150. W 70 rocznic urodzin wodza obozu pokoju i postpuJzefa Stalina,
Kobieta 105106 (December 1949).
151. Wasilewska to Broniewska, Kiev 8 January 1950, quoted in Zatorska, ed.,
Wanda Wasilewska, 180181.
152. Julian Stryjkowski, Wielki strach; To samo, ale inaczej (Warsaw: Czytelnik,
1990), 359.
153. Wasilewska to Broniewska, 15 June 1947. Copy provided by Ewa Zawistowska.
154. Wasilewska to Broniewska, 24 July 1948, quoted in Zatorska, Wanda
Wasilewska, 181.
155. Wasilewska to Broniewska, 28 September 1948. Cited in Ewa Zawistowska,
personal correspondence, Greece, 15 December 2000; edited version in
Zatorska, Wanda Wasilewska, 181182. Macia-heroina is a reference to the
Soviet term mat-geroiniaan award and special status conferred upon
Soviet women who gave birth to a large number of children.
156. Wasilewska to Broniewska, 28 September 1948, quoted in Zatorska, ed.,
Wanda Wasilewska, 182183.
157. WAS, 6870.
158. Baranczak, Skamander after Skamander, 346.
159. Tuwim to Sonimski, Anin, 12 August 1949, LPP, 234236.
160. Tuwim to Sonimski, Anin, 16 May 1950, LPP, 237239.
161. Antoni Sonimski, Odprawa, Krytyka 13/14 (1983): 242243; from Trybuna
Ludu (4 November 1951).
162. Czesaw Miosz, Do Antoniego Sonimskiego, ibid., pp. 244252; from
Kultura 12 (1951).
163. Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 501.
164. Adam Wayk, Przeczytaem Mj wiek, Puls 34 (1987): 5354; Wat, Dziennik
bez samogosek, 15.
165. Wat, My Century, 5960.
166. Ibid., 59.
167. Aleksander Wat, Imagerie Dpinal, Poezje, ed. Anna Miciska and Jan

430 n o t e s t o p a g e s 295 298

Zieliski (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1997), 169. The poem is dated by the editors
1949, although this seems unlikely given the dedication to Slnsk and
Rajk.
168. Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 247, 260.
169. Feliksa Lichodziejewska, Broniewski i jego archiwum, in To jadb:
Wspomnienia i eseje o Wadysawie Broniewskim, ed. Stanisaw Witold Balicki
(Warsaw: PIW, 1978), 439.
170. Ibid., 442.
171. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 143.
172. Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 6970.
173. Irena Krzywicka, Wyznania gorszycielki (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1998), 408.
174. Streszczenie sprawy kryptonim Literaci, Warsaw, 11 February 1953,
01224/1426, IPN, Warsaw; Notatka subowa dot. sprawy Janusa Edwarda
i Jabonowskiego Romana-Jana krypt. Literaci, Warsaw, 10 April 1954;
0298/200/t-1, IPN.
175. Quoted in Kott, Still Alive, 235.
176. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 140.
177. Streszczenie sprawy kryptonim Literaci, Warsaw, 11 February 1953,
01224/1426, IPN. In Hungary during the war, Stawar was involved in publishing the Polish weekly newspaper Tygodnik Polski; following the defeat of
the Nazis in Hungary, Stawar helped to organize the Tymczasowy Komitet
Polski (The Polish Temporary Committee).
178. Wat, My Century, 47.
179. Wygodzki to Tadeusz Borowski, Gauting, 31 December 1945, in Tadeusz
Drewnowski, ed., Niedyskrecje pocztowe: Korespondencja Tadeusza Borowskiego
(Warsaw: Prszyski i S-ka, 2001), 60.
180. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 143144. See Tadeusz Borowski, This
Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, trans. Barbara Vedder (New York:
Penguin, 1992).
181. Wat, My Century, 47.
182. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 145146.
183. Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 16. On the reactions of Tuwim, Wayk, and
Stryjkowski to Stalins death see Micha Zarzycki, Po Stalinie: To nie wiatr,
to szloch, Karta 37 (2003): 5487.
184. Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze, 146147.
185. Fijakowska, Borejsza i Raski, 145.
186. Quoted ibid., 146. See the protocol from this Plenum KC PPR 31 August
3 September 1948 in Nowe Drogi 11 (1948).
187. Natanson, Tygodnik Odrodzenie (19441950), 143; Kott, Still Alive, 176;
Fijakowska, Borejsza i Raski, 124.
188. Roman Bratny quoted in Natanson, Tygodnik Odrodzenie (19441950), 149.
189. Jerzy Borejsza to Bolesaw Bierut, 4 April 1950, Warsaw. Jzef Stpie, ed.,
Listy do Pierwszych Sekretarzy KC PZPR (19441970) (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo FAKT, 1994), 6869.

n o t e s to pages 299 30 343 1

190. Antoni Sonimski, Alfabet wspomnie (Warsaw: PIW, 1975), 2122.
191. Jerzy Putrament, P wieku: Literaci (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1970), 106.
192. Julian Tuwim, Do Jerzego Borejszy, in Kowalczykowa, Wiersze 2, 340341.
193. Fijakowska, Borejsza i Raski, 97.
194. Unsigned to Tuwim, Wabrzych, 30 July 1946, P-70/110, AABB.
195. See Adolf Berman et al. to Centralny Komitet PZPR, 31 January 1950, 333/8,
IH; published in Midrasz 1 (May 1997): 37. Adolf Bermans notes for the
original letter in P-70/11, AABB.
196. E. Rostal, List otwarty do Dra A. Bermana i Geni Levi, czonkw C.K.
MAPAM w Izraelu, Nowiny Izraelskie 11 (30 November 1952): 3; copy in
P-70/3, AABB.
197. Chaim Finkelstein to Adolf Berman, New York, 26 May 1954, P-70/58,
AABB.
198. Kott, Still Alive, 185.
199. Rudnicki to Adolf Berman, 16 May 1951, P-70/57, AABB.
200. Rudnicki to Adolf and Basia Berman, Warsaw, 4 March [1953?], P-70/57,
AABB.
201. Tuwim to Adolf Berman, Warsaw, 19 January 1952, P-70/57, AABB.
202. Anatol Stern, Z niedomknitej nocy, in WJT, 116; also see Putrament, P
wieku: Literaci, 215216; Julian Tuwim, Eugeniusz Oniegin w przekadzie
Adama Wayka: Materiay do recenzji i dyskusji, in Pisarze polscy o sztuce
przekadu 14401974: Antologia, ed. Edward Balcerzan (Pozna: Wydawnictwo Poznaskie, 1977), 302377.
203. Tuwim to Leopold Sta, Warsaw, 21 April 1948, LPP, 284.
204. LPP, 266267.
205. See Roman Loth, introduction to Mieczysaw Grydzewski and Jarosaw
Iwaszkiewicz, Listy 19221967, ed. Magorzata Bojanowska (Warsaw:
Czytelnik, 1979), 510.
206. Iwaszkiewicz to Grydzewski, Paris, 4 July 1947. Ibid., 5557.
207. Grydzewski to Iwaszkiewicz, London, 2 August 1947. Ibid., 59.
208. Iwaszkiewicz to Grydzewski, Stawisko, 13 August 1947. Ibid., 61.
209. Iwaszkiewicz to Grydzewski, Stawisko, 14 November 1947. Ibid., 6768.
210. Grydzewski to Iwaszkiewicz, London, 19 November 1947. Ibid., 70.
211. Iwaszkiewicz to Grydzewski, Stawisko, 2 February 1950. Ibid., 71.
212. Grydzewski to Iwaszkiewicz, 8 November 1950. Ibid., 72.
213. Sonimski, Alfabet wspomnie, 120.
214. Wat, Mj wiek, vol. II, 209.
215. WAS, 109.
216. Quoted in Wanda Nowakowska, Lecho i Tuwimdzieje przyjani, Prace
Polonistyczne 51 (1996): 242.
217. Quoted in LPP, 6162.
218. Lecho to Stanisaw Baliski, Margaretville, USA, 31 July 1952. Tadeusz Janu
szewski, ed., Listy Jana Lechonia do Stanisawa Baliskiego, Kwartalnik
Literacki 35:3 (1998): 223.

432 n o t e s t o p a g e s 30 4 30 9
219. WAS, 110111.
220. Tuwim to Aleksander and Ola Wat [1952], B-179, AWPB.
221. Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 35.
222. Iwaszkiewicz, Trzydzieci pi lat, WJT, 457.
223. Quoted in Baranczak, Skamander after Skamander, 340.
224. Leon Kruczkowski, Przemwienie z okazji mierci Juliana Tuwima, 1954,
1040, ML.
225. 28 December 1953, quoted in Nowakowska, Lecho i Tuwimdzieje
przyjani, 244.
chapter 9. ice melting
Epigraph: Antoni Sonimski, Nie woaj mnie, Lyriki najpikniejsze, ed.
Aleksander Madyda (Toru: Algo, 1999), 45.
1. Protok Nr. 252 posiedzenia Sekretariatu Biura Organizacyjnego KC w
dniu 24 lipca 1953 r., in Centrum wadzy: Protokoy posiedze kierownictwa
PZPR wybr z lata 19491970, ed. Antoni Dudek et al. (Warsaw: Instytut
Studiw Politycznych PAN, 2000), 124.
2. Artur Starewicz, relacja, part 4, W-R/26, ADH.
3. Teresa Toraska, Oni (Warsaw: Agencja Omnipress, 1990), 166.
4. Ibid., 170. Protok Nr. 82 posiedzenia Biura Politycznego w dniach 12 i 13
marca 1956 r. in Dudek et al., Centrum wadzy, 152.
5. Adam Wayk, Poemat dla dorosych, in Poeta pamita: antologia poezji
wiadectwa i sprzeciwu 19441984, ed. Stanisaw Baranczak (London: Puls,
1984), 6672; from Nowa Kultura 6:34 (21 August 1955): 12.
6. Adam Wayk, Krytyka Poematu dla dorosych, in Wiersze i poematy
(Warsaw: PIW, 1957), 153156.
7. Pawe Homan quoted by Toeplitz, Adam Waykpoeta i historia. See
also Czeslaw Milosz, Poland: Voices of Disillusion, Problems of Communism
5:3 (MayJune 1956): 2430.
8. Toraska, Oni, 126.
9. Leon Kruczkowski, O ideowe oblicze naszej prasy literackiej, Trybuna Ludu
315 (13 November 1955): 1038, ML.
10. Aleksander Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, ed. Krzysztof Rutkowski (London:
Polonia, 1986), 180181.
11. Mieczysaw Jastrun, Dziennik: Wybr z lat 19551960 (London: PULS, 1990),
30.
12. Jan Kott, Still Alive: An Autobiographical Essay, trans. Jadwiga Kosicka (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 235236; Andrzej Stawar, O Szoo
chowie, Twrczo 11:6 (June 1956): 145153.
13. Notatka o sytuacji w Zwizku Literatw Polskich, JI/29, ADH.
14. Aby wzmc udzia twrcw w ksztatowaniu naszego ycia, Nowe Drogi 10:1
(79) (January 1956): 38, 4.
15. Antoni Sonimski, O przywrcenie swobd obywatelskich, Przegld Kulturalny 5:14 (511 April 1956): 3.

n o t e s to pages 309 31 3433

16. Kott, Still Alive, 181.
17. See ibid., 205. On the inuence of French existentialism among communist
writers in Czechoslovakia, see Marci Shore, Engineering in the Age of Innocence: A Genealogy of Discourse inside the Czechoslovak Writers Union,
19491967, East European Politics and Societies 12:3 (fall 1998): 397441.
18. Protok Nr 217 posiedzenia Biura Politycznego z dnia 19 stycznia 1959 r, in
Dudek et al., Centrum wadzy, 323; Notatka o sytuacji w Zwizku Literatw
Polskich, JI/29, ADH; Kott, Still Alive, 207210; Jastrun, Dziennik: Wybr z
lat 19551960, 67.
19. Bohdan Drozdowski, Wadysaw Broniewski, ycie Literackie 19 (11 May 1958).
20. Jastrun, Dziennik: Wybr z lat 19551960, 123. Przybo left the Party following
the execution of Imre Nagy in Hungary. See Grzegorz Woowiec, Nowoczeni
w PRL: Przybo i Sandauer (Wrocaw: Wrocawska Drukarnia Naukowa PAN,
1999), 269.
21. Jakub Berman, 17 November 1982, Warsaw, 325/1, AAN; Protok Nr 91
posiedzenia Biura Politycznego w dniach 2, 3, 4 i 5 maja 1956 r. in Dudek et
al., Centrum wadzy, 160161; Jzef Stpie, Ustpienie Jakuba Bermana z
Biura Politycznego w wietle protokou BP KC PZPR z 25 V 1956 r., Teki
archiwalne 2:24 (1997): 195222.
22. Stpie, Ustpienie Jakuba Bermana, 202205. Marian Spychalski
(19061980) was a member of the KPP from 1931 and co-founder of the
Polska Partia Robotnicza (Polish Workers Party) during the war. The communist Wadysaw Gomuka was arrested in 1948 on charges of nationalist
deviation. Despite pressure from Stalin, there was no public trial and
Gomuka was not executed, but rather sentenced to house arrest. General
Stanisaw Tatar and eight other interwar military ocers were accused of
fascist conspiracy and sentenced to life imprisonment.
23. Stpie, Ustpienie Jakuba Bermana, 202.
24. See also VIII Plenum KC PZPR 1921 X 1956, Nowe Drogi 10:10 (October
1956): 9195.
25. Stefan Jdrychowski, rozmowa z Grzegorzem Sotysiakiem, 17 February
1994, K. 143, W/R 5, ADH.
26. Irena Olecka, interview, Warsaw, December 1997.
27. Lucyna Tychowa, interview, Warsaw, 25 August 2003.
28. Rzaski remained in prison until October 1964. See Zdzisaw Uniszewski,
Jzef Raski and Samokrytyka Raskiego, Karta 31 (2000): 111155
and 116126.
29. Jakub Berman, Untitled, 325/1, AAN.
30. See Perry Andersons preface to Isaac Deutscher, Marxism, Wars and Revolutions: Essays from Four Decades, ed. Tamara Deutscher (London: Verso, 1984), v.
31. Wadysaw Krajewski, personal interview, Warsaw, 28 July 2003.
32. Olga Stande to T. Daniszewski (Kierownik Wydziau Historii KC PZPR),
d, 6 March 1956, 9889, AAN.
33. T. Daniszewski to Olga Stande, 6 September 1956, 9889, AAN. See also

434 n o t e s t o p a g e s 3 13 31 7

34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.

40.

41.
42.
43.
44.
45.

46.
47.

48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.

C. Budzyska, Stanisaw Ryszard Stande: Poetadziaaczkomunista,

9889, AAN.
Orzeczenie Prokuratora Wojskowego ZSRR do sprawy Brunona Jasie
skiego wydane 17 grudnia 1955 roku in BJSW, 184193.
Svidetelstvo o smerti, 1861/2/20, RGALI.
Piotr Mitzner, mier futurysty, Karta 11 (1993): 76.
A. Iasenskii to Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, [1961], 1861/2/26, RGALI.
Grayna Pietruszewska-Kobiela, Pejza dramatyczny Anatola Sterna
(Czstochowa: Wysza Szkoa Pedagogiczna w Czstochowie, 1989), 8.
Anatol Stern, Bruno Jasieski (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1969), 919.
See also Danishevskii to Tsentralnyi Komitet Kommunisticheskoi Partii
Sovetskogo Soiuza Otdel Istorii Partii, 9328, AAN; T. Daniszewski to Tow.
Lewikowski, 24 August 1956, 9328, AAN; Celina Budzyska to Wydzia Historii Partii przy KC PZPR (na rce tow. Daniszewskiego), Warsaw, 11 June
1956, 9328, AAN.
Anatol Stern, Do przyjaciela: Pamici Brunona Jasieskiego, Wiersze zebrane, vol. I, ed. Andrzej K. Wakiewicz (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie,
1986), 407; from Nowa Kultura 18 (1956).
Zarbiska to Broniewski, Horochw, 8 April 1939, KWB, vol. II, 347350.
Pawe Merlend, relacja, 731, AAN.
Stefan kiewski to Broniewski, 26 March 1956, MB.
Bohdan Drozdowski, Wadysaw Broniewski, ycie Literackie 19 (11 May
1958).
See Anna Kowalska, Id nasi pisarzy, Przegld Kulturalny 20 (17 May
23 May 1956): 1; Leon Kruczkowski, Na 20-lecie Zjazdu Lwowskiego,
1046, ML.
Grzegorz Lasota, Rozmowa z towarzyszem Broniewskim, Nowe Drogi 10:5
(May 1956): 5659.
Wadysaw Broniewski, [Autobiograa literacka], in Wadysaw Broniewski,
ed. Feliksa Lichodziejewska (Warsaw: Pastwowe Zakady Wydawnictw
Szkolnych, 1966), 127.
Pawe Merlend, relacja, 731, AAN; Grzegorz Lasota, Rozmowa z towarz
yszem Broniewskim, Nowe Drogi 10:5 (May 1956): 5659.
H. K., Telefoniczna rozmowa z Wadysawem Broniewskim, 26 November
1959, 731, AAN.
Pisarze przy pracy. Mwi Wadysaw Broniewski, in Lichodziejewska,
Wadysaw Broniewski, 128129.
Wasilewska to Broniewska, 20 December [1958?]. Copy provided by Ewa
Zawistowska.
Adolf Rudnicki, Spnion gaazk bzu, Nowa Kultura 5:6 (7 February
1954): 5.
Wanda Wasilewska to Nowa Kultura, 1953, 73/1/283, TsDAMLM.
Wasilewska to Broniewska, 24 June [1950]. Copy provided by Ewa
Zawistowska.

n o t e s to pages 3 18 321 435

55. Wanda Wasilewska to Janina Broniewska, 31 August 1954. Copy provided
by Ewa Zawistowska.
56. Bierut to Wasilewska, Warsaw, 21 January 1955; Jakub Berman to Wasilewska,
21 January 1955, 73/1/697, TsDAMLM.
57. Peredmova to knigi Ia. Bronevskoi Iz zapisok ... , 1955, 73/1/285,
TsDAMLM.
58. Wasilewska to Broniewska, 2 September [?]. Copy provided by Ewa
Zawistowska.
59. Wasilewska to Broniewska, Kiev, 22 December 1955. Helena Zatorska, ed.,
Wanda Wasilewska (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne, 1976),
186187.
60. Zoa Aldona Wonicka, O mojej siostrze, WWW, 48; Jurij Smoycz,
Organiczny stop motyww, WWW, 207209.
61. Wasilewska to Broniewska, 610 April [1957?]. Copy provided by Ewa
Zawistowska.
62. Jastrun, Dziennik: Wybr z lat 19551960, 26.
63. Quoted by Wadysaw Bartoszewski, WAS, 19.
64. Kruczkowski to Sonimski, 12 December 1956, Warsaw, 1064, ML.
65. Antoni Sonimski, Portret prezydenta and Pochd, Poezje (Warsaw:
Czytelnik, 1955), 364, 360361.
66. Jastrun, Dziennik: Wybr z lat 19551960.
67. See Artur Starewicz, relacja, part 5, W-R/26, ADH.
68. Protok Nr 217 posiedzenia Biura Politycznego z dnia 19 stycznia 1959 r,
in Dudek et al. Centrum wadzy, 321325.
69. Artur Starewicz, relacja, part 5, W-R/26, ADH.
70. Aleksander Wat, Mj wiek: Pamitnik mwiony, 2 vols. (Warsaw: Czytelnik,
1998), vol. I, 236237.
71. Grydzewski to Iwaszkiewicz, 26 March 1956. Mieczysaw Grydzewski and
Jarosaw Iwaszkiewicz, Listy 19221967, ed. Magorzata Bojanowska (Warsaw:
Czytelnik, 1979), 91.
72. Grydzewski to Iwaszkiewicz, 12 May 1956. Ibid., 97.
73. Wierzyski to Grydzewski, New York, 23 September 1957. Rafal Habielski,
ed., Z listw do Mieczysawa Grydzewskiego 19461966 (London: Polonia,
1990), 8384.
74. 10 January 1954 in WAS, 111.
75. 15 April 1956 in WAS, 111.
76. Wanda Nowakowska, Lecho i Tuwimdzieje przyjani, Prace Polonis
tyczne 51 (1996): 244245. Lechos poem to Tuwim appeared in Grydzew
skis Wiadomoci on 6 February 1955. Count di Cagliostro was an eighteenthcentury Italian gure involved in alchemy and the occult. He established
Egyptian Rite Masonic lodges and in general led a rather scandalous life,
traveling around the world before he was arrested by the Inquisition and
given life imprisonment in a castle.
77. Wierzyski to Grydzewski, 15 June 1956 and 16 June 1956, New York;

436 n o t e s t o p a g e s 321 326

Zdzisaw Czermaski to Grydzewski, 14 June 1956, New York. Habielski,
Z listw do Mieczysawa Grydzewskiego, 7578, 230231.
78. Iwaszkiewicz to Grydzewski, Sandomierz, 10 June 1956. Grydzewski and
Iwaszkiewicz, Listy 19221967, 9899.
79. Iwaszkiewicz to Grydzewski, Rome, 29 November 1958. Ibid., 127.
80. Adolf Rudnicki to Adolf Berman, 20 February 1954, P-70/58, AABB.
81. Mirski was active as a both a Party member and a writer. His books published between 1952 and 1963 included Problemy krytyki i literatury, Bez
stopnia, and Biegem Marsz, a memoir of his time in the Bereza Kartuska
prison camp in the 1930s. Micha Mirski, Ankieta uczestnika Rewolucji
Padziernikowej i wojny domowej w ZSRR, 20 November 1967, 4027,
AAN.
82. Adolf Berman to Micha Mirski, Tel Aviv, 10 June 1956, 330/35, IH.
83. Aleksander Wat, My Century: The Odyssey of a Polish Intellectual, trans. Richard Lourie (New York: Norton, 1988), 70; Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 105.
84. Ola Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniesjze (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1990), 147.
85. Iwaszkiewicz to Zarzd gwny RSW, Prasa, Warsaw, 12 September 1955,
A-86, AWPB.
86. Following Wats death the parts of the novel he had written were published
under his intended title. Aleksander Wat, Ucieczka Lotha, ed. Wodzimierz
Bolecki (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1996).
87. Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 10, 45.
88. Ibid., 4647.
89. Wat, Mj wiek, vol. II, 336338; Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 22, 40, 27, 218.
90. Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 2547.
91. Ibid., 34. Wieniawa-Dugoszowski himself committed suicide in New York
in 1942.
92. Ellipsis points in original. Wat, Ibid., 3.
93. Ibid., 12.
94. Aleksander Wat, Poezje, ed. Anna Miciska and Jan Zieliski (Warsaw:
Czytelnik, 1997), 168. Jagganath was an image of a Hindu deity believed
to contain the bones of Krishna. During Krishnas festival, Jagganath was
pulled on a temple cart through the streets of Puri, Orissa. Devoted ones
would throw themselves beneath the wheels of the cart and be crushed
to death.
95. Watowa to Iwaszkiewicz, 25 December 1957, A-85, AWPB.
96. Iwaszkiewicz to Watowa, Stawisko, 5 January 1958, A-86, AWPB.
97. Watowa to Iwaszkiewicz, 8 January 1958, A-85, AWPB.
98. Wat, Zeszyt ostatni, 14, AWPB.
99. Wat to Miosz, 5 September 1960, Nervi, C-218, AWPB; Bohdan Drozdowski,
Rozmowy z pisarzami: Julian Przybo, ycie Literackie 8:15 (13 April 1958): 3,
7; Aleksander Wat, Nad kolek profesora Heisenbergarozmylanie,
Nowa Kultura 9:16 (20 April 1958): 6.
100. Sonimski to Wat, 17 December 1957, A-5, AWPB.

n o t e s to pages 326 331 437

101. Ellipsis points in original. Stanisaw Baliski to Aleksander and Ola Wat,
London, 16 January 1958, A-3, AWPB.
102. Stanisaw Wygodzki, Spotkanie z Miesicznikiem Literackim, Polityka
2:38 (20 September 1958): 6.
103. Irena Wygodzka to Watowa, 7 April 1957, C-204, AWPB.
104. Twarz zwrcony do mierci ... Listy Aleksandra Wata do Jzefa
Wittlina, Znak 43 (February 1991): 8.
105. Jastrun, Dziennik: Wybr z lat 19551960, 8990.
106. Anatol Stern, Sowo wstpne, in Wodzimierz Majakowski, Poezje, ed.
Mieczysaw Jastrun, Seweryn Pollak, Anatol Stern, and Adam Wayk
(Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1957), 8.
107. Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 13.
108. Jastrun, Dziennik: Wybr z lat 19551960, 146.
109. Feliksa Lichodziejewska, Broniewski bez cenzury: 19391945 (Warsaw:
Wydawnictwo Spoeczne KOS, 1992), 23.
110. Isaac Deutscher, U rde tragedii KPP, 1957, K. 42 (S V/7), ADH.
chapter 10. the end of the affair
Epigraph: Aleksander Wat, My Century: The Odyssey of a Polish Intellectual,
trans. Richard Lourie (New York: Norton, 1988), 12.
1. Mieczysaw Jastrun, Dziennik: Wybr z lat 19551960 (London: Puls, 1990),
120.
2. Jakub Berman, 17 November 1982, Warsaw, 325/1, AAN; Protok Nr. 91
posiedzenia Biura Politycznego w dniach 2, 3, 4 i 5 maja 1956 r., in Centrum
wadzy: Protokoy posiedze kierownictwa PZPR wybr z lat 19491970, ed.
Antoni Dudek et al. (Warsaw: Instytut Studiw Politycznych PAN, 2000),
160161.
3. Jakub Berman to Wadysaw Gomuka, Warsaw, 9 May 1960. Jzef Stpie,
ed., Listy do Pierwszych Sekretarzy KC PZPR (19441970) (Warsaw: Wydaw
nictwo FAKT, 1994), 208209. Original (two drafts) in 325/1, AAN.
4. Aleksander Wat, Mj wiek: Pamitnik mwiony, 2 vols. (Warsaw: Czytelnik,
1998), vol. I, 6970; Aleksander Wat, ... jak upir staj midzy wami i
pytam o rdo zego ... , Na Antenie 4:43 (6 November 1966): 1.
5. Jan Kott, Still Alive: An Autobiographical Essay, trans. Jadwiga Kosicka (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 230231.
6. Stawar to Wat, 17 May 1961; Stawar to Wat, 24 May 1961; Stawar to Wat, 17
June 1961, Meandre; B-170, AWPB.
7. Stawar to Wat, 25 July 1961, B-170, AWPB.
8. Kott, Still Alive, 236237; Jerzy Giedroyc, Autobiograa na cztery rce (Warsaw:
Czytelnik, 1994), 194; Informacja, 15 September 1961; T. Daniowicz, Notatka dla Tow. Amb. P. Ogrodziskiego dot. Okolicznoci pobytu Andrzeja
Stawara we Francji, 27 September 1961; Notatka dot. Pobytu Stawara na
terenie Francji, Warsaw, 11 November 1961, 01224/1426, IPN.
9. Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 6970; Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze (Warsaw:

438 n o t e s t o p a g e s 332 335

10.
11.
12.
13.

14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.

23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.

29.
30.
31.
32.

Czytelnik, 1990), 141. Stawars papers remained in France, with Giedroyc.

Notatka dot. Pobytu Stawara na terenie Francji, Warsaw, 11 November 1961,
01224/1426, IPN.
Kott, Still Alive, 236237.
Wat, ... jak upir staj midzy wami, 1.
Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 6970.
See Stanisaw Witold Balicki, ed., To jadb: Wspomnienia i eseje o
Wadysawie Broniewskim (Warsaw: PIW, 1978), 286287; Lucjan Marek,
O Wadysawie Broniewskim, 14 March 1962, 731, AAN; Adam Wayk,
Przeczytaem Mj wiek, Puls 34 (1987): 4855.
Wat, My Century, 14.
See teczka Stawara, 01224/1426, IPN.
Broniewski to Tadeusz Galiski (Minister Kultury i Sztuki), 18 October 1961,
MB.
Wadysaw Broniewski, Moje przyjanie poetyckie (Warsaw: PIW, 1960).
See Anka, in Wadysaw Broniewski, Wadysaw Broniewski: Poezje 1923
1961 (Warsaw: PIW, 1995), 477499.
Grydzewski to Wat, 28 February 1962, London, A-58, AWPB.
Wat to Mieczysaw [Grydzewski], La Messuguire, 2 March 1962, C-219, AWPB.
Wat, . . . jak upir staj midzy wami, 1.
Jarosaw Iwaszkiewicz, Mazowsze, in Wadysaw Broniewski, ed. Feliksa
Lichodziejewska (Warsaw: Pastwowe Zakady Wydawnictw Szkolnych,
1966), 288; from ycie Warszawy 27 (1965).
Kazimierz Wierzyski, Na mier Broniewskiego, in Wadysaw Broniewski, Wiersze (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1962), 78.
Janina Broniewska, Dziesi serc czerwiennych (Warsaw: Iskry, 1964), 125.
Ewa Zawistowska, personal correspondence, Greece, 23 January 2001.
Janina Broniewska, Tamten brzeg mych lat (Warsaw: Ksika i Wiedza, 1973),
191194.
List Vasilevskoi v TsK KPRS pro poizdku na Kubu i Meksiku, 73/2/1,
TsDAMLM.
Wanda Wasilewska, Dziecistwo, in Wanda Wasilewska, ed. Helena Zatorska (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne, 1976); Janina Broniew
ska, Wanda Wasilewska, in oliborz: wczoraj, dzi, jutro (Warsaw: Ksika i
Wiedza, 1970), 203204; Vanda Vasilevskaia, O moikh knigakh, Vecher
niaia Moskva 41:222 (19 September 1964), copy in 73/1/321, TsDAMLM.
Wanda Wasilewska, Dwadziecia lat temu, Gos oniera 15:57 (1112 May
1963): 12. Copy in 73/1/257, TsDAMLM.
Wanda Wasilewska, Wspomnienia Wandy Wasilewskiej (19391944),
Archiwum Ruchu Robotniczego 7 (1982): 427.
Wanda Wasilewska nie yje, Trybuna Ludu 17:209 (31 July 1964). Copy
in 73/1/817, TsDAMLM.
The original obituary appeared in Izvestiia 48:181 (31 July 1964). Copy in
73/1/817, TsDAMLM.

n o t e s to pages 335 342439

33. Aleksander Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, ed. Krzysztof Rutkowski (London:
Polonia, 1986), 96, 143146, 159.
34. Ibid., 69.
35. Ibid., 6970, 79.
36. Wat to Jerzy Giedroyc, Nervi, 1960, C-219, AWPB.
37. Wat to Giedroyc, unsent letter (list niewysany [na skutek pojednawczego
listu] G.), A-48, AWPB.
38. Aleksander Wat, La mort dun vieux bolchvik: Souvenirs sur Stieklov,
Le Contrat Social 7 (1963); Aleksander Wat, mier starego bolszewika,
Kultura 12 (1964): 2740.
39. Wiktor Woroszylski to Aleksander and Ola Wat, 12 February 1963, Warsaw,
C-202, AWPB.
40. Szmalcownicy refers to Poles who blackmailed Jews during the Nazi occupation. Wat to Miosz, undated; Wat to Miosz, 5 September 1960, Nervi, C-218,
AWPB; Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 201, 218219.
41. Wat to Jzef Czapski, C-219, AWPB.
42. Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 7983, 209, 217.
43. Wat, My Century, 261262; Wat to Miosz, 8 December 1965, C-218, AWPB.
44. Wat to Jzef Czapski, 6 May 1967, C-222, AWPB; Wat, Zeszyt ostatni, 14,
AWPB; Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 65, 186188, 197, 216; Wat, ... jak
upir staj midzy wami, 1.
45. Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 170.
46. Ibid., 222223; Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 63.
47. Ewokacja, La Messuguire, February 1963, in Aleksander Wat, Poezje,
ed. Anna Miciska and Jan Zieliski (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1997), 2427.
48. Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 62.
49. Wat to Wittlin, 26 June 1965, [Berkeley], in Twarz zwrcony do mierci
...: Listy Aleksandra Wata do Jzefa Wittlina, Znak 43 (February 1991): 16;
Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 6165, 158; Wat, My Century, 230, 293294;
Wat, Mj wiek, vol. II, 218.
50. Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 148.
51. Ibid., 67189; Wat, My Century, 287.
52. Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 112113.
53. Wat to Miosz, Berkeley, [1964], C-222, AWPB.
54. Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 79.
55. Miosz to Wat, Berkeley, B-127, AWPB.
56. Miosz to Wat, Berkeley, B-127, AWPB.
57. Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 67, 93.
58. Wat to Miosz, Berkeley, [1964], C-222, AWPB; Wat to Jerzy [Giedroyc], C-219,
AWPB.
59. Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 103135.
60. Ibid., 130.
61. Wat to Jerzy [Giedroy?], [c. 1965], C-219, AWPB.
62. Wat to Miosz, Berkeley, [1964], C-222, AWPB.

44 0 n o t e s t o p a g e s 343 347
63. Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 206; Wat, My Century, 1112, 96, 115116; Wat
to Wittlin, 26 June 1965, [Berkeley], in Twarz zwrcony do mierci, 15.
64. Wat, My Century, 13.
65. Wat, Mj wiek, vol. I, 174.
66. Wat, My Century, 96.
67. Jerzy Giedroyc rejected publishing Wats memoirs in their original form due
to what he perceived to be errors in Wats memory and some harshly critical
remarks. Wat and Miosz both refused to agree to Giedroycs changes.
Giedroyc, Autobiograa na cztery rce, 196.
68. Adolf Rudnicki to Wat, B-153, AWPB.
69. Stanislaw Baranczak, Skamander after Skamander: The Postwar Path of
the Prewar Polish Pleiade, Cross Currents 9 (1990): 349.
70. From Antoni Sonimski, Sd nad Don Kichotem, excerpt translated in
Baranczak, Skamander after Skamander, 349.
71. Grzegorz Sotysiak, Trockici, Karta 7 (1992). See also Kott, Still Alive,
180181.
72. Antoni Sonimski, Kroniki tygodniowe 19271939, ed. Wadysaw Kopaliski
(Warsaw: PIW, 1956), 138139.
73. Przemwienie kol. Antoniego Sonimskiego, K. 103, S V/16, ADH.
74. Isaac Deutscher, An Open Letter to Wladyslaw Gomulka and the Central
Committee of the Polish Workers Party, 24 April 1966, in Marxism, Wars
and Revolutions: Essays from Four Decades, ed. Tamara Deutscher (London:
Verso, 1984), 128131.
75. Odpis tajne wystpienie profesora U.W. Leszka Koakowskiego na zebraniu
dyskusyjnym zorganizowanym w dniu 21. 10. 1966 w Instytucie Historycz
nym UW przez Zarzd ZMS Wydziau Historycznego UW na temat Kultura
polska w ostatnim 10-leciu, 22 October 1966, Warsaw, K. 103, S V/16, ADH.
76. Leszek Koakowski to Biura Politycznego KC PZPR, 23 November 1966 in
Stpie, Listy do Pierwszych Sekretarzy, 253.
77. Informacja w sprawie prof. Leszka Koakowskiego, K. 103, S V/16, ADH.
Also see Micha Mirski to Biuro Polityczne Komitetu Centralnego PZPR,
24 November 1966, Warsaw, K. 103, S V/16, ADH; Ankieta uczestnika
Rewolucji Padziernikowej i wojny domowej w ZSRR, 20 November 1967,
4027, AAN; Protok z przeprowadzonych indywidualnych rozmw z
pisarzami, sygnatariuszami listu do Biura Politycznego KC PZPR w sprawie
przywrcenia praw czonka PZPR L. Koakowskiemu, 25 November 1966,
K. 103, S V/16, ADH; Zapiski z zebrania POP przy oddziale warszawskim
ZLP, 9 December 1966, K. 103, S V/16, ADH.
78. Artur Starewicz, Zaczenie owiadcze skierowanych do egzekutywy POP
przy ZLP w Warszawie, 24 January 1967, Warsaw, K. 103, S V/16, ADH.
79. Julian Stryjkowski, Ocalony na wschodzie (Montricher: Les Editions Noir sur
Blanc, 1991), 262264.
80. Odpis stenogramu wystpienia Leszka Koakowskiego w dniu 4.XII.1965 r,
0236/128/t-6, IPN.

n o t e s to pages 347 35544 1

81. Notatka informacyjna o przebiegu zebrania sprawozdawczo-wyborczego
POP przy ZLP, 2 February 1967, K. 103, S V/16, ADH.
82. Anatol Stern, Bruno Jasieski (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1969), 17.
83. Anatol Stern, Bruno Jasieski w Paryu, czyli trzy portrety pisarza, Kamena
2 (21 January 1968): 4.
84. In fact Stern was not entirely alone in his devotion to Jasieskis memory. At
least one graduate student in the Soviet Union wrote rather hagiographically
about Jasieski as well, in particular about Jasieskis love for Tadzhikistan
and his contribution to socialist culture there. The graduate student and his
co-author put this in the context of the Polish nations contribution to the
revolutionary tradition. See A. Ia. Vishnevskii (kandidat istoricheskikh nauk)
and V. A. Rudnitskii, Pod znamenem proletarskogo internatsionalizma i
edinstva, 9328, AAN.
85. Stern to Wat, 9 June 1963, A-5, AWPB. The reference is to the leaet titled
Tak (Yes) that Wat and Stern published together in 1918. See Wat, Poezje,
337471.
86. Anatol Stern, O czysto obyczajw w literaturze, Kultura 45 (7 November
1965): 11.
87. Wat to Jan piewak, 24 December 1965, Antony (letter unsent in this
version, zmieniony, zagodzony), C-222, AWPB.
88. Wat to Jan piewak, 24 December 1965, Antony (letter unsent in this version, zmieniony, zagodzony), C-222, AWPB. Wayks memoirs were published in Twrczo in 1966; they later appeared as the book Kwestia gustu. In
1963 Stefan Staszewski encouraged Wayk to write memoirs of his engagement with communism, but Wayk was not so inclined, saying he felt disgust towards all of that. Untitled report, teczka Wayka, 0246/1031, IPN.
89. Wat to Miosz, 18 January 1966, C-218, AWPB.
90. Wat, Zeszyt ostatni, 14, AWPB; Ola Watowa to Seweryna Broniszwna,
20 August 1967, Toulon, C-237, AWPB; Watowa, Wszsystko co najwaniejsze,
176177.
91. Iwaszkiewicz to Seweryna Broniszwna, 5 August 1967, Stawisko, C-234,
AWPB. Czesaw and Janka Miosz to Watowa; Grydzewski to Watowa; Alicja
and Anatol Stern to Watowa; Kazimierz and Halina Wierzyscy to Watowa,
31 July 1967, C-237, AWPB.
92. Watowa to Kocik, 13 September 1967, C-237, AWPB.
93. Watowa to Seweryna Broniszwna, 20 August 1967, Toulon, C-237, AWPB.
94. Wat, Zeszyt ostatni, 1967, 14, AWPB.
95. Wat, Zeszyt ostatni, 1967, 14, AWPB.
96. Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 206208.
97. Emphasis in original. Wat, Zeszyt ostatni, 1967, 14, AWPB. Gail Glickman
translated this letter from the original French.
98. Prochy Alfred Lampego powrc do kraju, Trybuna Ludu 283 (12 October
1964). Copy in 250/1, AAN.
99. Adolf Berman to Micha Mirski, 4 April 1962, Tel Aviv, 330/35, IH.

442 n o t e s t o p a g e s 355 358

100. Adolf Berman to Micha Mirski, 14 June 1964, Tel Aviv, 330/35, IH; Adolf
Berman to Micha Mirski, 28 November 1964, Tel Aviv, 330/35, IH.
101. Notatka dot. nadzwyczajnego zebrania OW ZLP, 29 February 1968,
Warsaw, 0236/128/t-3, IPN.
102. Ewa Zawistowska, personal correspondence, Greece, 24 June 2003.
103. A collection of these cartoons originally published in onierz Wolnoci in
1968 and 1969 can be found in Simon Wiesenthal, Judenhetze in Polen
(Bonn: Brandt, 1969).
104. Wadysaw Gomuka, Przemwienie na spotkaniu z warszawskim aktywem
partyjnym, 19 March 1968 in Przemwienia 1968 (Warsaw: Ksika i
Wiedza, 1969), 7475.
105. Interior Ministry Report, 0204/1203/t-2, IPN. On the anti-Zionist campaign of March 1968 see Dariusz Stola, Kampania antysyjonistyczna 1967
1968 (Warsaw: Institut Studiw Politycznych PAN, 2000); Mieczysaw
Rakowski, Dzienniki polityczne 19671968 (Warsaw: Iskry, 1999); Grzegorz
Sotysiak and Jzef Stpie, eds., Marzec 68: Midzy tragedi a podoci
(Warsaw: Pro, 1998); Stefan Jdrychowski, rozmowa z Grzegorzem Soty
siakiem, 17 February 1994, K. 143, W/R 5, ADH; Artur Starewicz, relacja,
cz. 7, W-R/26, ADH. In English see Michael Steinlauf, Bondage to the Dead:
Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust (Syracuse: Syracuse University
Press, 1997); and Dariusz Stola, The Anti-Zionist Campaign in Poland
19671968, in Jewish Studies at the Central European University, ed. Andras
Kovacs and E. Andor, vol. II (Budapest: Central European University Press,
2002).
106. See Wyjtki z referatu Jakuba Bermanawice premiera Rady Ministrw
PRL (Rzd Jednoci Narodowej), czonka Biura Politycznego i Sekretarza KC
PPR oraz Sekretarza Polacy Syjon [sic] wygoszonego w kwietniu 1945 na posiedzeniu Egzekutywy Woj. Komitetu ydowskiego (wyjtki z stenogramu),
01208/1303, IPN. The forged transcript attributes to Jakub Berman both his
own position as a member of the Politburo and his brothers position as secretary of Poalei Zion. The same le contains the security apparatuss surveillance reports on Jakub Berman during this period. The security apparatuss
interest continued long after the 1968 events, as evidenced by this and other
Ministry of Internal Aairs les. See for example Notatka, 10 February
1974, Warsaw, 0204/397/t-1, IPN.
107. Micha Mirski to Egzekutywa POP PZPR przy Oddziale Warszawskim
Zwizku Literatw Polskich, 1969, 330/33, IH.
108. WAS, 24; Baranczak, Skamander after Skamander, 346347.
109. Antoni Sonimski, Poezje zebrane (Warsaw: PIW, 1964), 457.
110. WAS, 1921.
111. Wadysaw Bartoszewski and Zoa Lewinwna, eds., Ten jest z ojczyzny
mojej: Polacy z pomoc ydom, 19391945 (Cracow: Znak, 1969).
112. Wadysaw Bartoszewski to Adolf Berman, Salzburg, 1 October 1968,
P-70/63, AABB.

n o t e s to pages 358 362443

113. Emphasis in original. Wadysaw Bartoszewski to Adolf Berman, London,
18 August 1969, P-70/59, AABB.
114. S [Aleksander Masiewicki] to Adolf Berman, New York, 2 October 1970,
P-70/63, AABB. Deianeira's burning shirt is an allusion to the Greek myth
told by Sophocles in Women of Trachis. In this story Deianeira received
blood from a centaur whom her husband, Hercules, had mortally wounded
with an arrow. The centaur told her that the blood was a love potion which
she could use if her husband ever lost his love for her. When Hercules became enchanted with a young princess, Deianeira made a shirt, soaked it
with the blood potion, and presented it to Hercules as a gift. But the centaur
had tricked her, and when Hercules put on the shirt it began to burn him
alive. The nineteenth-century Polish poet Juliusz Sowacki draws on this motif in his poem Grb Agamemnona. The source of Masiewicki's allusion is
most likely these lines from the poem: Zrzu do ostatka te pachty ohydne, /
TDejaniry palc koszul: / A wsta jak wielkie posgi bezwstydne. ...
115. Aleksander Masiewicki to Adolf Berman, New York, 14 March 1971, P-70/64,
AABB.
epilogue
Epigraph: Quoted in Jan Kott, Przyczynek do biograi (Cracow: Wydawnictwo
Literackie, 1995), 200.
1. Wadysaw Bartoszewski, interview, Warsaw, 22 December 1997.
2. Ludwik was Bartoszewskis underground name during the war. Wadysaw
Bartoszewski, interview, Warsaw, 22 December 1997. Jakub Bermans
Ministry of Internal Aairs le contains various mentions of Adolf Bermans
visits to Poland. See, for example, Notatka, Warsaw, 16 January 1965,
01208/1303, IPN.
3. Teresa Toraska, Oni (Warszawa: Agencja Omnipress, 1990), 142144.
4. Lucyna Tychowa, personal interview, Warsaw, 25 August 2003; Teresa
Toraska, personal correspondence, Warsaw, 7 June 2002.
5. Teresa Toraska, personal correspondence, Warsaw, 7 June 2002.
6. Toraska, Oni, 16.
7. Jakub Berman, Wspomnienia, 325/33, AAN.
8. Jakub Berman, Wok Kongresw Intelektualistw w Wrocawiu w obronie
pokoju (2528 sierpnia 1948 r), Warsaw, June 1978, 325/32, AAN.
9. Inspektor Wydziau IV, Dep. III MSW, Ppk J. Jakubik, Notatka ze spotkania
z kp. Tatra, Warsaw, 16 January 1970, 0204/1203/t-2, IPN.
10. Antoni Sonimski, Jedna strona medalu: Niektre felietony, artykuy, recenzje,
utwory powane i niepowane publikowane w latach 19181968 (Warsaw:
Czytelnik, 1971).
11. Sonimski, radio interview with the Dutch journalist Dirk Verkijk. On So
nimskis dissident activities and contacts in the last two decades of his life
see 0204/1203, IPN.
12. According to his Ministry of Internal Aairs le, Wayk signed the petition

444 n o t e s t o p a g e s 362 368

13.
14.

15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.

opposing the projected changes to the constitution on 31 January 1976. See

0246/1031, IPN.
Antoni Sonimski, LOrdre rgne Varsovie, Kultura (Paris) 3 (1976): 2627.
The interview appeared in Les Nouvelles Littraires on 22 January 1976.
Czesaw Miosz, Do Antoniego Sonimskiego, Kultura (Paris) 3 (1976): 28.
See also Tony Judt, Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 19441956 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1992), 275292.
WAS, 2223.
Notatka dot. przebiegu pogrzebu Antoniego SONIMSKIEGO w dniu
8.07.1976, Warsaw, 8 July 1976, 0204/1203/t-4, IPN.
Antoni Sonimski, Z Alfabetu wspomnie (inedita), Wi 25:4/5
(AprilMay 1982); WAS, 2223.
See the chapter Ostatni zarzd Iwaszkiewicza in Jerzy Putrament, P
wieku: Sierpie (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1987), 114.
Jakub Berman to Adam Wayk, [1979], 325/3, AAN.
Julian Stryjkowski, Ocalony na wschodzie (Montricher: Les Editions Noir sur
Blanc, 1991), 103104.
Watowa to Seweryna Broniszwna, 20 August 1967, Toulon, C-237, AWPB.
Watowa to Seweryna Broniszwna, 1972, C-229, AWPB; Watowa to Seweryna
Broniszwna, 17 January 1973, Paris, C-222, AWPB.
Emphasis in original. Panna z Wilka and Brzezina are stories by Iwaszkiewicz. Watowa to Iwaszkiewicz, 10 May 1973, Paris, A-85, AWPB.
Ola Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1990), 9, 3638.

conclusion
Epigraph: Julian Tuwim, Bal w Operze (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie,
1999), 65. This long poem by Tuwim was written in 1936 but published only
after the war.
1. Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism, trans. Charles Rougle (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1992), 1415, 36, respectively.
2. Ibid., 44, 34. According to Katerina Clark, by the time socialist realism was
instituted, the happy marriage between the avant-garde and Soviet power
had reached its end, together with the revolution itself, for the liminality
inherent in revolution ultimately could not be sustained. See Katerina Clark,
Petersburg: Crucible of Cultural Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1995), 296.
3. Emphasis in the original. Stefan Kordian Gacki to Wat, 22 June 1965, A-3,
AWPB. Gacki (19011984) was the editor of the futurist Almanach Nowej
Sztuki between 1924 and 1926. In 1952 he emigrated to the United States,
where he worked for Radio Free Europe and the migr newspaper Nowy
Dziennik in New York. My thanks to Micha Gowiski for his assistance in
identifying the author of this letter.
4. Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1979), 5.

n o t e s to pages 368 374445

5. Aleksander Wat, My Century: The Odyssey of a Polish Intellectual, trans.
Richard Lourie (New York: Norton, 1988), 12.
6. Aleksander Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, ed. Krzysztof Rutkowski (London:
Polonia, 1986), 178.
7. Abel Kainer [Stanislaw Krajewski], ydzi a komunizm, Krytyka 15 (1983):
229.
8. Wat, My Century, 54.
9. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, In 1926: Living at the Edge of Time (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1997), 255.
10. Ola Watowa, Wszystko co najwaniejsze (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1990), 20.
11. Emphasis added. Slavoj iek, The Plague of Fantasies (London: Verso, 1997),
58.
12. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans.
John Cumming (New York: Continuum, 1996).
13. Jakub Berman, Znieczulicarodowd jednego sowa, January 1980,
Warsaw, 325/32, AAN.
14. Robespierre: Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution
(London: Methuen, 1986), 73.
15. This might be understood as the Derridean aporia of self-criticism, the moment when language subverts itself and meaning is no longer possible. I am
grateful to Dena Goodman for conversations on this topic.
16. Jan Tomasz Gross, Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Polands
Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1988), 67.
17. Ibid., 120, 231.
18. A collection of photographs of Wasilewska can be found in 73/1/2238,
TsDAMLM.
19. Janina Broniewska, O mojej przyjacice Wandzie Wasilewskiej, Promeej
(March 1975): 6.
20. Ibid.
21. Wasilewska to Broniewska, 24 VII 1948, quoted in Wanda Wasilewska, ed.
Helena Zatorska (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne, 1976), 181.
22. Caroll Smith-Rosenberg, The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations
between Women in Nineteenth-Century America, Signs: Journal of Women
in Culture and Society 1:1 (1975): 27.
23. On the question of identity versus identication, see Luisa Passerini,
The Last Identication: Why Some of Us Would Like to Call Ourselves
European and What We Mean by This, in Europe and the Other and Europe
as the Other (Brussels: PIE-Lang, 2000), 4565.
24. See Julian Stryjkowski, Ocalony na wschodzie (Montricher: Les Editions Noir
sur Blanc, 1991), 2744. Also see Jacek Trznadels interview with Stryjkowski
in Haba domowa (Warsaw: Agencja Wydawnicza Morex, 1997), 172.
25. Stryjkowski, Ocalony na wschodzie, 235.
26. Wat to Miosz, 5 September 1960, Nervi, C-218, AWPB.

446 n o t e s t o p a g e s 374 377

27. Antoni Sonimski, Elegia miasteczek ydowskich, in Poezje zebrane
(Warsaw: PIW, 1964), 495.
28. Adam Wayk, Przeczytaem Mj wiek, Puls 34 (1987): 53.
29. Aleksander Wat, Dziennik bez samogosek, 7.
30. Anatol Stern, Bruno Jasieski (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1969), 167.
31. Quoted in Grayna Pietruszewska-Kobiela, Pejza dramatyczny Anatola
Sterna (Czstochowa: Wysza Szkoa Pedagogiczna w Czstochowie, 1989),
8.
32. Wat, My Century, 5354. Cf: Mary Gluck, Georg Lukcs and His Generation,
19001918 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985).
33. Wayk, Przeczytaem Mj wiek, 53.
34. Aleksander Wat, Mj wiek: Pamitnik mwiony, 2 vols. (Warsaw: Czytelnik,
1998), vol. I, 61.
35. Wat, My Century, 54.
36. Wygodzki to Tadeusz Borowski, 31 December 1945, Gauting. Tadeusz Drew
nowski, ed., Niedyskrecje pocztowe: Korespondencje Tadeusza Borowskiego
(Warsaw: Prszyski i S-ka, 2001), 61.
37. Gumbrecht, In 1926, 352; iek, Plague of Fantasies, 158.
38. My thanks to Brian Porter for his help in formulating this idea.
39. See Leszek Kolakowskis Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden
Age, the Breakdown (New York: Norton, 2005).
40. St. Inspektor Departamentu III MSW Pk. St. Borowczak, Notatka Subw
(tajne), Warsaw, 22 November 1963 and M. Inspektor Wydziau III Roman
Koryl, Analiza, Warsaw, 21 April 1976, 0246/1031, IPN.
41. Watowa, Wszsytko co najwaniejsze, 2627.

index

Adorno, Theodor, 322, 369

Adria, 122
Akhmatova, Anna, 278
Akiba, Rabbi ben, 209
Aleichem, Sholem, 156
Alma-ata, 204, 205, 211218, 240, 241,
273, 278, 340, 354
Almanach Nowej Sztuki, 40, 77, 78, 367,
385, 444
Alter, Wiktor, 128, 154, 173, 233, 296, 322
amnesty. See Sikorski-Maiskii agreement
Anders army, xviii, 204207, 216,
218221, 240
Anders, Wadysaw, xviii, 189, 205207,
216, 219221, 240, 260, 262, 263,
423
anti-Zionist campaign, xx, 4, 355359
Antonovka (Kazakhstan), 212, 214216
Antonov-Ovseenko, Vladimir, 186
Anusia (Aleksander Wats nanny), 13,
351353
Apollinaire, Guillaume, xxii, 15, 37, 40,
277, 279, 306, 347, 377
Appenszlak, Jakub, 423
Appenszlak, Paulina, 262, 423
Arem, Klara, 63, 98, 144, 149, 313
Arendt, Hannah, 322, 381
Aseev, Nikolai, 58, 391

ashes, 208, 209, 241, 254, 257, 258, 266,

319, 331, 332, 344, 354, 376
Augustine, Saint, 189, 386
Auschwitz, 226, 227, 255, 260262, 280,
283, 288, 290, 296, 352
Austrian Empire, 1, 3, 97, 102, 232, 383
Averbakh, Leopold, 142144
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 191
Baghdad, 219
Baliski, Stanisaw, 195, 303, 326
Barbusse, Henri, 65, 66, 94, 101, 104, 375,
393
Bartoszewski, Wadysaw, 227, 268, 356,
358, 360363
Bazhan, Mykola, 176, 335
Beauvoir, Simone de, 7
Beck, Jzef, 66, 393
Bdzin, 46, 53, 283
Benda, Julien, 6, 270, 276
Berlin, 1, 44, 66, 92, 93, 108, 144, 145,
208, 251, 294
Berling, Zygmunt, 246, 247
Berman, Adolf, xvii, 5, 128, 226, 227, 228,
230, 268, 300, 301, 321, 322, 346,
355, 358, 359, 360, 373
Berman, Guta, 297
Berman, Jakub, xvii, 5, 69, 108, 109, 112,

447

4 4 8 i n d e x
Berman, Jakub (continued)
128, 149, 199, 200, 223, 226, 237,
238, 244, 246, 254257, 266268,
271, 272, 274, 277, 279, 280, 294
301, 305, 306, 308312, 318, 322, 328,
330, 344, 356, 360363, 370, 373
Berman, Mieczysaw, 5, 226, 227, 301, 373
Berzi, Anna, 98, 105, 146, 149, 313, 314
Bezpieka (Urzd Bezpieczestwa, security
apparatus), xvii, 258, 268, 284, 305,
311, 313, 428, 442
Biaystok, 183, 199
Bielski, Count, 159
Bierut, Bolesaw, 267, 272, 278, 284286,
295, 298, 302, 305, 306, 310, 318,
319, 428
Bogatko, Franciszek, 165
Bogatko, Marian, xvii, 124126, 132, 133,
140, 149, 154, 165, 174, 175, 335
Bordeaux, 197
Borejsza, Jerzy, xvii, 111, 112, 160, 177, 184,
186, 199, 201, 202, 205, 257, 263,
264, 268272, 276, 282, 297299,
302, 306, 308, 311, 324, 361, 372;
gentle revolution 269, 270, 274,
278, 279, 296, 297
Borowski, Tadeusz, 278, 296, 297, 376,
381
Boy-eleski, Tadeusz, xix, 91, 129, 159,
160, 173, 177, 178, 191, 203, 226, 290
Braun, Mieczysaw, xviii, 11, 3033, 35,
3740, 138, 139, 226, 258, 381
Brecht, Bertolt, 333
Brik, Lilia, 65, 105, 314
Brik, Osip, 65, 391
Broniewska, Anna (Anka), 54, 128, 141,
149, 182, 198, 200, 204207,
219221, 224, 246, 247, 255, 260,
261, 289, 314, 333, 334
Broniewska, Janina (ne Kunig), xviii,
4144, 54, 56, 57, 60, 73, 79, 8386,
90, 92, 109, 111, 114117, 123, 125128,
132, 141, 149, 150, 154, 178, 183, 198
201, 204, 206, 220, 222224, 229,
233, 235, 238, 240, 246251, 254,
255, 257, 260, 262, 284, 286289,
295, 311, 317, 318, 331336, 347, 355,
372, 373

Broniewski, Wadysaw, xviii, xx, 11, 2631,

34, 3859, 6163, 68, 69, 73, 74, 79,
80, 8392, 9499, 108, 112, 114123,
127129, 135, 138, 141, 145, 149151, 153,
154, 159, 160, 162172, 175, 181187,
189193, 198199, 201, 204208,
211, 213, 218222, 226, 254, 255, 259
263, 275, 276, 279283, 286, 288,
295, 296, 303, 310, 314316, 319, 320,
324, 327, 328, 330, 332334, 347, 355,
369, 371374, 376, 385, 388, 412
Broniszwna, Seweryna, 189, 245, 273,
350, 351, 363
Brucz, Stanisaw, 30, 63, 67, 385
Bucharest, 196
Bukharin, Nikolai, 88, 156
Bukojemski, Leon, 288
Bund, xix, 128, 141, 154, 173, 192, 193, 228,
233, 261, 403
Burliuk, David, 20, 389
cafs: Astoria, 59; de la Regence, 196; du
Dme, 66; Swann, 135; Ujazdowska,
425; Ziemiaska, xviii, 4, 10, 11, 13,
26, 2932, 45, 50, 56, 58, 60, 63,
66, 67, 69, 70, 73, 86, 91, 127, 139,
149, 153, 156, 166, 191, 208, 210, 217,
254, 276, 295, 320, 370, 371, 426
Cagliostro, Count di, 320, 435
apek, Karel, 276
Castle Square (Plac Zamkowy), 19
caviar, 92, 106, 114, 287
Central Committee of Polish Jews (Centralny Komitet ydw w Polsce), 168
Centralniak, 88, 89, 179, 182, 332
Cheka, 44, 121, 176, 179
Chimkent, 213
Churchill, Winston, 254
Chwat, Ewa, 91
circumcision, 84
Cocteau, Jean, 196
Comintern, 51, 94, 104, 108, 119, 145, 149,
200
Communist Party: All-Russian, 101, 177,
178, 202, 314; of Czechoslovakia,
300; of France, 104; of Israel, 300;
of Poland (Komunistyczna Partia
Polski, KPP), xviixx, 12, 38, 39, 51,

index 449
54, 6668, 83, 8688, 94, 98,
109111, 121, 127, 145, 148, 149, 170,
172, 173, 177, 178, 185187, 199201,
222, 227, 237, 267, 299, 308, 316,
322, 329, 335, 355, 356, 380, 398,
400, 433; Soviet, 132, 305; Ukrainian,
158. See also Polish Workers Party;
United Polish Workers Party
Congress of Cultural Workers (Lww),
xix, 112, 127130, 271, 315, 322
Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of
Peace (Wrocaw), 270273, 297,
298, 261
Conrad, Joseph, 226
Cracow, xix, xx, xxii, 1, 3, 11, 16, 43, 44, 83,
102, 109, 123, 124, 145, 149, 173, 193,
198, 201, 224, 231, 277, 328
Cyrankiewicz, Jzef, 344
Czerwony Sztandar, 158, 160164, 166,
170, 176, 178, 185, 201, 363
Czytelnik, 269, 270, 274, 298, 299
Dbal, Tomasz, 65, 107, 120122, 141, 142,
144, 146, 147, 313, 398
Dachau, 262, 283
Damascus, 219
Dan, Aleksander, 158160, 162, 163, 167,
169, 177
Darwin, Charles, 12, 13, 352
Daszewski, Wadysaw, xviii, 6668, 101,
112, 122, 153, 159, 166169, 179, 186,
204, 258, 261, 275, 276, 328, 364,
409410
Deianeira, 359, 443
Derrida, Jacques, 8
Desanti, Dominique, 270, 272
Detroit, 233, 251
Deutscher, Isaac, xviii, 5, 57, 68, 109, 110,
296, 312, 328, 329, 345, 355, 369, 372
Dmowski, Roman, 2, 3
Dnieprostroi, 118, 119
dogs, 10, 137, 198, 302
Domestic National Council (Krajowa
Rada Narodowa), 249, 257
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 19, 244, 285, 323
Drohobycz/Drohobych, 382, 383
Drzewicki, Henryk
duel, 116, 117, 159

Dunayevsky, Evgeny, 190

Dymowski, Tadeusz, 25
Dzhambul, 212, 213, 217
Dziennik Popularny, 400
Dzieryski, Feliks, 179, 229
Dwignia, 5456, 59, 60, 63, 68, 97, 100,
108, 160, 164
eagles, 105, 182, 184
Edelman, Marek, 228
Ehrenburg, Ilya, 11, 55, 66, 188189, 196,
202, 206, 235, 266, 270273, 276,
301, 355, 361
Eichmann, Adolf, 356
Eisenstein, Sergei, 214, 391
luard, Paul, 270, 272, 273, 286
embassy, Polish, 101, 197, 206, 207, 213,
223, 273, 331; Soviet, 59, 61, 62, 92,
114, 186
Engels, Friedrich, 121
Erlich, Henryk, 128, 173, 192, 193, 233, 419
Esenin, Sergei, 40, 48, 58, 61, 244, 333,
387
Esperanto, 11, 138
Europa, 309, 319
Ewa: Tygodnik, 423
F 24, 387
Fadeev, Aleksandr, 272
famine, 113, 118
ferment, 308, 319
Finkelstein, Chaim, 301
Foucault, Michel, 9, 381
Fourier, Charles, 307
Frank, Leonhard, 274
Front of Progressive Jewish Culture
(Front Postpowej Kultury
ydowskiej), 322
Gacki, Stefan Kordian, 40, 367, 387, 444
Gadomski, Romuald, 149, 198, 199, 220,
260, 262, 263
Gadomski, Stanisaw, 196, 224
Gaczyski, Konstanty, 8, 283, 284, 381
Galicia, xviii, xxi, 128, 195, 382
Gdask, 92, 121
Gebethner, Jan, 91, 154
gentle revolution. See Borejsza, Jerzy

4 5 0 i n d e x
Gerbert, Bolesaw, 233
Gestapo, 142, 154, 180, 191, 193, 258, 383
ghetto benches, 130, 134
Gibraltar, 235
Giedroyc, Jerzy, 331, 336, 440
God, 1, 13, 14, 17, 25, 34, 36, 90, 131, 180,
189, 243, 251, 294, 323, 338, 339, 347,
354, 367
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 62, 293
Gogol, Nikolai, 88
Gombrowicz, Witold, 91, 349
Gomuka, Wadysaw, 297, 311, 312, 330,
345, 345, 356, 433
Gorky, Maksim, 130, 144
Grska, Halina, 155, 158160, 162, 177, 184,
188, 258
Grabski, Stanisaw, 208
Gross, Jan T., 371
Grosz, Wiktor, 201, 231, 232
Groys, Boris, 366, 367
Grydzewski, Mieczysaw, 10, 11, 16, 20, 49,
59, 96, 122, 139, 186, 195, 196,
208211, 233, 264, 302, 303, 319321,
333, 350, 361, 362
Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich, 6, 369
Haifa, 219
Hass, Ludwik, 345
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 9
Hellman, Irena, 115117, 135
Hempel, Jan, xviii, 34, 3639, 48, 54, 68,
77, 86, 87, 90, 94, 95, 99101, 114,
119, 120, 145, 148, 164, 184, 185, 189,
295, 313, 315, 316, 333
Henry, O., 244
herring, 87, 109, 345
Herzl, Theodor, 156
Hidas, Antal, 93, 106, 107
Hitler, Adolf, 132135, 157, 228, 251, 265,
323, 338
Hohenzollern monarchy, 102
Home Army (Armia Krajowa), 227, 253,
254, 259, 284
homosexuality, xix, 11, 321, 374, 158
Horkheimer, Max, 322, 369
Hotel Bristol, 304
Hotel George, 158, 159
Hotel Polonia, 290

Hudson Hotel, 321

Hulka-Laskowski, Pawe, 52, 389
Huxley, Aldous, 272
Iasenskii, Andrei, 98, 313, 314
Ili (Kazakhstan), 240245, 273, 337, 340,
353
ination, 75, 76
Inquisition, 150, 435
International Organization of Aid to
Revolutionaries (Mezhdunarodnaia
Organizatsiia Pomoshchi Bortsam
Revoliutsii), 99
Iudin, Pavel, 142, 143
Ivanovka (Kazakhstan), 188, 212
Iwaszkiewicz, Jarosaw, xix, 11, 12, 15, 16,
19, 20, 22, 23, 105, 115, 139, 194, 225,
226, 253, 254, 264, 265, 271, 273,
276, 278, 284, 290, 302304, 308,
319322, 325, 333, 336, 345, 350, 362,
363, 444
Iwaszkiewiczowa, Anna, 11, 225, 265, 266,
290, 363
Izvestiia, 107, 146, 192, 335
Jabonowski, Roman, 400
Jagganath, 325, 436
Jasieski, Bruno, xix, xxi, 11, 1517, 20, 21,
26, 30, 33, 34, 37, 53, 55, 61, 6367,
69, 77, 93107, 119, 120, 122, 141149,
151, 156, 171, 184, 306, 313315, 328,
333, 336, 347349, 375, 393, 397,
405, 441
Jdrychowski, Stefan, 127, 153, 201, 223,
245, 249, 376, 311
Jerusalem, xviii, 219222, 247, 255, 259,
260, 352
Jewish Combat Organization (ydowska
Organizacja Bojowa), 227, 230
Johnson, Lyndon, 356
Judt, Tony, 6, 7
K, 43, 44, 388
kaddish, 353
Kalisz, 41, 92, 114, 115
Kamenev, Lev, 110, 150
Kamensky, Vasilii, 20
Katy, 229, 249, 419

index 451
kayak, 124, 140
Kazimierz, 194, 195, 150
Kencbok, Bronisaw Sylwin, 2831
Kharkov, 101, 107, 117, 118, 121, 375
Khlebnikov, Velimir, 18, 20, 58
Khrushchev, 154, 148, 176, 177, 245, 252,
267, 268, 286, 314, 335; secret
speech by, 305, 306, 309, 312, 334
Kielce, 259
Kierkegaard, Sren, 12, 353
Kiev, xxi, xxii, 92, 99, 122, 147, 172, 174,
175, 188, 189, 200202, 252, 255,
268, 288, 289, 318, 334, 335, 373
Kirov, Sergei, 151
Kirsanov, Semn, 162, 191, 337
Klub Krzywego Koa, 344
Kobieta, 288
Kochanowski, Jan, 233, 234
Koakowski, Leszek, xxi, 345347, 355,
362, 376
Kolski, Witold, 38, 164, 170, 185, 201, 202
Kon, Feliks, 199
korenizatsiia, 101
Korneichuk, Oleksandr, xxii, 154, 158, 159,
173, 176, 194, 200, 224, 228, 229,
252, 287, 334, 335
Kott, Jan, 173, 277, 296, 301, 310, 321, 332
Kowalewski, Jan (military attach), 101,
122, 399
Kowel, 154
Kozarzewska, Magdalena, 284, 285, 428
Kozarzewski, Jerzy, 284, 285, 428
KPP. See Communist Party: of Poland
Krajewski, Stanisaw, 368
Krajewski, Wadysaw, 312
Krakowski, 212, 217
Kruchenykh, Aleksei, 18
Kruczkowski, Leon, xix, 112, 264, 303,
304, 308, 315, 319, 336
Krzemieniec, 195
Krzywicka, Irena, xix, 12, 15, 26, 42, 44,
91, 108, 139, 226, 229, 376, 290,
295, 296
Krzywicki, Ludwik, xix, 12, 108
Kuibyshev, 200, 204, 206, 207, 213,
222224, 228, 229, 260, 263, 340
Kultura (Paris), 292, 331, 332, 336, 376
Kultura (Poland), 344, 345, 348

Kultura Mas, 98101, 106, 146

Kun, Bla, 93
Kuro, Jacek, 345
Kunica, 277, 280, 281, 296, 301
Lampe, Alfred, xix, 149, 177, 178, 199, 200,
222224, 228, 238, 240, 249, 286,
354, 355
Lange, Oskar, 224, 234, 235, 351
La Pologne Littraire, 56
Lechn, Jan, xx, 3, 4, 10, 12, 22, 23, 67,
196198, 202204, 209, 211, 225,
251, 262, 264, 276, 303, 304, 320,
321, 328, 337, 384, 423
Lef (Levyi Front Iskusstva), 59, 61, 391
Lger, Fernand, 272
Legions, 2628, 41, 50, 92, 95, 118, 121,
170, 171, 182, 184, 219, 333, 401
Lenin, Vladimir, 1, 2, 58, 102, 110, 121, 192,
213, 273, 280, 307, 337, 376
Leningrad, 278
Les Nouvelles Littraires, 362
Leszno, 125
Letter of the Fifty-Nine, 362
Letter of the Thirty-Four, 344
Lewartowski, Jzef, 227
LHumanit, 66, 270, 393
lice, 14, 180, 181, 212, 337
Lisbon, 197
d, xviii, xxi, xxii, 2, 11, 30, 35, 39, 44,
45, 48, 55, 58, 74, 122, 138, 226, 233,
258, 260, 261, 265, 275, 283, 364
London, xviii, 72, 73, 202, 204, 208211,
220, 221, 225, 227, 229, 233, 235,
239, 241, 244, 251, 253, 259, 261, 265,
272, 290, 291, 293, 302, 312, 321,
326, 333, 345, 353, 358, 362,
London government. See Polish
government-in-exile
Lourie, Richard, 380
Lubianka, 189, 190193, 204, 205, 260,
274, 337
Lublin, 154, 249, 251, 252, 254, 255, 257,
258, 264, 268, 269, 276
Lubowidzka, Jadwiga, 27, 44, 46, 90,
388
uck/Lutsk, 155
Luxemburg, Rosa, 1, 2, 148, 329

4 5 2 i n d e x
Lww/Lemberg/Lviv/Lvov, xviixxii, 83,
95, 112, 127130, 134, 153190, 194,
195, 199203, 213, 214, 217, 222, 226,
258, 260, 263, 269, 271, 273275,
315, 322, 324, 328, 333, 340, 342, 363,
371, 410
Machiavelli, Niccolo, 189
Magnitogorsk, 87, 118
Maiskii, Ivan, 204, 205
Maisons-Latte, 331
Majdanek, 250
MAPAM, 300
March 1968. See anti-Zionist campaign
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, 14, 17, 24,
133, 190, 347
martial law, 361, 363
Marx, Karl, 121, 191, 280, 376
Masiewicki, Aleksander, 358, 359, 443
Mayakovsky, Vladimir, xxi, 10, 20, 24, 26,
30, 40, 52, 55, 65, 69, 85, 98, 105, 113,
147, 148, 155, 162, 178, 179, 187, 213,
215, 217, 242, 265, 276, 277, 279,
282, 297, 301, 314, 315, 328, 330, 333,
336, 337, 343, 347, 367, 376, 389, 391,
392; visit to Warsaw, 5863; death
of, 7981
Medem, 141
Mekhlis, Lev, 106, 107
Meyerhold, Vsevolod, 391
Michnik, Adam, 362
Mickiewicz, Adam, 18, 19, 195, 226, 303,
355
Miesicznik Literacki, xix, xxii, 6892, 100,
108110, 133, 160162, 164, 166, 184,
186188, 242, 244, 270, 282, 294,
296, 297, 322, 324, 326, 328, 333,
336, 340, 343, 349, 370, 371, 375, 376,
396
Mikoajczyk, Stanisaw, 235, 253, 254, 259
Miosz, Czesaw, 7, 8, 153, 276, 281,
291293, 340343, 350, 353, 362,
440
Minsk, 105, 199, 200
Mirski, Micha, xx, 128, 322, 246, 356, 436
Modzelewski, Karol, 345
Molotov, Vyacheslav, 153, 158, 227229,
246, 249, 267, 272, 424

Molotovobad, 218
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, 153, 157, 158,
196, 202, 227, 246
Monde, 65, 101, 104
Montmorency, 350
Morand, Paul, 65
Moscow, xx, 4, 16, 58, 61, 62, 65, 90, 92,
98, 101, 105108, 110, 113, 114, 119, 120,
122, 135, 148, 150, 165, 166, 172174,
185, 189, 191, 193, 204208, 217, 222,
223, 228230, 234, 235, 238240,
243, 250254, 260, 267, 273, 287
289, 292, 298, 301, 305, 306, 313
316, 318, 354, 367, 399, 410
Nasz Przegld, 68, 138, 139, 383, 423
Natanson, Szymon, 127, 173, 178, 400
National Democrats (Narodowa Demo
cracja, Endecja), 2, 25, 91, 130, 132,
134, 208, 210, 235
Nazis/Nazism, 109, 132, 135, 153, 154, 157,
160, 164, 165, 174, 195, 196, 199200,
202204, 208, 210, 226230, 236,
239, 241, 246, 254, 255, 258, 259,
262, 266, 283, 292, 322, 356, 338,
430, 439
Nazi-Soviet non-aggression treaty.
See Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Neruda, Pablo, 276, 285, 286
New York, xxxxii, 40, 198, 202, 203, 210,
224, 236, 250, 251, 257, 259, 260,
263, 264, 283, 301, 303, 304, 321, 358,
436
Nieborw, 278, 308
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 1, 2, 12, 17, 29, 351,
366
NKVD. See Peoples Commissariat for
Internal Aairs
Norwid, Cyprian, 34, 284
Nowakowski, Zygmunt, 105106
Nowa Kultura (interwar), 3440, 54, 68,
77, 164, 185, 316
Nowa Kultura (postwar), 280, 306308,
316, 317, 322, 326, 344
Nowa Sztuka, 20, 30, 63, 76
Nowe Widnokrgi, 178, 191, 201, 222, 223,
229, 239
Nowy Dziennik, 444

index 453
numerus clasus, 130
Nurt, 110, 111, 296
Oblicze Dnia, 109
Odrodzenie, 258, 261, 276280, 282, 283,
296, 298
Omarkhadzhev, Colonel, 242244
opera, 287
Operation Barbarossa, 191
Oren, Mordechai, 300
Ossolineum, 159, 160, 201, 269
Ostrowa, 11, 19
OZON (Obz Zjednoczenia Narodo
wego), 210, 416
Pabianice, 53
Padre Pio, 324
Parecki, Franciszek, 172, 183, 184, 410
Paris, xix, xxi, xxii, 4, 5866, 69, 93, 94,
101, 102, 106, 107, 148, 186, 196, 197,
208210, 251, 280, 291, 292, 302,
303, 331, 332, 335340, 342, 343, 347,
354, 363, 376; Rue Blondel, 67
passisme, 12, 19, 33, 75, 76, 279
Pasternak, Boris, 87, 333
Pasternak, Leon, 166169, 333, 409
Paulus, Friedrich, 228
Paustovsky, Konstantin, 214
Peiper, Tadeusz, xvii, xx, 11, 16, 20, 7779,
108, 160, 166, 168171, 184, 187189,
191193, 226, 230, 263, 276, 328,
348, 349, 371, 410
Peoples Army (Armia Ludowa), 227
Peoples Commissariat for Internal
Aairs (Narodnyi Komissariat
Vnutrennikh Del, NKVD), xvii, 141,
144149, 158, 159, 168, 169, 175, 179,
183187, 191, 205, 211, 213, 241243,
245, 274, 313, 340
Peoples University, 34
pepper, 252, 295
Piach, Bolesaw, 172, 410
Picasso, Pablo, 270, 272, 273, 279
Piasecki, Bolesaw, 269, 299
Piasecki, Stanisaw, 133
pickle, 60
Pieracki, Bronisaw, 66, 393
Pisudski, Jzef, xviii, xix, 2, 3, 26, 28, 29,

50, 51, 54, 57, 66, 73, 92, 94, 97, 100,
111, 118, 120, 121, 122, 123, 130, 170, 171,
182, 203, 219, 234, 324, 337, 380,
398, 401, 416; coup, 50, 51, 57
Pisk, 250
Pock, 46, 90, 327
Poalei Zion, xvii, 442
Pod Pikadorem (Picadorem), xix, 12, 22
24, 50, 51, 210, 225, 292, 302, 303,
321, 384
Pod Prd, 110, 111, 296, 332, 400
Polish Army (interwar), 117, 381
Polish army division (Soviet Union, im.
Kociuszka), 238, 239, 245, 246, 334
Polish Committee of National Liberation
(Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Naro
dowego), 249, 258
Polish delegation, 213, 215, 218, 240, 241,
417
Polish government-in-exile, 202, 220,
227, 229, 235, 239, 241, 261
Polish Military Organization (Polska
Organizacja Wojskowa, POW), 120,
121, 122, 146, 147, 313, 398, 401
Polish Peasant Party, 235, 239, 420
Polish Socialist Party (Polska Partia
Socjalistyczna, PPS), xvii, xxi, 2, 34,
74, 100, 109, 123, 138, 155, 172, 173,
176, 201, 237, 259
Polish-Soviet (Bolshevik) War, xviii, 3, 19,
121, 380
Polish Teachers Union, 123, 126, 127
Polish Temporary Committee (Tymczasowy Komitet Polski), 430
Polish Workers Party (Polska Partia
Robotnicza, PPR), 200, 227, 250,
258, 259, 267, 269, 270, 276278,
288, 294, 433
Polskie Wiadomoci, 209, 210, 251, 302,
333, 435
Po Prostu, 344
Popular Front, 109, 112, 127, 128, 153, 173,
226, 230, 239, 258, 315
Poronin, 44, 388
Pozna, 3, 66, 83, 162, 312
PPS. See Polish Socialist Party
Praga, 254256, 295
Prague, 103, 268, 300, 392

4 5 4 i n d e x
Pravda, 106, 107, 142144, 292
Priacel, Stefan, 65, 66
Proletariacka Prawda, 147
Proletariat, 199
Proust, Marcel, 135, 178, 189
Prus, Bolesaw, 206
Przegld Kulturalny, 344
Przybo, Julian, xx, 16, 26, 160, 162, 177,
178, 257, 276278, 303, 309, 310,
326, 336, 433
Pushkin, Aleksandr, 19, 24, 80, 244, 301,
306, 333
Putrament, Jerzy, 112, 153, 160, 172, 177,
183, 186, 238, 257, 262, 268, 276,
282, 294, 297, 299, 328, 331, 381,
410
PZPR. See United Polish Workers Party
Qui pro Quo, 170
Radio Free Europe, 332, 444
Radom, 241243
Rajk, Lszl, 294
Rapaport, Natan, 268
Red Army (Soviet), 154, 155, 157, 161, 174,
177, 183, 201, 223, 225, 227, 228, 230,
235, 238, 246, 249, 254, 255, 258,
273
rehabilitations, xxi, 308, 312, 314
Revolution, Bolshevik, 3, 96, 102, 142, 147,
161, 162, 192, 193, 280, 283, 309, 318,
328
Revolution of 1905, 2, 3, 12, 74
Ribbentrop, Joachim von. See MolotovRibbentrop Pact
Rio de Janeiro, xxi, 197, 198, 251, 266
Robespierre, Maximilien, 370
Robotnik (Berlin), 208
Robotnik (interwar), 138
Robotnik (wartime), 210
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 234, 254
Rothschilds, 196
Raski, Jacek, xvii, 111, 268, 299, 308,
311, 312, 428, 433
Rudnicki, Adolf, 155, 169, 177, 178, 191, 301,
316, 317, 321, 336, 343, 344
Russian (tsarist) empire, 2, 3
Rzeszw, 73

Saratov, 192, 193, 201, 204, 206, 211, 212,

214, 217, 228, 338
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 7, 266, 267, 272, 309,
362
Schiller, Leon, 16, 66, 121, 275
Schulz, Bruno, 15, 90, 178, 258, 382, 383
self-criticism, 7677, 93, 99102, 113, 131,
142144, 158, 162, 163, 199, 281, 297,
307, 308, 310, 311, 330332, 342, 370,
371, 445
Semipalatinsk, 204, 205, 213
Severianin, Igor, 349
Shklovsky, Viktor, 61, 69, 155, 213215, 217,
218, 241, 391
Shnaider, Mikhail, 214
Shomer, 128, 156
Sikorski, Wadysaw, 204, 205, 229, 235
Sikorski-Maiskii agreement, 204, 205, 211,
212, 214, 230
Singer, Bernard, 109
Skamander (group), xviiixxii, 2325,
51, 53, 60, 72, 75, 76, 78, 80, 86,
9496, 112, 136, 138, 153, 166, 195
197, 202, 203, 209, 217, 225, 263,
270, 276, 290, 302, 303, 318, 321,
333, 337, 344, 347, 368, 384
Skamander (journal), 10, 23
Skwarzyska, Stefania, 188, 189
Slnsk, Rudolf, 268, 394, 300
Sonimski, Antoni, xx, 3, 1012, 14, 15, 22,
24, 26, 50, 51, 5860, 67, 7074, 81,
83, 86, 112116, 129135, 138, 139, 150,
151, 153, 178, 194196, 208211, 235,
265, 281, 290293, 298, 299, 303
305, 309, 318321, 324, 326, 328, 330,
335, 337, 343346, 348, 356358, 362,
363, 374, 376, 382, 389
Sowacki, Juliusz, 18, 19, 443
snob/snobbism, 25, 26, 30, 63, 64, 72,
74, 76, 99, 132, 196, 270, 298
Social Democratic Party of Poland and
Lithuania (Socjaldemokracja
Krlestwa Polskiego i Litwy), 2, 380
socialist realism, xx, xxii, 8, 66, 103, 104,
214, 224, 257, 267, 272, 277279,
280282, 288, 306, 309, 362, 366,
370, 375, 444
Sophocles, 443

index 455
Solidarity, 361, 363
Sommerstein, Emil, 239
Spychalski, Marian, 311, 433
Sta, Leopold, 74
Stalin, Iosif, xix, xxii, 4, 81, 100, 107, 108,
110, 120, 132, 133, 142, 143, 146, 149,
151, 155, 161, 172, 173, 177, 189, 192, 193,
224, 225, 228230, 234, 237, 238,
240, 241, 245, 246, 251, 252, 254,
267, 269, 277, 280, 282, 283, 288,
297, 305, 308, 310, 315, 323, 334, 337,
347, 389, 399
Stalingrad, 228, 235, 241, 249
Stande, Olga, 312, 313
Stande, Stanisaw Ryszard, xx, xxi, 13, 11,
12, 34, 41, 4648, 54, 55, 57, 59, 66,
68, 79, 80, 82, 9398, 100, 104, 105,
108, 119, 145, 148, 149, 156, 184, 186,
189, 295, 306, 312, 313, 315, 328, 333,
376, 393, 398
Stanisaww, 195
Stawar, Andrzej (Edward Janus), xxi, 54
59, 61, 68, 82, 83, 86, 87, 91, 94, 96,
97, 99, 100, 108, 110112, 140, 141,
163, 191, 276278, 295, 296, 299,
308, 322, 330333, 355, 430
Stawisko, xix, 11, 225, 336, 363
Steklov, Nakhamkes, 192, 193, 336
Steinbeck, John, 287
Stendhal, 244
Stern, Anatol, xviii, xix, xxi, 13, 1521, 23
26, 30, 33, 34, 37, 49, 5153, 59, 61
63, 68, 75, 77, 87, 94, 97, 98, 162,
166, 169171, 187, 207, 226, 259,
263, 303, 314, 328, 347350, 371, 375,
383, 385, 423
Sternowa, Alicja, 166, 375
streets: Danilowiczowska, 26; Hipo
teczna, 56; Hoa, 304; Marsza
kowska, 224; Mazowiecka, 10;
Mia, 221; Niebielak, 187; Niecaa,
3; Piwna, 293; witokrzyska, 139
Stryjkowski, Julian, xxi, 5, 128, 156, 157,
160, 161, 170172, 194, 199, 201, 202,
230232, 238, 276, 288, 346, 362,
363, 373, 374
Stur, Jan, 95
Szczeci, 279, 281, 282

Szczuka, Mieczysaw, 33, 35, 54, 100

szmalcownicy, 336, 439
Szpilki, 343, 344
Sztandar Wolnoci, 199
Tadzhikistan, 101, 104, 107, 108, 119, 145,
441
Taitz, Misha, 191, 337, 338
Tatar, Stanisaw, 259, 311, 433
Tel Aviv, xvii, 221, 222, 236, 259, 300, 321
Theater Square (Plac Teatralny), 2, 57
Tiis, 119
Tito-Stalin split, 277
Tokyo, 320
Tolstoy, Lev, 2, 19, 189, 212, 214, 244, 299,
304
Toraska, Teresa, 267, 361
Toulouse, 184
Treblinka, 227
Tretiakov, Sergei, 391
Trotsky, Leon, xviii, 28, 110, 111, 142144,
150, 151, 170, 171, 184, 296, 329, 331,
345
Trybuna Radziecka, 147
Tuwim, Julian, xx, xxi, 2, 1012, 15, 22, 24,
26, 50, 51, 5561, 64, 67, 73, 74, 86,
120, 121, 125, 129, 135139, 153, 154,
194198, 202204, 209211, 224,
225, 233237, 250, 251, 257266,
268, 269, 271, 272, 276, 281286,
290, 299304, 306, 316, 317, 320,
321, 324, 337, 366, 370, 374, 428, 435,
444
Tuwimowa, Ewa (Ewunia), 266, 267, 291
Tuwimowa, Irena, 11, 202, 203, 233
Tuwimowa, Stefania, 195, 196, 265, 266,
301
Twrczo, 308, 322, 325, 326, 364
Tygodnik Polski (Hungary), 430
Tygodnik Polski (USA), 260, 423
Tygodnik Powszsechny, 356
Ufa, 200, 223
UNESCO, 290, 320
Union of Polish Patriots (Zwizek
Patriotw Polskich), xx, 229,
237241, 243, 244, 247, 249, 259,
263, 286

4 5 6 i n d e x
United Polish Workers Party (Polska
Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza,
PZPR), 259, 263, 269, 280, 282,
287, 291, 296299, 305, 307313,
316, 319, 328, 330332, 334, 335,
344346, 355, 356, 358360, 362,
363, 400, 433, 436
Valentin, 243245
Valry, Paul, 196
Venclova, Antanas, 286
Venice, 294
Vercors, 272
Verlaine, Paul, 31
Versailles, Treaty of, 68
Vertov, Dziga, 391
Vilna/Wilno, 108, 127, 128, 134, 135, 153,
160, 201, 276, 291, 403
vodka, 86, 109, 151, 164, 166, 167, 180, 225,
259, 263, 287, 295, 314
Wagman, Saul, 16, 350, 383
Wagman, Tristan, 350
Wandurski, Witold, xx, xxi, 11, 3539, 41,
4453, 55, 5861, 9294, 96, 97, 99,
101, 120122, 136, 141, 144, 145, 147,
148, 156, 184, 186, 295, 306, 313, 315,
333, 369, 374, 388
Warsaw ghetto, xviii, 226228, 230, 237,
253, 257, 261, 268, 373
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 227, 228, 230,
253, 261, 268, 373
Warsaw Uprising, 253255, 290
Warska, Zoa, xx, 1, 2, 57, 66, 98, 148, 312,
398
Warski, Adolf, xx, 1, 51, 57, 98, 148, 189,
312, 313, 368, 380
Waryski, Ludwik, 179, 250
Wasilewska, Ewa, 141, 165, 175, 224, 246,
247, 286, 288, 318
Wasilewska, Wanda, xviixix, xxi, 108,
109, 111, 112, 123130, 132, 140, 141,
149, 154, 155, 157, 159, 160, 162,
165, 166, 171179, 183, 184, 188
189, 200202, 204, 212, 213, 220,
222226, 228234, 237240,
244247, 249, 252, 255, 257, 267,
268, 276, 286289, 316318, 322,

328, 334336, 346, 355, 372, 373,

408, 420
Wasilewski, Leon, xxi, 123, 126, 231, 334
Wat, Aleksander, xviii, xxi, xxii, 13, 6,
822, 2426, 2830, 34, 3640, 54,
5963, 6572, 7493, 100, 108112,
118, 126, 129, 133, 139, 151163, 166
172, 174, 175, 179182, 184185, 187
193, 195, 199, 205, 207, 211219, 226,
227, 241245, 258, 263, 270, 273
276, 278, 281283, 293297, 303,
304, 308, 319, 321333, 335343,
348354, 363, 364, 367372, 374
376, 382, 384, 392, 409, 410, 412,
436, 440
Wat, Andrzej, 84, 85, 90, 139, 154, 158,
187189, 212218, 245, 273, 351, 354,
364
Watowa, Ola (ne Lev), xxii, 10, 15, 40,
5962, 68, 79, 8387, 90, 91, 108,
109, 139, 152, 154, 155, 158, 161, 166
170, 172, 174, 179, 181, 187189, 192,
212217, 241245, 273276, 295
297, 304, 322, 325329, 340, 341,
343, 350353, 363, 364, 369, 376,
392
Wayk, Adam, xxii, 5, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 23,
26, 56, 57, 59, 61, 68, 91, 112, 118,
160162, 166169, 172, 177, 178, 187,
191, 212, 238, 244, 247, 250, 257,
262, 270, 273, 276279, 281, 282,
284, 293295, 301, 306310, 324,
328, 336, 338, 344, 350, 360, 362,
363, 371377, 441, 443
Weimar, 293294
White, Hayden, 6
Wiadomoci Literackie, xviii, xx, 16, 22, 23,
48, 49, 51, 53, 56, 62, 67, 70, 71, 73,
80, 86, 87, 90, 96, 97, 112, 114117,
128, 129, 133, 135, 138, 140, 151, 185,
186, 196, 266, 276, 302, 309
Wicek, Kazimierz, 213, 218, 417
Wieniawa-Dugoszowski, Bolesaw, 66,
67, 86, 324, 337, 436
Wierzyski, Kazimierz, 1012, 23, 86, 197,
198, 202, 204, 209, 211, 225, 251,
262, 264, 276, 320, 321, 333, 350,
423

index 457
Wiley, Irena Monique, 202
Wilno. See Vilna/Wilno
Witkiewicz, Stanisaw Ignacy (Witkacy),
7, 10, 1517, 23, 91, 258, 326, 348,
349, 363, 383
Witos, Andrzej, 239, 252, 420
Witos, Wincenty, 420
Wittlin, Jzef, xxii, 67, 94, 95, 155, 158,
203, 263, 264, 339, 423
Wolna Polska, 229232
workers theater, xxi, 35, 45, 46, 50, 55, 92,
186, 315
World War I, xx, 3, 4, 10, 98, 146, 274, 301,
383, 398, 401
World War II, 153257, 260269, 272,
273, 276, 277, 281, 283, 284, 286,
287, 290, 295, 296, 298, 300302,
314, 315, 319, 328, 334, 352, 363, 400
Woroszylski, Wiktor, 278, 282, 336, 344,
346
Writers Union, Polish, xix, 258, 273, 275,
277, 281, 282, 287, 297, 302, 304,
315, 318, 319, 336, 342, 344, 347, 355,
356, 362, 363; in Lvov, 159, 163, 166,
177, 184; Soviet, 98, 104107, 141, 142,
144, 301, 314, 316
Wrocaw, 270274, 278, 297, 298, 315,
319, 361
Wygodzka, Irena, 296, 327
Wygodzki, Stanisaw, 46, 47, 53, 100, 262,
276, 283, 296, 326
Yakovleva, Tatiana, 62
Yezhov, Nikolai, 144, 147

Zakopane, 15, 23, 91, 194, 206, 262, 263,

316, 317, 331, 388
Zaleszczyki, 195
Zamarstynw, 169, 170, 179182, 189, 192,
193, 218, 338, 339, 412
Zarbiska, Maria (Marysia), 149, 150,
165167, 169, 172, 181, 183, 188, 189,
206, 226, 255, 260, 261, 288, 314;
daughter Maria (Majka), 150, 165,
206, 226, 255, 260, 261, 288
arnowerwna, Teresa, 54, 58
egota, xviii, 227, 360, 361
eromski, Stefan, 10, 2426, 41, 58, 72,
76, 93, 95, 97, 111, 121, 190, 206, 226,
299, 347, 355, 385
Zhdanov, Andrei, 271, 272, 278, 279
Zhemchuzhina, Polina (wife of Molotov),
267, 424
Zhivov, M., 93, 94, 100, 163, 164
Zinoviev, Grigorii, 110
iek, Slavoj, 369
oliborz, 111, 125, 149, 150, 165, 219, 221,
254, 255, 276
kiewski, Stefan, 315
Zoshchenko, Mikhail, 214, 278
Zurich, 274
Zvezda, 278
Zwrotnica, xx, 2022, 77, 78, 79
ydokomuna, 56, 91, 157, 210, 341, 356, 390
Zygielbojm, Szmul, 261