Bid for Freedom

The boldest and most widely read newspapers behind the Iron Curtain today are published in Poland, whose newsmen in recent months have refused to serve up the party-line pap that passes for reporting in every other Communist society. Instead, Warsaw's dailies and literary weeklies bitterly attacked Russia and Poland's Communist Party for the miseries of everyday existence in postwar Poland, thus played a leading part in bringing the Gomulka government to power. During the Hungarian uprisings, Nowa Kultura (New Culture), a literary weekly published by the Writers' Union, and the Communist youth organ, Po Prostu (Speaking Frankly), ran staff-written stories that denounced Russian intervention, ranked with Western press coverage for honest, vivid reporting.

Polish dailies have not only covered stories like Western papers; they are even beginning to look like them. Though some Warsaw papers have long carried drab, inconspicuous ads, Trybuna Ludu, the official party organ, announced last month that it would start running display ads, which are nonexistent in other satellite papers. Other Warsaw dailies scrambled to sell space, now run whole pages of bold-faced ads for free enterprisers. On one freezing day last week, a Warsaw brewery urged Zycie Warszawy readers: "If you have a cold, fix yourself a mulled beer." Urged the Polish equivalent of an Arthur Murray school: "Learn all the modern dances in time for the carnival season."

No Place for Censorship. Last week Polish newsmen were busily planning a campaign to cut the last strings of censorship and win constitutional guarantees of independence for the press. One of the leaders of the campaign is Eligiusz Lasota, fiery young (29) editor of the weekly Po Prostu, who was resoundingly elected to Parliament last month. His first task in office will be to fight for press freedom. "There is no place for censorship in a democracy," says Lasota. "Without democracy, there is no socialism."

One of the most courageous journalists in Poland, Lasota has boosted Po Prostu's circulation from 30,000 to 150,000 since taking over as editor in January 1956, says he could quadruple circulation if he had the newsprint. His first act as editor was to fire Po Prostu's staff, since, as, he explained, "It's easier to teach people with ideas how to write than to teach journalists how to have ideas." Packed with ideas, Po Prostu has battled successfully for new youth organizations free of domination by "tired-out" party hacks, attacked Stalinist "reactionaries," urged sweeping reforms in agricultural policy (later adopted in large part by Party Secretary Gomulka) that include virtual liquidation of Russian-type collective farming in favor of new incentives for independent farmers.

"Find Good Things to Say." The anti-Russian ferment in Poland's press started out in literary papers three years ago, before Moscow's destalinization campaign, as a protest against Communist stultification of Polish culture, boiled over into mass circulation magazines and such leading Warsaw dailies as Zycie Warszawy and Express Wieczorny, In the past year Polish papers have boldly challenged Russian policies in every sphere, from art to economics.

In recent months LIFE-like Swiat (World) magazine has run excerpts from Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell's prophetic novel about the sterile lives of "unpersons" in a totalitarian society. Another magazine carried a lengthy review of ex-Communist Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, hailed his savage exposition of Communist terrorism as "a very thorough analysis of Stalinist methods." Other papers have run glowing stories on the "truly democratic" U.S. and Western prosperity. The Culture Ministry's official organ recently published an article on the U.S. economy by a Communist official who noted sardonically that he "prefers imperialist Coca-Cola to the best home-distilled vodka."

By last month the press had become so free that Gomulka, in alarm before the elections, tightened censorship. "The time has come," he warned Warsaw editors, "to find some good things to say. We'll self-criticize ourselves into self-liquidation." Despite Gomulka's election victory, newsmen do not expect him to lift press curbs for some time to come, since, as he explains, Poland must move carefully if the nation is not to imperil its hard-won gains. But Polish journalists, having tasted freedom, are still getting stones past the censor that would never see print in any other Communist country. One sure proof of their effectiveness is that the Polish press is being denounced in Pravda.

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