October's Harvest

In his first State of the Union message, President John F. Kennedy singled out Poland for special mention. He suggested that U.S. funds in Poland could be used for "projects of peace that will demonstrate our abiding friendship for and interest in the people of Poland." Among the shackled satellites of Eastern Europe, Poland, which is 98% Roman Catholic, has long been the most restless.

By tradition, Poles are rebellious, individualistic, and Western-minded in culture as in faith. With his courageous defiance of Nikita Khrushchev in 1956, Communist Boss Wladyslaw Gomulka raised hopes that Poland might one day break free from the Kremlin's bonds.

Though Kennedy did not say so, the new U.S. Administration hoped to encourage Communist Gomulka's independence from Moscow and to remind other captive peoples behind the Iron Curtain that the U.S.

had not forgotten them.

Pity for Patrice. Unhappily, Gomulka --and Poland with him--seems to be moving the other way. Gone are the soaring hopes that followed Poland's famous October 1956 revolt against the Communist yoke. "October? What's that?" cracks a writer. "Our calendar now has only eleven months." For him, free expression died in 1959, when Gomulka's party men took over the Writers' Union and choked off the "deviationists" with threats and a "shortage" of newsprint.

The universities have been recaptured by zealots with Marxism-Leninism on their lips, and Warsaw's daring painters are beginning to feel the pressure of disapproval. The press is under total censorship, and editors seldom even try to evade it with the subtle nuances for which Polish journalists were once famous.

Although Western tourists are getting into Poland with little difficulty (14,000 last year), fewer and fewer Poles are being given passports for travel abroad. The Ford Foundation was forced to reduce its program of grants to Polish scholars for study and lecturing in the West because so many obstacles were put in the way of its candidates.

Today, among party officials, the idea of a "Polish road to socialism" is no longer mentioned, for the chosen road leads mainly to Moscow. In foreign policy decisions, Poland is scarcely more independent than the Ukraine or Byelorussia. Of all the Soviet bloc leaders, Gomulka was first with lavish congratulations for Nikita Khrushchev after he torpedoed the summit conference last year. Last month Warsaw hastened to rename a street and a collective farm after Patrice Lumumba, following Moscow's big propaganda blast in memory of the Congolese "symbol of anti-colonialism." Two "Freedoms." In exchange for this kind of cooperation, the Russians keep the 30,000 Soviet troops stationed in Poland close to their barracks and out of the towns. Until recently, Moscow has respected two big concessions won by the Poles in 1956, which have survived more or less intact. One is the principle of private ownership of the farms; the other is relative freedom for the Catholic Church.

Bowing to the stubborn peasants, Gomulka still permits 87% of the farmers to remain outside the collectives, though his regime is pushing hard for voluntary membership in agricultural "circles," a modified form of collectivization.

But the church has begun to come under increasing pressure from Comrade Gomulka's party activists. Last year, factories suddenly stopped or slowed down deliveries of materials for church buildings, and the army started drafting seminary students a few at a time. Two religious holidays were declared to be official workdays. Then the party threatened to wipe out religious education in the schools, which Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski had won from Gomulka after months of struggle four years ago.

The real test of strength will come in the elections early next month. Four years ago, in exchange for concessions to the church, Cardinal Wyszynski urged Catholics to vote for Gomulka's candidates.

All Poland waited to hear what the Cardinal would advise now. Wyszynski has said nothing yet. But a few weeks ago, he circulated a grim private letter to all of Poland's 15.000 priests, warning them to "prepare for the worst . . . even jail or physical harm." Empty Streets. Churches are still full, for Poles are highly religious, and the vast quantity of vodka they consume is hardly sufficient solace for a life that is endlessly drab. Industrial production is up, and food supplies are adequate, but Warsaw, like most Polish cities, is bleak and shabby; at night the ill-lit streets are empty but for a scattering of street cleaners, drunks and rattletrap taxis.

WThat might be done to help Poles with the U.S.'s funds--$300 million worth of U.S. zloty farm proceeds products from -- is the open sale to of surplus question.

As in every Communist country, there is precious little the U.S. might buy that would not create a shortage elsewhere in the creaky economy. And whatever worthy project the U.S. decided to spend its zloty on would get nowhere unless the Gomulka regime was willing to make materials or labor available.

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