"Splinters Must Fly"

While the forces of liberalization continued to gather momentum in Czechoslovakia, the regime of Poland's Wladyslaw Gomulka stiffened its resistance to reform. To filter out the ringleaders of the student demonstrations that have occurred over the past few weeks, it closed down eight academic depart ments at Warsaw University, forcing 1,000 out of its 7,000 students to reen roll this week. The government drafted into the army more than 200 students, expelled 34 others at Warsaw and fired six professors, at least two of them Jew ish, on charges of inciting disturbances. In a revival of a thinly veiled anti-Semitic campaign, it also fired the twelfth Jewish high government official in three weeks. All in all, the drive on students and professors, whom Gomulka called "enemies of the people," constitutes the most sweeping purge of intellectuals in Poland since the Stalinist days just after World War II.

Less than Absolute. The students en joyed a minor bit of triumph when the state-controlled daily Zycie Warszawy printed a list of demands drafted at a Warsaw protest rally. But it also printed a reply to each point, starting with the students' bedrock demand for the enforcement of constitutional guarantees of free speech and assembly. While allowing that some of the complaints might be justified, the paper warned that such freedoms "cannot be used against the character of our socialist sys tem." As for the students' protest against police brutality during the rioting, the paper came straight to the point. "When chopping wood," it said, "splinters must fly." The students got a new ally, how ever, in Poland's Roman Catholic Episcopate, which broke its silence on the outbursts by protesting the government's "brutal use of force."

With no liberal wing such as that in the Czechoslovak party to absorb and channel complaints, Gomulka's regime seems to be on a collision course with students and intellectuals. Gomulka's own powers within the government seem to be considerably less than absolute, as proved by the fact that his condemnation of the anti-Semitic campaign has failed to stop it--or even slow it down. At week's end Jews were baited, in effect, to join the campaign; they were asked to denounce what the government called an international "Zionist" propaganda effort against Poland. There are rumors in Warsaw that Interior Minister Mieczyslaw Moczar, the head of the police and an ambitious candidate to succeed Gomulka, is backing the anti-Semitic campaign in the hope of replacing many dismissed Jews with his own men.

The students as a whole seem as dangerously irrepressible as ever. Many universities were rimmed with police guards, and the atmosphere at Warsaw University became so threatening that the rector closed it for a day. A group of 200 students decided to meet there anyway, and broke into a lecture hall to pass resolutions demanding reinstatement for the fired professors and military discharges for the drafted students. If they have not received satisfaction by the end of Easter vacation, warned the leaders, they will put out a call for a general strike at all Polish universities.

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