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Jacek Kuroń - Pre-election battle (28/150)

2,803 views · Published 20 October 2017 · 3:31 · Indexed 21 September 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · News & Politics

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Polish activist Jacek Kuroń (1934-2004) helped to transform the political landscape of Poland. He was expelled from the communist party, arrested and incarcerated. He was also instrumental in setting up Workers' Defence Committee (KOR) and became a Minister of Labour and Social Policy. [Listeners: Jacek Petrycki, Marcel Łoziński; date recorded: 1987]

TRANSCRIPT: Let me tell you an anecdote going back to the beginning of my activity. Just before the elections, Jerzy Wiatr who's currently a professor, a learned specialist in politics and the main theorist on communism in Poland, was then an activist of the WICI MIKOŁAJCZYKOWSKIE. I got in with Zygmunt Paź, who was later an officer of the secret police for many years. He made a huge impression on me, he was a member of ZWM during the occupation and had been held in a camp. So I got myself in with him and followed him with a bucket of glue while he pasted up 'threes'. Somewhere along the way, we came across Jerzy Wiatr who was pasting up 'fours' as that was the number PSL had in Żolibórz. They had prepared one number for the whole country for the List of the Front, that's what they called it, in the Democratic Block which included PPR, PPS, SD, whereas the PSL lists varied from one region to the next to make it harder to spread mutual propaganda and in Żolibórz they had the number four. So Wiatr was going around pasting up these 'fours' while we crept up on him, Paź kicked him up the backside, and I pasted a 'three' over his 'four'. Wiatr said, 'I protest against this unparliamentary form of pre-election contest.' 'You can fuck off with your protest', said Paź and we carried on. But Wiatr, who seemed to be such a loser, dodged and weaved so that he could come out in a spot where all the WICIARZE had their meeting place. So suddenly, we found ourselves in the very heart, in the heart of darkness. They lunged at us, and we started to run, Paź broke free and would have got away except that I kept tripping on the pot of glue I was carrying because I didn't just chuck it away. Paź came back for me and so they gave him a kicking, they gave both of us a kicking and ended by sticking the pot of glue on Paź's head. My dealings with Wiatr don't end there because after unification of the organisation, he became a very important person in the regional government of ZMP, the director of the department of propaganda. He was well educated and was already a first-year student of the Academy of Political Sciences. In my eyes, he was an extraordinary political authority. Nevertheless, during the election conference, I asked him if it was true that he used to paste up 'fours'. He said it was true and then he lost the elections. He lost the elections, but by then it wasn't a time when those elections were respected all that much. He was still the director of the department of propaganda, and I had just started, it was Stalin's 70th anniversary birthday, it was '51. And now, my father's arguments - because I was still quarrelling with him fiercely - his arguments made a lot of sense to me. At the time I was reading Plekhanov's 'The Development of the Monist View of History' where he debates the issue of the cult of an individual which was practised by the nationalists, and so I came to the conclusion that all this propaganda that we were generating for Stalin that it's a cult of the individual and I went to Wiatr with this. We spent the whole night talking and I remember that he convinced me because if somebody wants to be talked around, he will be.

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