6585845119

305

SHORT NOTES

Robert Klementowski and Sebastian Figarski (eds.), Artyści a Służba Bezpieczeństwa. Aparat bezpieczeństwa wobec środowisk twórczych. Materiały pokonferencyjne [Artists and the Security Service: The Attitude of Security Forces to Creative Milieus. Conference Materials], Wrocław 2008, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 255 pp., index of persons

The book presents 16 articles prepared for a conference which was held in 2007 under the auspices of the National Remembrance Institute. The aim of the conference was to sum up the scattered results of research on the authorities’ attitude to creative milieus, with emphasis on the role played by the security forces. The participants in the conference discussed the following subjects: the methods of pressure on artistic milieus; the impact of the 1956 thaw on the attitudes of creators of culture; the role played by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, who for many years was chairman of the Polish Writers’ Union; the Security Services’ operations against writers (with Wrocław as an example); the way the cultural monthly Odra functioned under censorship and the pressure exerted by security forces; jazz fans in the 1960s (as they were described in the documents of the Security Service). Let us draw attention to an analysis of documents of the East German Stasi which sińce the foundation of‘Solidarity’ had gathered data on Polish writers. Very interesting is the description of the artistic milieu written by Jacek Łukasiewicz, who points out that in practice it was impossible for a creator to make a debut in some official periodical without the backing of a trade union. ‘It was a totalitarian system in the sense that all things were linked, they were United in one great institution in which we had to live’, says Łukasiewicz. The book ends with a debate in which such well known writers as Ryszard Krynicki, Marek Nowakowski and Antoni Pawlak took part. The record of the debate contains a great deal of interesting information on the everyday life of writers in the Polish People’s Republic, on customs in their milieu, liter-ary cafes and on the influence exerted by censorship and the security forces on creativc work and moods in artistic milieus. (KK)

Bogusław Kopka and Grzegorz Majchrzak, Operacja Poeta. Służba bezpieczeństwa na tropach Czesława Miłosza (Opera-tion Poet: The Security Service on the Trail of Czesław Miłosz], afterword by Grzegorz Musidłak, Lublin 2007, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, 208 pp., index of persons, ills.

Czesław Miłosz was awarded a Nobel literary prize on 9 October 1980. This meant that his works could be officially published in Poland for the first time sińce 1951, when he left the country. The poet’s selected works appeared at the end of 1980. On 5 June 1981 Miłosz started a two-week visit to Poland under the pretext of being granted a honorary doctorate of the Lublin Catholic University. The visit became part of the ‘Solidarity carnival’ (which began when ‘Solidarity’ was established in the summer of 1980). On 12 June 1981, during a meeting