No Place for Chitchat

In the heady days of October 1956, Polish intellectuals eagerly supported Communist Leader Wladyslaw Gomulka's stand against the Stalinists in the belief that free expression would flow under his new regime. It did, but only briefly and within strict limits. During much of the past decade, writers and artists have found Gomulka's rule arid and intolerant.

Two months ago, the government's harsh attitude toward dissent entered a tough new phase. It began when Leszek Kolakowski, a party member and professor of philosophy at Warsaw University, addressed a student meeting. His subject was Poland's progress since the 1956 revolution. His conclusion: there had been none. No democratic freedom had evolved. Criticism and research in literature, sociology, modern history and the arts were still sharply inhibited. The old Stalinist penal code was still in existence and arbitrarily applied. The students applauded wildly, and several rose to support Kolakowski's defiant conclusion.

Hazarding Revenge. The regime's riposte was quick. Snapped a party zealot: "What the party needs is unity and not intellectuals who produce neither bread nor steel but only chitchat." Six of the more outspoken students were suspended from the university, and Kolakowski was expelled from the party and accused of a long list of "crimes" including having "sat down to tea with Cardinal Wyszynski," the Polish primate, and having had a prolonged meeting with American Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski of Columbia University. When a group of Poland's leading artists and writers wrote letters to the Politburo demanding Kolakowski's reinstatement, 13 of the petitioners were also expelled or suspended from party membership.

Ironically, the gesture deprived Gomulka of some of the most anticlerical Communist writers, who might have sided with him in the regime's latest confrontation with the Roman Catholic Church. For eight long months this year, the regime fumed as the church's millennium was celebrated by millions of Poles. No sooner were the ceremonies over last month than Gomulka felt he could safely hazard his revenge. It took the form of a demand for the removal of six rectors of seminaries that had refused to submit to government inspection and control of their curriculums.

The church refused to remove the rectors, and early this month the regime threatened to close some of the offending seminaries. With that, Cardinal Wyszynski last week summoned church leaders to an emergency meeting and issued a letter to be read in all Polish pulpits denouncing the government's attack and mobilizing national opinion against it.

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