Chapter 8
The Final Years of the Polish People’s Republic
In: Politics and the Media in Poland from the 19th to the 21st CenturiesSearch for other papers by Dariusz Jarosz in
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Abstract
Scientific objective: This article constitutes a tentative analysis of Party opinions on the Polish book-publishing-cum-dissemination front in 1985–1989 concentrated on the issues of: 1. the extent to which the Party elites in the end period of the Polish People’s Republic (PRL) were bound in their thinking by the ideological and political system’s framework; 2. what was their diagnosis of the book sector in all its aspects - publishing, printing, bookselling and library circulation.
Research methods: This analysis is based on the files of the Cultural Department of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party (further: Cultural Department), in particular the Party Team for Publishing Policy and Book Dissemination (PZPWUK), created in 1985, and the National Team of Party Librarians and Booksellers at the Cultural Department. in the spring of 1987.
Results and conclusions: An analysis of the documents produced by duly appointed teams operating under the patronage of the Cultural Department of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party is revealing of several characteristics of the thinking of the Party’s elites on the force of literature. t seems that the diagnosis of the Polish book sector’s condition in all its ramifications made by these teams, took into account at least in part the basic, real problems in this field: shortage of paper, difficulties in determining the state publishing plan, the origins and development of the reader’s market etc. Some of the analysed documents were flawed by schematic political-ideological modes of thinking. Up to the second half of the 1980s, publications propagating a positive image of the USSR were often no more than tributes of a sort to the statutory founding principles of the PRL. An important enemy of the state publishing policy was the Catholic Church and its hierarchy. The problems of the underground publications and censorship, were not raised in the Cultural Department’s analyses. The answer to the question of the reason for this phenomenon needs further research.
Cognitive value: The article provides the broader context, in which the Cultural Department is important element of the institutions implementing publishing policy and controlled the public space.