Forward to battle for the Six-Year Plan! Polish writers 1945–56

Abstract

This article follows the experience of Polish writers in the first decade of communism. Although the Red Army had pushed the Nazis out of Poland, for almost all Poles communist rule brought pain and confusion. For several years the Resistance waged a war against the incoming communists. Poles connected to the London Government in Exile and the AK (Home Army) faced arrest and imprisonment; those who had spent the war abroad had to decide whether or not to return; those who had spent the war in the USSR had an intimate knowledge of what Soviet communism was capable but little choice other than to accept the ‘new reality’. For Polish writers, who were by tradition social and political leaders, the Party was something of a rival, but one with which they shared certain aims. Their decision eventually resolved itself into one question: how far should they compromise in order to write and survive?