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NEXT STORY

Lynch mobs in Poznań

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Poznań: a repeat of Berlin
Jan Józef Lipski Social activist
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So these reports about Poznań all agreed in one respect, namely, there were lots of things there which nobody could understand, but in one respect everyone was agreed that the people were dissatisfied with their working conditions, that the people of Poznań, who are very precise, conscientious and quite loyal generally en masse, in their attitude, and they were feeling increasingly dissatisfied above all with issues associated with their everyday existence. It has to be said that a person who has a great loyalty to the authorities and is conscientious and believes that he should treat his work seriously and not just pretend that he's working, and this probably is more common in Poznań than it is in Warsaw, feels much more keenly the effects of having his wages cut, if he's unable to earn as much as he can because increasingly he can't earn money dishonestly by stealing something from his place of work or moonlighting instead of working. People from Poznań always found it harder to do this than the residents of Warsaw, if you observed them, and these people, driven to despair, at first tried to send their delegation to Warsaw to come to some agreement with the authorities. They weren't treated sensibly, to put it mildly, they were sent away with nothing after which their return to Poznań was hampered. That's when information began to spread that some terrible fate had befallen them but this proved to be an exaggeration. In any event, Cegielski went on strike supported by... the strike at Cegielski was supported by the whole of Poznań, hoards of people took to the streets and any policemen they met immediately had their weapons taken from them; young people, who knew from having military drills where a few guns or something were kept, broke in straight away. After a while, when they started shooting into the crowds, it became clear that a proportion of the crowd was already armed. They attempted to launch an armed attack on the headquarters of the secret police, the regional committee building, and so it wasn't long before the forces were mobilised, mainly from the Internal Security Corps but not only, and brought into Poznań and what looked like the beginning of an armed uprising was quelled by force. The press immediately began to write in the same way that we were already familiar with from the events in Berlin, saying that agents had arrived and that they'd done this and that, but that was... that would only have been believed by the stupidest of people. A whole city doesn't take to the streets even if there were 100 agents, so it was obvious, even the stupidest person knew that that this was rubbish. So that was Poznań.

Więc te relacje o Poznaniu opowiadały... były pod jednym względem zgodne, to znaczy tam wiele rzeczy było niezrozumiałych wówczas, ale pod jednym względem były zgodne, że ludzie byli niezadowoleni z warunków pracy; że poznaniacy, którzy są ludźmi bardzo dokładnymi, rzetelnymi, lojalistycznymi dosyć ze swą... na ogół w swojej masie, z nastawień swoich, a czuli się coraz bardziej niezadowoleni przede wszystkim ze... ze spraw związanych, no, z codziennym bytowaniem. A trzeba powiedzieć, że człowiek, który jest bardzo nastawiony właśnie lojalnie wobec władzy, a jest przy tym rzetelny, uważa, że pracować trzeba poważnie, a nie udawać, że się pracuje – a w Poznaniu to się chyba częściej zdarza niż w Warszawie – to bardziej odczuwa skutki tego, jeżeli mu się obcina premię, jeżeli nie może zarobić uczciwie tyle, ile może, dlatego że częściej się tam zdarza, że nieuczciwie zarobić nie potrafi przez to, żeby coś ukraść z zakładu, żeby zamiast pracować, to robić fuchy. Poznaniakom to trudniej zawsze wychodziło niż tutaj w Warszawie, jeśli się to obserwowało. I ci ludzie doprowadzeni do rozpaczy początkowo próbowali, wysyłając swoje delegacje do Warszawy, dogadać się tutaj z władzą. Potraktowano ich bardzo nierozsądnie, mówiąc delikatnie, zbyto ich niczym, po tym utrudniano im powrót do Poznania. Wtedy były informacje, że w ogóle coś strasznego ich spotkało, prawda, no, ale to okazało się przesadne. No, w każdym razie Cegielski zastrajkował, poparły go właściwie, no, poparł go, zakłady Cegielskiego... strajk zakładów Cegielskiego poparł cały Poznań, masy ludzi wyszły na ulice, zaczęto natychmiast, z miejsca rozbrajać spotykanych z bronią milicjantów. Młodzi ludzie, którzy wiedzieli, że tam, powiedzmy sobie, jest – ze względów na szkolenie wojskowe – że tam gdzieś jest parę karabinów czy coś, to od razu wyłamywano drzwi. I po pewnym czasie, kiedy zaczęły się... kiedy otwarto już ogień do tłumów, okazało się, że już jest pewna ilość ludzi uzbrojonych. Były próby zbrojnego zdobycia gmachu bezpieki, komitetu wojewódzkiego, no i dosyć szybko zmobilizowano, ściągnięto siły – głównie KBW, ale chyba nie tylko – do Poznania, no i po prostu siłą tutaj stłumiono to, co by już... przybierało już formę zbrojnego powstania. Prasa od razu zaczęła pisać właśnie – tak już zupełnie według... według tego samego schematu, który... znaliśmy z wypadków berlińskich – o tym, jak to agenci przyjechali, którzy to agenci tamto i owo zrobili, no, ale to już było... to już mogło trafić już do najbardziej głupich tylko. Całe miasto nie wychodzi na ulice, prawda, dlatego że przyjechało nawet stu agentów, więc to było wiadomo, to nawet najgłupszy człowiek wiedział, że to jest jakaś bzdura. To tak z Poznaniem.

Jan Józef Lipski (1926-1991) was one of Poland's best known political activists. He was also a writer and a literary critic. As a soldier in the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), he fought in the Warsaw Uprising. In 1976, following worker protests, he co-founded the Workers' Defence Committee (KOR). His active opposition to Poland's communist authorities led to his arrest and imprisonment on several occasions. In 1987, he re-established and headed the Polish Socialist Party. Two years later, he was elected to the Polish Senate. He died in 1991 while still in office. For his significant work, Lipski was honoured with the Cross of the Valorous (Krzyż Walecznych), posthumously with the Grand Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1991) and with the highest Polish decoration, the Order of the White Eagle (2006).

Listeners: Marcel Łoziński Jacek Petrycki

Film director Marcel Łoziński was born in Paris in 1940. He graduated from the Film Directing Department of the National School of Film, Television and Theatre in Łódź in 1971. In 1994, he was nominated for an American Academy Award and a European Film Academy Award for the documentary, 89 mm from Europe. Since 1995, he has been a member of the American Academy of Motion Picture Art and Science awarding Oscars. He lectured at the FEMIS film school and the School of Polish Culture of Warsaw University. He ran documentary film workshops in Marseilles. Marcel Łoziński currently lectures at Andrzej Wajda’s Master School for Film Directors. He also runs the Dragon Forum, a European documentary film workshop.

Cinematographer Jacek Petrycki was born in Poznań, Poland in 1948. He has worked extensively in Poland and throughout the world. His credits include, for Agniezka Holland, Provincial Actors (1979), Europe, Europe (1990), Shot in the Heart (2001) and Julie Walking Home (2002), for Krysztof Kieslowski numerous short films including Camera Buff (1980) and No End (1985). Other credits include Journey to the Sun (1998), directed by Jesim Ustaoglu, which won the Golden Camera 300 award at the International Film Camera Festival, Shooters (2000) and The Valley (1999), both directed by Dan Reed, Unforgiving (1993) and Betrayed (1995) by Clive Gordon both of which won the BAFTA for best factual photography. Jacek Petrycki is also a teacher and a filmmaker.

Tags: Ciegielski, Poznań

Duration: 3 minutes, 58 seconds

Date story recorded: October 1989

Date story went live: 10 March 2011