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Our meetings at Brzusio's

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'Mr Konik, we're going to use the copier'
Jan Józef Lipski Social activist
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Był to ciągle okres dużego odpływu i to taki dwojaki charakter miał ten odpływ nastrojów. Po pierwsze to było to, co już po październiku dosyć szybko i po wyborach w szczególności do Sejmu było widać, że jest lepiej niż było, że czy można więcej wymagać, czy da się coś więcej uzyskać, że może nie warto i może nie, że się już nic więcej nie uzyska. A jednocześnie było tak... był jeszcze drugi taki tego nurt, że ludzie coraz bardziej tracąc nadzieję w głębsze zmiany, coraz bardziej trochę zmęczeni tym okresem takich...wielkiego podniecenia, jednak mieli pewną nadzieję na to, że może się uda jakoś urządzić, że może trzeba pomyśleć o tym, co dopiero później zostało ochrzczone małą stabilizacją. Wtedy jeszcze tego zwrotu nie było, ale już pewne takie nastroje wynikające z tych nadziei, że będzie jednak troszkę lepiej pod różnymi względami niż w czasach stalinowskich już się pojawiały i no, nie liczyliśmy na to, żeby te strajki zyskały szerokie poparcie, no i po prostu odesłaliśmy ich z niczym. Natomiast powstały dwa dokumenty, dwa listy otwarte do Gomułki – list zespołu „Po prostu” i list organizacji partyjnej „Po Prostu”. Jak łatwo się domyślić w uchwalaniu drugiego nie miałem okazji brać udziału, ale mi zupełnie odpowiadał w treści; natomiast co do pierwszego, no to zgodnie cała redakcja ten tekst przyjęła, no i był teraz problem, że właściwie trzeba, żeby on jakoś funkcjonował i wtedy się okazało, że wszystkie powielacze właściwie do których „Po prostu” miało jakikolwiek, chociażby pośredni dostęp, są bardzo dokładnie zablokowane i pilnowane. No tak się szczęśliwie złożyło, że ja jako pracownik PIW-u i to kierownik redakcji w PIW-ie, mogłem sobie na to pozwolić, żeby pójść do takiego majstra od tego i mu powiedzieć: „Panie Konik, my tutaj coś odbijemy na powielaczu”. A kierownik... a facet był łebski dosyć, to znaczy z miejsca powiedział: „Panie redaktorze, Pan każe, otwieramy powielarnię i powielam z tym że ja nie będę czytał i nie chcę czytać tego tekstu, który Pan mi daje do powielenia”. Mówię: „Oczywiście, ja to w każdej chwili, ktokolwiek będzie chciał, to mu to poświadczę, że ja jako kierownik redakcji przyszedłem do Pana, żeby Pan powielił, a Pana w ogóle nie interesowało to, co Pan powiela”. Jakiś ubek to zresztą wypatrzył, że my pracujemy po godzinach pracy w powielarni, ale... ale, że tak powiem, mały kurdupel bał się trochę mi to odbierać i trochę nie kończąc pracy, co było – uciekłem z tym czym prędzej. On się bał już takiego starcia bezpośredniego, a nim tam pobiegł, tam zaalarmował kogoś, to mnie już nie było. Bardzo przyzwoicie zresztą dyrekcja postąpiła, nie to, że biorąc mnie w obronę, bo akurat nie było tego problemu, tylko że ostro postawiła sprawę wobec tego ubeka miejscowego, że dyrekcja sobie nie życzy, żeby on gdziekolwiek, komukolwiek tutaj jakiekolwiek kroki w tej sprawie dalsze robił, dlatego że to bardzo zaszkodzi instytucji, że dyrekcja nie będzie tego tolerować...tego, żeby takiej instytucji szkodzić.

This was still a time of a significant ebbing of moods which took two forms. Firstly, there was the thing that was evident quite quickly after October and after the elections especially to the Sejm when you could see things were better than they had been, can we demand more, can we gain any more, perhaps it's not worth it, maybe we shouldn't, that we won't gain anything else. At the same time, there was a second trend where people were losing hope that there would be any bigger changes, they were a bit tired out by this period of great excitement although they hoped that perhaps they'd be able to arrange things, that maybe they ought to be thinking about this which only later came to be called the minor stabilization. At the time, that term didn't exist but certain attitudes stemming from these hopes that things would be better in some instances than they were during Stalinism were emerging, and we weren't banking on widespread support for these strikes, so we just sent them away with nothing. But two documents, two open letters to Gomułka were written, one letter from the team at Po prostu and the other a letter from the party organisation at Po prostu. As you can easily guess, I didn't have the opportunity to be involved in approving the second letter but I completely agreed with its contents. As regards the second letter, the whole editorial team accepted it so there was a problem that now it had to work somehow, and it turned out that all the copiers that Po prostu had any kind of access to were out of bounds and very closely watched. Luckily, since I worked for PIW [Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy (National Institute of Publishing)] and was head of the editorial department of PIW, I was able to go to one of the technicians and say to him, ‘Mr Konik, we're going to copy something on the copier’. He wasn't daft and so he said straight away, ‘If you tell us to, we'll unlock the copier and make you your copies except I won't read and I don't want to read the text that you'll give me to copy’. I said, ‘Of course. If anyone at any time wants me to, I'll testify that since I'm head of the editorial department, I came to you asking for copies to be made but that you weren't in the slightest bit interested in what you were copying’. Some secret policeman noticed that we were working after hours in the copier room but the little runt was a bit afraid of taking the stuff away from me, and so without finishing the job, I made myself scarce. He was afraid of a direct clash and by the time he ran off to tell someone, I was already gone. Management behaved very decently, not that they stood up for me because there was no problem with that, but they put the matter very tersely to the secret policeman saying that management does not want him to take any further steps in this matter with anyone whatsoever because that would be very harmful for the institution and management will not permit any damage to be done to an institution such as this one.

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: Jacek Petrycki Marcel Łoziński

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.

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.

Tags: Sejm, Po Prostu, National Institute of Publishing, Władysław Gomułka

Duration: 4 minutes, 6 seconds

Date story recorded: October 1989

Date story went live: 10 March 2011