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Our meetings at Brzusio's
Jan Józef Lipski Social activist
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Nie, żadnej odpowiedzi Gomułki... żadnej odpowiedzi Gomułki na ten list nie było. No więc list rozkolportowany siłami Klubu Krzywego Koła, potem rozszedł się kolportowany głównie na uniwersytecie i na ulicach; a na ulicach po pałowaniu pod domem akademickim na placu Narutowicza, no mieliśmy trzydniowe, regularne rozruchy. Z tym że ja do dzisiejszego dnia nie umiem jednej rzeczy powiedzieć: czy... jaką rolę w tym odegrali robotnicy? W zakładach niewątpliwie nie strajkowali, ale moje doświadczenie życiowe uczy, że jeżeli gdzieś, w jakimś miejscu w czasie dziania się takich rozruchów milicja dostaje wycisk, a w prasie można przeczytać o elementach chuligańskich, to prawdopodobnie są to robotnicy po prostu; bo jednak okazuje się, że jeżeli dać wycisk milicji, to to raczej studenci się, jak okazuje się, gorzej się do tego nadają. A tych elementów chuligańskich, które jak się okazuje, tam między placem Zamkowym gdzieś, a Królewską mniej więcej działały, to na ogół świadkowie są zdania, że nie byli to studenci, trochę, ale trochę za dużo, może było dużo chuliganów w Warszawie, ale nie tak, żeby no tego rodzaju tłumy tam zaatakowały milicję. Podejrzewam, że to raczej byli robotnicy, ale nie mam żadnych na to dowodów, nigdy nie spotkałem nikogo takiego, kto by mi powiedział, że „Ja pracowałem wtedy tu i tu i wtedy brałem udział tam w tym biciu się z milicją, tam na placu Zamkowym”, na przykład. Ale tak mi się wydaje, że to jednak byli robotnicy. No, rozruchy zostały stłamszone, a redakcja odgrywała już po uchwaleniu tego, co miała uchwalić, rolę bardzo bierną – to znaczy w mieszkaniu Jurka Urbana, czyli zwanego Brzusiem, spotykaliśmy się, siedzieliśmy non stop, tak jak przed tym w redakcji. To był dobry punkt, blisko do politechniki, niedaleko też do naszej redakcji, akurat między politechniką, a redakcją, która w Pałacu Kultury się w tym czasie już mieściła. Tam jeszcze były różne zajęcia likwidacyjne związane z tym że, no...to była duża impreza takie „Po prostu" i to tak w jeden dzień się wszystkiego nie zlikwidowało. I...no więc takim miejscem sztabowym było mieszkanie Jurka Urbana, gdzie się tłumy przewalały, no i jak się to uspokoiło, to zaczęły się przesłuchiwania przed Komisją Kontroli Partyjnej członków partii. No więc ten zaszczyt był mi niedostępny, ale muszę powiedzieć z wielką przyjemnością, że w tym momencie wszyscy okazali lojalność, nikt się nie wyłamał z solidarności, to było bardzo miłe. Była jedna koleżanka do której nie można mieć pretensji, która powiedziała: „Przecież ja przez ten cały czas, kiedy są pretensje do "Po prostu" chorowałam, ja za nic nie ponoszę odpowiedzialności”, ale to za to rzeczywiście nie można do dziewczyny mieć pretensji, ona...no...rzeczywiście jak kogoś nie było, no to go nie było po prostu. Tak że zostało miłe wspomnienie tego, że...jakiejś koleżeńskiej solidarności. No a zginęło przy tej okazji archiwum „Po prostu” i to o ile wiem nie dlatego, żeby Służba Bezpieczeństwa je zabrała. Niestety wydaje mi się, że ono nie ocalało, to znaczy, że przy jakichś okazjach, takich kiedy zanosiło się na to, że tam ktoś wkroczy do mieszkania, gdzie były te całe paki chowane to jednak zostało to zniszczone.

No, there was no response from Gomułka… no response from Gomułka to this letter. The letter was distributed by the Crooked Circle Club and then it was distributed in the university and on the streets. On the streets, following the police beatings outside the student halls of residence on Narutowicza Street, there was a proper three-day riot. Except that, to this day, there’s one thing I don’t know: what role did the workers play in all of this? There definitely were no strikes in the various workplaces, but in my experience, if somewhere during these sorts of disturbances the police is being given a hard time, and the press is writing about hooligan elements, then they’re most probably workers because when it comes to giving the police a hard time, it turns out that students aren’t that great at this, while these hooligan elements which it seems were there between Plac Zamkowy and Królewska Street weren’t, according to witnesses, students. There were too many of them, perhaps there were lots of them, there were lots of hooligans in Warsaw but not so many as to have made up the kind of crowds that attacked the police there. I rather suspect that they were workers, although I have no proof. For instance, I’ve never met anyone who said, ‘I was working in such a place then and I took part in the fighting with the police on Plac Zamkowy’. But I think that they were workers, the unrest was quelled and the editorial team, after having approved what it was meant to have approved, played a very passive role, meaning we’d meet up in Jurek Urban’s apartment – we called him Brzusio – and we were there constantly, the way we used to be in the editorial office, it was a good spot, close to the Polytechnic, not far from our editorial offices, right between the Polytechnic and the editorial offices which at that point were located in the Palace of Culture. There were all sorts of procedures involved with shutting things down, Po prostu was a big enterprise so it couldn’t all be shut down in one day. So headquarters was in Jurek Urban’s home where crowds of people passed through, and once that had all calmed down, that’s when the interrogations began of party members by the Commission for Party Control. This honour was denied me but it gives me great pleasure to say that everyone showed enormous loyalty and no one broke ranks which was very nice. There was one colleague, but you can’t blame her, who said, ‘I was off sick during the whole of the period that your objections towards Po prostu pertain to, so I’m not responsible for anything’, but you can’t blame her for saying this, she really… well, if someone wasn’t there, they simply weren’t there. So I have pleasant recollections of a friendly solidarity. That was when the archives of Po prostu disappeared and, as far as I know, not because the secret police took them. Unfortunately, I think that they didn’t survive, meaning that there must have been an occasion where it looked like someone was going to search an apartment where all these packages were hidden and so the archives must have been destroyed.

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: Po Prostu, Crooked Circle Club, Narutowicza Street, Plac Zamkowy, Królewska Street, Warsaw, Palace of Culture, Commission for Party Control, Władysław Gomułka, Jerzy Urban

Duration: 4 minutes, 36 seconds

Date story recorded: October 1989

Date story went live: 10 March 2011