Three Times Yes
Warsaw in Chains. By Stefan Korbonski. (Allen and Vnwin, 30s.) STEFAN KORBONSKI was an important actor in two Polish tragedies. He was one of the organisers . of the secret Home Army through the war and the catastrophe of the Rising; and, after a spell in gaol, he emerged as a leader of the Polish Peasant Party in its hopeless contest with the Communists. The first tragedy was described in a previous book.
As Korbonski describes in his diary the dying- away of a free public life into a pantomime and the approach of tyranny and silence, he writes with an almost Tacitean awe at the far view over history which in Poland is granted only to Cas- sandras. The educated Catholic leader of a peasant party, he is inclined to make too much mystification about inner unities which transcend mere differences of class and wealth, but he is also a lawyer with a passion for the drama of the public assembly. Thus the two best passages in his book are the description of the funeral of Wincenty Witos, the squalid and beloved old peasant who led the farmers before the war, and his impressions as a member of the first session of the packed Diet.
The Communists' advance to stun and capture the Peasant Party was wary. They contrived to manoeuvre the Peasant leaders into a succession of positions in which they appeared to be agreeing with the Communist Government, and thus be- e-
wildered the party following until a final pounce on the last independent politicians was possible and safe. The 'Three Times Yes' referendum in 1946 innocently asked the electorate to approve of the abolition of the Senate, of mildly socialistic reforms and of the new frontier with Germany. The Peasant Party was rendered dumb : as a pre- war radical party it was known to agree with all three points. In impotent rage, it opposed the first point for mere opposition's sake and split its ranks just as it was meant to.
By appeals for peace and promises of amnesty, the Communists persuaded the Peasants, sick at heart, to disown the fugitive remnants of the great Home Army. Returning from the funeral of Witos, and of all his own hopes as a young man opposing Pilsudski's tyranny before the war, Korbonski drove into an ambush set by the starv- ing men who, two years before, had been his own.
Remnants of armed units wander through innumerable Polish woods with eagles on their
caps . . . refusing to give up, cold and starved,
continuing the struggle with clenched teeth now only for the sake of honour, to register their
protest . . . alone and deserted.
He knew he would have to abandon them, and that by abandoning them he would narrow his own room to manoeuvre still further. For a time he and his friends seemed free. Mikolajczyk continued to boast that he possessed a secret 'recipe' from the Western Allies which would bring them to his side at the hour of need. Korbonski moved, with temporary immunity, among the men preparing to be his executioners and looked into their faces with interest. Like a good attorney he chose to carry on the political fight by Westminster rules until the Russian-led security police were moving in for the kill. Only then did Korbonski and the other Peasant leaders fly.
NEAL ASCHERSON
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