View of Warsaw
From PETER KIRK* THIS is the best view of Warsaw,' my guide said, as we looked at the city from the top balcony of the Palace of Culture. 'It is the only one where you cannot see the Palace of Culture.' As a joke it was, maybe, a little less rib-tickling than Grouch') Marx; but it gained Point from the fact that the Palace had been presented to the long-suffering citizens of War- saw—who already had enough to contend with in the way of rebuilding without having a sugar- cake phallic symbol added—by Stalin. Of course, there may well have been nothing in it, just as there may be nothing in the fact that the neo- Regent Street 'monstrosities which mark the earlier stages of Warsaw's reconstruction are always referred to as coming from the 'bad time,' leaving it to the listener to work out Whether this refers to architecture or politics. And certainly, when it was pointed out to me that the working-class suburb of Prag, on the east bank of the Vistula, had suffered a good deal less destruction than Warsaw itself 'because the Russians somehow got here a bit earlier,' the hint could be taken. No one can have forgotten the fact that the Red Army was halted on the banks of the river, and did not move for two Months, while the citizens of Warsaw fought with astonishing gallantry against the Nazis, and their democratic leaders were wiped out almost to a
'flan.
All of which shows two things : that it is a fundamental error on our part to assume that Eastern Europe is a monolithic structure— visiting Czechoslovakia immediately after Poland as an eye-opener in this respect; and that the Poles are given to a freedom, at least of opinion, Which seems almost unbelievable to those brought up on the legend of a completely con- formist totalitarian State in which only one °Pinion is tolerated. Poland is not free—but even those Who are opposed fundamentally and Philosophically to the ideas of the present regime can say what they like within certain clearly defined limits, and it is typical of the country tl'ar I Was not only allowed but encouraged to Ineet such people. The same cannot be said of Czechoslovakia.
Not that there were many who contemplated ueserting the Russian alliance, even for a _rne'nlent. The reason is undoubtedly Germany, which all Poles hate with a consuming hatred- awnd this goes for East and West Germany as ,,e11. There is satisfaction in contemplating outbriches regime only in the thought that it is ,rnItY under control; they are not so sure about Zeenauer. The Czechs feel the same way, and reason is abundantly plain when one ,visits 4:Ischwitz and Lidice—the former maintained 1"(t,neh as it was when the Red Army conquered it nere is a room full of human hair which I shall re Member as long as I live) and the latter still rvn..e. desert which the Nazis created, with the new jiage and the beautiful rose garden on the hill 'move. On this subject, argument is useless. To MP for Gravesend. point out that things have changed in West Ger- many, to refer to Adenauer's record under Hitler, to affirm that Ulbricht too has Nazis in his Government—all this is wasted breath. Back come the quotations from speeches made by the lunatic fringe in West German politics, out leaps the ever-present fear of another Drang nach Osten. It is almost the only thing which the mass of Poles and Czechs have in common—and almost the only thing which unites the Polish Government and people.
My German friends have sometimes excused their continuing immovability on the question of the Oder-Neisse line—a subject on which I have been convinced for years they are making a serious mistake—on the grounds that the Poles, though undoubtedly charming people, are feck- less and quite incapable of rebuilding this, the worst-destroyed area in Europe. Beautifully produced books are published in Dfisseldorf and Munich to show that what had once been stately cities were now desert wastes. I specifically asked to see these territories, therefore, and was allowed to go where I liked. Always suspicious by nature, I varied the programme suddenly on two occa- sions, at less than an hour's notice; on one occa- sion, the car broke down, and we simply walked into the nearest block of flats and talked to the people living there. (Incidentally, the number of ordinary people I talked to—French and Ger- man, together with English, created an adequate language bridge—who had close connections with this country, generally in the form of a relative living here, was remarkable.) The evidence to my mind is conclusive. The Poles are building up in the Oder-Neisse terri- tories a community totally unlike Germany, and indeed in many ways unlike the rest of Poland as well. The only thing I have ever seen like it was in Israel. Here, one had the same feeling of a young community; all of them coming originally from somewhere else—though 40 per cent. of the population has been born there since the war; determined to create a new society and new culture completely of its own. In Wroclaw, the former Breslau, there was a remarkable flourishing of art almost from the first day, even though the city, thanks to .a fanatic Nazi com- mander, was the last German bastion to sur- render, and was 90 per cent. destroyed. In Sczeczin, the ninth largest shipbuilding yard in the world has been created virtually from nothing, in a way which should make the Clyde and the Tyne shiver. The pace is much faster here than in the rest of Poland, and the achievements greater.
Poland, however, is still a poor country, and has a very long way to go. There is a delightful inefficiency overshadowing everything; register- ing at the Grand Hotel, Warsaw—a building bearing a striking resemblance to the YMCA— takes anything up to two hours. The traditional Communist difficulty in keeping bath-plugs still holds. Ordering a meal still produces a pitying smile from the waiter as he picks up the menu and strikes out the item you have just named. Food is poor; the shops give clear evidence of a lack of consumer goods; and while rebuilding is impressive—except in Sczeczin, where the har- bour and dockyard seem to have been tackled to the detriment of housing—the Polish habit of putting everything back just as it was two centur- ies ago has produced some curious results.
Yet the Polish charm prevails. A touching desire for friendship between Poland and this country dominates the incessant talk. The talk is about almost anything, and can be quite fright- ening in its frankness; there seems to be no desire to hold anything back, or to have anything held back. I was delivering lectures on Britain's rela- tions with the Common Market, a subject dis- cussed with great gusto, not from the straight anti-German point of view, as in Prague, but from a very well-informed economic point of view, with particular reference to the effect on Anglo-Polish trade. I had a quarter of an hour's live broadcast on Polish television, perfectly fairly carried out, and the Warsaw equivalent of the Spectator arranged a round-table discussion with four journalists, all of which was recorded and published—with cuts merely for length— after I had been given the opportunity to edit it myself.
Through all the talk ran the flattering longing for closer ties with Britain. Few Poles would wish to abandon their present policy, which they regard as prudent if distasteful, but at the same time, they want to manceuvre within it as much as possible, and one of the ways which even government circles have in mind is to try and establish a direct line with Britain—the second- largest satellite speaking to the second country in the Atlantic bloc as honest brokers. This idea has various forms; the Rapacki Plan was part of it, a plan which they insist was an independent initiative on the part of their country. The same idea is behind the proposal now being officially discussed for an Anglo-Polish `Ktinigswinter' along the lines of the annual Anglo-German con- ference between politicians, journalists and businessmen. This would obviously require very careful preparation, but it could yield good results. There would seem to be less chance of another idea which is floating around in Warsaw, that the two governments might get together to see if they can find any breach in the wall of mistrust which has grown up between the two blocs.
Whatever the merits of these two specific pro- posals there is no doubt that we have in Poland the one nonconformist which we could talk to, as the contrast between Poland and Czechoslo- vakia shows. Czechoslovakia is much more pros- perous—and it was not only the breathtaking beauty of Prague which made it seem so to me; but talk there is virtually impossible. The Czechs did not seem to be interested in new ideas, only in repeating old slogans; and there was a smugness, especially, in their view ot Poland itself, which was most disconcerting. We should have no illusions: Poland is a Communist State, and there have been recent developments, in church-State_ relations for example, which have been alarming. But the fact remains that it is almost the only country in the Communist bloc at the moment with which we can talk rationally, and it might not be a bad thing to begin.
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