1956 was a difficult year for the Soviet Union. February saw Khrushchev’s Secret Speech, and within months, the Warsaw Pact nations were made aware of Stalin’s overall shabby behavior, to put it lightly. Poland was particularly vocal through its media in badmouthing Soviet culture, fashion, and life in particular. On 26 September 1956, Soviet Embassy counsellor P.P. Turpitko in Warsaw dashed off a five-page encrypted telegram to Moscow to the Central Committee of the CPSU filling in Committee members and seniors in the Foreign Ministry on Poland’s apparently free reign in openly mocking and casting aspersions at all things Soviet. He wrapped up his report with a promise to send along translations of the offending articles in a diplomatic pouch.
This is all a setup for what would be come known as “Polish October“.
The translation of the Top Secret report follows.
Received: 21:10 26 September 1956
Decrypted and printed in 34 copies: 10:30 27 September 1956
Distributed to members and candidate-members of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Secretary of the Central Committee, head of the Central Committee international department, and officials in the Soviet Foreign Ministry
26 September 1956
Top Secret
Reproduction prohibited
Despite the criticism leveled at the editorial boards of several newspapers and magazines at the 7th Plenum of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party, the situation in the Polish press has seen little improvement. Recently, articles promoting anti-Soviet statements have reappeared in the Polish weeklies Przegląd Kulturalny, Nowa Kultura, and the journal Dookola Świata. These include articles by [Józef] Hen, “Notes on a Stay in Moscow,” Teodor Teplitz, “The Catastrophe of the Prophets,” Jan Kott, “Reflections at the Beginning of the School Year,” and Kamila Chylińska, “Against Denunciations.” It should be emphasized that these articles appeared during Polish-Soviet Friendship month.
Józef Hen’s “Notes on a Stay in Moscow” (Nowa Kultura, No. 37) contains attacks on the Soviet way of life and Soviet culture.
Particularly striking is the author’s desire to find something that might reveal the spiritual fractures of the Soviet people. Hen reproaches the Soviet people, declaring that “nowhere is so much money spent on impractical things as in the Soviet Union.” He dwells extensively on the bad taste of Muscovites’ clothing and claims that the upcoming World Youth Festival will finally teach Muscovite women to dress fashionably, just as the past one taught Warsaw women.
Even the American and British tourists who have spoken well of Moscow, Hen accuses of lacking taste.
The same spirit of dislike for Soviet people and their way of life permeates Wojciech Gelżynski’s travel notes, published in the magazine Dookola Świata (No. 39, 23 September 1956).
Hen’s “Notes” appeared in Nowa Kultura this 9 September, the day Polish-Soviet Friendship month began, and his travel essay in Dookola Świata appeared on the first day of the decade of strengthening ties between Polish and Soviet youth.
It is significant that, Hen’s notes included an illustration, a large-format photograph, occupying about a quarter of the page, a product of one of the most reactionary French publishing houses, depicting a corner of Moscow with an old tram, two sloppily dressed girls, and two officers in full uniform marching in parade.
Teplitz’s lengthy article, “The Catastrophe of the Prophets,” published across two pages in Nowa Kultura (No. 38), is a response to criticism in Literaturnaya Gazeta and the Czechoslovak journal Literaturnye Novosti of Kott, Przyboś, and Slonimsky’s attacks on the Party’s ideological leadership of literature and art, and on socialist realism. In a scholarly vein, Teplitz attempts to demonstrate the futility and artificiality of the socialist realist method, declaring that it was invented to promote “a broad political maneuver aimed at transitioning from Leninist policies to the autocratic rule of Stalinism.” After describing at length and in bleak detail the ills brought upon Soviet literature by the use of socialist realism, and vilifying M. Gorky’s report at the First Writers’ Congress, Teplitsa arrives at the following insolent conclusion, insulting to Soviet culture:
“A lowering of demands in art,” he writes, “a focus on the least prepared consumer, a renaissance of bourgeois taste in the visual arts and the enjoyment of its benefits, a renaissance of a peculiar fideism expressed in the cult of personality, a renaissance of certain poetic traditions, a renaissance of Jesuit tendencies in pedagogy (for example, the spread of the strikingly anti-pedagogical legend of Pavlik Morozov), a reluctance to debate with opposing trends and establish broad intellectual contacts — this was the true face of socialist realism as the official literary ideology of the Stalinist system.”
Teplits’s article, which also appeared at the beginning of Polish-Soviet Friendship month, is completely at odds with that month’s goals. It could foster an unfriendly attitude toward Soviet literature among Polish readers, especially young ones.
Jan Kott’s “Reflections at the Beginning of the School Year” (Przegląd Kulturalny, No. 37) and Kamila Chylińska’s “Against Denunciations” (Nowa Kultura, No. 38) contain sleazy hints about the bankruptcy of Soviet methods of educating citizens and developing culture.
These articles demonstrate the desire of a certain group of Polish journalists, under the pretext of refusing to gloss over life in the Soviet Union, to denigrate that life, highlighting isolated, atypical aspects and deliberately ignoring the good, bright things that Soviet people are proud of and should learn from.
These sentiments among a number of Polish journalists were clearly evident in a press conference held at the headquarters of the Polish-Soviet Friendship Society (OPSD) on the eve of the opening of Polish-Soviet Friendship month. Some journalists stated there that, in their opinion, Poland and the Soviet Union do not have equal relations, that Poland is a satellite of the Soviet Union, which allegedly exploits Poland’s natural resources without giving much in return. Voices also chimed in that the time had come to reexamine the history of Soviet-Polish relations and to answer the pressing questions troubling Poles. Journalists noted that newspapers and magazines had accumulated numerous articles on this topic, and expressed outrage that such articles were not being published.
The Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party is aware of such sentiments among a significant group of workers in the national press, and is aware of the publication, even after the 7th Plenum, of articles written in an unfriendly tone toward the Soviet Union. However, the PUWP Central Committee is taking no measures to rectify the situation. Moreover, the Secretariat recently adopted a resolution condemning the actions of the Press Oversight Directorate for, in our opinion, quite rightly prohibiting the editorial board of Sztandar Młodych from publishing the full transcript of the poet Woroszilski‘s demagogic and unfriendly speech toward the Soviet Union at the plenum of the General Board of the Union of Polish Youth.
We feel it necessary to draw the attention of our Polish comrades to the appearance of new articles in the Polish press written in a tone unfriendly towards the Soviet Union.
We are sending translations of the articles by diplomatic pouch.
Turpitko
AP RF. F. 3. Op. 66. D. 141. L. 104-109.
Translation © 2025 by Michael Estes and TranslatingHistory.org
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