256
PARTISAN REVIEW
but the Polish clergy
is
often narrow-minded, nationalistic, bigoted, and
anti-Semitic. It has recently emerged victorious from a period of perse–
cution, and is bent upon consolidating its position, which seems to be
stronger today
than
it was in pre-war Poland, a predominantly secular
state despite its reputation for virulent Catholicism. The party leaders
have often turned to local priests, recently, for help in getting strikers
back to work; the clerics were able to exert authority when all other
forces had been discredited. Now, even though the Polish intellectual
Left
is
not stupidly anti-clerical or atheistic,
it
has already clashed on
several points with the Catholic majority of the population-which
followed the intellectuals in voting overwhelmingly for Gomulka.
One of the main issues in
this
conflict was created by the re–
establishment of religious training in the schools. What is in question
is
not the principle itself, but the practical consequences of this measure
for children of agnostic or Jewish parents. Religion was for so long
the refuge of freedom in Poland, the most accessible method of protest
during the years of Stalinist terror, that a kind of anti-conformist con–
formism developed among the children, probably due to the influence
of the majority of parents. Even under Stalinism a kind of "moral
terror" was beginning to be felt in the schools : children who failed to
attend religious classes in the parishes were frowned upon. One of my
friends, a famous agnostic writer, a kind of Polish Colette, told me that
her grand-daughter had three years ago forced her to go through the
motions of taking communion, threatening to commit suicide if Grandma
refused. "I, who never took communion, not even before 1914!" said
this woman, who was brought up in a progressive milieu, at a time when
religion was still a matter of choice, though it was fashionable and
looked upon with approval. Today, children who declare that their
parents do not wish them to have religious training are subject to real
maltreatment, and anti-Semitism plays a considerable part in
this
development.
Anti-Semitism should have been discredited by the very fact that
it was part of the Stalinist program, and by the report, persistent
though almost impossible to verify, that it was directly inspired by
Khrushchev. But unfortunately it seems to be the one Soviet influence
that continues to have force in Poland, no doubt because the ground
there
is
traditionally favorable to it. It is frightening to learn that one
of the mass student organizations formed after Gomulka's accession to
the government demanded the establishment of a
numerus clausus
for
Jewish students.
The Polish reactionaries have taken over the heritage of stupidity,
