CONVERSATIONS IN WARSAW
269
L. had left the party after a close friend of his was expelled for
exposing corruption among provincial party officials. The corrupt
party officials had influential protectors--L.'s friend had been ac–
cused of defaming the party, and was thrown out. Shortly after that,
L. left the party. But he still considered himself a Marxist. He felt
that both the United States and the Soviet Union were imperialist
states, and was contemptuous of the new mass culture in Poland
that the regime was unable to shape. Since the masses did
not believe in Communism, their only aspirations were petit-bour–
geois: they wanted to read stories about the old aristocracy, old
romances, or about the shining appliances in America. Ironically,
L. made his living as a free-lance journalist, writing pulp stuff for
mass consumption. In his views on planning, he was changing his
mind. Like many of his friends, he had favored decentralization and
the creation of workers' councils. Now he was less sure, feeling that
I
these had not worked, and that centralized planning was perhaps
necessary after all. L. was still an intensely political person, but like
many revisionists, he faced a dilemma that he himself was only
dimly aware of. In a politically flexible society, he could join a dis–
sident group and still continue to be political--or at least go through
the motions.
If
he were an academic, he could take refuge in his
work, and devote himself to scholarship or technique. But as a jour–
nalist, he was tied to the periphery of politics, and either had to
make his way back, or bolt. Which would he do? Already, in his
thinking about economics, he was beginning to accept the party's
. views; the rationalizations were obvious. In art, he was still a
heretic.
If
the regime followed the policy of isolating
art,
and per–
mitting it a certain autonomy, it too could easily neutralize the
revisionists. Would the regime do so? Would L. go back to the
party, as he tentatively seemed to be doing? Questions.
In the morning I walked over to one of the publishing houses
and asked for M., a young woman who worked there. She was a
friend of
J.,
an
emigre
in Paris who wrote for
K ultura,
but she
hadn't heard from him for a long time and was therefore surprised
to see me. Fair, with soft round shoulders and a round bosom ac–
cented by a peasant blouse, she captivated me completely. We
gossiped about
J.,
his cats, a painter friend of his, and so on. She
