PARTISAN REVIEW
61
to extend its freedom to make its own decisions. This creates tensions
ir. the political machine and makes it vulnerable to social pressure.
National sovereignty is not in itself sufficient to bring about the. eman–
cipation of the working people, but it is obviously an indispensable
condition. Fear of the brotherly cannon in the East is not, of course,
unfounded, though it is deliberately intensified as a means of squelch–
ing even the most modest demands, and of convincing the people
that all their efforts are futile. In fact, Poland, as well as the other
nations within the Soviet sphere, try to exert a constant pressure to
weaken their dependence without provoking military conflict. Here,
too, the ideology of "all or nothing" is disastrous, and to accept it
would be tantamount to agreeing to "nothing." No one can be so
blind as to believe that Poland's national status is the same as Lithu–
ania's, or that the nature of Poland's dependence did not change
between 1952 and 1957. There are, then, degrees of dependence and
nonsovereignty, and the differences cannot be minimized. In this re–
gard, the role of teachers and those working in the humanities is
crucial.
For if the Polish nation successfully resisted Russification and
Germanization during the partitions, it was mainly thanks to this so–
cial class. Had this class not existed, the Polish nation would have
shared the fate of the Lusatian nation, which has managed to retain
it~
language, but without its own culture and its own intelligentsia
has little chance of survival. Poland as a cultural entity has survived
thanks to those who created the Committee for National Education
- thanks to the nineteenth century teachers, writers, historians,
philologists, and philosophers who, despite the odds, worked to ex–
tend the heritage of national culture. Similarly, the Czech nation,
which at one point was threatened with Germanization, survived
through the efforts of its intellectuals. Those who today suppress the
free dvelopment of national culture are Poland's enemies.
If
I declare myself for "reformism," it is not because I prefer
"legality" to "illegality." The distinction is meaningless in a situation
where neither one is defined by law, but decided by the police and
party apparatus through arbitrary interpretation of vague decrees.
In
a country where the rulers can, if they wish, arrest and punish
citizens for owning illegal books, conversing on political subjects with
