Interviews

Wildstein: I understood that Catholicism is my fate

With great effort and great trouble we are, eventually, able to replace one’s national community for another one, but to live alone – we are not. A man is not an individual being. We live in a community. This is what makes us human – says Bronisław Wildstein, writer, essayist, publicist, opposition activist in the communist Poland.

TVP WEEKLY: On Saturday 11 June 2022 you will celebrate your 70th birthday. You have played many roles in your life, including that of a dissident, journalist, publicist, writer. Which one do you feel you are?

BRONISŁAW WILDSTEIN:
A writer. I knew I was going to be one from an early age. My first attempts, very naive of course, were made at the age of 12. Admittedly, I made my official debut quite late, with the novel “Jak woda” [Like Water] in 1989 – I was 37 years old – but even before that, I was writing all the time. I use various forms, mainly literary, but I also try to analyse reality more theoretically in essays, or do more ad hoc journalism. Nevertheless, it is writing.

How did this passion start?

I have always been interested in literature. When I could not yet read, my father used to read books aloud to me. And once I learnt to read, I quite quickly turned to serious books, for example by Aldous Huxley. I also read literary criticism, some essays. I was always interested in the world. I reflected on its colourfulness. And on the fact that it would be worthwhile to understand it somehow, and therefore to describe it.

Which artists inspired you in your youth?

This was changing, depending on the age. Anyway, it would be a shame to refer to some now…

You seem to have had a weakness for the work of the existentialists. At the age of 18, I read “Filozofia egzystencjalna” [Existential Philosophy], an anthology compiled by Leszek Kołakowski and Krzysztof Pomian. With difficulty, because it is not an easy read, but I was fascinated by it. I read André Malraux very early. And when I was 17 – Samuel Beckett. This is the kind of literature that is worth coming back to. Just like William Shakespeare, whom I have been reading all my life. I started when I was 12 – I got bits and pieces of his work that inspired me.

I also reached out for poetry. At first, Julian Tuwim, but early on I also read “The Iliad and the Odyssey”. I liked Polish Romantics, the works of Juliusz Słowacki, who interested me more than Adam Mickiewicz. To understand Mickiewicz, however, you need to be more mature.

Apart from literature, however, you also had many worries on your mind.

When I was 16 my father died of cancer. I quickly had to take responsibility for myself. My mother could not take care of me because she was very ill. Rather, it was me taking care of her. In general, I had a somewhat peculiar childhood. My father was the commandant of a military hospital. We lived on its grounds. So I didn’t have a normal yard where I could spend time with my peers. But as a child, the yard has a socialising role. That’s why entering the world was a bit more difficult for me. But I had to manage somehow.

You have Jewish roots on your father’s side. From the Six-Day War in June 1967, the communist authorities began feeding anti-Semitist behaviours, culminating in March ‘68. How did you feel about that atmosphere? It wasn’t that important to me, because at home I didn’t really talk about my Jewish roots. Although I suspected that my father was Jewish. With time, however, I became sensitive to anti-Semitic remarks. Whenever they appeared in my environment, I reacted immediately. Sometimes it ended in a fight.

My reaction was not one of fear. Rather, it was a sense of frustration related to the stupidity and meanness of people revealed in this way. I was less than 16 years old during March ‘68, but I was already mature enough to know that this was an organised action of the authorities. And that there were certain people who succumbed to the communist narrative, unleashing their dark side.

You are a Catholic. But when you were young, the Church did not go your way. Probably under the influence of your father, who held dear Marxist views.
Bronisław Wildstein (right) in 2004 during the panel discussion “To be a Jew in Poland today and tomorrow”. Next to Piotr Paziński and Piotr Kadlcik. Photo: PAP/Andrzej Rybczyński
My attitude towards the Church has changed a lot over the years. I describe this process in detail in “Cienie moich czasów” [Shadows of my time]. At the beginning I was hostile to religion. I saw it as a system of oppression and alienation. I was a naive heir of my age. My thinking grew not only from my readings but also from the spirit of the times. However, I soon realised how naive this conventional wisdom was. My evolution was generated by life experience and, to a large extent, by contacts with Catholics.

Paradoxically, I was already very religious in my youth. In the sense that I was always interested in the deepest dimension of human existence. Although, at the time, I drew all sorts of perverse conclusions from this. After some time I understood that, as George Santayana put it – “Any attempt to speak without speaking any particular language is not more hopeless than the attempt to have a religion that shall be no religion in particular”. I understood that Catholicism is my fate.

For several years you have been struggling with a serious illness. Does your faith support you in this struggle?

I am afraid of this, because it might suggest that faith is an escape from the tragedy of existence. And this is not the case. Although, we can say that it allows us to come to terms with it, so it is an anchor. It enables us to transcend our narrow perspective. It helps us to better understand ourselves, our life. On the other hand, we do not believe in God because it is convenient for us.

In an interview in the book “Niepokorny” [The Disobedient], you told Piotr Zaremba and Michał Karnowski that you had the opportunity to travel to the United States after your father’s death. Were there moments when you regretted not taking advantage of this opportunity?

No, I have never regretted it. My father was an officer, and after the outbreak of the Second World War he got to Romania, where he worked for the émigré structures (Polish government-in-exile, 1939–1990). He helped people to get to France and then to England. He was interned in Hungary and sent to an oflag, where he remained until the end of the war. When he returned, it turned out that his entire immediate family had been murdered. So he started looking for his relatives. In 1968, a relative from America heard about my father’s death. He sent a letter to my mother with the proposal that he would take us in the States and provide everything for us, including studies for me. My mother wanted to go. I refused.

Did you really not want to get out of this grey, communist reality?

I had the feeling that this was my country. My world, albeit overrun by usurpers who are destroying it and must be driven out. Had we left, my life would have been different. But do I now regret not having had a different life? It is hard to imagine it.

You could also have become an athlete.

At the age of 17 I became district champion in wrestling. It’s a paradox, but I was a little too good to continue in the sport. If I wanted to continue in this direction, I would have to dedicate my life to it. And I was young and I was not particularly attracted to the rigours of sport for the rest of my life. The coach said: “What, are you going to waste it all? Are you going to college? Fine, but it can be combined somehow!”. But I couldn’t do it.

However, the training was not in vain. You had a tendency to get into fights...

Come on! It’s just that I never had my tail between my legs. But, indeed, sometimes there were quarrels.

You began studying Polish philology at Jagiellonian University. There you became engrossed in opposition activity. The breakthrough and tragic moment in your life was the murder of your closest friend Stanisław Pyjas by the communist secret police (SB) on 7 May 1977. As it would turn out years later, Lesław Maleszka – at the time a friend, but in reality an informer, alias “Ketman” – denounced him and the entire opposition centre you co-founded. Would you say that Pyjas’s death changed your life?

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I do not think so. It shook me deeply. Any young person who would have had a friend killed would have been shocked. However, Staszek’s death did not change my attitude in any way, because I had become involved in opposition activities earlier. Staszek was also involved – that’s why he was murdered... Perhaps this strengthened my views. But I don’t think so either. Because we knew what the communists were capable of. We observed the events of December ‘70 or June ‘76 (series of protests provoked by a sudden increase in the price of basic commodities, violently put down by the communist regime). There were also some cases of death in unclear circumstances. So we were aware that communism is a very gloomy system and that its foundation is terror.

Stanisław Pyjas’s death was followed by a mobilization in Kraków. You co-organised the students’ “black Carnival”, and a few days after your friend’s funeral – the “black march”, during which the founding declaration of the Student Solidarity Committee (SKS) was read out. You became even more involved in opposition activity. Did you consider that you might share the fate of Stanisław Pyjas?

We all took into account the risk of serving time, rather than death. We did not think about it. Although, of course, there was a sense of danger. I remember being arrested near the Gdańsk Shipyard in August 1980. First they took me to the detention centre. At night they cuffed my hands and put me in a car with three intelligence agents, plus a driver. Two sat in the back, next to me. They all displayed their “tools” [guns – ed.] I thought we were going to Kraków. But they turned into the forest, into some side road.

I thought then that it was a provocation and I had to prepare myself for the worst. But it turned out that they took me to Sieradz by side roads. And the next day they transported me to Kraków, where I was to sit with a sanction [as a temporary detainee – ed.] for three months until the trial, but I was released under the agreement from 31 August 1980. I was lucky. I was convinced that sooner or later I would end up in prison for many years. Meanwhile, it ended up with just a few months of a sentence.

You lived to see the trial in 1980. And you were close to going to prison for a long time. All the more so because, in the autumn, after two of your colleagues had stumbled upon a party of police officers looking for vodka during a party in Kraków and got beaten up, you beat up a few policemen in reprisal.

Immediately after this incident, my wife and I fled Poland. When we crossed the border, I had an unpleasant feeling. Because Solidarity was being formed, and I had to leave; I was threatened with imprisonment. It wasn’t me who started the fight with the militia, but surely they would find a pretext to convict me for assault.

We travelled around western Europe. We wanted to wait for the matter around this dispute to die down. We played the role of travelling salesmen for the Polish cause. We quickly established contacts with emigration centres. We talked about what was happening in Poland and tried to arrange various matters for Solidarity and the Independent Students’ Association (NZS). Eventually, we decided we had to go back. But while we were returning (hitchhiking), precisely in the Netherlands, we found out that martial law had been imposed.

We had to stay abroad. After being arrested near the Gdańsk shipyard, I was charged by the prosecutor. Under martial law, I would certainly be imprisoned again.

What were these allegations?

The first was for “dissemination of false information that may cause serious damage to the interests of the People’s Republic of Poland” – nothing special, I could get three years for that. But the second was for “belonging to an organisation whose aim is to overthrow the constitutional order of the People’s Republic of Poland” – this one was serious, I was even threatened with the death penalty.

You stayed in France. What impression did the expatriate community there make on you?
Kraków, 15 May 1977: Black March – demonstration organised after the murder of Stanisław Pyjas, Jagiellonian University student and opposition activist. On the right: Bronisław Wildstein. Photo: Tomek Sikora / Forum
In “Cienie moich czasów” [Shadows of my time] I wrote that meeting these people was an extraordinary experience for me. I had the feeling that I had met characters from Atlantis, from a world that no longer exists. These were extraordinary, wonderful people. For them, civic activity on behalf of their country, their nation, was something obvious. They did not hide behind irony when presenting such an attitude. In the communist Poland we used a characteristic screen of irony – in that reality it was not appropriate to be serious. Although in reality we took everything very seriously, we also tried to distance ourselves from it, or at least not to show our commitment. This was completely absent in emigration. Moreover, they used Polish in a different way than we did – more beautifully.

It was the absolute elite. Above all, I got to know the people gathered around “Kultura” [Culture] in Paris (leading Polish-émigré literary-political magazine). Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, Konstanty “Kot” Jeleński, Józef Czapski, and Jerzy Giedroyc, though less so, because he was always distanced from social relations. Maciej Morawski, my boss at the Paris bureau of Radio Free Europe, came from this generation. He represented the same ethos. He was a wonderful man. On 6 June 2022, a year passed since his death…

However, the image of the West was soon verified by reality. To make ends meet, you took on various jobs. In general, things were not going well.

But we did not cherish illusions and I didn’t particularly mind that. In Poland, I wasn’t used to baked stuffed cabbage either. I was used to physical work. And it was occasional, because I was thrown out of every permanent job.

For your views? Or is it because you are difficult to work with?

In communist Poland the pattern was simple. As soon as the secret police found out that I worked somewhere, I was immediately fired. Later, things were different. Maybe I have an excessive independence gene in me?

Let us come back to France.

I worked odd jobs, including as a night watchman. Nothing special. But later this was combined with the publications of the “Kontakt” [Contact] monthly, which was created by people from Solidarity. Mirek Chojecki was the head of the publishing house, and I was the editor-in-chief. It was really a lot of work at that time because our activity in “Kontakt” was combined with other initiatives for the benefit of Poland. This had its consequences. One wanted to take a closer look at the reality of the West. But there was no time for that. We lived a bit in the Polish ghetto, from which it was impossible to get out. But that was our karma (laughs).

You returned from France in 1990. How did you perceive Polish reality?

I first arrived in the autumn of 1989 as a correspondent for Radio Free Europe, and permanently at the beginning of 1990. I was aware that everything had to be built from scratch. I had no illusions about this. Although my initial impressions were very positive. Everything was changing faster than I had expected.

When did disappointment set in?

Actually, right from the moment I became the head of Radio Kraków. I mean, on the one hand I was enthusiastic about the changes, but on the other I started to notice more and more mistakes made by my – I dare say it – friends, colleagues, until recently leaders of the anti-communist opposition. It seemed to me that they were neglecting certain matters. But it took some time before I felt really disappointed. I asked myself: maybe it is impossible for change to come about faster? Maybe there are so many forces against the reconstruction of Poland that we need time and various compromises with the communists?

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I noticed more and more problems in my own field, that is in the media. My first critical text, which struck at the institution where I worked, was published in “Tygodnik Powszechny” [The Common Weekly] in 1990. In it, I asked rhetorically why the Radiokomitet, the communist institution which held control of radio and television, had not been dismantled. At first, the new authorities had no intention of dissolving it. The assumption was: “It was bad because the communists ruled. Now we took over – the new, good ones – so everything will be fine. What is there to change?”

As head of Radio Kraków, you returned to the case of Stanisław Pyjas’s death. Meanwhile, in this new, democratic Poland, you hit a brick wall.

The explanation was that, yes, I was talking about a dramatic case, but an individual one nonetheless, and in fact I was sacrificing public affairs for the sake of privacy... That was the reaction of my old friends in government, and to break through the old justice system, rebranded as democratic, was different and grim matter.

But all of this had not yet come together for me. In fact, I fully understood what was happening in Poland at that time in 1992-93. At that time I wrote a very large text on the need for decommunization. The first part was published by “Gazeta Krakowska” [Poland’s Newspaper Krakowska], the second by “Res Publica” (cultural and social monthly).

Have you not thought about quitting journalism and going into politics?

I was wondering. I even got an offer.

From whom?

For example from Krzysztof Kozłowski, Minister of the Interior [in Tadeusz Mazowiecki’s government – ed.] It sounds rather ridiculous, considering our later relations. I suppose that I would not have stayed with him for long.

There were various proposals. But I came to the conclusion that direct politics is not for me. You need to have the talent and the right skills for it. I am not sure that I have them.

In the 1990s you published a series of books, as you mentioned – very diverse in form: novels, short stories, essays, political journalism. In 2000 you even published a collection of interviews with eminent intellectuals such as Samuel Huntington, Richard Pipes, Michael Novak and Zbigniew Brzezinski.

When I was fired from Radio Kraków, I came to Warsaw in search of work. I got a job at “Życie Warszawy” [Life of Warsaw], which at the time was the only major newspaper going against the tide. But we soon left when the new owner tried to “reformat” us. We created a new, conservative daily, “Życie”, in which I played a major part. I became deputy to the editor-in-chief, Tomasz Wołek, which, in retrospect, is quite funny. Wołek also threw me out because I was trying to create a serious newspaper, and he wanted to be Michnik (historian, essayist, former dissident, public intellectual, and editor-in-chief of the Polish newspaper, “Gazeta Wyborcza”) of the right – the newspaper was to be an instrument of his political actions.

I had no job and had to support my family. I started cooperation with the weekly “Wprost”; I agreed with Piotr Gabryel, who was then the deputy editor-in-chief, that I would conduct a series of interviews with world-famous intellectuals. Mainly Americans. That is why, at the end of the 1990s, I spent some time in the United States, where I had been before. And then the book “Profile wieku” [Profiles of the Century] came into being.

I get the impression that you are often not taken seriously. You are labelled a controversial person, or even a madman on a witch hunt. Many Poles still associate Bronisław Wildstein more with the storm after the publication of the so-called “Wildstein List” than with his literary output.
[Wildstein’s List is a colloquial term for the catalogue index of the files of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN). In 2005 Bronisław Wildstein, as a publicist for “Rzeczpospolita”, copied this index in the reading room of the Institute of National Remembrance and distributed it among the media. Soon afterwards the list was made public on the Internet, which turned out to be one of the most important voices in the discussion on the so-called lustration (i.e. disclosure of secret collaborators and informers of the communist secret services and political police). “Wildstein’s List” also became an important impulse leading to the regulation on a statutory level of the issue of disclosing cooperation of persons holding public functions with the security services.

The Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) was established by the Sejm of the Republic of Poland in 1999. Its tasks include prosecuting Nazi and communist crimes, conducting educational activities and searching for the resting places of those who died fighting for the independence and unification of the Polish State. In general, however, one of the most important areas of its activity is the collection, preservation and making available of the documentation of the state security organs drawn up between July 1944 and July 1990 – that is, to simplify slightly, the personal and operational files of the political police of the communist Poland (PRL). A considerable part of them was destroyed by the management and officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the autumn and winter of 1989: the surviving materials were sent to IPN. (ed.)
]

Debate in Gdańsk in 2004 under the slogan “Between Freedom and Responsibility for Words”. From left: Kamil Durczok, Father Adam Boniecki, Daniel Passent, Bronisław Wildstein, Monika Olejnik and Jerzy Bralczyk. Photo: PAP/Stefan Kraszewski
This is a deeper problem. And it is not only about the so-called “Wildstein’s List”, but also about my political journalism. We live in the reality of an intensive ideological and political war in which the defenders of the status quo, the Third Republic, the dominant ideology, use a method which has its roots in communism. It consists in “cutting out” opponents, disavowing them, crossing out their entire heritage. According to this, an artist who opposes the dominant ideology must not be appreciated, because otherwise his views could be taken more seriously. Someone who is against the establishment cannot be a significant person in any field. I am not saying that this is a fully conscious act, but it works without exception.

I wrote about Zbigniew Herbert, who was the most recognised poet of the 1980s in Polish society. It seemed that his work could not be questioned. Yet the dominant current milieu, together with “Gazeta Wyborcza”, found a way. In the 1990s, his new, excellent books of poems were either overlooked, or written about badly.

After his death, Herbert was rediscovered by this environment – even appropriated as a great artist. Only that he “suffered” from what I call fragmentary schizophrenia. It was put this way: “Herbert was an outstanding poet, a great essayist, a cultural critic – in these areas he was quite sane. However, when it came to political views, he was a madman, he understood nothing”.

And how do you assess your work against the background of contemporary Polish literature?

Should I judge myself? I judge myself very well (laughs). Where would you rank yourself in the hierarchy?

Very high. I don’t follow fashions. I try to show universal issues through the concrete. To analyse human behaviour here and now, both to understand our time and to comprehend the world in a universal dimension. In this way, I became a chronicler of the Third Republic of Poland, but also a literary researcher of our ideologised times, and thus also an analyst of the clash of man with completely new challenges. In this way, I continue the great Polish tradition.

When the Third Republic of Poland came into being, Maria Janion, who in my opinion is a very overrated literary critic (although she has also written some interesting texts), announced the end of the romantic paradigm in Polish literature. One could say that this was an achievement on a par with Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history”. Except that Fukuyama justified his position. Maria Janion did not. Her statement implied that we are entering a new stage of the existence of Poland, Poles, or humanity in general. Therefore, all traditional “problems” cease to be important for us; man will be completely new, different... Utter nonsense!

But in the mainstream, Maria Janion’s statement was considered a commandment. Literature should therefore stay away from real political problems. Describe, for example, the inner dilemmas of the seventy-two sexes, or a woman who wants to be a man, or the anguish of living in a patriarchal society, etc.

The Romantic ethos is very important to me. Although it is a vague term, because “romanticism” can be understood in many different ways. I stick to romantic literature as a certain way of getting to know reality and a commitment to it. I try to look at the world as it is in relation to us, and through this world discover the universal dimensions of the human condition. And because I refer to reality, my work is easily reduced to the purely immediate, political meanings attributed to me – as if it were journalism that pretended to be literature. This, too, is absurd.

Perhaps your books are simply too demanding and not accessible enough for the average reader?
I don’t think so. I try to share with my audience how I experience the world, how I perceive reality. When we read literature, we build the equivalent of our life experiences – and on many levels. I don’t expect my readers to be able to immediately recognise all my allusions, references; to go through all the levels. In “Dolina Nicości” [The Valley of Nothingness], for example, I refer to Max Weber’s distinction between the ethics of belief and responsibility, which are largely determined by our thinking. But it is not as if the readers need to know this to understand the book. Of course, if Weber’s thought is not alien to them, they will have an additional perspective. But that is not the point.

What are your literary plans? There are too many of them (laughs). I’m writing a book, which I have tentatively named: “The novel of an idiot or the order of nature?”. But there is still a long way to go before it is finished. In an intellectual sense, it is a continuation of my penultimate book – the essay “Bunt i afirmacja” [Rebellion and Affirmation]. On top of that, I have several literary ideas in my head that are nagging me. I have also recently started writing in parallel a short essay “In the mirror of war” on the deeper dimensions of war. We all know that the Russians invaded Ukraine, that they are a threat, etc. But war tells us something more. For example, it allows us to discover the deep meaning of history for our existence. It shows the value of traditional identities – people sacrifice their lives to defend them – as well as that human freedom is embedded in a community.

But the value of traditional identity is not only revealed by war. For me, such experiences included the Solidarity movement, which was an extraordinary phenomenon, or my stay in exile. The years spent in Paris were very interesting. But they made me realise that I was not at home in France. Someone could say: “You can cut yourself off from your community. You are able to live alone”. But this is a story for small children or naive people. With great effort and great trouble we are, eventually, able to replace one’s national community for another one, but to live alone – we are not. A man is not an individual being. He is, as Aristotle said, a political and social being. We live in a community. This is what makes us human.

– interviewed by Łukasz Lubański

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists


– Translated by jz
Bronisław Wildstein is a writer, journalist, columnist and essayist. During the communist era he was an anti-communist opposition activist, co-founder of the Student Solidarity Committee in Kraków. In the 1980s, he was an emigrant in Paris. After the fall of communism in 1989, he became the head of Polish Radio Kraków. Then he worked, among others, in “Życie Warszawy”, “Życie”, he cooperated with “Wprost” weekly, with “Puls” television and was a publicist in “Rzeczpospolita”. In the years 2006-07 he was a president of TVP. He was a co-founder of the weekly “Do Rzeczy”, currently he writes columns for the weekly “Sieci”.
Main photo: Bronisław Wildstein during the programme debate of the “Alternatywa” series entitled “Polish culture – challenges and future” in February 2014 in the Sejm. Photo PAP/Jacek Turczyk
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