Socialist realism in Poland
Encyclopedia
Socialist realism in Poland was an official Communist doctrine used by the pro-Soviet government in the process of forcible Stalinization of the postwar People's Republic of Poland
. The policy was introduced in 1949 by a decree of the Polish United Workers' Party
Minister (later, Minister of Culture and Art) Włodzimierz Sokorski
. As in all Soviet-dominated Eastern Bloc
countries, Socialist realism
became the main instrument of political control
in the building of totalitarianism
. However, the trend has never become truly dominant. Following Stalin
's death on March 5, 1953, and the subsequent destalinization of all People's Republic
s, Polish artists, writers and architects started abandoning it around 1955. Destalinization process peaked during the Polish October
.
The policy was enforced in Poland between 1949 and 1956 amidst the wave of gross human rights abuses committed by the state security forces. It involved all domains of culture including visual and literary arts, though its most spectacular achievements were made in the field of architecture. The objectives of this new trend were explained in a 1949 resolution of the National Council of Party Architects. Architecture was declared a key weapon in the creation of a new social order
. It was intended to help spread the communist ideology by influencing citizens' consciousness as well as their outlook on life.
During this massive undertaking, a crucial role fell to designers perceived not as merely architects creating streets and edifices, but rather as "engineers of the human soul
". The idea extended beyond aesthetics and into principles of urban design
meant to express grandiose expectations and arouse feelings of stability and political power.
, which resulted in the majority of new buildings blending into one another. The all-encompassing Stalinist vision propagated by the Soviet Union was best exemplified by the new Joseph Stalin Palace of Culture and Science (Pałac Kultury i Nauki imienia Józefa Stalina) constructed in Warsaw
between 1952 and 1955. Its design was based on similar skyscrapers built in the USSR
at that time. The 3,500 builders were brought in directly from the Soviet Union with their own blueprints, and housed in a suburban shantytown.
The monumental form disseminated by the Communist Government reached its apogee with the construction of an entire new town near Kraków
along with a steel mill
soon to become the biggest in Poland. Nowa Huta
was centrally planned as a major new centre of heavy industry, against substantial resistance from middle-class Cracovians. Its Main Square (Plac Centralny) was surrounded by huge blocks of flats populated by a new class of industrial workers employed at the Lenin Steelworks. Notably, the socrealist centre of Nowa Huta is currently considered a monument of architecture. Other prominent examples of urban design included Marszałkowska Housing Estate (MDM) in Warsaw, Kościuszkowska Housing Estate (KDM) in Wrocław, Main Station Gdynia Główna, a housing estate in Kowary
, and the Palace of Coal-Basin Culture in Dąbrowa Górnicza
.
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Socialist realism
in Polish art was confined to portraits of party leaders and various depictions of muscular labourers and battle scenes, with special attention paid to popular taste. Formally inspired by Neoclassicism
as well as the local folk art, socrealism served strictly political and pro-Soviet propaganda
purposes; however, its most notable artists, such as Wojciech Weiss
and Włodzimierz Zakrzewski were educated before Stalinism and inadvertently adhered to traditional Western techniques and technologies. Some of the most blatantly socrealist paintings were: "Pass-on the brick" (Podaj cegłę) pictured here, by Aleksander Kobzdej
, and "Thank you tractor operator" (Podziękowanie traktorzyście) pictured here, as well as "Comrade Bierut among labourers" (Towarzysz Bierut wśród robotników) by Helena and Juliusz Krajewski.
In sculpture, there was a trend toward stone-carved allegories elevating the common worker, used mainly for architectural purposes, such as those surrounding the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, including mostly plaster busts of communist apparatchik
s. The collection of Polish socrealist sculpture is exhibited at Kozłówka Palace near Lubartów
.
originated around the time of the Bolshevik Revolution (Eisenstein
, Dovzhenko
, Pudovkin
) and reached its peak in the 1930s, it did not have sufficient time to develop in postwar Poland. Therefore, the cult of the communist party remained alien to the local film industry. Among the more creative Polish films
loosely adhering to principles of socialist realism were Celuloza by Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Pokolenie by Andrzej Wajda
and Piątka z ulicy Barskiej by Aleksander Ford
. The ideological stereotype gave birth to some inferior productions as well, such as Uczta Baltazara by Jerzy Zarzycki and Jerzy Passendorfer.
In music, the trend was limited to art song, film soundtrack, and pop-song based on local folk tradition
. Communist ideals were glorified in lyrics. Among the prominent composers were Jan Maklakiewicz
: "Śląsk pracuje i śpiewa" (Silesia Works and Sings), Alfred Gradstein: "Na prawo most, na lewo most" (A Bridge on the Right, and a Bridge on the Left), and Andrzej Panufnik
: "Symfonia Pokoju" (The Symphony to Peace). Widely promoted popular songs included "O Nowej to Hucie piosenka" (This Song is about Nowa Huta) featured here with the video. The song is still well remembered by most Polish people of the older generation.
Following Stalin's death, and especially from 1953 on, critical opinions were heard with increasing frequency. Finally, as part of the Gomułka political thaw
from within the Polish United Workers' Party
, the entire doctrine was officially given up in 1956.http://books.google.com/books?id=94LDaZ3efUYC&pg=PA232&vq=thaw&dq=%22Leon+Kruczkowski%22&lr=&as_brr=3&source=gbs_search_s&cad=0
People's Republic of Poland
The People's Republic of Poland was the official name of Poland from 1952 to 1990. Although the Soviet Union took control of the country immediately after the liberation from Nazi Germany in 1944, the name of the state was not changed until eight years later...
. The policy was introduced in 1949 by a decree of the Polish United Workers' Party
Polish United Workers' Party
The Polish United Workers' Party was the Communist party which governed the People's Republic of Poland from 1948 to 1989. Ideologically it was based on the theories of Marxism-Leninism.- The Party's Program and Goals :...
Minister (later, Minister of Culture and Art) Włodzimierz Sokorski
Włodzimierz Sokorski
Włodzimierz Sokorski was a Polish communist official, writer, military journalist and eventually a Brigadier General in the Soviet-dominated People's Republic of Poland...
. As in all Soviet-dominated Eastern Bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
countries, Socialist realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
became the main instrument of political control
History of Poland (1945–1989)
The history of Poland from 1945 to 1989 spans the period of Soviet Communist dominance imposed after the end of World War II over the People's Republic of Poland...
in the building of totalitarianism
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
. However, the trend has never become truly dominant. Following Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's death on March 5, 1953, and the subsequent destalinization of all People's Republic
People's Republic
People's Republic is a title that has often been used by Marxist-Leninist governments to describe their state. The motivation for using this term lies in the claim that Marxist-Leninists govern in accordance with the interests of the vast majority of the people, and, as such, a Marxist-Leninist...
s, Polish artists, writers and architects started abandoning it around 1955. Destalinization process peaked during the Polish October
Polish October
Polish October, also known as October 1956, Polish thaw, or Gomułka's thaw, marked a change in the Polish internal political scene in the second half of 1956...
.
Social order
Social order is a concept used in sociology, history and other social sciences. It refers to a set of linked social structures, social institutions and social practices which conserve, maintain and enforce "normal" ways of relating and behaving....
. It was intended to help spread the communist ideology by influencing citizens' consciousness as well as their outlook on life.
During this massive undertaking, a crucial role fell to designers perceived not as merely architects creating streets and edifices, but rather as "engineers of the human soul
Engineers of the human soul
Engineers of the human soul was a term applied to writers and other cultural workers by Joseph Stalin.The phrase was apparently coined by Yury Olesha; Viktor Shklovsky said that Olesha used it in a meeting with Stalin at the home of Maxim Gorky, and it was subsequently used by Stalin, who said...
". The idea extended beyond aesthetics and into principles of urban design
Urban design
Urban design concerns the arrangement, appearance and functionality of towns and cities, and in particular the shaping and uses of urban public space. It has traditionally been regarded as a disciplinary subset of urban planning, landscape architecture, or architecture and in more recent times has...
meant to express grandiose expectations and arouse feelings of stability and political power.
Local characteristics
Since the style of the Renaissance was generally regarded as the most revered in old Polish architecture, it was to become Poland's socialist national format. However, in the course of incorporating these principles into new ideology, major changes were also introduced. One of these was to more closely reflect Soviet architectureStalinist architecture
Stalinist architecture , also referred to as Stalinist Gothic, or Socialist Classicism, is a term given to architecture of the Soviet Union between 1933, when Boris Iofan's draft for Palace of the Soviets was officially approved, and 1955, when Nikita Khrushchev condemned "excesses" of the past...
, which resulted in the majority of new buildings blending into one another. The all-encompassing Stalinist vision propagated by the Soviet Union was best exemplified by the new Joseph Stalin Palace of Culture and Science (Pałac Kultury i Nauki imienia Józefa Stalina) constructed in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
between 1952 and 1955. Its design was based on similar skyscrapers built in the USSR
Seven Sisters (Moscow)
The "Seven Sisters" is the English name given to a group of Moscow skyscrapers designed in the Stalinist style. Muscovites call them Vysotki or Stalinskie Vysotki , " high-rises"...
at that time. The 3,500 builders were brought in directly from the Soviet Union with their own blueprints, and housed in a suburban shantytown.
The monumental form disseminated by the Communist Government reached its apogee with the construction of an entire new town near Kraków
Kraków
Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...
along with a steel mill
Steel mill
A steel mill or steelworks is an industrial plant for the manufacture of steel.Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon. It is produced in a two-stage process. First, iron ore is reduced or smelted with coke and limestone in a blast furnace, producing molten iron which is either cast into pig iron or...
soon to become the biggest in Poland. Nowa Huta
Nowa Huta
Nowa Huta - is the easternmost district of Kraków, Poland, . With more than 200,000 inhabitants it is one of the most populous areas of the city.- History :...
was centrally planned as a major new centre of heavy industry, against substantial resistance from middle-class Cracovians. Its Main Square (Plac Centralny) was surrounded by huge blocks of flats populated by a new class of industrial workers employed at the Lenin Steelworks. Notably, the socrealist centre of Nowa Huta is currently considered a monument of architecture. Other prominent examples of urban design included Marszałkowska Housing Estate (MDM) in Warsaw, Kościuszkowska Housing Estate (KDM) in Wrocław, Main Station Gdynia Główna, a housing estate in Kowary
Kowary
Kowary is a town in Jelenia Góra County, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, in south-western Poland.It lies approximately south-east of Jelenia Góra, and south-west of the regional capital Wrocław.-History:...
, and the Palace of Coal-Basin Culture in Dąbrowa Górnicza
Dabrowa Górnicza
Dąbrowa Górnicza is a city in Zagłębie Dąbrowskie in southern Poland, nearby Katowice. The north-east district of the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union - metropolis with the population of almost 3 millions...
.
Painting and sculpture
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
in Polish art was confined to portraits of party leaders and various depictions of muscular labourers and battle scenes, with special attention paid to popular taste. Formally inspired by Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
as well as the local folk art, socrealism served strictly political and pro-Soviet propaganda
Propaganda in the Soviet Union
Communist propaganda in the Soviet Union was extensively based on the Marxism-Leninism ideology to promote the Communist Party line. In societies with pervasive censorship, the propaganda was omnipresent and very efficient...
purposes; however, its most notable artists, such as Wojciech Weiss
Wojciech Weiss
Wojciech Weiss was a prominent Polish painter and draughtsman of the Young Poland movement.Weiss was born in Bukovina to a Polish family in exile of Stanisław Weiss and Maria Kopaczyńska. He gave up music training to study art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków under Leon Wyczółkowski...
and Włodzimierz Zakrzewski were educated before Stalinism and inadvertently adhered to traditional Western techniques and technologies. Some of the most blatantly socrealist paintings were: "Pass-on the brick" (Podaj cegłę) pictured here, by Aleksander Kobzdej
Aleksander Kobzdej
Aleksander Kobzdej was a Polish painter. He was born in, what was then, the Ukraine. Kobzdej is best known for being one of the most prominent representatives of the Polish Social Realist group, and for being the creator of unique Polish versions of "matter" painting.Kobzdej began studying...
, and "Thank you tractor operator" (Podziękowanie traktorzyście) pictured here, as well as "Comrade Bierut among labourers" (Towarzysz Bierut wśród robotników) by Helena and Juliusz Krajewski.
In sculpture, there was a trend toward stone-carved allegories elevating the common worker, used mainly for architectural purposes, such as those surrounding the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, including mostly plaster busts of communist apparatchik
Apparatchik
Apparatchik is a Russian colloquial term for a full-time, professional functionary of the Communist Party or government; i.e., an agent of the governmental or party "apparat" that held any position of bureaucratic or political responsibility, with the exception of the higher ranks of management...
s. The collection of Polish socrealist sculpture is exhibited at Kozłówka Palace near Lubartów
Lubartów
Lubartów is a town in eastern Poland, with 23,000 inhabitants , situated in Lublin Voivodeship. It is the capital of Lubartów County and the Lubartów Commune.-History:...
.
Film and music
While the socialist realism doctrine in Soviet cinemaCinema of the Soviet Union
The cinema of the Soviet Union, not to be confused with "Cinema of Russia" despite Russian language films being predominant in both genres, includes several film contributions of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union reflecting elements of their pre-Soviet culture, language and history,...
originated around the time of the Bolshevik Revolution (Eisenstein
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
, Dovzhenko
Alexander Dovzhenko
Aleksandr Petrovich Dovzhenko , was a Soviet screenwriter, film producer and director of Ukrainian descent. He is often cited as one of the most important early Soviet filmmakers, alongside Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin.- Biography :...
, Pudovkin
Vsevolod Pudovkin
Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin was a Russian and Soviet film director, screenwriter and actor who developed influential theories of montage...
) and reached its peak in the 1930s, it did not have sufficient time to develop in postwar Poland. Therefore, the cult of the communist party remained alien to the local film industry. Among the more creative Polish films
Cinema of Poland
The history of cinema in Poland is almost as long as history of cinematography, and it has universal achievements, even though Polish movies tend to be less commercially available than movies from several other European nations....
loosely adhering to principles of socialist realism were Celuloza by Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Pokolenie by Andrzej Wajda
Andrzej Wajda
Andrzej Wajda is a Polish film director. Recipient of an honorary Oscar, he is possibly the most prominent member of the unofficial "Polish Film School"...
and Piątka z ulicy Barskiej by Aleksander Ford
Aleksander Ford
Aleksander Ford born Mosze Lifszyc was a Polish film director; and head of the Polish People's Army Film Crew in the Soviet Union. Ford became director of the nationalized "Film Polski" company at the end of World War II...
. The ideological stereotype gave birth to some inferior productions as well, such as Uczta Baltazara by Jerzy Zarzycki and Jerzy Passendorfer.
In music, the trend was limited to art song, film soundtrack, and pop-song based on local folk tradition
Traditional music
Traditional music is the term increasingly used for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. More on this is at the terminology section of the World music article...
. Communist ideals were glorified in lyrics. Among the prominent composers were Jan Maklakiewicz
Jan Maklakiewicz
Jan Adam Maklakiewicz was a Polish composer, conductor, critic, and music educator.-References:**...
: "Śląsk pracuje i śpiewa" (Silesia Works and Sings), Alfred Gradstein: "Na prawo most, na lewo most" (A Bridge on the Right, and a Bridge on the Left), and Andrzej Panufnik
Andrzej Panufnik
Sir Andrzej Panufnik was a Polish composer, pianist, conductor and pedagogue. He became established as one of the leading Polish composers, and as a conductor he was instrumental in the re-establishment of the Warsaw Philharmonic orchestra after World War II...
: "Symfonia Pokoju" (The Symphony to Peace). Widely promoted popular songs included "O Nowej to Hucie piosenka" (This Song is about Nowa Huta) featured here with the video. The song is still well remembered by most Polish people of the older generation.
Following Stalin's death, and especially from 1953 on, critical opinions were heard with increasing frequency. Finally, as part of the Gomułka political thaw
Polish October
Polish October, also known as October 1956, Polish thaw, or Gomułka's thaw, marked a change in the Polish internal political scene in the second half of 1956...
from within the Polish United Workers' Party
Polish United Workers' Party
The Polish United Workers' Party was the Communist party which governed the People's Republic of Poland from 1948 to 1989. Ideologically it was based on the theories of Marxism-Leninism.- The Party's Program and Goals :...
, the entire doctrine was officially given up in 1956.http://books.google.com/books?id=94LDaZ3efUYC&pg=PA232&vq=thaw&dq=%22Leon+Kruczkowski%22&lr=&as_brr=3&source=gbs_search_s&cad=0