Rafał Milach: Refusal

In the seventh year of primary school, during a trip to the Kłodzko Valley, my best friend Piotr surprised me with an unexpected confession: I’m a communist! I cannot remember the context of the conversation, but I remember my reaction perfectly. Without hesitation, I replied: so am I, I’m a communist too! It was the first conscious ideological declaration I had ever made. At the time, the most important role in shaping my worldview was probably played by Jan Tomczak, our geography and civil-defence teacher. He was a strict but fair teacher. He treated boys and girls, star pupils and dunces, with equal ruthlessness. Failing to give the right answer resulted not only in a failing mark in the register, but also in a whipping administered with a map pointer. Thanks to Tomczak’s teaching methods, I remember to this day—and shall never forget—that ROW stands for the Rybnik Coal District, the capital of Zaire is Kinshasa, and Suriname’s greatest natural resource is bauxite. 

Tomczak’s bouts of cruelty alternated with periods of relative gentleness. Mr Jan would then open his heart to us and speak at length and vividly about his travels through the farthest reaches of the Land of the Soviets. He often illustrated his accounts with what we would now call multimedia presentations. These consisted of slides Tomczak had made himself, photographs taken from official teaching materials for years six to eight, and reproductions of battle paintings. All this was interspersed with propaganda slogans and graphs charting increases in production. Tomczak skilfully wove elements of Marxist-Leninist doctrine into his stories, and the message as a whole was addressed proportionately to our hearts and minds. 

When, in the darkness of the classroom, Uzbek cotton fields suddenly appeared before us, white all the way to the horizon; when mighty rockets soared towards the stars from the Kazakh steppes, and the small feet of young Pioneers left their prints in the golden sands of Sochi; when the Ural Railway Carriage Works once again exceeded its target, and the steel pincers of three armoured corps closed around the Seventh Army crowded into a pocket—we were filled with enthusiasm and joyful excitement. At such moments we loved both Tomczak and the greatest country on Earth that he so cherished. 

A wooden pointer, a lecture illustrated with colourful slides, and a pinch of dialectics proved entirely sufficient to induce all of us not only to join the Polish-Soviet Friendship Society and the Scout Service for Socialist Poland, but also to undertake a murderous run in gas masks beneath the May sun to the edge of the “Unity” Production Cooperative, where we crouched in drainage ditches for nearly three hours, awaiting an imaginary enemy.   

Tomczak undoubtedly possessed a talent for oratory and absolute certainty in the views he proclaimed, but he decidedly lacked the fervour of our parish priest. In religious-education lessons, the priest spoke with fiery exaltation, yet his arguments entirely lacked those elements of logic and rationality so important to our geographer. He addressed them solely to our hearts, and children with particularly sensitive hearts flocked to him like bees to honey. Alicja and Kasia had the most sensitive hearts in our class. The priest often took Ala on his lap and embraced her. With concern and delight, he also examined Katarzyna’s hands, patiently urging her to abandon her foolish dream of becoming a Polish teacher, since she was destined for a great career as a pianist. The priest decidedly favoured girls and treated boys with barely concealed dislike. This glaring injustice made me remain steadfast in my far-left position. A hardened atheist, I skipped the Masses to which my mother sent me. For this my father—an active member of the Polish United Workers’ Party, who saw not the slightest contradiction in his conduct—gave me a hiding. 

When I was in the eighth year, the slide projector broke just after the summer holidays, followed soon afterwards by the epidiascope. Months passed, and the spare parts ordered from the central school-supplies depot failed to arrive. 

At a time when obtaining toilet paper or light bulbs of more than 40 watts bordered on the miraculous, no one found this surprising. Deprived of his technical facilities, Tomczak gradually lost his confidence. He would turn up at school unshaven, and on several occasions he dozed off during lessons. Although he continued to terrorise us with his pointer, he no longer seemed so frightening, much less infallible. Communism lost all its charm. Some of my classmates sought spiritual support from the parish priest, but most of us, myself included, turned into cynical nihilists. 

To return to Alicja and Katarzyna: I have no idea what became of Ala. Kasia, meanwhile, continued her education at the same National Education Commission Secondary School in Bielsko-Biała that I attended. She never learnt to play an instrument and chose a general curriculum rather than the humanities, which suggested that she was not considering studying Polish. She was withdrawn, quiet and taciturn, but certain words activated her instantly. The most important of these was “spirit”, or more precisely the “Holy Spirit”. In the autumn of 1980, we met by chance in an empty compartment on the Bielsko-Biała–Kraków train, known as the “Southern Arrow” on account of the speed it achieved along the route (a maximum of 40 km/h). I then realised that my friend had a peculiar relationship of mutual dependence with the aforementioned spirit: she surrendered herself to it completely and received in return what were known as “charisms”. One of these was the ability to peer deeply into the souls of people nearby. This ability meant that she could read me like an open book. One glance was enough for her to know that I was lost and fundamentally unhappy, that I came from a dysfunctional family and consequently suffered from low self-esteem, and that I was travelling to Kraków solely in search of vulgar amusements and to drown my sorrows in alcohol. Our meeting could not be accidental, she declared. I should trust her, and all my problems would be solved. The Catholic Charismatic Renewal would soon become my new family. 

I would never again be lost or unhappy. 

Watching Katarzyna’s beautiful hands, I genuinely envied the Holy Spirit’s influence over my fellow passenger. After two hours of travelling I was almost ready to succumb when, impatient with my hesitation, Kasia unexpectedly changed strategy. She began vehemently warning me about the consequences of further resistance. She threatened that if I did not see the light and rejected the exceptional gift she was now offering me, I would face the consuming fire of failed relationships, the hell of addiction, and years of fruitless struggle. Katarzyna’s fanaticism, like the priest’s irrationalism and sexist policy before it, permanently discouraged me from all religious activity. I decided to take up politics.

It was September 1980, and the Solidarity carnival was rapidly gathering pace. A time of joyful lack of ideology had begun, one that survived martial law and did not start to fade until the latter half of the decade. No one believed in communism any longer. Official state ideology was reduced to symbolic trappings, empty rituals and a bizarre “language” that one had to master in order to make a career in the apparatus of power. The choice of an ideological identity was replaced by a simple division: us—the public—and them—the authorities. In principle, reality was perceived in much the same way on both sides of the barricade; the differences concerned only how it was judged. As Captain Ryszard Janik of the Security Service neatly put it while interrogating me about the distribution of subversive publications: “if we don’t fucking clobber you, the Russkies will fucking kill you”. The key fact in our discussion was, of course, the role of the Russkies, whose fundamental importance neither of us denied. 

This lack of ideology by no means meant that the anti-communist opposition had no “right” and “left”. (If I remember correctly, Korwin-Mikke spouted much the same nonsense as he does today.) But this meant little to the so-called general public; the only important question was how to finish off the communist regime, now supported solely by fear, conformity and indifference. 

The first signs of the new times appeared unnoticed. 

After 1985, works on economics—which had previously been almost entirely absent—began appearing in increasing numbers among the literature, philosophy and historical essays of the underground publishing circuit. Intellectual fashions were changing. By the late 1980s, no one wanted to discuss Solzhenitsyn, Herbert or Hannah Arendt any more. At the very sound of the word “Horkheimer”, everyone turned away in disdain. Social success was now guaranteed by only two surnames: Friedman and Hayek. H a y e k and F r i e d m a n. This password opened the door to even the most snobbish private parties. It was enough to declare that “there is no such thing as a free lunch”, and everyone immediately wanted to buy you a beer. I never read The Road to Serfdom, let alone The Constitution of Liberty, but my more perceptive acquaintances explained the fundamental ideas of these works to me: the state is bad, the market good. Its invisible hand would guide anyone who was able, hard-working, intelligent, tenacious, flexible, quick-witted and open to innovation towards prosperity and personal fulfilment. Getting rich was commendable and morally justified. Our resistance to activity calculated solely for profit resulted from the years of indoctrination to which we had been subjected under actually existing socialism. The more rich people there were, the fewer poor people there would be—and this devastating logic captured my imagination. Besides, this was no longer an ideology! It was simply correct reasoning, something I had plainly grown unused to while constantly occupying my mind with matters that a normal person in a normal country would never consider at all. 

As soon as Joanna Szczepkowska announced the end of communism, I abandoned my foolish dreams of becoming a novelist. Both my family and the entire new symbolic space then taking shape cried out that I was destined for a great career in business. I decided to invest the dollars I had earned through hard work abroad with cunning. Together with a friend, I opened a wholesale book business. Unfortunately, our business failed to account for rapidly changing trends. The bookshops in our town went under one after another, and we were left with debts and half the print run of a work entitled Husserl and the Search for Certainty. We found a madman who took Husserl off our hands for half price and used the proceeds to buy forty drills from the “Celma” works, which was on the verge of bankruptcy. Unfortunately, the idea of a power-tool hire shop came to nothing, as we were refused a loan for floor sanders. We recouped some of our losses by selling the drills at a substantial profit, but then our partnership collapsed because of numerous disagreements concerning the non-business use of the premises in which we operated. With the last hundred dollars I had put aside for a rainy day, I bought outright the cooperative bedsit I had previously occupied. A year later I sold it privately for USD 1,200, paid off most of my debts and rented a three-room flat. As a promising businessman, I had to live in suitable style. Unfortunately, I no longer had the money for further investments. I took odd jobs, but still fell behind with the rent. The landlord terminated my tenancy, and to make matters worse I began to be haunted by an insistent question: perhaps, after all, I should tie my future to literature? I quickly concluded that this must be a form of neurotic obsession inherited from my mother, who would always scream during her hysterical fits that I had wasted her life. Circumstances had forced her to become an accountant, while from early youth she had dreamt of working with disabled children. After many months of expensive therapy, I managed to overcome my own fantasies. I finally reconciled myself to the idea that I was inept, lazy and none too intelligent; that I was easily discouraged, lacked quick reactions and thought in clichés. The invisible hand of the market gave me the middle finger. Reality proved too great a challenge for me. I began to sink: successive failed relationships, numerous addictions and years of fruitless struggle made me recall with genuine regret the offer I had so hastily rejected from Katarzyna.

I shall omit the details of the disillusionments that followed. I shall confine myself to a confession of guilt: yes, I was mistaken. Like most of my peers, I changed my views in an attempt to recognise a changing reality. Today I believe my feet are firmly on the ground, and the experience I have gained protects me against rash declarations. 

Of course, my first impulse on seeing Heydar Aliyev’s marble sanctuaries built among mud huts is to tap my forehead in disbelief. I find it difficult not to laugh when I listen to Ksenia Degelko’s collective-farm rap. But then I feel ashamed. And the feeling is as intense as that evoked by the memory of poems I myself declaimed with enthusiasm at ceremonial assemblies marking the anniversary of the October Revolution, or the drivel about a flat tax that I confidently spouted over vodka at the birthday party of an acquaintance from the Freedom Union. I also realise that beside clean-shaven young men chanting “pride, pride, national pride!”, Ksenia is the embodiment of common sense and restraint. In my youth, the parish priest’s irrational zeal and my primary-school teacher’s fanatical self-confidence were by no means commonplace. Today I encounter similar attitudes at every turn. We were furious with communists and riot police, and we had had enough of lies and hypocrisy, but the intensity of bad feeling in those times—which were nevertheless decidedly worse—was incomparably lower than it is today. Only fear was far more abundant, and courage far scarcer. Comparisons describing the reality of the time as something unreal, straight out of a Franz Kafka novel, had already become clichés. Today reality (in a certain sense) resembles a surreal dream even more closely, and it seems to me that we are beginning to lack a language capable of describing this state of affairs with precision. The term “spectrality” has recently come into fashion, and perhaps that is the right trail to follow? Postmodernism did not end at all; rather, it entered its most acute phase. In 1996, the American physicist and mathematician Alan Sokal published an essay entitled Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity. The text was a skilful hoax. In it, the author argued that all reality—not only social but above all physical reality—was in fact merely a linguistic and ideological construct, and that “there is no such thing as an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual human being and indeed of humanity as a whole”. Its publication in a well-known cultural-studies journal was calculated to provoke a scandal. This was intended to expose the numerous abuses committed by contemporary postmodernist thinkers. Poland today is a country in which Sokal’s parody has become reality. The answer to the question “can a birch trunk forty centimetres in diameter sever the wing of an aircraft travelling at 240 kilometres per hour?” seems to depend exclusively on the experts’ political views. 

This is profoundly depressing. And if anything still restores my hope, it is individual gestures of opposition—such as the “refusal” of the anonymous ploughman from a Belarusian collective farm. A man who, ignoring pressure from the authorities and the demands of ideology, decided to keep his face for himself.

* Maciej Pisuk, writer, screenwriter and photographer. A graduate of the Higher Vocational Screenwriting School at the Łódź Film School. He has written screenplays and scripts for film and theatre, including the film You Are God, about the history of the group Paktofonika, and the television play The Stars and the Fate of Man. His texts have appeared in “Brulion” and the anthology You Have Your Poets, among other publications. For several years he has been working on a documentary photographic series devoted to the residents of Warsaw’s Praga district.