How would I like to be remembered? I have no doubts about that. I would like to be remembered as a journalist, a professional in this field.
I have written about this many times, also here. I know, I have a somewhat old-fashioned idea of this profession. I know that technology changes it a lot, and I do not like change, and as the years go by, I dislike change more and more. Unfortunately, the Olympic Games in Paris made me painfully aware that there is no demand for my old-fashioned professional experience, but there is a demand for an old-timer – a pole vaulter who remembers jumping on bamboo wrapped in plasters, and then, as part of technical progress, on rigid metal pipes.
Such gloomy thoughts came to my mind while reading a collection of texts by Andrzej Werblan entitled “Truth and Realism”. For those for whom Werblan's name means little, I would like to remind you that he was a political activist. First in the PPS, where he meant little, and then after the unification of the PPS and PPR into the PZPR, where he spread his wings. I remember Andrzej Werblan as the head of the science department of the Central Committee. During his rich career as a party activist, Werblan was also the secretary of the Central Committee and from 1980 a member of the Political Bureau, i.e. the strict leadership of the PZPR. He also served as Bolesław Bierut's secretary.
This text began with the observation that every person has some idea of how they would like to be remembered. I – as a journalist who saw many events in his life and described them in such a way that he helped his listeners, viewers or readers to read their true meaning. How does Andrzej Werblan want to be remembered? He wants to be remembered as a historian, not as an apparatchik.
Without a doubt, Werblan is impressively astute. I do not know of any historical study in which Werblan would be placed among such outstanding PPS politicians as Motyka, Rapacki, Reczek or Drobner, but when he himself refers to his PPS lineage, no one questions it, just in case.
He was excellent at predicting the course of events, and he accurately assessed which political direction would prevail. I was convinced of this by Werblan's famous article published in the “Miesięcznik Literacki” in the March era. It was titled “A Contribution to the Genesis of the Conflict” and was essentially a scientific-historical justification for the anti-Semitic purge in the Party.
Werblan certainly knew how to risk a good reputation if he thought that his colleagues could be left out in the cold. The volume “Truth and Realism” provides many examples of such an attitude. For example, from the cited volume I learn that he was a political patron of Mieczysław Rakowski. I do not rule out that my memory fails me, but from the two years of work at “Polityka” I do not recall Werblan visiting the editorial office, whereas at “Kultura” Werblan visited my boss Janusz Wilhelmi regularly and – I believe – saw in him an intelligent student of a course in political cynicism. Wilhelmi's name does not even appear in the personal index of “Truth and Realism”. There are, however, numerous pictures in which Andrzej Werblan chats with Jacek Kuroń.
I have doubts about Andrzej Werblan's method of historical writing, presenting it in the guise of scientific objectivity. Writing about the motives behind the actions of people in power, of which he himself was a part, Werblan states that the most common “motive for their actions was (…) the vision of the public good, not private interest”. This is in contradiction to common experience, but also to the opinion of historians, for whom the thoughts of Werblan and his late admirers have only contemptuous terms: “stupidity” and “indecency”. And all because Antoni Dudek dared to say that the Polish People's Republic, as Andrzej Friszke reminded us in his delightfully reliable work “Poland. The fate of the state and nation 1939 – 1989”, represented a “totalitarian tendency”.
I understand the need and admire the skill with which Andrzej Werblan builds the legend of a hidden liberal. The legend of a lover of truth, offered, with sincere regret, on the altar of realism, in whose name one has to lie from time to time.
I also sometimes dream that I am jumping like Duplantis.
Opinions expressed in columns for tvn24.pl do not constitute the editorial position.
Maciej Wierzyński – TV journalist, publicist. After the introduction of martial law, he was dismissed from TVP. In 1984, he emigrated to USA. He was a scholarship holder at Stanford University and Penn State University. He founded the first multi-hour Polish language channel Polvision on the cable television “Group W” in the USA. In 1992-2000 he was the head of the Polish Section of the Voice of America in Washington. Since 2000 he has been the editor-in-chief of the New York “Nowy Dziennik”. Since 2005 he has been associated with TVN24.
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