CONVERSATIONS IN WARSAW
273
reflects itself in the arbitrary shifts of policy in these different areas.
In the economic field, some of the tough old Stalinist elements have
returned. But with these elements gaining in one section of
the party, those on the ideological commission are afraid of being
thought too "soft," so they too begin to .talk tough. This is why they
propose having compulsory courses in Marxism-Leninism in the
university, and have begun to change the quotas in order to reduce
the number of students who come from old middle-class families."
There is a new joke now, he added wryly. "Next year the Commu–
nist Party is going to issue a new calendar, with ten months in the
year. No more September and no more October."
To dinner with Q., perhaps the most engaging and extra–
ordinary of all the very likable people I met in Warsaw. He was
young-in his mid-thirties-and chunky, with a broad, open face
and high cheekbones, and sandy hair that kept falling down across
I
his eyes. An infectious smile animated his face when he talked. He
reminded me vividly of that remarkable actor Zgniebaw Cybulski,
in the Polish film
Ashes and Diamonds.
1
Q.,
I
knew,
had taken an
active role in the insurrection, and led a street unit in the fighting.
1.
This film, directed by Wajda, which I had seen the previous summer in
London, was itself the most direct illustration of the meaning of October.
The action of the film takes place within the span of one day, the day
the Germans finally surrendered. The protagonists, sympathetically por–
trayed, are members of an underground unit of the Polish Home Army
under orders to shoot the Secretary of the district Communist Party, who
is coming to take over the city. In an earlier film of Wajda's,
A GenerlV
tion,
the Polish Home Army underground forces are portrayed as male–
volent bourgeois who, though unequivocally anti-German, are more fear–
ful of the Polish workers. In
Ashes and Diamonds,
the fighters in the
Home Army and the party officials are all sympathetic figures and their
motives are equally patriotic, while the villains are the careerists, bour–
geois
and
Communist, who are interested only in themselves. In onc
scene, a member of the Home Army terrorist unit is being interrogated
by a Communist secret-police official who scornfully asks the captive,
"And what were you doing during the war?" The boy replies fiercely,
"Shooting Germans." The Communist policeman then shouts, "And
now you are shooting Poles?" To which the boy retorts, "And what are
you doing, shooting sparrows?" The policeman remains silent. The pic–
ture seems to be saying, Let the past be forgotten, let us recognize that
there are honest men as well as crooks on both sides.
