Polish Students Reject Censorship and Repression, 1968

In early 1968, the Polish
National Theater in Warsaw decided to stage a production of “Dziady,” a classic
Polish play by the revered 19th century writer Adam Modzelewski. The
production’s director, Kazmierz Dejmek, choose to highlight the text’s
connection to early Christianity as well as the story of Poland’s struggle for
liberation. Although the communist government rejected religion, no pundits
viewed the play’s content as an exceptional departure from the guidelines of
the Central
Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR), the governing party of
Poland.

After the debut of Dejmek’s
production in early January, the PZPR announced that 30 January 1968 would be
the show’s final night by order of the police. Unlike other acts of censorship,
which usually happened with no prior warning or explanation, the government
leaked the order to censor “Dziady” to the public two weeks in advance of 30
January.

On 30 January 1968, three
hundred students from the University of Warsaw and the National Theater School
marched to the National Theater, where Dejmek’s final production had just
finished. The demonstration continued as students marched to the statue of Adam
Modzelewski, the playwright of “Dziady,” and laid flowers at the base of the
monument. In the following days, students circulated a petition protesting the
PZPR’s censorship at the University of Warsaw.

On 3 February 1968, the PZPR’s
Department of Science and Education referred to the demonstration of 30 January
in a telegram sent to the fourteen Provincial Committees in Poland, asking that
Provincial authorities take action if student dissent began in their province.

On 8 March 1968, several
hundred University of Warsaw students marched to their rector’s office shouting
“No studies without freedom.” As they proceeded to march through campus, five
hundred members of the Worker’s Militia (the state’s special police force)
arrived and asked to speak to the student demonstrators. Soon after, they used
clubs to disperse the demonstration – two hundred police officers who had
gathered nearby arrested students attempting to flee.

The following day, 9 March,
twenty thousand students marched through the center of Warsaw in response to
the militia’s repression - police officers beat the marching students with
clubs.

On the same day, the heads
of the PZCR Science and Education Department sent a telegram to the Provincial
Committees recounting the previous day’s protests and stating that police would
prevent any future protests by punishing and expelling students who initiated
the demonstrations. The telegram also threatened to discipline faculty who had
supported the student dissidents. The propaganda of PZPR, which appeared on campuses
in Warsaw, Lublin, and Jagiellonian University on 9 March, characterized the
protests as the result of Jewish outside agitators. The same day police
arrested Adam Michnik, a Jewish student and well-known dissident leader.

The next day, 10 March 1968,
students again assembled to protest the closing of “Dziady” and to express
their outrage at the invasion of their campuses by the police and the Worker’s
Militia, and the arrests of their peers. Students at the Warsaw Polytechnic
School marched through the streets, condemning the “Gestapo” of the Ministry of
the Interior and throwing rocks at the police who responded with tear gas
before cordoning off the streets and clubbing the students. Meanwhile at the
University of Warsaw, police attacked students demonstrating by the church where
the heart of composer Frédéric Chopin was buried.

On 11 March 1968, thousands
of students protested in Warsaw, Gdansk, Cracow, Poznan, Wroclaw, Gliwice, and
Lodz, some of whom attempted to stage sit-ins and boycotts on campus. In
addition to protesting censorship, students called for freedom of the press and
denounced the state-controlled media. Police, some of whom used water cannons
and tear gas, attacked almost all demonstrations.

In Warsaw, thousands of
students marched to the Polish Community Party headquarters and clashed with
police for eight hours in the streets – the officers clubbed and arrested
demonstrators. When additional officers arrived to Warsaw campuses, students
yelled “Gestapo!” Later in the day Warsaw students formed a three-person
committee to serve as a representative body for the protesters.

In Lublin a thousand
students and supporters gathered on campus chanting “Help Warsaw” and “Down
with censorship.” In Gliwice nearly two hundred students gathered on the
Silesian Polytechnic campus to sing the national anthem and the “Internationale,”
a famous anthem of socialist revolutions. The police attempted to disperse the
crowd without force and later arrested 43 of the most active protesters as the
demonstration ended.

In Lodz students circulated petitions
demanding that police stop arresting student protesters and that the government
expand freedom of the press. A thousand students joined a march through campus
and declared a three-day sit-in.

The PZPR cut the phone lines
on the Lodz campus to isolate protesters from each other although students
still managed to form a delegation to represent the protesters’ demands.

By 12 March 1968, the
student protest movement had engulfed all of Poland’s major academic campuses:
Warsaw, Gdansk, Cracow, Poznan, Wroclaw, and Lodz. The PZPR began to identify
Jewish students as leaders of protests and to target them for arrest during
demonstrations.

Students distributed fliers
in Cracow, Prezemysl, and Siedlice that called for a protest on 13 March in
solidarity with Warsaw students. At Gdansk Polytechnic, students sent delegates
to places of work to explain their demands to workers. The PZPR sent 800 police
officers to Cracow, 130 to Gdansk, and 80 to Poznan.

Frequent street
demonstrations occurred over the next three days and police attacked and
arrested students at each one. Cracow and Poznan students demonstrated on 13
March. Students at Gdansk Polytechnic rallied on 14 March and voted to hold a
joint demonstration with workers the following day. On 15 March students in
Gdansk, Katowice, Legnica, and Wroclaw held rallies, and two days later several
hundred secondary school students in Radom demonstrated, resulting in 41
arrests.

Students at Cracow also formed
an inter-university committee to represent the protesters on 13 March. They began
a six-day strike on 14 March, which led to a boycott of classes until 20 March.
Students at Wroclaw also began two-day strike on 14 March, occupying the campus
until 16 March. On 16 March several dozen people departed Cracow en route to
Warsaw in hopes of supporting the student leaders at Warsaw University - 50
were detained on the way.

On 19 March 1968, Community
Party General Secretary Wladyslaw gave a speech publicly rejecting any chance
of negotiation between students and PZPR.

At Lodz University, students
and some administrators held a strike from 21 March to 22 March. Strikes also
occurred on three Warsaw campuses from 21 March to 23 March.

In response, the Ministry of
the Interior arrested the organizers of the Warsaw Polytechnic strike and the
members of the Warsaw University Student Committee. Between the beginning of
the mass protests on 8 March and 21 March, 2,180 Poles were arrested for
participation in demonstrations, including 525 students. Although the PZPR
hoped to pit the Worker’s Militia against the students, the arrest records
reveal that many workers in the Provinces were disciplined for distributing
fliers and protesting in support of the students. During the same period 769
blue-collar workers and 288 white-collar workers were arrested. 825 of the
arrestees were released within 48 hours of their detainment.

On 22 March administrators
at Wroclaw Polytechnic expelled 1553 students from involvement in the movement.

On March 25, students from
Wroclaw, Warsaw, Lublin, Lodz, Cracow, Gliwice, Poznan, Torun, and Szczecin
held a meeting in an attempt to coordinate actions. The Ministry of the
Interior received information on the meeting and reported that students
discussed reaching out to Polish workers to build support for their demands.

On March 28 police arrested
twenty-two more Warsaw students, 15 of whom were members of the university-wide
committee. By the end of March almost students who had participated in the
March 25 planning meeting were in prison.

Some Polish citizens and
secondary school students living in the provinces outside the major academic
centers supported the students and secretly distributed sympathetic fliers by
scattering them in public places or placing them in mailboxes. Three hundred
such fliers were distributed in Jelenia Gora on 31 March – police later
arrested a secondary school student who confessed to making the fliers that
Jelenia had distributed.

In early April students at
Wroclaw campuses organized a cafeteria boycott.  Schools reported that they only served ten to thirty percent
of the usual numbers of meals during the boycott. At the same time Warsaw
students called for a boycott of the state-controlled press, where students refused
to watch state television or listen to the state’s radio from 5 April to 10
April.

Police seized 153
pro-student fliers in Bytom on 8 April. By 6 April, the total number of arrests
since 8 March had increased to 2,725, including 641 students, 937 blue-collar
workers, and 272 white-collar workers.

Several campuses called for
a major demonstrations and strikes to occur on 22 April, and students
distributed fliers for the action in the preceding days.

To preempt the strike, the
Ministry of the Interior arrested several dozen students organizers at Warsaw,
Cracow, and Wroclaw. The planned demonstrations and strikes did not occur on 22
April.

Students
hoped to rally on May Day but continuing arrests, investigations, and threats
hampered the dissidents. Police seized 300 pro-student fliers in Mragowo in
late April, and another 500 anti-PZPR fliers in Milsko on 30 April.

On
1 May 1968, a hundred students from Wroclaw Polytechnic rallied and dropped a
banner emblazoned with: "The arrested are among us," "The truth
is on our side," "We demand that the students be freed." Without
using force the police persuaded the students to remove the banners and
disperse. In Czechoslovakia, May Day demonstrators, including Czech students
and citizens, marched to the Polish embassy to protest Poland’s repression of
the students. The Czech demonstrators also demanded that the Polish PZPR end
its persecution of Jews.

The
repercussions of the PZPR’s heavy repression continued in the years following
the mass demonstrations. Between March 1968 and 28 February 1969, prosecutors
sent 96 arrestees, including 91 students, to be tried in court – 80 out of the
total 96 were found guilty and sentenced, of which 33 received prison terms.
Soon after, 22 were released which left 9 students – all members of the student
dissident leadership – still in prison by 28 February 1969.