Cenzura i krytyka, krytyka i cenzura. Uwagi o systemie komunikacji literackiej w pierwszych latach powojennych

Abstract

The author of this article attempts to describe the functions and tasks of the Main Office for Control seen from the perspective of the entire system of literary and social communication which was implemented in Poland after 1945 and which, in this view, was in force at the turn of the 19405 and 1950s. A thesis of the article is that tasks assigned to censors go far beyond the immediate control of the media or artistic products, while their overarching goal is to shape social behaviour and impulses. They also serve reproducing in advance planned events and situations which constitute elements of everyday life and form the entire model of social communication. What largely (from a certain point of view, even more than largely) contributed to the shape of this model was literary criticism which, in turn, became resemblant in its practices to censorship’s practices. This is how the totalitarian power produced an exceptional system of communication and control in which the two mutually legitimizing institutions: censorship and criticism - criticism and censorship were used to satisfy its immediate objectives. Their importance and role were not suggested by the rank of the institution nor its character but by dynamic changes taking place in social and political life of post-war Poland. To confirm those theses, selected literary events (their progress) from the turn of the 1940s and 1950s have been analysed together with examples of works and their authors involved in the described model of literary communication.