New phenomena in contemporary Polish prose

In the creative circles of Poland, two completely contradictory phenomena emerged after the 20th Congress of the CPSU and the 8th Plenum of the Polish United Workers' Party. One was expressed in a criticism of dogmatism and in the revelation to writers of new creative socialist perspectives. On the other hand, however, under the influence of sometimes unprincipled criticism, a process of ideological regression took place in some circles. In the midst of the criticism, revisionist voices spoke out, placing political issues at the center of their attacks: the attitude of the authorities towards the masses, the role of the party in society, the importance of socialist ideology in practical state and public life. Even individual authors came to the conclusion that in order to avoid mistakes, one must act without relying on any ideology, on the basis of a technologically practical attitude towards social issues. These revisionist views found their most vivid expression in Leszek Kolakowski's essay "The Priest and the Fool", in which the author tries to prove that man is faced with only one basic alternative: to adopt the attitude towards life of a priest or a fool. And Kolakowski proved all the advantages of the fool's attitude. All kinds of systems and ideologies limited freedom and conscience with dogmas, stiffened the mind - the only expressor of human dignity. The main mistake in the past was to put history in the role of the former god, to replace facts with assessments, while only the mind, unconstrained by any systems and dogmas, ready to mock the accepted order, could judge the facts. For Kolakowski, the "fool's attitude" meant a technological attitude towards problems, it was a revisionist transition to the positions of bourgeois neopositivism. I will dwell in detail on this "revelation" of revisionism, to understand the essence of the revisionist manifestations in Poland during the years 1956-57 and so that we can also grasp those positive phenomena that have been observed in Polish cultural life for the past three years.