a ritual. They spoke about their families more or less the way the first Christians spoke about the pagans.’
‘So the definition of communism as the New Faith is not just a metaphor?’
‘It is literal. The point of having the young activists make frank confessions was to cut them off from the past, and to emphasize that they were aware of the difference between the old and new times. Of course, some of them did it for their careers, but not Kapuściński. He was sincere, genuine in his faith at the time, just as later on he was able to change his views under the pressure of reality.’
Some cars stop outside a large barracks decorated with flags and portraits of the hero workers. Lads in SP uniforms and red ties jump out [the SP was the ‘Service for Poland’, a youth organization connected to the Party and the army]. In a short while, the first district ZMP conference at Nowa Huta will begin. At it, the young people of Nowa Huta will talk about their successes, analyse their mistakes and shortcomings, share experiences and jointly draw conclusions from them, then elect the new Board.10
Such articles – reports from meetings and rallies attended by youth and Party activists – by Kapuściński perfectly illustrate the mood of the ZMP revolution of the 1940s and 1950s. Continuing in the same vein, he writes:
There is huge enthusiasm in the hall. The welcome speech . . . is interrupted by warm applause and cheers. The words ‘Nowa Huta – Peace – Stalin – Bierut – ZMP’ are chanted non-stop . . .
Long live the PZPR and its leader, Comrade Bierut.
Long live the Leader of the World Camp for Progress and Peace, the great friend of youth, Joseph Stalin . . .
All the delegates join in with the applause and for a long time the hall roars with clapping and enthusiastic cries of ‘Long may they live’.11
As a mature writer, Ryszard Kapuściński has a sense of déjà vu when, thousands of miles from Poland and a quarter century later, he sees similar scenes:
Now I visited the committee headquarters. Committees – that’s what they called the organs of the new power. Unshaven men were sitting around tables in cramped, littered rooms . . . What should we do? Do you know what to do? Me? Not me. Maybe you know? Are you talking to me? I’d go whole hog. But how? How do you go whole hog? Ah, yes, that’s the problem. Everyone agrees: That is indeed a problem worth discussing. Cigarette smoke clouds the stuffy rooms. There are some good speeches, some not-so-good, a few downright brilliant. After a truly good speech, everyone feels satisfied; they have taken part in something that was a genuine success.12
Before the farcical elections of 1952, Kapuściński runs about town with Andrzej Wyrobisz, a friend from high school, now also in the history faculty; together they encourage people to get out and vote. The agitation is pointless, because everyone knows who will win and that there is no real choice. However, the authorities want to boast of a 99 percent turn-out. The fervent ZMP members are helping them.
‘Rysiek yelled so enthusiastically that he lost his voice,’ says Professor Wyrobisz with a smile.
He really did know what it meant to go the whole way.
In the autobiographical section of Travels with Herodotus, in which he writes about this period in his life, Kapuściński says not a word about his ZMP activities, or his later ones in the Party.
8
Lapidarium 2: Lance Corporal Kapuściński
‘He was a pretty annoying career NCO.’
At military training for Warsaw University students, history of art student Krzysztof Teodor Toeplitz, many years later one of Poland’s best-known columnists, gets to know history student Kapuściński. They meet at military science lectures as well as every Saturday at exercises in drill, crawling, and shooting.
‘Rysiek was our star student. He cared about physical fitness, in spite of having a rather small physique. This fitness later helped him survive tough conditions in Africa, when he was working as a Polish Press Agency correspondent. Even before cadet camp, which took place towards the end of our training, they promoted Rysiek to lance corporal, and Lance Corporal Kapuściński gave us common privates a really hard time. Running harder, more press-ups . . . Most of us took military studies with a pinch of salt, but Rysiek took it deadly seriously.’
9
On the Construction Site of Socialism, Continued
In 1952 Kapuściński writes an application requesting to be ‘admitted as a candidate for the Polish United Worker’s Party’.
It is my greatest need and desire to join the ranks of our beloved Party. This necessity is on a par with my greatest aspiration, which is to serve the cause of our Party with all my strength and my entire being. Throughout my life, ever since I understood to whom I should devote it, I have felt how every victory brings me closer to the Party, and how every defeat or mistake demands that I make an even greater effort not to turn back on the road I have taken – the road to the Party.
Being admitted as a candidate for our Party will be a very great reward and honour for me, and also a very high obligation. I want even more and even better to live the Party life, to work and fight to fulfil the tasks set by the Party for the best Party comrades. I pledge to safeguard the recommendations which Comrade Stalin has vowed to protect and fortify in the name of all ‘people of a special cut’.
My guiding light shall be total dedication to becoming worthy of that title, and to remaining so for the rest of my life.1
On the next few pages of his application to join the Party, Kapuściński provides a self-critical report, saying that the young communist in him did not awaken quickly enough: ‘My world outlook was still burdened by remnants of petty bourgeois ideology, there were many things I did not understand, and I did not feel the need to get involved.’
Among his mentors at this time he mentions Wiktor Woroszylski, a young socialist-realist poet and the editor of the culture section of the ZMP newspaper Sztandar Młodych, as well as several other poets and writers, above all Władysław Broniewski. (Someone later tells me that as president of the Young Writers’ Circle affiliated with the Polish Writers’ Union, Kapuściński made sure that the notoriously drunken Broniewski drank a bit less.)
In support of his application, Bronisław Geremek, Kapuściński’s fellow student in the year above, writes him a letter of recommendation: ‘I have known Comrade Ryszard Kapuściński since October 1951 from work within the ZMP organization at our college.’ As well as praising his ‘dedication and devotion, youthful enthusiasm and eagerness, militant attitude’, and also his ‘political sophistication’ and ‘exemplary moral attitude’, Geremek informs the Party of the candidate’s ‘serious mistakes and shortcomings’:
1) failure to understand the role of the Party organization within the faculty, an inappropriate, ill-considered attitude to his Party comrades in Year One,
2) an immature attitude to his studies, continuing from the previous year, which recently Comrade Kapuściński has managed to overcome, as evidenced by his good results in the summer session,
3) a not fully collective style for his work in managing the faculty organization, originating mainly from a lack of confidence in people and in the collective,
4) reluctance to accept criticism, and
