446 POLSKA LUDOWA
in differing forms and in different degrees did not exist in every part of the world.
But an important distinction has to be made. Whereas in most countries it is gen-
erally assumed that all information and expression of opinion is free and accessi-
ble except in those areas such as Defence or Obscenity where it is specifically
proscribed, under the Soviet system of pre-emptive Censorship (Cenzura prewen-
cyjna) the opposite assumption applied, where nothing was free and accessible
except that which was specifically prescribed. Nothing was supposed to be known
or published without the prior approval of the appropriate state authorities. In
Poland, therefore, as in the Soviet Bloc as a whole, the state sought not merely to
manipulate information but actually to manufacture it, to process it, and to clas-
sify it from a position of monopolistic control. The state used Censorship not only
as an instrument of negative suppression but also and in particular as a means of
active propagation. Although the self-defeating practice of falsifying government
statistics appeared to have been curtailed since 1956, and although the Polish cen-
sors now claimed to exercise their powers in a relatively tolerant manner, it was a
simple fact that the vast machinery of information control had never been dis-
mantled. On the contrary, it was constantly expanding, and was constantly
refining its techniques. From its headquarters in Warsaw, the Main Office for the
Control of Press, Publications, and Public Spectacles (GUKPPiW) ran an elaborate
network of local branches. Its officers, who were permanently employed on the
premises of all major organizations and concerns, regulated the activities of all the
media, all news and translation agencies, all publishing houses, all printing-shops,
all concerts, theatres, cinemas, and exhibitions, and all other means of communi-
cation. Its approval, in the form of an authorized certificate, was required for the
appearance not just of newspapers or television programmes but even of private
items such as wedding invitations or funeral notices. Its instructions, which filled
hundreds of pages every single week, divided information into separate categories,
for foreign consumption, for mass consumption at home, for restricted circula-
tion, for official discretion, and for suppression. Its explicit priorities concentrated
on the unblemished reputation of the USSR and of the Polish Party leaders, and on
sensitive subjects such as Foreign Policy, Religion and Ideology, and Military
Affairs. Its targets for regular suppression started with criticism of the USSR or of
the party-line of the day, all comparisons between the Soviet Union and Tsarist
Russia, all civil disasters, all shortcomings in industrial safety, all defects in Polish
export goods, all references to the superior economic and social standards of non-
communist countries;... and they end, significantly enough, with all information
regarding the existence of the Censorship. Here, if anywhere, was Orwell's vision
of the 'Ministry of Truth'. Most seriously, the activities of the censors, although
performed in the name of the State, were responsible to no one except to the
Central Committee of the Party. The accuracy of any information which derived
from the organs of the People's Republic, including much of what follows, could
never be taken for granted. Contemporary analysts of the communist world had
to possess a critical sense no less sharp than that of historians who delve into the
mysteries of the Middle Ages.^43