VATICAN II AND POLAND 159into a transnational tug of war; Polish prelates and Communists
alike drew in third parties from around the world.
The anti-Marian memo commissioned and promoted by the
secret police can be seen as the immediate impetus for the fury
unleased by Wyszyński during the Affaire PAX. The primate’s de-
nunciation of Catholic fellow travelers can, in turn, be seen as
the motivation for the PZPR’s withdrawal of Communist press
from the bishops’ briefings. This was Polish politics relocated to
a Roman playground, where the field of play between the episco-
pate and the party was far more level than in Poland.
Unlike other Iron Curtain countries with substantial Catholic
populations, Communist Poland also sported a substantial civic
space for concessioned groups of lay activists. Of the three sig-
nificant movements in place during Vatican II, two were little
more than puppets of the PZPR: PAX and a splinter group called
the Christian Social Association (Chrześcijańskie Stowarzyszenie
Społeczne, ChSS).98 Meanwhile, the ZNAK movement created in
the wake of Gomułka’s return to power in 1956 pursued a genu-
inely independent agenda. Its leader, Jerzy Zawieyski, was not
only president of the Warsaw Catholic Intelligentsia Club, but an
MP and a member of the elite State Council of the People’s Re-
public of Poland.99
Zawieyski was both a Catholic and a socialist.100 He had known
Gomułka since the 1930s. On the cusp of the Second World War, he
experienced a spiritual awakening. While in hiding during the Nazi
occupation, he became friends with Stefan Wyszyński, not yet
even a bishop. A playwright and poet by vocation who had refused
all commissions during Poland’s Stalinist era, Zawieyski nonethe-
- Friszke, Oaza na Kopernika: Klub Inteligencji Katolickiej 1956–1989 (Warsaw:
Biblioteka WIĘZI, 1997), 34–54. - On Zawieyski, see Marta Korczyńska, Jerzy Zawieyski: Biografia humanistyc-
zna 1902–1969 (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek, 2011). - Zawieyski explained his attempts at reconciling Catholicism and commu-
nism in Zawieyski, Droga katechumena (Warsaw: Biblioteka WIĘZI, 1971).