George Orwell and Communist Poland

Krystyna Wieszczek holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Southampton, UK. She is currently an English tutor at the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of Bologna, Italy, and Assistant Professor in English at the Ignatianum Academy in Krakow, Poland. She has just been awarded the Horizon Europe’s Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA) to research the potential effects of literary reading on empowerment at Columbia University, New York, and the University of Verona.

Introduction

Chapter 1 Émigré Reception – Orwell a Friend and Political Ally

The Rare British Friend Speaks up for the Polish Cause

Orwell a Friend and Political Ally

Poland in Orwell’s Writing

Censorship Troubles

Orwell’s ‘Omissions’

Polish Friends Reciprocate

Polish Friends Speak up for Orwell

Polish Émigré Media and Orwell Good for All

How Appropriate for Us: Animal Farm in Polish

Animal Farm to Save the World with a Little Help from Polish Friends

Not Only Animal Farm: An Overlooked Would-Be Essay Collection in Polish

The Most Poignant Book of Our Times: Echoes of Nineteen Eighty-Four

Dead but Much Alive: Orwell’s Afterlife among the Polish Diaspora

Polish Exiles Mourn the Author’s Death

Another Paris-London Collaboration: Nineteen Eighty-Four in Polish

A Weapon in Unorthodox Cold War Offensives

Orwell Defies Détente

The Orwell Year 1984 Commemorated

Chapter 2 Official Reception – Orwell an Enemy

Orwell and the Communist Censorship System

Banned Yet Present – Smuggled, Disguised, Misread

Innocent and Anonymous

Socialist Realism versus a Shadowy Enemy of Humankind

The 1956 Thaw Attempts to Tame the Foe

The Nemesis Frozen for Decades

But Lurking in Libraries

Orwell’s Texts

Foreign Sources on Orwell

Traces of Presence in Homegrown Books

But Evoked in Official Culture

The 1980s and Orwell Back in Sight

Reinscribed Books

Back in the Fourth Estate under Censor’s Keeping

The Orwell Year Relief of Alliance Transmutations

Affable Anonymous Aspidistra for the Relentless Crisis

Aspidistra Is Not the Orwell; or, a Death Foretold

Chapter 3 Clandestine Reception – Orwell a Liberator

Orwell Ammunition

Before the Paper Revolution

Orwell in Diaries, Letters and Other Writing

A Homo Sovieticus Antidote

After the Paper Revolution

Top of the Charts

Orwell Published Underground

The Solidarity Carnival

Big Brother’s Return: Martial Law

The Orwell Year Looming

Life after 1984

Orwell Good for All

Notes

Selected Thematic Bibliography

Letters, Diaries and Memoirs

Letters: Orwell and Jeleńska; Giedroyc and Mieroszewski, Świderska and Weintraub

Other Letters, Diaries and Memoirs

Unpublished

Published

Polish Communist Records

Unpublished

Published

Polish Émigré and British Records

Interviews

Other Communication

Broadcasts

Artefacts and Transformations

Publications of Orwell’s Works

Émigré

Official

Clandestine

Non-Polish and Polish Post-1989

Polish Publications Concerning Orwell from the Period

Émigré

Official

Clandestine

Secondary Sources

Orwell Criticism and References

Translation and Reception

Censorship

Émigrés and Diaspora

Official Culture in Poland

Clandestine Printing and Second Circulation

Reference Works

Literature

Archives Consulted

Appendices

Appendix A Orwell’s response to Wiadomości’s survey on Joseph Conrad (1949)

Appendix B List of Orwell’s Polish clandestine book editions (1976–1989)

Appendix C List of selected Polish translations of Orwell’s essays and shorter pieces by chronology