Olive Senior - PEN International

Walerian Domanski
Smoke Factories
WORDS ... WALERIAN DOMANSKI 53
In 1955, I sat on the Regional Party Committee of the city of Kielce, as First Secretary
for Economic Affairs. That summer was a hot one; the sky seemed aglow at all
times. One day, my assistant informed me that the Secretariat of the Party Central
Committee in Warsaw was convening an urgent conference, and that my presence
would be required: I had only twelve hours until it began. I immediately informed
my wife and sent for my driver, and for the rest of the day attended only to the
most urgent problems on my desk.
I arrived in Warsaw the following day, and checked into a room that had been
reserved for me at the hotel where the Central Committee meeting was to take
place. It had also been arranged that meals would be served in a special canteen.
I met a few old friends who were also in attendance. We settled down at 10am
for the beginning of the conference, which was led by Jakub Berman, a highranking
member of the Polish Politburo who was known to have Stalin’s trust.
He began the conference in typical fashion – but the topic of our meeting, it turned
out, was not so typical.
‘Comrades,’ Berman began, ‘I am very pleased to welcome you all. The theme
of this conference is the prevention of unemployment.’
Now, with the great achievement of communism came, supposedly, full
employment. In communist Poland we could not refer to the ‘unemployed’, for in
fact no one could be unemployed. Berman emphasised that we could not allow this
chief principle of communism to be disrespected.
Yet Polish production had shown a dangerous tendency to slow down, for
various reasons – sites throughout the country had been informing us that the lack
of materials and orders from abroad were preventing them from having anything
to produce. Our trading partners, including the Soviet Union, China and other
communist countries, were experiencing economic difficulties of their own, and
cutting off orders, especially for consumer goods. We had full order books only for
coal, steel, sulphur, freight cars, ships and military equipment. (The Soviet Union
and China, evidently, were not slowing down defence spending.)
The time had come, Berman exhorted us, to take drastic measures to maintain
full employment. First we considered a transfer of workers from industry to
agriculture, but agriculture was already overstaffed. We wondered if perhaps
sending our workers to foreign countries on international contracts was the
answer, but this idea was rejected as too risky, as workers there might either be
recruited by Western intelligence services or defect entirely. Our Soviet comrades
were also very likely to protest such a notion.
No, we comrades concluded, the only way to solve this problem was to build