1956 is a key date in Europe's history. The politically and ideologically divided continent seemed to have been drifting in opposite directions ever since Yalta. The cold war climate was strengthening the actual divisions. Stalin's death in March, 1953, did not bring any particular changes, although in culture it brought a slow and timid break with Socialist Realism patterns.
Ilya Ehrenburg's book The Thaw, published in Moscow, became a symbolic beginning of new trends and tendencies. In Hungary, writers contribute to the development of a new, more liberal policy course chosen by Imre Nagy. In Poland, new aspirations and new generations are heard among intellectuals and artists. In early 1955, Andrzej Wajda makes a film debut with "A Generation". A few months later, at the Exhibition of Young Visual Arts AGAINST WAR, AGAINST FASCISM, held at Warsaw's Arsenal as a side event of the World Festival of Youth and Students, work breaking away from Socialist Realism is exhibited for the first time. Among the exhibited pieces were
Marek Oberlander's BRANDED ("Napiętnowani"), Przemyslaw Brykalski's NUDE ("Akt"), Waldemar Cwenarski's RAVAGES of WAR ("Pozoga"), Hilary Krzysztofiak's JAW ("Szczeka"), and
Andrzej Wroblewski's MOTHERS ("Matki").
The 1956 events in Hungary and Poland aroused keen interest in many European countries. For the first time, with such force, many prominent intellectuals and artists expressed their solidarity with societies living under communism. It is for this reason that the
Adam Mickiewicz Institute, supported by the
Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, undertook the implementation of a project "THE YEAR 1956", whose aim is to recall western reactions and opinions testifying to a revived feeling of European community, and to present the cultural aspects of the "Thaw" period.
For the European community is, first and foremost, a community of culture. All too often, we forget that culture played a unique role in the final disintegration of communism. 1956 is not only the year of Khrushchev's secret speech, the June events in Poznan and the bloody crushing of the Hungarian uprising. Political changes, especially in Poland, were followed by new phenomena in culture (film, literature, visual arts, music) which referred to general European tendencies, and which would determine the Polish cultural scene for decades to come...1956 is the year of the first Jazz Festival in Sopot, which brought to light
Krzysztof Komeda's musical genius, and which in 1958 spontaneously transformed itself into
JAZZ JAMBOREE. It is the year of Warsaw's first
INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC "WARSAW AUTUMN". It is the year of literary debuts of many writers and poets ("inter alia",
Marek Hlasko, Miron Bialoszewski,
Zbigniew Herbert, Jerzy Harasymowicz,
Julia Hartwig, Tadeusz Nowak and Stanislaw Grochowiak). It is the return to Poland of artists - émigrés since the end of WWII ("inter alia", Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, Melchior Wankowicz, Stanislaw Cat-Mackiewicz). We want to recall this in order to better understand the culture dimension of the events of 1956.