Author: Robert Nowacki, source: original research, published: 2002-01-01

Ryszard Kapuściński first went abroad as a press correspondent in 1956, taking an opportunity that arose at Sztandar Młodych, where he was working. That fact is easy to find and establish. But how did it come about that a man still in his twenties was offered such an unusual assignment? What convinced the editors of Sztandar to trust this young reporter? What were the beginnings of the future Journalist of the Century?

The few existing accounts on this subject contradict one another. I decided to go back to primary sources and establish how it all started — to find and present Kapuściński’s debut. To that end I spent many hours in libraries going through newspapers from more than half a century ago. The text below is a chronological record of events up to 1956.

Ryszard Kapuściński was born on 4 March 1932 in Pinsk (today part of Belarus). His first journey began in September of that “memorable year,” from a village in the Lublin region — where he was on holiday — all the way back to his home town of Pinsk. Together with his mother, his sister, and a paralysed grandfather, they made their way home amid bombing aircraft. The next journey came during the war, in the opposite direction — from Pinsk to Warsaw. His mother sold everything they had in the house, hired a cart, and they set off toward Warsaw in search of his father.

After the war, young Kapuściński often set out with a friend to distant corners of the new state — to Wrocław, to Gdańsk. It was there that he first came close to death: he fell ill with paratyphoid fever.

Like many of his contemporaries, he was a passionate footballer. He had the great good fortune of training with Legia Warsaw under Kazimierz Górski himself. He also became junior vice-champion of Warsaw in boxing (bantamweight, for Polonia). In addition he wrote poetry — particularly when tired or dispirited after running about on the pitch — and sent his verses to various literary journals.

In 1950 Kapuściński sat his school-leaving examinations at the Stanisław Staszic secondary school in Warsaw. As he himself said of those years: “I learned less than average. I preferred running through the forest or kicking a ball to reading. I even went to my final exams with a crib sheet hidden under my UNRRA pullover — that was the fashion then. Sport genuinely fascinated me: football. The fact that I had written poems was a shock even to me. My Polish teacher followed the fate of those poems; he was the one who discovered that they had been printed here and there. The Ochota neighbourhood I knew best was not exactly conducive to intellectual dreams and speculation either. I was under-read.”

Ryszard Kapuściński made his debut at the age of seventeen (!) on 14 August 1949 in the Catholic weekly Dziś i Jutro, with poems entitled Writing at Speed and Healing. Shortly afterwards his poetry appeared in other leading literary journals of the time. On his eighteenth birthday the weekly Odrodzenie printed another of his poems, On the Matter of Commitments. Below are the texts of poems published in Odrodzenie in 1950.

Weekly Odrodzenie, No. 6, 5 February 1950

WINTER SCENES

PINK APPLES

Snow. White snow, like my mother’s hair. Snow. Thick snow, like the lines of my father’s face. Frost clings to every flake, to every grain of air. And suddenly… suddenly pink apples grew on the snow. I say it plainly, comrades: pink apples on the snow.

Pink apples — the joyful little faces of children. And children can have many names: Janek, Danka, Jadzia, Zdzisiek. Ordinary, simple names. They are the sons and daughters of miners from Zabrze — miners, the most beautiful victors. The world is white, like a peace dove carrying a scrap of red cloth in its beak — children hoisted the red flag on the mast with hands warm from trust.

Ryszard Kapuściński

Weekly Odrodzenie, No. 10, 5 March 1950

ON THE MATTER OF COMMITMENTS

Well, comrades — poets, let me say a few words too. The matter is important for us: even in verse the tortoise must be overtaken.

The tortoise — you know what that means. So even the critics should draw a tortoise when writing about poetry.

Let us not wrap things in the cotton wool of phrases; the matter is simple enough: poetry cannot be left trailing behind events.

We are far behind. But let us begin our pursuit behind the miners — you can guess what I mean. What would Mayakovsky say here?

It may seem strange to you: such a young “poet” already setting output norms in poetry.

I know: more than one person will take me to task, flash a lantern of talent. Not for fame does the lyre sing — I exchange it for the hum of work.

Examiners: Markiewka, Poręcki, Michałek, Markov. Examiners: the workers, with the Party at their head.

Ryszard Kapuściński

According to a biography of Kapuściński by Mariusz Szczygieł on the Gazeta Wyborcza website, the first of these poems, Pink Apples, sparked passionate political discussions at school.

“A discussion about poetry was organised at the secondary school, comparing poems by Gałczyński, Wierzyński, and Mayakovsky with those by two pupils: Ryszard Kapuściński and Andrzej Piotrowski. His rival sharply criticised his classmate’s poem: ‘Kapuściński does not strongly emphasise his political affiliation. That is the real flaw. The second flaw is Kapuściński’s use of a symbol that comes, as we know, from a completely different era — one that blurs the poem’s simplicity, creates an impression of insincerity, and avoids calling things by their proper name.’ What the author of Snow replied to this is not known; the discussion concluded with Piotrowski’s magnanimous observation: ‘Kapuściński is our classmate, and we ourselves will help him overcome his errors.’”

The young poet’s talent was quickly noticed and acknowledged. The journal of the Polish Writers’ Union, Twórczość, devoted several pages in November 1950 to Kapuściński’s poetry — a collection entitled The Road Leads Forward! It comprises a selection of poems very characteristic of those post-war years. Dedicated to ZMP tractor brigades, they describe the hard work of the socialist worker and farmer, the effort and joy of collective labour in cooperatives, the joy of shared harvests. A marvellous record of that period as seen through the eyes of a young, sensitive human being. Below are just two short extracts, from the poems Our Days and July Commitments.

Extract from the poem “Our Days”

Let the cooperative’s wide fields tremble from the roar of tractors, let the steel machines race, overcoming obstacles. We are able to plough stubbornly, with steadfast joy, to watch — not years from now, but already now — our harvests being hauled away.

Ryszard Kapuściński

Extract from the poem “July Commitments”

The tractor drivers sat down at the table. The warm food dissolved in the bowls. Duty called them to the meeting. They hurried. And there were many meetings.

They hurried, for none of us wishes to be said to be dawdling at the rear of events. And difficult matters were plentiful, but they knew: the ZMP would help and teach.

Ryszard Kapuściński

That same month Nowa Kultura published extracts from his Poem about Nowa Huta. It is a text written in a language so foreign today, yet so distinctive and unusual.

Shortly after finishing school he was found by editors of the newly founded daily Sztandar Młodych. Mariusz Szczygieł records that he was first taken on as a messenger. Wiktor Woroszylski, head of the culture section, sent him to collect statements from writers. It was thus that Kapuściński came to meet famous figures of Polish literature — Maria Dąbrowska, Zofia Nałkowska, Leopold Staff, and Julian Tuwim.

After a while Kapuściński began to travel around Poland as a fledgling journalist, still only eighteen. Not only that: that same year he went to Berlin for the World Festival of Youth and Students. After the Festival he stayed on, not returning home with the rest of the group. He had pleaded with his editor to be allowed to remain longer, accompanying on tour through the GDR the Song and Dance Ensemble from the secondary school in Płock. That was his first trip abroad as a journalist. On his return, however, a hard period began: he studied at Warsaw University, enrolling in 1951 in the Polish Philology Faculty before transferring to History.

At university he worked as a student assistant and was active in the Polish Youth Union (ZMP). Graduating, he returned to the Sztandar editorial board — now as an experienced reporter and special envoy, including to the World Festival of Youth and Students in Warsaw in the summer of 1955. His dispatches from the multi-day gathering of young people from across the world in defence of peace appeared frequently in the daily’s pages, as did his accounts of meetings of Polish delegates to the Festival in cities including Szczecin. His name was a regular presence in Sztandar, often on the front page.

At the end of August 1955 Adam Ważyk’s A Poem for Adults appeared, depicting the hopeless, sterile, and degrading life of the workers building Nowa Huta.

Extract from Adam Ważyk’s “A Poem for Adults”

From villages and small towns they travel by wagon to build a steelworks, conjure a city, dig a new Eldorado from the earth — a pioneer army, a gathered rabble, crowding into sheds, barracks, hostels, trudging and whistling through muddy streets…

The poem caused a shock. The Polish People’s Republic was, after all, a land of universal happiness. The Party declared the verse anti-humanist, anti-popular, anti-worker, and anti-Party. The entire press joined the campaign against A Poem for Adults.

The envoy of Sztandar, Ryszard Kapuściński, also arrived at Nowa Huta — at this youngest of districts, where the socialist workers’ paradise was being built. But what he saw with his own eyes was a shock, one that drove him to write the reportage that was to be a turning point in his journalistic life. Its title is telling: This Is Also the Truth about Nowa Huta. Just five years earlier, in his Poem about Nowa Huta, the young poet had celebrated the achievements of the builders of the new district, the new city, the new man. Now, richer in experience and with a changed sensibility, he could see more — details that undermined the whole. Below is the full text of this pivotal reportage.

This Is Also the Truth about Nowa Huta

Sztandar Młodych, No. 234, 30 September 1955

I

So you have arrived. You greet this city like a friend you had to leave for a long time. You walk streets that did not exist before, among houses utterly unknown to you; you pass people surprised that you do not remember them. And yet it is not such a distant past — the time when the first foundation was laid here, when the first flat was opened. Everything was first here then. People too. Today you can still meet them. Many have left, but how many familiar faces you will find! They have a home, a trade, a family, and they came with empty hands, with nothing. They have bound themselves to this soil. Władek says to me: “I’ve been here two years and for the life of me I would never leave.” No need to look for such people, to ask for addresses or names. They are everywhere. In their lives you can read the history of Nowa Huta. This community with the city contains enough warmth to remain lasting.

II

But within Nowa Huta, in its interior, there are disturbing and bad things. There are many such things. Too many. You observe them, you go deeper, you investigate — and questions without answers pile up, indignation grows, objection awakens. You call out: look at Nowa Huta carefully, more carefully! It will be an instructive lesson in wrongs, vileness, callousness, and deceit. People left to themselves, wounds healed by no one. That is the Nowa Huta you will also see.

III

Listen. Recently one 14-year-old girl infected an army of boys. When we spoke with her she recounted her exploits so vulgarly it turned the stomach. She is not alone. Not all are so young, but there are plenty. Go to the Mogiła wood, go to “Taiwan,” to “Kożedo” — names of the Piesza estate. They speak for themselves. In Nowa Huta people know the flat where in one room the mother takes money from men, while in the other the daughter makes up for their loss. That is not the only such flat. All these stories have moved from the street and the gateways into homes. It is harder to fight now — it has become more concealed, more hidden. But who besides the police concerns themselves with such things? Do you know what regulates moral norms here? Money. Literally! One comrade told me: “Morality is better when they have nothing to buy it with.” The remedy? An administrative directive! Not everything can be cured by administrative measures. And here too nothing works well. For bureaucracy here reaches the degree of barbarism. A woman living in a workers’ hostel is about to give birth. In that room there are six more girls. After three months she should return to work. She does not return: she works at Nowa Huta, several kilometres from the hostel, and she must feed her child four times a day. Yet they ask her to produce a certificate proving she is employed. Yes, but she cannot deliver it. Then the hostel manager comes, takes away the bedding, takes away everything that is not her property: the woman and her infant are left on bare boards. Now take several hundred young couples in Nowa Huta who have no flats. Try to imagine the thoughts of a girl expecting a child. It will not be hard. Do you know where young couples spend their nights here? In doorways or in ditches. Stefek S. always says to me: “I won’t get married, I refuse, because in these conditions I would have to have no respect for my wife.” Talk to the girls. There are those who will tell you: “Get married? When they won’t let us live together anyway, why make trouble for yourself? You have to get by somehow.” And yet these are fundamentally good, hard-working girls for whom giving up happiness does not come easily. This is how cynicism is born, this is how so much beauty is stripped from youth. But they are not born like this, they are not like this inside — it is we who cannot teach them anything, who cannot give them a helping hand. Do you think anyone here will decisively resolve this housing question? There was, it’s true, a meeting. One must wait a long time for results. I know: not everything can be done at once, but who agrees that his family life should depend on the senseless paragraphs of a hostel regulation? Whoever came up with the brilliant idea that married couples may be together in a hostel room only until 8 in the evening? Why was not even one hostel set aside for young couples?

Now look at the life of a young person here in Nowa Huta. He gets up in the morning and goes to work. He comes back at 3 o’clock. That is everything. At 3 his day ends. I walked through such hostels, looked into rooms: they sit. In fact, sitting is the only activity they perform: they sit. They do not even talk — what is there constantly to talk about? They could read — they are not used to it; they could sing — it disturbs the others; they could fight — they do not want to. They just sit. The more active ones wander aimlessly in the streets. For God’s sake, is there somewhere to go, something to fill half a day? There are plenty of bars. But some do not want to go there; others have no money. Apart from that, there is nothing. Common rooms, where they exist at all, are empty; two tiny cinemas (roughly 400 seats combined for 80,000 inhabitants); no swimming pool, no sports grounds — in a word, thoroughly dreary. And then some write soothing reports stating that such-and-such a number of meetings were held (according to instructions), while others spit with contempt on the rabble “howling” from boredom on December evenings.

But where are the third group — those who would tell the boys how to fight for their rights, how to fill their day, what to occupy themselves with, what to aim for?

My friend, we see only part of a person — only the moment in which he works. If he works well, we praise him: look here, a model to follow. If he works badly, we rebuke him. We have by now established some sort of norms of socialist morality in the workplace. That is a great achievement. But what do we do to cultivate such norms outside work? Who cares about a young man once he has left the factory gate? His party secretary? His branch chairman? The activists? If he behaves correctly — no one; if he misbehaves — the police. I know secretaries here in Nowa Huta who were held responsible for poor production figures. I know similarly placed ZMP chairs. They paid dearly — sometimes. But who is held responsible for the fact that people simply did not know how to live, and he did not help them, though that was his duty? They came from the countryside, bringing a petty village morality that had ceased to apply here. But we gave them no educator, no strict collective opinion, no living human tradition. How dare we turn our backs on these people, or fail to notice any of this?

People somehow lose their breath; their enthusiasm dims; the desire to fight runs out. Our people. Not the grumblers, the distrustful, the unconvinced — but those who led the way, accustomed to struggle, reliable. I know them; they fired my spirit; with them I felt stronger. Do you remember Kwiatkowski? A wonderful young man — young worker, eager for books, brave, level-headed. He could not bear all these dirty tricks; he criticised, was indignant, wrote. They found a way to deal with him: they did not give him a flat, even though his mother is ill and his wife is in the countryside. Let him stop criticising! You know Mikoś? He didn’t give up either — he kept demanding workers’ rights. They found a way to deal with him too: he was dismissed. The young man spent three months wandering without work. Let him stop criticising! And Jakuś — that unyielding, bold Jakuś? They cannot sack him; he is too well known. So they spread rumours that he is a shirker and a troublemaker. Not a bad method either. Let him stop criticising! Kwiatkowski said: “I’ve now been convinced it’s not worth fighting for anything.” You know where this is heading. People say openly here: “If only Comrade Dzerzhinsky were here!” That single remark says more than a thousand facts.

People watch, and people see much. They built this steelworks; they are its conscientious owners, caring about its good. A very fine thing. People are concerned about the assets. People understand that this is their steelworks. And now look: they say — worker, save every złoty. A worker builds, for example, a new housing block and saves złotys. He has built it up to the first floor; it sometimes happens that the design is changed and the building is partly demolished, walls are knocked out, and so on. The worker saved his złotys; the designer wasted thousands. Who is responsible? No one. Recently one of the open-hearth furnaces broke down. They say the loss is half a million. Who is responsible? No one — though everyone knows whose fault it is. And we say: worker, save every złoty. Costumes were made for the song-and-dance ensemble — reportedly costing a million and a half. The ensemble has now been dissolved because it “cannot be brought up to standard” (!); the costumes are rotting. Who is responsible? No one. And we say: worker, save every złoty. We are certainly right to say it. But only putting a stop to such practices can save us from speaking into the void.

You have listened to so many stories — anyone here can hear them. No, I have not verified with absolute certainty that things look exactly like this, that there is no inaccuracy. But I speak — because everyone here speaks of it, and not only of these matters, but of hundreds of things of the same kind as well. One person, and not a specialist at that, cannot get to the bottom of anything. It is too difficult, even impossible, for him alone. But the voices of dozens of people mean something. They have their significance; they cannot be passed over; someone must gather them, repeat them, bring them to light. It is not a matter of multiplying examples. What matters is that people see clearly. One gets the impression that a monstrous fungus of bureaucracy has grown up here, that it is spreading, crushing everything, and yet no one takes any interest, no one cares. Someone from the Central Committee comes here frequently, someone from the ministry. We see them arrive. We see them leave. We do not see anything change after such a visit. Who, coming from Warsaw, talks to the workers, to the young? No one — with one exception: Comrade Khrushchev talked to them when he came to Nowa Huta. The workers still remember it as if it were yesterday.

I believe that people have the right to ask. I believe that people have the right to ask who is responsible for the millions thrown in the mud, wasted or outright stolen. Who cares about the situation in Nowa Huta, about the wrongs done to the workers? Who approved the city construction plan providing to this day for only two small cinemas, but plenty of bars? I think people have the right to ask. And since they cannot find an answer here on the spot, they believe that someone in Warsaw, someone in the governing authorities, ought to answer.

In our system, no question from a working person can be left unanswered. There cannot be matters that are spoken of in whispers, in corners. We speak about everything out loud.

It is not enough to call for criticism from below. We must encourage it not only with words but with example: punish a few of those who would prefer to live not with the workers but off the workers. Have we not perhaps too soon merely re-educated those who ought to have been put before a court? For heaven’s sake, it is not only saboteurs who do harmful work here.

A person here is entirely dependent on the goodwill and ill-will of a superior. Displease him — and you have lost. And before you obtain your rights, much water will have flowed.

V

We do not want people to find no justice on their path. These are not times for coming to terms with those who do wrong. Real people live in Nowa Huta. Honest, hard-working, and steadfast. People who are learning to live and who need help. One could write a story here about a genuine human being — in fact many such stories could be written. For Nowa Huta is a terrain of unceasing struggle and fierce conflicts. Invisible from outside, they are no less universal for that. Human dissatisfaction finds an outlet not only in roundabout talk and furtive whispering; it is also released in stormy meetings, prickly discussions at assemblies, and letters written to Warsaw. And see: although those who criticise sometimes have their lives made difficult, not all of them capitulate — in fact more and more appear, with a fresh store of strength. But then this is no discovery: it is the law of struggle. More than once the selfsame Jakuś had come to Warsaw and reported on the situation in Nowa Huta to the Central Executive — to no echo. Documents about the bad state of affairs in Nowa Huta exist in that same Warsaw — unanswered. This shows that we do not always heed those voices attentively; but it shows above all that people do not cease in their striving for something better — that they quarrel about it, fight for it, and demand change and improvement.

Good and bad in Nowa Huta clash every day; human concern and courage prevail, win new ground, consolidate positions. Nowa Huta is dear to its inhabitants and they will not accept having a millstone tied around its neck. Who knows how many obstacles have been removed, how many costs saved, how much work improved, precisely thanks to these ordinary labourers.

VI

None of the inhabitants of Nowa Huta is a legendary hero — all are ordinary, often unprepossessing. Yes, how often they walk crooked paths. But they are not a “rabble,” not a “half-crazed soul,” not “an inhuman Poland,” certainly not “gruel”!

These expressions, taken from Ważyk’s Poem for Adults, are unfair to them, untrue, offensive. Their effort deserves respect, and they bear a grudge against the poet for seeing “gruel” in them rather than a warm heart and a will worthy of recognition. They said in discussion: “This outrages us. We are not as the Poem portrays us. We are simply people.” The Poem did not appeal to them; they understood it as meaning that they are needed by no one, that they are not even seen. The poem’s stanzas did not ring for them as a call to struggle — they deepened resentment. Yet they acknowledged the truth of many of the Poem’s images, all the more because they read the whole truth about themselves far too rarely. Or rather, what concerns them most are the disturbing matters — and the force that can sweep away the filth and staleness, if it is given help, is great enough. In this battle they will decide! In Nowa Huta it must be seen that every day we stand in defence of the working person, that we look into places where the worker has no access — for we are still far from a situation in which the local petty boss feels responsible before the masses. Let us not deceive ourselves.

In Nowa Huta people await justice. They cannot wait long. Someone must go there, dig out what has been carefully buried from human sight, and answer many, many bitter questions. Nowa Huta is waiting — waiting impatiently. The people there will say much to you, if they see that someone stands up for them; they will help with all their heart and all their strength. That is guarantee enough, and a firm support in the struggle for a better life in Nowa Huta — a struggle that continues, and that must grow stronger.

We shall return to this struggle; we shall write about it. To write about it means also to take part in it — more fully and more completely than before.

RYSZARD KAPUŚCIŃSKI

A remarkable text. Written in a very bold form — addressed directly to a person (or persons), with an unspoken sense that its addressee was the Authorities. The young reporter used turns of phrase now rarely heard, or perhaps no longer known: “their enthusiasm dims, the desire to fight runs out; if they see that someone stands up for them, they will help.”

This lengthy reportage, printed on the second page of a widely read newspaper, provoked violent reactions, even leading to disturbances in Nowa Huta that did not subside until a special investigation commission was appointed — which confirmed the validity of the charges. The author not only kept his job; he received an award. As one of Kapuściński’s biographers, Kazimierz Wolny-Zmorzyński, writes:

“With this reportage he drew attention to himself not only from readers but from the authorities. Kapuściński was awarded the Gold Cross of Merit [in 1956]. The significance of this decoration may be twofold. On the one hand, it genuinely honoured the reporter’s talent; on the other — knowing the attitudes and actions of the authorities at the time — it gently sidelined Kapuściński, as a person of uncommon perceptiveness and sensitivity, from Polish affairs and problems.”

The decoration was the first award for the young Kapuściński. Kapuściński himself spoke of this reportage in an interview from the late 1970s: “It was a great experience. I understood that writing is bound up with risk — the risk of everything. And the value of writing is often not what they print but its consequences.”

Only on 3 November 1955 was the first theatre in Nowa Huta opened with great fanfare — the Teatr Ludowy (People’s Theatre). The inaugural production was Cracovians and Highlanders. From then on, alongside the two small cinema halls, it was to be another cultural outpost in that vast workers’ district.

After such a success, the young journalist was given the opportunity to travel abroad. He modestly asked for Czechoslovakia. “In those days it was a serious and distant trip,” he says himself, years later. But as it happened the editorial board had just arranged a first journey to Asia — India, Pakistan, Afghanistan. And so began his first journey to the countries of the Third World.

It lasted, with few interruptions, for nearly forty years. In fact, it has never truly ended.

I decided that Kapuściński’s first journey to Third World countries is the event that closes the period of his literary debut. From that point on he became a reporter, a journalist. But he did not forget his poetic roots either: in 1986 he published a small volume of his poems — Notes.

But that is a subject for another text.

Author’s note: Unfortunately I was unable to scan the masthead to show the layout of Sztandar from nearly fifty years ago. Perhaps someone reading this has a copy in their archive and would be willing to share it. And perhaps someone who lived in Nowa Huta at the time and remembers the stir caused by this article will also write to us. I shall be very grateful for any accounts and recollections, and I warmly invite discussion and exchange of thoughts on the beginnings of the work of the Master of Reportage.

source: kapuscinski.info