Fire at the ‘House of the Polish Word’ during Leonid Brezhnev’s Visit to Warsaw: Causes, Course, and Contexts

Abstract

11 May 1973 was the first day of the visit to Warsaw of the Soviet delegation with Leonid Brezhnev. In the afternoon of the same day, the largest printing house in Poland called the House of the Polish Word, located on Miedziana Street, burned down. The losses were enormous. Was it sabotage, deliberate arson, an accident, or a mechanical failure? This article aims to describe the circumstances and course of this event using the following methods: archival, bibliographic, literary analysis and criticism, and historical-descriptive. Among the sources used were the archival materials preserved at the Polish Institute of National Remembrance.