First after the Triumvirs, First after “Wieslaw” – Roman Zambrowski

Abstract

In 1948–1963 Roman Zambrowski was one of the most important communist politicians and cabinet activists of the Polish United Workers’ Party. As a member of the Party authorities he survived two personal-ideological crises (in 1948 and 1956). Mirosław Szumiło has outlined Zambrowski’s life against the backdrop of the changing history of Poland and the communist movement (from its very onset to the 1970s).

M. Szumiło has based the biography on an extremely meticulous, well devised, and successfully conducted survey of Polish and Russian archives, private collections, and accounts. The book’s chronological order is frequently interrupted by extensive descriptions of the history of the communist milieu, just as essential as the biographical motif. The publication is divided into seven chapters preceded by a methodological introduction and completed with a conclusion. From the factual point of view (facts, dates, statistical and percentage calculations, names, organisation structures) it reaches a very high level. In places, however, the narration falters due to the absence of a specialist who would explain and comment on the contents, compare new findings with existing ones, decipher the Party newspeak, and, consequently, draw the reader into the depicted world and, first and foremost, facilitate the absorption of the effects of the scientific research. The arrangement of the publication is also not entirely convincing: the book contains numerous interpretations in which Zambrowski vanishes in a crowd of other protagonists, facts, and data. We are thus dealing with a combination of two books written by applying different methods and dealing with unlike motifs: a life story and the development of an organisation. All these features do not reduce the cognitive value of the publication, which has already become one of the most relevant and indispensable studies for learning about the structures and mechanisms of the authorities of People’s Poland as well as the biographies of the communists who ruled the country.