1956 is the year that Great History re-entered the lives of ordinary people awakening enslaved minds and helping to overcome fear. Tragic in June and hopeful in October. Gloomy and sad like the fate of thousands of victims of Stalinism and colorful like jazz and the socks of the bikinis.
Piotr Bojarski talks about this extraordinary year, recalling colorful first-hand reports. The book 1956. Awakened "is a moving story of the collapse of the regime under the sign of Stalin and Bierut.
This is the backstage of the creation of the legendary Andrzej Wajda's Channel, Poznań June seen through the eyes of doctors and nurses rescuing the wounded, writers awakened from Stalin's night, love during the revolution in Hungary, prisoners released on the wave of the thaw, trying to re-arrange their lives and from the beaters they change into the beaten. It is also a story about the euphoria of journalists who simply began to write the truth. In these stories, the events of sixty years ago are happening again today.
That year, 1956, like rarely, was a year of great breakthrough. Polish society breathed deeper and slower, thousands of political prisoners were released, and Poles united around an episodically charismatic leader ... social injustice and will right people wrong.
You will find all of this in the book by Piotr Bojarski entitled "1956. Awakened ”(Agora 2016).
Therefore, if I were to write about 1956, I would probably not avoid the nostalgic note. But Piotr Bojarski is fifty years younger and tests the epoch and people on selected topics. He asks questions that would seem tactless or brutal to me. He verifies our dreams by confronting reality.
Marian Turski
The year 1956 showed that the restrictive Soviet system was weakening under the pressure of social protests. The filmmakers woke up earlier:we had war to show, our topic to be told to the world, and the language of the picture made it difficult for censorship, which chased words, to prevent our films from being shown on the screens.
The unforgettable 1956 years later found its own image in this most important book.
Andrzej Wajda
PIOTR BOJARSKI - journalist of "Gazeta Wyborcza" in Poznań and writer. He graduated in history from AMU. Author of the reportage collection Four faces of Prusaka and Poznanians against the swastika as well as novels, incl. nominated for the Angelus Ściemy award, Pętla, Grandmaster and Juni . The latter won the competition for the best novel about Poznań in 2016.