OUR INTERVIEW. Gliński responds to the "FAZ" attacks: These are lies used for political struggle

wPolityce.pl: The German daily FAZ wrote that you had carried out the restructuring wherever you were able to „eradicate liberal influence in culture”. How would you respond to this?

Deputy Prime Minister Prof. Piotr Gliński: It is a primitive stereotype, propagandist insinuation, supposed to give the impression that we are a form of dictatorship which changes the reality by force. In other words, these are lies used for political struggle. It is also a struggle for power and influence and those who lost thereof use lies and manipulation in order to influence public opinion in the West. Whereas, we have just been introducing a certain correction in the functioning of cultural institutions, which we had announced before the election. We have won the election with the very same program. We have received a democratic mandate and we’ve been introducing some reforms in a lawful manner. It’s natural in democracy.

What are these reforms based on?

When it comes to the area of culture, it is a very sensitive issue because culture must be pluralistic, largely open and free. This is the only way in which values that are important for everybody can be created. Every political community needs such a culture. However, due to what had been happening in Poland before 2015, i.e. a monopoly or even an ideological dictate and almost a lack of democracy, we must introduce some changes. The Polish community was created after 1989 without a founding myth in the moral and axiological sphere, which would indicate what is good and what is evil, what in the past deserved condemnation, and what was worthy of praise. Hence the later years of hypocrisy and the ideological monopoly of one option. We need to fix this state now. Regarding the article in FAZ, it is a pack of insinuations and lies. I wish to turn, through your website, to the editor-in-chief of „FAZ” - the author of this article and the newspaper’s owner, to ask him for rectification and apologies. It is unbelievable to describe Polish politics in this way.

What content of this article struck you the most?

I read in it that

„interference in creativity has cast a long shadow particularly on Polish theater”,

as well as:

„there is an authoritarian regime that conducts aggressive cultural policy”, etc.

I have already been reading such statements on the e-theater portal, which, by the way, is maintained by public ministerial funds. It was written there that I am conducting

„Stalinist purges in the theater.”

Therefore, in my view, we should scrutinize the following data: there are 4 state theaters in Poland, including musical theaters, and 13 institutions co-run by the ministry. There are 121 institutional public theatres, which after adding associations, foundations and various school theaters will give the number of 888. The personnel changes, which are considered by some to be controversial, have been conducted in 2 theaters, which means two out of 888, in two out of 121 public ones or in two out of 17, which are influenced by the Ministry of Culture. This is what our „dictatorial policy” really looks like, or called by others: „a totalitarian regime that killed artistic creation”. It is worth mentioning that one of these theaters, i.e. the Polski Theater in Wrocław, is not run by the ministry, but by local authorities directed by our political opponents; and the director of this theatre was changed through an open competition. In the second theatre, the Old Theater, the director was also changed as a result of the open competition. In my view, it is important that these facts are put before the readers of FAZ.

Does it mean that de facto you haven’t made any deeper changes in cultural institutions?

Whether you like it or not, there was no and will not be a deeper change. Culture does not like violent changes, and the law does not allow it anyway; and we - against the propaganda lies of the opposition - are a law-abiding country. We are carrying out the corrections, evolutionary changes, creating new institutions which are needed by Poland, such as the Institute of Polish Cultural Heritage Abroad or the National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning and many others, but we do not conduct any total anti-liberal revolution. We are also not a „conservative-national” government, how it is often put by Western propaganda. We are rather a „republican-conservative”, patriotic and not nationalist government, which cares for the national community and Polish national interest to the same extent as current Western countries governments do towards their national communities. And if we introduce some personnel changes, it is not because somebody has liberal views, but because someone is ideologically extremely radicalized or serving the previous elites of political and symbolic power.

We replace such people with professional statesmen and Republicans who do not think only about the narrow interests of the radical and neoliberal elites, but about the public good of the whole society. There is a thesis in the FAZ article that we conducted a purge in the theater, and in the film the so-called liberal elites defend against „dictatorship”. This thesis is ridiculous, because it is actually the movie in which we have changed the director of the institute financing the cinematography, who was associated with a certain expressive and radical ideology. She broke the law, therefore we could conduct an open competition and a new director was appointed. There are also insinuations that director Pawlikowski is being persecuted. It is another lie. His last film, Cold War, was co-financed by the Polish state. The new director even gave him a million zlotys of support at the last minute to help him complete the project, because there was no reason not to do it.

How were things with regard to Smarzowski and his „Kler”?

In fact, Smarzowski hasn’t got any funding from us. He had never applied for it, anyway. He was probably well aware that his script is biased, and shows distorted reality, and the film is supposed to be a tool in ideological struggle with the Church. It is a pity that the director took the easy way out here and made a unilateral and propaganda film. I believe that the problems of the contemporary Church, also in Poland, deserve being described honestly. Of course, it requires not only talent, but also good will and basic knowledge about the reality that you want to present with such commitment.

The article complains that Polish art is „to become again patriotic, catholic and faithful to the government”. How would you comment on it?

This is another propaganda. An ordinary lie. Of course, we do support patriotic initiatives or those related to Catholic religion, because we are a Catholic society and we should look after the interests of our national community; Poles want it. That is why they have chosen us. But that does not mean that all Polish art should be subject to one ideology or religion.

As the government, we support various cultural initiatives, and most probably those that are apolitical and non-ideological or religious. On the other hand, previously, almost no one supported initiatives such as those that refer to Polish history, identity, and community. We have already forgotten that the previous government has abandoned, among others, the construction of the Museum of Polish History, and began the project of the Museum of the Second World War with the so-called European propaganda message. Hardly anyone remembers that almost all references to patriotism or national interest had been eliminated from the public space and from the language of public debate until the Smoleńsk catastrophe. These words were to disappear, turn into non-being. In this regard, it was the time of reign of a peculiar symbolic violence realized through the undemocratic institutional monopoly of one ideological option.

That is why it is now necessary to change the proportions, introduce some correction, and make sure that there is no place for one-sidedness, also in art, as it was the case of the previous government. We believe that culture must be pluralistic; however we need to introduce some corrections in the areas where we are way behind as a result of the monopoly and oppression of the previous government. The culture of that time was characterized by a clear domination of postmodern and left - wing (not to say leftist) content and the neoliberal feature (in the sense of economic liberalism). This second tendency meant that culture was systemically – most probably intentionally - underfunded. It was allowed for the market to aggressively destroy culture; many Polish cultural institutions had been sold, such as Polskie Nagrania (Polish Recordings Muza) or released to become prey to the market, such as PWM (Polish Music Publishing House), PKZ (Polish Conservation Studios) or PIW (National Publishing Institute).

Other institutions were starving at the mercy of local governments. We have changed this state of affairs. However, the effects of that approach are still present, for example, in the aesthetics of public space. Spatial order in Poland has been largely destroyed, with the silent approval of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. It is symbolic that it was the Minister of Culture as an expert on architecture who issued a positive opinion on the construction of the famous infill at the Castle Square in Warsaw interfering with the area of the UNESCO World Heritage Site. Such people ruled Polish culture. And we are not so much fighting with the liberals or introducing God-Motherland culture; we are repairing the damage and obvious omissions of our predecessors: no more and no less

Prof. Piotr Gliński was interviewed by Piotr Czartoryski – Sziler

Tłum: KJ