Oni: Stalin's Polish Puppets

This book of interviews, conducted by journalist Teresa Toranska with five high officials of postwar Poland, is fascinating. The Solidarity period enabled her to shed fresh light on the politics of the 1945-70 era. Berman, Ochab, Staszewski, Werfel and Julia Minc all belonged to the team sent to Poland by Stalin to help build his new order, Soviet-style. All five were prewar communists who believed communism was the wave of the future. All except Staszewski continued to believe it, despite the post-1945 horrors. Toranska recorded what they told her about Poland's new order and in particular about the impact of the 1956 denunciation of Stalin, the 1968 anti-Semitic drive and Walesa's denunciation of a system which has failed to deliver what the people want. There are several gems: Berman's account of the Kremlin stag party at which he danced with Molotov and Stalin wound the gramophone; Ochab's story of his early contacts with the Chinese preparing to break with Moscow; Staszewski's tale of Khrushchev saying that Bierut's fatal heart-attack had been brought on by Staszewski's reports on the 1956 revelations. Toranska ably seized her opportunity to record these insiders' tales.