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Show Russian Factions Battle In Polanc Polish students have some reason to fear any government which they feel might be modeled after the regime headed by Party Chairman Gomulka. Their frustration might be summed up in the words of one of the demonstrators at the Warsaw War-saw Polytechnic School: "Until about three years ago, Poland was one of the freest of the socialist countries, at least as far as we were concerned. The government had moved away from the Russians after '56 and things were loosening up nicely. But now it's almost unbearable, un-bearable, and the screws are still being tightened. Everybody's in the West as a CIA front organization) organ-ization) is far more popular than any Polish station, the Voice of America, or the BBC Foreign Service. Ser-vice. One student put it this way: "Radio Free Europe tells it like it is, and their intelligence is fantastic. fantas-tic. They know what's up in Poland three or four weeks before it's announced an-nounced by our government. They always have it first. RFE appeals to our sense of patriotism, but VOA tries to brainwash you. Some of the more 'intellectual' students listen to the BBC their news is quite cool and reasoned, you know? But Radio Free Europe is the true underground un-derground station here." It is not at all unusual to meet with students who strongly support the American presence in Vietnam. Such support is by no means universal uni-versal and is almost never phrased as an approval of President Johnson's John-son's tactics. Nevertheless, there is a marked difference on the issue of the war between the student revolts in Western Europe and those afraid of a war now either i civil war against the governmen or a foreign war with West Ger many. Nobody knows when it wil come, but things can't go on like this much longer." For Polish students, "tightening the screws" means a number oi things, both within the university administration and the entire Polish Pol-ish social system. In the univers- WARSAW, Poland (CPS) The sit-ins, strikes, and riots at Warsaw War-saw University and the Warsaw Polytechnic School which have resulted re-sulted in hundreds of students being arrested are reflections of two diverging di-verging trends inside Poland: an increasingly pro-Russian regime re-gime with distinct Stalinst tendencies; tenden-cies; and an increasingly anti-Russian populace. "A year ago," says one student at Warsaw University, "the regime still had some popular support. But now they have lost almost everybody's every-body's sympathy the students, the intellectuals, the farmers, the workers, the military nobody supports the government except the highest level of the party bureaucracy." bur-eaucracy." Protests Recent Such discontent has been brewing for some time, but the student protests pro-tests which are now making news began much more recently, when discontent flared up over the closing clos-ing of an anti-Russian play at the end of January. Anti-Russian sentiment senti-ment is, of course, traditional in Poland, and has been strongly present pres-ent since the country was partitioned parti-tioned and occupied by the Russians Rus-sians in 1945. But since 1956, and particularly in the last two years, it has become increasingly difficult to express publicly such opinions. The play which was censored. "Dziady," is a Polish classic written writ-ten by the 19th century Polish writer Adam Mickewicz, and is normally considered to be an unimpeachable unimpeach-able part of the Warsaw theatrical repertory. The play contains anti-Czarist anti-Czarist rather than strictly anti- Russian sentiments, but this par-ticula par-ticula poduction stongly emphasized the anti-Russian aspects of the play in the boadest possible way with the actcrs shouting each line and waiting for the applause to die down before proceeding. Play Ordered Closed The play was ordered closed after af-ter the third performance, which was attended by the Russian ambassador. am-bassador. The order could not be carried out immediately, however, because tickets for the next few nights had already been sold. When the news of the impending closing became public, crowds gathered around the theatre, forced their way into the building for the remaining re-maining performance, filled the aisles, the halls, and even sat on the stage, while even more crowded crowd-ed into the lobby or waited outside. Shouts of "freedom for art" and "freedom for Mickewicz" (the author) auth-or) were at times so frequent and violent that the actors could not continue. After the performance, the audience, audi-ence, which was largely composed of students, marched to the central square in Warsaw and demonstrted outside the massive palace of Culture Cul-ture in protest against the regime's political censorship. Special police were brought in from Poland's newly enlarged school for riot police po-lice "Goledzinow," just outside Warsaw, and in the ensuing conflict more than 50 students were arrested. arrest-ed. Most of these were released after a short period, but three were held and tried for disturbing the peace, which in Poland can be a fairly serious offence. One of these three was the son of a prominent party member he was released with a light fine. The other 'two were sentenced to six months. Favortism Spurs Riots This obvious favoritism, only intensified in-tensified public opinion and, together to-gether with other evidence of official offi-cial corruption and stricter official controls, has helped prepare the ground for the massive demonstrations demonstra-tions "which Poland is now experiencing. exper-iencing. Compared with student movements move-ments in Western Europe and America, Am-erica, the Polish students are politically po-litically more conservative. On the other hand, considering the implications implica-tions of being expelled from a university uni-versity in a state where all employment em-ployment comes from the government, govern-ment, they are also more daring. Radio Free Europe (well-known in Poland, and to a lesser extent, in Hungary and East Germany as well. In Poland, students who support the U.S. involvement usually argue by analogy, equating the life under un-der Communism they know in Poland Po-land with life under Communism for the Vietnamese. "You are the only country strong enough to stop this spread of red, red, red," said one student who had been active in the Warsaw University demonstrations. demonstra-tions. "We know what it's like to live under the kind of government Communism finds necessary. We don't like Johnson either but we don't understand why so many Americans want him to pull out of Southeast Asia entirely." ity there are no legal student political po-litical organizations, but sentiment has jelled around suspensions of faculty and censorship issues in the past two years. The suspension of Leszek Kola-kowski Kola-kowski has aroused the strongest resentment among students. Kola-kowski, Kola-kowski, a prominent Polish Philosopher, Philos-opher, was expelled from the party in 1966 for publishing a paper called call-ed "What Those Ten Years Gave Us." In the paper he criticized the government for insufficient progress pro-gress in the 1956 riots. In the two years since his trial, the government govern-ment has tightened disciplinary procedures pro-cedures so wjthin the university and increased the frequency of political po-litical charges and political trials. |