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Wladyslaw Chtopicki
The character of Comrade Szmaciak was developed by Janusz Szpotariski in
his subsequent publications (e.g. 1977, 1979, 1983), which appeared in under¬
ground circulation and were later reprinted in collections of his works (e.g. 1981
and 1990). Some of the publications appeared without illustrations, others were
illustrated by anonymous artists. In this chapter I have used illustrations published
mainly by Wydawnictwo Mysl in the 1980s and also by Wydawnictwo Nowa in
the 1970s and 1980s. There exist other sets of illustrations published by Nowa in
their other editions (e.g. Szpotariski 1983), but because of space limitations, I have
ignored them here.
Comrade Waldemar Szmaciak resides in the town of Pcim (the embodiment
of a provincial small town, in fact an actual small town located to the south of
Cracow) and is of low social background, which is the cause of his sense of inferi¬
ority® (in Figure 1 his working class background is illustrated by the caption with
the title Comrade and the last name first—the epitome of provinciality: Comrade
Szmaciak Waldemar). He is part of the provincial establishment though and serves
his party bosses, regardless of the current party line; he is not only malleable but
fearful of the stronger and to such a grotesque extent that when physically kicked
he falls on his back and raises all fours in a demonstration of helplessness. This
is precisely what happens in the mock story of a professional football player that
Szpotañski includes to illustrate the mind-set of his character. The footballer arrives
in his Mercedes on a local field when village boys are playing and shows them his
skills, but in the process it turns out that he has very little skill—when confronted
by the boys he lies down on the ground, all fours in the air, and apologizes to them,
mentioning his difficult childhood and other attenuating circumstances.
Szmaciak’s ugly character comes out in his various dreams, which Szpotariski’s
poems describe in detail, contributing to the grotesque nature of the events and
images. Szmaciak has many unpleasant features; for example, he is mildly, passively
anti-Semitic. Here is a quotation from Szpotariski’s poetic verse that expresses
Szmaciak’s unsophisticated beliefs about Others (in my prose translation), while
Figure 3 aptly illustrates Szmaciak’s own disreputable nature:
Riffraff gathers all over town
the question is who is behind.
Revisionists raise their ugly heads
no doubt the Jew has sneaked in here
and can now pull strings.
° It must be borne in mind that the social base of the communist rule in Poland were peasants and the
working class, who appreciated and supported the new regime for giving them social advancement. Even
though they now had higher, social status they often felt socially inferior to intellectuals not having much
formal education. Their frequent reaction to that cognitive dissonance was aggression and alcoholism, just
as Szpotariski describes it in the character of Szmaciak.