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384 Wladyslaw Chtopicki The character of Comrade Szmaciak was developed by Janusz Szpotariski in his subsequent publications (e.g. 1977, 1979, 1983), which appeared in underground 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 inferiority® (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.
