Studia Koszalińsko-Kołobrzeskie (Dec 2021)

Cenzurowanie organu urzędowego kurii gorzowskiej w latach 1957–1959. Fragment polityki antykościelnej PRL

  • Dariusz Śmierzchalski-Wachocz

DOI
https://doi.org/10.18276/skk.2021.28-22
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 28

Abstract

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Communism, a totalitarian system that wanted to oversee all spheres of public life and in some cases also of private citizens. One of the institutions fulfilling this task was censorship, functioning in all countries of the so-called People’s Democracy. It supervised verbal and written communication, i.e. the transmission of truth which had been previously infiltrated and manipulated. The Catholic Church remained the last area of free speech in Poland, conducting also journalistic activities of official bodies or these in the form of magazines, wherein the first were directed to the clergy providing on the one hand curial and pastoral information and on the other theological knowledge. In the case of the Ordinariate of Gorzow (Gorzów), which covered 1/7 of the country, these were first Orders from 1945, and from 1957 Gorzowskie Wiadomości Kościelne. The task of censorship was to supervise the content of subsequent issues. Excerpts or even entire articles, that according to the censor were contrary to the interests of the regime, were removed. The resources of the Zielona Gora (Zielona Góra) Delegacy of the Office Controlling the Press, Publications and Spectacles, collected in the State Archives are largely incomplete, hence the author, presenting examples of interference in the publishing activity of Gorzowskie Wiadomości Kościelne, focused only on the years 1957–1959.

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