ABSTRACT

Modern communication technology has proved once again that censorship is unable to seal off the citizens of the Soviet bloc from news even if events take place within a Communist country. Despite the existence of a formal censorship apparatus the touchy subject of Soviet history also continues to cause headaches in Poland. Even making the most generous allowance for Soviet sensibilities, national pride and ideological pretensions neither book could be described as violating the ‘state secrets’ of either the Soviet Union or Hungary. The censorship office carefully and characteristically outlined the way in which references to the Katyn massacre, the murder of 15,000 Polish officers in 1940 by the Soviet secret police, were to be treated. The tragic family involvement of a Polish bureaucrat with the great taboo of Polish-Soviet relations led to sensational revelations about censorship, the abolition of which became a key demand during the upheaval in the summer of 1980.