"Jakieś zwycięstwo". Cenzura w PRL-u - post factum

Abstract

Stefan Kisielewski wrote his last unfinished novel Before Death Comes [Zanim nadejdzie śmierć] in the first years after the 1989 transformation. The action focused around an eventful biography of the secret police ex-officer. The book became a starting point for reflections over censorship as a key problem for research on literature in the People's Republic of Poland. Considering the way censorship functioned, the range of its influence and its attempts at blurring boundaries between censors' practices and editors' work, two kinds of text circulation should be distinguished: the original one with participation of authors, editors, censors collectively preparing publications for print and the secondary, official one, available to public - external and by design unaware of the way this "creative" process was taking place.