Yearbook of Bibliology and Press Studies

Summary

This article deals with the theory and practice of the press control by the Polish United Workers' Party in the years 1956-1989. It is hardly possible to discuss the press published in Poland at that time without taking into account the role of the Polish United Workers' Party as the main controller of means of communication.
The chronological framework of the article is the period 1956 - 1989. The first date is associated with the period of short-lived democratization in Poland, and the fact that an earlier period has already been discussed in several reliable scholarly publications. The second date is marked with the end of so-called ..People's Poland."
After an analysis of archive sources, numerous memoirs, reports and diaries, the press and the relevant literature, the present Author comes to a conclusion that the Polish press in the period under discussion was controlled by a small group of decisionmakers from the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party. Apart from political pressure, they had at their disposal: cadre policy (nomenclature), censor's office, and in extreme cases the state apparatus of terror. The party decision-makers recognized the press as one of the instruments of power. Although in official statements