Dinner with the Bezpieczenstwo

John Scott, head of TIME'S Berlin Bureau, was arrested in Poland on his way to cover the recent referendum. Last week he cabled this account of some interesting hours spent with the Bezpieczenstwo, the secret police which is supposed to be Polish but appears to contain some citizens of another country:

At Poznan headquarters I was turned over to a character right out of Gogol--a middleaged, dark-bearded gentleman in the uniform of a Polish major, nine medals (not ribbons, medals) on his chest. His name was Vinokurov--a distinctly Russian name, but he agreed to speak Russian to me only when it became clear that conversation in Polish was quite impossible. The Major was scrupulously polite. I showed him my passport, Russian zonal permit, car registration, driver's license, etc. All were in order, but the Major went on to other questions: How was it that I spoke Russian so well? What did I think of the new Polish frontiers? I talked for an hour, then the Major had to go to a meeting, and I sat through an hour with a Polish captain who told me that all Germans should be killed, Poland should have even more land, and if anyone tried to take away the new western areas, then the Polish Army would fight. I asked the captain why I was being detained. "Oh, they think you may be a Red Army deserter," he said.

The Major came back and with him was a stubby little man in dusty trousers and a tieless blue shirt, whom the others called "The Chief." His name, as I later found out, was Morozov--a common Russian name. When his questions got completely political, I told him: "I must insist that you arrest me, and then after seeing the American consul, I will perhaps answer such questions, not now. Furthermore, if I am detained long, it might look to some as though the authorities in Poznan were afraid to allow foreign correspondents to watch the referendum."

Routine Work. At this point the Major tried to telephone Minister of Security Radkiewicz in Warsaw. While we waited for the call, I sat in the office for half an hour and heard the Major, the Chief sitting at his elbow, deal with his routine work. Bandits had held up a truck in one place, political oppositionists were becoming very active in another. Some of the conversations went on in Russian, some in Polish. I was getting very tired and hungry and quite irritated when Warsaw called. The Major listened for a moment, then said O.K. and hung up. "What did they say?" asked everyone in the room. "They said do not make fools of ourselves and cook up an incident. It seems that the Foreign Office has been informed and is raising hell. Your embassy works quickly," he nodded to me.

I got up, lit my last cigaret and said: "I have been your guest now for some five hours. I shall be much hurt if you do not agree to be my guests for dinner at the hotel." The Major and the Chief agreed with some embarrassment.

Dinner was excellent and for nearly three hours we ate, drank and talked. I told them I had been much amused at the fact that they took me for a fake American, just as I thought they were fake Poles. They laughed, and asked about Germany. Was it true that the Russians also, like the British and Americans, were using Germans as railroad guards and policemen in their respective zones? Why did they behave so foolishly? I asked them about the elections. It was reported that they were arresting many oppositionists. Was this true? The Major shook his head: "Every day we have cases of bandits attacking Government officials, plotting the collapse of the Polish Government. We must fight these bandits with their own weapons--terrorism. We must teach them that we mean to run the country in the people's interests, not in the interests of the landowners and financiers." He added: "It is true that a considerable part of the ignorant peasantry has fallen for Mikolajczyk's demagogy. That is what makes Mikolajczyk so dangerous, though today his influence is decreasing."

"Why is it," said Morozov over his fourth vodka, and forgetting his assimilated Polish nationality entirely for the moment, "that we can't seem to get along better with America? We have no geographical conflicts. We don't want any of your colonies, nor you any of ours. We are working for the best interests of our people. Even more, here we are working for the best interests of the Polish people, and everywhere, all through the Balkans, the Middle East and the Far East you object and create nasty situations."

"It Gets Boring." I tried to explain that according to our ideas of democracy, peoples should be allowed to do things as they wanted, not as someone else thought was in their interests. Neither Morozov nor the Major understood. Even after the sixth vodka they didn't understand. These Russian counterparts of Britain's Indian Civil Service saw things with eyes so different that they could be worried only by the possibilities of a major conflict with America. When brought right down to it, they were frustrated because the Poles, many of them, did not seem to appreciate the self-sacrifice and generosity which the Russians displayed in spending so much time and effort showing the Poles how to run their government, their army, their secret police in the interests of "true democracy." Somehow the Americans and British, with all their irresponsible talk of freedom and liberty, seemed to them partly responsible for the conflict and civil disturbances which were shaking Poland.

As the party broke up after midnight, Morozov, now thoroughly relaxed, the plainclothesman's fish-eyed stare gone from his face, said: "You know the Major here and I often discuss political questions, but it gets boring. We each know exactly what the other is going to say. Now tonight it has been different. It has been interesting."

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