One day I saw on Kolega's Facebook page a image of “to give” books placed on the floor, among which there were besides volumes by Bogusław Wołoszański. erstwhile I was increasing up in 1990, mainly influenced by Mama, who is an avid viewer of tv broadcasts by B. Voloszanski, I bought most of his published books. I read any of them, I never went to others, but to this day they are all on 1 of the shelves, set with others. The memory that was recalled by the photograph led me to catch up and read the forgotten items from the set.
To begin with, I reached for the second volume of the series "This Cruel Age", released in 1996. It consists of 4 chapters devoted, respectively, to the activities and deaths of russian peculiar services leaders from Felix Dzierżyński to Lavrentiy Beria, the pre-war activities of Philby, the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich and the flight of Rudolf Heß to England. The book was covered with rich photographic material and valuable for the layman with bibliography of items published mainly in English in the UK in the second half of the 20th century – respective of the works included in it have been published since the “This Cruel Age” made available to the Polish reader, frequently thanks to the publication of B. Wołoszanski himself.
What can be said very powerfully about this position is that it has grown old. In any of its layers noble, in others revealing its flaws. Let's start with the fact that many photographs illustrating the book in a day of ubiquitous and almost all-encompassing net no longer make the same impression as erstwhile the net was little developed and little popular. In 1990. However, it was from the books of Voloszański that I learned what the Yankee “superfortress” looked like, and it was from them that I best remembered the images of key figures of planet War II. There is no uncertainty that many photographs – as the author declares – deserve designation in this place.
It is besides worth noting the well-developed footnotes, which approximate the past of improvement and parameters of various types of weapons and the biography of the characters mentioned in the book. At the age of Wikipedia, however, they are no longer "windows for an era" as it was in 1996, but inactive hold the value of the quasi-encyclopedic development, standing despite the popular character of the book, but of a level higher on the scale of credibility than the above-mentioned encyclopedia of the Wikimedia Foundation, while compiling in a synthetic form information not even included in textbooks of past (even academic ones).
The author's narrative, which is dynamic and "uninvolved", has besides grown noblely old. This first feature makes reading "The Cruel Age" pleasant, the second very beneficially reflects on the background of systematic degeneration (mainly influenced by the IPN) of the culture of conducting the historical discourse in present-day Poland. Voloshanski does not saturate his book with moral exultations or “indignantness”, fundamentally avoiding value. His “non-involvement” goes even so far that he writes about Poland as a country not “his” but “third” – just like the USSR or the German Reich.
Thus, there is besides no discussion of the Grotesque Russophobia of Voloshan and the anti-communism of obsession. The russian Union acts there under its appropriate name, not under the publicistic movie “Soviet Union” or “Soviets”. The Russians are described in the same way as the Germans, the English or the Yankees, not like a band of "Mongol-Kalmucian rapists". It is clear that Wołoszański wrote his book, before the intellectual integrity and moral level of Polish historiography fell victim to the PiS “dworski” historians like Wojciech Roszkowski, Andrzej Nowak or Jan Żaryn and the officers of the IPN.
This feature of Voloszanski's speech is worth noting that the author is not a historian or even a scholar, but a journalist, but the standards of historical objectivity adhere to incomparably stricter than most historians of present (not to mention historical journalists), as well as the actions of the tormenting reader, and this "rightly morally" condemnation of the things that should be condemned today, and this is simply a kitschy "patriotic" exultation, at least a clear recognition with 1 side of the described conflicts or with certain participants of the described events.
Let us besides remember that Wołoszański did not belong to the political category of "nonconformists", having views alternatively not diverge from the mainstream of the "pre-Kraczystowski" 3rd Polish establishment. The ability to emergence above them and limit itself to describing the facts itself, alternatively of instructing and "moralizing" the reader in intelligent manner in terms of how these facts should be interpreted and valued, is nevertheless affirmative of the author.
The axial historical thesis of the author of “This Cruel Age” is little favorable today. It is not present in today's historiography by Voloszański hypothesis that "Kim" Philby was a triple agent, an English agent camouflaged as a russian agent in an English interview. Nor did she find, after years of categorical confirmation by the author, that the man held after the war in Berlin's prison Spandau was not a real Rudolf Heß, but a double substituted in the Netherlands by Himmler, who wanted to replace Hitler's power – genetic investigation conducted in 2019 showed 99.99% compatibility of Y chromosome markers of the prisoner and surviving male relatives of R. Heß.
The Wołoszański thesis mentioned here are the organizational axes of the second and 4th (two widest) chapters of the work, which should fundamentally exceed its value today. In my opinion, however, that is not the case. Wołoszański is simply a origin of historical details and curiosities, which – even if they are engaged as arguments in support of his quaint speculations – hold a self-existent factual value.
Besides, the themes of Phlyby, Heydrich, and Heß do not dominate the chapters dedicated to them: they become a pretext for Voloshansky alternatively to draw a broader historical background for the activities of the russian services, a conflict fought in the apparatus of Nazi power Germany or the German-English War, while dying, in fact, against the background of these broader arguments. erstwhile reading the 100-page chapter on “Kim” Philby, we forget about him comparatively rapidly to follow the executional actions of the NKVD throughout Europe or the diplomatic conflict around Czechoslovakia in 1938, returning to this character only at the end of the chapter.
It is besides worth noting that, contrary to the allegations repeated by any of the later publicists today, in the communicative of Voloszański about the triumph in the war no spies and commandos decide, only the state's preservation of the industrial base, the capacity and size of arms production, method parameters of the fighters produced, the possession of (or not) strategical bombers, etc. Thus, it is not literature that distorts the view of history, providing quite a few interesting facts. The construction of the speech besides seems to propose that at least any of the dialogues cited are quotes or at least paraphrases of preserved transcripts, memories or notes.
So I would consider the book of Voloszański a category of "historical stories" – with an emphasis, however, on the factographic component alternatively than the plotation. I myself personally, reading 1 book from the literature of fact – 1 of the beautiful or popular literature – I classified it as “popular literature”. However, it is literature with cognitive value, akin to Frederick Forsyth and John le Carré novels. Like the another two, Voloshansky stimulates imagination about the activities of peculiar services and secret diplomacy. Like Forsyth, his journalistic education was utilized to make a dynamic speech and sensational styling, somewhat resembling the old volumes of the “Reporter Express”.
In spite of the communes repeated at least in any historical forums, I would not urge today's book Voloshański to a layman who wants to learn about the subject of the 20th century history. It is actual that sensational styling and dynamic (and in the good sense of the word "dry") kind attracts attention, while teaching a cool distance, so in a way equipping to an analytical approach. The same reporter's quest for sensationalism, however, was all Voloshanian to speculate, present completely falsified by technological historiography.
Wołoszański, on the another hand, is simply a rather pleasant “offshoot” from this technological historiography, presenting quite a few interesting facts and neatly summarizing crucial events and processes, but not overwhelming the reader with the weight of a “heavy”style and a technological apparatus. It reads Voloszański like “Odessa Act”, “Fourth Protocol” or “Hunting on Red October”, but that characters and stories are authentic in his books.
This is so a "fair" amusement for those engaged in "professionally" global policy and interview activities, while, of course, on the spectrum of historical-sensational spy literature much closer to the former. individual already formed in a culture of mature reasoning about politics and history, Voloshański's “departure” appearing in his speeches should not mislead towards “shuria”, his well-crafted and unsexed communicative will supply pleasures and the secret actions and intrigues described will stimulate imagination and creativity of thinking.
Ronald Lasecki
(B. Voloshan, this cruel age. Part Two, Warsaw 1996, p. 340.
