Włodzimierz Sokorski

Włodzimierz Sokorski (2 July 1908, Oleksandrivsk – 2 May 1999, Warsaw) was a Polish communist official, writer, military journalist and a brigadier general in the People's Republic of Poland. He was the Minister of Culture and Art responsible for the implementation of the socialist realist doctrine in Poland. During World War II he escaped to the Soviet Union.

In 1949 at the Congress of Polish Composers in Łagów he banned jazz, after a four-and-a-half-hour diatribe on the "imperialist rot" poisoning people's minds.^[1]^[2] Following the socialist thaw of the Polish October revolution, Sokorski headed the Polish radio and television committee of the Polish United Workers' Party in the 1960s, and later, the Miesięcznik Literacki ideological monthly magazine (dismantled in 1990).^[3] Despite promoting socialist realism and the line of the PZPR, it is emphasized that as the minister of culture and art, he also saved some writers and people of culture from repression.

He wrote memoirs, novels with strong sexual undertones, and was showered with state medals and awards.^[4]

He is buried at the Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw.

References

^ Igor Pietraszewski, "O przemianach edukacyjnych w muzyce jazzowej po 89’." Page 169. In Edukacja, wychowanie, poradnictwo w kulturze popularnej by Marta Kondracka and Alina Łysak. Wrocław 2009.^{[dead link]}
^ Bylander, Cindy (2015). "Clichés Revisited: Poland's 1949 Łagów Composers' Conference" (PDF). Retrieved 16 September 2017.
^ Katarzyna Samojluk, Czasopisma kulturalne w zbiorach Dolnośląskiej Biblioteki Publicznej. Dolnośląska Biblioteka Publiczna im. T. Mikulskiego we Wrocławiu. Retrieved November 5, 2011.
^ Zmarł Włodzimierz Sokorski. Presspublica "Archiwum.rp.pl". Retrieved November 4, 2011.