One Day in People’s Poland, on OVID.tv

September 27, 1962 was a day like any other in Communist Poland. It was typically oppressive and typically well documented. Listening to excerpts of secret police reports selected by Polish documentarian Maciej Drygas might make viewers wonder if everyone in Poland was under constant surveillance during the Communist era. For all practical purposes, everyone had to assume they were. While it does not seem like a hugely significant day from our historical vantage point, it was pretty awful for many average Polish citizens, as primary sources attest in Drygas’s short documentary, One Day in People’s Poland, which premieres today on OVID.tv.

Every word in this film was in some way recorded in 1962. It starts with an early morning police report regarding anti-Communist graffiti defacing the wall of the Chinese embassy. It was a rather punky but amusing act of defiance. The mystery offenders also did a thorough job of it, because the authorities literally had to chisel sections out of the stone wall.

More ominously, there are multiple reports from the Security Service, regarding their surveillance targets. One poor woman went to three different stores in hopes of finding salt for sale. She never got her salt before the Party arrested her.

Considering this day was chosen for its averageness, Drygas’s film should dispel several misconceptions. First, it demonstrates widespread discontent with Communism, well before the Solidarity movement rose to prominence. There are several cases of anti-Communist graffiti, also including a few choice words left on the wall of a train station bathroom.

It also proves just how desperately poor the country was under Marxist economics. The lack of basic necessities was even a national security concern for one military inspector, who reported “25% of soldiers have no shoes whatsoever.” We can only imagine what happened to a truth-teller like him.

Obviously, One Day in People’s Poland shares a close kinship with Drygas’s Violated Letters. Both are meticulously constructed and damningly revealing. However, Violated Letters is more thematically focused, in ways that hit home even harder, especially for advocates of free speech. However, the 9/27/62 doc gives viewers ample footage of new recruits’ pasty white, undernourished bare butts, so consider yourself warned.

Together, both one-hour-long films give the audience a brutally honest portrait of life under Communism, through the regime’s reports and news broadcasts. In some ways, Drygas’s archival work shares some commonalities with the much more celebrated Sergei Loznitsa, but the Polish filmmaker’s documentaries are much more manageable and accessible. Both films would make excellent teaching aids in high school history classes. Violated Letters is even more powerful, so start with it, but One Day in People’s Poland is also very highly recommended when it starts streaming today (10/1) on OVID.tv.