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. 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). 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.

He is buried at the Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw.

See also

Socialist realism in Poland

References

1908 births

1999 deaths

People from Oleksandrivsk

People from Yekaterinoslav Governorate

Communist Party of Poland politicians

Communist Party of the Soviet Union members

Polish Workers' Party politicians

Polish United Workers' Party members

Government ministers of Poland

Members of the State National Council

Members of the Polish Sejm 1947–1952

Members of the Polish Sejm 1952–1956

Members of the Polish Sejm 1965–1969

Members of the Polish Sejm 1969–1972

Members of the Polish Sejm 1972–1976

Polish expatriates in the Soviet Union

Polish male novelists

Polish People's Army generals

Polish military personnel of World War II

Grand Crosses of the Order of Polonia Restituta

Commanders with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta

Commanders of the Order of Polonia Restituta

Knights of the Order of Polonia Restituta

Recipients of the Gold Cross of the Virtuti Militari

Recipients of the Order of the Builders of People's Poland

Recipients of the Order of the Banner of Work

Recipients of the Order of Lenin

Burials at Powązki Military Cemetery

20th-century Polish novelists