The influence of totalitarianism on the development of musical traditions in Galicia. The security apparatus and church organs in the Krakow area in the years 1959–1962

Abstract

After the end of the Second World War, a communist government and a Stalinist “order” were imposed in Poland against the will of the people. Throughout the communist period, the Catholic Church in Poland was an opponent of the totalitarian order and an enemy of the authorities under Moscow’s supervision. The clergy and the faithful in the former Galician lands of southern Poland, especially in the Kraków voivodeship, were particularly active against the regime. The political police (Security Service) showed, according to archival documentation from the years 1959–1962, an interest in church organs as a musical instrument in terms of their manufacture, repair, reparation and tuning. For the secret police it was important who built the organ (legality of organbuilding companies, individual organ-builders and fiscalism of their incomes), where the funds for such undertakings came from (sources of financing and their legality), and in the case of antique organs, whether the work was carried out with the consent, knowledge and under the supervision of the Provincial Conservator of Monuments (official state decision-making). Often the fact of organising financial collections for the purchase or renovation of organs was not, in the opinion of the communist authorities, legal, if it had not been officially reported and formally authorised by the organisers beforehand. The “people’s” authorities, fighting against the Catholic Church (clergy, believers), permanently obstructed its functioning in order to secularise and humiliate it. In the period analysed, one of the main punishments used against Church people for manifestations of resistance and opposition to the “people’s” government were penal and administrative proceedings with the imposition of fines. The text gives examples of the use of this type of repression, showing one of the mechanisms used to combat the Catholic Church. The official communist machine had at its disposal a wide range of repressive proceedings, often leading to the collapse and liquidation of organ-building companies, whose traditions dated back to the Galician times.