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

1. Włodzimierz (given name)
2. Society of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy
3. Władysław Strzemiński
4. First Polish Army (1944–45)
5. Union of Polish Patriots
6. Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (Poland)
7. Telewizja Polska
8. Polish Armed Forces in the East
9. TVP2
10. Socialist realism in Poland
11. Matthew Kaminski
12. List of Polish generals
13. Afterimage (film)
14. Polish culture during World War II
15. Krzysztof Dracz
16. Cabinet of Bolesław Bierut and Józef Cyrankiewicz
17. Deaths in May 1999
18. Sala Neoplastyczna
19. List of Polish Communist Party politicians
20. Andrzej Panufnik