The gas crisis and a Hollywood production based on a Polish escape from a Soviet gulag.

Press reviewed by Michał Kubicki

On the gas crisis, GAZETA WYBORCZA quotes Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski as saying that problem of energy and gas has to be confronted by a united European Union. Asked whether Poland should not toughen its stand vis-a-vis Russia, as advocated by President Kaczynski, the foreign minister responded: ‘I beg you not to use the simplified terms such as tough or soft approach, or breakthrough. Our policy has to be effective. The president was right in saying that it would be easier to work out a joint EU stand if the bloc consisted of 27 Polands. But this is not the case’, Sikorski told GAZETA WYBORCZA. Interviewed by the same paper, secretary of state for European matters in the Foreign Ministry, Mikolaj Dowgielewicz, says that Russia is losing its credibility in the eyes of the European Union. A need for a common energy policy of the European Union is also stressed by former prime minister and now member of the European Parliament Jerzy Buzek in an interview with the tabloid FAKT.

The SUPER EXPRESS tabloid fears that thousands of Poles are likely to lose their jobs as many factories are already having problems maintaining production.

DZIENNIK has a report on a new Hollywood production by the famous Australian director Peter Weir. Entitled The Way Back, it is based on a book by the Polish soldier Slawomir Rawicz which recounts his capture by the Russians in 1939 and his spectacular escape with a group of inmates from a Siberian Gulag. Polish filmmaker Kazimierz Kutz told DZIENNIK that it’s a good thing that the story of the Polish victims of Stalinism will reach mass audience. A Polish historian quoted by the paper worries, however, if the tragedy of the gulag prisoners will not become shallow in its Hollywood attire. The location shooting for The Way Back begins in Bulgaria in March. 

And in another story on culture, DZIENNIK looks ahead to next year’s celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Chopin. The Polish minister of culture is quoted as saying that the anniversary events will be held not only in most European countries but also in Japan, China, Malaysia, Singapore and Brazil. The highlights in Poland will include the opening of a newly designed multi-media Chopin Museum and a Chopin Centre in Warsaw.