What is "sztafeta"

Sztafeta (English: Relay race) is a 1939 book of literary reportage written by Melchior Wańkowicz. Sztafeta was published in the year of the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland. Due to popular demand it was reprinted four times already by Biblioteka Polska prior to the outbreak of hostilities. The book was never reprinted in Communist Poland because it praised the democratic achievements of the prewar Second Polish Republic. Sztafeta gives an account of one of the biggest economic projects of the interwar Poland, its Central Industrial Area. The book has been described as a "colorful reporter's panorama, telling the story of the recovery of the Second Polish Republic". Ryszard Kapuściński wrote that Sztafeta "was the first grand reportage of its kind in Poland's history – written about Polish production effort". To write the book, Wańkowicz collected great amount of background information, and carried out dozens of interviews, starting with President of Poland Ignacy Mościcki, ending with sailors, coal miners and primary school teachers. The book begins with analysis of the situation of Poland in 1918, right after World War I. The country was in ruins, with two million houses destroyed, with devastated industry, with poverty, hunger and the threat of a cholera epidemic left behind by the partitioning empires. The author goes on to describe the achievements of the Second Polish Republic, writing not only about the Central Industrial Area, but also about the construction of Gdynia seaport, and the political scandals such as annexation of Zaolzie. The book was disliked by some members of the military establishment in Poland in 1939. As they claimed, Wańkowicz too frequently criticized poverty and backwardness of Poland after a century of foreign occupation.

Wańkowicz, who was one of the first Polish modern-day reporters to write about economy, had authored a series of reports about the Central Industrial Area (or Polish Magnitogorsk, as he called the project). They were published in Polish press in late 1937 and early 1938, and became so popular, that Wańkowicz decided to gather four of them in one book, titled C.O.P. Ognisko siły, published in 1938. The book was immediately sold, as Polish readers loved Wańkowicz's optimism, temperament, national pride and honesty. Impressed by popularity of C.O.P. Ognisko siły, Wańkowicz began writing a more extensive work on the Central Industrial Area, and the development of Polish economy as a whole. Sztafeta, with 520 pages, is the result of his work. Mariusz Grabowski of Polska The Times daily wrote in February 2012 that Sztafeta reads like a national myth with every page a gem, praising Minister Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski, and the Sanacja government.

Sztafeta, based on the 1939 original copy, together with a number of photographs and maps by prewar graphic designer Mieczysław Berman, was republished in February 2012 by the Warsaw publishing house Prószyński i spółka (whose founder Mieczysław Prószyński is a grandson of Konrad Prószyński), as the 16th volume of collected works of Melchior Wańkowicz.