Juliusz i Ethel – historia małżeństwa Rosenbergów w dramacie Leona Kruczkowskiego z 1954 roku. Elementy dyskursu antywojennego w literaturze polskiej we wczesnych latach 50.

Abstract

The text discusses the play about the last hours of life of the Rosenbergs titled Julius and Ethel, the history of the trial, passing the sentence and the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenbergs carried out on June 19, 1953. Besides Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy’s “witch-hunt”, this is the second most famous example of the American anti-communist atmosphere of the early 1950s, which led to the crisis of the democratic order and its institutions in the United States. The case took place at the beginning of the Cold War division of the world and the nuclear arms race, which put the world on the brink of selfdestruction. For the US radicals and the left-wing intellectuals, the Rosenbergs belonging to the US Communist Party are victims of the right-wing witch-hunt, creating anti-communist atmosphere, however they are also perceived as patrons of antiwar movements, precursors of the nuclear weapons opponents movement (the espionage, which they had never confessed to was to concern passing secrets about the US nuclear weapons programs to the Russians). For conservative America this will be a story about the efficiency of the legal, political and moral system facing a real threat in the fight against communism – dangerous for the entire civilized democratic world. How does the socialist realism work by Leon Kruczkowski appear against this background?