Sztafeta

Sztafeta (English: Relay Race) is a 1939 compendium of literary reportage written by Melchior Wańkowicz. It was published in the year of the German-Soviet invasion of Poland. Popular demand caused it to be reprinted four times by the Biblioteka Polska before the outbreak of hostilities. The book was never published in Communist Poland because it praised the democratic achievements of the prewar Second Polish Republic. It gives an account of one of the biggest economic projects of the newly resurgent interwar Poland, its Central Industrial Area. The work has been described as a "colourful 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 a great amount of background information, and he carried out dozens of interviews, starting with President Ignacy Mościcki and ending with sailors, coal miners and primary school teachers. The book begins with an analysis of the situation of Poland in 1918, right after World War I. The country was in ruins, with two million houses destroyed; industry devastated; poverty, hunger and the threat of a cholera epidemic, all left behind by the Partitions of Poland. It goes on to describe the achievements of the Second Polish Republic, not only about the Central Industrial Area but also about the construction of Gdynia seaport, and of the political scandals such as the annexation of Trans-Olza. The book was disliked by some members of the military establishment in Poland in 1939. Wańkowicz, they claimed, too frequently criticised the poverty and backwardness of Poland after over a century of foreign occupation.