Responses to Adversity: The Polish Composers Union and Musical Life in the 1970s and 1980s.

The article focuses on the Polish Composers Union and the musical life in the 1970s and 1980s. It recalls that the union gave its approval to a motion that will allow workers to create independent unions and lead to the end of censorship and to the improvement of access to media. The disagreement between creative unions and the government during the period is discussed in which the politicization of creative unions is cited as a distinctive feature of the cultural life in Poland. It recalls how the union worked to preserve the organization in the 1970s and how it changed direction under president Józef Patkowski in 1979.