Władysław Gomułka First secretary of the United Workers' Party When did Gomulka become first secretary of the United Workers' Party? on 20 October the Central Committee brought Gomulka and several associates into the Politburo, removed others, and elected Gomulka as first secretary Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? Gomulka was one of the key leaders of the Warsaw Pact and supported Poland's participation in the intervention in Czechoslovakia in August 1968. What did Gomulka do as first secretary of the UWP? believed that the alliance with the Soviet Union was the only thing stopping the threat of a future German invasion. How did the alliance with the Soviet Union fare? Khrushchev decided that Gomulka was a leader that Moscow could live with. How do the USSR help Gomulka? The German side recognized the post-World War II borders, which established a foundation for future peace, stability and cooperation in Central Europe. What else can you say about the USSR at that time? The Soviet leadership viewed events in Poland with alarm.
Why did the Soviet leadership view events in Poland with alarm?
Why did the Soviet leadership view events in Poland with alarm?
The reformers in the Party wanted a political rehabilitation of Gomulka and his return to the Party leadership. Gomulka insisted that he be given real power to implement further reforms. He wanted a replacement of some of the Party leaders, including the pro-Soviet Minister of Defense Konstantin Rokossovsky.  The Soviet leadership viewed events in Poland with alarm. Simultaneously with Soviet troop movements deep into Poland, a high-level Soviet delegation flew to Warsaw. It was led by Nikita Khrushchev and included Mikoyan, Bulganin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Marshal Konev and others. Ochab and Gomulka made it clear that Polish forces would resist if Soviet troops advanced, but reassured the Soviets that the reforms were internal matters and that Poland had no intention of abandoning the communist bloc or its treaties with the Soviet Union. The Soviets yielded.  Following the wishes of the majority of the Politburo members, First Secretary Ochab conceded and on 20 October the Central Committee brought Gomulka and several associates into the Politburo, removed others, and elected Gomulka as first secretary of the Party. Gomulka, the former prisoner of the Stalinists, enjoyed wide popular support across the country, expressed by the participants of a massive street demonstration in Warsaw on 24 October.  A major factor that influenced Gomulka was the Oder-Neisse line issue. West Germany refused to recognize the Oder-Neisse line and Gomulka realized the fundamental instability of Poland's unilaterally imposed western border. He felt threatened by the revanchist statements put out by the Adenauer government and believed that the alliance with the Soviet Union was the only thing stopping the threat of a future German invasion. The new Party leader told the 8th Plenum of the PZPR on 19 October 1956 that: "Poland needs friendship with the Soviet Union more than the Soviet Union needs friendship with Poland... Without the Soviet Union we cannot maintain our borders with the West". Seeing that Gomulka was popular with the Polish people, and given his insistence that he wanted to maintain the alliance with the Soviet Union and the presence of the Red Army in Poland, Khrushchev decided that Gomulka was a leader that Moscow could live with. The treaty with West Germany was negotiated and signed in December 1970. The German side recognized the post-World War II borders, which established a foundation for future peace, stability and cooperation in Central Europe.  In 1967-68 Gomulka allowed outbursts of "anti-Zionist" political propaganda, which developed initially as a result of the Soviet bloc's frustration with the outcome of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War. It turned out to be a thinly veiled anti-Semitic campaign, pursued primarily by others in the Party, but utilized by Gomulka to keep himself in power by shifting the attention of the populace from the stagnating economy and mismanagement. The result was the emigration of the majority of the remaining Polish citizens of Jewish origin. At that time he was also responsible for persecuting protesting students and toughening censorship of the media. Gomulka was one of the key leaders of the Warsaw Pact and supported Poland's participation in the intervention in Czechoslovakia in August 1968. CANNOTANSWER
He wanted a replacement of some of the Party leaders, including the pro-Soviet Minister of Defense Konstantin Rokossovsky.
Władysław Gomułka (; 6 February 1905 – 1 September 1982) was a Polish communist politician. He was the de facto leader of post-war Poland from 1947 until 1948. Following the Polish October he became leader again from 1956 to 1970. Gomułka was initially very popular for his reforms; his seeking a "Polish way to socialism"; and giving rise to the period known as "Polish thaw". During the 1960s, however, he became more rigid and authoritarian—afraid of destabilizing the system, he was not inclined to introduce or permit changes. In the 1960s he supported the persecution of the Catholic Church, intellectuals and the anti-communist opposition.

In 1967–68 Gomułka allowed outbursts of "anti-Zionist" political propaganda, which turned into an anti-Semitic campaign, pursued primarily by others in the Party, but utilized by Gomułka to retain power by shifting the attention from the stagnating economy. Many of the remaining Polish Jews left the country. At that time he was also responsible for persecuting protesting students and toughening censorship of the media. Gomułka supported Poland's participation in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968.

In the treaty with West Germany, signed in December 1970 at the end of Gomułka's period in office, West Germany recognized the post-World War II borders, which established a foundation for future peace, stability and cooperation in Central Europe. In the same month, economic difficulties led to price rises and subsequent bloody clashes with shipyard workers on the Baltic coast, in which several dozen workers were fatally shot. The tragic events forced Gomułka's resignation and retirement. In a generational replacement of the ruling elite, Edward Gierek took over the Party leadership and tensions eased.

Childhood and education
Władysław Gomułka was born on 6 February 1905 in Białobrzegi Franciszkańskie village on the outskirts of Krosno, into a worker's family living in the Austrian Partition (the Galicia region). His parents had met and married in the United States, where each had immigrated to in search of work in the late 19th century, but returned to occupied Poland in the early 20th century because Władysław's father Jan was unable to find gainful employment in America. Jan Gomułka then worked as a laborer in the Subcarpathian oil industry. Władysław's older sister Józefa, born in the US, returned there upon turning eighteen to join her extended family, most of whom had emigrated, and to preserve her US citizenship. Władysław and his two other siblings experienced a childhood of the proverbial Galician poverty: they lived in a dilapidated hut and ate mostly potatoes. Władysław received only rudimentary education before being employed in the oil industry of the region.

Gomułka attended schools in Krosno for six or seven years, until the age of thirteen when he had to start an apprenticeship in a metalworks shop. Throughout his life Gomułka was an avid reader and accomplished a great deal of self-education, but remained a subject of jokes because of his lack of formal education and demeanor. In 1922, Gomułka passed his apprenticeship exams and began working at a local refinery.

Early revolutionary activities

Involvement with labor unions and first imprisonment
The re-established Polish state of Gomułka's teen years was a scene of growing political polarization and radicalization. The young worker developed connections with the radical Left, joining the Siła (Power) youth organization in 1922 and the Independent Peasant Party in 1925. Gomułka was known for his activism in the metal workers and, from 1922, chemical industry unions. He was involved in union-organized strikes and in 1924, during a protest gathering in Krosno, participated in a polemical debate with Herman Lieberman. He published radical texts in leftist newspapers. In May 1926 the young Gomułka was for the first time arrested but soon released because of worker demands. The incident was the subject of a parliamentary intervention by the Peasant Party. In October 1926, Gomułka became a secretary of the managing council in the Chemical Industry Workers Union for the Drohobych District and remained involved with that communist-dominated union until 1930. He around this time learned on his own basic Ukrainian.

In late 1926, while in Drohobych, Gomułka became a member of the illegal-but-functioning Communist Party of Poland (Komunistyczna Partia Polski, KPP) and was arrested for political agitation. Technically, at this time he was a member of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine, which was an autonomous branch of the Communist Party of Poland. He was interested primarily in social issues, including the trade and labor movement, and concentrated on practical activities. In mid-1927, Gomułka was brought to Warsaw, where he remained active until drafted for military service at the end of the year. After several months, the military released him because of a health problem with his right leg. Gomułka returned to communist party work, organizing strike actions and speaking at gatherings of workers at all major industrial centers of Poland. During this period he was arrested several times and lived under police supervision.

Gomułka was an activist in the leftist labor unions from 1926 and in the Central Trade Department of the KPP Central Committee from 1931. In the summer of 1930, Gomułka illegally embarked on his first foreign trip with the intention of participating in the Red International of Labor Unions Fifth Congress held in Moscow from 15 to 30 July. Traveling from Upper Silesia to Berlin, he had to wait there for the issuance of Soviet documents and arrived in Moscow too late to participate in the deliberations of the Congress. He stayed in Moscow for a couple of weeks and then went to Leningrad, from where he took a ship to Hamburg, stayed in Berlin again and through Silesia returned to Poland.

In August 1932, he was arrested by the Sanation police while participating in a conference of textile worker delegates in Łódź. When he later tried to escape, Gomułka sustained a gunshot wound in the left thigh which ultimately left him with permanent walking impairment.

Journey to the Soviet Union and second imprisonment
Despite being sentenced to a four-year prison term on 1 June 1933, he was temporarily released for surgery on his injured leg in March 1934. Following his release, Gomułka requested that the KPP send him to the Soviet Union for medical treatment and further political training.  He arrived in the Soviet Union in June and went to the Crimea for several weeks, where he underwent therapeutic baths. Gomułka then spent more than a year in Moscow, where he attended the Lenin School under the name Stefan Kowalski. The ideology-oriented classes were arranged separately for a small group of Polish students (one of them was Roman Romkowski (Natan Grünspan [Grinszpan]-Kikiel), who would later persecute Gomułka in Stalinist Poland) and included a military training course conducted by Karol Świerczewski. In a written opinion issued by the school Gomułka was characterized in highly positive terms, but his extended stay in the Soviet Union caused him to become disillusioned with the realities of Stalinist communism and highly critical of the agrarian collectivization practice. In November 1935 he illegally returned to Poland.

Gomułka resumed his communist and labor conspiratorial activities and kept advancing within the KPP organization until, as the secretary of the Party's Silesian branch, he was arrested in Chorzów in April 1936. He was then tried by the District Court in Katowice and sentenced to seven years in prison where he remained jailed until the beginning of World War II. Ironically, this internment most likely saved Gomułka's life, because the majority of the KPP leadership would be murdered in the Soviet Union in the late 1930s, caught up in the Great Purge under Joseph Stalin's orders.

Gomułka's experiences turned him into an extremely suspicious and distrustful person and contributed to his lifelong conviction that Sanation Poland was a fascist state, even if Polish prisons were the safest place for Polish Communists. He differentiated this belief from his positive feelings toward the country and its people, especially members of the working class.

World War II

Invasion of Poland

The outbreak of the war with Nazi Germany freed Gomułka from his prison confinement. On 7 September 1939, he arrived in Warsaw, where he stayed for a few weeks, working in the besieged capital on the construction of defensive fortifications. From there, like many other Polish communists, Gomułka fled to eastern Poland which was invaded by the Soviet Union on 17 September 1939. In Białystok he ran a home for former political prisoners arriving from other parts of Poland. To be reunited with his luckily found wife, at the end of 1939 Gomułka moved to Soviet-controlled Lviv.

Like other members of the dissolved Communist Party of Poland, Gomułka sought a membership in the Soviet All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). The Soviet authorities allowed such membership transfers only from March 1941 and in April of that year Gomułka received his party card in Kiev.

The circumstances of the Polish communists' lives changed dramatically after 1941 German attack on the Soviet positions in eastern Poland. Reduced to penury in now German-occupied Lviv, the Gomułkas managed to join Władysław's family in Krosno by the end of 1941. However, a momentous development soon took place in the sphere of communist political activity: in January 1942, Joseph Stalin reestablished in Warsaw a Polish communist party under the name of the Polish Workers' Party (PPR).

In 1942, Gomułka participated in the reformation of a Polish communist party (the KPP was destroyed in Stalin's purges in the late 1930s) under the name Polish Workers' Party (Polska Partia Robotnicza, PPR). Gomułka became involved in the creation of party structures in the Subcarpathian region and began using his wartime conspiratorial pseudonym "Wiesław". In July 1942, Paweł Finder brought Gomułka to occupied Warsaw. In August, the secretary of the PPR's regional Warsaw Committee was arrested by the Gestapo and "Wiesław" was entrusted with his job. In September Gomułka became a member of the PPR's Temporary Central Committee.

In late 1942 and early 1943, the PPR experienced a severe crisis because of the murder of its first secretary Marceli Nowotko. Gomułka participated in the party investigation directed against another member of the leadership, Bolesław Mołojec, that resulted in Mołojec's execution. Together with the promoted to secretary Finder and Franciszek Jóźwiak, "Wiesław" (Gomułka) was included in the Party's new inner leadership, established in January 1943. The Central Committee was enlarged in the following months to include Bolesław Bierut, among others.

In February 1943, Gomułka led the communist side in a series of important meetings in Warsaw between the PPR and the Government Delegation of the London-based Polish government-in-exile and the Home Army. The talks produced no results because of the divergent interests of the parties involved and a mutual lack of confidence. The Delegation officially discontinued the negotiations on April 28, three days after the Soviet government broke diplomatic relations with the Polish government. He became the Party's main ideologist. He wrote the "What do we fight for?" (O co walczymy?) publication dated 1 March 1943, and the much more comprehensive declaration that emerged under the same title in November. "Wiesław" supervised the Party's main editorial and publishing undertaking.

Gomułka made efforts, largely unsuccessful, to secure for the PPR cooperation of other political forces in occupied Poland. Bierut was indifferent to any such attempts and counted simply on compulsion provided by a future presence of the Red Army in Poland. The different strategies resulted in a sharp conflict between the two communist politicians.

State National Council, Polish Committee of National Liberation
In the fall of 1943, the PPR leadership began discussing the creation of a Polish quasi-parliamentary, communist-led body, to be named the State National Council (Krajowa Rada Narodowa, KRN). After the Battle of Kursk the expectation was of a Soviet victory and liberation of Poland and the PPR wanted to be ready to assume power. Gomułka came up with the idea of a national council and imposed his point of view on the rest of the leadership. The PPR intended to obtain consent from the Comintern leader and their Soviet contact Georgi Dimitrov. However, in November the Gestapo arrested Finder and Małgorzata Fornalska, who possessed the secret codes for communication with Moscow and the Soviet response remained unknown. In the absence of Finder, on 23 November Gomułka was elected general secretary (chief) of the PPR and Bierut joined the three-person inner leadership.

The founding meeting of the State National Council took place in the late evening of 31 December 1943. The new body's chairman Bierut was becoming Gomułka's main rival. In mid-January 1944 Dimitrov was finally informed of the KRN's existence, which surprised both him and the Polish communist leaders in Moscow, increasingly led by Jakub Berman, who had other, competing ideas concerning the establishment of a Polish communist ruling party and government.

Gomułka felt that the Polish communists in occupied Poland had a better understanding of Polish realities than their brethren in Moscow and that the State National Council should determine the shape of the future executive government of Poland. Nevertheless, to gain Soviet approval and to clear any misunderstandings a KRN delegation left Warsaw in mid-March heading for Moscow, where it arrived two months later. By that time Stalin concluded that the existence of the KRN was a positive development and the Poles arriving from Warsaw were received and greeted by him and other Soviet dignitaries. The Union of Polish Patriots and the Central Bureau of Polish Communists in Moscow were now under pressure to recognize the primacy of the PPR, the KRN and Władysław Gomułka, which they ultimately did only in mid-July.

On 20 July, the Soviet forces under Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky forced their way across the Bug River and on that same day the combined meeting of Polish communists from the Moscow and Warsaw factions finalized the arrangements regarding the establishment (on 21 July) of the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN), a temporary government headed by Edward Osóbka-Morawski, a socialist allied with the communists. Gomułka and other PPR leaders left Warsaw and headed for the Soviet-controlled territory, arriving in Lublin on 1 August, the day the Warsaw Uprising erupted in the Polish capital.

Post-war political career

Role in communist takeover of Poland

Gomułka was a deputy prime minister in the Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland (Rząd Tymczasowy Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej), from January to June 1945, and in the Provisional Government of National Unity (Tymczasowy Rząd Jedności Narodowej), from 1945 to 1947. As a minister of Recovered Territories (1945–48), he exerted great influence over the rebuilding, integration and economic progress of Poland within its new borders, by supervising the settlement, development and administration of the lands acquired from Germany. Using his position in the PPR and government, Gomułka led the leftist social transformations in Poland and participated in the crushing of the resistance to communist rule during the post-war years. He also helped the communists in winning the 3 x Tak (3 Times Yes) referendum of 1946. A year later, he played a key role in the 1947 parliamentary elections, which were fraudulently arranged to give the communists and their allies an overwhelming victory. After the elections, all remaining legal opposition in Poland was effectively destroyed, and Gomułka was now the most powerful man in Poland. In June 1948, because of the impending unification of the PPR and PPS, Gomułka delivered a talk on the subject of the history of the Polish worker movement.

In a memo written to Stalin in 1948, Gomułka argued that "some of the Jewish comrades don’t feel any link to the Polish nation or to the Polish working class…or they maintain a stance which might be described as ‘national nihilism’". As a result, he considered it "absolutely necessary not only to stop any further growth in the percentage of Jews in the state as well as the party apparatus, but also to slowly lower that percentage, especially at the highest levels of the apparatus". Nikita Khrushchev, who was intimately involved in Polish affairs in the 1940s, according to Khrushchev′s memoirs, believed that Gomułka had a valid point in opposing the personnel policies pursued by Roman Zambrowski, Jakub Berman, and Hilary Minc, all of them of Jewish descent and brought to Poland from Stalin′s Russia. Nevertheless, Khrushchev attributed Gomułka′s subsequent downfall to his rivals having succeeded in portraying Gomułka as being pro-Yugoslav; the charges were not made public but were brought to Stalin′s attention and became crucial in his decision-making on whose side he would support — in view of the Soviet–Yugoslavia rift that occurred in 1948.

Temporary withdrawal from politics
In the late 1940s, Poland's communist government was split by a rivalry between Gomułka and President Bolesław Bierut. Gomułka led a home national group while Bierut headed a group reared by Stalin in the Soviet Union. The struggle ultimately led to Gomułka's removal from power in 1948.  While Bierut advocated a policy of complete subservience to Moscow, Gomułka wanted to adapt the Communist blueprint to Polish circumstances. Among other things, he opposed forced collectivization and was skeptical of the Cominform. The Bierut faction had Stalin's ear, and on Stalin's orders, Gomułka was sacked as party leader for "rightist-nationalist deviation," replaced by Bierut. In December, soon after the PPR and Polish Socialist Party merged to form Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) (which was essentially the PPR under a new name), Gomułka was dropped from the merged party's Politburo. He was stripped of his remaining government posts in January 1949 and expelled from the party altogether in November. For the next eight years, he performed no official functions and was subjected to persecution, including almost four years of imprisonment from 1951 to 1954.

Bierut died in March 1956, during a period of de-Stalinization in Poland which gradually developed after Stalin's death. Edward Ochab became the new first secretary of the Party. Soon afterward, Gomułka was partially rehabilitated when Ochab conceded that Gomułka should not have been jailed, while reiterating the charges of "rightist-nationalist deviation" against him.

Rise to power

In June 1956, violent worker protests broke out in Poznań. The worker riots were harshly suppressed and dozens of workers were killed. However, the Party leadership, which now included many reform-minded officials, recognized to some degree the validity of the protest participants' demands and took steps to placate the workers.

The reformers in the Party wanted a political rehabilitation of Gomułka and his return to the Party leadership. Gomułka insisted that he be given real power to implement further reforms. He wanted a replacement of some of the Party leaders, including the pro-Soviet Minister of Defense Konstantin Rokossovsky.

The Soviet leadership viewed events in Poland with alarm. Simultaneously with Soviet troop movements deep into Poland, a high-level Soviet delegation flew to Warsaw. It was led by Nikita Khrushchev and included Mikoyan, Bulganin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Marshal Konev and others. Ochab and Gomułka made it clear that Polish forces would resist if Soviet troops advanced, but reassured the Soviets that the reforms were internal matters and that Poland had no intention of abandoning the communist bloc or its treaties with the Soviet Union. The Soviets yielded.

Following the wishes of the majority of the Politburo members, First Secretary Ochab conceded and on 20 October the Central Committee brought Gomułka and several associates into the Politburo, removed others, and elected Gomułka as the first secretary of the Party. Gomułka, the former prisoner of the Stalinists, enjoyed wide popular support across the country, expressed by the participants of a massive street demonstration in Warsaw on 24 October. Seeing that Gomułka was popular with the Polish people, and given his insistence that he wanted to maintain the alliance with the Soviet Union and the presence of the Red Army in Poland, Khrushchev decided that Gomułka was a leader that Moscow could live with.

Leadership of the Polish People's Republic

Relations with other Eastern Bloc countries
A major factor that influenced Gomułka was the Oder-Neisse line issue. West Germany refused to recognize the Oder-Neisse line and Gomułka realized the fundamental instability of Poland's unilaterally imposed western border. He felt threatened by the revanchist statements put out by the Adenauer government and believed that the alliance with the Soviet Union was the only thing stopping the threat of a future German invasion. The new Party leader told the 8th Plenum of the PZPR on 19 October 1956 that: "Poland needs friendship with the Soviet Union more than the Soviet Union needs friendship with Poland... Without the Soviet Union we cannot maintain our borders with the West". The treaty with West Germany was negotiated and signed in December 1970. The German side recognized the post-World War II borders, which established a foundation for future peace, stability and cooperation in Central Europe.

During the events of the Prague Spring, Gomułka was one of the key leaders of the Warsaw Pact and supported Poland's participation in the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968.

Domestic policies
In 1967–68 Gomułka allowed outbursts of "anti-Zionist" political propaganda, which developed initially as a result of the Soviet bloc's frustration with the outcome of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War. It turned out to be a thinly veiled anti-Semitic campaign and purge of the army, pursued primarily by others in the Party, but utilized by Gomułka to keep himself in power by shifting the attention of the populace from the stagnating economy and mismanagement. The result was the emigration of the majority of the remaining Polish citizens of Jewish origin. At that time he was also responsible for persecuting protesting students and toughening censorship of the media.

Resignation and retirement

In December 1970, economic difficulties led to price rises and subsequent protests. Gomułka along with his right-hand man Zenon Kliszko ordered the regular Army under General Bolesław Chocha, to shoot striking workers with automatic weapons in Gdańsk and Gdynia. Over 41 shipyard workers of the Baltic coast were killed in the ensuing police-state violence, while well over a thousand people were wounded. The events forced Gomułka's resignation and retirement. In a generational replacement of the ruling elite, Edward Gierek took over the Party leadership and tensions eased.

Gomułka's negative image in communist propaganda after his removal was gradually modified and some of his constructive contributions were recognized. He is seen as an honest and austere believer in the socialist system, who, unable to resolve Poland's formidable difficulties and satisfy mutually contradictory demands, grew more rigid and despotic later in his career. A heavy smoker, he died in 1982 at the age of 77 of lung cancer. Gomułka's memoirs were not published until 1994, long after his death, and five years after the collapse of the communist regime which he served and led.

The American journalist John Gunther described Gomułka in 1961 as being "professorial in manner, aloof, and angular, with a peculiar spry pepperiness".

Decorations and awards
:
 Order of the Builders of People's Poland 
 Grand Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta 
 Order of the Cross of Grunwald (1st class)
 Partisan Cross
 Medal "For Warsaw 1939-1945"
 Medal Rodła

Other countries:
 Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour (France)
 Knight Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (Italy)
 Order of Lenin (Soviet Union)
 Jubilee Medal "In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" (Soviet Union)

See also
 History of Poland (1945–89)

References

External links

 

1905 births
1982 deaths
People from Krosno
People from the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria
Communist Party of Poland politicians
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People of the Cold War
The Communist Party of Western Belorussia (, KPZB; ) was a banned political party in the Interwar Poland, active in the territory of present-day West Belarus from 1923 until 1939; in Polesie (1932–1933) Słonim county (1934) and Vilnius.

History
The party was founded in 1923 in Wilno by representatives of the Belarusian communist circles from Wilno, Białystok and Brest with logistical help from the Bolsheviks. Although its name, the Communist Party of Western Belarus, could suggest a desire for independence of Belarus, wrote historian Sergiusz Łukasiewicz, in reality the party advocated transfer of eastern provinces of Poland to the Soviet Union, which constituted high treason. This is why it has been delegalized by the Polish authorities.

The party's political program included a socialist revolution in Poland and unification of Western Belorussia with the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic in the USSR. The party worked undercover; in 1925-1927 it masked its illegal activities under the legal Belarusian Peasants' and Workers' Union in Poland. It received support from the Soviet Union with leadership brought in secretly from across the border (see Vera Kharuzhaya).

In 1938, following a decision by the Comintern on the orders of Joseph Stalin, the KPZB along with the Communist Party of Poland and the Communist Party of Western Ukraine were delegalized by the USSR under the charge of affiliation with the Polish bourgeoisie. Following the Soviet invasion of Poland and the annexation of Western Belarus to the Soviet Union in 1939, many former members of the KPZB were repressed, others joined the Communist Party of Byelorussia, the East Belarusian branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Notable members

 Siarhei Prytytski, future Chairman of Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of Belarus (1968-1971)
 Branisłaŭ Taraškievič, linguist, writer, later executed by the Soviets in 1938
Mikalai Dvornikau, commander of the Ukrainian interbrigade company Taras Shevchenko, died in a battle in 1938
 Maksim Tank, future multiple times awarded writer, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Belarus (1965–1971)
 Vera Kharuzhaya, later executed by Nazis in 1942

References

Edwarda Orłowska, Pamiętam jak dziś, Książka i Wiedza, Warsaw 1973. 

1923 establishments in Poland
1938 disestablishments in the Soviet Union
Banned communist parties
Communist parties in Belarus
Defunct communist parties in Poland
Defunct political parties in Belarus
Political parties disestablished in 1938
Political parties established in 1923
Political parties of minorities in Poland
Political repression in the Soviet Union
Western Belorussia (1918–1939)
Communist Party of Western Belorussia Polish October (), also known as October 1956, Polish thaw, or Gomułka's thaw, marked a change in the politics of Poland in the second half of 1956. Some social scientists term it the Polish October Revolution, which was less dramatic than the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 but may have had an even deeper impact on the Eastern Bloc and on the Soviet Union's relationship to its satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe.

For the Polish People's Republic, 1956 was a year of transition. The international situation significantly weakened the hardline Stalinist faction in Poland, especially after the Polish communist leader Bolesław Bierut died in March. Three years had passed since Joseph Stalin's death and his successor at the Soviet Union's helm, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced him in February.  Protests by Poznań workers in June had highlighted the people's dissatisfaction with their situation. In October, the events resulted in the rise in power of the reformers' faction, led by Władysław Gomułka. After brief but tense negotiations, the Soviets gave permission for Gomułka to stay in control and made several other concessions, resulting in greater autonomy for the Polish government.

For Poland, that meant a temporary liberalisation, but eventually, hopes for a full liberalisation were proven false, as Gomułka's regime gradually became more oppressive. Nonetheless, the era of Stalinism in Poland had ended.

Background
Gomułka's thaw was caused by several factors. The death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 and the resulting destalinization and the Khrushchev Thaw prompted debates about fundamental issues throughout the entire Eastern Bloc.

In the summer of 1955, the 5th World Festival of Youth and Students was held in Warsaw. Designed to be a vast propaganda exercise and a meeting place for Eastern European communists and their comrades from Western Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, the event brought hundreds of thousands of Polish spectators to Warsaw for the five days to watch dancing, theatre and other attractions. However, the real attractions for the Polish people were the foreigners, many of whom were from Western Europe and contrasted starkly with local Poles because they shared a similar culture but were much richer and more open. Deeply stricken, many Poles realised that a decade's worth of anti-Western rhetoric had been false. Poles, Germans, Hungarians, Czechs and others from the Communist bloc actively socialised with one another. With the more exotic visitors, Poles also socialised in private apartments all around the city. College students even held debating meetings with foreigners, many of whom turned out not to be communists.

In February 1956, following the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev delivered the Secret Speech (officially titled On the Personality Cult and Its Consequences) with wide implications for the Soviet Union and other communist countries. In Poland, in addition to criticism of the cult of personality, popular topics of debate centered on the right to steer a more independent course of "local, national socialism", instead of following the Soviet model in every detail. For example, many members of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) criticised Stalin's execution of older Polish communists during the Great Purge. Several other factors contributed to the destabilisation of Poland, such as the widely publicised defection in 1953 of high-ranking Polish intelligence agent Józef Światło, which resulted in the weakening of the Ministry of Public Security of Poland, the secret police. In addition, the unexpected death in Moscow in 1956 of Bolesław Bierut, the PZPR First Secretary (known as the "Stalin of Poland"), led to increased rivalry between various factions of Polish communists and to growing tensions in Polish society, which culminated in the Poznań 1956 protests (also known as June '56).

The PZPR Secretariat decided that Khrushchev's speech should have wide circulation in Poland, a unique decision in the Eastern Bloc. Bierut's successors seized on Khrushchev's condemnation of Stalinist policy as an opportunity to prove their reformist democratic credentials and their willingness to break with the Stalinist legacy.

Protests and riots
In late March and early April 1956, thousands of Party meetings were held all over Poland, with the blessing of the Politburo and the Secretariat. Tens of thousands took part in such meetings. The Secretariat's plan succeeded beyond what it had expected. The political atmosphere in Poland shifted as questions were increasingly asked about taboo subjects like the Polish communists' legitimacy; responsibility for Stalin's crimes; the arrest of the increasingly-popular Władysław Gomułka, and issues in Soviet–Polish relations, such as the continued Soviet military presence in Poland, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Katyn massacre and the Soviet failure to support the Warsaw Uprising. A new Party Congress was demanded, as were a greater role for the Sejm and a guarantee of personal liberties. Alarmed by the process, the Party Secretariat decided to withhold the speech from the general public.

In June, there was an insurrection in Poznań. The workers rioted to protest shortages of food and consumer goods, bad housing, the decline in real income, trade relations with the Soviet Union and the poor management of the economy. The Polish government initially responded by branding the rioters as "provocateurs, counterrevolutionaries and imperialist agents". Between 57 and 78 people, mostly protesters, were killed, and hundreds were wounded and arrested. Soon, however, the party hierarchy recognised that the riots had awakened a nationalist movement and reversed their opinion. Wages were raised by 50%, and economic and political change was promised.

The Poznań protests, although the largest, were not unique in Poland, where social protest resumed its fury that autumn. On November 18, rioters destroyed the militia headquarters and radio jamming equipment in Bydgoszcz, and on December 10, a crowd in Szczecin attacked public buildings, including a prison, the state prosecutor's office, militia headquarters and the Soviet consulate. People across the country criticised the security police and asked for the dissolution of the public security committee and the punishment of its most guilty functionaries. Demands were made for the exposure of secret police collaborators, and suspected collaborators were frequently assaulted. In many localities, crowds gathered outside the secret police headquarters, shouted hostile slogans and broke windows. Public meetings, demonstrations and street marches took place in hundreds of towns across Poland. The meetings were usually organized by local party cells, local authorities and trade unions. However, official organisers tended to lose control as the political content exceeded their original agenda. Crowds often took radical action, which often resulted in unrest on the streets and clashes with police and other law enforcement agencies. Street activity peaked during and immediately after the 19–21 October "VIII Plenum" meeting of the Central Committee of the PZPR but continued until late in the year. A concurrent upsurge in religious and clerical sentiment took place. Hymns were sung, and the release of Stefan Wyszyński and the reinstatement of suppressed bishops were demanded. Nationalism was the cement of mass mobilisation and dominated public meetings during which people sang the national anthem and other patriotic songs, demanded the return of the white eagle to the flag and traditional army uniforms and attacked Poland's dependence on the Soviet Union and its military. They demanded the return of the eastern territories, an explanation for the Katyn massacre and the elimination of the Russian language from the educational curriculum. In the last ten days of October, monuments to the Red Army, despised by Poles, were attacked; red stars were pulled down from roofs of houses, factories and schools; red flags were destroyed; and portraits of Konstantin Rokossovsky, the military commander in charge of operations that drove the Nazi German forces from Poland, were defaced. Attempts were made to force entries into the homes of Soviet citizens, mostly in Lower Silesia, which was home to many Soviet troops. However, unlike the protesters in Hungary and Poznań, activists limited their political demands and behaviour, which were not purely opposed to the communist system. The communist authorities were not openly and unequivocally challenged, as they had been in June, and anticommunist slogans, which had been prevalent in the June uprising, such as "We want free elections", "Down with Communist dictatorship" or "Down with the Party", were much less prevalent. Also, party committees were not attacked.

Change in the political leadership

In October, Edward Ochab, the First Secretary of the Party and the Polish Prime Minister, proposed Władysław Gomułka for election for the First Secretary of the Party during the 8th Plenum meeting. Gomułka was a moderate who had been the First Secretary of the Party from 1943 to 1948 and had been ousted and in 1951 imprisoned after he had been accused of "right-wing nationalist deviation" by Stalinist hardliners, along with Bierut. Gomułka proved to be acceptable to both factions of Polish communists: the reformers, who were arguing for liberalization of the system, and the hardliners, who realised that they needed to compromise. Gomułka insisted on being given real powers to implement reforms. One specific condition that he set was that Soviet Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, who had mobilized troops against the Poznań workers, be removed from the Polish Politburo and Defence Ministry, to which Ochab agreed. The majority of the Polish leadership, backed by both the army and the Internal Security Corps, brought Gomułka and several associates into the Politburo and designated Gomułka as First Secretary. Untouched by the scandals of Stalinism, Gomułka was acceptable to the Polish masses but at first was viewed with much suspicion by Moscow.

The Soviet leadership viewed events in Poland with alarm. Destalinisation was underway in the Soviet Union as well, but the Soviet leadership did not view the democratic reform that the Polish public desired as an acceptable solution. In Moscow, the belief was that any liberalisation in one country could lead to the destruction of communism and the ruin of Soviet influence in the region as a whole. The Soviet Union was not worried about only the political implications of reform but also its economic implications. Economically, the Soviet Union heavily invested in much of the Eastern Bloc and was striving for integration of its economies. The Soviet Union had financed Polish industry and was Poland's main trading partner. The Soviet Union directed the products that Poland manufactured, bought the products and exported goods to Poland that were no longer produced in it. That integration meant any reform, be it political or economic, in one country would have a great impact on the other. Because Poland was inextricably connected to the Soviet Union economically, the thought of an independent Polish economy was unrealistic. The country had been forced to rely on the Soviets for so long that breaking away completely would prove disastrous. Thus, both countries held crucial power in different facets. Poland could threaten Soviet strength and power in Eastern Europe politically, and the Soviet Union could essentially destroy the Polish economy. Therefore, any reform in the Polish government would have to concede to some Soviet demands, but the Soviets concurrently would have to concede to a vital partner.

A high-level delegation of the Soviet Central Committee flew to Poland in an attempt to block removing pro-Soviet members of Politburo, mainly Soviet and Polish Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky. The Soviet delegation was led by Nikita Khrushchev and included Anastas Mikoyan, Nikolai Bulganin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich and Ivan Konev. The negotiations were tense; both Polish and Soviet troops were put on alert and engaged in "manoeuvres" that were used as thinly-veiled threats. Even before the Soviet delegation arrived, Soviet armed forces stationed in Poland (including two armored divisions) left their bases and started moving towards Warsaw. When ordered to halt their advance, they were only 100 km from the Polish national capital.

The Polish leadership made it clear that the face of communism had to become more nationalised and that the Soviets could no longer directly control the Polish people.

Khrushchev's speech worked against him. During Stalinism, the Soviet Union had placed Moscow-friendly Poles or Russians themselves in important political positions in Poland. After denouncing Stalinism so vehemently in his speech, Khrushchev could not regress to the Stalinist position by forcing more Russians into the Polish leadership. The Poles, in recognising the cries of the public, needed to keep the Soviets from direct control but could not raise their demands to a point that endangered their relationships in the bloc. Gomułka demanded increased autonomy and permission to carry out some reforms but also reassured the Soviets that the reforms were internal matters and that Poland had no intention of abandoning communism or its treaties with the Soviet Union. The Soviets were also pressured by the Chinese to accommodate the Polish demands and were increasingly distracted by the events in Hungary.

Eventually, when Khrushchev was reassured that Gomułka would not alter the basic foundations of Polish communism, he withdrew the invasion threat and agreed to compromise, and Gomułka was confirmed in his new position. According to the account Khrushchev gives in his memoirs, he ordered the Soviet troops to halt in place after he was personally confronted by Gomułka who, according to Khrushchev, was in a state of agitation and "demanded" that the troops return to their bases, or "something terrible and irreversible will happen." Khrushchev claims the he was never against appointing Gomułka at the helm of PZPR and had expected him to be elevated to the top post ever since he was released from prison.

The leadership's stance contributed to the relatively-moderate political dimension of social protest in October. Also crucial were the impacts of nationalism and nationalist emotions. They spurred social protest in June but dampened it in October, when the threat of Soviet invasion against Gomułka and his supporters transformed the social image of Polish communists. In June, they were still treated as puppets and servants of alien, anti-Polish interests and excluded from the national community. In October, they became a part of the nation opposing Soviet domination. Gomułka was enthusiastically supported by the great majority of society not primarily as a communist leader but as a leader of a nation who, by resisting Soviet demands, embodied a national longing for independence and sovereignty. His name was chanted, along with anti-Soviet slogans, at thousands of meetings: "Go home Rokossovsky", "Down with the Russians," "Long live Gomułka" and "We want a free Poland".

Gomułka's anti-Soviet image was exaggerated but was justified in the popular imagination by his anti-Stalinist line in 1948 and years of subsequent internment. Thus, Polish communists found themselves unexpectedly at the head of a national liberation movement. The enthusiastic public support offered to Gomułka contributed to the legitimisation of communist rule in Poland, which incorporated mass nationalist, anti-Soviet feelings into the prevailing power structures. In Hungary, social protest destroyed the political system, but in Poland, it was absorbed into it.

Aftermath

Information about events in Poland reached the people of Hungary via Radio Free Europe's news and commentary services between 19 October and 22 October 1956. A student demonstration in Budapest in support of Gomułka, asking for similar reforms in Hungary, was one of the events that sparked the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The events of the Hungarian November also helped distract the Soviets and ensure the success of the Polish October.

Gomułka, in his public speeches, criticized the hardships of Stalinism and promised reforms to democratize the country; this was received with much enthusiasm by Polish society. By mid-November, Gomułka had secured substantive gains in his negotiations with the Soviets: the cancellation of Poland's existing debts, new preferential trade terms, abandonment of the unpopular Soviet-imposed collectivization of Polish agriculture, and permission to liberalize policy towards the Roman Catholic Church. In December, the status of Soviet forces in Poland, the Northern Group of Forces, was finally regulated.

In the aftermath of the October events, Rokossovsky and many other Soviet "advisers" left Poland, signaling that Moscow was willing to grant Polish communists slightly more independence. The Polish government rehabilitated many victims of the Stalinist era, and many political prisoners were set free. Among them was cardinal Stefan Wyszyński. The Polish legislative election of 1957 was much more liberal than that of 1952 although still not considered free by Western standards.

Gomułka, however, could not and did not want to reject communism or Soviet domination; he could only steer Poland towards increased independence and "Polish national communism". Because of these restricted ambitions, which were recognized by the Soviets, the limited Polish revolution succeeded where the radical Hungarian one did not. Norman Davies sums up the effect as a transformation of Poland from puppet state to client state; Raymond Pearson similarly states that Poland changed from a Soviet colony to a dominion.

Gomulka's pledge to follow a "Polish road to socialism" more in harmony with national traditions and preferences caused many Poles to interpret the dramatic confrontation of 1956 as a sign that the end of the dictatorship was in sight. Initially very popular for his reforms, which were optimistically referred to at the time as "Gomułka's thaw", Gomułka gradually softened his opposition to Soviet pressures, and the late-1950s hopes for major political change in Poland were replaced with growing disillusionment in the 1960s. In the end, Gomułka failed in his goal to salvage communism—or socialism—in Poland.

Society became more liberal (as seen, for instance, in the achievements of the Polish Film School and the creation of such controversial movies as Ashes and Diamonds), and a civil society started to develop, but half-hearted democratization was not enough to satisfy the Polish public. By the time of the March 1968 events, Gomułka's thaw would be long over, and increasing economic problems and popular discontent would end up removing Gomułka from power in 1970—ironically, in a situation similar to the protests that once had propelled him to power.

Nonetheless, some social scientists, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Frank Gibney, refer to these changes as a revolution, one less dramatic than its Hungarian counterpart but one which may have had an even more profound impact on the Eastern Bloc. Timothy Garton Ash calls the Polish October the most significant event in the post-war history of Poland until the rise of Solidarity. History professor Iván T. Berend claims that while the effects of the Polish October on the Eastern Bloc may be disputed, it set the course for the eventual fall of communism in the Polish People's Republic.

References

Further reading
Dallin, Alexander. "The Soviet Stake in Eastern Europe". Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 317(1958): 138–145.
"Excerpts from Gomulka's Speech to Central Committee of Polish Communists". New York Times, 21 October 1956: 28.
Gruson, Sydney. "Soviet Leaders Rush to Poland to Demand Pro-Moscow Regime; Said to Post Troops at Warsaw". New York Times, 20 October 1956: 1.
Kemp-Welch, Tony. "Dethroning Stalin: Poland 1956 and its Legacy". Europe-Asia Studies 58(2006): 1261–84.
Kemp-Welch, Tony. "Khrushchev's 'Secret Speech' and Polish Politics: The Spring of 1956". Europe-Asia Studies 48(1996): 181–206.
Zyzniewski, Stanley J. "The Soviet Economic Impact on Poland". American Slavic and East European Review 18(1959): 205–225.

External links
Poznań - Budapest - 1956
1956 - a european date
LOC: From Stalinism to the Polish October
LOC: Gomulka and Gierek

Protests in Poland
Polish People's Republic
1956 in Poland
1956 protests
Political history of Poland
Stalinism in Poland
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