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. This massive borrowing, estimated to have totaled US$10 billion, was used to re-equip and modernize Polish industry, and to import consumer goods in order to give the workers more incentive to work.[14]. [16] Two facade small parties, one for farmers (Zjednoczone Stronnictwo Ludowe) and one for the intelligentsia (Stronnictwo Demokratyczne), were allowed to exist. This occurred five years after Polish bishops had issued the famous Letter of Reconciliation of the Polish Bishops to the German Bishops, then heavily criticized by the Polish government.[16]. [44], The next few months were spent on political maneuvering. But whatever goodwill the new leader gained by these promises was even shorter lived than it had been in 1956 and 1971, because there was no way that the regime could have kept the promises it had made at GdaÅsk, even if it wanted to. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. [20] In September, one of communist leaders, WÅadysÅaw GomuÅka, who had always been an opponent of Stalin's control of the Polish party, was accused of harboring a "nationalistic tendency," dismissed from his posts, and imprisoned. The Prime Minister of the Polish government-in-exile, StanisÅaw MikoÅajczyk, resigned his post in 1944 and, along with several other exiled Polish leaders, returned to Poland, where a Provisional Government (RzÄ
d Tymczasowy Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej; RTTP), had been created by the Communist-controlled Polish Committee of National Liberation (Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego; PKWN) in Lublin. The peasants were subsidized to grow more food. Wehr, Paul, Guy Burgess, Heidi Burgess, eds.. 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. [25], 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". Polish E ncounters, Russian I dentity Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. Polish Philosophy Page: The Marxist Trend, History of "History of Poland (1945-1989)", https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/p/index.php?title=History_of_Poland_(1945-1989)&oldid=1008690, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License, Albania | Bulgaria | Czechoslovakia | East Germany | Hungary | Poland | Romania |. In April 1989, Solidarity was again legalized and allowed to participate in semi-free elections on June 4, 1989. These events brought many more Polish intellectuals into active opposition of the Polish government. Many Polish intellectuals opposed the campaign, some openly, and Moczar's security apparatus became as hated as Berman's had been. [19] The new non-Communist government, the first of its kind in Communist Europe,[16] was sworn into office in September 1989. "Khrushchev's 'Secret Speech' and Polish Politics: The Spring of 1956". The new Polish Constitution of 1952 officially established Poland as a People's Republic,[19] ruled by the Polish United Workers' Party, which since the absorption of the left wing of the Socialist Party in 1948 had been the Communist Party's official name. [24] In the early 1950s, the Communist regime also carried out major changes to the education system. Uprising in East Germany, 1953 comprises 95 of the most important recently released records from Russian, German, Czech, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Polish, British and American archives. This left the government looking both economically foolish and politically weak, a very dangerous combination. As GomuÅka's popularity declined and his reform Communism lost its impetus, the regime became steadily less liberal and more repressive.[14]. The origins of Polish television date back to the late 1930s, however, the beginning of World War II interrupted further progress at establishing a regularly televised program. After the first wave of reform, GomuÅka's regime started to move back on their promises, as the power of the Party, such as Party's control of the media and universities, was gradually restored, and many of the younger and more reformist members of the Party were expelled. [4][7][8], The PZPR Secretariat decided that Khrushchev's speech should have wide circulation in Poland, a unique decision in the Eastern Bloc. [15] The Soviet delegation was led by Nikita Khrushchev and included Anastas Mikoyan, Nikolai Bulganin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich and Ivan Konev. In early August 1980, the wave of strikes led to the founding of the independent trade union "Solidarity" (Polish SolidarnoÅÄ) by electrician Lech WaÅÄsa. [23], 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. PoznaÅ Riots, (June 1956), uprising of Polish industrial workers that caused a crisis among the Polish communist leadership as well as in the Soviet bloc and resulted in the establishment of a new Polish regime headed by WÅadysÅaw GomuÅka. [1] Gomułka insisted to be given real power to implement reforms. 400th Anniversary of Polish Settlement in North America : 2008 90th Anniversary of the Greater Poland Uprising : 2009 European green lizard: 2009 WÅadysÅaw StrzemiÅski (1893-1952) 2009 Winged cavalryman 17th Century: 2009 90th Anniversary of the Establishment of the Supreme Chamber of Control : 2009 180 Years of Central Banking in Poland : 2009 AKA: War Cry, Teufel der weißen Berge. They chose the latter, and on August 31, WaÅÄsa signed the GdaÅsk Agreement with MieczysÅaw Jagielski, a member of the PZPR Politburo. [2], Polish period of liberalisation and destalinisation, Ł. Jastrząb, "Rozstrzelano moje serce w Poznaniu. However, the Polish Communists, led by GomuÅka and Bierut, were aware of the lack of support for their side among the Polish population. [19] Kania made the same sort of promises that GomuÅka and Gierek made when they had come to power. Gierek was interested only in buying off dissatisfied workers and keeping the Soviet Union convinced that Poland was a loyal ally. What remained of the Warsaw ghetto was razed to the ground by German troops led by SS General Juergen Stroop, who, after having been tried in Poland for crimes against humanity, was hanged on March 6, 1952, in Warsaw's Rakowiecka St. prison. GomuÅka promised an end to police terror, greater intellectual and religious freedom, higher wages and ⦠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. The Polish government initially responded by branding the rioters as "provocateurs, counterrevolutionaries and imperialist agents". But the Soviet alliance was at the heart of Gierek's problems: following Brezhnev Doctrine and because of Poland's strategic position between the Soviet Union and Germany, the Soviets would never allow Poland to drift out of its orbit, as Yugoslavia and Romania had by this time done. Paul Wehr, Guy Burgess, Heidi Burgess, (eds. Former Voice of America (VOA) Polish Service chief Ted (Tadeusz) Lipien has updated his 2015 article about the silent treatment of the Warsaw Uprising by the wartime U.S. ⦠Western bankers had loaned over $500 million to the government of Poland, and at a meeting at the Handlowy Bank in Warsaw on July 1, 1980, made it clear that low prices of consumer goods could no longer be subsidized by the state. These years, while featuring many improvements in the standards of living in Poland, were marred by social unrest and economic depression. [38][39] In response to this situation, the government, which controlled all official foreign trade, continued to maintain a highly artificial exchange rate with Western currencies. [10][11], Even before the Red Army entered Poland, the Soviet Union was pursuing a deliberate strategy to eliminate anti-Communist resistance forces in order to ensure that Poland would fall under its sphere of influence. The union was backed by a group of intellectual dissidents, the KOR, and adhered to a policy of nonviolent resistance. 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. At the same time, many prominent Communist candidates failed to gain even the minimum number of votes required to capture the seats that were reserved for them. The Polish thaw was the times of transition from rule under Stalin to rule under no one. Soon, however, the party hierarchy recognised that the riots had awakened a nationalist movement and reversed their opinion. Using strikes and other tactics, the union sought to block government initiatives.[28]. Two months earlier, the approach of the Red Initially, the auditions were broadcast t⦠Untouched by the scandals of Stalinism, Gomułka was acceptable to the Polish masses but at first was viewed with much suspicion by Moscow. Stalin had died in 1953. [23] Although Poland received compensation in the form of the territories and property left behind by the German population of the annexed western territories, it is disputed whether they were enough compensation for the loss of Kresy territories. Hard-line Stalinists such as Berman were removed from power, and many Soviet officers serving in the Polish Armed Forces were dismissed,[18][22] but almost no one was put on trial for the repressions of the Bierut period. In September 1980, the increasingly frail Gierek was removed from office and replaced as Party leader by StanisÅaw Kania. Thus Jaruzelski, whose name was the only one the Communist Party had allowed on the ballot for the presidential election, won by just one vote in the National Assembly, essentially through abstention by a sufficient number of Solidarity MPs. One specific condition that he set was for Soviet Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, who had mobilized troops against the Poznań workers, to be removed from the Polish Politburo and Defence Ministry to which Ochab agreed. [8], The implementation of the immense task of reconstructing the country was accompanied by the struggle of the new government to acquire a stable, centralized power base, further complicated by the mistrust a considerable part of the society held for the new regime and by disputes over Poland's postwar borders, which were not firmly established until mid-1945. if(typeof __ez_fad_position != 'undefined'){__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-newworldencyclopedia_org-large-mobile-banner-1-0')};if(typeof __ez_fad_position != 'undefined'){__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-newworldencyclopedia_org-large-mobile-banner-1-0_1')};if(typeof __ez_fad_position != 'undefined'){__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-newworldencyclopedia_org-large-mobile-banner-1-0_2')}; .large-mobile-banner-1-multi-167{border:none !important;display:block !important;float:none !important;line-height:0px;margin-bottom:15px !important;margin-left:0px !important;margin-right:0px !important;margin-top:15px !important;min-height:250px;min-width:300px;padding:0;text-align:center !important;}. Poland suffered heavy losses during World War II. [25], GomuÅka's Poland was generally described as one of the more "liberal" Communist regimes,[4] and Poland was certainly more open than East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania during this period. Voices began to be raised in the Party and among the intellectuals calling for wider reforms of the Stalinist system. The losses in national resources and infrastructure amounted to over 30 percent of the pre-war potential. However, official organisers tended to lose control as the political content exceeded their original agenda. [19][18] Some Polish intellectuals protested, and Ryszard Siwiec burned himself alive during the official national holiday celebrations. It incorporated most of the other Resistance groups and received help from allies around the world. [12], The Communists further alienated many Poles by persecuting the Catholic Church. Poland enjoyed a period of relative stability over the next decade, but the idealism of the "Polish October" had faded away. Bierut's successors seized on Khrushchev's condemnation of Stalinist policy as a perfect opportunity to prove their reformist democratic credentials and their willingness to break with the Stalinist legacy. What remained of the Warsaw ghetto was razed to the ground by German troops led by SS General Juergen Stroop, who, after having been tried in Poland for crimes against humanity, was hanged on March 6, 1952, in Warsaw's Rakowiecka St. prison. Among them was the last commander of the uprising, Marek Edelman. The Warsaw Uprising ends on October 2, 1944, with the surrender of the surviving Polish rebels to German forces. During the 1952 political campaign, Dulles had railed against the Truman administration for an immoral policy of mere containment rather than the "roll back" of communism. 640 killed. The 1976 disturbances and the subsequent arrests and dismissals of worker militants brought the workers and the intellectual opposition to the regime back into contact. Between 57[9] and 78[10][11] people, mostly protesters, were killed, and hundreds were wounded and arrested. [19] General Jaruzelski became the president of the country, but Solidarity member Tadeusz Mazowiecki became the Prime Minister. Although Poles were much more cynical than they had been in 1956, Gierek was believed to be an honest and well-intentioned man, and his promises bought him some time. [19] PuÅawy faction included Jewish Communists, as well as members of the old Communist intelligentsia, who in large part spent the war in the USSR and supported the Sovietization of Poland. [12] In 1943, following the Katyn controversy, Stalin had severed relations with the Polish government-in-exile in London. [19] In the 1980s, it helped form a broad anti-Communist social movement, with members ranging from people associated with the Roman Catholic Church to anti-Communist leftists. [15] Thus, from its outset the Yalta decision favored the Communists, who enjoyed the advantages of Soviet support for their plan of bringing Eastern Europe securely under its influence, as well as control over crucial ministries such as the security services.[14]. For the rest of the 1970s, resistance to the regime grew, in the form of trade unions, student groups, clandestine newspapers and publishers, imported books and newspapers, and even a "flying university". Throughout the mid-1980s, Solidarity persisted solely as an underground organization, supported by a wide range of international supporters, from the Church to the CIA. The new factories built by Gierek's regime also proved to be largely ineffective and mismanaged, often ignoring basics of market demand and cost effectiveness. As the government became increasingly unable to borrow money from abroad, it had no alternative but to raise prices, particularly for basic foodstuffs. Soviet Note of April 25, 1943, severing unilaterally Soviet-Polish diplomatic relations. Thus, both countries held crucial power in different facets. In May 1952, Western powers signed the General (Bonn) and European Defense Community (EDC) treaties. The negotiations were tense; both Polish and Soviet troops were put on alert and engaged in "manoeuvres" that were used as thinly-veiled threats. The Catholic Church, while protesting against police violence against demonstrating students, was also not willing to support a direct confrontation with the regime. [19] Prices were lowered, wage increases were announced, and sweeping economic and political changes were promised. The Soviet Union was not worried about only the political implications of reform but also its economic implications. [25] Natolin consisted largely of ethnic Poles of peasant origin who in large part had spent the war in occupied Poland, and had a peculiar nationalistic-communistic ideology. Hufbauer, Gary Clyde, Jeffrey J. Schott, and Kimberly Ann Elliott. Also crucial were the impacts of nationalism and nationalist emotions. In addition, the unexpected death in Moscow in 1956 of Bolesław Bierut, the PZPR First Secretary (known as the "Stalin of Poland"),[6] 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). For the People's Republic of Poland, 1956 was a year of transition. "Solidarity" gained more support and power, though it never approached the levels of membership it enjoyed in the 1980â1981 period. The perestroika and glasnost policies of the Soviet Union's new leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, were another factor in stimulating political reform in Poland. On December 13, 1981, claiming that the country was on the verge of economic and civil breakdown, and claiming the danger of Soviet intervention (whether this fear was justified at that particular moment is still hotly disputed by historians),[36] Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, who had become the Party's national secretary and prime minister that year, started a crack-down on Solidarity, declaring martial law, suspending the union, and temporarily imprisoning most of its leaders. Demonstrations against the price rises broke out in the northern coastal cities of GdaÅsk, Gdynia, ElblÄ
g and Szczecin. By August of 1989, it was clear that a Solidarity Prime Minister would have to be chosen. 1944. [19][14][18] GomuÅka's right-hand man, Zenon Kliszko, made matters worse by ordering the army to fire on protesting workers. MikoÅajczyk was forced to leave the country, and Poland became a de facto single-party state and a satellite state of the Soviet Union. In 1956, talking to President Eisenhower by telephone about the crisis in Hungary, Secretary of State Dulles had said that it was "very difficult to know how to handle the situation." [4] Initially very popular for his reforms,[26] 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. By the mid-1960s, Poland was experiencing increasing economic, as well as political, difficulties. The result was an immediate nationwide wave of strikes, with violent demonstrations and looting at PÅock and Radom. [3]:446–448, In February 1956, following the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev delivered the Secret Speech. Solidarity candidates captured all the seats they were allowed to compete for in the Sejm, while in the Senate they captured 99 out of the 100 available seats. During the era hundreds of thousands of Poles emigrated looking for jobs and prosperity abroad. On November 4, 1956, Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest to crush, once and for all, the national uprising. Many Poles adopted an attitude that might be called "resigned cooperation." [28], The leadership made little effort to intervene. While their attempts to create a bridge between Poland's history and Soviet Marxist ideology were mildly successful, they were nonetheless always stifled due to the regime's unwillingness to risk the wrath of the Soviet Union for going too far from the Soviet party line. The Communist Party's principal rivals were the veterans of the Armia Krajowa movement, along with MikoÅajczyk's Polish Peasant Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe; PSL), and the veterans of the Polish armies which had fought in the West. Alarmed by the process, the Party Secretariat decided to withhold the speech from the general public. [19] The Warsaw Pact was dissolved in the summer of 1991 and the Soviet troops would leave Poland by 1993. The Sovet-controlled Polish Army was called in to suppress the uprising. In 1990, Jaruzelski resigned as Poland's president and was succeeded by WaÅÄsa, who won the 1990 presidential elections. By this time, the Polish Communists had lost the Stalinist zealotry of the 1940s; they had grown corrupt and cynical during the Gierek years,[19] and had no stomach for bloodshed. ... it depends on the point of view. Lettering: POLSKA RZECZPOSPOLITA LUDOWA 19 88 mw ZÅ 100 ZÅ . about 500 killed. Millions of Poles relocated from the eastern territories annexed by the Soviet Union into the western territories, which Soviets transferred from Germany to Poland. [28][19] It marked an important development: the intellectual dissidents accepting the leadership of the working class in opposing the regime. Gomułka's thaw was caused by several factors. In the late 1970s the government of Edward Gierek was finally forced to raise prices, and this led to another wave of public protests. 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". GomuÅka promised an end to police terror, greater intellectual and religious freedom, higher wages and the reversal of collectivization, and to a certain extent he indeed fulfilled all of these promises. One was an official approval for demonstrating Polish national feelings, including the scaling down of official criticism of the prewar Polish regime, and of Poles who had fought in the anti-Communist wartime partisan movement, the Armia Krajowa. Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. Russia and the West in the T eaching of the Slavophiles; A S tudy of R omantic I deology Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952. "The defection of Jozef Swiatlo and the Search for Jewish Scapegoats in the Polish United Workers' Party, 1953–1954", "Notes from the Minutes of the CPSU CC Presidium Meeting with Satellite Leaders, 24 October 1956", "Październik 1956. July 11â12: Zagaje massacre. The prestige of the Communists fell so low that the even the two puppet parties allied with them decided to break away and adopt independent courses. 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. Economically, the Soviet Union heavily invested in much of the Eastern Bloc and was striving for integration of its economies. 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 control over art and artists was deepened and with time the Socialist Realism became the only movement that was accepted by the authorities. [31] The government gave in and announced a system of gradual but continuous price rises, particularly for meat. Polish People's Republic was an official name of Poland from 1952 until 1989. [44] The Communists thought of the election as a way to keep power while gaining some legitimacy to carry out reforms. In March 1968 student demonstrations at Warsaw University broke out when the government banned the performance of a play by Adam Mickiewicz (Dziady, written in 1824) at the Polish Theatre in Warsaw, on the grounds that it contained "anti-Soviet references." [14] At the same time between 1951 and 1953 a large number of pre-war reactionary professors was dismissed from the universities. [22] The events of the Hungarian November also helped distract the Soviets and ensure the success of the Polish October. The first Bank of Poland was founded in Warsaw in 1828 by Prince Franciszek Ksawery Drucki-Lubecki.An institution of the government of the Kingdom of Poland, it was entitled with issuance of the Polish currency as well as control over the credit rates.It was also entitled with a concession to operate foreign currencies and buy off credits issued by foreign companies and banks. 1944 For the sake of the national interest, we have always made every effort to stand the test of time and deal with difficulties. [19] The end of collectivization returned the land to the peasants,[14] but most of their farms were too small to be efficient, so productivity in agriculture remained low. 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. A new Party Congress was demanded, as were a greater role for the Sejm and a guarantee of personal liberties. "The Soviet Stake in Eastern Europe. Crowds often took radical action, which often resulted in unrest on the streets and clashes with police and other law enforcement agencies. A concurrent upsurge in religious and clerical sentiment took place. This indicated Chinaâs increasing importance in international affairs. China supported the Polish Communist Party, and as a result, Khrushchev did not use force. The Communists consolidated power by gradually whittling away the rights of their non-Communist foes, particularly by suppressing the leading opposition party, MikoÅajczyk's Polish Peasant Party. Nor would they allow any fundamental economic reform that would endanger the "socialist system. By the 1960s, other government officials had begun to plot against GomuÅka. As a further sign that the end of Soviet influence in Poland was nowhere in sight, the Warsaw Pact was signed in the Polish capital of Warsaw on May 14, 1955, to counteract the establishment of the Western military alliance, NATO. Wladyslaw Gomulka, who had been accused of Titoism in the late forties, was released from prison. 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.[2]. At the same time Soviet forces had engaged in plunder on Recovered Territories which were to be transferred to Poland, stripping it of valuable industrial equipment, infrastructure and factories and sending them to the Soviet Union. The referendum comprised three fairly general questions, and was meant to check the popularity of communist rule in Poland. [14] The plan called for accelerated development of heavy industry and forced collectivization of agriculture. In October, they became a part of the nation opposing Soviet domination. Those and other reforms, while more or less controversial, were greeted with relief by a significant faction of the population. Informator encyklopedyczny." [19], The striking electoral victory of the Solidarity candidates in these limited elections, and the subsequent formation of the first non-Communist government in the region in decades, encouraged many similar peaceful transitions from Communist Party rule in Central and Eastern Europe in the second half of 1989.[45]. 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. Nevertheless, under GomuÅka, Poles could still go to prison for writing political satire about the Party leader, as Janusz SzpotaÅski did, or for publishing a book abroad. Engraver: Ewa Tyc-KarpiÅska In June, they were still treated as puppets and servants of alien, anti-Polish interests and excluded from the national community. In June 1956, workers in the industrial city of PoznaÅ went on strike. [7] Poland, still a predominantly agricultural country compared to Western nations, suffered catastrophic damage to its infrastructure during the war, and lagged even further behind the West in industrial output in the War's aftermath. A spontaneous national uprising that began 12 days before in Hungary is viciously crushed by Soviet tanks and troops on November 4, 1956.
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