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The Foundation of the Communist Party of Poland1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2017
Extract
At the Close of 1918, after the end of hostilities and the disarmament of the German and Austrian troops, the economic and social conditions of Poland were highly upset. In November, 1918, only the Dąbrowa coal basin employed more workers than before the war. The metal and textile industries sank to a very low level and were almost at a standstill because of lack of raw materials and the removal of machinery to Germany. With the cessation of hostilities many industries were suddenly closed down, throwing huge masses of unemployed and discontented workers on the market. On the other hand, agriculture, although it suffered bitterly both from lack of machinery and fertilizers, was relatively better off and its production did not suffer as much as that of industry. Owing to the favorable prices on one hand, and devaluation of the currency on the other, it was able to reduce its debts and mortgages. The high prices of food products made agriculture a relatively good business. Inflation sent the prices sky-high, especially for food. Profiteering and black market were rampant.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1952
Footnotes
1
This paper is based on a chapter of a larger project entitled Genealogy of a Party: Origins and Beginnings of the Communist Party of Poland. The research for this project has been supported by the Russian Research Center of Harvard. The author gratefully acknowledges the generous assistance granted to him by this institution.
References
2 For post-World War I economic conditions see Zweig, F., Poland Between Two Wars: A Study of Social and Economic Changes (London, 1944), pp. 28–38 Google Scholar; Czerwiński, W., Le problème de l'indèpendance èconomique de la Pologne (Paris, 1931)Google Scholar, the chapter “Lés debuts pénibles de l'indépendance Polonaise,” pp. 77–83; the last chapter of St. A. Kempner's Rozwój gospodarczy Polski od rozbiorów do niepodlegości (The Economic Development of Poland from Partitions to Independence) (Warsaw, 1924), pp. 321–45; also Handelsman, M., ed., La Pologne, sa vie économique et sociale pendant la guerre (Paris–New Haven, 1932), I, 275–592 Google Scholar.
3 “Demokracja i konstytuanta” (The Democracy and the Constituent Assembly), Nasza Trybuna (Our Tribune), No. i (November 1, 1918); also Gromada (Village Gathering), No. 3 (November–December, 1918), pp. 1–2.
4 For the program of the so-called “Lublin Government,” see Niepodłegtość (Independence), XIV, No. 2 (1936), 268–73; for the background and the origins, I. Daszyński, Pamigtniki (Memoirs), II, 320–34.
5 The PPS-Left was invited by Piłsudski to join the coalition government of Moraczewski but scornfully turned this proposal down: Gtos Robotniczy (The Worker's Voice), November 14, 1018, p. 1.
6 Ibid., No. 98 (December 6, 1918).
7 “Do proletariatu Polski!” (To the Proletariat of Poland!), Wiadomości Rady Delegatów Robotniczych Okregu Sosnotoieckiego (The News of the Council of Workers’ Delegates of the Sosnowiec Region), No. 1 (December 6, 1918), p. 1; No. 2 (December 23, 1918). As was admitted later on by a Communist paper, the strike had to be abandoned because of the apathy of the masses.
8 Glos Robotniczy, November 12, 1918, p. 1.
9 Szmidt, Socjtddemokracja Królestwa Folskiego i Litwy, Materialy i dokumenty 1914–1918 (Social Democracy of Poland and Lithuania, Materials and Documents, 1914–1918) (Moscow, 1936), p. 318, the proclamation “Przeciwko rozbiciu Rad Delegatów Robotniczych” (Against the Split of the Councils of Workers Delegates).
10 The editorial of the official Communist organ Sztandar Socjalizmu (The Banner of Socialism), December 27, 1918, p. 1, wrote inter alia, “… the lack of a spontaneous, strong revolutionary movement caused the internal life of the Councils to die down, and the conscious efforts of the false Socialists managed to weaken and to paralyze their activities.”
11 Głos Robotniczy, December 4, 1918, and Nasza Trybuna, No. 3 (November 29, 1918). Nevertheless, the latter paper had to admit the good effects of the social reforms of the Moraczewski cabinet, although it branded it as “half-hearted and hesitating.”
12 Gromada, No. 3 (November–December, 1918), pp. 4–6; the resolution of the November Conference of the SDKPiL on the agrarian question, Szmidt, op. cit., pp. 325–26; “Głód ziemi” (The Hunger of the Soil), Gromada, August, 1918. After some greatly exaggerated reports (Gromada, November–December, 1918, p. 56 and February, 1918, pp. 3–4) on the revolutionary developments in the villages of the Lublin district, there is an almost complete silence in the Communist press on the subject. See also, Trybuna, No. 218 (November 16, 1918), p. 3; also “Trzecia konferencja grupy SDKPiL w Rosji” (The Third Conference of the SDKPiL in Russia), Trybuna, No. 221 (November 21, 1918).
13 Nasza Trybuna, No. 4 (December 6, 1918) and No. 5 (December 13, 1918); both issues were largely devoted to the conference. See also the editorial of No. 1, “Ku zjednoczeniu” (Toward Unification) which pointed out that, if the PPS-Left is really for the Social Democratic program, then the existence of two proletarian organizations with the same platform would be a waste of energy and a piece of nonsense. The enthusiastic, highly emotional article by W. Warski, “Niech zyje zjednoczenie” (Long Live the Merger), in No. 5 of the paper was, later on, repudiated by the party in a special issue of Nasza Trybuna for its sharp criticism of the SDKPiL and not enough criticism of the PPS–Left. “The line of the PPS–Left, pursued during the war,” wrote Warski, “was wrong, but during the corresponding period the SDKPiL had no line at all.” In Nasza Trybuna, No. 4, pp. 5–7, see also the report from the conference of the SDKPiL.
14 “Do zjednoczenia” (Toward Unification), Gios Robotniczy, November 7, 1918; also “Najwyzszy czas” (The Supreme Time), ibid., November 10, 1918.
15 At the beginning, the new organization bore the name, “Communist Workers’ Party of Poland—United Name of the SDKPiL and PPS–Left.” The subtitle was dropped in February, 1921. Only after four years and after a considerable modification of its program, the organization assumed the name which it bore until its dissolution by the Comintern in 1937, “The Communist Party of Poland.”
16 “Do proletariatu Polski! Proklamacja Zjazdu Organizacyjnego Komunistycznej Partii Robotniczej Polski (Zjednoczonej SDKPiL i PPS-Lewicy)” (To the Proletariat of Poland! Proclamation of the Organization Congress of the Communist Party of Poland [The United SDKPiL and the PPS-LeftI), Sztandar Socjalizmu (The Banner of Socialism), Warsaw, No. 1 (December 19, 1918).
17 In October, 1918, during a Moscow conference of the Communist and Communist-gravitating parties of the neighboring countries, a representative of the SDKPiL made a report on the position of his party in Poland. This report admitted that there were only seven Social Democratic groups in Warsaw (one of them Jewish), each numbering from twenty to thirty members. The number of sympathizers was two or three times larger. Thus, according to the report, which had no reason to be modest since the party was pushing the Bolsheviks to an armed intervention, the stronghold of the SDKPiL numbered about 200 members and no more than 600 sympathizers. In Łódź, the second largest region of the party, the situation was no better; Zhizn natsionalnostiei (The Life of Nationalities), No. 1 (November 9, 1918), p. 2. Thus, one can estimate the membership of the SDKPiL throughout the whole country as being between one and two thousand at the most, with the fellow travelers amounting to three to five thousand. The membership of the PPS-Left, difficult to estimate exactly, was certainly several times larger.
18 The first large secession, that of Łódź, led by Szczerkowski, took place as early as March, 1918. Szczerkowski carried with him most of the active party members of the Łódź district. The Poznań district followed. See Antoni Szczerkowski, “Opozycja.niepodłegiościowa w PPS-Lewicy” (The Independence Opposition within the PPS-Left), Ksigga Pamiatkowa PPS (The Memorial Book of the PPS) (Warsaw, n.d.), pp. 217–21; also jednośćc Robotnicza, June 2, 1918, p. 6; and the article “Dezorganizatorzy” (The Disorganizers) in Głos Robotniczy, June 16, 1918.
19 For the various parts of the program see, Brand and Walecki, Der Kommunismus in Polen (Hamburg, 1921), pp. 6-9.
20 See also the official organ of the party, Sztandar Socjalizmu, No. 1 (December 19, 1918), “Wspólna platforma programowo-taktyczna” (The Common Ideological and Tactical Platform); also the December 22, 1918 issue of the same paper, which gives the texts of the resolutions passed at the end of the Congress; the resolution concerning the treatment of the working movement and the Jews by the Moraczewski government; the greetings for the Communist International and the Spartacusbund.
21 The new party trusted that the resolution of the SDKPiL Party Conference of November, 1918, took proper care of the agrarian problem (NUSZQ Trybuna. No. 5 [December 13, 1918], p. 7).
22 In this respect see “Z Gdańskiem czy bez Gdańska” (With or Without Danzig), Nasza Trybuna, No. 210 (238) (November 3, 1918); the article repeated with emphasis the old slogan “Away with frontiers” which are of no concern to the party—only the dictatorship of the proletariat will create the “International State of Labor” (Międzynarodowe Państwo Pracy).
23 In this connection, see the discussion, to be quoted further, which took place a few months later between Lenin and Marchlewski; Szmidt, op. cit., pp. 335–37. For a different attitude to both questions on the part of the Luxemburg-inspired Spartacusbund see Luxemburg, R., Le programme communiste … Que veut l'union de Spartacus (Paris, 1922), pp. 32–33 and 40–42Google Scholar.
24 Szmidt, op. cit., pp. 335–37; also Lenin, , Sočinenija (4th Russian edition, Moscow, 1950), XXIX, 153–54Google Scholar. Marchlewski had a strange fear of anarchy and disorder, and on several occasions deplored the anarchy caused by the Bolshevik revolution, especially the way in which the land was distributed by the peasants, with tremendous losses in cattle, buildings and implements. His idée fixe was to avoid it in Poland. That is why he opposed the slogan “Land to the Peasants” in 1920.
25 Monitor Polski, No. 13 (January 1, 1919), p. 1.
26 According to the official sources of information, the party numbered in the spring of 1919, 22,000 active members, Monitor, No. 160 (July 19, 1919), p. 2. It is difficult to estimate even roughly the number of sympathizers. The number of unemployed at the same period exceeded half a million in the Congress Kingdom and one hundred thousand in Warsaw alone, ibid., No. 159 (July 15, 1919), p. 4. About two-thirds of them had governmental assistance, ibid., No. 92 (April 4, 1919), p. 2.
27 Pierwazy zjazd Miedzynarodówki Komunistycznej w Moskivie w marcu 1919 r (The First Congress of the Communist International in Moscow, in March 1919) (Hamburg, 1919), pp. 7 and 8. The invitations to the Congress were signed by the “Foreign Bureau of the Communist Party of Poland.” It is interesting to note that this Bureau refused to add the word “Workers” to its name.
28 Quoted by Gankin, O. and Fisher, H. H., ed., The Bolsheviks and the World War: The Origins of the Third International (London, England and Stanford, California, 1940), p. 506.Google Scholar
29 “Wyzwolenie” (Liberation), a peasant party preaching a radical redistribution of large estates among peasants on the basis of private ownership of land.
30 Z Pola Walki (From the Field of Battle), Nos. 5–6 (Moscow, 1933), p. 40.