Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T16:02:11.375Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Politics of Ethnic Cleansing: The P.P.R., The P.Z.Z. and Wielkopolska's Nationalist Revolution, 1944–1946

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

T. David Curp
T. David Curp*
Affiliation:
Ohio University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

“… all of society is caught up in a hatred of Germany … [this] creates a serious possibility of uniting all of society into one entire national front.”

Władysław Gomułka

Three costly revolutions began in Poland between spring 1944 and summer 1946. The first two were primarily state-sponsored political and socioeconomic revolutions initiated by a minority comprising the Moscow-appointed and -controlled Polish Workers' Party (Polska Partia Robotnicza, P.P.R.) and their allies. Although they dominated the commanding heights of regional and national politics and administration, the P.P.R. and its supporters faced fierce opposition and waged these revolutions with only partial success, relying heavily on fraud and force. These ongoing state-sponsored transformations established an uneven hold on Polish society and depended upon the police power of the new Polish state and, ultimately, the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union was no longer willing to support its satellites in Eastern Europe by force of arms and the Polish people dismantled their regime's coercive power, much of the laboriously developed political and socioeconomic superstructure of the People's Republic of Poland collapsed.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , December 2001 , pp. 575 - 603
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Gomułka, Włatisław. Excerpt from a paper of the Secretary of the Central Committee of the P.P.R. entitled A New Situation, New Tasks: Poland's Situation and the Tasks of Our Party in the Second Stage of the Country's Liberation,” presented to an enlarged Plenum of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers' Party on 6 February 1945. Quoted in Zofia Polubiec, ed., Polska Partia Robotnicza: dokumenty programowe 1942–1948 (Warsaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1984), pp. 279–299. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Polish are the author's.Google Scholar

2. Jan Gross calls the social and cultural meaning and impact of exile as one of the largely unexplored “grand themes” of East Central European history. Gross, Jan, “Themes for a Social History of War Experience and Collaboration,” in István Deák, Jan T. Gross and Tony Judt, The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Naimark, Norman, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).Google Scholar

4. For Poland alone this included not only the expulsion of over 3.5 million Germans then living within the country's newly reconfigured borders, but also the removal of over half a million Ukrainians, Byelorussians, and Lithuanians to the Soviet Union and the additional deportation of over 140,000 Ukrainians from their homes in eastern Poland to Poland's newly annexed Recovered Territories. Sakson, Andrzej, “Socjologiczne Problemy Wysiedleń, in Hubert Orłowski and Andrej Sakson, eds, Utracona Ojczyzna: Przymusowe deportacje i przesiedlenia jako wspólne doświadczenie (Poznań: Instytut Zachodni, 1996), pp. 158–159. Sakson's figures exclude millions of Germans who fled the Soviet wartime advance and were prevented by the Polish government from returning to their homes. Thus the number of Germans expelled from their homes in Poland's Oder–Neisse territories (as well as Poland's pre-war German minority) totaled over ten million people. Sebastian Siebel-Achenbach, Lower Silesia from Nazi Germany to Communist Poland 1942–49 (Hong Kong: St Martin's Press, 1994), pp. 86–90.Google Scholar

5. For a full discussion of the diplomatic maneuvers surrounding the redrawing of Poland and Germany's political and ethnographic frontiers, see Siebel-Achenbach, , Lower Silesia, chapters 3, 5, 9, pp. 86–90.Google Scholar

6. Gross, Jan, “War as Revolution,” in Norman Naimark and Leonid Gibianskii, eds, The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944–1949 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997), p. 23.Google Scholar

7. Musiełak, Michał, Polski Zwia̦zek Zachodni 1944–1950 (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1986), pp. 26–33.Google Scholar

8. Blanke, Richard, Orphans of Versailles: The Germans in Western Poland, 1918–1939 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), pp. 94–95, 98–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Kwilecki, Andzej and Tomaszewski, Władysław, Poznań Jako Ośrodek Polskiej Myśli Zachodniej w Dwudziestoleciu Mi̦dzywojennym, in Andrzej Kwilecki, ed., Polska Myśl Zachodnia w Poznaniu i Wielkopolsce: Jej rozwój i realizacja w wiekach xix i xx (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1980), p. 173.Google Scholar

10. Blanke, Richard, Prussian Poland in the German Empire (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1981), pp. 216–218.Google Scholar

11. Giertych, J̦drzej, Pół Wieku Polskiej Polityki: Uwagi o polityce Dmowskiego i polityce polskiej lat 1919–1939 i 1939–1947 (London, 1947), pp. 15–36.Google Scholar

12. Blanke, , Orphans of Versailles, pp. 60–61, 200–202, 215, 225; Edward Wynot, Polish Politics in Transition: The Camp of National Unity and the Struggle for Power, 1935–1939 (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1973), p. 29.Google Scholar

13. Blanke, , Orphans of Versailles, pp. 200, 216.Google Scholar

14. “A Memorial on the Aims and Tasks of the Polish Western Union, May 1945,” Wojewódzkie Archiwum Panstwowe w Poznaniu (henceforth WAPP) Polski Zwia̦żek Zachodni (henceforth PZZ) 589, p. 1.Google Scholar

15. Werblan, Andrej, Władysław Gomułka Sekretarz Generalny PPR (Warsaw: Ksia̦żka i Wiedza, 1988), pp. 542–558, 600.Google Scholar

16. Marczak, Tadeusz, Propaganda Polityczna Stronnictw Przed Referendum z 30 VI 1946 R. (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytet Wrocławskiego, 1988), p. 40.Google Scholar

17. Germans made up over 300,000 of the province's almost five million inhabitants by 1931 and were a commanding, if often deeply anti-Polish, presence in much of Wielkopolska's economic and cultural life throughout the interwar period. Przemysław Hauser, Mniejszość Niemiecka w Polsce w Latach 1918–1939, and Wojciech Kotowski, Lojalizm czy iredenta? Mniejszość niemiecka wobec państwa polskiego w latach 1919–1939, in Wrzesinski, , ed., Polska-Polacy-Mniejszosci Narodowe (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy imienia Ossolinskich Wydawnictwo, 1992), pp. 31–52, 53–64.Google Scholar

18. Minutes of a Meeting of the Executive of the Provincial Central Committee [henceforth PCC] of the PPR, WAPP Komitet Wojewódzkie Polski Partii Rabotniczej [henceforth KW PPR] p. 6, 11.Google Scholar

19. Kwilecki, and Tomaszewski, , Poznań Jako Ośrodek Polskiej Myśli Zachodniej, in Kwilecki, ed., Polska Myśl Zachodnia, pp. 129–184.Google Scholar

20. Erazmus, Eduard, Referendum i wybory w województwie Poznanskim w latach 1946–1947 (Poznań: Uniwersytet im. A. Miczkiwicza, 1970), pp. 16–18, 25–26.Google Scholar

21. The Struggle and Self-Defense of the People in Relation to the Terror of the Occupation, in a paper read to the First Plenary Session of the National Homeland Council (Krajowa Rada Narodowa, K. R.N.) on 1 January, 1944, in Gomułka, , O Problemie Niemieckim: artykuły i przemówienia (Warsaw: Ksia̦żka i Wiedza, 1971), p. 12.Google Scholar

22. Werblan, , Władysław Gomułka, pp. 168–170.Google Scholar

23. No. 24, December 1943, Lódz—An Article Stating the Relations of the PPR to the German Population in Poland. On Our Relations with the Germans, in Polubiec, Zofia, ed., Polska Partia Robotnicza: dokumenty programowe (Warsaw: Ksia̦żka i Wiedza, 1984), pp. 174–179.Google Scholar

24. It is worth noting that in his report in January 1944 on the political situation in wartime Poland, Gomułka grouped the National Democrats among fascists and other reactionary organizations. Gomułkca, Władysław, Artykuły i Przemówienia: Tom I: styczeń 1943–grudzień 1945 (Warsaw: Ksia̦żka i Wiedza, 1963), pp. 67–68.Google Scholar

25. The Struggle and Self-Defense, in Gomułka, , O problemie Niemieckim, p. 12.Google Scholar

26. The Manifesto of the Polish Committee of National Liberation, 22 July 1944, in Bester, Liliana, ed., Manifest PKWN (Warsaw: Ksia̦żka i Wiedza, 1974), pp. 13–25.Google Scholar

27. The manifesto was vague enough to avoid committing the P. K.W. N. (and more importantly, the Soviet Union) to claiming all of Lower Silesia or the entire Pomeranian coast, including the port of Szczecin, as Polish territorial objectives. Kołomejczyk, Norbert, Ziemia Zachodnia w dzialalnosci PPR (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 1966), p. 46.Google Scholar

28. Using the eastern or the western Neisse to delineate a Polish–German frontier determined whether Breslau (WrocBaw), over 24,793 square kilometers of German territory, and an additional two to three million Germans would fall under Polish rule, those Germans to be ultimately expelled. Siebel-Achenbach, , Lower Silesia, pp. 88–89.Google Scholar

29. Quoted in Kałomejczyk, , Ziemia Zachodnia, p. 48.Google Scholar

30. Polonsky, Antony and Drukier, Bołesław, eds, The Beginnings of Communist Rule in Poland (London: Routledge&Kegan Paul, 1980), pp. 47–53, 227.Google Scholar

31. A Memorial on the Aims and Tasks of the Polish Western Union, May 1945, WAPP PZZ 589, p. 1.Google Scholar

32. Musielak, , Polski Zwia̦zek Zachodni, p. 65.Google Scholar

33. To the Polish Committee of National Liberation, 2 November, 1944, WAPP Wojewódzkie Archiwum Panstwowe w Poznaniu [henceforth WAPP] Polski Zwia̦zek Zachodni [henceforth PZZ] 579, pp. 213–214.Google Scholar

34. PZZ Correspondence with the Chairman of the Committee of National Liberation, 21 November 1944, WAPP PZZ 579, p. 217.Google Scholar

35. Musielak, , Polski Zwia̦zek Zachodni, 76. The four-member organizational committee of the P.Z.Z. included two activists from the P.P.R. and one from the Polish Socialist Party (Polska Partiy Socjalistyczna, P.P.S.). The most important of these was P.P.R. member and P.Z.Z. Secretary General Józef Dubiel, a member of the pre-war Communist League of Polish Youth and a wartime communist partisan commander who played an important role in the subsequent history of the P.Z.Z., and later as Vice Minister of the Ministry of Recovered Territories. Polonsky and Drukier, The Beginnings of Communist Rule, p. 162.Google Scholar

36. “A Memorial,” WAPP PZZ 589, p. 3.Google Scholar

37. At the May 1945 Plenum there was a call for Dubiel to leave the P.Z.Z. He was later caught up in the post-1948 P.P.R. witch hunt of national-deviationists. Accused of wartime cooperation with the Gestapo, he was arrested along with many others of Gomułka's political allies in 1949. Polonsky, Antony and Drukier, Bołesław, eds, The Beginnings of Communist Rule in Poland (London: Routledge&Kegan Paul, 1980), pp. 162, 438.Google Scholar

38. “To the Leadership of the Polish Committee of National Liberation, Lublin, 2 November, 1944,” WAPP PZZ 579, p. 1, which contained the initial formulation of the P.Z.Z.'s mission and self-definition, stated that the P.Z.Z. was an “all-Polish, non-Party, anti-Fascist and democratic institution.”Google Scholar

39. Gomułkca, , Artykuły i przemowienia: Tom I, p. 255 Google Scholar

40. A Memorial, in WAPP PZZ 589, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

41. Protocols of an Extraordinary Meeting of Regional Delegates in Łódź on 6 May 1945, WAPP PZZ 580, p. 8.Google Scholar

42. Musielak, , Polski Zwia̦zek Zachodni, pp. 76–79.Google Scholar

43. So called because of the Polish nationalist claim that all German territory east of the Oder and Neisse rivers was historically Polish land. Norman Davies points out the fictions inherent in arguing for any real continuity between early medieval Polish settlements in the Oder–Neisse region and Poland's right to territories that, in 1945, had for over 600 years been outside the orbit of any Polish state. Ultimately the Z. O. was, for Poland, booty of war. Davies, , God's Playground: A History of Poland: Volume II: 1795 to the Present (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), pp. 492–535.Google Scholar

44. Musielak, , Polski Zwia̦zek Zachodni, p. 89.Google Scholar

45. Dulczewski, Zygmunt and Kwilecki, Andzrej, Społeczeństwo Wielkopolskie w osadnictwie Ziem Zachodnich (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 1962), p. 45.Google Scholar

46. Musielak, , Polski Zwia̦zek Zachodni, pp. 192, 195–197.Google Scholar

47. Ibid., p. 214.Google Scholar

48. See Musielak, Michał, Ludność niemiecka w Wielkpolsce po II wojnie światowej w ocenie Polskiego Zwia̦zku Zachodniego, in Andrzej Sakson, ed., Polska-Niemcy-Mniejszość Niemiecka w Wielkopolskce: Przeslość i Terazniejszość, pp. 133–35; and Małgorzata Ujdak, Polski Zwia̦zek Zachodni Wobec Problemów Narodowościowych w Latach 1944–1950 (Katowice: Uniwersytet Śla̦ski, 1988), p. 27.Google Scholar

49. Report of the Starosta in Moglino and Report of the Starosta in Ostrów for 14 May 1945, in WAPP Urzad Wojewodzkie Poznańskie (henceforth UWP), pp. 73, 110, 213. Local government officials referred to the P.Z.Z. as the elite of local society. In Mogline the president of the local circle of the P.Z.Z., K. Szymański, was a pharmacist, and the vice-president, E. Zawadzki, was the Inspector of Schools. In Ostrów the P.Z.Z. leadership was described as apolitical and among the most highly educated members of local society.Google Scholar

50. In Poznań, (which eventually became the headquarters for the Union in all of Poland) the P.Z.Z. became a mass organization, present in 40 of the province's 43 counties and organized in 136 local circles with 23,000 members. The Poznań Circle in 1945, WAPP PZZ 586, p. 130.Google Scholar

51. The Poznań Circle in 1945, WAPP PZZ 586, p. 146. In late April, the Ministry of Public Administration commissioned the P.Z.Z. to develop a practical plan for colonizing all of the Recovered Territories.Google Scholar

52. Musielak, Michał, Polski Zwia̦zek Zachodni, in Barbara Wiśniewska and Benon Dymek, eds, 40-Lecie Powrotu Ziem Zachodnich i Północnych do Polski: Cz̦ść II: Sekcja Polityczno-Socjologiczna: Materiały Ogólnoposlkiej Sesji Naukowej Odbytej w Dniach 25–26 Czerwca 1985 R. (Warsaw: Drukarnia KC PZPR, 1986), p. 158.Google Scholar

53. Szczegóła, , Przeobrażenia, pp. 50–52.Google Scholar

54. Dulczewski, and Kwilecki, , Społeczeństwo Wielkopolskie, pp. 87–90.Google Scholar

55. Engelgard, Jan, Testament Dmowskiego Niemcy-Rosja-Polska (Warsaw: Wydanwnictwo Polskie SP.Z.o.o., 1996), p. 25.Google Scholar

56. Terej, Jerzy Janusz, Rzeczywistość i Polityka: Ze studiów nad dziejami najnowszymi Narodowej Demokracji (Warsaw: Ksia̦żka i Wiedza, 1971), p. 12.Google Scholar

57. Kwilecki, and Tomaszewski, , Poznań Jako Ośrodek Polskiej Myśli Zachodniey; and Serwański, Myśl Zachodnia, in Kwilecki, Polska Myśl Zachodnia, pp. 154, 214.Google Scholar

58. Report on the Department of Press Information for the Month of October 1945, WAPP Wojewódzki Urza̦d Informacji i Propagandy (henceforth WUIiP) 34, p. 72.Google Scholar

59. Choniawko maintains that the PPR enjoyed authority [in Wielkopolska] because of its role in settlement [in the Recovered Territories]. Choniawko, Andrzej, Stosunki polityczne w Wielkopolsce, 1945–1950 (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 1980), pp. 49–50. Szczegóła also discuss the importance of the Poznań P.P.R. in sending operation groups to various towns in the Recovered Territories. He notes that the P.P.R. emphasized work in the Western Territories, yet it was the P.Z.Z. which was the main organizer of mass settlement in the Recovered Territories. Szczegóła, Przeobrażenia, pp. 38–39.Google Scholar

60. As early as May, party activists from Warsaw pointed to deep failures in land reform in Wielkoposlka. AAN KC PPR 295/IX-57, p. 9; see also Sżabek, Henryk, Dzieje Polskiej Reformy Rolnej 1944–48 (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1972), pp. 122–138.Google Scholar

61. Szczegóła, Hieronim, Przeobraceenia Ustrojowe-Społeczne na Ziemi Lubuskiej w Latach 1945–1947 (Poznań: Uniwersytet Adama Mickiewicza, 1971), p. 45.Google Scholar

62. Gomułka, , Artykuły i Przemówienia, Tom I, p. 246.Google Scholar

63. Ibid., pp. 211, 219.Google Scholar

64. Ibid., pp. 248–249.Google Scholar

65. “Comrade Zambrowski from the Central Committee on the Party Line and the Recovered Territories in the Aftermath of the May Plenum,” WAPP KW PPR 50, p. 20.Google Scholar

66. “Comrade Zambrowski,” WAPP KW PPR 50, p. 22.Google Scholar

67. Kenney, Padraic, “Whose Nation, Whose State?” in Antony Polonsky, ed., Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry: Volume XIII: Focusing on the Holocaust and its Aftermath (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2000), pp. 224–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

68. Kochański, Aleksander, Minutes of the Central Committee Conference, in Protokół Obrad KC PPR w Maju 1945 Roku (Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Politycznych Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1992), p. 42. Compare this with Roman Zambrowski's speech on the political promise for the P.P.R. of land reform and distribution in the Z.O. Polonsky and Drukier, The Beginnings of Communist Rule, p. 417.Google Scholar

69. Provincial Commissioner for the Task of Settlement–Resettlement for the Province of Poznań, WAPP KW PPR 145, pp. 16–17. The government issued instructions that “weak families” (consisting of only “women with children” or the elderly) who were not capable of engaging in pioneer work in the Recovered Territories be settled in the less rugged conditions of the pre-war territories. Classifying a family as “weak” did not necessarily imply criticism, since P.P.R. activists initially claimed that “the women repatrianci [who headed such families] are hardened, do not fear work, and are full of zeal.”Google Scholar

70. Provincial Commissioner for the Task of Settlement–Resettlement, WAPP KW PPR 145, p. 16. Because of the repatrianci's “reactionary” political views and political unpopularity, Poznań's P.P.R. later revised its earlier, positive assessment of this group.Google Scholar

71. Provincial Commissioner for the Task of Settlement–Resettlement, WAPP KW PPR 145, p. 17.Google Scholar

72. The Regional Inspector of the State Repatriation Agency in Ostrów County, Poznań Branch, 27 July 1945, WAPP Państwowy Urza̦d Repatriacyjny (henceforth PUR), 872, p. 6. For a further discussion of the impact of regional identity on Polish settlers in the western territories, see Kenney, Padraic, Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists, 1945–1950 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), pp. 156–163.Google Scholar

73. “Reports from the Town Government of Gorzów for July and August 1945,” WAPP UWP 78, pp. 7, 65.Google Scholar

74. “Report of the County Instructor for Settlement Questions, 16 October, 1945 for October 1–16, 1945,” AAN Ministerstwo Administracji Publicznej (henceforth MAP) 2465, p. 155.Google Scholar

75. “The Offences of Marauders and Soldiers of the Red Army on the Terrain of the Recovered Territories,” AAN Ministerstwo Ziem Odzyskanych (henceforth MZO) 60, pp. 202–203.Google Scholar

76. “Report from the Town Government of Gorzów for August 1945,” WAPP UWP 78, pp. 65–67.Google Scholar

77. “Report of PUR, District Branch in Gorzów, 22 August, 1945,” WAPP PUR 2675, p. 14. Of the 10,993 free farms in Gorzów county, P. U.R. reported that 40% of these were in Soviet hands and that “it can be counted on that when the Soviets leave such places they will be completely devastated.” In Strzelce there were similar problems with the Soviets destroying property they occupied, including one estate that, after the Soviets left, had only “empty walls and the land” with no farm implements, furnishing, seed grain or animals. AAN MZO 1154, p. 8.Google Scholar

78. “September 1945 Report of the Provincial Office of the Ministry of Information and Propaganda,” WAPP WUIiP 33, pp. 155, 164.Google Scholar

79. Marczak, , Propaganda Polityczna, pp. 12–14.Google Scholar

80. “Meeting of Party Activists on 7 August 1945,” WAPP KW PPR 50, p. 27.Google Scholar

81. “Meeting of Party Activists on 7 August and 6 September 1945,” WAPP KW PPR 50, pp. 27–28, p. 46.Google Scholar

82. “Minutes of the Meeting of the Provincial Executive Committee of the PPR on 5 August 1945,” WAPP KW PPR 6, p. 78.Google Scholar

83. “Minutes of the meeting of the Provincial Executive Committee of the PPR on 5 August 1945,” WAPP KW PPR 6, p. 76.Google Scholar

84. The above title is the refrain from “Rota”, an anti-German patriotic song composed in 1919 to honor the unveiling of a monument on the 500th anniversary of the defeat of the Teutonic Knights and which was sung at almost all postwar public meetings in Wielkopolska. For the full text, see Davies, , God's Playground, Volume II, p. 136.Google Scholar

85. Giertych, , Pół Wieku Polskiej Polityki, p. 187.Google Scholar

86. Siebel-Achenbach, , Lower Silesia, pp. 239–253.Google Scholar

87. Musielak notes that the cause of the failure of the P.Z.Z. to maintain its traditional apolitical line was that its supporters tried—and failed—to develop the Union's ideas and programs “in isolation from the then current political reality,” and that from its beginning the P.Z.Z.'s apolitical aspirations were only “theoretical postulates.” Musielak, , Polski Zwia̦zek Zachodni, p. 96.Google Scholar

88. Minutes from the Conference of the Directors of the PZZ from 10 to 12 October 1945, WAPP PZZ 582, p. 3.Google Scholar

89. The Plan of Programmatic Resolutions of the PZZ, WAPP PZZ 582, p. 47.Google Scholar

90. A similar process was already underway among professional movements in Poland at this time. Chumiński, J̦drzej, Ruch Zawodowy w Polsce w Warunkach Kstałtuja̦cego Si̦ Systemu Totalitarnego 1944–1956 (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Akademii Ekonomicznej im. Oskara Langego we Wrocławiu, 1999), pp. 181–186.Google Scholar

91. The Governing Board of the PZZ's Socio-Political Department: A Notice to All Circles on Organizational and Programmatic Questions, WAPP PZZ 582, p. 28.Google Scholar

92. Of 1,087 total delegates, over two-thirds (659) had belonged to the K. P.P. and over 400 of these had spent the war outside of Poland. Werblan, Władysław Gomułka, pp. 300–301, 318–319.Google Scholar

93. Coutouvidis, and Reynolds, , Poland, p. 222.Google Scholar

94. Gomułka, , Artykuły i Przemówienia, Vol. I, p. 525.Google Scholar

95. Werblan, , Władysław Gomułka, pp. 306–307.Google Scholar

96. Gomułka, , Artykuły i Przemówienia, Vol. 1, pp. 440–441.Google Scholar

97. Ibid., pp. 429–430.Google Scholar

98. Kawalec, Krzystof, Roman Dmowski (Warsaw: Editions Spotkanie System, 1996), pp. 126–127, 320–322.Google Scholar

99. Gomułka, , Artykuły i Przemówienia, Vol. 1, pp. 480–484, 510.Google Scholar

100. Ibid., pp. 488–492, 502–504.Google Scholar

101. Ibid., pp. 510–515.Google Scholar

102. Kołomejczyk, Norbert and Malinowski, Marian, Polska Partia Robotnicza, 1942–1948 (Warsaw: Ksia̦żka i Wiedza, 1986), pp. 288–289; and Polubiec, Polska Partia Robotnicza: dokumenty programowe, pp. 320–322.Google Scholar

103. Werblan, , Władysław Gomułka, pp. 309–311.Google Scholar

104. Report of the Provincial Secretary of the PPR, Comrade J. Izydorczyk to a Meeting of the Active Members of the Province on 9 January, 1946, WAPP KW PPR 51, p. 3.Google Scholar

105. In a single-spaced eight-and-a-half-page manuscript the Recovered Territories Izydorczyk mentioned the Recovered Territories twice (and once repeated Gomułka's point about the necessity of concentrating the nation's and the party's efforts on binding the Z. O. to Poland). Report of the Provincial Secretary, WAPP KW PPR 51, pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

106. For an in-depth discussion of negotiations surrounding the referendum, see Marczak, , Propaganda Polityczna, pp. 45–71.Google Scholar

107. Łach, Stanisław, Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe w latach 1945–1947 (Gdansk: Marpress, 1995), pp. 157–159.Google Scholar

108. Gomułka, Władysław, W walce o demokracje ludów (Warsaw: Ksia̦żka, 1947), p. 15.Google Scholar

109. Minutes of the Meeting of the PCC on 18 January, 1946, WAPP KW PPR 7, p. 19.Google Scholar

110. Minutes of the meeting of the PCC on 6 February, 1946, WAPP KW PPR 7, p. 28.Google Scholar

111. Minutes of the Secretariat of the PCC of the PPR on 27 February, 1946, WAPP KW PPR 6, p. 46.Google Scholar

112. To the Minister of Information and Propaganda in Warsaw, an Evaluation of the People's Vote in the Province of Poznań, WAPP WUIiP Korespondencja tajna 26, pp. 38–39; The Political Situation of the Province, March, 1946, WAPP WUIiP 39, pp. 2–3; The Political Situation June 1946, WUIiP 42, pp. 2–3.Google Scholar

113. During the campaign there were numerous complaints of the wild excesses of regime propaganda; in Wielkopolska alone the regime printed over 21 million pieces of propaganda, from brochures to posters, in a region with 3 million people. Propaganda officials noted popular dissatisfaction about how the regime did not have enough paper for primary school textbooks, but could cover the towns of Wielkopolska with “three times yes” propaganda. “Minutes of the Provincial Meeting of Active Party Members in Poznań on 9 July 1946, WAPP KW PPR 51, 99a; The Political Situation of the Province in the Period of This Report, June 1946, WAPP WUIiP 42, p. 2.Google Scholar

114. Łach, , Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe, pp. 271–272.Google Scholar

115. Compare the “Circular Concerning the 1st of May Celebrations [1946] to All Provincial, Town and Country Committees and All Party Organizations,” AAN KC PPR 295/vii–7, pp. 71–73, and “Circular Concerning the 1st of May Celebrations [1945] to All Provincial, Town and County Committees and All Party Organizations of the PPR,” AAN KC PPR 295/ix/378 pp. 10, 12.Google Scholar

116. Gomułka, , Artykuły i Przemówienia, Vol. 2, pp. 155–156.Google Scholar

117. Program of Work for the PZZ in 1946, WAPP PZZ 589, pp. 13, 16.Google Scholar

118. Musielak, , Polski Zwia̦zek Zachodni, pp. 140–141.Google Scholar

119. Ibid., pp. 91–92.Google Scholar

120. Protocol Number 1: From a Meeting of the Presidium of the Governing Board of the PZZ on 15 June, 1946,” WAPP PZZ 596, pp. 2–4.Google Scholar

121. See for example a P.Z.Z. poster for the referendum (AAN MZO 283, p. 3) which calls for a vote of “three times yes” to answer “all of the enemies of our borders on the Oder, Neisse and the Baltic.”Google Scholar

122. “Report on the Activities of the Administrative Circle of the PZZ in Poznań in 1946, WAPP PZZ 586, p. 300.Google Scholar

123. The Poznań Circle 1945 and The Report on the Activities of the Administrative Circle of the PZZ in Poznań in 1946, WAPP PZZ 586, pp. 130, 291. This was part of a larger, nationwide drop in P.Z.Z. membership in 1946. Though the Union eventually recovered (and even expanded) from these losses, the new members were often registered en masse and evinced little interest in the activities or ideas of the Union. Musielak, Polski Zwia̦zek Zachodni, pp. 97–108.Google Scholar

124. Report on the Activities of the Administrative Circle … for 1946, WAPP PZZ 586, p. 291.Google Scholar

125. Ibid., p. 300.Google Scholar

126. Coutouvidis, and Reynolds, , Poland, pp. 253–254.Google Scholar

127. An Evaluation of the People's Vote in the Province of Poznań, WAPP WUIiP 26 Secret Correspondence, p. 39. The significant margins of error in the Ministry of Information and Propaganda's tally may be attributed to local information on the extent of administrative fraud. Actual results were even lower than the above: according to Paczkowski in Wielkopolska the no vote on the first and second questions was 83.1% and 58%, respectively, whereas the third question received a yes vote of 81% (from a total of 521,668 valid votes cast). Some (but not all, given the heavily falsified pro-regime results of the voting in Ziemia Lubuska) of the discrepancy can be accounted for by the use in the Poznań Ministry of Information's report of results from Ziemia Lubuska. Even these assessments cannot be regarded as completely accurate, given the prevalence of fraud at the site of the voting prior to any count. Paczkowski, , Referendum, pp. 11–12, 97.Google Scholar

128. Władysław Raczkiewicz and General Władyslaw Anders were leaders of the Polish government-in-exile in London who did not return to Poland after the war; Churchill gained the ire of many Poles for his increasingly critical stance towards Poland's postwar territorial gains. The NSZ (Narodowe Siły Zbrojne, National Armed Forces) and WiN (Wolność i Niepodległość, Freedom and Independence) were anti-regime insurgencies that had all but been destroyed by the spring of 1946. Kersten, , The Establishment of Communist Rule, pp. 229, 325.Google Scholar

129. Minutes of the Provincial Meeting of Active Members in Poznań on 9 July, 1946, WAPP KW PPR 51, pp. 97–99.Google Scholar

130. Czarnecka, Ewa and Fiut, Alexsander, Conversations with Czeslaw Milosz (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), p. 53.Google Scholar

131. Musielak, , Polski Zwia̦zek Zachodni, pp. 164–167, 252–255.Google Scholar

132. By 1948, of the 3,020 (mostly Protestant) churches in the Recovered Territories, the regime had turned over 2,895 to the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church also gained additional confiscated Protestant church properties in areas of former German settlement within pre-war Poland, especially Wielkopolska. “Church Property in the Recovered Territories in 1948 According to Confession,” AAN MZO 50, p. 236.Google Scholar

133. Oșkowski, , Społeczenstwo Polski, pp. 173–174, 189–193.Google Scholar

134. Museilak, , Polski Zwia̦zek Zachodni, pp. 109–110.Google Scholar

135. Jankowiak, Stanisław, Wielkopolska w Okresie Stalinizmu 1948–1956 (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 1996), pp. 155–156.Google Scholar

136. Musielak, , Zachodni, Polski Zwia̦zek, in Wiceniewska and Dymek, 40-Lecie Powrotu Ziem Zachodnich, p. 161.Google Scholar

137. The ongoing importance of anti-German imagery in officially sanctioned art as late as the 1970s can be seen in Kubik's analysis of the play The Song of Wavel. Kubik, Jan, The Power of Symbols against the Symbols of Power: The Rise of Solidarity and the Fall of State Socialism in Poland (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), pp. 75–102.Google Scholar