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The Crisis in the Polish Communist Party

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Adam B. Ulam
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Extract

Just as the Russo-Yugoslav dispute was reaching its climax, and before the meeting of the Cominform, which issued a detailed condemnation of the Yugoslav Party, a plenum of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers' Party took place. What happened at this plenum of June 3, 1948 is known to us, not directly but from many accounts given at the August 31—September 3 plenum. At the June meeting Secretary General of the Party and Deputy Prime Minister of Poland Gomulka-Wieslaw, (Wieslaw was the party name of Gomulka during the war and it is used throughout the debate), delivered the main report, ostensibly an “historical analysis” of the character of the Polish working class movement. In his speech Gomulka took as the basis of Polish Socialism the tradition of the fervently nationalistic Polish Socialist Party, and condemned the internationalist and Pro-Russian Social Democratic Party of Poland, and by implication as well the pre-1938 Polish Communist Party of which the Workers' Party was supposed to be a continuation in everything but name.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , January 1950 , pp. 83 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1950

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References

1 “Historical analysis” is, of course, a favorite weapon of political struggle with Communism. One remembers how Trotsky in 1924 intensified his struggle for the control of the Communist Party of Russia (mis-directing his fire against Zinoviev and Kamenev) with an historical analysis contained in his The Lessons of October, 1917. Popov, , Ocherk Istorii Vsesoiuznoy komunisticheskoy Partii, Moscow, 1927, p. 292.Google Scholar

2 A few words have to be said about the genesis of Polish Socialism in general, as that involved question became the symbol of the 1948 crisis. Prior to 1918 there had been two main socialist parties in Polish territories: the Social-Democratic Party of Poland and Lithuania, and the Polish Socialist Party. The Social Democrats under Rosa Luxemburg were from 1906 associated with the Social Democratic Party of Russia. They were very strongly opposed to the policy of national self-determination, and even broke with Lenin on that issue in 1903 (see Popov, , p. 70). In contrast the Polish Socialist Party was strongly nationalistic. In 1919 the surviving leaders of the Social Democrats with a handful of “;left” Polish Socialists established the Communist Party of Poland. The Polish Socialist Party, except for the defection of Pilsudski and a few other leaders, who became key figures in his regime, continued as a mass workers' party, strongly opposed to the post-1926 regime, but equally and vehemently anti-communist in its ideology. From the point of view of official Communist orthodoxy, Rosa Luxemburg is not a satisfactory percursor of Polish Communism, since “Luxemburgism” is a deviation though a minor one when compared, for example, with “Trotskyism.” But the tradition of the old Polish Socialist Party, equally anti-Russian, in Tsarist and in Soviet times, is a much greater evil. The whole problem, as we shall see, has more than academic interest.Google Scholar

3 Thus we get in reverse the situation which occurred in April, 1948 in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia where two members, Hebrang and Zhujovic, opposed Tito's defiance of Russia, but found themselves in a minority and were expelled. See The Soviet-Yugoslav Dispute, published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

4 “The June report of Comrade Wieslaw was undoubtedly a conscious and premeditated revision of Leninist analysis of the history of our movement. The resolutions of the Political Bureau, voted immediately after the June plenum, contained a complete critique of the errors revealed in Comrade Wieslaw's report at the June 3rd Plenum of the Central Committee.” Translated from the speech by Bierut, at the August Plenum of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party, Nowe Drogi for September-October, 1948, p. 13.Google Scholar

5 “Comrade Wieslaw, while declaring in his letter to the July Plenum of the Central Committee his agreement with the position of the Politbureau and his acceptance of the declaration of the Plenum, did not hesitate at the same time, both before and during his leave, to conduct conversations with his colleagues in the Politbureau and with others in which he aired sentiments drastically opposed to the declaration. He questioned the resolution of the Cominform concerning the method of socialist reconstruction of agriculture, and even reproached our delegates to the Cominform saying they had no right to vote for that part of the resolution of the Cominform. The forces of reaction at home and abroad started trumpeting about a new breach in the democratic—anti-imperialist camp, and attempted to set Comrade Wieslaw alongside Tito as a hero of national Communism.” Bierut's speech, Ibid., p. 14.

6 The speech by Mazur, Ibid., p. 102.

7 From the speech by Borejsza, Ibid., p. 126.

8 Ibid., p. 33.

9 It is amusing to recall that the conference of Communist leaders, which established the Cominform was supposedly convened at the invitation of the Polish Workers' Party; yet its Secretary General is now revealed as having been opposed to the whole idea.

10 There are many references to Gomulka's misunderstanding of the “collegiate principle” of Party leadership.

11 Bierut, , op. cit., p. 15.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., p. 179.

13 Here lies an interesting and characteristic story. In 1943 the USSR broke off diplomatic relations with the Polish government-in-exile. Shortly afterwards the Polish Workers' Party established their own “government” in Poland—the National Council in opposition to the “official Underground government representing London.” On July 1, 1944 an article appeared in a Communist underground paper which urged collaboration with the “healthy elements” within the London government. What is most interesting is the implication in the resolution that Gomulka, who had inspired the article, looked with diffidence upon Russian intentions, and Gomulka's rejoinder that (a) the National Council had a “narrow base” among the people, (b) that nobody knew whether the Russians would not arrive at an accommodation with the London government, and therefore it was useful to negotiate with the “third force,” that is, with those leftists who were both anti-Russian and anti-London. This, despite the fact that on May 22, Stalin received the delegation of the National Council, and that the Red Army was approaching the (present) frontier of Poland. Whether the incident was or was not a reaction to Russia's territorial claims on Poland, it illuminates the problem of the relationship between the USSR and foreign Communist parties.

14 Ibid., p. 57.

15 Ibid., p. 115.

16 E. g. “In your present position, Comrade Wieslaw, you will become the symbol of the bourgeoisie, of the rich peasants, of reaction. I have been informed by our comrades from Silesia—the area where Comrade Wieslaw used to be so popular, where we worked so hard for his prestige—that at numerous mass meetings not a voice was raised in his honor, people somehow felt that something was fishy,” Ibid., p. 63.

17 Ibid., pp. 97–97.

18 “It may have been harder for the comrades who were not in the country during the (German) occupation to take a correct atitude toward Point Five of the resolution. Yet without having been in the country they evaluated the problem correctly on the basis of the discussion and directed by the compass of Marxist analysis, while I who had had a direct contact with the situation evaluated it incorrectly.” Ibid., p. 139.

19 Ibid., p. 145.

20 Ibid., pp. 204–206.

21 Early in 1949 Gomulka was discharged as Vice-Premier and Minister of Recovered Territories; he has now an official position of secondary importance.

22 Ibid., pp. 156–183.

23 Of the three types sketched by Minc two are close to the category of the “toz,” that is, a simple producers' cooperative for the purpose of rationalizing soil cultivation, common use of machinery, etc. Individual rewards are stipulated not only on the basis of work days on the part of every member, but also in proportion to the amount of land brought in by the members. The principle of private ownership is weakened but not abolished. The third model proposed is somewhat closer to the “artel,” but not quite synonymous with it, since the peasants are still to own cattle individually, as well as the modicum of land left for private cultivation in the “artel.” The third type is called by Mine the highest form of collective farming. There is, at present, no desire to indicate the “commune,” the most drastic form of communal ownership of land, even as a distant goal.

24 The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR freely acknowledged in its rejoinder to Tito that the Russian Ambassador had “discussions with a member of the Central Committee of the Yugoslav Party.” The same Yugoslav led the opposition to Tito within his Party, but not for long. See The Soviet-Yugoslav Dispute, p. 49.Google Scholar

25 The alternative possibilities (a) that Gomulka was “framed,” (b) that he had had the support of his Politbureau, who then abandoned him, are conceivable but all the evidence at. our command points against them.

26 See Trybuna Ludu March 24, 1949.Google Scholar

27 A small but significant illustration reported plaintively by a Communist functionary is the fact that at the University of Cracow there are at present upward of 400 students studying English literature and the English language, while only 9 are studying Russian linguistics. See Nowe Drogi, July-August, 1949, p. 43.Google Scholar

28 It is characteristic that the Secretary-General of the Party and the “strong man” of the regime, Alexander Zawadzki assumed recently the additional post of president of the Trades Unions Congress, see Trybuna Ludu, June 8, 1949.Google Scholar