History of Poland (1945–1989) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The history of Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

from 1945 to 1989 spans the period of Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

Communist

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

dominance imposed after the end of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

over the People's Republic of Poland

People's Republic of Poland

The People's Republic of Poland was the official name of Poland from 1952 to 1990. Although the Soviet Union took control of the country immediately after the liberation from Nazi Germany in 1944, the name of the state was not changed until eight years later...

. These years, while featuring many improvements in the standards of living in Poland, were marred by social unrest and economic depression.

Near the end of World War II, the advancing Soviet Red Army

Red Army

The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

pushed out the Nazi German

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

forces from occupied Poland. At the insistence of Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

, the Yalta Conference

Yalta Conference

The Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, held February 4–11, 1945, was the wartime meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, represented by President Franklin D...

sanctioned the formation of a new Polish provisional and pro-Communist coalition government in Moscow, which ignored the Polish government-in-exile based in London. This has been described as a Western betrayal of Poland

Western betrayal

Western betrayal, also called Yalta betrayal, refers to a range of critical views concerning the foreign policies of several Western countries between approximately 1919 and 1968 regarding Eastern Europe and Central Europe...

on the part of Allied Powers to appease the Soviet leader, and avoid a direct conflict. The Potsdam Agreement

Potsdam Agreement

The Potsdam Agreement was the Allied plan of tripartite military occupation and reconstruction of Germany—referring to the German Reich with its pre-war 1937 borders including the former eastern territories—and the entire European Theatre of War territory...

of 1945 ratified the westerly shift of Polish borders and approved its new territory between the Oder-Neisse

Oder-Neisse line

The Oder–Neisse line is the border between Germany and Poland which was drawn in the aftermath of World War II. The line is formed primarily by the Oder and Lusatian Neisse rivers, and meets the Baltic Sea west of the seaport cities of Szczecin and Świnoujście...

and Curzon line

Curzon Line

The Curzon Line was put forward by the Allied Supreme Council after World War I as a demarcation line between the Second Polish Republic and Bolshevik Russia and was supposed to serve as the basis for a future border. In the wake of World War I, which catalysed the Russian Revolution of 1917, the...

s. Poland, as a result of World War II, for the first time in history became an ethnically homogeneous nation state without prominent minorities due to destruction of indigenous Polish-Jewish

History of the Jews in Poland

The history of the Jews in Poland dates back over a millennium. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world. Poland was the centre of Jewish culture thanks to a long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy. This ended with the...

population in the Holocaust, the flight and expulsion of Germans in the west, resettlement of Ukrainians in the east, and the repatriation of Poles

Repatriation of Poles

Repatriation of Poles can refer to:*Repatriation of Poles *Repatriation of Poles...

from Kresy

Kresy

The Polish term Kresy refers to a land considered by Poles as historical eastern provinces of their country. Today, it makes western Ukraine, western Belarus, as well as eastern Lithuania, with such major cities, as Lviv, Vilnius, and Hrodna. This territory belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian...

. The new communist government in Warsaw

Warsaw

Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...

solidified its political power over the next two years

Polish legislative election, 1947

The Polish legislative election of 1947 was held on January 19, 1947 in the People's Republic of Poland. The anti-communist opposition candidates and activists were persecuted and the eventual results were falsified...

, while the Communist Polish United Workers' Party

Polish United Workers' Party

The Polish United Workers' Party was the Communist party which governed the People's Republic of Poland from 1948 to 1989. Ideologically it was based on the theories of Marxism-Leninism.- The Party's Program and Goals :...

(PZPR) under Bolesław Bierut gained firm control over the country, which would become part of the postwar Soviet sphere of influence

Sphere of influence

In the field of international relations, a sphere of influence is a spatial region or conceptual division over which a state or organization has significant cultural, economic, military or political influence....

in Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

. Following Stalin's death in 1953, a political "thaw" in Eastern Europe

Khrushchev Thaw

The Khrushchev Thaw refers to the period from the mid 1950s to the early 1960s, when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were partially reversed and millions of Soviet political prisoners were released from Gulag labor camps, due to Nikita Khrushchev's policies of de-Stalinization and...

caused a more liberal faction of the Polish Communists of Władysław Gomułka to gain power

Polish October

Polish October, also known as October 1956, Polish thaw, or Gomułka's thaw, marked a change in the Polish internal political scene in the second half of 1956...

. By the mid-1960s, Poland began experiencing increasing economic, as well as political, difficulties. In December 1970, a price hike led to a wave of strikes

Polish 1970 protests

The Polish 1970 protests were protests that occurred in northern Poland in December 1970. The protests were sparked by a sudden increase of prices of food and other everyday items...

. The government introduced a new economic program based on large-scale borrowing from the West

Western world

The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...

, which resulted in an immediate rise in living standards and expectations, but the program faltered because of the 1973 oil crisis

1973 oil crisis

The 1973 oil crisis started in October 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or the OAPEC proclaimed an oil embargo. This was "in response to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military" during the Yom Kippur war. It lasted until March 1974. With the...

. In the late 1970s the government of Edward Gierek

Edward Gierek

Edward Gierek was a Polish communist politician.He was born in Porąbka, outside of Sosnowiec. He lost his father to a mining accident in a pit at the age of four. His mother married again and emigrated to northern France, where he was raised. He joined the French Communist Party in 1931 and was...

was finally forced to raise prices, and this led to another wave of public protests.

This vicious cycle

Virtuous circle and vicious circle

A virtuous circle and a vicious circle are economic terms. They refer to a complex of events that reinforces itself through a feedback loop. A virtuous circle has favorable results, while a vicious circle has detrimental results...

was finally interrupted by the 1978 election of Karol Wojtyła as Pope

Pope

The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...

John Paul II

Pope John Paul II

Blessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...

, strengthening the opposition to Communism in Poland. In early August 1980, the wave of strikes led to the founding of the independent trade union

Trade union

A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...

"Solidarity" (Polish

Polish language

Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

Solidarność) by electrician Lech Wałęsa

Lech Wałęsa

Lech Wałęsa is a Polish politician, trade-union organizer, and human-rights activist. A charismatic leader, he co-founded Solidarity , the Soviet bloc's first independent trade union, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and served as President of Poland between 1990 and 95.Wałęsa was an electrician...

. The growing strength of the opposition led the government of Wojciech Jaruzelski

Wojciech Jaruzelski

Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski is a retired Polish military officer and Communist politician. He was the last Communist leader of Poland from 1981 to 1989, Prime Minister from 1981 to 1985 and the country's head of state from 1985 to 1990. He was also the last commander-in-chief of the Polish People's...

to declare martial law

Martial law in Poland

Martial law in Poland refers to the period of time from December 13, 1981 to July 22, 1983, when the authoritarian government of the People's Republic of Poland drastically restricted normal life by introducing martial law in an attempt to crush political opposition to it. Thousands of opposition...

in December 1981. However, with the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...

in the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, increasing pressure from the West

Western world

, and continuing unrest, the Communists were forced to negotiate with their opponents. The 1989 Round Table Talks

Polish Round Table Agreement

The Polish Round Table Talks took place in Warsaw, Poland from February 6 to April 4, 1989. The government initiated the discussion with the banned trade union Solidarność and other opposition groups in an attempt to defuse growing social unrest.-History:...

led to Solidarity's participation in the elections of 1989; its candidates' striking victory sparked off a succession of peaceful transitions

Revolutions of 1989

The Revolutions of 1989 were the revolutions which overthrew the communist regimes in various Central and Eastern European countries.The events began in Poland in 1989, and continued in Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and...

from Communist rule in Central

Central Europe

Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...

and Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

. In 1990, Jaruzelski resigned as the President of the Republic of Poland and was succeeded by Wałęsa after the December 1990 elections

Polish presidential election, 1990

The 1990 Presidential elections were held in Poland on Sunday, November 25 , and Sunday, December 9 . These were the first direct presidential elections in the history of Poland. Before World War II, presidents were elected by the Sejm, but the Sejm was abolished in 1952. The leader of the...

Wartime devastation, border and population shifts

Poland suffered heavy losses during World War II

World War II casualties

World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history. Over 60 million people were killed, which was over 2.5% of the world population. The tables below give a detailed country-by-country count of human losses.-Total dead:...

. While in 1939 Poland had 35.1 million inhabitants, at the end of the war only 29.1 million remained within its borders. The first post-war census

Census

A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...

of 14 February 1946 showed 23.9 million due to migration. It is estimated that 6 million Polish citizens – nearly 21.4% of Poland's population died between 1939 and 1945, nevertheless, the number of ethnic Polish victims could have been smaller by as much as 50% due to multiethnic

Multiethnic society

A multiethnic society is one with members belonging to more than one ethnic group, in contrast to societies which are ethnically homogenous. In practice, virtually all contemporary national societies are multiethnic...

diversity of prewar Poland reflected in national censuses – according to 2009 statement by German-Polish reconciliation commission. The 3 million Jewish Polish victims are undisputed. Minorities in Poland were very significantly affected: before World War II

World War II

, a third of Poland's population was composed of ethnic minorities; after the war, however, Poland's minorities were all but gone.

Poland, still a predominantly agricultural

Agriculture

Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...

country compared to Western nations, suffered catastrophic damage to its infrastructure

Infrastructure

Infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...

during the war, and lagged even further behind the West in industrial output in the War's aftermath. The losses in national resources and infrastructure amounted to over 30% of the pre-war potential. Poland's capital of Warsaw

Warsaw

was among the most devastated cities, with over eighty percent destroyed in the aftermath of the Warsaw Uprising

Warsaw Uprising

The Warsaw Uprising was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance Home Army , to liberate Warsaw from Nazi Germany. The rebellion was timed to coincide with the Soviet Union's Red Army approaching the eastern suburbs of the city and the retreat of German forces...

.

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. In 1947 Soviet influence caused the Polish government to reject the American-sponsored Marshall Plan

Marshall Plan

The Marshall Plan was the large-scale American program to aid Europe where the United States gave monetary support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II in order to combat the spread of Soviet communism. The plan was in operation for four years beginning in April 1948...

, and to join the Soviet Union-dominated Comecon

Comecon

The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance , 1949–1991, was an economic organisation under hegemony of Soviet Union comprising the countries of the Eastern Bloc along with a number of communist states elsewhere in the world...

in 1949. At the same time Soviet forces had engaged in plunder on the former eastern territories of Germany which were to be transferred to Poland, stripping it of valuable industrial equipment, infrastructure

Infrastructure

Infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...

and factories and sending them to the Soviet Union.

After the Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

annexation of the Kresy

Kresy

territories east of the Curzon line

Curzon Line

, about 2 million Poles were transferred and expelled

Repatriation of Poles (1944–1946)

The Polish population transfers from the former eastern territories of Poland also known as the flight and expulsion of Poles towards the end – and in the aftermath – of World War II refer to the forced migration of Poles between 1944–1946...

from these areas into the new Western and Northern Territories east of the Oder-Neisse line

Oder-Neisse line

, which the Soviets transferred from Germany to Poland after the Potsdam Agreement

Potsdam Agreement

. Additional settlement with people from central parts of Poland brought up the number of Poles in what the government called the Regained Territories up to 5 million by 1950. The former German population of 10 million had fled or was expelled

Flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland during and after World War II

The flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland was the largest of a series of flights and expulsions of Germans in Europe during and after World War II...

to post-war Germany

History of Germany since 1945

As a consequence of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II Germany was split between the two global blocs in the East and West, a period known as the division of Germany. While seven million prisoners and forced laborers left Germany, over 10 million German speaking refugees arrived there from...

by 1950. With the repatriation of Ukrainians from Poland to the Soviet Union and the 1947 Operation Vistula dispersing the remaining Ukrainian minority

Ukrainian minority in Poland

The Ukrainian minority in Poland is composed of 27,172 people according to the Polish census of 2002. Most of them live in the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship , followed by West Pomeranian , Podkarpackie and Pomeranian Voivodeship ....

, and with most of the former Jewish minority

History of the Jews in Poland

exterminated by Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

during the Holocaust and many of the survivors emigrating to newly created Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

, Poland for the first time became an ethnically homogenous nation state. Warsaw and other ruined cities were cleared of rubble — mainly by hand — and rebuilt with great speed (one of the successes of the Three-Year Plan

Three-Year Plan

The Three-Year Plan of Reconstructing the Economy was a centralized plan created by the Polish communist government to rebuild Poland after the devastation of the Second World War. Carried out in the years 1947-1949, it is widely considered a success and the only efficient economic plan in the...

) at the expense of former German cities like Wrocław, which often provided the needed construction material.

The Regained Territories Exhibition , a propaganda

Propaganda

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....

exhibition

Art exhibition

Art exhibitions are traditionally the space in which art objects meet an audience. The exhibit is universally understood to be for some temporary period unless, as is rarely true, it is stated to be a "permanent exhibition". In American English, they may be called "exhibit", "exposition" or...

celebrating "the restoration of the Recovered Territories

Recovered Territories

Recovered or Regained Territories was an official term used by the People's Republic of Poland to describe those parts of pre-war Germany that became part of Poland after World War II...

to Poland

Poland

" after the end of Second World War, was opened on 21 July 1948 by Bolesław Bierut and lasted for 100 days. About 2 million people have visited the exhibition and Iglica

Iglica

thumb|Iglica against the background of the Centennial Hall.Iglica is a needle-like monument in Wrocław, Poland. It was built in 1948 and was 106 meters tall...

monument was built in front of the Centennial Hall in Wrocław.

Consolidation of Communist power (1945–1948)

Even before the Red Army

Red Army

entered Poland, the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

was pursuing a deliberate strategy to eliminate anti-Communist resistance forces to ensure that Poland would fall under its sphere of influence. In 1943, following the Katyn massacre

Katyn massacre

The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre , was a mass execution of Polish nationals carried out by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs , the Soviet secret police, in April and May 1940. The massacre was prompted by Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to execute all members of...

, Stalin had severed relations with the Polish government-in-exile in London. However, to appease the United States and the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union agreed at the February 1945 Yalta Conference

Yalta Conference

to form a coalition government composed of the Communist Polish Workers' Party

Polish Workers' Party

The Polish Workers' Party was a communist party in Poland from 1942 to 1948. It was founded as a reconstitution of the Communist Party of Poland, and merged with the Polish Socialist Party in 1948 to form the Polish United Workers' Party.-History:...

, members of the pro-Western Polish government in exile

Polish government in Exile

The Polish government-in-exile, formally known as the Government of the Republic of Poland in Exile , was the government in exile of Poland formed in the aftermath of the Invasion of Poland of September 1939, and the subsequent occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, which...

, and members of the Armia Krajowa

Armia Krajowa

The Armia Krajowa , or Home Army, was the dominant Polish resistance movement in World War II German-occupied Poland. It was formed in February 1942 from the Związek Walki Zbrojnej . Over the next two years, it absorbed most other Polish underground forces...

("Home Army") resistance movement

Resistance movement

A resistance movement is a group or collection of individual groups, dedicated to opposing an invader in an occupied country or the government of a sovereign state. It may seek to achieve its objects through either the use of nonviolent resistance or the use of armed force...

, as well as to allow for free elections to be held.

With the beginning of the liberation of Polish territories and the failure of the Armia Krajowa

Armia Krajowa

's Operation Tempest

Operation Tempest

Operation Tempest was a series of uprisings conducted during World War II by the Polish Home Army , the dominant force in the Polish resistance....

in 1944, control over Polish territories passed from the occupying forces of Nazi Germany to the Red Army, and from the Red Army to the Polish Communists, who held the largest influence under the provisional government. 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.

The Prime Minister of the Polish government-in-exile, Stanisław Mikołajczyk, resigned his post in 1944 and, along with several other exiled Polish leaders, returned to Poland, where a Provisional Government

Provisional Government of Republic of Poland

The Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland was created by Krajowa Rada Narodowa on the night of 31 December 1944.-Background:...

(Rząd Tymczasowy Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej; RTTP), had been created by the Communist-controlled Polish Committee of National Liberation

Polish Committee of National Liberation

The Polish Committee of National Liberation , also known as the Lublin Committee, was a provisional government of Poland, officially proclaimed 21 July 1944 in Chełm under the direction of State National Council in opposition to the Polish government in exile...

(Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego; PKWN) in Lublin

Lublin

Lublin is the ninth largest city in Poland. It is the capital of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 350,392 . Lublin is also the largest Polish city east of the Vistula river...

. This government was headed by Socialist Edward Osóbka-Morawski

Edward Osóbka-Morawski

Edward Osóbka-Morawski was a Polish activist in PPS before World War II, and after the Soviet takover of Poland, Chairman of the Communist interim government called the Polish Committee of National Liberation formed in Lublin with Stalin's approval and backing.In October 1944, Osóbka-Morawski...

, but the Communists held a majority of key posts. Both of these governments were subordinate to the unelected, Communist-controlled parliament, the State National Council

State National Council

Krajowa Rada Narodowa in Polish was a parliament-like political body formed in the late stages of the Second World War in the Soviet Union, as part of the formation of a new Communist Polish government...

(Krajowa Rada Narodowa; KRN), and were not recognized by the increasingly isolated Polish government-in-exile, which had formed its own quasi-parliament, the Council of National Unity

Council of National Unity

Rada Jedności Narodowej was the quasi-parliament of the Polish Underground State during World War II...

(Rada Jedności Narodowej; RJN).

The new Polish Provisional Government of National Unity

Provisional Government of National Unity

The Provisional Government of National Unity was a government formed by a decree of the State National Council on 28 June 1945. It was created as a coalition government between Polish Communists and the Polish government-in-exile...

(Tymczasowy Rząd Jedności Narodowej; TRJN) — as the Polish government was called until the elections of 1947 — was finally established on 28 June, with Mikołajczyk as Deputy Prime Minister. The Communist Party

Polish Workers' Party

's principal rivals were the veterans of the Armia Krajowa movement, along with Mikołajczyk's Polish People's (Peasant) Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe; PSL), and the veterans of the Polish armies which had fought in the West

Polish Armed Forces in the West

Polish Armed Forces in the West refers to the Polish military formations formed to fight alongside the Western Allies against Nazi Germany and its allies...

. But at the same time, Soviet-oriented parties, backed by the Soviet Red Army

Red Army

(the Northern Group of Forces

Northern Group of Forces

The Northern Group of Forces was the military formation of the Soviet Army stationed in Poland from the end of Second World War in 1945 until 1993 when they were withdrawn in the aftermath of the fall of Soviet Union...

would be permanently stationed in Poland) and in control of the security forces, held most of the power, especially in the Polish Workers' Party

Polish Workers' Party

(Polska Partia Robotnicza; PPR) under Władysław Gomułka and Bolesław Bierut.

The 1946 referendum and elections of 1947

Stalin had promised at the Yalta Conference that free elections would be held in Poland. However, the Polish Communists, led by Gomułka and Bierut, were aware of the lack of support for their side among the general population. Because of this, in 1946 a national plebiscite, known as the "3 times YES" referendum

Polish people's referendum, 1946

The People's Referendum of 1946, also known as the "Three Times Yes" referendum, was a referendum held in Poland on 30 June 1946 on the authority of the State National Council...

(3 razy TAK; 3×TAK), was held instead of the parliamentary elections. The referendum comprised three fairly general questions, and was meant to check the popularity of communist initiatives in Poland. Because most of the important parties at the time were leftist – and could have supported all three options – Mikołajczyk's PSL decided to ask its supporters to oppose one of them: the abolition of the senate. The Communists voted "3 times YES". The referendum showed that the communist side was met with little support; less than a third of Poland's population voted in favor of their proposed options. Only electoral fraud

Electoral fraud

Electoral fraud is illegal interference with the process of an election. Acts of fraud affect vote counts to bring about an election result, whether by increasing the vote share of the favored candidate, depressing the vote share of the rival candidates or both...

(vote rigging) won the communists a majority in the carefully controlled poll, which led to the nationalization of industry, land reform, and a unicameral (not the bicameral) Sejm

Sejm

The Sejm is the lower house of the Polish parliament. The Sejm is made up of 460 deputies, or Poseł in Polish . It is elected by universal ballot and is presided over by a speaker called the Marshal of the Sejm ....

. Following the forged referendum, the Polish economy started to be nationalized.

The Communists consolidated power by gradually whittling away the rights of their non-Communist foes, particularly by suppressing the leading opposition party – Mikołajczyk's Polish People's Party (PSL). In some widely-publicized cases, their perceived enemies were being sentenced to death on trumped up charges — among them Witold Pilecki

Witold Pilecki

Witold Pilecki was a soldier of the Second Polish Republic, the founder of the Secret Polish Army resistance group and a member of the Home Army...

, the organizer of the Auschwitz resistance; and numerous leaders of Armia Krajowa and the Council of National Unity (see: the Trial of the Sixteen

Trial of the Sixteen

The Trial of the Sixteen was a staged trial of 16 leaders of the Polish Underground State held by the Soviet Union in Moscow in 1945.-History:Some accounts say approaches were made in February with others saying March 1945...

). Many resistance fighters were murdered extrajudicially, or forced to exile. The opposition members were also persecuted by administrative means. Although the ongoing persecution of the former anti-Nazi organizations by state security, forced thousands of partisans

Cursed soldiers

The cursed soldiers is a name applied to a variety of Polish resistance movements formed in the later stages of World War II and afterwards. Created by some members of the Polish Secret State, these clandestine organizations continued their armed struggle against the Stalinist government of Poland...

back into forests, the actions of the UB

Ministry of Public Security of Poland

The Ministry of Public Security of Poland was a Polish communist secret police, intelligence and counter-espionage service operating from 1945 to 1954 under Jakub Berman of the Politburo...

(Polish secret police), NKVD

NKVD

The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....

and Red Army steadily diminished their numbers.

By 1946, all rightist parties had been outlawed, and a new pro-government Front of National Unity

Front of National Unity

Front of National Unity or National Unity Front was a Polish communist political organization supervising elections in People's Republic of Poland and also acting as a coalition for the dominant communist Polish United Workers' Party and its allies. It was founded in 1952 as National Front and...

was formed which included only the forerunner of the communist Polish United Workers' Party

Polish United Workers' Party

and its leftist allies. On January 19, 1947, the first parliamentary elections

Polish legislative election, 1947

took place featuring PPR candidates and a token opposition from the Polish People's Party already powerless due to government control. Results were adjusted by Stalin himself to suit the Communists. Through rigged elections, the regime's candidates gained 417 of 434 seats in parliament (Sejm
Sejm
The Sejm is the lower house of the Polish parliament. The Sejm is made up of 460 deputies, or Poseł in Polish . It is elected by universal ballot and is presided over by a speaker called the Marshal of the Sejm ....

), effectively ending the multi-party system in politics. Many opposition members, including Mikołajczyk (threatened with arrest), left the country. Western governments did not protest, which led free-spirited Poles to speak about a continued "Western betrayal

Western betrayal

" regarding Central Europe. In the same year, the new Legislative Sejm created the Small Constitution of 1947

Small Constitution of 1947

Small Constitution of 1947 was a temporary constitution issued by the communist-dominated Sejm of 1947-1952. It confirmed the practice of separation of powers and strengthened the Sejm. It was renewed in 1949, 1950 and 1951...

. Over the next two years, the Communists monopolizied their political power in Poland.

Additional force in Polish politics, the long-established Polish Socialist Party

Polish Socialist Party

The Polish Socialist Party was one of the most important Polish left-wing political parties from its inception in 1892 until 1948...

(Polska Partia Socjalistyczna, PPS – once led by Piłsudski), suffered a fatal split at this time, as the rulling Stalinists applied the salami tactics

Salami tactics

Salami tactics, also known as the salami-slice strategy, is a divide and conquer process of threats and alliances used to overcome opposition. With it, an aggressor can influence and eventually dominate a landscape, typically political, piece by piece. In this fashion, the opposition is eliminated...

to dismember their opposition. Communist politicians supported a PPS faction led by Cyrankiewicz

Józef Cyrankiewicz

Józef Cyrankiewicz was a Polish Socialist, after 1948 Communist political figure. He served as premier of the People's Republic of Poland between 1947 and 1952, and again between 1954 and 1970...

who personally visited Stalin with the idea of a party merger, securing his own place for the future. In 1948, the Communists and Cyrankiewicz's own faction joined ranks to form the Polish United Workers' Party

Polish United Workers' Party

(Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza; PZPR) in power for the next four decades. Poland became a de facto single-party state

Single-party state

A single-party state, one-party system or single-party system is a type of party system government in which a single political party forms the government and no other parties are permitted to run candidates for election...

, and a satellite state

Satellite state

A satellite state is a political term that refers to a country that is formally independent, but under heavy political and economic influence or control by another country...

of the Soviet Union. Only two other parties were allowed to exist legally, a small one for the farmers (Zjednoczone Stronnictwo Ludowe) and a token one for the intelligentsia

Intelligentsia

The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...

, called Stronnictwo Demokratyczne (see also: political organization in Poland 1945-1989). A period of Sovietization

Sovietization

Sovietization is term that may be used with two distinct meanings:*the adoption of a political system based on the model of soviets .*the adoption of a way of life and mentality modelled after the Soviet Union....

and Stalinism

Stalinism

Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...

started.

Stalinist era (1948–1956)

The repercussions of Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

's break with the Soviet Union reached Warsaw in 1948. As in other Eastern Bloc countries, there was a Soviet-style political purge of Communist officials, accused of "nationalist" or other "deviationist" tendencies in Poland. In September, Communist leader Władysław Gomułka, who opposed Stalin's direct control of the Polish party, was charged with "nationalistic tendency" and dismissed from his posts of First Secretary. He was arrested by the Ministry of Public Security and interrogated by both, Romkowski

Roman Romkowski

General Roman Romkowski born Natan Grünspau [Grinszpan]-Kikiel, was a Polish-Jewish communist, second in command in Berman's Ministry of Public Security during the late 1940s and early 1950's. Along with several other high functionaries including Dir. Anatol Fejgin, Col. Józef Różański, Dir...

and Fejgin

Anatol Fejgin

Anatol Fejgin was a Polish-Jewish communist before World War II, and after 1949, commander of the Stalinist political police at the Ministry of Public Security of Poland, in charge of its notorious Special Bureau...

on Soviet orders. Gomułka escaped physical torture only as a former close associate of Stalin (according to some), or perhaps because Bierut and Berman

Jakub Berman

Jakub Berman was born into a middle-class Jewish family. Berman first became a prominent communist in prewar Poland. Toward the end of World War II he joined the Politburo of the Soviet-formed Polish United Workers' Party...

desired only to save themselves. He was put under house arrest without typical show trial

Show trial

The term show trial is a pejorative description of a type of highly public trial in which there is a strong connotation that the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal to present the accusation and the verdict to the public as...

, and released unharmed a few years later, in 1954 or 1955. Bierut replaced him as party leader until his own death.

The new government was controlled by Polish Communists who had spent the war in the Soviet Union, aided by the Ministry of Public Security, and the Soviet "advisers" who were placed in every arm of the government as guarantee of the pro-Soviet policy of the state. The most important of them was Konstantin Rokossovsky

Konstantin Rokossovsky

Konstantin Rokossovskiy was a Polish-origin Soviet career officer who was a Marshal of the Soviet Union, as well as Marshal of Poland and Polish Defence Minister, who was famously known for his service in the Eastern Front, where he received high esteem for his outstanding military skill...

(Konstanty Rokossowski in Polish), the Defense Minister from 1949 to 1956, former Marshal

Marshal of the Soviet Union

Marshal of the Soviet Union was the de facto highest military rank of the Soviet Union. ....

in the Soviet Armed Forces, backed by a slew of well-trained Russian Commissars in control of Polish state security. The Soviet-style secret police and Urząd Bezpieczeństwa (UB) grew to around 32,000 agents as of 1953. There was one UB agent for every 800 Polish citizens; never again, in the history of Communism in Poland, special services were so large in numbers. The MBP ministry was also in charge of Internal Security Corps, the Civil Militia, Border guard, prison staff (Straż Więzienna); and paramilitary police ORMO used for special actions (with 125,000 members). For many years, the public prosecutors and judges as well as functionaries of MBP, Służba Bezpieczeństwa and GZI WP military police engaged in acts recognized by international law as crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace, such as the torture and execution of seven members of the 4th Headquarters

1951 Mokotów Prison execution

On March 1, 1951, the Soviet-controlled communist Polish secret police, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa , carried out an execution of seven members of the 4th Headquarters of anti-Communist organization Wolność i Niezawisłość in the Mokotów Prison in Warsaw...

of anti-Communist organization Wolność i Niezawisłość (WiN) in the Mokotów Prison

Mokotów Prison

Mokotów Prison is a prison in Warsaw's borough of Mokotów, Poland, located at Rakowiecka 37 street. It was built by the Russians in the final years of the foreign Partitions of Poland...

in Warsaw

Warsaw

after the official amnesty and their voluntary disclosure. All executed members of WiN took active part in anti-Nazi resistance during World War II

World War II

. The Polish Army, intelligence and police were full of Soviet NKVD officers who stationed there with the Northern Group of Forces

Northern Group of Forces

until 1956.

Economic reforms and nationalization

The last Polish–Soviet territorial exchange took place in 1951. Some 480 km² (185 sq mi) of land along the border were swapped between the People's Republic of Poland and the Soviet Union. The adjustment was made to the decisive economic benefit of the Russians due to rich deposits of coal given up by Poland. Within eight years following the exchange, the Soviets buit four large coal-mines there producing 15 million tons of coal annually.

The government, headed by Cyrankiewicz and Marxist economist Hilary Minc

Hilary Minc

Hilary Minc – born into a middle-class Jewish family of Oskar Minc and Stefania née Fajersztajn – was a communist politician in Stalinist Poland and pro-Soviet Marxist economist. Minc joined the Communist Party of Poland before World War II...

embarked on a sweeping program of economic reform and national reconstruction. The Stalinist turn, that led to the ascension of Bierut meant that Poland would now be brought into line with the Soviet model of a "people's democracy

People's Democracy

People's Democracy was a political organisation that, while supporting the campaign for civil rights for Northern Ireland's Catholic minority, stated that such rights could only be achieved through the establishment of a socialist republic for all of Ireland...

" and a centrally planned socialist economy, in place of the façade of democracy and market economy which the regime had preserved until 1948. Fully Soviet-style centralized planning begun in 1950 with the Six-Year Plan

Six-Year Plan

Six-Year Plan was the second - after the Three-Year Plan - centralized plan of the People's Republic of Poland. It concentrated on increasing the heavy industry sector. Interestingly, this six year plan has the distinction of covering only 5 years...

. The plan focused on rapid development of heavy industry

Heavy industry

Heavy industry does not have a single fixed meaning as compared to light industry. It can mean production of products which are either heavy in weight or in the processes leading to their production. In general, it is a popular term used within the name of many Japanese and Korean firms, meaning...

and (eventually futile) collectivization of agriculture. The land seized from prewar large landowners was redistributed to the poorer peasants, but subsequent attempts at taking the land from farmers met wide resentment. In what became known as the battle for trade
Battle for trade
Battle for trade refers to the early period of communist takeover of Poland when new laws and regulations succeeded in significantly decreasing the size of the private sector in Polish trade, in order to facilitate the transformation of Polish economy from capitalism to Soviet communism's planned...

, the private trade and industry were nationalized

Nationalization

Nationalisation, also spelled nationalization, is the process of taking an industry or assets into government ownership by a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to private assets, but may also mean assets owned by lower levels of government, such as municipalities, being...

. Within few years the private shopkeeper disappeared from Poland. The regime embarked on the campaign of collectivization

Collectivization in the People's Republic of Poland

Collectivization in the People's Republic of Poland was a policy pursued during the Stalinist period, from 1948 till the liberalization of 1956.Poland was the only country of the Eastern Bloc where large scale collectivization was a failure....

(as seen in the creation of Państwowe Gospodarstwo Rolne), although the pace for this change was slower than in other satellites. Poland remained the only Soviet bloc

Eastern bloc

The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...

country where individual peasants would continue to dominate agriculture.

In 1948 the United States announced the Marshall plan

Marshall Plan

initiative to help rebuild Europe and thus gain more political power in postwar situation. After initially welcoming the idea of Poland's participation in the plan, the government declined the offer of help under pressure from Moscow. Also, following the uprising of 1953 in East Germany

Uprising of 1953 in East Germany

The Uprising of 1953 in East Germany started with a strike by East Berlin construction workers on June 16. It turned into a widespread anti-Stalinist uprising against the German Democratic Republic government the next day....

, Poland was forced by the Soviet Union to give up its claims to compensation from Germany, which as a result paid no significant compensation for war damages, either to the Polish state or to Polish citizens. Although Poland received compensation in the form of the territories and property left behind by the German population of the annexed western territories

Recovered Territories

Recovered or Regained Territories was an official term used by the People's Republic of Poland to describe those parts of pre-war Germany that became part of Poland after World War II...

, it is disputed whether they were enough compensation for the loss of Kresy

Kresy

territories. This marked the beginning of the wealth gap, which would increase in years to come, as the Western market economies

Market economy

A market economy is an economy in which the prices of goods and services are determined in a free price system. This is often contrasted with a state-directed or planned economy. Market economies can range from hypothetically pure laissez-faire variants to an assortment of real-world mixed...

grew much more quickly than the centrally planned

Planned economy

A planned economy is an economic system in which decisions regarding production and investment are embodied in a plan formulated by a central authority, usually by a government agency...

socialist economies of Eastern Europe.

Return to relative normalcy

The constitution of 1952 guaranteed universal free health care

Health care

Health care is the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in humans. Health care is delivered by practitioners in medicine, chiropractic, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, allied health, and other care providers...

. In the early 1950s, the Communist regime also carried out major changes to the education system

Education in the People's Republic of Poland

Education in the People's Republic of Poland was controlled by the communist state, which provided primary schools, secondary schools, vocational education and universities. Education in communist Poland was compulsory from age 7 to 15....

. The Communist program of free and compulsory school education for all, and the establishment of new free universities, received much support. The Communists, however, screened out what facts and interpretations were to be taught; history as well as other sciences had to follow Marxist views approved by ideological censorship

Censorship in the People's Republic of Poland

Censorship in the People's Republic of Poland was primarily performed by the Polish Main Office of Control of Press, Publications and Shows , a governmental institution created in 1946 by the pro-Soviet Provisional Government of National Unity with Stalin's approval and backing, and renamed in 1981...

. At the same time, between 1951–1953, a large number of prewar professors who were perceived as "reactionary" by the new regime, was dismissed from universities. The government control over art and artists deepened. The Soviet-style Socialist Realism

Socialist realism

Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...

became the only formula accepted by the authorities after 1949. Most works of art and literature presented to the public had to be in line with the voice of the Party and thus present its own propaganda

Propaganda in the People's Republic of Poland

Communist propaganda played an important role in the People's Republic of Poland , one of the largest and most important communist satellite states of the Soviet Union...

The reforms, while reasonably controversial, were greeted with relief by a significant faction of the population. After the Second World War many people were willing to accept Communist rule in exchange for the restoration of relatively normal life; tens of thousands joined the communist party and actively supported the regime. Nonetheless a latent popular discontent remained present. Many Poles adopted an attitude that might be called "resigned cooperation". Others, like the remnants of the Armia Krajowa, and Narodowe Siły Zbrojne and Wolność i Niezawisłość, known as the cursed soldiers
Cursed soldiers
The cursed soldiers is a name applied to a variety of Polish resistance movements formed in the later stages of World War II and afterwards. Created by some members of the Polish Secret State, these clandestine organizations continued their armed struggle against the Stalinist government of Poland...

, actively opposed the Communists, hoping that a possible World War III

World War III

World War III denotes a successor to World War II that would be on a global scale, with common speculation that it would be likely nuclear and devastating in nature....

would liberate Poland. Although most had surrendered during the amnesty of 1947

Amnesty of 1947

The Amnesty of 1947 in Poland was an amnesty directed at soldiers and activists of the Polish anti-communist underground, issued by the authorities of People's Republic of Poland. The law on amnesty was passed by the Polish Sejm on February 22, 1947. The actual purpose of the amnesty was the...

, the brutal repressions by the secret police led many of them back into the forests, where a few continued to fight well into the 1950s.

The Communists further alienated many Poles by persecuting the Catholic Church

Roman Catholicism in Poland

Ever since Poland officially adopted Latin Christianity in 966, the Catholic Church has played an important religious, cultural and political role in the country....

. The Stowarzyszenie PAX ("PAX Association") created in 1947 worked to undermine grassroot support from Roman Catholicism and attempted to create a Communism-friendly Church. In 1953 the Cardinal

Cardinal (Catholicism)

A cardinal is a senior ecclesiastical official, usually an ordained bishop, and ecclesiastical prince of the Catholic Church. They are collectively known as the College of Cardinals, which as a body elects a new pope. The duties of the cardinals include attending the meetings of the College and...

Primate of Poland

Archbishops of Gniezno and Primates of Poland

Archbishops of the Archdiocese of Gniezno and simultaneously Primates of Poland since 1418. They also served as interrex in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.*Since 1821 until 1946 in personal union with the Archdiocese of Poznań....

, Stefan Wyszyński, was placed under house arrest, although before that he had been willing to make compromises with the government. In the early 1950s, the war against religion by secret police led to the arrest and torture of hundreds of Polish religious personalities, culminating in the Stalinist show trial of the Kraków Curia

Stalinist show trial of the Kraków Curia

The Stalinist show trial of the Kraków Curia was a public trial of four Roman Catholic priests – members of the Kraków diocesan Curia – including three lay persons, accused by the Communist authorities in the People's Republic of Poland of subversion and spying for the United States...

. The Office of the Council of Ministers (Urząd Rady Ministrów) produced a list of government-approved Bishops.
The new Polish Constitution of 1952 officially established Poland as a People's Republic

People's Republic

People's Republic is a title that has often been used by Marxist-Leninist governments to describe their state. The motivation for using this term lies in the claim that Marxist-Leninists govern in accordance with the interests of the vast majority of the people, and, as such, a Marxist-Leninist...

, 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. The post of President of Poland was abolished, and Bierut, the First Secretary of the Communist Party, became the effective leader of Poland.

Stalin had died in 1953. Between 1953 and 1958 Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...

outmaneuvered his rivals and achieved power in the Soviet Union. In March 1956 Khrushchev denounced Stalin's cult of personality

Cult of personality

A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are usually associated with dictatorships...

at the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party. The de-Stalinization

De-Stalinization

De-Stalinization refers to the process of eliminating the cult of personality, Stalinist political system and the Gulag labour-camp system created by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Stalin was succeeded by a collective leadership after his death in March 1953...

of official Soviet ideology left Poland's Stalinist hard-liners in a difficult position. In the same month as Khrushchev's speech, as unrest and desire for reform and change among both intellectuals and workers was beginning to surface throughout the Eastern Bloc, the death of the hardline Bierut in March 1956 exacerbated an existing split in the PZPR. Bierut was succeeded by Edward Ochab

Edward Ochab

Edward Ochab was a Polish Communist politician promoted to the position of the First Secretary of the Communist party in the People's Republic of Poland between 20 March and 21 October 1956, just prior to the Gomułka thaw...

as First Secretary of the PZPR, and by Cyrankiewicz

Józef Cyrankiewicz

Józef Cyrankiewicz was a Polish Socialist, after 1948 Communist political figure. He served as premier of the People's Republic of Poland between 1947 and 1952, and again between 1954 and 1970...

, brought back as Prime Minister.

Polish October and the process of de-Stalinization

In June 1956, workers in the industrial city of Poznań

Poznan

Poznań is a city on the Warta river in west-central Poland, with a population of 556,022 in June 2009. It is among the oldest cities in Poland, and was one of the most important centres in the early Polish state, whose first rulers were buried at Poznań's cathedral. It is sometimes claimed to be...

went on strike caused by the appaling working conditions and wage fraud. Demonstrations by factory workers turned into a huge city-wide protest. Soon, 16 tanks, 2 armoured personnel carriers and 30 anti-riot vehicles rolled in on Rokossowsky's orders. Some 53–80 people were killed and over 300 injured in a shooting rampage when the 10th and 19th Armoured Divisions, reinforced by the 2nd Armoured Corps and the 4th Infantry Division entered the scene. Cyrankiewicz tried to frighten the rioters. In his widely publicized speach, he threatened that: "any provocateur or lunatic who will dare raise his hand against the people's rule may be sure that this hand will be chopped off."

Shaken to its foundations, the 7th Plenum of the Central Committee held in July 1956 split into two informal factions, the "ethno-nationalist" Natolin and the "reformist" Puławy faction named after the locations where they held their meetings: the Palace of Natolin

Natolin

Natolin is a historic park and nature reserve on the southern edge of Warsaw, Poland. "Natolin" is also the name of a neighborhood located to the west of the park — a part of Warsaw's southernmost Ursynów district....

near Warsaw, and Puławska Street in Warsaw. Natolin consisted largely of communist officials from the army and state security including Moczar, Kliszko and Nowak

Zenon Nowak

Zenon Nowak was a Communist activist and politician in the People's Republic of Poland. One of the members of the pro-Soviet Natolin faction of the PZPR Central Committee during the Polish October of 1956.-References:...

, who advocated the removal of Stalin's Jewish protégés from the system, and publicly gave Gomułka their backing. Puławy faction included Jewish Communists from the security apparatus who in large part spent the war in the USSR; as well as disillusioned opportunists, and members of the old Communist intelligentsia

Intelligentsia

. Both factions supported the Sovietization of Poland with slightly different aim, but the staunch Stalinists lacked the support of Khrushchev who flew in with a high-level delegation, and the regime turned to conciliation: it announced wage rises and other reforms. Voices began to be raised in the Party and among the intellectuals calling for wider reforms of the Stalinist system.

Realizing the need for new leadership, in what became known as the Polish October

Polish October

Polish October, also known as October 1956, Polish thaw, or Gomułka's thaw, marked a change in the Polish internal political scene in the second half of 1956...

, the 8th Plenum chose Władysław Gomułka – released from house arrest – as the new First Secretary of PZPR. He was elected on October 19, 1956. Gomułka, pledging to dismantle Stalinism, convinced the Soviet Union that he would not allow its influence on Eastern Europe to diminish. Even so, Poland's relations with Kremlin were not nearly as strained as Yugoslavia's, and the end of Soviet influence in Poland was nowhere in sight; after all, on 14 May 1955 the Warsaw Pact

Warsaw Pact

The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance , or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe...

was signed in the Polish capital, to counteract the establishment of NATO.

The 20th Congress launched a process of partial democratisation of Polish political as well as economic life. The number of security agents was cut by 22%, and 9,000 socialist and populist politicians were released from prison on top of some 34,644 detainees across the entire country. Hardline Stalinists, such as Berman

Jakub Berman

and Romkowski

Roman Romkowski

were removed from power, and many Soviet officers serving in the Polish Armed Forces

Polish Armed Forces

Siły Zbrojne Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej are the national defense forces of Poland...

were dismissed, but almost no one was put on trial for the repressions of the Bierut period with the above notable exceptions. The Puławy faction argued that mass trials of Stalinist officials, many of them Jewish, would incite animosity toward the Jews. Konstantin Rokossovsky

Konstantin Rokossovsky

and other Soviet advisors were sent home, and Polish Communism took on a more independent orientation. However, Gomułka knew that the Soviets would never allow Poland to leave the Warsaw Pact because of Poland's strategic position between the Soviet Union and Germany. He agreed that Soviet troops could remain in Poland

Northern Group of Forces

, and that no overt anti-Soviet outbursts would be allowed. In this way, Poland avoided the risk of Soviet armed intervention, the kind that crushed the 1956 Hungarian Revolution

1956 Hungarian Revolution

The Hungarian Revolution or Uprising of 1956 was a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government of the People's Republic of Hungary and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956....

in October.

There were also repeated attempts by some Polish academics and philosophers

History of philosophy in Poland

The history of philosophy in Poland parallels the evolution of philosophy in Europe in general. Polish philosophy drew upon the broader currents of European philosophy, and in turn contributed to their growth...

, many related to the prewar Lwow-Warsaw School - such as Leszek Kołakowski, Stanisław Ossowski and Adam Schaff

Adam Schaff

Adam Schaff was a Polish Marxist philosopher.-Life:Schaff studied economics at the Ecole des Sciences Politiques et Economiques in Paris, and philosophy in Poland, specializing in epistemology. In 1945 he received a philosophy degree at Moscow University, and in 1948 he returned to Warsaw...

- to develop a specific form of Polish Marxism. Their attempts to create a bridge between Poland's history and Soviet Marxist

Marxism

Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

ideology were mildly successful, although stifled due to the regime's unwillingness to risk the wrath of the Soviet Union for going too far from the Soviet party line

Party line (politics)

In politics, the line or the party line is an idiom for a political party or social movement's canon agenda, as well as specific ideological elements specific to the organization's partisanship. The common phrase toeing the party line describes a person who speaks in a manner that conforms to his...

National Communism

Poland welcomed Gomułka's rise to power with relief. Many Poles still rejected Communism, but they knew that the realities of Soviet dominance dictated that Poland could not escape from Communist rule. Gomułka 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. The January 1957 elections

Polish legislative election, 1957

The Polish legislative election of 1957 was the second election to the Sejm, the parliament of the People's Republic of Poland, and the third in Communist Poland). It took place on 20 January, during the liberalization period following Władysław Gomułka's ascension to power. Although freer than...

were more liberal than previous communist elections but still no opposition candidates were permitted to run.

Gomułka's Poland was generally described as one of the more "liberal" Communist regimes, and Poland was certainly more open than East Germany, Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

and Romania

Romania

Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

during this period. Nevertheless, under Gomułka, Poles could still go to prison for writing political satire

Political satire

Political satire is a significant part of satire that specializes in gaining entertainment from politics; it has also been used with subversive intent where political speech and dissent are forbidden by a regime, as a method of advancing political arguments where such arguments are expressly...

about the Party leader, as Janusz Szpotański

Janusz Szpotański

Janusz Szpotański, was a Polish poet, satirist, critic, translator, literary theorist and chess player .He was the creator of satirical tragi-comedic poems which ridiculed the communist...

did, or for publishing a book abroad. Jacek Kuroń

Jacek Kuron

Jacek Jan Kuroń was one of the democratic leaders of opposition in the People's Republic of Poland. Kuroń was a prominent Polish social and political figure; educator and historian; an activist of the Polish Scouting Association; co-founder of the Workers' Defence Committee; twice a Minister of...

, who would later become a prominent dissident, was imprisoned for writing an "open letter" to other Party members. As Gomułka's popularity declined and his reform Communism lost its impetus, the regime became steadily less liberal and more repressive.

After the first wave of reform, Gomułka'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. The reform-promising Gomułka of 1956 turned into the authoritarian Gomułka of the 1960s. Poland enjoyed a period of relative stability over the next decade, but the idealism of the "Polish October

Polish October

Polish October, also known as October 1956, Polish thaw, or Gomułka's thaw, marked a change in the Polish internal political scene in the second half of 1956...

" had faded away. What replaced it was a somewhat cynical form of Polish nationalism intervened with communist ideology, fueled by a propaganda campaigns such as the one against West Germany

West Germany

West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

over its unwillingness to recognize the Oder-Neisse line

Oder-Neisse line

.

By the mid-1960s, Poland was starting to experience economic, as well as political, difficulties. Like all the Communist regimes, Poland was spending too much on heavy industry, armaments and prestige projects, and too little on consumer production. The end of collectivization returned the land to the peasants, but most of their farms were too small to be efficient, so productivity in agriculture remained low. Economic relations with West Germany were frozen because of the impasse over the Oder-Neisse line. Gomułka chose to ignore the economic crisis, and his autocratic methods prevented the major changes required to prevent a downward economic spiral.

The 1962 Szczecin military parade

1962 Szczecin military parade

The 1962 Szczecin military parade of October 9, 1962 led to a road traffic accident in which a tank of the Polish People's Army crushed bystanders, killing seven children and injuring many more. The resultant panic in the crowd led to further injuries in the rush to escape...

led to a road traffic accident in which a tank

Tank

A tank is a tracked, armoured fighting vehicle designed for front-line combat which combines operational mobility, tactical offensive, and defensive capabilities...

of the Polish People's Army crushed bystanders, killing seven children and injuring many more. The resultant panic in the crowd led to further injuries in the rush to escape. The incident was covered up for many years by the Polish communist authorities

People's Republic of Poland

1968-1970 in Poland

By the 1960s, other government officials had begun to plot against Gomułka. His security chief, Mieczysław Moczar, a wartime Communist partisan commander, formed a new faction, "the Partisans", based on principles of Communist nationalism and anti-inteligencja and anti-Jewish sentiment. The Party boss in Upper Silesia

Upper Silesia

Upper Silesia is the southeastern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia. Since the 9th century, Upper Silesia has been part of Greater Moravia, the Duchy of Bohemia, the Piast Kingdom of Poland, again of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown and the Holy Roman Empire, as well as of...

, Edward Gierek

Edward Gierek

, who unlike most of the Communist leaders was a genuine product of the working class, also emerged as a possible alternative leader.

In March 1968 student demonstrations at Warsaw University broke out when the government banned the performance of a play by Adam Mickiewicz

Adam Mickiewicz

Adam Bernard Mickiewicz ) was a Polish poet, publisher and political writer of the Romantic period. One of the primary representatives of the Polish Romanticism era, a national poet of Poland, he is seen as one of Poland's Three Bards and the greatest poet in all of Polish literature...

(Dziady
Dziady (poem)
Dziady is a poetic drama by the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz. It is considered one of the great works of European Romanticism. To George Sand and George Brandes, Dziady was a supreme realization of Romantic drama theory, to be ranked with such works as Goethe's Faust and Byron's Manfred.The...

, written in 1824) at the Polish Theatre in Warsaw

Polish Theatre in Warsaw

Polish Theatre in Warsaw The theatre was initiated by Arnold Szyfman and designed by Czesław Przybylski. Finished in 1913, the facility featured Poland's first revolving stage. It a private enterprise staging Polish and foreign classics, contemporary drama, as well as popular plays.The theater was ...

, because it contained "anti-Soviet references". In what became known as the March 1968 events Moczar used this affair as a pretext to launch an anti-intellectual and anti-Semitic press campaign (although the expression "anti-Zionist

Zionism

Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...

" was the one officially used) whose real goal was to weaken the pro-reform liberal faction. Approximately 20,000 Jews lost their jobs and had to emigrate.

The communist government reacted in several ways to the March events. 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

Armia Krajowa

. The second was the complete alienation of the regime from the leftist intelligentsia, who were disgusted at the official promotion of anti-Semitism. Many Polish intellectuals opposed the campaign, some openly, and Moczar's security apparatus became as hated as Berman's had been. The third was the founding by Polish Emigrants to the West of organizations that encouraged opposition within Poland. The campaign damaged Poland's reputation abroad, particularly in the United States.

Two things saved Gomułka's regime at this point. First, the Soviet Union, now led by Leonid Brezhnev

Leonid Brezhnev

Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...

, made it clear that it would not tolerate political upheaval in Poland at a time when it was trying to deal with the crisis in Czechoslovakia

Prague Spring

The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...

. In particular, the Soviets made it clear that they would not allow Moczar, whom they suspected of anti-Soviet nationalism, to be leader of Poland. Second, the workers refused to rise up against the regime, partly because they distrusted the intellectual leadership of the protest movement, and partly because Gomułka placated them with higher wages. The Catholic Church, while protesting against police violence against demonstrating students, was also not willing to support a direct confrontation with the regime.

In August 1968 the Polish People's Army took part in the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Some Polish intellectuals protested, and Ryszard Siwiec

Ryszard Siwiec

Ryszard Siwiec was a Polish accountant, teacher and former Home Army soldier who was the first person to commit suicide by self-immolation in protest against the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.- Self-Immolation :...

burned himself alive during the official national holiday celebrations. Polish participation in crushing Czech liberal communism (or socialism with a human face, as it was called then) further alienated Gomułka from his former liberal supporters. However, in 1970 Gomułka won a political victory when he gained West German

West Germany

West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

recognition of the Oder-Neisse line

Oder-Neisse line

. The German Chancellor, Willy Brandt

Willy Brandt

Willy Brandt, born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm , was a German politician, Mayor of West Berlin 1957–1966, Chancellor of West Germany 1969–1974, and leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany 1964–1987....

, asked on his knees for forgiveness for the crimes of the Nazis (Warschauer Kniefall

Warschauer Kniefall

Kniefall von Warschau refers to a gesture of humility and penance by social democratic Chancellor of Germany Willy Brandt towards the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.-Incident:...

); this gesture was understood in Poland as being addressed to Poles, although it was actually made at the site of the Warsaw Ghetto

Warsaw Ghetto

The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of all Jewish Ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. It was established in the Polish capital between October and November 15, 1940, in the territory of General Government of the German-occupied Poland, with over 400,000 Jews from the vicinity...

and was thus directed primarily toward the Jews. This occurred five years after Polish bishops had issued their famous Letter of Reconciliation of the Polish Bishops to the German Bishops

Letter of Reconciliation of the Polish Bishops to the German Bishops

The Pastoral Letter of the Polish Bishops to their German Brothers was a pastoral letter sent on 18 November 1965 by Polish bishops of the Roman Catholic Church to their German counterparts. It was foremost an invitation to the 1000 Year Anniversary Celebrations of Poland's Christianization in 1966...

, then heavily criticized by the Polish government.

Gomułka's temporary political success could not mask the economic crisis into which Poland was drifting. Although the system of fixed, artificially low food prices kept urban discontent under control, it caused stagnation in agriculture and made more expensive food imports necessary. This situation was unsustainable, and in December 1970, the regime suddenly announced massive increases in the prices of basic foodstuffs. It is possible that the price rises were imposed on Gomułka by enemies of his in the Party leadership who planned to maneuver him out of power. The raised prices were unpopular among many urban workers. Gomułka believed that the agreement with West Germany had made him more popular, but most Poles seemed to feel that since the Germans were no longer a threat to Poland, they no longer needed to tolerate the Communist regime as a guarantee of Soviet support for the defense of the Oder-Neisse line.

Demonstrations against the price rises broke out in the northern coastal cities of Gdańsk

Gdansk

Gdańsk is a Polish city on the Baltic coast, at the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area.The city lies on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay , in a conurbation with the city of Gdynia, spa town of Sopot, and suburban communities, which together form a metropolitan area called the...

, Gdynia

Gdynia

Gdynia is a city in the Pomeranian Voivodeship of Poland and an important seaport of Gdańsk Bay on the south coast of the Baltic Sea.Located in Kashubia in Eastern Pomerania, Gdynia is part of a conurbation with the spa town of Sopot, the city of Gdańsk and suburban communities, which together...

, Elbląg

Elblag

Elbląg is a city in northern Poland with 127,892 inhabitants . It is the capital of Elbląg County and has been assigned to the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship since 1999. Before then it was the capital of Elbląg Voivodeship and a county seat in Gdańsk Voivodeship...

and Szczecin

Szczecin

Szczecin , is the capital city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in Poland. It is the country's seventh-largest city and the largest seaport in Poland on the Baltic Sea. As of June 2009 the population was 406,427....

. Gomułka's right-hand man, Zenon Kliszko, made matters worse by ordering the army to fire on protesting workers. Another leader, Stanisław Kociołek, appealed to the workers to return to work. However, in Gdynia the soldiers had orders to prevent workers from returning to work, and they fired into a crowd of workers emerging from their trains; hundreds of workers were killed. The protest movement spread to other cities, leading to more strikes and causing angry workers to occupy many factories.

The Party leadership met in Warsaw and decided that a full-scale working-class revolt was inevitable unless drastic steps were taken. With the consent of Brezhnev in Moscow, Gomułka, Kliszko and other leaders were forced to resign. Since Moscow would not accept the appointment of Moczar, Edward Gierek

Edward Gierek

was drafted as the new First Secretary of the PZPR. Prices were lowered, wage increases were announced, and sweeping economic and political changes were promised. Gierek went to Gdańsk and met the workers personally, apologizing for the mistakes of the past, and saying that as a worker himself, he would now govern Poland for the people.

Gierek decade (1970–1980)

Gierek, like Gomułka in 1956, came to power on a raft of promises that now everything would be different: wages would rise, prices would remain stable, there would be freedom of speech, and those responsible for the violence at Gdynia and elsewhere would be punished. 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. He used this time to create a new economic program, one based on large-scale borrowing from the West — mainly from the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

and West Germany

West Germany

West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

— to buy technology that would upgrade Poland's production of export

Export

The term export is derived from the conceptual meaning as to ship the goods and services out of the port of a country. The seller of such goods and services is referred to as an "exporter" who is based in the country of export whereas the overseas based buyer is referred to as an "importer"...

goods. This massive borrowing, estimated to have totaled US$

United States dollar

The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

10 billion, was used to re-equip and modernize Polish industry, and to import consumer goods to give the workers more incentive to work.

For the next four years, Poland enjoyed rapidly rising living standards and an apparently stable economy. Real wages rose 40% between 1971 and 1975, and for the first time most Poles could afford to buy cars, televisions and other consumer goods. Poles living abroad, veterans of the Armia Krajowa

Armia Krajowa

and the Polish Armed Forces in the West

Polish Armed Forces in the West

Polish Armed Forces in the West refers to the Polish military formations formed to fight alongside the Western Allies against Nazi Germany and its allies...

, were invited to return and to invest their money in Poland, which many did. The peasants were subsidized to grow more food. Poles were able to travel — mainly to West Germany

West Germany

West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

, Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

and Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

— with little difficulty. There was also some cultural and political relaxation. As long as the "leading role of the Party" and the Soviet "alliance" were not criticized, there was a limited freedom of speech

Freedom of speech

Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...

. With the workers and peasants reasonably happy, the regime knew that a few grumbling intellectuals could pose no challenge.

"Consumer Communism", based on present global economic conditions, raised Polish living standards and expectations, but the program faltered suddenly in the early 1970s because of worldwide recession and increased oil prices. The effects of the world oil shock following the 1973 Arab-Israeli War

Yom Kippur War

The Yom Kippur War, Ramadan War or October War , also known as the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the Fourth Arab-Israeli War, was fought from October 6 to 25, 1973, between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria...

produced an inflationary surge followed by a recession in the West, which resulted in a sharp increase in the price of imported consumer goods, coupled with a decline in demand for Polish exports, particularly coal

Coal

Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...

. Poland's foreign debt rose from US$100 million in 1971 to US$6 billion in 1975, and continued to rise rapidly. This made it increasingly difficult for Poland to continue borrowing from the West. Again, consumer goods began to disappear from Polish shops. 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.

In 1975, Poland and almost all other European countries became signatories of the Helsinki Accords

Helsinki Accords

thumb|300px|[[Erich Honecker]] and [[Helmut Schmidt]] in Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe held in Helsinki 1975....

and a member of Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe is the world's largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization. Its mandate includes issues such as arms control, human rights, freedom of the press and fair elections...

(OSCE), the creation of which marked the high point of the period of "détente

Détente

Détente is the easing of strained relations, especially in a political situation. The term is often used in reference to the general easing of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1970s, a thawing at a period roughly in the middle of the Cold War...

" between the Soviet Union and the United States. Despite the regime's claims that the freedoms mentioned in the agreement would be implemented in Poland, there was little change. However, Poles were gradually becoming more aware of the rights they were being denied.

Economics of chronic shortages

As the government became increasingly unable to borrow money from abroad, it had no alternative but to raise prices, particularly for basic foodstuffs. The government had been so afraid of a repeat of the 1970 worker rebellion that it had kept prices frozen at the 1970 levels rather than allowing them to rise gradually. Then, in June 1976, under pressure from Western creditors, the government again introduced price increases: butter by 33%, meat by 70%, and sugar by 100%. The result was an immediate nationwide wave of strikes, with violent demonstrations and looting at Płock and Radom

Radom

Radom is a city in central Poland with 223,397 inhabitants . It is located on the Mleczna River in the Masovian Voivodeship , having previously been the capital of Radom Voivodeship ; 100 km south of Poland's capital, Warsaw.It is home to the biennial Radom Air Show, the largest and...

. Gierek backed down at once, dismissing Prime Minister Piotr Jaroszewicz

Piotr Jaroszewicz

Gen. Piotr Jaroszewicz was a Polish Communist political figure. He served as the Prime Minister of Poland between 1970 and 1980.Piotr Jaroszewicz was born on 8 October 1909 in Nieśwież. After finishing the secondary school in Jasło he started working as a teacher and headmaster in Garwolin...

and repealing the price rises. This left the government looking both economically foolish and politically weak, a very dangerous combination.

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. A group of intellectuals led by Jacek Kuroń

Jacek Kuron

and Adam Michnik

Adam Michnik

Adam Michnik is the editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, where he sometimes writes under the pen-names of Andrzej Zagozda or Andrzej Jagodziński. In 1966–1989 he was one of the leading organizers of the illegal, democratic opposition in Poland...

founded the Committee for the Defence of the Workers (Komitet Obrony Robotników; KOR). The aim of the KOR was at first simply to assist the worker victims of the 1976 repression, but it inevitably became a political resistance group. It marked an important development: the intellectual dissidents accepting the leadership of the working class in opposing the regime. These events brought many more Polish intellectuals into active opposition of the Polish government. The complete failure of the Gierek regime, both economically and politically, led many of them to join or rejoin the opposition. During this period, new opposition groups were formed, such as the Confederation of Independent Poland

Confederation of Independent Poland

Konfederacja Polski Niepodległej was a political party founded on 1 September 1979 by Leszek Moczulski and others declaring support for the pre-war traditions of Sanacja and Józef Piłsudski...

(KPN), Free Trade Unions of the Coast

Free Trade Unions of the Coast

Free Trade Unions of the Coast were a government-independent trade union in the People's Republic of Poland.This trade union was founded in Gdańsk on 29 April 1978 by Andrzej Gwiazda, Krzysztof Wyszkowski and Antoni Sokołowski...

(WZW) and the Movement for Defense of Human and Civic Rights

Movement for Defense of Human and Civic Rights

Movement for Defense of Human and Civic Rights was a right-wing political and social organization formed in People's Republic of Poland in March of 1977...

(ROPCiO), which tried to resist the regime by denouncing it for violating Polish laws and the Polish constitution

Constitution of Poland

The current Constitution of Poland was adopted on 2 April 1997. Formally known as the Constitution of the Republic of Poland , it replaced the temporary amendments put into place in 1992 designed to reverse the effects of Communism, establishing the nation as "a democratic state ruled by law and...

.

For the rest of the 1970s, resistance to the regime grew, as trade union

Trade union

s, student groups, clandestine newspapers and publishers

Polish underground press

Polish underground press devoted to prohibited materials has a long history of combatting censorship of oppressive regimes in Poland...

, imported books and newspapers, and even a "flying university

Flying University

Flying University was the name of an underground educational enterprise that operated from 1885 to 1905 in Warsaw, the historic Polish capital, then under the control of the Russian Empire, and that was revived between 1977 and 1981 in the People's Republic of Poland...

". The regime made no serious attempt to suppress the opposition. Gierek was interested only in buying off dissatisfied workers and keeping the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

convinced that Poland was a loyal ally. But the Soviet alliance was at the heart of Gierek's problems: following Brezhnev Doctrine

Brezhnev Doctrine

The Brezhnev Doctrine was a Soviet Union foreign policy, first and most clearly outlined by S. Kovalev in a September 26, 1968 Pravda article, entitled “Sovereignty and the International Obligations of Socialist Countries.” Leonid Brezhnev reiterated it in a speech at the Fifth Congress of the...

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

Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...

and Romania

Communist Romania

Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...

had by this time done. Nor would they allow any fundamental economic reform that would endanger the "socialist system".

At this juncture, on 16 October 1978, Poland experienced what many Poles literally believed to be a miracle. The Archbishop of Kraków, Karol Wojtyła, was elected Pope

Pope

The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...

, taking the name John Paul II

Pope John Paul II

. The election of a Polish Pope had an electrifying effect on what was by the 1970s one of the last idiosyncratically Catholic countries in Europe. When John Paul toured Poland in June 1979, half a million people heard him speak in Warsaw, and about a quarter of the entire population of the country attended at least one of his outdoor masses

Mass (liturgy)

"Mass" is one of the names by which the sacrament of the Eucharist is called in the Roman Catholic Church: others are "Eucharist", the "Lord's Supper", the "Breaking of Bread", the "Eucharistic assembly ", the "memorial of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection", the "Holy Sacrifice", the "Holy and...

. Overnight, John Paul became the most important person in Poland, leaving the regime not so much opposed as ignored. However, John Paul did not call for rebellion; instead, he encouraged the creation of an "alternative Poland" of social institutions independent of the government, so that when the next crisis came, the nation would present a united front.

By 1980, the Communist leadership was completely trapped by Poland's economic and political dilemma. The regime had no means of legitimizing itself, since it knew that the PZPR would never win a free election. It had no choice but to make another attempt to raise consumer prices to realistic levels, but it knew that to do so would certainly spark another worker rebellion, much better-organized than the 1970 or 1976 outbreaks.
In one sense, it was a reliance on capitalism that led to the fall of communism. Western bankers had loaned over $500 million to the government of Poland, and at a meeting at the Bank Handlowy in Warsaw on 1 July 1980, made it clear that low prices of consumer goods could no longer be subsidized by the state. The government gave in and announced a system of gradual but continuous price rises, particularly for meat. A wave of strikes and factory occupations began at once, coordinated from KOR's headquarters in Warsaw.
From the end of World War II until 1978, the US government loaned and gave the Communist regime in Poland $677 million. In 1979, it granted the Communist regime in Poland an additional $500 million in loans and loan guarantees.

The leadership made little effort to intervene. By this time, the Polish Communists had lost the Stalinist zealotry of the 1940s; they had grown corrupt and cynical during the Gierek years, and had no stomach for bloodshed. The country waited to see what would happen. In early August, the strike wave reached the politically sensitive Baltic coast

Baltic Sea

The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...

, with a strike at the Lenin Shipyards

Gdansk Shipyard

Gdańsk Shipyard is a large Polish shipyard, located in the city of Gdańsk. The yard gained international fame when Solidarity was founded there in September 1980...

in Gdańsk

Gdansk

. Among the leaders of this strike was electrician Lech Wałęsa

Lech Wałęsa

, who would soon become a figure of international importance. The strike wave spread along the coast, closing the ports and bringing the economy to a halt. With the assistance of the activists from KOR and the support of many intellectuals, the workers occupying the various factories, mines and shipyards across Poland came together.

The leadership was now faced with a choice between repression on a massive scale and an agreement that would give the workers everything they wanted, while preserving the outward shell of Communist rule. They chose the latter, and on 31 August, Wałęsa signed the Gdańsk Agreement

Gdansk Agreement

The Gdańsk Agreement was an accord reached as a direct result of the strikes that took place in Gdańsk, Poland...

with Mieczysław Jagielski, a member of the PZPR Politburo

Politburo

Politburo , literally "Political Bureau [of the Central Committee]," is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.-Marxist-Leninist states:...

. The Agreement acknowledged the right of Poles to associate in free trade union

Trade union

s, abolished censorship

Censorship

thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...

, abolished weekend work, increased the minimum wage

Minimum wage

A minimum wage is the lowest hourly, daily or monthly remuneration that employers may legally pay to workers. Equivalently, it is the lowest wage at which workers may sell their labour. Although minimum wage laws are in effect in a great many jurisdictions, there are differences of opinion about...

, increased and extended welfare and pensions, and abolished Party supervision of industrial enterprises. Party rule was significantly weakened in what was regarded as a first step toward dismantling the Party's monopoly of power, but nonetheless preserved, as it was recognized as necessary to prevent Soviet intervention. The fact that all these economic concessions were completely unaffordable escaped attention in the wave of national euphoria that swept the country. The period that started afterwards is often called the first part of the "Polish carnival" - with the second one taking place in the second half of 1980s.

End of Communist rule (1980–1990)

The Gdańsk Agreement

Gdansk Agreement

The Gdańsk Agreement was an accord reached as a direct result of the strikes that took place in Gdańsk, Poland...

, an aftermath of the August 1980 labor strike, was an important milestone. It led to the formation of an independent trade union

Trade union

, "Solidarity" (Polish Solidarność), founded in September 1980 and originally led by Lech Wałęsa

Lech Wałęsa

. In the 1980s, it helped form a broad anti-Communist social movement

Anti-communist resistance in Poland

Anti-communist resistance in Poland can be divided into two types: the armed partisan struggle, mostly led by former Armia Krajowa and Narodowe Siły Zbrojne soldiers, which ended in the late 1950s , and the non-violent, civil-resistance struggle that culminated in the creation and victory of the...

, with members ranging from people associated with the Roman Catholic Church

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

to anti-Communist leftists. The union was backed by a group of intellectual dissidents, the KOR, and adhered to a policy of nonviolent resistance

Nonviolent resistance

Nonviolent resistance is the practice of achieving goals through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, and other methods, without using violence. It is largely synonymous with civil resistance...

. In time, Solidarity became a major Polish political force in opposition to the Communists.

The ideas of the Solidarity movement spread rapidly throughout Poland; new unions were formed and joined the federation. The Solidarity program, although concerned chiefly with trade union matters, was universally regarded as the first step towards dismantling the Communists' dominance over social institutions, professional organizations and community associations. By the end of 1981, Solidarity had nine million members — a quarter of Poland's population, and three times as many members as the PUWP had. Using strikes

Strike action

Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...

and other tactics, the union sought to block government initiatives.

In September 1980, the increasingly frail Gierek was removed from office and replaced as Party leader by Stanisław Kania. Kania made the same sort of promises that Gomułka and Gierek made when they had come to power. 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 Gdańsk, even if it wanted to. The regime was still trapped by the conflict between economic necessity and political instability. It could not revive the economy without abandoning state control of prices, but it could not do this without triggering another general strike. Nor could it gain the support of the population through political reform, because of the threat of Soviet intervention. GNP

GNP

Gross National Product is the market value of all products and services produced in one year by labor and property supplied by the residents of a country...

fell in 1979 by 2%, in 1980 by 8% and in 1981 by 15–20%. Public corruption

Political corruption

Political corruption is the use of legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Neither are illegal acts by...

had become endemic and housing shortages and food rationing were just three of many factors contributing to the growing social unrest.

On 13 December 1981, claiming that the country was on the verge of economic and civil breakdown, and claiming the danger of Soviet intervention (whether this danger was real at that particular moment is disputed by historians, see Soviet reaction to the Polish Crisis of 1980-1981), Wojciech Jaruzelski

Wojciech Jaruzelski

, who had become the Party's national secretary and prime minister that year, started a crack-down on Solidarity, declaring martial law

Martial law in Poland

, suspending the union, and temporarily imprisoning most of its leaders. Polish police (Milicja Obywatelska
Milicja Obywatelska
Milicja Obywatelska was a state police institution in the People's Republic of Poland. It was created in 1944 by Soviet-sponsored PKWN, effectively replacing the pre-war police force. In 1990 it was transformed back into Policja....

) and paramilitary

Paramilitary

A paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces....

riot police

Riot control

Riot control refers to the measures used by police, military, or other security forces to control, disperse, and arrest civilians who are involved in a riot, demonstration, or protest. Law enforcement officers or soldiers have long used non-lethal weapons such as batons and whips to disperse crowds...

(Zmotoryzowane Odwody Milicji Obywatelskiej; ZOMO

ZOMO

Zmotoryzowane Odwody Milicji Obywatelskiej , were paramilitary-police formations during the Communist Era, in the People's Republic of Poland...

) suppressed the demonstrators in a series of violent attacks such as the massacre of striking miners

Pacification of Wujek

The Pacification of Wujek was a strike-breaking action by the Polish police and army at the Wujek Coal Mine in Katowice, Poland, culminating in the massacre of nine striking miners on December 16, 1981....

in the Wujek Coal Mine (9 killed). The government

Military Council of National Salvation

The Military Council of National Salvation was a military dictatorship administering the People's Republic of Poland during the period of the martial law in Poland ....

banned Solidarity on 8 October 1982. Martial law was formally lifted in July 1983, though many heightened controls on civil liberties and political life, as well as food rationing, remained in place throughout the mid-to-late 1980s.

During the chaotic Solidarity years and the imposition of martial law, Poland entered a decade of economic crisis, officially acknowledged as such even by the regime. Work on most of the major investment projects that had begun in the 1970s was stopped, resulting in landmarks such as the Szkieletor

Szkieletor

Szkieletor is the unofficial name of a 92 metre high-rise building in Kraków, Poland, originally intended to become the headquarters of the Main Technical Organization . The construction of the building was started in 1975, but was stopped in 1981 because of economic constraints...

skyscraper

Skyscraper

A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building of many stories, often designed for office and commercial use. There is no official definition or height above which a building may be classified as a skyscraper...

in Kraków. Rationing and queuing became a way of life, with ration cards (Kartki) necessary to buy even such basic consumer staples as milk and sugar. Access to Western luxury good

Luxury good

Luxury goods are products and services that are not considered essential and associated with affluence.The concept of luxury has been present in various forms since the beginning of civilization. Its role was just as important in ancient western and eastern empires as it is in modern societies...

s became even more restricted, as Western governments applied economic sanction

International sanctions

International sanctions are actions taken by countries against others for political reasons, either unilaterally or multilaterally.There are several types of sanctions....

s to express their dissatisfaction with the government repression of the opposition, while at the same time the government had to use most of the foreign currency it could obtain to pay the crushing rates on its foreign debt which reached US$23 billion by 1980. In response to this situation, the government, which controlled all official foreign trade, continued to maintain a highly artificial exchange rate

Exchange rate

In finance, an exchange rate between two currencies is the rate at which one currency will be exchanged for another. It is also regarded as the value of one country’s currency in terms of another currency...

with Western currencies. The exchange rate worsened distortions in the economy at all levels, resulting in a growing black market and the development of a shortage economy

Shortage economy

Shortage economy is a term coined by the Hungarian economist, János Kornai. He used this term to criticize the old centrally-planned economies of the communist states of the Eastern Bloc...

The Communist government unsuccessfully tried various expedients to improve the performance of the economy. To gather foreign currency, the government established a chain of state-run Pewex
Pewex
Pewex was a chain of hard currency shops in communist Poland...

stores in all Polish cities where goods could only be bought with Western currency, as well as issued its own ersatz
Ersatz
Ersatz means 'substituting for, and typically inferior in quality to', e.g. 'chicory is ersatz coffee'. It is a German word literally meaning substitute or replacement...

U.S. currency (bony). During the era hundreds of thousands of Poles emigrated looking for jobs and prosperity abroad. The government was increasingly forced to carry out small-scale reforms, allowing more small-scale private enterprises to function and departing further and further from the 'socialist' model of economy.

Facing the inevitable

The government slowly but inevitably started to accept the idea that some kind of deal with the opposition would be necessary. The constant state of economic and societal crisis meant that, after the shock of martial law had faded, people on all levels again began to organize against the regime. "Solidarity" gained more support and power, though it never approached the levels of membership it enjoyed in the 1980–1981 period. At the same time, the dominance of the Communist Party further eroded as it lost many of its members, a number of whom had been outraged by the imposition of martial law. Throughout the mid-1980s, Solidarity persisted solely as an underground organization, supported by a wide range of international supporters, from the Church

Roman Catholic Church

to the CIA

Central Intelligence Agency

The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...

. Starting from 1986, other opposition structures such as the Orange Alternative

Orange Alternative

Orange Alternative is a name for an underground protest movement which was started in Wrocław, a town in south-west Poland and led by Waldemar Fydrych , commonly known as Major in the 1980s...

"dwarf" movement founded by "Major" Waldemar Fydrych began organizing street protests in form of colorful happenings that assembled thousands of participants and broke the fear barrier which was paralysing the population since the Martial Law. By the late 1980s, Solidarity was strong enough to frustrate Jaruzelski's attempts at reform, including a failed attempt to gain a popular mandate for changes in a national referendum held in November, 1987, and nationwide strikes in May and August 1988 were one of the factors that forced the government to open a dialogue with Solidarity on 31 August 1989.

The perestroika and glasnost policies of the Soviet Union's new leader, Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev

, were another factor in stimulating political reform in Poland. In particular, Gorbachev essentially repudiated the Brezhnev Doctrine

Brezhnev Doctrine

, which had stipulated that attempts by its Eastern European satellite state

Satellite state

A satellite state is a political term that refers to a country that is formally independent, but under heavy political and economic influence or control by another country...

s to abandon Communism would be countered by the Soviet Union with force. This change in Soviet policy, along with the hardline stance of US President

President of the United States

The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

against Soviet military incursions, removed the specter of a possible Soviet invasion in response to any wide-ranging reforms, and hence eliminated the key argument employed by the Communists as a justification for maintaining Communism in Poland.

By the close of the 10th plenary session on 18 January 1989, the Communist Party had decided to approach leaders of Solidarity for formal talks. From 6 February to 4 April, 94 sessions of talks between 13 working groups, which became known as the "Round Table Talks

Polish Round Table Agreement

" (Polish: Rozmowy Okrągłego Stołu) radically altered the structure of the Polish government and society. The talks resulted in an agreement to vest political power in a newly created bicameral legislature

Bicameralism

In the government, bicameralism is the practice of having two legislative or parliamentary chambers. Thus, a bicameral parliament or bicameral legislature is a legislature which consists of two chambers or houses....

, and in a president

President of the Republic of Poland

The President of the Republic of Poland is the Polish head of state. His or her rights and obligations are determined in the Constitution of Poland....

who would be the chief executive.

On 4 April 1989, Solidarity was again legalized and allowed to participate in semi-free elections on 4 June 1989. This election was not completely free, with restrictions designed to keep the Communists in power, since only one third of the seats in the key lower chamber of parliament would be open to Solidarity candidates. The other two thirds were to be reserved for candidates from the Communist Party and its two allied, completely subservient parties. The Communists thought of the election as a way to keep power while gaining some legitimacy to carry out reforms. Many critics from the opposition believed that by accepting the rigged election Solidarity had bowed to government pressure, guaranteeing the Communists domination in Poland into the 1990s.

When the results were released, a political earthquake followed. The victory of Solidarity surpassed all predictions. Solidarity candidates captured all the seats they were allowed to compete for in the Sejm, while in the Senate

Senate of Poland

The Senate is the upper house of the Polish parliament, the lower house being the 'Sejm'. The history of the Polish Senate is rich in tradition and stretches back over 500 years, it was one of the first constituent bodies of a bicameral parliament in Europe and existed without hiatus until the...

they captured 99 out of the 100 available seats (the other seat went to an independent, who later switched to Solidarity). 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. With the election results, the Communists suffered a catastrophic blow to their legitimacy.

The next few months were spent on political maneuvering. The prestige of the Communists fell so low that, even the two puppet parties allied with them decided to break away and adopt independent courses. The new Communist Prime Minister, general Czesław Kiszczak, who was appointed on 2 August 1989, failed to gain enough support in the Sejm to form a government, and resigned on 19 August 1989. He was the last Communist head of government in Poland. Although Jaruzelski tried to persuade Solidarity to join the Communists in a "grand coalition", Wałęsa refused. By August 1989, it was clear that a new Prime Minister would have to be chosen from among the Solidarity nominees. Jaruzelski resigned as general secretary of the Communist Party on 29 July 1989, forced to come to terms with the prospect of new government being formed by political opposition. Increasingly nervous Communists, who still had administrative control over the country, were temporarily appeased by a compromise in which Solidarity allowed General Jaruzelski to remain head of state. Jaruzelski won by just one vote in the National Assembly

National Assembly of Poland

The National Assembly is the name of both chambers of the Polish parliament, the Sejm and the Senate, when sitting in joint session...

presidential election of 19 July 1989 even though his name was the only one on the Communist ballot. Essentially, he won through abstention by a sufficient number of Solidarity MPs. Wojciech Jaruzelski became President, but Solidarity elected representative Tadeusz Mazowiecki

Tadeusz Mazowiecki

Tadeusz Mazowiecki is a Polish author, journalist, philanthropist and Christian-democratic politician, formerly one of the leaders of the Solidarity movement, and the first non-communist prime minister in Central and Eastern Europe after World War II.-Biography:Mazowiecki comes from a Polish...

assumed the office of Prime Minister. He was appointed on 24 August 1989. The new non-Communist government, the first of its kind in Communist Europe, was sworn into office on 13 September 1989. It immediately adopted radical economic policies, proposed by Leszek Balcerowicz

Leszek Balcerowicz

Leszek Balcerowicz is a Polish economist, the former chairman of the National Bank of Poland and Deputy Prime Minister in Tadeusz Mazowiecki's government...

, which transformed Poland into a functioning market economy

Market economy

over the course of the next year.

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

Central Europe

Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...

and Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

in the second half of 1989.

In 1990, Jaruzelski resigned as Poland's president and was succeeded by Wałęsa, who won the 1990 presidential elections

Polish presidential election, 1990

. Wałęsa's inauguration as president in December, 1990 is thought by many to be the formal end of the Communist People's Republic of Poland

People's Republic of Poland

and the beginning of the modern Republic of Poland

Poland

. The Polish United Workers' Party

Polish United Workers' Party

(the Communists) dissolved in 1990, transforming into Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland

Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland

Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland was a social-democratic political party in Poland created in 1990, shortly after the Revolutions of 1989. The party was one of two successor parties to the Polish United Workers Party, the other being the Social Democratic Union. SdRP was the leading...

. The Warsaw Pact

Warsaw Pact

was dissolved in the summer of 1991 and the Soviet troops would leave Poland by 1993. On 27 October 1991 the first entirely free Polish parliamentary elections

Polish parliamentary election, 1991

The Polish parliamentary election in 1991 to the Sejm and the Senate of Poland was held on October 27. In the Sejm elections, 27,517,280 citizens were eligible to vote, 11,887,949 of them cast their votes, 11,218,602 of those were counted as valid. In the Senate elections, 43.2% of citizens cast...

since the 1920s took place. This completed Poland's transition from Communist Party rule to a Western-style liberal democratic political system.

External links

The CWIHP Document Collection on Poland in the Cold War
Photos and films of PRL
Polish Press Agency gallery of photos forbidden until 1989 and Photos of normal life
posters Muzeum PRL: PRL Poster gallery
Internet Museum of People's Republic of Poland
Soviet Archives concerning Poland (1980–1984) by Vladimir Bukovsky
Vladimir Bukovsky
Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky is a leading member of the dissident movement of the 1960s and 1970s, writer, neurophysiologist, and political activist....
Presentation The Solidarity Phenomenon (PL
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

, EN
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, DE
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, FR
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, ES
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, RU
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

)
Commonwealth of Diverse Cultures: Poland's Heritage
Vintage Poland: Pretty in Polska - slideshow by Life magazine

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Wartime devastation, border and population shifts

Consolidation of Communist power (1945–1948)

The 1946 referendum and elections of 1947

Stalinist era (1948–1956)

Economic reforms and nationalization

Return to relative normalcy

Polish October and the process of de-Stalinization

National Communism

1968-1970 in Poland

Gierek decade (1970–1980)

Economics of chronic shortages

End of Communist rule (1980–1990)

Facing the inevitable

See also

Further reading

External links