Poland And Communism

POLAND
AND COMMUNISM



The Soviet authorities, with the help of Polish Communists, quickly suppressed all opposition declared: Army soldiers Interior (AK) and Freedom and Independence(WiN) were imprisoned and sent to the gulags, the Polish Underground leaders were jailed in Moscow and sentenced in a process manipulated and organized as a public example, the activists of PSL (Polish PeasantParty), linked to Mikolajczyk, were detained, intimidated and even killed. The referendum of 30 June 1946 was falsified, as the parliamentary elections in January 1947.Mikolajczyk, Deputy Prime Minister of the Provisional Government decided

  From now on, Poland was to be governed by the PPR (Polish Workers Party) which, from 1948, called PZPR (Polish United Workers' Party -PZPR). In theyears 1948-1956, the so-called Stalinist period, the Communist Party in a Poland ruled unchallenged, with ample help from the political police and "Soviet advisers". Political opponents were not the only ones affected by retaliation; to prisons came not only the soldiers of the Interior Army, or Catholic priests (the placement of the Primate of Poland, Wyszynski in 1953), but even the militantsthemselves uncomfortable in the PZPR, for example, the party leader,Wladyslaw Gomulka. Poland was one of the faithful satellite states of the USSR. Of the country's economic structure had disappeared almost all small business owners and experts who did not belong to the Party and agriculture was collectivized property. Industrialization that was taking place at top speed caused a considerable dropin living standards and widespread discontent in the population.

The Poles had to wait until 1956 for the political terror. Stalinism was then officially condemned in the USSR, the death of Boleslaw Bierut (PZPR leader) and workers' riots in Poznan on 28 June

same year also brought changes in the Polish government team. In October, after a sharp conflict within the PZPR and after difficultnegotiations with the leaders of the USSR, at the head of the Party and the country, enjoying a strong social support was Wladyslaw Gomulka. The new First Secretary used the change to reduce dependence on the Soviet Union, political prisoners were gradually granted amnesty, the Primate of Poland was released, it renounced the forced collectivization of agriculture and allowed limited development of theprivate sector. The country, still recovering from the devastation of war, began the stage of "little stabilization."
Gomulka soon abandoned the liberal course of the "Polish October". The PZPR was still exercising absolute power in the country. The conflict between the authorities and society were becoming more frequent, the crisis between the state and the Church during the millenniumcelebrations of baptism of Poland and the student revolts of March 1968, the antisemitic campaign instigated by the PZPR in 1968, clearly showed the lack of support from society.

The end of the power of Gomulka, like his arrival in 1956, was caused by workers' demonstrations. In December 1970, after the price increase decided by the authorities in the port of Gdansk strikes andconfrontations occurred between workers on the one hand, and the militants and the army on the other, killed several dozen people. The

lost internal party opposition to Gomulka and elected as the new First Secretary of PZPR Edward Gierek.
In the seventies the Polish People's Republic enjoyed a period of "prosperity". Thanks to foreign credit stores are filled, new industrial enterprises grew, raised the standard ofliving of citizens. The first crisis occurred in 1976, riots in Radomand Ursus.
The communist economy was ineffective, external debt grew, the real incomes of the population began to decline, the supply worsened. Thus grew the number of strikes and worker protests. The reprisals of those who had protested in 1976 led to the creation of an illegal Defense Committee of the Workers (KOR). Began to...