Władysław Gomułka

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Władysław Gomułka
First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party
In office
21 October 1956 – 20 December 1970
Prime MinisterJózef Cyrankiewicz
ChairmanAleksander Zawadzki
Edward Ochab
Marian Spychalski
Preceded byEdward Ochab
Succeeded byEdward Gierek
First Secretary of the Polish Workers' Party
In office
23 November 1943 – 3 September 1948
Preceded byPaweł Finder
Succeeded byBolesław Bierut
Personal details
Born(1905-02-06)6 February 1905
Krosno, Austria-Hungary
Died1 September 1982(1982-09-01) (aged 77)
Konstancin, Polish People's Republic
Resting placePowązki Military Cemetery, Warsaw
NationalityPolish
Political party
SpouseLiwa (Zofia) née Szoken (1902–1986)

Władysław Gomułka (Polish:

Polish Communist politician. He was the de facto leader of post-war Poland
from 1947 until 1948, and again from 1956 to 1970.

Born in 1905 in

Stalin
's blessing.

Following the

Polish thaw". During the 1960s, however, he became more rigid and authoritarian—afraid of destabilizing the system, he was not inclined to introduce or permit changes. In the 1960s he supported the persecution of the Catholic Church
, and the anti-communist opposition.

In 1967 to 1968, Gomułka allowed outbursts of anti-Zionist and antisemitic political campaign,[2][3] pursued primarily by others in the Party, but utilized by Gomułka to retain power by shifting the attention from the stagnating economy. Many of the remaining Polish Jews left the country. At that time he was also responsible for persecuting protesting students and toughening censorship of the media. Gomułka supported Poland's participation in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968.

In the

bloody clashes with shipyard workers on the Baltic coast, in which several dozen workers were fatally shot. The tragic events forced Gomułka's resignation and retirement. In a generational replacement of the ruling elite, Edward Gierek
took over the Party leadership and tensions eased.

Childhood and education

Władysław Gomułka was born on 6 February 1905 in Białobrzegi Franciszkańskie village on the outskirts of

Subcarpathian oil industry. Władysław's older sister Józefa, born in the US, returned there upon turning eighteen to join her extended family, most of whom had emigrated, and to preserve her US citizenship. Władysław and his two other siblings experienced a childhood of the proverbial Galician poverty: they lived in a dilapidated hut and ate mostly potatoes.[4]
Władysław received only rudimentary education before being employed in the oil industry of the region.

Gomułka attended schools in Krosno for six or seven years, until the age of thirteen when he had to start an apprenticeship in a metalworks shop. Throughout his life Gomułka was an avid reader and accomplished a great deal of self-education, but remained a subject of jokes because of his lack of formal education and demeanor.[4] In 1922, Gomułka passed his apprenticeship exams and began working at a local refinery.

Early revolutionary activities

Involvement with labor unions and first imprisonment

The re-established Polish state of Gomułka's teen years was a scene of growing political polarization and radicalization. The young worker developed connections with the radical Left, joining the Siła (Power) youth organization in 1922 and the Independent Peasant Party in 1925. Gomułka was known for his activism in the metal workers and, from 1922, chemical industry unions. He was involved in union-organized strikes and in 1924, during a protest gathering in Krosno, participated in a polemical debate with Herman Lieberman. He published radical texts in leftist newspapers. In May 1926 the young Gomułka was for the first time arrested but soon released because of worker demands. The incident was the subject of a parliamentary intervention by the Peasant Party. In October 1926, Gomułka became a secretary of the managing council in the Chemical Industry Workers Union for the Drohobych District and remained involved with that communist-dominated union until 1930. He around this time learned on his own basic Ukrainian.[5][6]

In late 1926, while in Drohobych, Gomułka became a member of the illegal-but-functioning Communist Party of Poland (Komunistyczna Partia Polski, KPP) and was arrested for political agitation. Technically, at this time he was a member of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine, which was an autonomous branch of the Communist Party of Poland. He was interested primarily in social issues, including the trade and labor movement, and concentrated on practical activities.[4][7] In mid-1927, Gomułka was brought to Warsaw, where he remained active until drafted for military service at the end of the year. After several months, the military released him because of a health problem with his right leg. Gomułka returned to communist party work, organizing strike actions and speaking at gatherings of workers at all major industrial centers of Poland. During this period he was arrested several times and lived under police supervision.[5][7]

Gomułka was an activist in the leftist labor unions from 1926 and in the Central Trade Department of the KPP

Leningrad, from where he took a ship to Hamburg, stayed in Berlin again and through Silesia returned to Poland.[5]

In August 1932, he was arrested by the Sanation police while participating in a conference of textile worker delegates in Łódź. When he later tried to escape, Gomułka sustained a gunshot wound in the left thigh which ultimately left him with permanent walking impairment.[5]

Journey to the Soviet Union and second imprisonment

Despite being sentenced to a four-year prison term on 1 June 1933, he was temporarily released for surgery on his injured leg in March 1934. Following his release, Gomułka requested that the KPP send him to the Soviet Union for medical treatment and further political training. He arrived in the Soviet Union in June and went to the

collectivization practice. In November 1935 he illegally returned to Poland.[5]

Gomułka resumed his communist and labor conspiratorial activities and kept advancing within the KPP organization until, as the secretary of the Party's Silesian branch, he was arrested in Chorzów in April 1936. He was then tried by the District Court in Katowice and sentenced to seven years in prison where he remained jailed until the beginning of World War II. Ironically, this internment most likely saved Gomułka's life, because the majority of the KPP leadership would be murdered in the Soviet Union in the late 1930s, caught up in the Great Purge under Joseph Stalin's orders.

Gomułka's experiences turned him into an extremely suspicious and distrustful person and contributed to his lifelong conviction that

fascist state, even if Polish prisons were the safest place for Polish Communists.[8] He differentiated this belief from his positive feelings toward the country and its people, especially members of the working class.[5]

World War II

Invasion of Poland

The outbreak of the war with Nazi Germany freed Gomułka from his prison confinement. On 7 September 1939, he arrived in Warsaw, where he stayed for a few weeks, working in the besieged capital on the construction of defensive fortifications. From there, like many other Polish communists, Gomułka fled to eastern Poland which was invaded by the Soviet Union on 17 September 1939. In Białystok he ran a home for former political prisoners arriving from other parts of Poland. To be reunited with his luckily found wife, at the end of 1939 Gomułka moved to Soviet-controlled Lviv.[9]

Like other members of the dissolved Communist Party of Poland, Gomułka sought a membership in the Soviet

Kiev.[9]

The circumstances of the Polish communists' lives changed dramatically after 1941 German attack on the Soviet positions in eastern Poland. Reduced to penury in now German-occupied Lviv, the Gomułkas managed to join Władysław's family in Krosno by the end of 1941. However, a momentous development soon took place in the sphere of communist political activity: in January 1942, Joseph Stalin reestablished in Warsaw a Polish communist party under the name of the Polish Workers' Party (PPR).[9]

In 1942, Gomułka participated in the reformation of a Polish communist party (the KPP was destroyed in

Subcarpathian region and began using his wartime conspiratorial pseudonym "Wiesław". In July 1942, Paweł Finder brought Gomułka to occupied Warsaw. In August, the secretary of the PPR's regional Warsaw Committee was arrested by the Gestapo and "Wiesław" was entrusted with his job. In September Gomułka became a member of the PPR's Temporary Central Committee.[9]

In late 1942 and early 1943, the PPR experienced a severe crisis because of the murder of its first secretary Marceli Nowotko. Gomułka participated in the party investigation directed against another member of the leadership, Bolesław Mołojec, that resulted in Mołojec's execution. Together with Paweł Finder, who was made First Secretary of the party, and Franciszek Jóźwiak, Gomułka (under the pseudonym "Wiesław") was included in the Party's new inner leadership, established in January 1943. The Central Committee was enlarged in the following months to include Bolesław Bierut, among others.[9]

In February 1943, Gomułka led the communist side in a series of important meetings in Warsaw between the PPR and the Government Delegation of the London-based Polish government-in-exile and the Home Army. The talks produced no results because of the divergent interests of the parties involved and a mutual lack of confidence. The Delegation officially discontinued the negotiations on April 28, three days after the Soviet government broke diplomatic relations with the Polish government.[9] He became the Party's main ideologist. He wrote the "What do we fight for?" (O co walczymy?) publication dated 1 March 1943, and the much more comprehensive declaration that emerged under the same title in November. "Wiesław" supervised the Party's main editorial and publishing undertaking.[9]

Gomułka made efforts, largely unsuccessful, to secure for the PPR cooperation of other political forces in occupied Poland. Bierut, meanwhile, was indifferent to any such attempts and counted simply on compulsion provided by a future presence of the Red Army in Poland. The different strategies resulted in a sharp conflict between the two communist politicians.[10]

State National Council, Polish Committee of National Liberation

In the fall of 1943, the PPR leadership began discussing the creation of a Polish quasi-parliamentary, communist-led body, to be named the

Comintern leader and their Soviet contact Georgi Dimitrov. However, in November the Gestapo arrested Finder and Małgorzata Fornalska, who possessed the secret codes for communication with Moscow and the Soviet response remained unknown. In the absence of Finder, on 23 November Gomułka was elected general secretary (chief) of the PPR and Bierut joined the three-person inner leadership.[11]

The founding meeting of the State National Council took place in the late evening of 31 December 1943. The new body's chairman Bierut was becoming Gomułka's main rival. In mid-January 1944 Dimitrov was finally informed of the KRN's existence, which surprised both him and the Polish communist leaders in Moscow, increasingly led by Jakub Berman, who had other, competing ideas concerning the establishment of a Polish communist ruling party and government.[11]

Gomułka felt that the Polish communists in occupied Poland had a better understanding of Polish realities than their brethren in Moscow and that the State National Council should determine the shape of the future executive government of Poland. Nevertheless, to gain Soviet approval and to clear any misunderstandings a KRN delegation left Warsaw in mid-March heading for Moscow, where it arrived two months later. By that time Stalin concluded that the existence of the KRN was a positive development and the Poles arriving from Warsaw were received and greeted by him and other Soviet dignitaries. The

Central Bureau of Polish Communists in Moscow were now under pressure to recognize the primacy of the PPR, the KRN and Władysław Gomułka, which they ultimately did only in mid-July.[11]

On 20 July, the Soviet forces under Marshal

Bug River and on that same day the combined meeting of Polish communists from the Moscow and Warsaw factions finalized the arrangements regarding the establishment (on 21 July) of the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN), a temporary government headed by Edward Osóbka-Morawski, a socialist allied with the communists. Gomułka and other PPR leaders left Warsaw and headed for the Soviet-controlled territory, arriving in Lublin on 1 August, the day the Warsaw Uprising erupted in the Polish capital.[11]

Post-war political career

Role in communist takeover of Poland

Gomułka in recaptured Warsaw, 1945

Gomułka was a deputy prime minister in the

1947 parliamentary elections
, which were fraudulently arranged to give the communists and their allies an overwhelming victory. After the elections, all remaining legal opposition in Poland was effectively destroyed, and Gomułka was now the most powerful man in Poland. In June 1948, because of the impending unification of the PPR and PPS, Gomułka delivered a talk on the subject of the history of the Polish worker movement.

In a memo written to Stalin in 1948, Gomułka argued that "some of the Jewish comrades don't feel any link to the Polish nation or to the Polish working class … or they maintain a stance which might be described as ‘national nihilism’".[12] As a result, he considered it "absolutely necessary not only to stop any further growth in the percentage of Jews in the state as well as the party apparatus, but also to slowly lower that percentage, especially at the highest levels of the apparatus".[12] Nikita Khrushchev, who was intimately involved in Polish affairs in the 1940s, according to Khrushchev′s memoirs, believed that Gomułka had a valid point in opposing the personnel policies pursued by Roman Zambrowski, Jakub Berman, and Hilary Minc, all of them of Jewish descent and brought to Poland from the Soviet Union.[13] Nevertheless, Khrushchev attributed Gomułka′s subsequent downfall to his rivals having succeeded in portraying Gomułka as being pro-Yugoslav; the charges were not made public but were brought to Stalin′s attention and became crucial in his decision-making on whose side he would support — in view of the Soviet–Yugoslavia rift that occurred in 1948.[13]

Temporary withdrawal from politics

In the late 1940s, Poland's communist government was split by a rivalry between Gomułka and President Bolesław Bierut. Gomułka led a home national group while Bierut headed a group reared by Stalin in the Soviet Union. The struggle ultimately led to Gomułka's removal from power in 1948. While Bierut advocated a policy of complete subservience to Moscow, Gomułka wanted to adapt the Communist blueprint to Polish circumstances. Among other things, he opposed forced collectivization and was skeptical of the Cominform. The Bierut faction had Stalin's ear, and on Stalin's orders, Gomułka was sacked as party leader for "rightist-nationalist deviation," replaced by Bierut. In December, soon after the PPR and Polish Socialist Party merged to form Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) (which was essentially the PPR under a new name), Gomułka was dropped from the merged party's Politburo. He was stripped of his remaining government posts in January 1949 and expelled from the party altogether in November. For the next eight years, he performed no official functions and was subjected to persecution, including almost four years of imprisonment from 1951 to 1954.[14][15][16][17]

Bierut died in March 1956, during a period of de-Stalinization in Poland which gradually developed after Stalin's death. Edward Ochab became the new first secretary of the Party. Soon afterward, Gomułka was partially rehabilitated when Ochab conceded that Gomułka should not have been jailed, while reiterating the charges of "rightist-nationalist deviation" against him.[15]

Rise to power

Gomułka's speech on 24 October 1956 in Warsaw

In June 1956, violent

worker protests broke out in Poznań. The worker riots were harshly suppressed and dozens of workers were killed. However, the Party leadership, which now included many reform-minded officials, recognized to some degree the validity of the protest participants' demands and took steps to placate the workers.[18][19]

The reformers in the Party wanted a political rehabilitation of Gomułka and his return to the Party leadership. Gomułka insisted that he be given real power to implement further reforms. He wanted a replacement of some of the Party leaders, including the pro-Soviet Minister of Defense Konstantin Rokossovsky.

The Soviet leadership viewed events in Poland with alarm. Simultaneously with Soviet troop movements deep into Poland, a high-level Soviet delegation flew to Warsaw. It was led by Nikita Khrushchev and included Anastas Mikoyan, Nikolai Bulganin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Ivan Konev and others. Ochab and Gomułka made it clear that Polish forces would resist if Soviet troops advanced, but reassured the Soviets that the reforms were internal matters and that Poland had no intention of abandoning the communist bloc or its treaties with the Soviet Union. The Soviets yielded.[20]

Following the wishes of the majority of the

Red Army in Poland, Khrushchev decided that Gomułka was a leader that Moscow could live with.[21]

Leadership of the Polish People's Republic

Gomułka (left) greeted by members of the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation in East Germany.

Relations with other Eastern Bloc countries

A major factor that influenced Gomułka was the

Oder-Neisse line issue. West Germany refused to recognize the Oder-Neisse line and Gomułka realized the fundamental instability of Poland's unilaterally imposed western border.[22] He felt threatened by the revanchist statements put out by the Adenauer government and believed that the alliance with the Soviet Union was the only thing stopping the threat of a future German invasion.[21] The new Party leader told the 8th Plenum of the PZPR on 19 October 1956 that: "Poland needs friendship with the Soviet Union more than the Soviet Union needs friendship with Poland... Without the Soviet Union we cannot maintain our borders with the West".[23] The treaty with West Germany was negotiated and signed in December 1970. The German side recognized the post-World War II borders, which established a foundation for future peace, stability and cooperation in Central Europe
.

During the events of the Prague Spring, Gomułka was one of the key leaders of the Warsaw Pact and supported Poland's participation in the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968.

Domestic policies

In 1967–68 Gomułka allowed outbursts of

Polish citizens of Jewish origin. At that time he was also responsible for persecuting protesting students
and toughening censorship of the media.

Resignation and retirement

Gomułka's now abandoned retirement home in Konstancin-Jeziorna
Gomułka's grave in Powązki Military Cemetery

In December 1970, economic difficulties led to price rises and subsequent

automatic weapons in Gdańsk and Gdynia. Over 41 shipyard workers of the Baltic coast were killed in the ensuing police-state violence, while well over a thousand people were wounded. The events forced Gomułka's resignation and retirement. In a generational replacement of the ruling elite, Edward Gierek took over the Party leadership and tensions eased.[25]

Gomułka's negative image in communist propaganda after his removal was gradually modified and some of his constructive contributions were recognized. He is seen as an honest and austere believer in the socialist system, who, unable to resolve Poland's formidable difficulties and satisfy mutually contradictory demands, grew more rigid and despotic later in his career. A heavy smoker,[26] he died in 1982 at the age of 77 of lung cancer. Gomułka's memoirs were not published until 1994, long after his death, and five years after the collapse of the communist regime which he served and led.

The American journalist John Gunther described Gomułka in 1961 as being "professorial in manner, aloof, and angular, with a peculiar spry pepperiness".[27]

Gomułka was buried at Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw.

Decorations and awards

See also

  • History of Poland (1945–89)

References

  1. ^ "Rebellious Compromiser". Time Magazine. 10 December 1956. Archived from the original on 12 April 2008. Retrieved 14 October 2006.
  2. ^ Judt, Tony (2005). Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. New York, The Penguin Press, pp. 434–35
  3. .
  4. ^ , pp. 174–75
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Jerzy Eisler, Siedmiu wspaniałych. Poczet pierwszych sekretarzy KC PZPR, pp. 175–78
  6. , pp. 20–25
  7. ^ a b Andrzej Werblan, Władysław Gomułka. Sekretarz Generalny PPR [Władysław Gomułka: Secretary General of the PPR], pp. 25–44
  8. ^ [Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation's Life and Death in Marxism, 1918–1968, p. 149]
  9. ^ a b c d e f g Jerzy Eisler, Siedmiu wspaniałych. Poczet pierwszych sekretarzy KC PZPR, pp. 178–82
  10. .
  11. ^ a b c d Jerzy Eisler, Siedmiu wspaniałych. Poczet pierwszych sekretarzy KC PZPR, pp. 182–85
  12. ^ a b Applebaum, Anne. Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944–56. London: Penguin, 2013, p. 156
  13. ^ a b Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev; Edward Crankshaw; Strobe Talbott; Jerrold L Schecter. Khrushchev remembers (volume 2): the last testament. London: Deutsch, 1974, pp. 222–224.
  14. Encyclopedia Britannica
  15. ^
    Encyclopedia Britannica
  16. .
  17. ^ Andrzej Werblan, Władysław Gomułka. Sekretarz Generalny PPR [Władysław Gomułka: Secretary General of the PPR], p. 5
  18. ^ a b "The defection of Jozef Swiatlo and the Search for Jewish Scapegoats in the Polish United Workers' Party, 1953–1954" (PDF). Fourth Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities. Harriman Institute, Columbia University, New York City. 15–17 April 1999. Retrieved 27 October 2007.
  19. ^ Rothschild and Wingfield: Return to Diversity, A Political History of East Central Europe Since World War II OUP 2000
  20. ^ "Notes from the Minutes of the CPSU CC Presidium Meeting with Satellite Leaders, October 24, 1956" (PDF). The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, A History in Documents. George Washington University: The National Security Archive. 4 November 2002. Retrieved 2 September 2006.
  21. ^ a b Granville, Johanna "From the Archives of Warsaw and Budapest: A Comparison of the Events of 1956" pp. 521–63 from East European Politics and Societies, Volume 16, Issue #2, April 2002 pp. 540–41
  22. ^ Granville, Johanna "Reactions to the Events of 1956: New Findings from the Budapest and Warsaw Archives" pages 261-290 from Journal of Contemporary History, Volume 38, Issue #2, April 2003 pp. 284–85.
  23. ^ Granville, Johanna "From the Archives of Warsaw and Budapest: A Comparison of the Events of 1956" pp. 521–63 from East European Politics and Societies, Volume 16, Issue #2, April 2002 p. 541
  24. ^ Judt, Tony (2005). Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. New York, The Penguin Press pp. 434–35
  25. ^ a b Adam Leszczyński (17 January 2014). "Towarzysz Zenon, prawa ręka towarzysza Wiesława" [Tovarishch Zenon, the right hand of comrade Wiesław]. Gazeta Wyborcza. Retrieved 6 November 2015.
  26. ^ WP (7 March 2015). "Władysław Gomułka – gorliwy samouk". Galerie: "Dyktatura ciemniaków". Wiadomości. p. 2.
  27. LCCN 61-9706
    .
  28. ^ "ПРЕДСЕДНИКУ ТИТУ и ЧЛАНОВИМА ЊЕГОВЕ ПРАТЊЕ УРУЧЕНА НАЈВИША ПОЉСКА ОДЛИКОВАЊА". Borba. XXIX (173): 2. 26 June 1964.

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Party political offices
Preceded by General Secretary of the Polish Workers' Party
1943–1948
Succeeded by
Bolesław Bierut (as General Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party)
Preceded by General Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party
21 October 1956 – 20 December 1970
Succeeded by