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Lecture 20 The Stalinist Years 1949-1956

1. Introduction

Stalinism cannot be regarded as unchanging. Moreover, changed considerably after death of Stalin in 1953.

2. Chronology of the Cold War

a. First Cold War

Origins 1945-1947

Course 1947-1953

Reasons for its end b. First thaw 1954-1957 c. Second Cold War 1957-1961 d. Second Thaw 1961-64 e. Third (not very) Cold War 1964-1970 f. Third Thaw 1970-1981 g. Fourth Cold War 1981-1985 h. End of : nature of revolution of 1989-1991.

3. Characteristics of Stalinism - 2 -

One can define Stalinism in Eastern Europe as the combination of the totalitarian reshaping of the societies involved coupled with the extension of the political control of the in a region she felt vital to her security. A subordinate aspect of the phenomenon was that it took place in a period of mounting international tension in which the overriding conflict was that between the communist and the western camps. A few dates will give the relevant international background:

1. June 1947 Marshall aid refused

2. September 1947 Cominform set up

3. February 1948 Setting up of Western Union

4. February 1948 Berlin blockade

5. January 1949 Establishment of Comecon

6. April 1949 Establishment of Nato

7. June 1950 Korean War breaks out

3. Specific Features of the Stalinist Period in

1. Dependence on Russia

a. Political decisions

Not clear how these made. Jakub Berman as eminence grace

b. Security Services - 3 -

These were headed by Władysław Radkiewicz

The role of Jews in the security services has aroused considerable controversy. In his

Europe: A History, Norman Davies writes that in Poland, ‘Popular knowledge...has always insisted that the notorious communist Security Office (UB) contained a disproportionate number of Jews (or rather ex-Jews) and that their crimes were heinous’.

He goes on to concede that ‘few hard facts were ever published and , but claims that this point of view has become ‘all the more convincing’ because of recent ‘disclosures’ have

‘broken the taboo’ and are particularly credible, since ‘they were made by a Jewish investigator on evidence supplied by Jewish participants...The study deals with the district of Upper Silesia, and, in particular, with the town of Gliwice (Gleiwitz)’.

Following its author, John Sacks, Davies claims that ‘ in 1945 every single commander and three-quarters of the local agents of the UB were of Jewish origin; that ex-Nazi camps and prisons were refilled with totally innocent civilians, especially Germans; and that , starvation, sadistic beatings, and murder were routine’. (Europe: A History, pp.1022). However, Sack’s book An Eye for an Eye: The Untold Story of Jewish Revenge

Against Germans in 1945 is quite irresponsible and is little more than an extended interview with Lola Potok, one of the Jews in the UB. In it, he produces no documentary evidence to justify his claims, which have been used to argue, in Davies’ words, that ‘in this light, it is difficult to justify the widespread practice whereby the murderers, the victims, and the bystanders of wartime Poland were each neatly identified with specific ethnic groups’. - 4 -

Andrzej Paczkowski in is doing pioneer research on this subject. He and

Lech Głuchowski have made an assessment of the nationality of UB functionaries, making use of a confidential study prepared by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1978.

According to this study, between 1944 and 1945, there was a total of 287 functionaries who held leadership positions in the UB. The number of those listed as having ‘Jewish nationality’ totalled 75. This meant that Jews made up 26.3 per cent of the UB leadership, while the figure for Poles was 66.9 per cent. The remaining 6.9 per cent were Russians,

Belorussians and Ukrainians. The proportion of Jews at lower levels of the organization was considerably less. In another document, Stanisław Radkiewicz informed Bolesław

Bierut that the Security Office in November 1945 employed 25,600 personnel and that

438 (or 1.7 per cent) of them were Jews. Furthermore, the rapid increase in the number of

UB functionaries that took place in 1945 occurred in a political framework which placed the political orientation and class origins of the candidate above almost all other considerations. To quote Paczkowski and Głuchowski:

The great majority of candidates actually consisted of young - and very young - political transients, with no professional experience and mixed reasons, if not questionable motives, for joining the UB. There was a constant movement of lower-level cadres in and out of the UB between 1945 and 1946. At this time, approximately 25,000 employees left the UB: about the same number that were employed by the UB at the end of 1946. The majority had been released from the UB for drunkenness, theft, abuse, or for a lack of discipline. 1

Dependence on Russian advisers. According to Józef Światło, the whole security apparatus controlled by chief Soviet adviser to Radkiewicz, Gen Lalin

c. Army - 5 -

Marian Spychalski, one of Gomułka’s associates replaced by as Vice- minister of Defense. In November 1949 Stalin ‘made available’ Marshal Konstantitn

Rokossovsky, a former commander of in Poland. General Żymierski forced to retire.

The army was now made dependent on the Soviet Union. This was seen in its political training, in the oath of loyalty all officers had to take to the USSR and in the fact that nearly all key appointments were held by Soviet officers. Polish officers could only be promoted if they knew Russia or had been to a soviet military academy. There were also purges of offices who has served in the Polish armed forces in the west.

d. Economic situation

Trade links with Russia with Russia were now tightened, particularly after the rejection of Marshall aid. Under the new condition, Polish industry to produce for the Soviet market. In addition, according to an agreement of August 1945, Poland was to deliver approximately 12 million tons of coal annually at a price $1.25 per ton. This at a time when Denmark and Sweden were prepared to offer $12 and later $16 dollars per ton

The Soviet quota was later halved, but the Poles were still compelled to sell their coal for

$14 per ton, when they could have received $18-19 per ton from the Western Europeans.

The Poles were similarly compelled to sell sugar to the Soviet Union at below world market prices. The price of sugar was set at $1 per kg at a time when the Swedes were offering $2.82.

1 Letter to the Times Literary Supplement, around January 1997. - 6 -

e. .Soviet political model followed

Thus the constitution of July 1952 was largely modeled on the Soviet constitution.

f.

This constantly stressed the leading role of the USSR. A common formula was the

‘socialist countries with the Soviet Union at the head’.

2.Purges of party

1. The purge of the ‘Nationalist deviation’

Background - early 1948 quarrel between Tito and the Russians. June 1948 Tito expelled from Cominform. This led to the purge of the PPR’s first secretary, Władysław

Gomułka. He had opposed establishment of the Cominform, was sympathetic towards

Tito and had strong views on the importance of following a specific ‘Polish road to socialism.’

His fall from power took place in stages. In June 1948, the PPR Central

Committee forced him to take sick leave. At the meeting of 31 August - 3 September

1948 he was stripped of his position of Secretary-General of the PPR and four of his followers reduced from full to alternate members of CC - 7 -

After the unification of PPS and the PPR a new line - more hostile to nationalism was adopted. In these circumstances, Gomułka attempted to save himself by a direct letter to Stalin written on 14 December 1948, in which he argued that the accusations on

‘Polish nationalism’ had been brought against him by his Jewish comrades, who lacked a sense of national identity and appealed to Stalin’s increasingly paranoid antisemitism.

The letter has recently come to light and I will quote some of its most crucial passages:

All members of the Politburo are aware of my position on the matter of the party’s personnel policy, as it relates to the Jewish comrades. I actually gave it expression on more that one occasion at meetings of the Buro, and in individual conversations with Buro members. Personnel appointments to the higher echelons of the state and party apparatus, under the nationalities angle, creates, in my own opinion, a serious barrier hindering the expansion of our base, especially among the , as well as in the countryside, and also to a certain degree in the . It is indeed possible to make even me responsible for the high percentage of Jewish elements in the leadership of the state and party apparatus, but the main culprit for creating the state of affairs falls, above all, on the Jewish comrades.

As the party General Secretary, I did not find among them, not only understanding and support for my position on the matter of personnel policy, which the party ought to cultivate; but, on the contrary, the systematic practice of their personnel policy revealed that they do not agree with my position. It is in fact not true that only a serious deficit of Polish party cadres precludes the authorization of a personnel policy that is different from the present one. Cadres will never increase as long as the party does not create the appropriate conditions for it; for example, as long as it does not put forward for responsible positions the most competent comrades from that group, which it commands.

On the basis of may observations, I can confirm with complete responsibility that a part of the Jewish comrades do not feel tied to the Polish nation, and therefore with the Polish working class, by any threads, comparatively taking a position which can be designated by the label: national nihilism. Attitudes like this, however, are not taken completely into consideration when selecting candidates for different high positions.

This did not save him and the anti-Gomułka offensive came to a head in

November 1949 a few weeks before the Hungarian Foreign Minister, Laszlo Rajk condemned to death. Under tremendous pressure, Gomułka’s two main allies, Marian - 8 -

Spychalski and Zenon Kliszko crumble and make their peace with the party leadership.

On 13 November Gomułka expelled. The humiliating capitulation of Spychalski and

Kliszko did not save them and they were both imprisoned together with Gomułka.

The years 1951-2 saw a new purge, this time of the so-called ‘leftist’deviation. It was provoked by Stalin’s increased antisemitism and the suspicion aroused in his mind of the loyalty of many communists of Jewish origin, partly a result of the emergence of the state of Israel and his conviction of the links of world Jewry with the United States, his principal opponent in the developing Cold War. This purge led to the fall of Slansky in

Czechoslovakia and Anna Pauker and Vasile Luca in . It took rather smaller proportions in Poland.

3. Militarization of Society

Another feature of the Stalinist years was the widespread militarization of society, the result of the belief that a global conflict was imminent. The Soviets diverted an enormous amount of resources to the development of an atom bomb, which they successfully exploded in the fall of 1949. They believed that the satellites should now provide the conventional forces which would be needed in Europe. Under these circumstances, the Polish army increased in size from 100,000 in 1946 to over 500,000 .

The defence budget rose accordingly, from 1000 million zloty in 1948 to 1.8 million in

1949 and 6.6 million in 1952. Between 1951 and 1955, defence production absorbed 11 percent of all industrial investment. - 9 -

4. Forced Industrialisation and the neglect of agriculture.

Central planning on the Soviet model now became the accepted way for running the Polish economy. In November 1949 the State Planning Commission announced that the three year recovery plan, which had made some provision for private enterprises, had been successfully completed. A new six year plan, with much more stress on the central role of the state was now adopted. Its principal focus was on industry above all on producer goods. 46 per cent of all planned investment was to go to industry and of this 75 per cent was to be in producer goods. On paper the achievements of the plan were quite impressive, with an annual rate of growth of around 10 per cent.

Industrial Production in Millions of Tons.

1938 1949 1955

Raw steel 2.0 2.3 4.4

Rolled goods 1.4 1.6 2.9

Hard Coal 66.1 74.1 94.5

Brown Coal 4.6 4.6 6.0

Cement 2.5 2.3 3.8

Electric power 7.4 8.3 17.8

(th. mill kw)

But the breakneck pace set inevitably led to serious distortions in the economy.

This there was much emphasis on steel, not enough on coal, industries were often started where no adequate supply of raw materials existed there were too many kinds of - 10 - manufaturing enterprises and the whole economy was over-centralized and bureaucratic

Even more serious was the neglect of agriculture. Only 10 per cent of investment was channelled to this sector. In 1955, agriculture according to official figures, whereas industrial production was four times that of 1938, agricultural production had only risen by 8.7 per cent. State assistance was concentrated on state and collective farms, yet in

1955, collectives 9.2 per cent of cultivated area, state farms 13.5 per cent. Under these circumstances, the position of private peasants, the overwhelming majority of agricultural producers was very difficult. Although they owned 80per cent of the land they and get only received half of the available fertilizer. They still lived in very difficult conditions and had very inadequate agricultural buildings. Compulsory deliveries compelled them to supply government with large quantities of grain, meat, potatoes, and milk at low prices.

The standard of living in the towns was also adversely affected by the overwhelming stress on investment in consumer goods. This was manifested above all in the housing shortage, described graphically in Marek Hłasko’s Eighth Day of the Week, which was considerably worse in 1956 than it had been in 1948. At the same time the neglect of agriculture and of the production consumer goods put pressure on retail prices.

At the same time, wages did not increase significantly and may even have fallen.

According to official figures, the rise in real wages between 1949 and 1955 was 27.5 per cent, but according to the much more reliable estimates of the Economic Commission for

Europe real wages in 1953 were 12 per cent down on the 1949 level, and by 1956 were only 9 per cent higher than in 1953.

5. Cultural uniformity - 11 -

Cultural life was marked by the adoption of the principles of Socialist realism The educational system was also reorganised on the Soviet model. The relative liberalism which had characterised the immediate post-war period, in which the tone of cultural life had been set by Kuźnica (The Forge), a name which evoked that of the similar grouping set up in the eighteenth century by Kołłątaj and Staszic, whose members had hoped to restructure Polish cultural life in the new political conditions, drawing on the traditions of the Polish Enlightenment and avoiding as much as possible the extreme versions of and social realism was now brought to an end. ‘Socialist Realism’ on the Soviet pattern became the artistic orthodoxy. Its character was set by Adam Ważyk, who, to use Sandauer’s words, ‘was the official artistic authority. He wrote dramas which were immediately produced and inevitably failed; film scripts that were immediately shot and met with a similar fate; he excoriated Norwid for his petty-noble ideology and the producers of Coca-Cola for serving atomic death. He delivered a programmatic lecture at the Fifth Conference of the Association of Polish Writers and carried over Stalin’s linguistic theses to the methodology of literary studies.’2 Other writers followed suit. In 1954 Kazimierz Brandys also produced the novel Obywatele (Citizens,), which, with its depiction of high school students unmasking the bourgeois deviations of their teachers, can now be read only with embarrassment.

6. Church-State conflict

The Stalinist years were also marked by an increasingly bitter Church-State conflict. The

Vatican took a strong anti-communist line with the development of the Cold War, in July

2Artur Sandauer, O sytuacji pisarza polskiego pochodzenia żydowskiego w XX wieku (Rzecz, którą nie ja powinienem był napisał), Warsaw, 1982, 50. - 12 -

1949 threatening anyone who joined a communist party with excommunication. This inevitably made very difficult the position of the Catholic Church in Poland and its new leader the redoubtable Stefan Wyszyński, bishop of who became archbishop in

October 1948 and was created a Cardinal in 1953

In April 1950 Wyszyński succeeded in negotiating a comprehensive agreement with the Polish government. According to this the Episcopate was to be subordinate to the Pope in ‘matters of faith, morality and church jurisdiction’. Elsewhere to be guided by

Polish national interests and the exploitation of religious feelings for anti-state purposes was renounced state renounced The Church was allowed to set up a comprehensive organization in the Western and Northern territories. Religious education was permitted in theschools. In addition, the Church was guaranteed a number of specific rights – to organize public worship and traditional processions, to undertake charitable activities, to run publishing ventures and to have chaplains in army hospitals and prisons. Religious orders were to be permitted complete freedom of activity ‘within the limits of their mission.’

Not surprisingly, this agreement rapidly breaks down. The government attempted to split the Church setting up a pro-government Catholic organization named Pax. It brought Bishop Kaczmarek to trial and had him sentenced to twelve years in jail in

September 1953

By the beginning of 1954, some bishops and several hundred priests in goal.

7. Use of terror

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Imprisonment and show trials.

4. Conclusion