- 1 - Lecture 21 The Polish October and the ‘Little Stabilization’ 1. The Polish October The rigid Stalinist system established in Poland between 1949 and 1953 did not long outlast the death of Stalin in March 1953. Yet the process by which it was dismantled proved initially to be somewhat slower than parallel developments in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Indeed, the high point in the conflict between the Church and the Communist authorities, the arrest of the Primate, Cardinal Wyszyński and his confinement in a monastery took place as late as September 1953. Similarly, in spite of some concessions to the ‘New Course’ adopted by Georgi Malenkov in the USSR in August 1953, the second congress of the Polish United Workers Party in March 1954 still upheld without major modification the basic Stalinist economic policies of rapid industrialization, stress on heavy industry and further collectivization in agriculture. A number of factors explain the relative lack of movement in Polish politics in the year after Stalin’s death. In the first place, the process of Stalinization had not been as ruthlessly pursued in Poland as elsewhere in Eastern Europe. As late as 1955, for instance, agriculture was dominated by private production, with state farms controlling only 14 per cent of arable land and collectives 9 per cent. A significant private industrial sector and class of artisans had also managed to survive in spite of punitive taxation. Though Władysław Gomułka and a number of his associates had been purged from the party and imprisoned, the party leadership had rejected all pressures from Moscow to make them the victims of a show trial similar to those taking place elsewhere in Eastern - 2 - Europe. Furthermore, Boleslaw Bierut, the Party First Secretary, never enjoyed the unchallenged political ascendancy of Stalin and some of his other proteges. It is also characteristic that Poland was the one country in Eastern Europe where a monument to Stalin was not erected. In addition, though church-state relations had deteriorated drastically, so that by 1954 nine bishops and several hundred priests were under arrest, the regime failed to mount a show trial against Cardinal Wyszyński. The Catholic University of Lublin continued to function and provided a haven for both staff and students who found access to higher education elsewhere difficult on social or political grounds. Change was also inhibited by the fact that by 1953, the Party, though still enjoying minimal support in Poland, had become a vast and privileged bureaucracy numbering over one million members. The main interest of a large proportion of the Party functionaries, many of whom were poorly educated and owed their advance to the purges of 1949-52 in which at least 30 per cent of the Party members were expelled, was to avoid any changes which would endanger their position. Moreover, the regime was well aware of its weakness and isolation. Most of those in prison were supporters of the pre-war regime or the government-in-exile, while any change of agricultural policy could only strengthen the peasantry who were also regarded as hostile. There was a real fear that any modification of the rigid political model imposed on Poland might lead to incalculable consequences. Finally, western support for West Germany seemed to many Poles to call into doubt Poland’s hold on her newly acquired western and northern territories and thus dictated some accommodation with the existing regime which could at least guarantee Soviet protection. - 3 - Nevertheless, pressures for change soon began to build up. These were the result both of the impact of events in the Soviet Union and of demands in Poland itself for the modification of the Stalinist system. Stalin’s rule by personal terror did not survive him, and his death was followed by the establishment of the principle of collective leadership and the repudiation of the principle of the cult of the individual. At the same time, the fall of Lavrenty Beria, head of the HVD, in 1953 led to a drastic weakening of the security apparatus. These changes were bound to initiate demands for similar reforms in the countries of Eastern Europe. The ‘New Course’ initiated by Malenkov in August 1953 and not seriously modified by Khrushchev after the establishment of his personal ascendancy in May 1955 also seemed to have implications for the Soviet Union’s satellites. This policy called for greater stress on consumer goods, aid to agriculture, a diminution of the power of the security apparatus and greater freedom in the arts. The new softer line in Soviet foreign policy towards the west made the rigours of Stalinism more difficult to justify, while Khrushchev’s rapprochement with Yugoslavia from May 1955 seemed to legitimize the concept of’separate roads to socialism’ the very deviation for which Gomułka had been expelled from the Polish United Workers Party. Finally, the obvious policy divisions within the Soviet leadership stimulated those in the Polish party who wanted greater autonomy in Polish affairs. In Poland, calls for change became increasingly vocal.Writers and intellectuals called for an end to the crude rigidities of Stalinism in the cultural field. Under their pressure, the weekly press became notably freer in highlighting the social problems which had been created in Poland by rapid industrialization and which had been ignored - 4 - previously since official dogma had denied they could exist under socialism. In April 1954, the Minister of Culture, Włodzimierz Sokorski, even admitted that ‘stagnation’ and ‘deterioration’ had occurred in the artistic field as a result of the ‘false interpretation’ of the doctrine of socialist realism. Censorship of the arts was now somewhat relaxed, and the crudities of the official Marxist line in history and sociology subjected to scathing criticism. Party attempts at re-establishing discipline over the writers and intellectuals in late 1955 were completely unsuccessful and were in fact repudiated by the party theoretical journal Nowe Drogi in January 1956. The intelligentsia was again taking on its traditional role of spokesman for the Polish nation. Its mood, and particularly that of its younger members, was summed up in an article in the student newspaper Po Prostu, which proclaimed ‘We are people who cannot stop meddling with all that happens around us. We are a group of the discontented; we want more things, wiser things, better things.’ Within the United Workers Party, many members were disillusioned with the way the country was being governed and, in particular, at the way in which its interests were being subordinated to those of the Soviet Union. Their dissatisfaction was greatly increased when the defection in December 1954 of a senior official of the security apparatus, Józef Światło, revealed that Bierut, probably under Soviet pressure, had established in 1952 a special department to watch over the loyalty of the top Party leadership. As a result, Bierut was strongly criticized in the Politbureau in December 1954. A number of political prisoners, including Gomułka himself, were released, Radkiewicz, the head of the security police was demoted and the separate status of the Ministry of Public Security was abolished. In general, the power of the secret police was now drastically cut down. The divisions between reformers and Stalinists in the Party - 5 - emerged clearly at the Third Plenum of Central Committee in January 1955. On this occasion, the majority favoured further changes to reduce the power of the security apparatus, to increase the scope for free discussion in the Party and to modify the planning system so as to make it more responsive to initiatives from the shop-floor. Yet the strength of the conservatives on the Politbureau was sufficient largely to frustrate the introduction of these reforms. At the same time, many economists were demanding a more flexible economic system, less based on the Soviet experience of the 1930s and more responsive to Polish conditions. The Six-Year Plan adopted in 1950 had been largely successful in its main goal, the tripling of the index of producer goods between 1950 and 1955 and the increase of non-agricultural employment by over 60 per cent (according to the official figures). But these gains had been achieved by investing what was officially estimated at 25 per cent, but was probably nearer 30 per cent of the national income mostly in heavy industrial projects. Agriculture, consumer goods, housing and social services had all been neglected, the system had proved wasteful and over-centralized and the living standards of the workers had almost certainly fallen. Moreover criticism was raised not only against the conception of the plan but at the way in which, in order to justify its implementation, statistics had been juggled with and even falsified. It was in 1956 that the pace of change began to accelerate startlingly. At the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, the concept of separate national roads to socialism was given clear legitimization, while Khrushchev’s secret speech, with its revelation of the horrors which had accompanied Stalin’s rule, seriously undermined the authority of local Stalinists in Poland. So too did the public announcement during the - 6 - Congress that Stalin’s dissolution of the Communist Party of Poland in mid-1938 and the subsequent deaths of most of its leaders in Soviet camps had been the result of accusations ‘based on materials which were falsified by subsequently exposed provocateurs.’ These revelations would almost certainly have led to Bierut’s fall and probably hastened his death on 12 March 1956. He was succeeded by Edward Ochab, who in spite of his Stalinist past was by now committed to moderate reforms. In April, he told a meeting of Party activists that ‘democratization’ would continue and announced the release of Gomułka and the restoration of his Party rights and those of a number of his associates.