The Origins of Gomulkaism:

...Gomulka's attitudes had stemmed from his own Polish experience, and in many respects they were (and are) very different from those of Tito...

...Using Lenin's phrase, Poland had become a weak link in the chain of Soviet imperialism...

...In the other countries, entire villages, subjected to a Party-police "offensive," joined the collectives...

...One must add, too, the fact that the Communist plan for agricultural production was, over the years, about 70 per cent unfulfilled...

...if one considers that the prices of capital goods were markedly lower than commodity prices, the investment burden was probably closer to 50 per cent of national income...

...In July, a Central Committee plenum was held in his absence and his views were widely criticized, though his name was not mentioned...

...An underground Communist since 1942, he was employed by the Central Committee of the Polish Communist party from 1951 through 1955 in ideological activity...

...In 1948, he branded a report that kolkhozes would be established in Poland as a "hostile rumor" and "propaganda...

...The speech was made without prior consultation with the Politburo, and its theses met with the decided opposition of a majority of the Politburo and Central Committee...

...The younger Party generation was still lost in the haze of enthusiasm for the Soviet Union and Stalin, the "conqueror of fascism" and "liberator of humanity...

...The chief political task was to defeat the non-Communist parties and insure the monopoly of the Communist party...

...For the people, Gomulka was a symbol of Soviet intervention in Poland, falsified elections, secret-police lawlessness and deportations to Siberia...

...Soviet credits amounted to some 3 billion rubles, more than all the other East European satellites together, and the major influence was to further unbalance the Polish economy...

...In view of these divergences between Gomulka and the Soviet Communists, it is easy to understand why Gomulka took an unfavorable view of the Cominform declaration of 1948 which condemned Tito's Yugoslavia...

...Uninformed commentators tend to lump Gomulkaism and its program with Titoism, clearly a very different phenomenon...

...There are cities in Poland, including Warsaw, in which 80 per cent of the housing space was destroyed by the war...

...It should be noted here that Gomulka's view of the struggle against Hitlerism had differed in some aspects from that of Moscow...

...Without Soviet credit, the Poles would never have dreamed of building such a plant...

...Gero in Hungary did in transferring power to Imre Nagy—calling in Soviet troops...

...The experiences of the last twelve years only added fuel to the fire...

...It was only at the end of that period that the differences between him and the Stalinists became manifest, but they had always been present in embryonic form...

...his speech on the occasion of the formation of the Cominform was devoted chiefly to underscoring the freedom which the Polish party would enjoy despite it...

...The story goes that when Gomulka was Party secretary, 99 out of 100 students at Party schools, asked "What do you know about the prewar Polish Communist party...

...Some time later, Pawel Finder, who had succeeded him, was also killed by the Gestapo...

...And no Okhrana or Gestapo killed as many of our comrades as the Soviet NKVD...

...All Socialists," he stressed, "should find themselves in the new party...

...The chief task of foreign policy was to terminate the war with Germany and annex its eastern territories to Poland...

...A popular saying in the Party aktiv in 1955 was: "It is not fair that the French Communists call themselves the Party of the Murdered...

...A sharp discussion took place, but was inconclusive, and Gomulka went on "vacation" in order to think over the problem...

...Industrialization lay especially heavy on the people because Poland's war damage was the highest in the world proportional to national wealth...

...Furthermore, the centrist Gomulka group is often compelled—under the pressure of the masses in October 1956, in fear of Kremlin intervention more recently— to take steps which it regards as improper or insufficient...

...Eight years later, however, Gomulka had become, in the eyes of the people, a symbol of resistance to Stalinism, of endurance and strong principles...

...To be sure, there were potential divergences in the field of long-range policy, but Moscow needed Gomulka to attain its immediate goals in Poland, and Gomulka knew that Polish Communists needed Soviet aid to achieve power...

...But even some well-informed Western correspondents in Poland attach the label "Gomulkaism" to everything that happens in the Polish Communist party...

...among them, Marceli Nowotko was to be the underground party's First Secretary, Gomulka a district secretary...

...The remnants of the Socialist party were absorbed by the Communists into the new United Workers party in December 1948...

...The percentage increase in production of heavy industry, and the absolute increase per capita, were higher than in the other satellites, and in many cases higher even than in the Soviet Union...

...He emphasized that his party would not, like the prewar one, be dependent on Moscow but would consider the class struggle and national independence as equally important...

...Only a few members of the postwar Politburo had been prewar Central Committee members...

...the lower-type "cooperatives," designed for less "aware" peasants, were least successful...

...He even said, on several occasions: "We are not a Communist party, we are a workers' party and a party of the nation...

...The plenum sent a telegram to Gomulka with best wishes for his "health," and announced a general discussion on fundamental problems of Party policy...

...In other words, collectivization in Poland could attract or coerce only the very weak or Communist-minded peasants, without denting the broad peasant mass...

...The roots of the Gomulkaist program are to be found primarily in the years 1944-49, the period of the formation of the Communist state in Poland, when Gomulka was General Secretary of the Party...

...As far as Russia is concerned, quite apart from the suppressions of the Tsars, Poles remember the Russo-Polish war of 1920, the terror against thousands of Polish citizens and clergymen in post-Revolutionary Russia, the Nazi-Soviet partition of 1939, the murder of Polish officers at Katyn, the Soviet betrayal of the Warsaw Insurrection of 1944, the deportation and imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of Poles in the Soviet Union during and after the war...

...How was it that in 1948 Gomulka was quietly and easily defeated, in contrast to his stormy return last year...

...The subsequent rise of liberal influences in the Polish party enabled the opponents of Stalinism to gain a majority in the Central Committee and Politburo even before the October upheaval...

...Soviet occupation forces in Poland were more numerous than in any other satellite country besides East Germany...

...Unlike Czechoslovakia, which had developed defense industries before the war, Poland had to build most of its war plant9 from their very foundations...

...Polish patriotism, and the strong aversion to Russia and Germany among its workers, are well known...

...It is thus necessary to distinguish carefully the essence of the Gomulkaist program from the various tactical maneuvers it must undertake from time to time...

...Soviet exploitation of Poland was also especially severe...

...But he regarded these relations as state matters, not ideological or Party affairs...

...The old leaders of Polish Communism having been liquidated, Moscow had to start afresh when it began to organize an underground party in Poland in 1942...

...He died in 1956...

...Here there was a bitter legacy of "cooperation" with Soviet Communists...

...For example, on the basis of Soviet credit, Poland built a large steel works at Nowa Huta, with a capacity of several million tons...

...During the Nazi occupation of Poland, he had urged an alliance of Communists and non-Communists for the duration of the struggle...

...The old Party activists, on the other hand, would not forgive Gomulka's attempt to erase their past traditions, his favoring of underground anti-Nazi fighters to old Moscow-based Communists...

...therefore, his Party work had to be kept secret...

...In this situation, Gomulka, secretary of the Warsaw Party committee, became First Secretary...

...Gomulka's attitude in this respect also determined his view of the Socialist tradition in Poland...

...Only when Gomulka's party had attained full power, that is, in 1948, did these long-range divergences come to the fore...

...Toward the end of August, another Central Committee plenum was called, at which Bierut delivered a speech on "Nationalistic and Rightist Deviations in the Party...

...A number of other key Polish Party leaders had to operate within the USSR, organizing a Polish army which would enter Poland with the Red Army and constitute the nucleus of the apparatus of Communist dictatorship...

...This project also engaged the activities of numerous Polish technicians, skilled construction workers, etc...

...Poland was still paying these reparations in 1954, after East Germany had been exempted from them by Moscow...

...He stated unequivocally that the prewar Socialists were right and the prewar Communists were wrong in regard to national independence...

...After a few months, Nowotko was captured by the Nazis and shot...

...Between 1944 and 1948, the first stage of the Communist revolution in Poland, Gomulka and Moscow viewed events identically...

...other villages, not yet attacked, remained independent...

...a year later, he was arrested...

...He used police methods, accepted the aid of Soviet troops, falsified elections, and did not object to Soviet interference in Polish life so long as it was aimed at defeating his foes...

...When it came to these ends—as well as the means of carrying them out—Gomulka had no quarrel with the Soviets...

...At the December 1948 congress of the Polish Party, Gomulka spoke on the danger of "cosmopolitanism...

...several of his colleagues were also removed from key posts...

...In other satellites, the proportions ranged from 26 to 75 per cent...

...The situation Seweryn Bialer, 31-year-old native of Lodz, Poland, spent ten months in Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Friedland...

...Gomulka openly opposed not only limitations on Polish national sovereignty by the USSR, but any limitation of the sovereignty of the Polish Party by the Soviet Communist party...

...Poland, the first nation invaded by Nazi Germany, paid reparations to the USSR for German assets on the Western territories annexed to Poland after the war...

...The hidden aversion to Stalinism in the Polish Party came to the surface after Stalin's death, and gained in strength as police terror diminished...

...Thus Gomulka, though he had been deposed in 1948 as Party Secretary, had remained alive, wielding great authority and cast in the role of a martyr...

...Though the USSR supplied much equipment, what could not be brought from Russia for this plant had to be produced in Poland—and thus over a hundred large Polish plants became involved in supplying the steel works...

...He was, nevertheless, reelected to the Central Committee...

...yet reconstruction was so slow that in 1955 the housing space per capita was lower than in 1948...

...Heavily contributing to the growth of anti-Soviet sentiment—and to the victory of the Gomulka faction— was the economic position of Poland...

...In 1949, however, the attacks against his group grew ever sharper, and accusations of a criminal character began to appear more frequently...

...In the view of the majority of the Party, too, he had become if not the "ideal leader" at least "the best solution...

...In December 1948, Gomulka, a delegate to the Party Congress, delivered a speech which brought sharp retorts from Politburo members...

...The entire party discussed the published minutes of the plenum...

...Many of the views condemned were, after all, the views of Gomulka himself—particularly with regard to national independence...

...With him into the new regime came his old colleagues of 1948: Defense Minister General Marj an Spychalski, Gomulka's ideologist and Education Minister Wladyslaw Bienkowski, trade-union chief Ignace Loga-Slowinski, Central Committee cadres chief Zenon Kliszko, commander of Internal Security troops General Waclaw Komar, and many others...

...While the fight against the others was waged from the start according to the Soviet pattern of 1936-38, in terms of a criminal case, the fight against Gomulka was first conducted on political grounds, resembling the Soviet pattern of 1926-29...

...He hoped the new party would synthesize the Socialist program in national matters with the Communist program in social matters...

...And, on the industrial front, he supervised the elaboration of the Three Year Plan for 1947-49, which did not stress the Stalinist principle of priority for heavy industry, and which Gomulka called a "plan for abundance...

...The answer is that in 1948 he did not enjoy wide support either among the people or in the Party...

...By the end of the war, he possessed great authority...

...Crucial to this situation was the atmosphere prevailing in the Communist party aktiv, particularly among Party intellectuals but including top leaders...

...With much difficulty, a group of Communists was mustered and sent into Poland...

...The chief economic tasks were the nationalization of industry, the division of landlords' estates among the peasants, and the reconstruction of war damage...

...The only prominent prewar Central Committee member in Poland after the war was Franciszek Fiedler, who had been in France during the purge and war periods...

...Continued next week...

...But Gomulka's views were not mere echoes of Tito's—the two men met but once in 1946, and contacts between the Yugoslav and Polish parties were weak between 1945 and 1948...

...The tempo of industrialization in Poland was also exceptionally high...

...To begin with, Gomulka was undoubtedly an adherent of alliance and cooperation between Poland and the USSR...

...would begin their replies: "The basic errors of the Communist party before the war were...

...He escaped to West Berlin in January 1956 and later came to this country...

...To cite two of many examples: In 1947, Gomulka was quite reserved and reluctant when the Cominform was being organized, fearing it as an instrument of Soviet domination...

...After six years, only 9 per cent of the arable land—representing 7 per cent of farm production—had been collectivized...

...Second, Gomulka atempted to detach the traditions of the postwar Polish party from those of the prewar Polish Communist party...

...At the regular meeting of the Central Committee, Gomulka delivered a report on the traditions of the Communist and Socialist movements in Poland...

...A favorite Gomulka statement was: "We are a new party...

...In December 1949, a Central Committee plenum condemned Gomulka and his colleagues for accepting bourgeois police agents into Party ranks, political blindness, lack of vigilance and factional activity...

...In Poland, however, the local collective ordinarily embraced a handful of farms, while the rest of the village resisted it...

...Boleslaw Bierut, whom the Kremlin trusted best, was also in Poland, but Moscow's plan called for him to assume the office of President of the state, traditionally non-partisan in Poland...

...in Poland made him the symbol of victorious resistance to the Kremlin within the Communist movement...

...It is important to note a crucial difference between the Stalinist struggle against Gomulka in 1948-49 and the struggle against Laszlo Rajk in Hungary, Ana Pauker in Rumania, the Slansky group in Czechoslovakia, and other alleged East European "Titoists...

...According to official figures, investment amounted to some 25 per cent of national income...

...Finally, Gomulka differed from the Stalinists on key economic questions...

...That this link broke differently than the link in Hungary may be traced to the fact that the desire for change in Poland had long reached higher into the Party aktiv...

...In contrast to Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Bulgaria, during the years 1949-53 there were no trials of real or imagined "Titoists...

...Gomulka was then removed as General Secretary, but remained in the Central Committee...

...While the charges against all the latter were for the most part fabricated, the charges brought against Gomulka were in many respects true...

...It was a speech clearly calculated to warn the delegates against the danger of losing Polish freedom to the Soviets...

...Finally, though the population of the Western territories is only a third of the total Polish population, three-fourths of collective-farm families were concentrated in these districts—where many peasants lack ownership deeds and the right to sell their land, and all peasants have been cultivating their soil only since the end of the war...

...Between 1951 and 1956, it suffered more than any other satellite besides Hungary—even though its living standard had ranked right behind Czechoslovakia's and East Germany's...

...Gomulka himself, though a man of stature, was the product of a whole confluence of conditions and circumstances, traditions and experiences...

...With the exception of the insignificant parties of Korea and Switzerland, this was the only case in the Communist movement where a single purge embraced the entire party...

...As a result, Edward Ochab, who had succeeded Bierut as First Secretary, transferred authority to Gomulka in October without—as Ern...

...Poland was the main satellite producer of jet planes, tanks and other heavy war equipment...

...And, though the Polish Communists used all the approved Soviet methods, they were by far the least successful of the East European states in collectivization...

...The fight first broke into the open in June 1948...

...Although Gomulkaism has an international character, it is Poland which became the center of this movement of reforms and resistance to Soviet Communism...

...Poland was also the chief transit country for the Soviets, and the transit costs were primarily paid by the Poles...

...The fact is that, even though Gomulka's faction has led the party for a year, both the "conservative" (Stalinist) and "liberal" (more properly, socialist) factions command positions in the Party and state apparatus, and continue to influence Party policy and official statements...

...they also tell us much about Gomulkaism today...

...He used Zhdanov's slogan, however, to warn the Polish Party against "subjugation" not by the West but by the East...

...Gomulka was expelled from the Party...

...Such, then, were the major political and social experiences which contributed to the rise and triumph of Gomulkaism in Poland...

...With exceptions which can literally be counted on one's fingers, the entire Polish Central Committee was shot in Russia or sent to concentration camps from which they never returned...

...Its military burden was more severe than that of any other East European state...

...The expansion of heavy industry was rapid, but reconstruction was slow...

...The discussions of 1948 revealed the main lines of Gomulka's policy and how it differed from Moscow...

...there were also some fortuitous events...

...Among the latter was the death of the outstanding Polish Stalinist, Boleslaw Bierut, shortly after the 20th Soviet Party Congress...

...It is we who deserve that name...

...Earlier, when the first state stations were established to rent machinery to peasants, he opposed the plan to scale rental fees to the size of the farms...

...For the tendency which Polish Party Secretary Wladyslaw Gomulka represents sprang from forces operating in all the satellite countries and in nearly all Communist parties, forces which can be summed up as the political and ideological crisis of Soviet Communism...

...He stated many times that Soviet-style collective farms were not suited to the Polish peasant, and absolutely opposed the use of force in collectivization...

...Poland's policies today were framed in debates a decade ago The Origins of gomulkaism By Seweryn Bialer (First of two articles) There are few Communist parties in the world today, and none in Eastern Europe, in which individual leaders and even major groups cannot accurately be described as Gomulkaist...

...Even Soviet aid to Poland had a deplorable effect...

...And in 1953 Poland had to begin repaying the credit —-with valuable export goods constituting some 10 per cent of its annual export...

...Thus, he pressed for the earliest possible merger of the Socialist and Communist parties—before the Socialist party could be purged...

...To begin with, Gomulka's selection as General Secretary in 1944 was, to a large extent, the result of circumstance...

...Thus, the highest types of collectives, similar to the Soviet artel, constituted 80 per cent of all collectives...

...Polish coal was transported to the Soviet Union in enormous quantities, either at prices only a fraction of the world market price, or gratis—as war reparations...

...The purge that followed was unprecedented...

...It was, moreover, a party with extremely rich traditions, with hundreds of leaders whose experience extended back to Tsarist times...

...This was contrary to Soviet plans, plans which led to the Soviet betrayal of the Warsaw uprising in 1944, the destruction of Warsaw and the death of hundreds of thousands of Polish patriots...

...Stalin had dissolved the Communist party of Poland in 1938...