Poland Steps Backward
STAAR, RICHARD F.
Return to government of orthodox Communist activists 'signifies tightening of policy in education, agriculture, economic planning and military security' POLAND STEPS BACKWARD By Richard F....
...In this capacity, he made policy for two-and-a-half years until Gomulka's election as First Secretary...
...Beginning as government representative for industry in Silesia, he soon became a division chief, in 1949 minister of foreign trade, and in 1952 a deputy premier...
...Important reasons must thus have motivated the recall from Prague of a man so discredited in the eyes of the public...
...In 1935 he left for France, joined the CP there, and studied at the Institute des Sciences Sociales...
...The man who replaces Gede in the Moscow Embassy is Boleslaw Jaszczuk...
...the latter, now 35, was only elevated to candidate membership in 1954 and had no prewar experience with Communism, because of his youth...
...Born in 1906 and orphaned at the age of nine, he held jobs as a messenger boy, apprentice to a tinsmith and textile worker...
...This list included CP activists, army officers and intellectuals who were suspected of being Gomulka supporters...
...Other arrests followed, the most notable in 1936 when he spent six months at the Bereza Kartuzka detention camp...
...He did not join the Party until 1945, after which his rise was truly phenomenal, probably due to the fact that the Communists had few members with university educations...
...He now becomes vice chairman of the Planning Commission, where he will work closely with Szyr and Tokarski...
...They are Jerzy Morawski, hitherto director of the Central Committee section for education and science, and education minister Wladyslaw Bienkowski...
...And what is perhaps of the greatest importance is that these men have the confidence of the Russians...
...During the first two postwar years, Tokarski commanded a military police unit which fought against the anti-Communist underground near Lublin and Rzeszow...
...demanded a curtailment of the democratization process...
...Prior to the war, he was arrested several times and served short prison terms...
...One is deputy premier Eu-geniusz Szyr...
...Only one year ago, at the Central Committee's secret 12th plenum, Szyr made a speech in which he glorified Red China's "Great Leap Forward" and argued for a return to the Stalinist emphasis on capital goods as well as a more rapid tempo of development in heavy industry...
...At one time he was also a member of the central administration for peasant self-help, a cooperative movement, and later became director of the main board for state farms (sovkhozes...
...The remaining five—Gede, Jaszczuk, Szyr, Tokarski, Witaszewski—have been able to maintain their positions, with some setbacks, and to receive promotions to the most responsible Party and/or Government offices...
...Both came from a working-class environment and met in Nazi-occupied Warsaw as editors of Communist publications...
...Szyr participated in the Spanish Civil War and rose to deputy brigade commander for political affairs, following which he was interned for three years in France and Algeria...
...It is probable that Moscow played a role in this decision...
...A student of contemporary Polish affairs, he is writing a book on the Polish Communist Party...
...As an electrical engineering student at the Warsaw polytechnic institute, he joined the CP youth affiliate...
...He was graduated from the Central Party School and served as province organizer successively in Lublin and Wroclaw...
...After a brief period as director of the Central Committee's vocational section, Witaszewski became mayor of his native Lodz, then chairman of the Trade Union Central Council (1945-48...
...During the recent shake-up, he was relieved as minister of education...
...At the end of the war, their paths separated...
...His postwar career began as secretary for economic affairs in the Warsaw Party committee, deputy mayor of Warsaw and governor of Silesia...
...Witaszewski's appointment, however, is the most shocking of all...
...Like Gede, he is a graduate of the Warsaw polytechnic institute...
...Far-reaching changes will probably take place in Poland's armed forces...
...In the field of education, two individuals have been removed who had apparently favored a milder course...
...During the past two years he has been in political exile as military attache in Prague...
...The third man who will participate in economic planning is Tadeusz Gede...
...directed 1944 uprising...
...Gede was elected in 1953...
...All but one were elected to the Central Committee at either the 1945 or 1948 Party congress...
...Together with Soviet Marshal Konstan-tin K. Rokossovsky, then commander-in-chief of the Polish Army, and Natolin chief Franciszek Mazur, he selected the names of 700 Poles to be executed in October 1956...
...He was purged in 1948, having been identified with the Gomulka heresy, and lived quietly until 1956 as director of the state library in Warsaw...
...According to informed sources in Warsaw, a purge will begin after the resignation of defense minister Marian Spychalski (in poor health since his imprisonment during the Stalinist period), who will possibly remain on the Politburo as liaison between the Party and the Army...
...The other new deputy premier is Julian Tokarski...
...They possess certain common characteristics...
...As a result of the present critical meal shortage throughout Poland, it is expected that Jagielski will obtain increased production by applying stronger measures against the peasants...
...Szyr's postwar promotions followed very rapidly—director of reconstruction in Silesia, undersecretary of state in the ministry of industry, deputy chairman and, in March 1954, chairman of the State Committee for Economic Planning...
...and proposed the introduction of a proportional representation system by nationality for the allocation of Party and state positions—a system whose intent was clearly anti-Jewish...
...He joined the CP, and his first arrest came in 1926 for distributing subversive literature...
...Only one of them, Gede, had no experience in the USSR or in Soviet-occupied territory during the war...
...He served as minister of power from 1952-57 but was removed by Gomulka and made one of the deputy chairmen in the planning committee attached to the Council of Ministers, where Szyr was secretary...
...In 1942, he was serving in the Red Army...
...According to Jozef Swiatlo, the Polish secret police defector, Tokarski spent 1938-41 as an NKVD informant in a Soviet labor camp...
...In 1915, when he was only 15 years old, he became involved in Communist activities...
...Tokarski was personally responsible for the bloody Poznan riots...
...At the end of last month, it became known that Colonel Pawel Monat, a man with access to both political and military intelligence, had defected to the West...
...All five joined the Party or its youth affiliate in the 1920s or the early 1930s...
...He returned to Poland with Szyr as a low ranking politruk...
...Active in the Communist youth movement before the war, Jaszczuk worked as an engineer in Bialystok under Russian occupation in 1939-41...
...he was at the same time director of the Central Committee propaganda section...
...He has the reputation of a "liberal" who voluntarily stepped down from Party leadership to make way for Gomulka and even reportedly stood up to Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev in October 1956...
...These five belonged to the "Nato-lin" faction of the Party, named after the summer vacation town near Warsaw where caucuses used to be held...
...They also participated in the small CP underground during the LondonThe most recent shifts in Poland's politics are analyzed here by Richard F. Staar, who teaches political science at Emory University in Atlanta...
...After the outbreak of Nazi-Soviet hostilities, he moved to Warsaw where he helped organize the Polish Workers' (Communist) party and became active in the Communist underground...
...He has now left both organs and at the end of November was appointed one of the several deputy chairmen of the Supreme Control Chamber, a very unimportant body...
...His replacement in the agriculture ministry is Mieczyslaw Jagielski, who initially worked in the youth movement and joined the Party only after the war...
...wanted reimposition of strict press censorship...
...Witaszewski returned to Poland as chief of personnel for politruks in the Polish units accompanying the Soviet armed forces...
...The last appointment is perhaps the most significant because it may indicate direct intervention by the USSR...
...Later, he was transferred into Agitprop, where he worked until his elevation to the Politburo and Secretariat by Gomulka...
...Among the new appointees, only one represents the professional civil service...
...The Nazi-Soviet honeymoon found him in Russian-occupied Lwow...
...The former, an ex-Socialist, is not yet a Central Committee member...
...Gede spent World War II inside Poland...
...In 1957, he became vice minister of agriculture...
...This, together with the recent defections of Polish military intelligence agents in Paris and Tokyo, apparently brought the appointment of a man trusted by the Soviets to a sensitive position they had controlled until late 1956...
...Because he has never held any important position in either the Party or governmental hierarchies, it is probable that the new minister will merely implement policy in the general area of education...
...Bienkowski's postwar career started with an undersecretaryship of state, as Party watchdog in the education ministry...
...He was originally a grade school teacher and since 1957 was one of the secretaries of the Central Council of Trade Unions, with special responsibility for the teachers' union...
...Ironically, it was Morawski who, in a speech at the Third Party Congress last spring, helped set the stage for the unanimous resolution that abrogated the 1948 condemnation of Gomulka's "crime" of "right-wing nationalist deviation...
...The entire group can qualify as professional apparatchiki...
...he made up for this deficiency by serving as ambassador to Moscow in 1957-59...
...Tulodziecki joined the Socialist party at the age of 17 and has been a Communist only since 1948, when the Socialists were absorbed at the "fusion" congress...
...He will probably again control all Polish economic planning...
...Briefly, the number of deputy premiers was increased from three to five, a new vice chairman was added to the State Planning Commission, a new ambassador departed for the USSR, army intelligence received a new chief, and two ministers as well as the director of a Central Committee section "resigned...
...Ochab, nevertheless, remains on the Politburo, and has retained his place in the Secretariat...
...This post is being taken by the 55-year old Waclaw Tulodziecki...
...Two of the seven new appointees mentioned above, Tulodziecki and Jagielski, will be excluded from the following analysis...
...Szyr was then demoted to minister of construction, and after two months almost disappeared from sight as secretary of the economic committee attached to the Council of Ministers...
...In a single year, 1953-54, Jagielski was advanced from senior instructor to deputy director and then director of the Central Committee agricultural section...
...As minister of the automobile and tractor industry...
...The dismissed agriculture minister, Politburo member Edward Ochab, just returned from a mission to the United States, where he had requested further shipments of surplus wheat and a new loan...
...Their return now probably signifies a tightening of policy in the following main areas: education, agriculture, planning and military security...
...The remaining six are all CP activists, who in their former positions had played very important roles under the Stalinist regime...
...supported an unrealistic and certainly inflationary rise in wages and salaries...
...For the general area of planning, three of the new appointees are important...
...It makes General Kazimierz Witaszewski deputy chief of the General Staff in charge of military intelligence...
...Born in 1903, he joined the Communist Union of Polish Youth at 17, and later entered the Party itself...
...Gomulka relieved him of this post but in early 1957 sent Gede as ambassador to Moscow...
...Gomulka sent Tokarski into eclipse, where he remained as deputy director of the Central Committee economic section until his recent appointment...
...The Natolinists opposed Gomulka's return to power...
...In 1943, he managed to reach the USSR where he emerged as a colonel and head of all politruks in the Polish forces attached to the Red Army...
...Next, he headed the Warsaw city CP organization, then moved on to become direclor of the important cadre section in the Central Committee, and after 1950 headed the ministries of heavy industry, machine industry, automobile and motor industry...
...They disappeared from the public eye after October 1956...
...Because this is the first important reorganization since Party chief Wladyslaw Gomulka returned to power three years ago, it merits close attention...
...It was he who rebuffed the workers' delegation from the Cegielski plant which had been sent to Warsaw to present their grievances in June 1956...
...In this capacity, he had contact with both Szyr and Tokarski...
...Return to government of orthodox Communist activists 'signifies tightening of policy in education, agriculture, economic planning and military security' POLAND STEPS BACKWARD By Richard F. Staar JUST A MONTH ago, several changes occurred in the government of Communist Poland...
...The following year he served as vice minister for labor and social welfare, first secretary of the Party in Wroclaw province (1949-51), one year (1952) as director of the cadre section in the Central Committee...
...Morawski went into the leadership of the Communist youth movement, then served as Party secretary for Poznan (1950-52...
...Until Gomul-ka's return to power he was undersecretary of state in the national defense ministry and chief of the Central Political Board of the armed forces in charge of all politruks...
...This was all cut short by arrest and three years of imprisonment at the German concentration camps of Auschwitz and Mauthausen-Gusen...
Vol. 42 • December 1959 • No. 47
