POLISH EMIGRE PERIODICAL DISCUSSES GOMULKA CASE, RECALLS STALIN'S TREATMENT OF POLISH COMMUNISTS IN 1937

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-00809A000700130516-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: R
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 23, 2011
• Sequence Number: 516
• Publication Date: September 30, 1953
• Content Type: REPORT

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Political - Communist party history
Monthly periodical
Paris
Jan 1952
REPORT
CD NO.
DATE OF
DATE DIST. 36.Je,P1953
NO. OF PAGES 6
SUPPLEMENT TO
REPORT NO.
OLISH EMIGRE PERIODICAL DISCUSSES GaaULEA CASE,
~STAJ IN'S TREATMENT OF POLISH CCMMUD[IS'PS IN 1937
The following article, written by Alfred Burmeister and taken
from a Polish emigre periodical published in Pa-4s, discusses
Stalin's treatment of Polish Communist leaders from the 1937 purges
to the time of Gomulka's downfall.]
Gomulka had already been in prison 'or several months when he was deprived
of his parliamentary immunity on 33 October 1951. Even pally members did not
know of his imprisonment, nor of his removal from the party, nor that for 2
years his every step had been watched by the Bezpieka (Security Police). Party
members hopefully said that be was still active and not threatened with a trial.
The PZPR (Polska Zjednoczona Partja Robotnicza, Polish United Workers'
Party) nourished such hopes to show that it was "free and independent."
The news of Gcnulka'e removal from the Central Committee struck the party
unexpectedly. The reaction was so strong in the rural areas, because the
peasants feared complete collectivization after Gomulka's removal, that it
cook Mine several mont`- to bring the supply of meat to the towns back to normal.
A year later f1947, Gomulka spoke for the last time before the plenum of
the Central Committee. He was to give a speech of self-criticism, but something
unheard of happened: he d.d not express repentance, but defended himself. His
cause was hopeless, and his comrades wept both for him and for their own youthful
idealism, which Stalin was betraying for the second came. They knew he would
ruin Gomulka, as he had ruined others, and as some dal he would probably ruin
them. It was then that the Central Committee remembered the year 2937.
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Unfortunately, the fate of the Polish Communists in this year is little
known in the West, especially in Poland. It is easy to see why. It would
not do the party, the regime. nor Soviet propaganda much good if Polish public
opinion were to know what actually happened. The Poles could not know that
Stalin ordered the arrest and execution or imprisonment of all functionaries,
of the KPP (Komunistyczna Partja Polska, Communist Party of Poland) upon whom
he could lay his hands; that he ordered all of them who were outside the USSR
to report to Moscow only to arrest them; and that he accused all who, from
idealistic conviction, had faithfully served the Bolshevik cause, of being
"Pilsudski spies."
Hundreds of Polish Communists were arrested in the USSR. Their number
was undoubtedly many times greater than the number arrested and sentenced by
the "fascist" government of Pilsudski. during the whole time of its existence.
The NKVD, moreover, was much more efficient and could carry out its drive with
much greater precision. It actually was able to seize all who took an active
part in some illegal activity in Poland Having inside knowledge of the organ-
ization, it could also seize those who were just being trained for such ac-
tivity and even those who had taken part in its activity many years before and
were now inactive. It was in this manner that the whole structure of the KPP
toppled suddenly.
Among those arrested was Adolf Warski, who voted with Lenin and the
Bolsheviks at the hi:.oric Second Congress of thr. Russian Social Democratic
Party (1903) in the name of the SDKPiL (.iocjaldemokracja Krolestws Polskiego
i Litwy, Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania). This 70-
year-old revolutionary, who belonged co the first worker organization in
Poland (called the "Proletariat"), was dragged out of the home of Feliks
Dzierzynski's widow. (Warski belonged to the circle of her closest friends.)
Max Walecki, leader of the left wine of the PPS (Polska P:.rtja Socjalistyc-na,
Polish Socialist Party), which In 1919 united with the SDF3iL to form the KPP,
was arrested in May 1937? The sam: thing happened to Lenski, who directed the
KPP for nearly 10 years (1927 - 1937), and to all his co-workers, as well as
to members of the Central Committee that preceded Lenski's -- Sewery Pruchniak
and Wera Kostrzewa. Wera Kostrzewa, an old and sickly woman, died du.ing a
"hearing" in a Moscow prison.. Kar,jewski, the Polish Cos.,iunist and functionary
of the Comintern, -is sentenced for a time to the secret "silence camps." Such
a sentence, as far as the old guard was concerned, was synonymous with the
death sentence.. He is supposed t,o h:,ve died in 1942, in one of these camps,
according to notification received by his family.. Slawa Grosser (among the
most important prisoners at the famous Swietojurski trial in Poland in
September 1922 of 39 leading Communists) was sentenced in 1937 to 10 years
imprisonment which she did not survive. (Daniszewski, the contemporary of-
ficial party historian, mentions the u'wietojurski trial but can name only one
of the accused, Stefan Bojka, who died in Poland.) Rylski and Ciszewski, the
Polish Central Committee's functionaries, were sentenced to "silence camps";
Wroblewski, a former member, was sentenced in 1936 to 5 years and was supposed
to have died or the way to Alma-Ata. One of the last to be arrested, after
being recalled to Moscow, was the Polish Communist, Ryng.
Henrychowski was sentenced to 10 years. Stande and Bruno Jasienski,
Polish Communist writers, disappeared. The latter died in a transfer camp at
Vladivostok in 1938.
Eliminated also as "Pilsudski spies" were those Polish Communists who for
years had served in the ranks of the USSR and had taken an active part on the
side of Lenin in the 1917 Revolution. These included; Unszlicht, a member of
the Revolutionary War Council, together with his wife and sister; Bronski, who
during World War I represented the SDKPiL at the famous conferences in Zinnerwald
and Klenthal, and in 1921 was a Soviet envoy to Vienna; Stanislaw Boninski,
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professor of history; and Malecki, vice-director of the "Conminist University
of Western National Minorities" in Moscow, an old man who had spent 13 years in
prison before the Revolution. Malecki, broken in spirit, died in a transfer
camp in Vladivostok. The fate of Karol Radek, who came out of the SDKPSL, is
common knowledge. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison at one of the famous
Moscow trials. Among his co-workers who were also arrested were the Polish
Communists Lapinski, Rajewski, the younger Kowalski, and Dolecki, chief of Tass,
who committed suicide when the NKVD came to arrest him. Bratmann-Bradowski,
a former member of the SDKPiL and adviser to the Moscow embassy in Berlin for
many years, was eliminated by the NKVD. Lauer, who was one of the ;"ost skilled
economists of the Gosplan USSR, the erononist Leder, and many others also fell.
With each of the arrested Polish Co^_ca:vista fell his relatives, just as
in the 1937 arrests and purges in the USSR T::?: only differeoce was that it
was impossible to arrest all Russian Com ur.lets, while the arrest of all Polish
Communists in the USSR presented no difficulty By the middl.? of 1938 those
remaining were Marchlewki's widow; `tie aged Fe::r._: P:or, who di=.d shortly after;
and Zofia Dzierzynska, the widow of Feiiks Dzierzy:ss:, whc sat alone in the
deserted Polish section of the Comintern. The Polish published in Moscow
ceased to exist. and the Folish section of Tarty publications wa, eliminated.
After Stalin had destroyed the leaders the FPF and a C,ocd portion of
its members, it was decided to dissolve the party itself. A I% 8 Comintern
resolution called the KPP a party of traitors
It seems strange, then, for Daniszewski and Fiedler, the editor of the
theoretical organ of the APR, Nave r i, -n trying to piece together thr
history of the KPP -- after filling pages with the history of its glorious
strikes, its theoretical and political stracgles against reaction, and its
"int.oductiots of Marxism and Leninism to the working class movement in Poland"
to state suddenly "in 1938 the situation became even more complicated --
the Communist Party of Poland. which had become infiltrated with enemies and
provocateurs sent by Pilsudski, was dissolved by the executive of the Communist
International." (Daniszewski, Droga walk! KPFF, (The Hard road of the KPP),
fall 1919, on the 30th srr.iversary of i e fcor.d:ng They do not admit, how-
ever, that these "agents whom the Pisudski peop'.e smuggled into the party
and who even reached executive positions ir. the party" were their closest
companions They de not mention the :.arses of Loose "spice," nor the number.
They do not give the names of the Communists beyond those who died in Poland.
Thus, this history of the UP" is a sad tile cf nameless "worthy cadres,"
not mentioning, however, that their services were paid for by the NKVD, that
they fell not as offerings to "fascist reaction" or the Gestapo, but as victims
of their commander in chief. Supposedly, both historians tried to salvage at
least such names as Warski, Walecli, and Lenski, but approval was not forth-
coming from the Kremlin.
Perhaps it is not yet forgotten that over 2 year ago the Narsaw govern-
ment and representatives of the PZPR initiated a solemn transfer of the urn
containing the ashes of Julian Marchiewsei, the Folish Communist, from the
east.:rn sector of Berlin to Warsaw. This was all that the PZP? could bring
back to the country. The remai.ns of other Folish Cor unI ts, friends and co-
workers of Marchleweki, will not be brought to Warsaw; they lie far away in
the vast taiga, where the bones of a whole generation of Russian Communists
also lie.
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In 1939, the Communists in Poland, deprived of a party, were in the depths
of despair; the war and a new betrayal was visited upon them by their commander
in chief when he divided Poland with Hitler. Polish Communists in Russian
prisons were mobilized and sent to Siberia by the Red Army, which was recruiting
among former party members in Lwow, Stanislawow, and other Soviet-occupied Polish
towns.
The "amnesty" given by the USSR to those who survived after 2 years in no way
applied to the Polish Communists arrested in l93,'. They disappeared, as did
their Russian comrades, among the many millions in chains.
The war in 1939 freed many Polish Communist.- who ironically missed the
fate of their comrades because they had been arrested in "Pilsudski's Poland"
and could not take advantage of the invitation to Mocow. They were all filly
aware that if they had been in Moscow they would have been liquidated also. A
leading figure in present-day Poland recounted the following incident '.:hick
casts a characteristic light on the present system. 'in :96 we were trans-
ferred from jail to 'ail and were given opportunities to escape. Of the 17
transferred prisoners li escaped while the others, ncilidi,_ myself, politely
remained. We were Coma';nls-s and decided to remain. Where were we to flee?
We would fall into hands of the Gestapo in Czechoslovakia, and in the Soviet
Union as was known even in Polish prisons) we knew we wc',ld end cp behind bars
as "Polish spier By remaining in prison ws saved our lives
Toward the end of 1939, when this purge had r-an its course Sr. the USSR,
Bier'at, Minc, Berman, and others went to the USSR and waited to regain Stalin's
favor. They did no during the war, when the Soviet Army staged its counter-
uffensive. They were entrusted with the task ci fcrminr, the new Polish Commu-
nist government
Others, among them Wladyslaw Gomulka, remained in Poland. Correlka, Finder,
and Nowotka formed the PPR (Polska rar.ja Rot'otnieza, Polish Workers' Party) in
January 1940, Although the FPR program Spoke of "'octinuirg in the best tra-
ditions of the KPP," and ai'hough "omu,ka, wio :.ad spent many years in Polish
jails, was a former KPF activist, oeverthele s the new party differed greatly
from the old Cnmmunist Party. There was more talk of democracy and of Poland
in its program, and less of the dictatorship of the proletariat. There was
even talk of cooperation with other parties, a1t'ro'gh this, cooperation was
understood to mean cooperation under the leader-:;hip of the Communist Party.
After the deaths of the co-founders, Finder and Nowotka, Gomul.ka became the
leader of the party and, according to the official party publication as late
as 1948, not only "devoted his whole strength, indefatigably participated in
the building of the party, and laid the foundations of the new Polish state,"
but also won the cooperation of Jozef Cyrankiewicz and his FPS associates,
thereby assuring the success of the Corniinists in Poland.
This is the crime of which 3oimaika is today acc.usedt Gomulka was the
leader of the Communists during the period in which Stalin agreed to some
semblance of democracy to quiet somewhat the demands of the Western allies.
Then there was talk of the "people" and not the "proletariat," the word
"Communism" was not used, and there was no thought of collectivization. Stalin
promised Gomulka "a Polish road to socialism" -- a promise similar to those he
made Ackerman in Germany and Tito in Yugoslavia.
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Stalin also agreed to something which under different circumstancros he
would not even have considered. When Communist Poland was being created, it
became apparent that there were too few persons faithful to the USSR who would
be able to carry out the new plan which the Kremlin had in mind for Poland.
Bierut and his associates remembered the Polish Communists still alive in Soviet
prisons and decided to speak to Stalin about their freedom. It was surprising
that the petitioners as well as Stalin had no doubts that these people, who had
been imprisoned for an average of 8 years, would be willing to build Stalinist
Communism in Poland with equal vigor and devotion.
The NKVD asked Bierut and Berman for a list of names and the camps in
which these Polish Communists were confined. They worked at this zealously
for several months. The list was made up from memory and on the basis of
innumerable letters and verbal reports handed down by other comrades in prison.
In this respect, it is interesting to note that 12 Polish Communists, returned
to Poland from prisons on the Kolyma River. owe their freedom to the sister of
Bierut's wife, who spent 8 years there. The first tc; re freed gave additional
names and new lists were drawn up. Funds were raised for the prisoners and
money sent to them for their passage.
They arrived in MoScou with dirty, torn clothes and for a long time did
not dare approach the embassy to which they owed their freedom They claimed
that it was because of their visits to the Polish Embassy that they were im-
p:isoned in 1937. Gradually they became accustomed to the new ccnditic S. A
summer home in the vicinity of Moscow as,, rented and designated as extraterri-
torial so that the prisoners could live near Moscow. This was actually pro-
hibited to them since they were not supposed to be closer than 100 kilometers
to Moscow. They were provided with food and shelter and even employed in the
Polish embassy. It is interesting to note that one group was even entrusted
with drawing up a list for a new anne.ty of Pcles arrested during :r alley the
war; for 10 months, 20 former prisoners worked on this list. On the basis of
information and letters from those arrested and their close relatives, a list
of about 60,000 names was drawn up. The great number of prisons in which Poles
were imprisoned were marked on a large :nap of the USSR in the embassy. How-
ever, no more was heard of the promised amnesty
The freed Communists ?,ere sent ore at a time for a 10-day rest to a
private villa which Stalin had givir, to Wanda Wasilewska The stout hostess
looked with disdain at the rage in which her guests were clothed. She waS
surprised that they knew how to serve themselves with the coetly table service
placed before them. and remembered the French names of the dishes They,
indeed, were strange acquaintances for Wasilewska in Moscow,,
There were many obstacles and mrac?i formality before a few groups of the
freed Communists returned to Poland. There were perhaps 80 to 10C returned,
a tiny fraction of those seized in 1937 Among them were women, mothers, and
grown children of former Communist functionaries. They .rere the second and
third selections of the party and contained no prominent personages. They were
only the wretched remains of the scattered old guard. Hone of the former
leaders returned.
The resson for this is -:ery simple When the lists of Polish Communists
were drawn up, Bierut and Berman could not give the location of their dis-
tinguished former colleagues. They could not be expected i, knoi this, since
Communists of any importance were sentenced to "camps of silence" He one knew
their addresses. The NKVD men would only shrug their shoulders and say they
did not know. Despite this, the Poles conscientiously wrote down nll the names,
the dates of birth, the places and times of arrest, and occupations; these lists
were submitted.
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Shortly afterward, when Bierut and Berman dared again to mention these
prisoners in the "silence camps," they received the reply from Beriya, chief
of the NKVD, that these people were no longer alive, at least to them.
The former prisoners, who returned to Poland, were not disappointed in
t .afidence placed in them within the country. The designation "class of
19. was sufficient identification to open all doors since it meant that this
was 'n goof, old, devoted Communist and worthy warrior for a new Poland." The
"1937 people" started tc learn Polish nationalism instead of internationalism
and learned not to shudde. at the sight of the Polish white eagle, which now
was the symbol of a new order. Did they believe? Could these people seri-
ously put up with every gesture and any kind of move by Stalin? Even at the
border in Brzesc they were stripped naked and examined to determine whether
they were smuggling anythi cut of the USSR. However, they had found nothing
in the USSR that would be woi.". taking with them They were received lavishly
by the party. The Central Committee at the time received them as part of the
family. And then something strange happened: they started to believe. How
easy it is to bring hope back to a person! What could be more pleasant to the
betrayed and disillusioned Polish jommunists than the faith and hope that they
would be building a socialist Poland according to the Polish way.
These hopes were dashed to the ground in 1948. The Cominform condemned
Tito, and Stalin orde"ed a return to the "right way." Many then believed that
Poland too would turn aga'nst Moscow. The internal situation provided more
reason for this in Poland than in Yugoslavia: However, Soviet armies were
stationed and still are stationed in Poland. It was for this reason that there
was peace in Poland when Stalin ord'red Gomulka and his friends out, of the
party leadership.
Gomulka, who in the last 2 years had become the symbol of the "struggle
for freedom against Moscow" for many people -- or a syibol of the "Polish form"
of Titoism -- in no way contributed to this idea, but still it decided his fate
"Stalin does not like the Poles," said an old Bolshevik in 1937 as a means
of Justifying the arrest of so many Polish Coni+mists This explanation is not
strictly correct: Stalin does not like anybody who is able to think inde-
pendently. who wants something other than what he wants, or who cannot be
swallowed without resistance.
The tragedy of the Polish Communists, within that of all Communism, is the
most terrible of all.
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