COMMUNISM IN EASTERN EUROPE: POST-STALIN DEVELOPMENTS IN THE SATELLITES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01445R000100070001-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 126
• Document Creation Date: November 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 24, 1998
• Sequence Number: 1
• Content Type: REPORT

N? 291
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Senior Research Staff on International Communism
COMMUNISM IN EASTERN EUROPE
Post - Stalin Developments in the Satellites
80-oi445R
CIA / SRS-7
f , .
I .. .. fJ
Ci. 7t S C
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WARNING
This material contains information affecting
the National Defense of the United States
within the meaning of the espionage laws,
Title 18, USC, Secs. 793 and 794, the trans-
mission or revelation of which in any manner
to an unauthorized person is prohibited by law.
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COMMUNISM IN EASTERN EUROPE:
Post-Stalin Developments in the Satellites
CIA/SRS-7
PART I FROM THE DEATH OF STALIN
TO THE 20th PARTY CONGRESS
PART II/A POLAND
This is a speculative study which
has been discussed with US Govern-
ment intelligence officers but has
not been formally coordinated. It
is based on information available
to SRS as of 8 October 1957.
COITE ENTIAL
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CO \FIDEN!TIAL
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
PART I - FROM THE DEATH OF STALIN
TO THE 20th PARTY CONGRESS
The Year 1953
1
The Year 1954
11
The Year 1955
18
The 20th Congress of the CPSU (1956)
28
PART II/A - POLAND
Conditions in Poland at the Beginning of 1956
37
Developments from the 20th CPSU Congress
to the Seventh. Plenum of the Polish
Workers Party (PZPR)
42
The Eighth Plenum, 19 October 1956
56
The Ninth Plenum, 15 May 1957
78
Relations with other Communist Countries
94
Analysis of the Polish Situation and Prospects
after the Ninth Plenum of the PZPR
96
Summary
117
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1. The essential principle of a celestial satellite is
its dependence on, and control by, the primary center around
which it circles, The general acceptance of this astronomical
term to describe the captive nations of Eastern Europe which
have made up the Soviet "Orbit" since World War ?I, as well
as, their actual behavior for a number of years, had led to the
widespread assumption that, like their heavenly counterparts,
their course could but follow that of their primary center,
the USSR.
2. The repercussions in the Satellite states of develop-
ments in the Soviet Union since the death of Stalin have, how-
ever, revealed that this analogy is subject to qualifications.
The "monolithic" Soviet system or bloc has shown itself to be
composed, not of inert bodies, inexorably obeying the law of
gravitation, but of living nations, differing considerably in
national temperament, historic tradition, economic develop
ment, geopolitical interests, and the capacity of the men in
power. Their reactions have therefore varied considerably.
3. It is the purpose of this paper to retrace the impact
of post-Stalin developments in the USSR upon the Communist
regimes in the Satellite countries, to endeavor to discern the
reasons why some of the Satellites have docilely followed the
Moscow line while others have rebelled and even revolted,
and to draw conclusions as to possible future developments
in the area.
4. The study will be divided into three parts. Part I
briefly surveys the background, covering the period from
the death of Stalin to the 20th Congress. Part. II will deal
with developments in each Satellite since the 20th Congress;
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Poland is presented as the first section (A), to be followed
in the near future by Hungary (Section B); and subsequently
by the other Satellites. Part III will be devoted to an analysis
of the divergences among the Satellites and to an estimate of
the future of Communism in Eastern Europe.
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FROM THE DEATH OF STALIN
TO THE 20th PARTY CONGRESS
The Year 1953
1, In 1953, immediately after the death of Stalin, a
"New Course" was initiated in the USSR and its European
Satellites. Under the leadership of GeorgiiMalenkov, the
New Course sought to correct certain aspects of the Stalinist
system which had become increasingly oppressive and self-
defeating in the last years of the dictator. The main features
of this reorientation -were a revival of the collective leader-
ship tenets of Lenin, a renunciation of government by terror,
a more "liberal" domestic policy and a less aggressive
approach in foreign affairs.
2. In the Satellite countries the principle of collective
leadership found its application mainly in the relinq .i.shment
of either the premiership or the first party secretaryship by
those leaders who were holding both posts. In Czechoslovakia,
after Gottwald's. death in March 1953, the new president,
Zapotocky, no longer occupied the positions of president and
first party secretary, the latter, going to Novotny. In Hungary,
Rakosi gave up the premiership to Imre Nagy. According to
Malenkov, as quoted by Nagy in his book on Communism
(written in the latter part of 1955 and the beginning of 1956),
Soviet comrades had discussed personnel questions with
Rakosi in May. Rakosi was asked whom he "recommended"
as his deputy, but he objected to every name mentioned.
He claimed he did not want to be premier himself "but he
wanted a premier who would have no voice in the making
of decisions. " However, the Soviet leaders were
adamant. Khrushchev declared it undesirable that leadership
of the Party and the state should be concentrated in the hands
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of one manor even of a few men, and on July 4 it was
announced that Imre Nagy, "recommended" by Malenkov,
Molotov and Khrushchev, had been appointed premier. In
Albania, Enver Hoxha, the party chief, relinquished the
cabinet portfolios he had held; in Rumania, on the other hand,
Gheorghiu-Dej retained the premiership. With the exception
of Hungary, where the duality of leadership had serious con-
sequences, the new principle made little difference, for in
practice one-man rule continued. Criticism of higher level
policies or personalities, although constantly stressed as an
important element of party democracy, continued to be ruled
out. The main effect of the new slogan, was to reduce, for a
time at least, local "bossism" and to make lower level party
meetings somewhat more frequent. However, criticism of
personal leadership in the abstract served the valuable pur-
pose of providing scapegoats for the mistakes which had
admittedly been committed in virtually every field.
3. One of the first acts of the new Soviet regime,
following the traditional. practice of new rulers, was to issue
an amnesty decree (27 March 1953) which included a promise
to abate the harshness of the Criminal Code, followed by an
editorial in Pravda (6 April.) promising that henceforth
legality and the civil rights of citizens would be respected.
Amnesties, actual or promised, followed in Rumania (4 April),
Czechoslovakia (4 May), East Germany (10 June), and in.
Hungary (4 July), where the promise was coupled, as in the
USSR, with assurances of a reform in police practices.
4. In the USSR economic concessions were officially
announced on 8 August 1953 by Malenkov, who declared,
"We must insure a more rapid increase in the material and
cultural levels of the people, force by every means the. devel-
opment of our light industry." He admitted that greater
incentives must be provided for the peasants and that, if the
Communist regime did not produce greater abundance w'ithin,
two or three years, it would imperil itself. The lag in
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Soviet agriculture was, exposed with great frankness. by
Khrushchev (3 September 1953) who promised corrective
measures, such as higher prices for agricultural products,
lower compulsory deliveries, higher wages, etc. These
developments, fulfilled the general expectations already
aroused by the larger than usual price reductions for food
and consumer goods (31 March), the appearance in stores of
unrationed wheat flour, and a hope-inspiring article in Pravda
(11 June).
5. The Satellite regimes. had their own special
reasons for. seeking to allay discontent and to increase
material incentives for greater production. Long before the
seizure of power by the Communists, everybody in East
Central Europe was. in agreement that the problem of rural
overpopulation in all those countrie's except Czechoslovakia
could be solved only by industrialization. But the only argu-
ment in favor of the excessive rate of industrialization
advanced by the puppet regimes was Soviet interest. Soviet
propaganda could perhaps succeed in convincing Russian
Communists as well as non-Communists, at first, that they
could only defend their country against enemy encirclement
if they became a great industrial power, and later, after
World War II, that they should aspire to be the leading
industrial and political power in the world, an aim well worth
heavy material sacrifices. But the first argument was
obsolete and the second carried little weight in the Satellite
countries. None but the most fanatic Communists. could
possibly be eager to endure privations for the glory of a
foreign nation. Worse still, while the Russians derived
material benefits from their preeminence in the Orbit, the
Satellites had not only to suffer hardships for their own
rapid industrialization but also to supply the USSR with
numerous, commodities, first as reparations or in return
for their "liberation", and later through the exploitation of
joint companies and under unfavorable trade agreements, as
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exemplified by the recent revaluation of Polish coal deliveries,
the agreement to refund transit dues, etc. Even if these
agreements had not been unfavorable, the important fact is
that the people in the Satellite countries were convinced they
were being ruthlessly exploited by the Russians.
6. The Krethli.n leadership, one may assume, was
well aware of the disaffection among the Satellite peoples and
authorized their governments to anticipate the formal announce-
ment of the New Course in the USSR. The East German Corn-
muhist leaders, possibly impressed by the serious riots which
the currency reform had provoked in Czechoslovakia, made
their announcement on 9-10 June 1953? The rebellion which
broke out in the following week seemed to confirm the theory
that half-hearted concessions are likely to be interpreted as
.signs of weakness and to backfire. But it also confirmed the
suspicion that Moscow was fully prepared, if necessary, to
support its puppets in the People's Democracies with its
armed forces o
7. The most far-reaching changes took place in
Hungary, at least on paper, for in practice their implerrienta.-
tion was to a great extent to be nullified by Rakosi and the
Party apparatus which he continued to control.. If a some-
what disproportionate amount of space in the following pages
is allocated to Hungary, this should find its justification in
the Hungarian Revolution, in the fact that the revelations con-
tained in Imre Nagy's apologia have supplied an unusual.
amount of seemingly authentic inside information on condi-
tions and developments in Hungary and on Soviet-Hungarian
relations up to the end of 1955 and in the fact that, with due
allowance for local variations, these may be considered
typical of conditions in the Soviet Orbit generally. "The
shocking situation /-M 195" writes Nagy, "wa.s described
7by the key members of the CPSU
Et-o a Hungarian delegation
who declared that the mistakes and crimes of the four-member
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Party leadership in Hungary, headed by Rakosi, drove the
country to the verge of catastrophe, shaking the people's
democratic system in its foundation; unless prompt and
effective measures had been taken the people would have
turned against them" and, quoting Khrushchev, "we would
have been booted out summarily:''.,
8. `Nagy ' claims that, in violation of Lenin's teaching
that the people's welfare was the highest law of Communism,
up to June 1953 the development of industry had been pushed
beyond all reasonable limits and in Hungary furthest of all,
although it was the poorest in industrial raw materials of
all the Satellites But as a result of inefficiency, antiquated
techniques and poor management, the goods exported to pay
for imported raw materials.were sold at a loss, leading to
progressive impoverishment of the country. Although heavy
industrial production had increased 500-700% since 1938 and
the Rakosi regime had promised a 50% rise in the standard
of living by 1954, the standard had actually been falling up to
June 1.953. Only 58% of the national income was spent for
consumption, as against a "previous 78-80%'." As a result
of forced collectivization and the refusal to help individual
farmers, agricultural production was barely at prewar levels.
Instead of the "promised abundance of consumer goods, the
regime had created a scarcity unparalleled since Liberation."'
9. With regard to political conditions, Nagy writes
that Rakosi had "made himself independent of the will and
opinion of the Party membership and of the decisions of the
"'Industrial development amounted to 159% in Poland from
1949 to 1955, to 98% in Czechoslovakia, to 92. 3% in the GDR
from 1950 to 1955, to 144% in Rumania from 1951 to 1955, to
120% in Bulgaria from 1949 to 1955, and to 2],Q'% in Hungary
from 1949 to 1953. "
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Party . . . with dictatorial methods, primarily with the aid
of the AVH the Secret Poli_e, which became predominant
over the Party, forced it to execute its wishes. !' Moreover,
Rakosi "violated the ethical and moral norms of socialism"
and as a result "shattered the masses' faith in the Party,
Nagy provides, however, one excuse for Rakosi in the eco-
nomic field:
harmful influences [on our trade were not
only of an internal kind, there were also external
forces and factors at play, especially in the field
of foreign trade agreements . . . A considerable
part of our foreign trade debts derive from expendi-
tures and investments for security and defense . . .
the June 1953 Resolution pointed out there were also
excesses in this field. "
In another chapter, on national defense, Nagy speaks of
"Rakosi, who, as he used to say, had already burnt his hands
once by fulfilling excessive demands. !' Thus the conclusion
is obvious that Soviet pressure had obliged Rakosi to accept
this heavy burden on the Hungarian economy.
10. This did not prevent Mikoyan from rebuking the
Hungarians who had been summoned to Moscow for a "con-
ference " in June 1953, presumably after disorders had
broken out in Csepel and other industrial centers "at the time
of the June events in Berlin, Pilsen and Prague", as Nagy
puts it. Mikoyan particularly criticized the "excessive
development of the El3ungaria iron smelting industry.
Hungary has no iron ore, no coke . . . There is also extrava-
gance in some fields of investment'.." Anticipating somewhat,
it may be added here that, according to Nagy, these criticisms
were repeated by Mikoyan early in 1954, when he blamed the
Hungarian regime for having failed to correct the disproportion
between heavy and light industry sufficiently. "You have
wanted to build socialism - a task that has occupied us for 35
years - too rapidly. The situation in Russia is entirely
different . . . "
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11. In the agricultural field, the Soviet leaders also
advised a retreat.
f'When", Nagy writes, "we expressed some anxiety,
Comrade Molotov (and not Beria) reassured us as
follows- The collectives must not be disbanded by
fiat but, if they choose to disband voluntarily, they
should not be hindered. No harm will come of it."t
12. The Central Committee of the Hungarian Workers'
Party met in Budapest on 27-28 June. The post of general
secretary was abolished, Rakosi was appointed a member of
a three-man secretariat and a resolution was passed embody-
ing a severe condemnation of past practices and setting forth
the main principles of the New Course. Publication of the
text of the resolution was, however, successfully prevented
by Rako:si, who was to devote all his energies for the next
two years to its nullification and to the destruction of Nagy'
but its main lines can be inferred from Nagy's book and from
the speech he made on 4 July.
13. In the first place, Nagy writes, the relations
between Party and state were redefined "on the basis of the
principles worked out at the Qune 19 Moscow conference's'"
He does not make clear what the new relationship was to be,
beyond the fact that the powers of the head of the government
were to be considerably increased - in line with the increased
stature of Malenkov in the USSR. But, Nagy writes., "the
results achieved were soon defeated, because of the resistance
on the part of Matyas Rakosi" in line again with the rise of
Khrushchev at Malenkov's expense.
14. With, regard to economic problems, Nagy stated
frankly in a speech on 4 July that
"o . . the objectives of our augmented Five-Year
Plan are beyond our strength. Its implementation
is vastly overtaxing our resources . o . The develop-
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ment of a socialist heavy industry cannot be an. end.
in itself . . The general direction must be
modified. "
The new policy, Nagy said, would reduce the emphasis on
farm collectivization as well as on heavy industry, members
of collectives being allowed to withdraw after the harvest.
It would provide greater assistance to private farmers and
allow the restoration of private enterprise in retail trade and
handicrafts. Amnesty for minor political. offenders, the
abolition of internment camps, greater religious tolerance
and greater reliance on Parliament were also promised.
15. Under the impact of the immediate breakdown of
labor discipline and withdrawals of collective farm members,
Nagy and, much more sharply, Rakosi, were, however,
obliged to warn the workers a week later that labor discipline
had to be restored, that farm collectivization was still the
ultimate aim and that withdrawals from collectives would. not
be tolerated now, nor would they be entirely painless even in
October.
16. The Rumanian government began releasing stocks
of food in the cities and granting a number of easements to the
peasants in the first half of July. The New Course was formally
launched by Gheorghiu-Dej on 22 August 1953, Ithe eve of
"National Liberation Day; "" He admitted that the proportion
between the investment and consumption funds had been "un-
just" and that "the rate of industrialization had been forced,
especially as regards heavy industry", the result having been
"an unsatisfactory increase in the living standard'.." He prom-
ised to reduce the share of the national income allocated to
investments and to double the share allocated to agriculture
and consumer goods. At the same time, Gh.eorghiu-Dej prom-
ised more state help to private farmers, who still, produced
75% of the marketable food surplus, as well as an end to the
persecution of kulaks and to coercion to join collective farms.
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For the. workers he promised higher buying power but he
conceded this, could only come as a result of higher labor
productivity and lower production costs.
17. The Czechoslovak New Course was announced on
15 September 1953. Premier Siroky promised to reduce
investments in industry, chiefly heavy industry, in favor of
agriculture and housing and admitted the need of "an increase
in consumption and the safeguarding of improved living
standards: '.r
18. In Bulgaria the New Course, foreshadowed by a
reduction in food and consumer goods prices on 1 August
1953, was formally introduced by Prime Minister Chervenkov
on 8 September, the Bulgarian. "Liberation: Day.Y He, too,
promised greater stress on consumer goods and considerable
help to agricultural collectives. Two months later this
announcement was amended to include individual peasants.
19. The Poles apparently decided that their delay in
following the Moscow line was sufficient to set them apart
from the commonplace Satellites, especially after having
deliberately flouted the liberalization policy by the trial of
Bishop Kaczmarek and his associates and the arrest of
Cardinal Wyszynski on 26 September 1953; Premier Bierut
launched the "New Course" on 28 October 1953. Its main
features were the usual ones of encouragement for agricul-
tural production, both in the private and in the socialized
sector - which was. to: be strengthened - and the allocation of
a larger slice of the investment fund, which was not to be
reduced, to consumer goods industries. Characteristically
dissociating themselves from the Satellite mass, the Polish
leaders were careful to point out that "a rise in the living
standard . . . was made possible. . . by our achievements
in the expansion of industry,.!'
20. In Albania, Enver Hoxha promised a higher
standard of living in August 1953.
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21. The remaining months of the year were mainly
devoted in the Soviet Bloc to implementation of the New Course
economic principles. East Germany reduced taxes on wages
and consumer goods prices; Poland also reduced prices;
Rumania, Hungary and Bulgaria took steps. to encourage pro-
duction, chiefly of livestock, by decreeing higher prices for
farm produce; Hungary and Bulgaria liberalized labor laws,
granting greater freedom to workers to change jobs and other
advantages; Rumania reduced taxes on wages by 30%, revised
the wages of some categories of workers and took steps to
make more consumer goods available to the peasants; Albania
and Czechoslovakia made concessions to small private traders.
and artisans; and all Satellites reduced in varying degrees the
compulsory delivery quotas of farm produce.
22. A fact worthy of note is that in the summer of
1953 a number of grandiose plans demanding huge investments,
such as the Budapest subway, the Danube-Black Sea Canal, etc.
were tacitly abandoned. The promised higher ratio of invest-
ment in consumer goods appears to have been achieved mainly
by cutting down on unnecessary prestige investment. More-
over, Communist spokesmen as exemplified by Gheorghiu-Dej
admitted frankly that, in the last analysis, the standard of liv-
ing could rise only if prices could be reduced as a result of
increased labor productivity. The alternative possibility,
granting at least temporary priority to consumer goods, was
not mentioned publicly. 1 Under the circumstances, a vicious
circle was created; increased productivity could only be
attained if the workers were offered greater material, in.cen-
tives, but these would only become available if labor produc-
tivity rose.. What the governments obviously counted on. to
break the circle was constant hammering on the themes of
1It is, however, strongly advocated by Imre Nagy in his
apologia.
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greater labor and management efficiency, better use of
modern machinery, more intelligent planning, and more
"scientific" piece-work rates, as well as on the fruits of
previous, investments. Bierut and Siroky even promised
15% increases in the 1954 standard. of living.
23. In the field of foreign affairs all Satellite govern-
ments had, by the end of the year, normalized their, diplon- tic
relations with. Yugoslavia. They exchanged, or agreed to
exchange, ambassaadorg, or, in the case of Albania, proceeded
to resume diplomatic relations. Between Yugoslavia and her
neighbors, negotiations were .lso begun for resumption of
traffic and trade and settlement of border problems; mutual
hostile propaganda practically ceased.
The Year 1954
24. In the USSR, the most notable event of 1954 was
Khrushchev's gradual rise to the position of "most collective"
among the collective leaders. Meanwhile, "liberalization"
made little progress. It is true that the power of the Soviet
police was reduced by dividing its, authority and making it
responsible to the Council of Ministers as a whole. But the
change was undoubtedly motivated less by solicitude for the
masses than by the leadership's collective opposition to the
concentration of all police powers in one man's hands, as
they had been in those of the recently executed Beria. More-
over, the press continued to mention periodically the duty of
the police to respect "socialist legality" and the duty of the
Party to keep an eye on the police.
25. In the economic sphere, February and March
1954 witnessed fresh promises to increase the availability
of housing and consumer goods, particularly food. But both
Khrushchev and Malenkov warmed that attention to the further
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development of heavy industry, "the foundation of Soviet
economy", would not be "relaxed"; rather it would be developed
by every means e ."' The chief satisfaction given the consumers
was the reaffirmation by Party Secretary Pospelov of the 1953
promise to increase capital investment in light industry in 1954
by 84%. But the final. figures for 1954 showed that not even the
revised production goals set in 1953 had been attained in such
branches as meat, fish, canned goods, cotton textiles, etc.
As a matter of fact, by that time it was clear that increased
"emphasis" on consumer goods had not meant, as many people
had thought, that they would be given priority over the produc-
tion industry, the basis of Communist power, but merely that
the disproportion between the two would be somewhat reduced.
In the meantime, the agricultural development of the "virgin
lands" was being vigorously pushed by Khrushchev. As a pre-
caution, however, additional incentives were given to farmers
in June 1954 in the form of reduced delivery quotas for kol -
khozes, higher prices for state purchases, and the cancella-
tion of some obligatory deliveries from individual plots.
26. Political events in the Satellite countries in 1954
were practically routine. In Bulgaria, the ostensible aim of
power decentralization was pursued by the creation, in Feb-
ruary 1954, of the post of first party secretary, occuped by
Todor Zhivkov. In the following month, Boleslaw Bierut
relinquished the Polish premiership to the former Social
Democrat, Jozef Cy:rankiewi.cz, but remained as first party
secretary. In April, Gheorghiu-Dej surrendered one of his
positions in Rumania; he decided to keep the premiership.
Apparently there was at that time no agreement in the Satel-
lite Orbit as to whether Malenkov or Khrushchev was the top
man in the USSR, although, if they had waited until. May the
fate of a dispatch setit to the New York Times by its Moscow
correspondent would have provided an unmistakeable clue to
the impending solution. This dispatch, which included a
statement that in a Communist country "the first secretaryship
of the Communist Party is the biggest job in that ccou.ntry",
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was, first "killed" by the Moscow censors, then released
unchanged two days later. Accordingly, in Albania, when
Enver Hoxha had finally to choose, he kept the first party
secretaryship and let Mehmet Shehu have the premiership
(July 1954).
27. The more "civilized" aspect of the New Course
was presumably reflected in the circumstance that, following
the Soviet example in the case of Beria, trials of party
traitors. and deviators were no longer held in public and accom-
panied by abject confessions of guilt. However, in March,
Gabor Peter, head of the Hungarian Security Police up to
January 1953, was given a life sentence "for crimes against
the state:'.' In April, Lucretiu Patrascanu, one of the earliest
and ablest Rumanian Communist leaders, who had been ejected
from the government in 1948 on the charges of "nationalist
deviationism" and of having been in the pay of the US, the on31r
man in Rumania who might have played the role of a Gomulka
or Imre Nagy, was tried and executed and six of his associates
were sentenced to long terms. of imprisonment. In Czecho-
slovakia several Slovak Communist leaders received long
prison terms. In Albania eight men were executed in April
on the charge of plotting a revolt.
28. It is difficult to understand why the Rumanian
Communists thought fit to mar the comparatively better
record they (and the Polish Communists) had had so far in
the matter of bloody intra-Party purges, by the execution. of
Patrascanu six years after his, alleged crime. One hesitates
to credit Gheorghiu-Dej with sufficient farsightedness to have
planned to forestall the occurrence of a Rumanian October.
It may well be, however, that Gheorghiu.-Dej had good reasons.
to nip in the bud growing subversive tendencies by proving
that he was not too "soft" to deal with them as the Czechs had
with Slansky, the Bulgarians. with Kostov, and the Hungarians
with Rajk.
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29. Presumably satisfied that the Patrascanu lesson
had sunk in, the Rumanian Party leadership in August
announced another amnesty which included minor political
offenders. It was content to sentence former Finance Minister
Vasile Luca - purged together with Ana Pauker and Teohari
Georgescu in 1952 ,- to life imprisonment, although he was
convicted on the serious charge of economic sabotage and
was declared responsible for no less than all the country?s
economic woes. For the first time too, in Rumania, a num-
ber of general officers. of the former Royal Army and of non-
Communist intellectuals and politicians, who had not been
heard of for years, reappeared at public functions.
30. In all. the Satellites, but especially in Poland, where,
as a result of the Swia.tlo revelations, the secret police were
rendered almost powerless, a relaxation of police terrorism
and arbitrariness was noticeable throughout the year.
31. Party congresses were held in March 1954 in
Bulgaria, Poland and East Germany. Their main task was
to approve revisions in. the party statutes, as well as the
organizational, changes in the top leadership mentioned above,
the chief characteristic of which was closer conformity with
the Soviet model. The new Bulgarian Central Committee
included a number of Kostov adherents purged in. 1950.
32. A notable feature of the new Polish party statute
was the belated institution of centralized control over village
party organizations, state farms, MTS, etc., accompanied
by a similar tightening of control in the field of local admin-
istration, together with the assurance that collectivization
would henceforth be entirely voluntary.
33. The decisions of the 3rd Hungarian Party Con-
gress, held at the end of May 1954, confirmed the New Course
adopted by the June 1953 plenum and condemned those who
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oppos:ed'it. They included revision of the Party statutes
on the Soviet pattern - with emphasis. on.collective leadership
as opposed to one-man rule - and reactivation of the long
dormant Patriotic People's Front, a coalition of parties and
mass. organizations. The need for this front organization had
beenur.ged by Nagy as a. means of enlisting the support of the
masses for the Communist Party. In spite of the Congress's
approval, however, the PPF was, Nagy writes in his book,
consistently sabotaged by Rakosi and his men, who saw in it
a potential rival of the Party and a powerful tool in the hands
of Nagy against whom they continued a relentless but un-
declared war.
34. Nagy, Rakosi, and Rakosi 1s right hand man Gerd,
agreed at the Congress only on the fact that the economic
situation continued to be bad. Gerd asserted that the value
of per capita production had been 6. 6% lower in the first
quarter of 1954 than in the same period of 1953, while wages
had risen lp. 6% and. costs had increased. Rakosi could not
yet afford to attack Moscow's nominee openly, so he blamed
the weakening of Party unity and effectiveness on rightist
opportunism, meaning excessive liberalization, but, equitably,
he also attributed part of the responsibility to leftist sectar-
ianism, .i. e. continued adherence to the old course which he
admitted had caused much damage. In the economic field,
Rakosi announced that the Second Five-Year Plan, to begin
in 1956, mould continue to follow New Course principles -
'much greater emphasis on consumer goods and food a key
feature'.!' Favorable results could also be expected from
the integration of Orbit economies, which was to be actively
pursued, In his book, Nagy, as was to be expected, places
all the blame for the disappointing results of the New Course
on its sabotage by the Rakosi forces. Nevertheless, at the
October 1954 CC Plenum, Nagy once again succeeded in
obtaining a reindorsement of the New (Course.
35. All Satellite budgets for 1954, except the Polish,
showed reductions in funds for investments and a shift in
favor of consumer goods.. The Rumanian budget showed the
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most pronounced changes, the appropriations for agriculture
and consumer goods increasing by 60 and 67. 7% respectively,
while defense outlays dropped from 18 to 11% of total expend-
iture. In Hungary, too, the share of defense outlays dropped
from 14 to 11%, but in the other Satellites they were practi-
cally unchanged.
36. The effort to improve living standards included
general price reductions in March and April in Czechoslovakia,
Bulgaria and Poland and wage and pension increases and. a cut
of meat and fat prices in Hungary - said to have been preceded
by cattle purchases in Switzerland. In May, a Bulgarian decree,
after a preamble repeating very much the same criticisms as
those voiced at the Hungarian Party Congress, listed a number
of consumer goods, the production of which "must" increase
substantially by the end of 1955.
37 Rumania was the only Satellite that did not hold
a Party Congress in 1954. In his customary 22 August
Liberation Day speech, Gheorghiu-Dej claimed that "the rate
of increase in the production of consumer goods exceeds the
rate of increase for capital goods, in accordance with the
August 1953 Party Plenum decision. '' By late fall, the
Rumanian leaders were at long last able to follow the example
of the other Orbit members and to abolish rationing. This,
the December 1954 announcement said, had been made pos-
sible not only by the good corn harvest, but by the favorable
prospects for consumer goods production as a result of the
27% increase in investment in light industry and the 40%
increase in agricultural investment, which should soon bear
fruit. The announcement promised a slight wage increase
but again made it clear that a real reduction in the cost of
living could only be achieved by more and better-.work at all
levels. Two weeks later, in order to, enhance the peasants'
material interest in production, the government raised the
prices of animal products, reduced grain delivery quotas and
granted credits to individual farmers.
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38. In September 1954, the Rumanian government
announced the cession by the USSR, on.what were claimed
to be very favorable terms, of its shares in twelve of the
fourteen joint Rumanian-Soviet enterprises; in October, the
Bulgarian government made a similar announcement with
regard to three out of the four Bulgarian-Soviet enterprises
and in November Hungary announced the cession.of all four
joint enterprises in that country. The intent was to remove
an all too obvious source of popular resentment but, as the
allegedly favorable terms: were not made public, it is doubt-
ful whether that. aim was achieved.
39. Hungary's economic troubles were underlined in
September 1954 by the belated admission that some long-term
capital investments had been abandoned and the completion. of
others, such as. the Stalin Steel Works, postponed. The state-
ment in the declaration issued at the end of the People's
Patriotic Front Congress (October 23-24) that a "consistent
fight must be waged against any distortion, departure or
deviation" from the New Course policies was interpreted as
a confirmation of the general belief that the Party continued
to be sharply split on the subject. Even if the New Course
did prevail, it was a paper victory, its actual implementation
being successfully sabotaged by its opponents. Bela Szalai
revealed, for example, that by the end of September actual
agricultural investments had amounted to only half the sums
allocated.
40. The result was to put Hungary at the bottom of
the list when the final figures. on industrial output in the
Satellites for 1954 were published.. The increase claimed
over 1953 was barely 3. 1% as against 4.4% by Czecho-
slovakia, 6. 6% by Rumania, 8. 7% by Bulgaria, 10% by East
Germany, and 11% by Poland. In 1953, the first year of the
New Course, increases had still ranged between 10%
(Czechoslovakia) and 17% (Poland). Even more remarkable
was, the fact that Hungary admitted an actual decrease in
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heavy industry output. The other Satellites claimed larger
rates of increase #br: consumer than for capital goods, with
the exception of Poland, which reported equal rates of
increase. Czechoslovakia blamed its poor showing chiefly
on the "declining tendency in the development of labor
productivity! !'
41. In the land collectivization sector, only Poland
reported any significant progress, although at a slower rate
than in 1953. Hungary had not recouped the heavy losses of
1953 and Czechoslovakia admitted a reduction of about 10%a.
Rumania, after having pushed permanent agricultural associa-
tions rather than collectives during the first part of the year,
shifted to encouragement of a still less advanced form of
"socialist" agriculture, temporary "production associations",
on the theory that if children were first encouraged to crawl
they might be more easily persuaded to walk.
42. In the field of foreign relations, peaceful co-
existence was furthered by a show of cordiality toward
Western diplomats at official receptions in Warsaw in July
and in Bucharest in August and by friendly gestures to Greece
on the part of Hungary, Rumania, and, to a lesser extent,
Bulgaria. Rumania and Czechoslovakia exchanged ambassadors
with Yugoslavia, which left Poland as the only Orbit country
not to have "normalized" diplomatic or trade relations with
Tito.
The Year 1955
43. By this time, the majority, if not all, of the
Communist leaders in the USSR had satisfied themselves that
the critical period of transition after the death of the dictator
had been successfully weathered and that there was, there-
fore, no more reason to pander to the popular wish for higher
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standards of living at the price of retarding Russia's and their
own achievement of world primacy. The ambiguities and
pretenses in the matter of consumer goods priority w-ere
definitely abandoned on 25 January 1955, when Khrushchev
in a speech to the Party Central Committee unequivocally
reaffirmed the priority of heavy industry. The new line was
to the effect that this was the correct long-term method of
increasing the people's welfare. The shortages of food, the
one element in the standard of living the regime could not
disregard without impairing industrial production itself, and
the shortages of equally indispensable agricultural raw
materials, were to be soled by a further large expansion of
the virgin land tillage program in the East and a great
increase in corn planting for livestock feed. Khrushchev's
speech was followed on 8 February by the "resignation" of
Premier Malenkov. It was therefore hardly accidental that
the final figures for 1955 revealed that production of consumer
goods had increased one-third less than the four-year average,
While that of heavy industry had increased at the same rate.
At the same time, the increase in the people's purchasing
power in 1953 and 1954 was nullified by doubling the amount
of the annual loan "subscription" and by higher taxes.
44. In the Satellite countries, the only significant
developments reflecting Communist Party troubles - and the
fall of Malenkov - occurred in Hungary. According to Na,gy's
somewhat sketchy account, the fact that the Central Committee
had in Octqbeii' 1954 "unanimously" decided to support the
"June policy" and to eliminate opposition had convinced Rakosi
and his adherents that, if the right wing were allowed to carry
out the October resolutions, "there would be no hope of a
return to the extreme left wing policy:"! They therefore
"began openly attacking the October resolutions" and Nagy
found it "impossible to break down the opposition through
purely party methods, to which I had always adhered . . .
without the help and support of the Party apparatus", which
was controlled by Rakosi. Then, in the winter of 1954-1955,
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7 usedmy absence enforced by ill-
Nagy fell sick. "CRakoia-i
ness to make the Political Committee accept a resolution
condemning the policy of the New Course and putting the
blame on me. "
45. On 4 March 1955 - less than a month after
Malenkov's demotion - the Hungarian Party's Central Com-
mittee adopted a resolution which claimed that its June 1953
decisions, taken to eliminate "the mistakes committed in the
building of socialism", had been "entirely correct. '.' Never-
theless, as the drop in ixzdustrial productivity, the rise in
production costs, the 1"ity of work discipline, the decline
in agricultural production and especially in agricultural
deliveries, which had temporarily been masked by inroads
in the state reserves and reductions in investments, could
not be denied, the resolution asserted that the reasons were
"primarily to be sought in the anti-Marxist, anti-Party and
opportunist views which of late - since June 1953 - have
spread in the Party, the state apparatus and other spheres
The result has been that industrial development has been
halted, Socialist accumulation decreased. and state and civic
discipline have deteriorated." "These rightist views", the
resolution continued., "were able to become so dangerous
because Comrade Nagy supported Lhe in his speeches
and articles. He advocated them in the first place." They
had manifested themselves "first of all in the distortion of
the correct policy of Socialist industrialization" and in the
"spreading of an atmosphere of complacency in the working
class. '.'
46. Nagy was further accused specifically of having
neglected "widespread political, economic and organizational
work in the interests of the consolidation and enlargement of
the kalkhoz movement", of failing to stress the importance of
produce collection and of having tolerated right-wing tenden-
cies "aimed at reducing the leading role and importance of
the Party in order to make the Patriotic People's Front the
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authority for controlling the State organizations and councils."!
The Resolution concluded with a reaffirmation of the Party's
fundamental aim of raising the people's standard of living.
To that end it directed the Political Committee to work out
the principle s. of the Second Five-Year Plan, which were
listed, presumably in the order of their importance, as "the
priority'of heavy industry and within it, that of the means of
production, the further development and modernization of
agriculture, the laying of the foundations of Socialism in agri-
culture `and further increase in the production of consumer
goods . . " At the same time "an uncompromising ideo-
logical struggle must be waged against every deviation from
the Party's. policy - in the present case, primarily against
right-wing deviation. ''
47. The Resolution prescribed for 1955 a 5.7% in-
crease over 1954 in industrial production, a 7. 3% increase
in agricultural production and a "considerable increase in
consumer goods production';?' During the succeeding weeks,
Rakosi endeavored to "clarify" the revised agrarian. policy
in a number of speeches.. The clarification boiled down to
the conclusion that pending the achievement by "political
enlightenment" of full collectivization by 1960, the regime
would continue to assist the independent peasants who still
farmed 70%a of the land.
48. As was. to be expected after the March resolution
of the Central Committee, Imre Nagy was relieved of the
premiership and also dismissed from the Political Bureau
and Central Committee (14 April 1955). Nagy's successor
in the premiership was his, first deputy, Andres Hegedus,
and Rakosi was once again the undisputed boss.. Writing in
the winter of 1955-1956, Nagy described the situation which
developed after his' ouster as one in which "terrorism and
fear of reprisal killed the sincerity 6f Party members" and
"the gravity of which has had no equal since the liberation'.'"
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Moreover, he charged that the Party was no longer under the
leadership of the elected body, the Political Committee, but
of the Party apparatus, and collective leadership was a myth.
49. In spite of the renewed emphasis on heavy indus-
try, echoing the Moscow line, all Satellite plans for 1955
actually betrayed the physical and moral impossibility of per-
severing on the road of high pressure industrialization and
disregard of consumer demands. Total investment plans were
substantially reduced, while the shares of agriculture and light
industry were increased. In Poland and Hungary the usual pro-
portion between the rate of growth of light and heavy industry
was allegedly reversed, the former being scheduled to grow
twice as fast, but a Warsaw, broadcast of 18 February 1955
took pains to explain that this was an exceptional measure,
"only warranted by the need to remove the disproportion
created in the past..' In Czechoslovakia and Albania, approx-
imately equal rates of growth were scheduled. Only the GDR
retained the old proportion. 2 The chief interest of these planned
figures is to be found in the implicit admissirn by the Communist
regimes themselves of the low prevailing standards of living
and the consequent disaffection of the population. For promise
and fulfillment are two different things. Gheorghiu-Dej's state-
ment to the Rumanian Second Party Congress in December 1955
provides a good illustration:
". . . No proper attention was paid to the development
of light and food industries. In recent years investment
1
In Hungary the allocation to agriculture was, according to Imre
Nagy, reduced by 30% and only 8. 7% of industrial investments
went to light industry. In Poland also it has been calculated
that the share of heavy industry would still be about eleven
times as large.
2
The Rumanian and :Bulgarian figures did not reveal the rela-
tive share;;of light and heavy industry.
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funds allocated to consumer goods industries have
been increased considerably and so have the achieve-
ments. Nevertheless, the allocated funds were not
used. '{
50. Czechoslovakia, Poland, Rumania and Bulgaria
announced further price reductions in April 1955, and Rumania.
repeated the performance in December. Czechoslovakia
reduced farm delivery quotas, Bulgaria granted further con-
cessions to collective farms but not to individual farmers,
while Hungary issued a series of decrees embodying a return
to a:;har'.si policy toward individual farmers,
51. Throughout the area 1955 turned out to be a com-
paratively good year from the economic point of view,
e*pecially in the southern Satellites. Albania, Bulgaria,
Rumania and Hungary were favored by better than average
weather and by the circumstance that the wet summer be ne -
fitted corn, which, in deference to Khrushchev, had been
planted much more extensively than in the previous years.
The Rumanian leaders could triumphantly announce that pre-
war grain production had at last not only been. equalled but
even surpassed.
52. As in the USSR, a notable feature of 1955 in the
Satellites was the crescendo in Party propaganda emphasis
on the need to decentralize controls, to increase management
efficiency, labor productivity and the care and utilization of
expensive machinery, to save raw materials, to stop paying
unauthorized and exaggerated wages, etc., shortcomings
which were growing increasingly serious instead of decreas.
ing as time went on. The Party leaders realized that the
pre-1953 rate of industrial investment in new machinery,
buildings, etc. could not be restored without grave political
danger and that even if it could, there was no advantage in
producing machines. which lay, idle, raw materials which went
to waste and shoddy goods which no one wanted to buy. On
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the other hand, labor reserves were by now exhausted and
could no longer be drawn upon to increase production.
53. Although none of the Satellites found it necessary
to publish a breakdown of the industrial output figures for
1955, they all claimed a general improvement in the economic
situation. The economic crisis which hit them in 1953, forc-
ing them to adopt the New Course, and the slow recovery in
1954 and 1955, are clearly reflected even in the official rates
of increase in total industrial production claimed for the
period 1952-1955:
1952
1953
1954
1.955
20
22
10.7
1.4.9
18
12
8.7
9.6
18.3
10
4.4
1.0
15.6
12.5
10
10.6
23.6.
11.8
3. 1
8.2
20
17.5
11
11
23
14.4
6.6
14
54. The Satellite regimes showed reluctance to
revive the collectivization drive in 1955, on the theory pre-
sumably that it was best to let well enough alone pending a
consolidation of the situation. At the end of 1955, Hungary
claimed,that collective farms and permanent farming asso-
ciations comprised 22.4% of the arable land, as against
26% in 1953 and 18% in 1954; Bulgaria claimed a slightly
over 50% ratio of collectivization; Rumania about 15%;
Albania about 13%; Czechoslovakia about 30% (as against 35%
in 1953); East Germany about 20%; and Poland about 13%. An
interesting development occurred in Hungary where a decree
legalized the setting aside of 10% of the collective income to
be distributed as land rent - a practice which Marx would
hardly have approved. Shortly afterwards, the Rumanian
regime went one step further and gave its blessing to the
Albania
Bulgaria
Czechoslovakia
E. Germany
Hungary
Poland
Rumania
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practice, which had developed. spontaneously; of forming
farming associations on the basis of the members' own
decision on the amount of joint income to be distributed as
ground rent.
55. With the exception of Hungary, there were no
political upset& in the Satellites int1955: In October 1955,
Gheorgbiu-Dej decided to conform to the prevailing Orbit
pattern 4nd resumed the first secretaryship of the Rumanian
Party, Cehivu Stoica being appointed premier. The promotion
of Josif Chi.sinevski,, who had been in eclipse under the New
Course, to the position of Party secretary, was widely inter-
preted as a victory of the Stalinist wing of the Party. This
reshuffle was followed in December by the meeting of the
long deferred Congress: of the Rumanian Workers' Party,
marking the demise, rather than the birth, as in the other
Satellites, of the New Course. Gheorghiu-Dej gave no ink-
ling of any intention to countenance greater freedom of ex-
pression or of nationalism in his satrapy. Rather, he signi-
fied that the threat to Party unity had to be combatted with
unflagging vigilance, although he implied that the most danger-
ous elements, the right-wing deviationists. Pauker, Luca, and.
Teohari Georgescu, had happily already been purged (in 1.951).
More specifically, Miron Constantinescu spoke of the "more
damaging effect of the appearance in some books . . . of
certain bourgeois nationalist manifestations which must be
unmasked and unsparingly eliminated
56. Similar strictures and warnings were voiced in
Hungary by Rakosi, mainly referring to literary production
during the Nagy premiership. Although Cardinal Mindszenty
was "promoted" from prison to house arrest in July and
another amnesty, for "war criminals" was announced in
Rumania in September, liberalization made but little headway
in the Satellites in 1955 with the one exception of Poland.
Publication in a literary magazine of Adam Waczykts Poem
for Adults, a bitter criticism of life under Communism, was..
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without precedent in a Communist country and4what was almost
even more sensational, the poet was not molested by the
authorities. In September, the release of the Catholic priests
held on political grounds was announced, and the general relax-
ation in the accustomed atmosphere of coercion became so
marked that it became known as the "Thaw".
57. Summing up the internal situation in the Satel-
lite countries in 1955, it may be saidjiriat by the end of the
year the same leaders who had held power under Stalin had
once again consolidated their positions, Poland being the
only country in which they manifested a new and puzzling
spirit of tolerance. The Communist regimes had been greatly
helped by the better harvest, which, together with lower prices,
somewhat greater availability of consumer goods and higher
wages, made possible by the reduced investments in heavy
industry, accounted for a modest improvement in living stand-
ards. The country- showing the least economic improvement
*as Hungary, chiefly as a result of the conflict between the
Nagy and Rakosi factions. But Nagy, writing at the turn of
the year 1955-1956, is authority for the view that the political
tension was even more serious than the economic situation.
It was caused by
" . the fact that a leadership stratum, foreign to
the Hungarian people, is opposing the ideals of
national independence, sovereignty, equality, as well
as national feelings and progressive traditions . . .
The policy based on the March and April_d952 CC
resolutions evoked passivity and resistance of the
Party member . . "
The policy, he concluded with remarkable foresight, was
"driving the people into the arms of reaction and bringing
the country to the brink of an unprecedentedly grave political
and economic crisis."
58. It was in the field of international relations that
the New Course went furthest in 1955. In May the USSR
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submitted a disarmament plan embodying a number of Western
demands, signed a treaty providing for the end of the Austrian
occupation. and sent a large delegation headed by Khrushchev
to Belgrade, where an attempt was made to reestablish the
former ties between the Soviet and Yugoslav Communist
partie:s to prepare the return. of Yugoslavia.to the Communist
Bloc. In this Ih.rushchev was. unsuccessful, in spite of his,
sensational admission of Soviet responsibility for the rift,
thinly disguised under a reference to the "provocative role"
of Beria. Of unsuspected. significance at the time was the
mention in the joint communique of the admissibility of "dif-
ferent. forms of Socialism," In its 3 June 1955 issue, Pravda
explained that "Soviet-Yugoslav consolidation would be facil-
itated by the condition, contained in the declaration, that ques-
tions of internal structure, differences in social systems and
differences. in the concrete forms of the development of social-
ism are exclusively a matter for the peoples of the respective
countries'.'! On the other hand, the East-West j4rift was under-
lined by the conclusion on 14 May 1955 of the Warsaw Pact,
which provided a convenient cover of legality for the mainte_?
raa oe:cf Soviet troops, in Hungary and Rumania, after the evacua-
tion of Austria, as well as in Poland.
59. The preliminaries of the Geneva "Summit" Con-
ference had encouraged the belief among the Satellite peoples
that it might bring about some sort of improvement of their
status. However, the Soviet press quickly killed these hopes -
and reassured the Satellite regimes., by declaring that the
USSR would never admit a discussion of a "non-existent East
European problem" # and the conference ended in an atmosphere
of general good will, without mention of the Satellites. Coupled
with Molotov$s boast in February of Soviet atomic superiority,
the Geneva meetings: were generally represented.in the Orbit
as proofs of the declining power of the West, and the Western
proposals concerning Germany were cited as threats to Poland's
and Czechoslovakians territorial integrity. The admission in
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December 1955 of Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Albania
to UN membership without any visible improvement in their
qualifications was a further asset to the Satellite regimes
and a corresponding disappointment for their opponents.
60. In spite of the spectacular USSR-Yugoslav
rapprochement, Satellite relations with Yugoslavia did not
becox perceptibly more cordial in 1955, being limited to
the conclusion of technical and trade agreements. The main
hurdle, but not the only one, was presumably Soviet lack of
encouragement for closer relations between them before the
future relationship between the Soviet and Yugoslav Commis--
nist parties had been clarified to Moscow's own satisfaction.
The 20th Congress of the CPSU
61. Although the main accomplishment of the 20th
Congress of the CPSU, which met from February 14-25., 1956,
consisted in approving measures and policies long since put
into effect by the Party leaders, still the facts that a radical
change in the methods of government applied for twenty years
was solemnly sanctioned, that it was accompanied by Khrush-
chev's staggering denunciation of Stalin and followed by the
first open rebellion among the captive nations, endow the Con-
gress with peculiar importance. In the following pages, those
aspects of the 20th Congress which may be considered to have
particularly affected the Communist parties in the Satellite
countries will be briefly reviewed.
62. Under the impact of Khrushchev's sensational
charges and the implicit repudiation of Stalinist methods,. it
is frequently overlooked that the first act of the 20th Congress
was to reaffirm Stalin's basic aim to achieve within the fore-
seeable future world hegemony for the USSR. To achieve this
aim, the rapid expansion of the Orbit's heavy industry was an
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indispensable condition which had been implicitly shelved
during Malenkov`s ascendency in 1953-54. For the New
Course's strong emphasis on consumer goods ruled out the
degree of austerity needed for rapid industrialization, which
was limited only by human docility and capacity for heavy work.
The formal re-adoption of Stalin's basic aim found its expres-
sion in the ratification by the Congress of the Sixth Five-Year
Plan, which set even higher production targets for heavy indus-
try by 1960 than Stalin himself had contemplated in his 1946
program and restored the 1950-55 capital and consumer goods
output ratio, 1 merely increasing within the latter the share of
agriculture and housing at the expense of other light industries.
The final resolution of the Congress called for "an advanced
growth of heavy industry" and added lamely, "At the same
time, the Congress thinks that the level of production achieved
at present makes possible a rapid development of the produc-
tion not only of the means of production but also of consumer
goods. " This reaffirmation of Stalinism's essential aim,
coupled with the repudiation of its methods, was further em-
phasized in the Resolution by the statement: "The Congress
notes that the Central Committee opposed in good time the
attempts to abandon the general line of the Party for the pref-
erential development of heavy industry, as well as. the con-
fusion in the question of the building of socialism in our
country . . . "
63. Prominent among the themes on the agenda
1The failure of Soviet industry to fulfill the 1956 production
plan forced the leadership in February 1957 to reduce the
growth rate planned for the year from 11%6 to 7. 1%, the lowest
since the war. But the priority of producer aver consumer
goods was even slightly increased. The concomitant reorgan-
ization of the Soviet economy would indicate, however, that
the setback is viewed merely as the result of growing pains
which the eform is expected to cure.
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affecting developments in the Satellites, either directly or
indirectly, were the "cult of personality" and collective
leadership, approval of the "strengthening of Communist
legality, " suppression of "arbitrariness" - somewhat counter-
balanced, however, by the appeal to "high political vigilance"
- and promises of higher wages and pensions, of improved
living conditions and shorter work days, the need of improve-
ments in the Soviet :Party organization and decentralization
of the economy.
64. The numerous passages in the Resolution devoted
to foreign relations, in particular to peaceful coexistence, to
the non-inevitability of war and to the allegedly novel possi-
bility of Communist victories in capitalist countries by non-
violent, parliamentary means, were of little concern to the
Satellite countries. On the other hand, the paragraphs deal-
ing with the subject of "different roads to socialism" certainly
had strong repercussions. The Resolution quoted Lenin's
dictum: "All nations will come to socialism but all of them
will not arrive there in a similar way; each will make its own
contribution to one or another form of democracy . . . ,
which could be used as a justification of "national" Commun-
ism. However, there is no doubt that the framers of the
Resolution had not meant it that way. For the next paragraph
stated:
"Now, parallel to the Soviet form of transforma-
tion of society onto socialist foundations, there is
also the form of people's democracy. It has under-
gone an all-around testing during ten years and fully
proved itself. In the people's democracies, there are
quite a few nuances and differences in accordance with
the conditions of each country . . . It is fully in accord-
ance with the laws of development that the forms of
transition of countries to socialism will in the future
differ -increasingly. At the same time it is not neces-
sary that the . . . transition . . . should be connected
with civil war. "
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The real intent of the paragraph was obviously to reassure
squeamish near-Communists in capitalist countries but
certainly not to signify advance approval of changes in the
countries of people's democracy, a form which had "fully
proved itself" and in which the differences called for by vary-
ing conditions had allegedly already been taken into account. 1
65. In the light of subsequent Soviet actions, in Poland
and particularly in Hungary, Khrushchev's views on. Stalin's
reign of terror, as he expressed them in his "secret" speech,
are of special interest.
a. Khrushchev accused Stalin of having, since
..1935, "practiced brutal violence, not only toward
everything which opposed him but also toward that
which seemed, to his capricious and despotic char-
acter, contrary to his concepts" and of having
"absolutely not tolerated collegiality in leadership
and in work, " instead of working through "persuasion,
explanation and patient coope ration with people. "
Ignoring the French Revolution, Khrushchev alleged
that Stalin had originated the "enemy of the people"
concept which made it unnecessary to prove ideo-
logical error and had "made possible the usage of the
most cruel repression, violating all norms of revol-
utionary legality against anyone who disagreed with
Stalin . . " ''Arbitrary behavior by one person
encouraged and permitted arbitrariness in others.
The strictly practical reasons why Khrushchev con-
1Significantly, too, although the particular contributions of
the remote Chinese People's Republic were mentioned in. this
context, those of Yugoslavia were not, although it had been
in the joint Soviet-Yugoslav statement of June 1955 that Lenin's
dictum on the subject had first been reaffirmed.
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demned Stalin's brutal methods appear from the
following statements: "Mass arrests and deportations"
and "execution without trial and without normal. inves-
tigation created conditions of insecurity, fear and
even despair. This of course did not contribute toward
unity of the Party ranks and of all strata of the working
people but on the contrary, brought about annihilation
and the expulsion from the Party of workers who were
loyal but inconvenient to Stalin" and "who were wasted
rather than being drawn to our side. "
Contrasting Stalin's "brutal" with Lenin's
"educational" method, Khrushchev defended the latter
against any charge of softness:
"Vladimir Ilyich demanded uncompromising deal-
ings with the enemies of the Revolution and of the
working class and when necessary resorted ruthlessly
to such methods . . . You will recall only Lenin's
fight with the Socialist Revolutionary anti-Soviet
uprising, with the counterrevolutionary kulaks in 1918
and with others . . . when he used the most extreme
methods . . . However he used them only against
actual class enemies and not against those who
blunder, who err, and whom it was possible to lead
through ideological influence. "
Furthermore, Khrushchev pointed out, Lenin
had used severe methods only "in the most necessary
cases, when the exploiting classes were still in
existence and were vigorously opposing the Revolu-
tion . . . " while Stalin had used them "when the
Revolution was already victorious, when the Soviet
state was strengthened . . . " and not only against
actual enemies but also against "individuals who had
not committed any crimes against the Party and the
Soviet government. Here we see no wisdom, but
only brutal force . . .
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b. ' Khr shchev's charges: against Stalin included
"grave pertr"ersion of party principles, party democ-
racy and revolutionary legality . . .. violation of the
principles of collective leadership and the accumula-
tion of immense and limitless power in the hands of
one person, . . cult of the individual, . . "'
failure to consult even the members of the CC of the
Political Bureau, mass deportations of whole nations,
military errors, -gross ignorance of the problems. of
agriculture and complete isolation from the people.
c. In the light of subsequent events, two further
charges are of interest. Condemning Stalin's: repres-
sion of an allegedly separatist organization in Georgia
in 1951 and 1952, Khrushchev asked sarcastically:
"Could it be possible . that nationalist tendencies
grew so much that there was a danger of Georgia
leaving the Soviet Union? . . This was. of course
nonsense . . Everybody knows how Georgia had
developed economically and culturally under Soviet
rule . er
d. Speaking of the break with Tito, Khrushchev
charged that the Yugoslav leader's mistakes and
shortcomings "were magnified in a monstrous manner
by Stalin, which resulted in a breach of relations
with a friendly country. " There were "no problems
which could not have been solved through Party dis-
cussions among comrades. " Recalling Stalin's
"delusions of grandeur" which led him to boast:
"I will shake my little finger and the re will be no
more Tito, " Khrushchev commented that they had
paid dearly for those delusions. For no matter what
else Stalin shook, "Tito did not fall. Why? The red,-
son was that . . . Tito had behind him a state and a
people who had gone through a severe school of fight-
ing for liberty and independence, a people which gave
support to its leaders. "
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e, On the other hand, speaking of Stalin's crimes
and errors which he had described, Khrushchev denied
that these were the deeds of a giddy despot. He
considered that this should be done in the interest of
the Party, of the working masses, in the name of the
defense of the revolution's gains. In this lies the
whole tragedyl " In other words, Stalin had been.
animated by the best intentions. If he had made mis-
takes, it was mainly due to his lack of the modesty
considered by Lenin essential "for a real Bolshevism. "
As a result, he had been corrupted by those who had
"excessively extolled" him and resorted to excesses
of cruelty which did more harm than good to the cause.
66. The conclusions to be drawn from Khrushchevis
"secret" speech and the other proceedings. of the Congress,
insofar as they are relevant to the subject matter of this
paper, can be briefly stated as follows: The Khrushchev
"line" was neo-Stalinist, not anti-Stalinist. There was to be
no change in the chief Party aim set by Stalin. His hard
methods, too, had been basically correct but he had applied
them without proper discrimination and carried them to
extremes. "We must affirm, " Khrushchev said, "that the
Party fought a serious fight against the Trotskyites, the
Rightists and Bourgeois Nationalists" - an allusion to the
Georgian and Ukrainian "national committees; '" of the early
twentied. "This ideological fight was carried out success-
fully . . Here Stalin played a positive role. " If in 1928-29,
Khrushchev continued, the Rightists, had prevailed "and we
had been oriented toward 'cotton-dress' industrialization or
the kulak, etc., we would not have now a powerful heavy
industry or the kolkhozes, we would find ourselves dis-
armed . . . " It follows that he had no objection to the
methods employed by Stalin against the peasants to impose
collectivization, to forced labor, and in general to the suffer-
ings imposed by forced industrialization, but he did reprove
brutality and terror against Party members and workers -
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unless they proved obdurate - because such methods weakened,
the Party and aroused hostility. Furthermore, while he
objected .to the concept of "enemy of the people; '' he approved
the concept of "class enemy" and presumably when.that term
did not fit, of "traitor to the working class." Khrushchev was
especially critical of Stalin's abuse of "extreme methods"
when the Party's power was not threatened, but he approved
of Lenin's "ruthless resort" to such methods when dealing
with "the enemies of the Revolution. " And these could
obviously appear in the Satellite countries too.
67. Khrushchev himself justified his indictment of
Stalin on the ground that "not all as yet fully realize the
practical consequences resulting from the cult of the individual
What he undoubtedly meant was that, as many top
Communists - certainly Molotov for example - still did not
agree that Communism would benefit from a less brutal policy
and were not reconciled to the abandonment of terror as the
surest and proven means of safeguarding the Soviet empire
on the theory o.derint, dum metuant, 1 the most ruthless
revelation of the truth was needed to silence the opposition.
68. Among other reasons for Khrushchev's action
was probably the fact that, in view of the nuclear stalemate,
the safest way to extend Moscow's realm was for the Com-
munists to seize power in other countries with the help of
left-wing parties, and for that it seemed expedient to convince
the voters. that Communism did not necessarily imply bloody
revolution and terror. Stalin's despotic excesses were a
perversion, not a result of true Leninism, which prescribed
collective leadership as. a preventive. After all, no foolproof
system of government had ever yet been devised, Khrushchev
realized that the best way to persuade the world that the new
regime really meant to turn over a new leaf was to hold a
symbolic autodafe. In the West, some Communist eyebrows
were indeed raised, when the full text was published in the
New York Times of 4 June 1956, but they were soon dropped
1Let them hate, so long as they fear !
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when the Central Committee of the CPSU issued on 30 June
its additional objective "explanation. " Even Togliatti.
seemed satisfied and made no further reference to "poly-
centrisni . " If anything, Moscow's leadership appeared to
have emerged from the ordeal consolidated rather than
weakened.
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PART II
POLAND
Conditions in Poland at the Beginning of 1956
1. The economic situation in Poland at the beginning
of 1956 appears to have been bad, This was revealed, inter
alia, by the fact that in spite of the official claim that the
industrial production plan for 1955 had been overfulfilled, the,
1956 plan scheduled a reduction. As for the entire Six-Year
Plan, Radio Warsaw broadcast a listener's letter which read
in part: "Why gild reality with nice speeches if it is obvious
that the Six-Year Plan failed? . . . And what about the much
publicized increase in the living standard? Everyone can find
that out best for himself. " (22 January 1956).
2. In spite of good weather in 1955, it was- officially
admitted by the Central Statistical Bureau that the agricultural
plan had been under-fulfilled (allegedly 97%) and that a short-
age of meat, fats, flour, butter, etc. had developed. But
there is no doubt that the economic situation in general, not
only with regard to food, was worse than was officially
admitted at the time. First party secretary Ochab himself,
who had no reason to exaggerate his own responsibility, at
the Eighth Plenum in October 1956 confessed with shame that
after the Seventh Plenum in June 1956,
"I spoke, thinking I had a right to speak thus, about
the practicability of the outlines of the Five-Year
plan decided upon at the Plenum. Now we know that
the figures supplied by the ministries and the State
Planning Commission were not checked well enough
and that things were much worse than we thought . . .
The deficit in our trade and payment balance is much
bigger than we assumed. "
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3. The picture of the Polish economy drawn by
Gomulka at the Eighth Plenum was equally gloomy:
"Generally speaking, (he said) after the conclusion
of the Six-Year Plan, which according to its promises
was meant to raise high the standard of living of the
working class and of the entire nation, we are faced
today, in the first year of the Five-Year Plan, with
immense difficulties which are growing from day to
day . . . We found ourselves in the situation of an
insolvent bankrupt. "
Gomulka then proceeded to give a number of striking exam-
ples of short-sighted, piecemeal planning, fictitious account-
ing and incompetent economic management. The agricultural
policy had resulted in the creation of collective farms which
produced less per hectare than the individual farms and only
subsisted thanks to state subsidies. Other examples were
the management of the coal mines in which productivity per
worker had dropped 36% since 1938, the utter neglect of
housing, etc. In short, the Six-Year Plan, Gomulka declared,
which had been
"advertised in the past with great energy as. a new
stage of the high growth of the living standards, dis-
appointed the hopes of the broad working masses.
The juggling with figures which showed a Z7% rise
in real wages during the Six-Year Plan proved a
failure. It only exasperated the people even more,
and it was necessary to withdraw from the position
taken by poor statisticians. The inflammable
materials had been accumulating for years."
4. The political system prevailing at the time is
described as one under which
"party and state policy were mapped out by the
supreme leading circle of the Party, within the
bounds of subordination to the 'Supreme Cult' and
that policy was implemented by a party and state
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apparatus not subject to the democratic control of
the masses. This was bound to result in estrangement
of the party and state apparatus from the peoples'
..masses . . . and in a loss of the masses' sense of
responsibility for their local affairs. Nobody is
infallible, and this also applies to a.workers' party.
But its mistakes really assume dangerous propor-
tions when the masses of the members are excluded
from influence and the masses of the working people
cannot identify themselves with the Party's policy
. , . What happened . was that the Party did not
care about the reaction of the masses: and became
quite callous in the face of their essential needs.. "
(Nowe Drogi, No. 1/1957).
5. Ochab too, in his self-critical speech to the
October Plenum, spoke of the "errors and perversions in
our policy . . . which led to a kind of rift between the leader-
ship . . and the broad Party aktiv? which, generally speak-
ing, seen in perspective today, rightly criticized the Party
leadership. " Ochab mentioned a Party meeting in November
1954, the Third Plenum, "when the leadership was: practically
isolated, " and a crisis. in the Politburo "when the so-called
trial of Comrade Spychalski was under discussion. " One of
the reasons the crisis could not be solved was, according to
Ochab, the death of Bierut. Another was the difficulty
'''even of the comrades. who opposed the greatest stupidities
and our continued entanglement in errors" - including him-
self, presumably to revise "their old points of view . . .
based on major mistakes in the assessment of the overall
situation in the country. "
6. Ochab thought that one of the chief causes of the
major lags in political decisions was. "the poor state of our
ideological front" primarily resulting from "the leadership's
weakness in this respect, " And this, he explained, was due
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to the fact "that for many years we had practically foregone
any independent ideological work and depended on our being
able to transfer creatively, as the saying went, all the exper-
ience of the USSR. However, of that creativeness there was
not much evidence . . . if
7. So much for conditions within the Party. As for
the masses, Gomulka in his speech to the Eighth Plenum on
20 October 1956 testified to the "profound dissatisfaction of
the entire working class stemming largely from its living
standards " The unpopularity of the Party among the
peasantry can be gauged from the statement made on 23
March 1957 by Stefan Ignar, chairman of the Central Com-
mittee of the United Peasant Party and deputy premier:
"Probably not everybody knows although it was men-
tioned several times and particularly at the Fifth
Plenum of the Central Committee - that, beginning
in 1953, from the beginning of the breakdown of the
worker-peasant alliance owing to Draconian methods
of purchase and collectivization, a protest was felt
Lsi J even more strongly within our Party against
the system of the alliance between town and country
and against the ordering about of the peasants by the
bureaucracy."
8. Another noteworthy fact - suspected, but hitherto
undocumented - about Communist Party relations with the
peasantry, was revealed by Politburo member Zambrowski.
He admitted that they had miscalculated when they thought
they could win over the poor peasants by pitting them against
the kulaks. "On the contrary, we aroused the solidarity of
the peasants. Often. a small-holder said: 'Why do we ruin
the kulak? He is a good farmer, is he not? "' (Zycie Partii
16 March 1957).
9. Two other major causes of resentment were
shared by the vast majority of Poles, with the exception of
some party stalwarts: the police terror, which had apparent-
ly persisted in a milder form, and Soviet domination, for
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which in his 20 October 1956 speech Gomulka diplomatically
blamed the "cult of personality". He began by describing
the acknowledged principles of relations between socialist
countries, which he asserted had been recognized but not
always respected by Stalin, since they could not fit within
the framework of the "cult of personality". This cult could
not be confined solely to the person of Stalin; rather, it was
a certain system which had prevailed in the Soviet Union and
was grafted to "probably all Communist parties". . Moreover,
Gomulka clearly implied that the system had not died with
Stalin.. The essence of the system, as he described it, was
"the fact that an individual, hierarchic ladder of cults was
created, " at the top of which in the bloc of socialist states
stood Stalin, and at the bottom the first secretaries of Com-
munist parties. Under this system which crushed every
independent socialist thought, relations between parties and
states c1adrly'_coulcg not be based on equality. Under such
conditions, no party leader could work normally even when
he worked collectively. But the situation was worse, Gomulka
continued, presumably alluding to Bierut, "when the honors
of power . . . were seized by a mediocre man, an obtuse
executive, or a rotten climber. "
10. Another evil consequence of the system condemned
by Gomulka was the violation of democratic principles and the
rule of law.
,,The characters and consciences of men were broken,
people were trampled under foot and their honor was
besmirched . . . We have our own domestic variety
of Beriaism . . . A page full of provocation, blood,
prisons, and the sufferings of innocent people. "
11. To complete the above sketch of the psychological
background of the Polish October, the rebellion of the intelli-
gentsia against intellectual conformism, which had been
steadily growing since 1954, must be mentioned, particularly
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as it reflected itself increasingly in the press, dominated
though it was by the Communist Party. Curiously enough, it
was mentioned by neither Gomulka nor Ochab.
Developments from the 20th CPSU Congress to the Seventh
Plenum
12. Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin - parts of
which were first published in Trybuna Ludu of 23 March 1956
- was fore shadowed in Poland by the rehabilitation on 19
February of the pre-war Polish Communist Party which had
been officially dissolved in 1938 after the liquidation of its
leaders by Stalin's security apparatus.
13. A fortuitous event, the death of the ailing Bierut
on 12 March 1956, very soon gave the Poles an opportunity
to test the sincerity of the 20th Congress principles of non-
interference in the affairs of other countries and of de-
Stalinization. Khrushchev, who had come to Warsaw for the
funeral, stayed a week and happened to be still there when
the Central Committee of the Polish Communist Party desig-
nated, as Bierut's successor in the first party secretaryship,
Edward Ochab, a man of whom Stalin himself had expressed
complete approval.
14. The effect in Poland of the 20th Congress - and,
one may add, of Khrushchev's secret speech, 100, 000 copies
of which were reportedly secretly printed and circulated in
Poland'- was described by Gomulka in his October speech
as follows:
"rIt] stimulated a turn in the political life of the
country. An. animating, sound current went through
the party masses, the working class, the entire
society. People began to straighten their backs.
The silent, enslaved minds began to shake off the
poison of mendacity, falsehood and hypocrisy. The
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stiff cliches previously predominant . . . began to
give place to creative, living words . . . There came
a powerful wave of criticism of the past - the criticism
of violence, distortions, and errors . , Everywhere,
above all at party and general meetings in work estab-
lishments, the demand was raised for an explanation
of the causes of evil and for appropriate measures to
be taken with regard to the people mainly responsible
for the distortions in economic and political life.
Above all, the working people wanted to know all the
truth, without any embellishments and omissions . ..
In the situation, . . . when it was necessary to act
quickly and consistently, . . . to go to the masses
with all frankness and to tell them the whole truth
about the economic situation, the causes and sources
of distortions in political life - the party leadership
failed to work out quickly a line of contcrete action.
The fact that the Seventh Plenum was several times
delayed is one proof of it. "
15. The reason for this failure is not far to seek; it
was supplied by Ochab in his apologetic speech to the October
Plenum, mentioned above. "It is no easy matter," he said,
"to cast off one's old spectacles through which one has been
looking at things, believing in them . . . when afterwards
one confronts one's views with the facts and seeks a way out
of the emerging contradictions. "
16. It must be said in Ochab's defense that the
situation he had inherited and was expected to dominate was
certainly difficult, Revisionism had already acquired such
momentum, not only in the masses, but among Party members
and intellectuals, that only by ruthless Stalinist methods could
he have controlled it; but that was ruled out so soon after
their repudiation by Moscow. By the end of March, it became
widely known that. Gomulka, General Spychalski, and General
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Komar, arrested in 1951, had been free for some months.
Meetings of intellectuals, artists, trade unions, factory
workers, etc. and the press protested with increasing vigor
against censorship, dogmatism, centralism, and inefficiency
and demanded the speedy rehabilitation of the former mem-
bers of the "Home Army". Ochab himself, perhaps hoping
to control the movement by placing himself at its head,
attacked the former leadership for its slowness in rehabili-
tating the victims of "Beri,aism" (Trybuna Ludu, 4 April 1956).
He condemned the arrest of Gomulka in 1949 as unjustified,
although the latter had been guilty of "opportunistic and nation-
alistic deviation" in opposing too rapid industrialization and
collectivization. A .few days earlier, Jerzy Morawski, a new
member of the Central Committee Secretariat, had also con-
demned the "Gomulka group. " Their error consisted, not in
advocating a "Polish road to socialism, " but in failing to see
that the true distinction between the Polish and the Soviet
road was that in Poland such problems as state-church rela-
tions and farm collectivization were actually being solved
differently, and in thus retarding in practice the necessary
changes.
17. On 6 April Ochab found it necessary to draw the
attention of a meeting of Party activists to the fact
"that some comrades seem to be losing their senses
of balance and proportion between justified criticism
and actions from positions which cannot be of advan-
tage to the Party . . . This shows an unhealthy
anarchistic tendency, the loss of a feeling of Party
responsibility, and a confusion of ideas."
Five days later, Ochab is reported to have even threatened,
at a meeting of the Polish Literary Association, to bring
tanks into the streets of Warsaw. Instead, there was a.
sudden reversal.
18. On 21 April, it was announced that the hated
Radkiewicz, Minister of Public Security up to February 1955
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and since then Minister of State Farms, had been dismissed;
his two most notorious subordinates, Romkowski and Feygin,
had been arrested, and the Ministers of Justice and Culture,
the Prosecutor General, and others, relieved of their posts.
At the opening session of the Sejm two days later, Premier
Cyrankiewicz, after acknowledging "the unusually accelerated
pulsation of political life in Poland, " developed a comprehen-
sive program of reforms. These included a greater role for
the Sejm, strict observance of "socialist legality, " a broad
amnesty for political prisoners, greater availability of
information, more freedomtto criticize bureaucracy, decen-
tralization of government, and streamlining of the govern-.
ment apparatus. In the economic field, he promised priority
in the improvement of living standards by raising wages,
abolition of overtime, reduction of grain deliveries, increased
prices for. cattle, substantial jn:creases in agricultural and
housing investments, to be offset by reduced industrial invest-
ment, and the encouragement of private enterprise by crafts-
men .and service establishments.
19. But the trouble lay deeper than the ruling clique
had apparently suspected. No promiseon their part could
solve the crise de confiance which had developed, not least
among the Party members, and which the top men seemed
unwilling or unable to check either by resolute implementa-
tion of their promises or by drastic repression. Five days
after the Premier's speech, at. a meeting of the Writers'
Association, chiefly composed of Party activists, Jerzy
Putrament, the chairman, was shouted down. The writers
demanded nothing less than the immediate resignation of the
Central Committee and. of the Politburo, new elections, an
opportunity for Gomulka to present his present view's and
opinions, and the prompt improvement of the "dreadful"
economic situation.
20. The trouble was, as Przeglad Kulturalny put i
"The evil isolation of many Communists has not yet been
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overcome everywhere. " Po Prostu declared: "People still
do not believe in the sincerity of present reforms and changes.
It is doubtful whether under the circumstances a placatory
article by Ochab (published in the Moscow Pravda of 29 April,
apparently in reply Ito that paper's invectives in its 5 April
issue against those who were trying "under the guise of con-
demning the cult of the individual to question the cor-
rectness of Party policy'-" and in which Ochacb boasted that
Poland knew how to deal with. "slanderers and opportunists"
and "certain groups" of Party members guilty of ideological
instability), carried much conviction with the Russians. But
as for the Poles, it served to confirm the opinion that Ochab
was Khrushchev's puppet, which hardly increased his popu-
larity. It was not until Berman, member of the Politburo and
Bierut's grey eminence, who had been in charge of political,
cultural and security matters, was dismissed on charges of
"errors and distortions" (6 May), that the ferment abated
somewhat, although. Ochab's threats - carried out in the case
of Roman Werfel, ousted as chief editor of Trybuna Ludu -
probably had some effect too.
21. But this turned out to be merely the lull before
the storm. Behind the scenes a struggle for supremacy was
being waged in the Central Committee of the party between the
"Stalinists" or Natolin group, as they were to be called. in
Poland, and the "anti-Stalinists" or Pulawy group. The most
prominent members of the former group, led by Ochab, were
said to be Zenon Nowak, Klosiewicz, Witaszewski, Mazur,
Mijal and Albrecht; of the latter, under Cyrankiewicz's leader-
ship, Zambrowski, Zawadski, Rapacki, Rybicki, and Szyr.
A number of newer members elected in March, most prom-
inent among whom were Morawski, Matwin, and Gierek, had
not quite made up their minds. Negotiations with Gomulka for
his reinstatement were said to be in progress during this
period, but failed when he refused to agree to any restrictive
conditions.
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22. Opinions even within each of the two groups appear
to have differed considerably. Ochab himself was believed
to favor only such reforms as might be agreeable to Khrush-
chev, while some of his followers inclined to the view,
attributed to Molotov, that Khrushchev himself had made the
mistake of going too far on the road to relaxation. Within the
Pulawy faction, Cyrankiewicz was thought to have favored a
"Polish road to socialism" diverging moderately from the
Moscow line; while others advocated more far-reaching
changes, ranging from Gomulka's to Djilas's programs, The
Pulawy faction also gained considerable strength from the
accession of the majority of the Jewish Communists as a
result of the anti-semitism of their rivals, who had, it is
alleged, taken their cue from Khrushchev's jibe, uttered dur-
ing his March visit to the Polish Central Committee, that it
had "too many Abramowiczes'. "
23. The respite was not long. Hardly had the intel-
lectual front quieted somewhat when signs of trouble began to
appear on the labor front. Rumors of unrest and strike
threats in a number of factories became increasingly persist-
ent, presumably owing to the workers' disappointment with
the inadequacy of the wage increases. On 18 June Ochab had
to reveal that, as a result partly of larger coal allocations to
private consumers, partly,of a deterioration of labor disci-
pline, the quantity of coal available for export, the principal
source of foreignexchange, had dropped sharply. Ten days
later, a street demonstration of metal workers in Poznan,
.demanding higher wages and lower taxes, soon turned into a
political demonstration in which the population joined, shout-
ing first ''We want bread" and "We want freedom, " and in the
later stages, anti-Soviet and anti-security police, and pro-
Western and pro-Catholic slogans. Many members of the
security police were mobbed, and people were killed or
wounded by the security troops brought up by the authorities
to quell the riot<
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24. The instinctive reflex of the Polish regime was
to blame "the imperialist centers hostile to Poland and the
reactionary underground" as Premier Cyrankiewicz declared
over the radio the next day. "Let every provocateur or mad-
man be certain that if he is bold enough to raise his hand
against the people's authority, it will be cut off . , . " But,
reversing their supposed roles, Ochab told the Seventh
Plenum on 18 July that
" . . . it would be erroneous to concentrate attention
above all on the machinations of provocateurs and
imperialist agents. It is necessary to look first for
the evil roots of these incidents, which have become
for the whole! of our party a signal of warning, testify-
ing to the existence of serious disturbances in the
relations between the Party and varie-i s sections of
the working class . . . The bureaucratic distortions
. . . gave birth to a callous attitude toward the people
and their often justified demV.nds. "
But Moscow flatly contradicted its nominee: Bulganin, who
happened to be visiting Warsaw on the eve of the Seventh
Plenum, asserted on 21 July that "the recent events in Poz-
nan, provoked by hostile agents, prove again that interna-
tional reaction has not yet discarded its plans for the restor-
ation of capitalism in the socialist countries. " It had to be
realized, he warned, that while each nation was building its
own socialism, the enemy was endeavoring to weaken the ties
of international socialism, using slogans of "national char-
acteristics" and "extension of democracy. "
25. Bulganin had also been commissioned "by the
Soviet people . . . to convey their brotherly greetings to the
people of the newly acquired Polish western provinces. "
Delivery of this message provided him with the opportunity
to remind the Poles that the guarantee of the permanence of
the frontier was "the friendship of the nations of the Socialist
camp, the friendship of the Polish and Soviet nations. "
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26. The Ochab regime obviously staked all its hopes
of allaying the continuing discontent among the people and
party members on the Seventh Plenum which was to. spell out
and formalize the reforms outlined in April. In their addresses
to the Plenum, which met from 18-28 July 1956, -Ochab and
Cyrankiewicz covered very much the same ground and did
little more' than offer variations on, and slight amplifications
of, the program they had expounded in April, which were sub-
sequently embodied in the final resolution. The main differ-
ence between the two was Ochab?s warning that much of the
recent criticism had gone too far,. that "criticism from the
position of the enemy" or outbursts. against the Party in the
press would not be tolerated. He further declared that in the
future the Party should not exercise authority directly, but
only give general political direction, thus eliminating bureaijc-
racy; it should further collective leadership, and party democ-
racy. The Party should also stop hampering the activities of
other parties (the Democratic and the Peasant Parties) which
were important allies. Both speakers once again freely con-
ceded past errors, such as excessive investments in industry
- which Cyrankiewicz, apparently forgetting peaceful co-
existence and the Geneva spirit, blamed in part at least on
the necessity, stemming from the. international situation, of
building up the defense industry".- and false statements on
the rise in living standards, which had actually hardly
improved at all, especially for the lowest paid workers.
There followed the usual list of panaceas and promises:
Greater emphasis. on consumer goods, more intelligent plan-
ning, better management, greater participation of workers
in management, decentralization, socialist legality, etc. But,
Cyrankiewicz emphasized,
. . . one of the main sources of our present difficulties,
both economic and political, . . is the still too weak
participation of the political and social initiative of the
broadest masses in our life . . . What is needed is an
active and creative attitude, an attitude full of initiative
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and enthusiasm for his work on the part of the worker,
the peasant, and the intellectual. We cannot achieve
this through methods of ordering about, of pressure,
of compulsion . . . but only when the masses are more
active politically, when there is a strong increase in
their active participation in governing the country and
its economy . . . We must once and for all put an end
to the period. in which the vwo rker, the peasant, or
intellectual was often looked upon with suspicion,
surrounded by thousands of regulations., his freedom
was limited, his criticism stifled, when he was often
exposed to illegality and abuse of power, when his
wrongs and grievances, his needs. and troubles, were
treated lightly. "
The people, especially the young, had to be molded into
"political activeness" which, according to Cyrankiewicz, was
to be achieved by further democratization. But, he added,
"this process must be guided. This is precisely the mission
of our party . . . "
27. Cyranki.ewicz conceded that the task was not an
easy one. On the one hand "the conservatism of a part of
our Party and state apparatus is hampering the process of
democratization;" on the other, "the class enemy is acting
and attempti7 to orient it in a direction advantageous for
him. " This was tantamount to an admission that part of the
Party apparatus was firmly convinced that if the masses were
indeed granted freedom and everything that was done "hap-
pened in accordance with their will,"' it would be the end of
Communism. Cyra:nkiewicz made no attempt to argue that
they were wrong.
28. Like everything else, self-criticism has its
advantages and its disadvantages. When Cyrankiewicz con-
fessed: "It is necessary to state that the rate and depth of
the political changes effected by us and the efficacy of the
measures employed did not fully correspond to the require-
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ments of the situation, " and when Ochab admitted that "the
Poznan incidents prove how little we have done toward
effectively overcoming bureaucratic deviations in our country
and especially in socialist enterprises, " they were inviting
the obvious retort that they stood self-condemned for bad
faith or incapacity to govern.
a9. "It is easier to lead by command than to win over
and persuade, " Cyrankiewicz had also said. But both he and
Ochab were apparently incapable of either. They had exhausted
their credit, and, as Gornulka was to put it in his speech to
the October Plenum: "The loss of the credit of the working
class means the loss of the moral basis of power. " There
was no question as to who was to assume the Party leadership,
for in the words of a veteran Polish Communist: "We are
left with only one political change of clothes, and that is
Gomulka. " If complete freedom was an unattainable dream,
the least the people wanted was a new man rather than a new
program, for there was not much difference left between the
programs of Gomulka and Ochab. There was, however, a
great difference between the two personalities. Gomulka had
remained in Poland during the German occupation, and he had
openly opposed a slavish subservience to Moscow in such
matters as the break with Tito, I forced industrialization, and
rigid centralism. Possibly others had shared these opinions,
but the difference was that Gornulka had had the courage to
voice his convictions.
1He recanted, indeed, in September 1949 after the break.
But his article in Trybuna Ludu, in which he spoke of his
recent "clear condemnation of the treacherous Tito" did not
save him from expulsion from the Party in November 1949.
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30. Whatever their reasons or motivations, the fact
is that the Seventh Plenum reinstated Gomulka in his Party
membership despite the fact that Pravda had just published
two editorials (on 16 and 24 July 1956, that is, only a month
after the announcement of the agreement with Tito) which were
clearly aimed at him. They spoke of the existence within the
Communist parties in the "camp of socialism" of "propagators
of chaos, adventure, and opportunists" who threatened that
ideological unity of the camp which must be the overriding
consideration. What Pravda seemed to mean was that, while
theoretically separate roads to socialism were conceivable
and admissible, in practice, no country could do better than
the USSR with its long experience. Countries of the "socialist
camp" must therefore stop wasting time on the secondary
matter of separateness and concentrate on the paramount
question of unity, and strengthen their ties with fellow members,
headed, of course, by the USSR.
31. On the surface, things seemed to quiet down in
Poland white the liberalization program was being implemented.
Gomulka?s readmission to Party membership was followed by
those of Generals Spychalski and Komar, the latter being;
appointed Chief of the Security Police, an appointment which
turned out in October to have been of crucial importance,.
Ochab ,).nnounced another substantial cut in the industrial
investment program and in the strength of the Army;
other decrees aiming at the improvement of economic condi-
tions were set forth.. The confidential letter sent by the CPSU
to the Communist parties in the satellite countries on 3
September 1956, warning them that Yugoslavia was not the
example to follow, seemed to make little impression in Poland.
The heads of two delegations returning from a visit to Yugo-
slavia praised the "independence" of views shown by the Yugo-
slavs in their socialist experiment and the degree of economic,
if not political, democratization they had achieved. Indeed,
the impact of the Yugoslav example on other Satellite Co:m-
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munist parties must have been stronger than appeared on the
surface, judging from Khrushchev's sudden visit to Belgrade
and Tito's return visit to Yalta at the end of September, an
account of which was given by the latter in his Pula speech
of 11 November 1956.
32. Everything appeared to be going smoothly in
Poland. Rather unexpectedly, the trials of the Poznan rioters
were conducted fairly. The Sejm heard for the first time in
many years some genuinely critical speeches, and revision
of the electoral law to allow greater freedom of choice was
seriously discussed. But behind the scenes, the struggle for
power between the Natolin and the Pulawy factions was grow-
ing in intensity. This struggle had far-reaching effects;
sabotage of many of the liberal reforms by the paid Party
apparatus, a majority of which favored the Natolin faction,
led to a further deterioration of the economy and of adminis-
tration in general.
33. Under the circumstances, the firm and purpose-
ful leadership indispensable in a Communist state was com-
pletely lacking. The Politburo was too badly split to exercise
collective leadership. Neither section seemed to be able to
dominate the other and to impose Party discipline, each being
backed by powerful forces - the Soviets on one side and the
majority of Poles, both Party and non-Party, on the other.
It is true that the Polish masses were overwhelmingly opposed
to Communists of any shade, but for the time being the major-
ity supported the liberal wing, perhaps not so much for fear
of Russia as on account of the Polish raison d'btat. For the
public was being constantly reminded that Poland needed
Soviet friendship if it were to keep the Oder-Neisse frontier,
a friendship it could expect to enjoy only if it remained Com-
munist, and one may assume that Moscow's comparatively
mild reaction to developments between Bierut's death and the
Eighth Plenum was mainly due to the fact that the Soviet
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leaders were equally aware of this decisive limitation on
Poland's freedom of action. The Poles might loosen their
bonds more than the Kremlin would like but they could never
sever them. It is also true that the Soviet leaders certainly
never expected the Poles to dare disregard the warnings
delivered by Bulganin in July and by Khrushchev in one of
the speeches he made in Belgrade during his September visit.
34. Firm guidance by a leader, whether first secre-
tary of the Party or prime minister, was also conspicuously
lacking. Cyrankiewicz, it is true, was always considered a
moderate, but Ochab, the man approved by Stalin and Khrush-
chev, was believed to be a conservative or Stalinist. What
game he was actually playing, or why and when he switched
to the liberals, is impossible to tell. The fact is, however,
that the liberal faction and Cyrankiewicz carried on secret
negotiations 1 with Gomulka all during the summer and Ochab
did nothing to prevent them, and, according to well informed
sources, he even participated in these from September
onwards.
35. Very probably, judging from his self-condemnatory
speech to the Eighth Plenum, Ochab gradually changed his mind
and at the same time increasingly realized his own incapacity
to dominate the situation, which might easily lead to a violent
revolution against the Communist Party. Speaking of "the
so-called trend of democratization, " he said, inter alia,
"It shows the concern of millions of people with
People's Poland . . . which largely gathered strength
spontaneously, not because there was resistance in
1These negotiations were common knowledge, as proved by
the resolution passed in September by the Warsaw Board of
the Polish Youth Union, demanding publication of a recent
interview between Party representatives and Gomulka.
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the Party leadership against new departures . . . but
because we often sought to apply our old yardstick toL
that mighty, huge, and spontaneous surge . . . We
saw a difficult situation, and we made efforts to
master it, but were not equal to the job which life
presented us. This is no doubt the fault of the whole
leadership, but it goes without saying that a particular
responsibility rests with me as the first secretary of
the Central Committee . . . I submitted my resigna-
tion which the Politburo rightly accepted. "
36. What exactly was being negotiated during
September and the first half of October, between Cyrankiewicz
and Ochab on one side and Gomulka on the other, is not known.
Piecing together various accounts from local sources, one may
assume that the former had fully made up their minds that .
Gomulka was the only man with a sufficiently strong person-
ality and enough authority to control the warring factions
within the Party and with enough popularity to quiet the people.
Whether the Stalinist or the liberal extremists emerged vic-
torious, the consequences could not but be disastrous for
Poland, for the end could only be violence and a tightening of
the Russian grip. Cyrankiewicz and Ochab were, however,
endeavoring, but in vain, to induce Gomulka to agree in
advance to collaborate with a number of leaders of the Natolin
faction and to accept a step-by-step promotion in the Party
hierarchy, in the hope, according to some observers, of
effecting the transfer of power as smoothly as possible,
according to others, of hobbling him.
37. In the meantime both factions were not idle. The
tactics of the Natolin faction consisted in stirring up the anti-
semitic feelings of the Poles, in inciting the workers against
the intellectuals, and in trying to gain popularity by reckless
promises of wage increases and other material benefits
regardless of the catastrophic consequences for the Polish
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economy. Gomulka and his followers were keeping in close
contact with factory workers and student groups and listening
sympathetically to their complaints and suggestions, while
avoiding embarrassing commitments. In spite of. Gomulka's
refusal, during conversations with Cyrankiewicz and Ochab
in the last days of September, to commit himself to keeping
the Stalinists in the Politburo, an agreement was finally
reached. Meetings 'between Gomulka and the liberal members
of the Politburo, including Rapacki, Morawski, Albrecht,
Jarosinski, Matvin, and Gierek, were held almost daily dur-
ing the next two weeks and it was only then that the Natolin
men learned what was in store for them. On 16 October 1956,
a party communique announced that a meeting of the Politburo
had taken place the day before, that Gomulka had participated,
and that the Eighth Plenum of the Central Committee would
convene on the 19th. It appears that Gomulka's elevation to
the first secretaryship of the Party had also been decided but
not made public yet.
The Eighth Plenum
38. To forestall the obvious outcome of the Plenum,
Marshal Rokossowski and General Witaszewski, acting for
the Natolin group, took steps, according to the account broad-
cast:by,radios Szczecin and Gdansk on 26 October, to organize
a putsch. The army was alerted and a list of 700 prominent
liberals who were to be arrested was handed to the UB
(secret police). However, the UB refused to make the arrests
and one of its chiefs, Alster, forwarded the list to GDm.ulka
and Gozdzik, party secretary of the Zeran Works, who, with
Stanislas Staszewski, first secretary of the Warsaw Party
Committee, was one of the leaders of the liberal movement
among the Warsaw workers. Armed combat groups of a few
hundred men, composed of the plant Party aktivs, were formed
in 16 of Warsaw's largest factories. The main force remained
on the alert in the plants during the critical days, 19-21.
October, while small detachments of workers and students,
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together with KBW (Internal Security Force) detachments, on
General Komar's orders, patrolled key points and protected
the most prominent Gomulka followers.
39. On 19 October, Soviet Ambassador Ponomarenko
returned from Moscow and delivered an invitation to the
Politburo and Gomulka to come to Moscow for conversations
but the invitation was politely declined in view of the prox-
imity of the Plenum. At the same time Warsaw heard rumors
of suspicious movements of Polish troops, followed by news
that Soviet troops too were on the march.
40. Nevertheless, the Eighth Plenum met on schedule
on Friday, 19 October, and listened to a motion by Ochab for
the election of Gomulka and three of his principal lieutenants,
Spychalski, Kliszko, and Loga-Sowinski, to the Central Com-
mittee, but not to the Politburo. They also heard the reading
of a letter from Berman, disclaiming any responsibility of the
secret police for Gomulkats arrest in 1951, and a letter from
Minc, who claimed he had been forced by Moscow, under
threat of death, to revise his 1950 Six-Year industrialization
plan sharply upward and asserted that everything done in
Poland had been ordered by Bierut. At that moment, to the
surprise of the liberals at any rate, the arrival at the Warsaw
airport of Khrushchev, Molotov, Mikoyan, Koniev and a group
of generals, was announced and the Plenum was recessed.
41. The conversations between the Polish Politburo
and the Russian "guests" were preceded by a sharp warning
from Khrushchev tot the effect that the Poles could not hope
"to get away with this sort of treason," followed by a prelim-
inary demand from Ochab that the Soviet troops be ordered
to turn back. Khrushchev promised to give the order. He
then proceeded to offer the Poles substantial economic aid,
on condition they became reasonable and abandoned their cur-
rent policy which would lead socialism toward a catastrophe.
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An earnest of their good intentions would be the retention of
Rokossowski and a number of other Politburo members, and
a more moderate liberalization program. Gomulka, however,
insisted upon the right of every Communist Party to select
its Politburo, and when Khrushchev threatened to use force,
he countered by the threat to reveal the Soviet demands to
the Polish people over the radio. Khrushchev immediately
changed his tone and thereafter listened to Gomulka's expose
of his program with outward signs of approval, although it
included a 50% wage increase over the next five years, the
money therefor to be obtained from a sharp reduction in mil-
itary forces and from compensation by the USSR for under-
valued coal deliveries and for the dismantling of plants in
the western provinces; it also stipulated complete equality
between Communist arties, further democratization, etc.
On the other hand, Gomulka emphatically denied any anti-
Soviet tendencies or personal resentment. However, no
definite agreements were reached. Further negotiations
were to be concluded in Moscow, mainly, it appears, because
of rising public unrest at the news of further Soviet troop
movements, including the crossing of the border by units
from East Germany. The publication in Pravda of an editor-
ial violently criticizing alleged "anti-national and anti-
socialist declarations in the Polish press" did not help to
allay resentment.
42. The Soviet delegation took the broad hints that
its continued presence would only inflame Polish public
opinion still more and departed in a friendly atmosphere.
The Poles attributed their success to Khrushchev's failure
to intimidate them by threats and to disrupt the solidarity of
the Gomulka-Ochab-Cyrankiewicz triumvirate, as well as to
the information he was receiving from the Soviet ambassador
concerning the attitude of the Polish army, security troops,
workers, and students, who were being rapidly mobilized.
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43. However, the Natolin group was apparently not
ready to concede defeat. On the following day, 20 October,
Soviet troop movements continued, and naval units appeared
before Gdansk; there were reports of clashes between Polish
units, the great majority of which had sided with Gomulka.
A tank column, advancing from Lodz, had to be intercepted
at Sochaszew by Internal Security troops.
44. The Plenum meeting on 20 October began with
violent attacks on Rokossowski, who could find no better
explanation than that the Soviet and Polish troops had been
only carrying out their usual autumn maneuvers. Gomulka
then addressed the gathering at great length; he was followed
by a number of speakers for both factions, the Natolin group
apparently still counting on the deterrent effect of the Soviet
troop movements and on the propagandistic activities of its
adherents, in the Party apparatus to bolster its position. But
whatever influence the overhanging threat of Soviet interven-
tion might have had, it was far outweighed by the mass demon-
strations and rallies of students and workers in continuous
progress in the city of Warsaw, protestiflg against Rokossowski,
the visit of the Soviet delegation, the Natolin faction, the inter-
ference by Polish troops which should rather turn their arms
against the common enemy, etc. The scene of the biggest
rally was the Warsaw Polytechnikum, from which over 50, 000
demonstrators marched to the Council of State Building where
the Eighth Plenum received a delegation of workers and stu-
dents. One of its leaders, Eligiusz Lasota, chief editor of
Po Prostu, the student newspaper which had been probably the
most courageous critic of the regime, read'.:Gothulka's :pro-
.grarh to the dernohstrat rs and conveyed his request that
the people show coolness and restraint and his assurance that
all was going well. Further appeals to refrain from violent
actions which would give their opponents the opportunity to
suppress them by force were made by the mayor of Warsaw,
Zarzycki, and by Helena Yaworska; with the help of the
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restraining influence: of Staszewski and Grozdzik, they suc-
ceeded in preventing acts of violence. It is true that inviting
targets were lacking. The seats of power were for all prac-
tica'1 purposes already in the hands of the "liberals"; even the
secret police, the greatest object of hatred in Communist-
dominated countries, was on their side, and there were no
Soviet troops in Warsaw. On the other hand, the Oder-Neisse
problem was always invisibly present, and the Communist
leaders of the movement had faith in Gomulka.
45. What might have happened, if the leadership crisis
and the concomitant power vacuum had lasted a little longer,
and if the Natolin faction had put up a more determined fight,
may be inferred from the raid on the Soviet-Polish Friend-
ship Society headquarters in Wroclaw on 22 October and the
anti-Soviet and anti-Communist demonstrations in Warsaw
and Legnica on the 24th. As it was, they were easily subdued,
and the strong underlying anti-Communist feelings of the
population were not allowed to gain momentum. The Eighth
Plenum ended on 21 October with. a complete victory for the
liberals. To the Politburo, reduced to nine members, were
elected Gomulka, Ochab, Cyrankiewicz, Loga-Sowinski,
Morawski, Jedrychowski, Zambrowski, Rapacki, and
Zawadski, the last named the only one whose position was
still doubtful. The relative strength of the two factions may
be gauged from tb.e 74 votes received by Gomulka, compared
with the 23 votes for a motion by Ruminski, spokesman for
the Natolin faction, for the nomination of Rokossowski.
46. Gomulka was then elected by acclamation first
secretary of the Communist Party. As mentioned above, the
program Gomulka outlined to the Eighth Plenum on 20 October
represented in the main a reiteration and amplification of the
Seventh Plenum program. The only new points were his pro-
posals to allow inefficient collective farms to disband whale
maintaining voluntary collectivization as the long-range goal,
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to liquidate State Machine Stations, to abolish gradually the
compulsory deliveries of farm produce, to free kulak farms
from restrictions, and to introduce worker council manage-
ment in some branches of industry, being careful however
not to disrupt production.
47. In the political field, Gomulka advocated further
democratization, but, echoing Ochab, he warned that criticism
must remain within bounds, for "we shall not allow anyone to
use the process of democratization to undermine socialism.
He recommended that the Sejm be allowed to fulfill the role,
assigned to it by the Constitution, of "supreme organ of state
power, " exercising the "highest legislative and controlling
power, without prejudice, of course, to the Party, which
would fulfill its role as guide all the better for being relieved
of the task of governing. Finally, Gomulka endorsed the new
electoral law which "allowed the people to elect, not only to
vote. "
48. With regard to "the problem . . of development
of inter-Party and interstate relations with our great fraternal
neighbor, " Gomulka said nothing that had not also been said by
the Soviet spokesman, with the only difference that he meant
what he said.
"What is immutable in socialism can be reduced to the
abolition of exploitation of man by man, The roads of
achieving this goal can be, and are, different. They
are determined by various circumstances of time and
place. The model of socialism can also vary. It can
be such as that created in the Soviet Union; it can be
shaped in a manner as we see it in Yugoslavia; it can
be different still. '"
With regard to inter-Party and interstate relations, Gomulka
claimed that within the framework of international working
class solidarity, mutual assistance, friendly criticism, if
necessary, and rational solutions of controversial matters,
'"each country should have full independence, and the rights
of each nation to a sovereign government in an independent
country should be fully and mutually respected. "
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"Stalin, om.ulka continu7, formally recognized
that all the principles enumerated above should
characterize the relations between the countries of
the camp of socialism. Not only did he recognize
them, but he himself proclaimed them. In fact,
however, these principles could not fit within the
framework of what makes up the cult of personality."
49. Speaking only a few hours after the intervention
in Polish affairs of the Soviet leaders, Gomulka - and, for
that matter, Khrushchev - must have been well aware of the
fact that all that was needed to make the last sentence fit
present conditions was to substitute the words "the Presidium"
for "Stalin, " and "cult of proletarian internationalism" for
"cult of personality. " But the next move was up to the Krem-
lin. Gomulka, for his part, was determined to prevent "harm
to the vital interests of the Polish state and the cause of build-
ing socialism in Poland Lfrom7 anti-Soviet moves in Poland, "
and Khrushchev could not have forgotten his recent criticism
of Stalin for having foolishly and unnecessarily broken with
Tito. Both men were content to wait and see, and in the mean-
time to prevent any "provocations. "
50, During the next few days, the situation was
extremely delicate. As previously mentioned, anti-Soviet
manifestations occurred in a number of cities. On 23 October,
Gomulka had to appeal to the "Workers and Youth" to "resist
with determination all attempts at provocation." of the USSR.
On the next day, Tyr ~buna Ludu crossed the t and dotted the i
in an editorial stressing the fact that "Soviet-Polish arms
had won the return of the oldest Polish lands, " and that "the
Polish-Soviet alliance is an iron shield which guards Poland
" On 24 October Gomulka reaffirmed before a crowd
of demonstrators his conviction that the "Soviet Union . . .
which constitutes the backbone of the alliance of all socialist
states would respect the principle of equality. " He further
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revealed that he had received assurances from Khrushchev
that all Soviet troops would be back in their bases "within
the framework of the Warsaw pact, " explaining that as long
as Poland's frontiers were threatened by Western Germany,
the "presence of the Soviet Army in Germany will correspond
to our highest state interest"; this was of course closely con-
nected with the presence of Soviet troops in Poland under the
pact. Khrushchev had further assured him that "all concrete
matters pertaining to our internal affairs would be solved in
accordance with the estimate of the Party and the govern-
ment" and that he accepted the principles adopted by the
Eighth Plenum as a basis for their mutual relations. Report-
edly, these assurances were given by Khrushchev by tele-
phone on 23 October to Gomulka, who told the other Party
leaders that Khrushchev had also apologized for his attitude
on the 20th and had assured him that he now completely
approved of his (Gomulka's) actions. Poland was to decide
whether, or how long, Soviet specialists and advisers were
needed.
51. A few days later it became known that Marshal
Rokossowski had departed on leave, that a number of generals,
most of them ethnically Poles but considered more Russian
than Polish, had been dismissed; that a number of personnel
changes had been made in the cabinet - among them the
appointment of Stefan Ignar, leader of the United Peasant
Party, to a deputy premiership, but also that of Zenon Nowak,
one of the leaders of the Natolin faction - that a far-reaching
turnover in Party apparatus personnel was being carried out,
that Cardinal Wyszynski had been reinstated in his Warsaw
see, and that the Poznan trials had been quashed.
52. The Polish regime certainly needed every ounce
of the combination of that "decisively patriotic attitude with
calmness, discipline, and a sense of Polish raison d'ett"
which, according to Trybuna Ludu of 1 November, had char-
acterized the Polish people during the recent events, when
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the Hungarian revolt began to gather momentum, and students
demonstrated on 29 October in Warsaw shouting anti-Soviet
slogans. Ironically, the occasion for the Party organ's
editorial was Moscow's statement of 30 October concerning
the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Budapest and its willing-
ness to discuss the question of Soviet troops and advisers
with other people's democracies, which the paper seized upon
as an added argument for Polish restraint. The editorial
recognized the dilemma posed in. the case of Poland by the
conflict between the Polish national interest and the strong
opposition to the continued presence of Soviet forces on
Polish soil. It assured its readers that a satisfactory solu-
tion would be worked out on the basis of an agreement subor-
dinating Soviet troop movements to Polish consent.
53. Somewhat less satisfactory to the Kremlin
leaders must have been the 2 November appeal addressed by
the Polish Central Party Committee to the people. Although
its main purpose was to combat demands for the withdrawal
of Soviet units from Poland, on the plea that this would be
"contrary to the most vital interest of the nation and the
Polish raison d'etat, " it did state that "from the bottom of
our hearts we have always been on the side of the Hungarian
workers and of all those who fought together with them for
socialist democratization, against the forces wanting at any
price to maintain in Hungary the old manner of governing,
hated by the people. " It described as tragic the consequences
of the decision of the former Communist leadership to call
for the assistance of Soviet troops, "instead of entering
immediately and consistently on the road of solutions in. con-
formity with the interests of socialism, with the will of the
working class and the majority of the nation. " The Central
Committee expressed its convictions that the Hungarian.
workers would "succeed in uniting and repelling the attacks
of the reaction" and that the problems of the defense of
socialism could "be solved by the forces of the Hungarian
people . . . and not by intervention from without. "
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54. This did not prevent Gomulka from stating, in a
programmatic address to Party activists on 4 November,
that the Party leadership gave "first priority in political work
to the problem of consolidating in the consciousness of the
whole nation the importance of friendship between Poland and
the Soviet Union. " He even went so far as to declare his
willingness to discuss matters with the political opponents of
socialism, but not with those who opposed Polish-Soviet
friendship. The latter "must be ruthlessly driven away
hbong ovati for they harm the interests of the Polish state
and the Polish nation . . . Poland should never find herself
in the situation in which Hungary found herself. "
55. In general, Gomulka seemed inclined to deal much
more sternly with nationalist and "hostile elements, " appar-
ently those who wanted to go still further in the direction of
liberalization and who presumably favored what he described
as "anti-Polish revisionist trends . . . sponsored by the
forces of international reaction, " than with the Stalinist or
Natolin wing. The very terms "Natolin" and "Pulawy" group
should, he declared, be eliminated from the Polish language,
and Party members should be judged solely on the basis of
their present, not their past attitude toward the policy adopted
by the Eighth Plenum, for the Party must remain monolithic.
He conceded, however, that those comrades who were as yet
unable to understand that the struggle for democratization and
sovereignty did not weaken, but on the contrary strengthened
socialism and friendship with the CPSU, must "at present" be
removed from influence on Party organs.
56. Gomulka described at some length the general
principles which were to govern the forthcoming Sejm elec-
tions, featuring joint lists including Communist, United
Peasant Party, Democratic Party, and Catholic group candi-
dates. But he devoted even more space to a defense of the
security apparatus, now cleansed of its evil elements, and
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whose competence would be limited to "fighting espionage,
terror, avid other hostile actions aimed against the rule of
the people and the interests of the state. " They had proved
that they were "ready to prevent any attempts aimed against
the political line mapped out by the leadership of the Party.
In other words, democratization was the watchword, but it
had strict limitations.
57. Understandably, especially after the second.
Soviet intervention in Hungary, and on the eve of negotiations
with Moscow, Gomulka's chief worry was the still threaten-
ing possibility of further anti-Soviet outbreaks. That this
worry was not unjustified was later proved by the Bydgoszcz
and Stettin riots on 28 November and 10 December, the latter
culminating in an attack on the Soviet Consulate. On the other
hand, there was no immediate danger of a Natolin counter-
offensive, provided the activities of the extreme revisionists
did not invite Soviet armed intervention.
58. Particularly after the Budapest experience, which
had shown that the mere appearance of Soviet tanks was not
sufficient to cow a nation into submission, the Russian lead-
ers were prepared to concede a certain amount, provided a
regime continued to bear the Communist label, remained
within the Communist camp - specifically, the Warsaw pact -
acknowledged, as Gomulka had, that the USSR was, if not the
head, at least the "backbone" of the camp, and avoided the
term "National Communism" which had become anathema
since it had been approved by the West. After all, Moscow
risked little, for the Polish raison d'etat guaranteed the
continuation of its Satellite status de facto, if not de jure
Circumstances have changed greatly since the days of Brest-
Litowsk when the leaders of proletarian internationalism
considered national frontiers as of minor importance.
59. Formal Soviet recognition of the "Polish road
to socialism" was effected by the conclusion of the Moscow
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agreement of 18 November. On paper, the USSR made sub-
stantial financial concessions by the cancellation of virtually
all Polish debts, but an uncollectible debt has no value, and,
at any rate, the amount was less than the sums owed by the
USSR on account of Poland's share in German reparations
and the undervaluation of coal deliveries. What was of
greater significance was the implicit admission of the charges
that the USSR had been ruthlessly exploiting the Satellites.
The clauses of the status of forces agreement, spelled out
in greater detail a month later, giving Poland a say in the
matter of Soviet troop locations and movements in the coun-
try, presumably soothed Polish amour propre, but were of
little practical importance. The same can be said of the re-
affirmation of the Oder-Neis.se frontier. The most valuable
concession made by Moscow was the supply on credit of 1.4
million tons of grain, but it hardly could have been refused
if further Poznans were to be avoided.
60. The main victims of the October events in Poland
were Soviet prestige, Soviet propaganda in neutral countries,
and Communist doctrine. Soviet prestige suffered by the
demonstration, sparked by the Poles and enhanced by the
Hungarians, that Russia's might was not ?sufficient to cow
nations into complete submission and to a certain extent could
even be successfully challenged. Soviet propaganda suffered
from the palpable demonstration that even the workers in
Communist-ruled countries, far from welcoming, did not
even acquiesce in Communism, and that it was rejected with
particular decisiveness by the younger generation. Commun-
ist economic doctrine suffered by the admission that after
12 years of application, the standard of living of the people
was, if anything, lower than before, and by the virtual
abandonment of the forced industrialization program. Per-
haps even more serious was the elevation to the realm of
distant ideal of the agricultural collectivization program,
the abolition of discriminatory taxation of kulaks and the
legalization of private sales of land, in spite of the dogma
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that a Communist state cannot be half socialist and half
capitalist, and that individual ownership of land spontaneously
generates capitalism. Other deviations from the orthodox
Party line which the new Polish leadership undertook to
implement included the encouragement of small craftsmen,
private stores and service enterprises, the granting of con-
siderable powers to workers' councils in industrial enter-
prises, the sanctioning of private initiative in the production
of building materials, etc.
62. Nevertheless, Gomulka, addressing on 23 Nov-
ember 1956 the meeting of first regional Party secretaries,
called for the purpose of providing some guidance to the
utterly confused Party apparatus, could argue that these
decisions represented "a change in the methods of our work
and a change in the model of socialism, " but remained
"within the framework of socialism. "
63. The Party activists who thought that the revision
of the Polish party line had gone too far, or that, after the
settlement with the USSR, the standard of living could be
improved overnight, were silenced by Gomulka with the
crushing retort that under the old regime Poland had reached
the point where in 1957 it faced a gap of 12 billion zloty worth
of goods, while coal exports were expected to drop by 10
million tons, and that even then the Lodz textile industry
would probably have to shut down for the winter to save coal
and also for lack of cotton. The only exception he envisaged
to the rule that no wage increases were possible in the im-
mediate future was in favor of the coal miners.
64. Those who thought that the revisions did not go
1
By the end of 1956 it was estimated that 80% of the Polish
collectives, even comparatively prosperous ones, had been
disbanded.
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far enough - the so-called enrag6s - or, as Gomulka admitted,
those "reactionary elements" which were convinced that this
was ''only a stage on the way to something else, " were silenced
by the frank statement:
"Any other program is not realistic and would lead
only to recklessness . ~ . in one way or another to
the Hungarian situation. This should be said boldly
to our comrades; it should be said openly to the patriots
who propose this or other theories; it should also be
said to other enemies of ours who are opposing our
Party organizations. "
65. Gomulka laid part of the blame for the widespread
disorientation in Party ranks on the false concepts. of democ-
ratization voiced, alas, even by journalists and. writers who
were Party members. He warned them that they were not to
imagine that they were above the Party leadership; unless
they mended their ways, the Party would have to "draw organ-
izational consequences;," that is, to tighten the censorship.
In this respect Gomulka was in an embarrassing position,
for it was largely to the intellectuals that he owed his suc-
cess - and they were as conscious of the fact as he was.
66. Gomulka's dilemma was perhaps even more
apparent when he spoke of collaboration with other political
parties. This he justified by the statement that he and his
supporters were "creating a new form of cooperation"; they
were building a "socialism as seen from the viewpoint of
humanitarianism and freedom of broad masses of workers. "
Their aim was to form one front with other "real" parties,
the Peasant Party and the Democratic Party. However, this
did not mean, he said, that "the workers' class will lose its
hegemony and that our Party will cease to be the chief leader.
The solution he envisaged was to let the members of the other
Parties occupy many posts in the economy, in the social
organizations, and even in the government, "provided, how-
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ever, they supported the common program and were tech-
nically qualified. " But, he reassured the Party secretaries,
he would be "much more cautious when it comes to the crea-
tion of the possibility for activity in the political sphere, "
for, he claimed, the truth was that the anti-Communist
elements, the followers of Mikolajczik, were "not interested
in the economic problems but only in the fight for power. Moreover,
" . . a wide wave has spread over the country, a wave
to restore al.l sorts of organizations and forms, with
the intent of using them . . . to undermine everything
developing in Poland. One of them was the Union of
Fighters, which included former Peasant Party lead-
ers, who have in mind a bourgeois democracy. ""
The degree of cooperation, Gomulka concluded, would be
determined by experience. And he candidly admitted that he
expected no difficulties from the Peasant Party leaders, but
rather from below. " These difficulties would have to be
overcome by intensive party work, although he did not deny
the truth of the comrades' statements that "it is in the vil-
lages that the situation of our Party organization is the worst.
He thus inferentially admitted that it was bad in the cities also,
and furthermore that the "leaders" of the allied Parties were
actually stooges of the regime.
67. To bolster their sagging morale, Gomulka
reminded the Party secretaries that all the accomplishments
of the last few months were solely
the result of the work of the Party. We initiated
it and can be proud of it . . . We did it, and no one
else . . . And why . . . are we incapable of utilizing
the great gains of our Party before the Party organi-
zations, before the workers, and before the whole
nation? "
68. But when he became specific, the only achieve-
ment he mentioned was. the solution of "the question of equality
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of our relations with the Soviet Union, the question of
sovereignty, etc. , of the liquidation of all forms of interfer-
ences in our internal affairs . . . " Yet only a few moments
earlier, speaking of the line "separating us as a Party and
those elements of political and social groups which collaborate
with us from those, on the other hand, who want to consider
the present situation as a stage which will lead to the restor-
ation of capitalism, " he admitted that "when it was a matter
of our sovereignty and our independence . . these reaction-
ary elements did support us. "
69. Whether the Party would have achieved what it
did, or its liberal wing even have gained control of the Party
without these "reactionary" elements, is a question Gomulka
of course did not raise. On the other hand, one would have
expected him to credit the Party for another achievement, the
resurrection of the humanitarian viewpoint in socialism. For,
as Przeglad Kulturalny, paraphrasing Marx, had written on
7 November 1956, it was no small matter: "A specter is now
haunting Eastern Europe . . . the specter of humane social-
ism and it frightens not only the capitalists, but the Stalin-
ists too.''
70. The need for the Party aktiv to "rid itself of a
certain type of doubt or disorientation . . . to acquire more
Party, militant, and Communist courage" - a remarkable
admission after its alleged recent triumph - was all the
greater since Gomulka was pledged to grant the people some-
what wider freedom of choice in the impending elections to
the Sejm. And he seemed particularly worried about the
situation in the industrial establishments. The chief task of
the Party was now to strengthen its organization in the fac-
tories, he said. But the method he recommended seemed
hardly the most likely to secure enthusiastic propagandists.
Although he admitted that Party functionaries who were being
dismissed under a ruling to reduce the Party apparatus
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showed great reluctance to return to the factories, he
appealed to them to do just that in order to prove their
"understanding of the present situation. "
71. After the achievement of an uneasy modus
vivendi with the USSR, the next milestone on the "Polish road
to socialism" was the elections to the Sejm. The problem was
to reconcile the promise to give the people a greater voice in
the affairs of the nation with the necessity of assuring the
permanence of the decidedly shaky Party dictatorship. For
this purpose a system was worked out under which a United
Front, composed of the Communist Party (PZPR), the United
Peasant Party (ZSL), the Democratic Party (SD) and Catholic
Groups, was to agree on a common list in each constituency,
with seven candidates for every four seats, in the order of
their "official" preference - in other words, of their relia-
bility as supporters of the regime - the voters having the
right to cross out any names they rejected. Although the dice
were healvily loaded in favor of the Communist Party and its
stooges, it still remained possible to vote only for the
minority of unreliable but popular candidates which it had not
been deemed advisable to reject, 2 or to abstain altogether.
The indications that this might well happen were so strong
that Gomulka made a desperate appeal to the voters on 19 Jan-
dacies agreed upon were as follows:
PZPR 50 percent
ZSL 25 percent
SD 10 percent
Non party and 15 percent
Catholic
2Osubka-Morawski, a Social Democrat and former premier,
was rejected among others for his "discordant" attitude.
According to Warsaw Radio of 2 January 1957, the candi-
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uary 1957 to vote "without deletions" for the "so-called
central candidates, because they are the leaders of the gov-
ernment, our Party and the other political parties, and the
mass workers and peasants associations. " He particularly
implored them not to delete PZPR candidates, because the
Party was a "guarantor of neighborly, brotherly Polish-Soviet
relations, which are the most vital interest of the Polish nation
. . . The German Wehrmacht 50 threatening our territories
. . . the deletion of PZPR candidates is synonymous with the
deletion of Poland from the map of Europe. "
72. This straightforward recognition of the geo-
political facts, together with the quiet but very effective
assistance of the Catholic clergy, had the desired effect.
The National Unity Front got 98% of the votes cast. 1 51% of
the elected deputies were Communists, although, with the
exception of Gomulka and Spychalski, all the Communist
leaders ran behind non-Communist candidates, and, among
the Communists themselves, the liberals came consistently
ahead of Stalinists, such as Pawlak, Titkow, Musialowa, etc.
73. The result of the elections was of course exceed-
ingly satisfactory for the prestige of the Gomulka regime,
although, as Trybuna Ludu of 20 February made clear, as
long as the central candidates had not been deleted, the Party
leadership would not have been endangered even if the Party
had been in the minority, "because PZPR leadership cannot
depend on a formal majority in the Seim. " It depended, the
paper explained, on the fact that the Communist Party was
"the most consistent Party of the Polish revolution" and on
its ability "to persuade" other Sejm deputies. Although the
other parties were indeed "independent political movements, it
they did "not constitute a structural opposition, " but on the
contrary were "also fostering socialist development. 11
94% of the electorate participated in the vote.
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74. Gomulka's electoral success, however, was far
from ending his difficulties. Some were inherent in political
and economic changeovers such as had occurred in October,
some were inheritances from the past, others were peculiar
to his regime.
75. Whatever its relative degree of liberalism, it is
obvious that, for the time being at any rate, no Communist
regime can function successfully, even within the limited
possibilities of Communism, without a strong central author-
ity, be it exercised individually or collectively. Gomulka
was in the curious position of having been chosen on the basis
of his personal mythos as the compromise candidate to lead
the nation, yet being unable to play the role effectively. On
the one hand, he could hardly exercise personal dictatorship
so soon; on the other, he lacked a cohesive moderate group
of his own within the Party Central Committee. As usual
after violent political upheavals, most Party leaders seemed
to be extremists, either extreme revisionists, or extreme
conservatives (Stalinists). As Trybuna Ludu stated, what
was needed was neither "the administrative monolith . . . or
a discussion club or a coalition of mutually incessantly fight-
ing trends, but a party rallied around a common program on
the principles of democratic centralism. " (5 April). And
quoting Kolakowski, the article described as the chief weak-
ness of the left (revisionist) wing "the fact that its negation
only reached the level of a moral protest and not that of
practical thought. "
76. The confusion at the top Party levels was natur-
ally compounded at the lower levels. Party officials not only
were confused as to the correct Party line, still in the pro-
cess of trial and error in many respects, but were demoral-
ized owing to the uncertainty of their fate while the reduction
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of the Party apparatus and the replacement of the unreliable
were still in progress. 1
77. Another inevitable consequence of the changes in
the local party apparatus and of the emancipation of the state
administration was a very general impairment of public
administration and law enforcement. Most of the administra-
tive officials and police officers had been mere rubber stamps
and were helpless on their own, while many of the old
apparatchiks had been efficient, whatever their other faults.
78. Willy-nilly, Gomulka had to rely increasingly on
the old Party officials who were used to discipline, in order
to restore the effectiveness of the Party machinery, with the
hope, by splitting the Stalinist group, of being better able to
control those occupying official positions.
79. A further revealing symptom of the disorganized
state of the Polish Communist Party, considering the impor-
tance attached by Communists to the indoctrination of youth,
is the weakness of the Socialist (Communist) Youth Union.
It had acquired a membership of only 60, 000 by the end of
April 1957, which practically leaves the field to its rivals,
the recently created Rural Youth Union, the Polish Scouts'
Union, and'` the Polish Students' Union. Marian Renke, first
secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth
Union, writing in Trybune Ludu of 7 August, complained that
the Union was developing under very complex and difficult
conditions 11as the effects of past errors are very strongly
felt by youth. " If, as Renke admits, the union could only
The Warsaw Radio announced on 7 August that 8, 669 mem-
bers of the Party apparatus had been dismissed since 6
October and on 10 August that 12, 000 government employees
would be dismissed.
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develop by renouncing "its basic ideological and political
principles" - something it obviously cannot do - its prospects
would not appear bright.
80. Revisionism, spearheaded by writers and jour-
nalists, calling for greater freedom to voice opinions con-
sidered dangerous by the Kremlin, was of course particularly
resented in Moscow.. Setting a harmful example was bad
enough, even if it had to be tolerated, but propagandizing
was worse. I Although naturally reluctant to muzzle his early
supporters among the intellectuals, Gomulka was obliged to
do so in order to ward off Soviet retaliation. This could
easily begin by taking the form of economic reprisals, as it
did in the case of Yugoslavia. In the absence of the hoped-
for substantial American credits, it could be well nigh
catastrophic, since Poland depends almost entirely on the
USSR for such indispensable raw materials as iron ore,
cotton and oil, quite apart from the grain needed to make up
the 1956 and possibly future deficits. 2
1
Cf. the article appearing in the March 1957 issue of the
Rumanian Party magazine Lupta de Clasa, stating, in a clear
allusion to Polish writers, that "certain ideologists abroad
have a tendency to negate the necessity of forming and develop-
ing the socialist masses finder the conditions of the dictator-
ship of the proletariat . . . They allege that once social
ownership is established over the means of production, this
process unfolds itself spontaneously. " The Party periodical
called this "a profoundly damaging revisionist thesis.
2Under the Polish-Soviet trade agreement concluded in April
1957, the USSR is to supply 96% of Poland's oil needs, 66%
of her iron ore, 72% of her cotton, and 100% of her nickel
needs. On the other hand, the USSR agreed to import far
more Polish machinery and less raw materials than hereto-
fore, according to a Warsaw broadcast of 22 April 1957.
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81. Some time in February, a behind-the-scene
agreement had reportedly been reached between Gomulka and
Moscow to take steps toward ending the exchange of recrim-
ination in the press. The editors of the principal party papers,
Zycie Warszawy and Trybuna Ludu, were replaced, in the
latter case by Leon Kasman, who had once held the position
under Bierut. K. Draczkowski, an avowed Stalinist, was
appointed assistant editor of Sztandar Ludu, and all Polish
editors were strongly admonished by Gomulka to moderate
their "irresponsible" campaign, for otherwise Moscow would
be at his throat. Foreign Minister Rapacki's. hurried trip to
Moscow in March, ostensibly to sign a minor frontier treaty,
was generally interpreted as proof that, as Education Minis-
ter Bienkowski privately stated, "the situation was very grave.
82. In a further attempt to placate the Kremlin,
Gomulka agreed for the first time (in a statement to a Hungar-
ian journalist on 15 March 1957) that "counter-revolutionary
forces launched a mad attempt to overthrow the socialist
system . . . just when Hungary had stepped onto the road of
the correction of past mistakes. " What Moscow wanted,
however, was not an obviously opportunistic official state-
ment but an end to the dangerous airing of unorthodox views
in the Polish press. This was made perfectly clear in a
Pravda article of 6 April, which quoted approvingly publica-
tions such as Zycie Partii, Nowe Drogi and Trybuna Robot-
nitza, These had criticized articles in Po Prostu, Sztandar
Mlodych, and other papers for their "revisionist, r" "liquida-
tionist" and "anti.-Marxist" tendencies, specifically:
"incorrect" evaluation of the Hungarian revolution, advocacy
of greater freedofn of expression and "renunciation of the
leading role of the Party, " criticism of the "apparatus of
authority in general, " incorrect views on the relationship
between socialism and capitalism, and frequent manifesta-
tions of nationalism and attacks on Soviet practices. Pravda
did not have to specify that it agreed with "certain papers
and journals" which considered
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"that the struggle against forces hostile to socialism
must at the present time become the main aspect of
the ideologic struggle of Party organizations . . .
Revisionism . . . has grown into liquidationism and
has attempted to force the Party to capitulate in the
face of the reactionary forces."
'Less than a week later, on 12 April, Trybuna Ludu came out
with a strong condemnation of revisionism which produced
immediate results.
The Ninth Plenum, 15-18 May 1957
83. Having apparently realized that there was nothing
to be gained by further postponement, Gomulka convened. the
overdue Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party on
15 May 1957. Its tasks, as stated by Gomulka in his opening
speech, were to
" tell the party and the working class what they must do
and how they must proceed to build socialism in our
country in accordance with the new directions mapped
out by the Eighth Plenum . . . and to draw the appro-
priate conclusions from various phenomena we observe
in our life . . . The essential meaning of the Eighth
Plenum was that it broke away from the bad methods
of socialist construction, from the bad ways and
means of exercising power and that it corrected the
party policy in such a way as to make socialist con-
struction the living creative work of the working
masses . . if
84. Workers wanted socialism, Gomulka claimed,
not only to feel free from exploitation but also because "they
connect with socialism their hope for a speedy improvement
of their existence. " But he had to concede that this hope
conflicted with the need to expand productive forces rapidly
and that "the socialization of the means of production and the
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transition to a planned economy alone" might not "in given
conditions, exert any great influence on changes in the mode
of thought of the working class. " To achieve the necessary
"socialist consciousness, " one had to increase the workers'
participation "in the every-day management of the national
economy and the local administration of the state. " As the
chief factors influencing the consciousness of workers were
"the specific, national conditions in the development of the
proletariat in each country, " Gomulka seemed to argue that
in Poland at any rate this participation was necessary.
Furthermore, it was perfectly permissible, inasmuch as,
"although socialism is universal, the forms of its construc-
tion are shaped by the concrete conditions prevailing in a
given time and place" . . . and it was necessary "on the basis
of one's own and other nations' experiences . . . to look for
new forms or to improve the old forms
85. The three new forms outlined by the Eighth
Plenum "in order to unify the working class with socialism
. . . and to bring the peasants closer to socialism" were:
workers' councils, expansion of the powers of people's coun-
cils, and the development of various forms of peasant self-
management. At this point Gomulka felt the need to define
the meaning of the expression "national road to socialism.
His involved explanation can be boiled down to the assertion
that although the essence of socialism lay in its international
character, its aims embracing all mankind, "the road - in
other words, the ways of construction of socialism - in a
given country and the road followed by the Soviet Union" could
be different. To prove it, Gomulka, after covering himself
by quoting the relevant thesis of the 20th Congress, repeated
the familiar explanation that the historical conditions under
which socialism had to be built in the .USSR and Poland, as
well. as the national characteristics of the two peoples, were
different. Mechanical imitation of the USSR might have been
justified when other countries lacked direct experience and
relations were unequal during the cult of personality period,
but it was no longer so.
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86. But, Gomulka continued,
i'. . . the stress on the national characteristics and on
the historical differences in socialist construction
must not mean the denial of the general regularity of
the universal principles deduced from the experiences
of socialist construction in the Soviet Union . . The
under-estimating or negating of the general regularities
in socialist construction which have been experienced
in the Soviet Union is nationalist revisionism. It must
be combatted . . for it has nothing in common with
socialism. 'I,
87. It followed, according to Gomulka, that the
"road to socialism" should be based on general fundamental
and common principles, and in this sense was international,
but it also presupposed a national understructure peculiar to
each country, and in this sense was national. To justify this
view, Gomulka recalled Lenin's oft-quoted dictum on the sub-
ject. For the misguided "contemporary scientific theorists"
who parroted bourgeois politicians and called the Polish road
to socialism "national Communism" Gomulka had nothing but
scorn and sarcasm.
88. Gomulka then attempted to answer the obvious
question: what were the general fundamental principles which
had to be followed in every country in order to establish
socialism? There were four:
a. Organization of a Marxist-Leninist party of
the working masses, observing the principles of
democratic centralism and of alliance between the
workers and peasants.
b. After the overthrow of the bourgeois ruling
class, the establishment of the. proletarian dictator-
ship over the former exploiters.
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c. Socialization of the capitalist means of
production, gradual transformation of rural produc-
tion relations, and central planning and management
of the entire economy.
d. Observance of the principles of proletarian
internationalism, of the equality and sovereignty of
all states. and nations, and of unity to oppose imperial-
ist aggression.
A further essential condition was the direction of these pro-
cesses by the Marxist- Leniniot workers' party, which had
therefore to be strengthened by every means.
89. Having thus disposed of his critics both on the
right and on the left, Gomulka proceeded to discuss the
"three important elements of the Polish road to socialism"
he had already mentioned. Considering what Gomulka had to
say with regard to the workers' councils, it seems difficult
to consider them an important element of anything. For while
he admitted that "the pattern of workers' councils had been
developed in accordance with the will of the working class
. as an instrument for the administration of its enter-
prises and the national economy, " he contended that trade
unions and works councils could serve just as well. In this
he was undoubtedly correct, if the workers' councils are
granted no more than the limited "rights" he enumerated,
which practically boiled down to the right to do everything
possible to increase production and reduce costs. In other
words, the popular workers' councils were to act as pinch-
hitters for the discredited trade unions. This was a far cry
from the Yugoslav model from which he agreed the Polish
concept had stemmed, but which had to be developed along
a different line, for, he claimed, if the factories became
cooperative enterprises of workers it would mean the adop-
tion of a capitalist organization, with additional disadvantages.
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90. Obviously realizing that it would be dangerous to
discard the workers' councils altogether, Gomulka outlined a
program which would in fact reduce them to mere auxiliaries
of the trade unions. The councils were to take over many of
the unions' duties and depend on them for their financial needs.
Even then he stressed the requirement that the local party
organization "point out to the workers . . .ose candidate
whose election would be the best guarantee of successful work
He practically admitted that the workers could not be
trusted:
The working class is not monolithic . . . it partly
consists of new workers, of youths who came to town
from the villages . partly of people who were
forced to leave other social strata. This variety of
our working class, in the conditions of general weak-
ening of its devotion to its ideals as a result of the
upheavals recently experienced by the working move-
ment, forms a favorable ground for the penetration
into its ranks of alien, in the class sense, and fre-
quently hostile influences, for the spreading of all
kinds of demagogy . . . Among the members of the
councils there are ideologically alien elements, brought
up on the crest of the wave of October. These elements
should be kept out . . . "
91. Having thus disposed of his fellow-riders on the
October wave, Gomulka turned to the second important
element in the Polish road to socialism, the powers of the
local people's councils. In essence, what Gomulka recom-
mended was the implementation of the decisions of 1950 and
1955 and their supplementation in the sense of increasing the
powers and financial resources of the councils and reorgan-
izing their administrative apparatus to make them more
efficient. One of their important duties would be to manage
some local industries which had previously been run -
inefficiently - from the center. Precautions should be taken,
however, "to insure that councils on the higher level have
precedence over councils on the lower levels. "
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92. The third element of the Polish road to socialism,
described by Gomulka as. "the radical turning point in the
policy of the Party" taken by the Eighth Plenum, and as "the
most difficult task of socialist construction, " was the "social-
ist reconstruction. of the countryside" on new lines. The
difficulty stemmed from the fact that the socialist form of
agriculture, the producers' cooperatives, had for the most
part "not withstood the tests of life. " The solution Gomulka
recommended was, besides continuing to encourage producers'
cooperatives by granting them the cheapest rates for MTS
services, the lowest taxes and the most favorable credit terms,
to develop as. extensively as possible lower forms of collective
activity, such as producers' associations and agricultural
circles, by offering them financial advantages denied to
individual farmers.
93. The qualms of the Natolin critics who pointed to
ZSL collaboration in the agricultural legislation and predicted
the resurgence of capitalism in the form of rich peasants. were
allayed by the assurance that "the government not only can,
but if need be, will, effectively counteract the excessive
enrichment of a small stratum of exploiters in the country-
side. " Gomulka also reminded these critics that they had no
other program, for the simple reason. that no better one could
be devised, and he assured them that they could safely trust
the ZSL. In fact, he practically let the cat out of the bag by
complaining that the former error of the Party in "dominat-
ing" instead of "leading" the ZSL had greatly reduced its
influence among the peasants and had therefore harmed the
Party. Now, Gomulka said, "we do not violate its party
sovereignty . . . We consider he ZSL an ally and there-
fore want its ranks to grow. " But at the same time he uttered
a stern warning- The Party was greatly worried by the
"accidental penetration Lof the ZS by elements alien and
even hostile to socialism" to which certain ZSL. leaders
showed tolerance and leniencyp. Adherents of the "bankrupt"
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Mikolajczyk and other emigr&s were "beginning to raise their
heads ever more boldly . . . This cannot be tolerated . . .
The alliance between the Party and the ZSL and the SD,
Gomulka stated emphatically, was based on the principle of
strengthening and developing socialism in Poland. This made
it perfectly clear that Gomulka's idea was to exploit the
popularity of the old ZSL and SD party labels for the sole
benefit of the Communists, while sternly repressing their
authentic ideologies.
94. Toward the Church, Gomulka's attitude was
realistic. He admitted that the Party's agreement with the
Church was "not in accordance with its world outlook, " but
he claimed that it could not use "administrative pressure
toward believers" and that the "old quarrel . . . pushed
millions of believers away from socialism. " The only solu-
tion was therefore coexistence: the state would not interfere
with Church in matters of faith, and expected the Church. to
"recognize" the change in Poland's social system.
95. From a review of ways of improving the mariag-
ment of the state and of the country's economy, Gomulka
proceeded to the discussion of what he termed the most
important problem: the Party, on whose "strength, stability,
ideological position, and influence on the masses" everything
else depended. To make a long, confused, and contradictory
Marxist story short, the gist of what Goniulka had to say on
the subject was that it was "impossible . . . to pretend that
one cannot see the political influences of the bourgeoisie on
the non-bourgeois strata of the population, " that the Party
was the main obstacle preventing the bourgeoisie and re-
action from abusing democratic freedoms" and that therefore
the greater the strength of the Party . . . the broader
democratic freedoms will be. "
96. The strength of the Party depended mainly,
Gomulka continued, on the unity of its ranks, which could
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only be based on "democratic centralism." Discussion and
criticism were of course permissible and desirable, but they
had to be "creative, " and no Party member had the right
"to express outside. the Party his convictions not conforming
to the convictions of the majority . . . , to the policy out-
lined by the Party organs . . " Those who did not agree
had to resign or be excluded.
97. To underline that necessity, Gomulka recalled
that prior to the Eighth Plenum, the violation of the democratic
centralism principle, combined with great policy mistakes,
had produced "mistrust of Party organizations in the leader-
ship, ideological chaos in the Party, the emergence of various
mutually opposed groups - which in sum amounted to a split in
Party unity. " The crisis came about "to no small extent" as
a result of an external event, the "exposure of the cult of the
individual, " intensified by the Poznan events. The Seventh
Plenums decisions were correct, in Gomulka's opinion, but
did not succeed in improving the situation. "In the circum-
stances existing at that time it was impossible to overcome
the political crisis except by means of internal struggle"
between "forces striving for renascence of the Party" and
the "real and sometimes imaginary representatives of con-
servative ossification. " Apparently Gomulka considered this
to have been a special case in which an exception to the rule
of settling differences of opinion by a simple majority vote
had been justified.
98. Fortunately, Gomulka continued, the Eighth
Plenum put the Party back on the right road and the re-
organized Politburo "is already acting as a monolith". But,
he admitted, "the Party is still weak, like a convalescent
after a grave illness, " a weakness, he added cryptically,
which "does not allow the Party to exploit fully the cause of
socialism, internationaliram, and the strengthening of Polish-
Soviet friendship and the great and most important achieve-
ments of the Eighth Plenum which found their expression in
the Polish-Soviet declaration of 18 November 1956. "
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99. The weakness of the Party, Gomulka said, encour-
aged the activity of reactionary, petit-bourgeois, and rebellious
forces, which, under the cover of the Eighth Plenum, attacked
the Party and "honest and active members under the false
slogan of struggle against Stalinists. " Unfortunately, in spite
of the successful Sejm elections, the Party still was confronted
with ideological confusion, "the efficiency of various false
theories, " i. e. revisionism, and a tendency to deny democratic
centralism, by accepting democracy but rejecting centralism.
There were even Party members who had lost socialism in the
search for new roads to it and who even "unambiguously express
their longing for capitalism.
100. To illustrate the extremes to which revisionism
could go, Gomulka then launched into a violent diatribe against
Kolakowski, who wanted "integral democracy, " also now
referred to as "the free play of political forces. " But, he
contended, Kolakowski could not deny that this would create
the threat of a revival of capitalism and of civil war. Could
anyone believe this would consolidate Poland's western
frontiers? No responsible Pole, Gomulka concluded, could
"subject the fate of Poland and the Polish nation to a lottery
called internal democracy. " There was no need to evaluate
the theories of other revisionists like Zimand and Woroszylski.
All derived "from the same bourgeois ideology under whose
influence social democratic ideology was formed.
101. Here Gomulka felt himself obliged to define
"revisionism." According to him, "revisionism is a dis-
tortion of Marxism by the introduction into its teachings of
erroneous and false theses which do not correctly define
social reality . . . " and "do not correspond to the laws
governing the development of society . . . ER evisionists
do not recognize the leading role of the Party, do not recog-
nize democratic centralism, and dispute the essence of the
class struggle. " It was true, Gomulka agreed, that Lenin
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had."revised and developed Marxism" and that "some prin-
ciples of Marxism were also revised by the 20th.CPSU .
Congress, " but nobody called them revisionist "because
amendments to Marxism reflecting actual life or a changed
life do not constitute revisionism. " Later on, when the bour-
geois class forces became unable to threaten the socialist
system, one might well imagine that there would be freedom
for all political opinions. But that was not true today, and
revisionism was "the ideology of capitulation.before the dif-
ficulties of socialist conjstruction, before the class enemy
" In its essence, revisionism aimed t"at a return to
the past while pretending to pave the way for the future. "
102. The opposite errors which disarmed the Party
"in the face of its class opponent" were, Gomulka continued,
dogmatism and conservatism. Dogmatism was "a kind of
collection. of obdurate conceptions which were created under
definite historic conditions"' - in other words, dogmatism
was. the rejection of the revisions deemed desirable. by Gomulka.
There were, he said, quite a few "ideological dogmatists" in
the Party, who created confusion but, even so, were not
dangerous. for Party life. Really dangerous. for the Party,
Gomulka asserted, were the conservatives. The conservative
group included the dogmatists, but was chiefly made up of the
"wide-scale party membership, " which was unable "to make
use of the political methods of work. " The overwhelming
majority of the Party aktiv was in complete agreement. with
the Eighth Plenum decisions, but still could not work in the
new way, and sought refuge in p .s sivity. What Gomulka
feared was a "revival of tendencies to solve all kinds of con-
flicts by force instead of by persuasion . .. "" Experience
taught that a policy "divorced from reality, dogmatic and
sectarian, can be pursued only by applying force and compul-
sion .. ... including towards one's own class. 1117 is a 11
serious mistake . . .
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103. Gomulka conceded that "a considerable per-
centage" of the Party membership consisted of people who
were "only formally members, " took no part in Party work,
failed to attend meetings or to pay their dues. If efforts to
turn them into "real members" failed, they should be dropped,
for quality was more important than quantity. He clearly
implied, however, that the Party membership included too
few workers and peasants. He demanded greater attention
to its "social composition" and urged "greatest caution . . .
in dealing with workers and peasants" when dropping "formal
members, " except in enterprises where they constituted a
considerable percentage. It was apparently better to have
"formal" worker and peasant members than none at all.
104. Party unity, although indispensable, was of
course not enough, Gomulka continued, and he proceeded to
enumerate the familiar requirements of a good and efficient
party apparatus, closely tied to the masses. Gomulka
demanded from the Party no less than that it should "con-
vince the working people on every issue which causes them
to have any doubts . . . " After that, it is difficult to blame
the "conservatives" who either used "administrative work
methods" or "remained passive. "
105. Gomulka then made some brief remarks con-
cerning the economic situation. He stressed the impossibility
of further wage increases in the near future and the difficulties
being experienced in balancing foreign trade as a result of the
increased demand for consumer goods which had to be imported.
With regard to strikes, he said that the Party was against them
but would not use administrative methods against them. The
differences were to be solved by discussions.
106. In the concluding part of his speech Gomulka
reverted to the theme of inter-Party relations. He reaffirmed
his contention that differences of opinion were natural and
inevitable, but could be settled by friendly discussions "on a
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platform of recognition of the common laws" which must be
applied "in the struggle for the overthrow of the capitalist
order." He promised to Iplace in the forefront everything
which unites us . . putting aside whatever divides us, and
letting time furnish a solution,"
107. Gomulka energetically repudiated any attempts
to sow discord between Poland and the USSR.
" Our Party most resolutely condemns everything
directed against the unity of the camp of socialist
states, everything that undermines Polish-Soviet
friendship and alliance, or that violates the prin-
ciples. of /proletariat internationalism . The
prospects for our country's Lconomi~~ development
are also based on the prospects of the development
of the Soviet Union.
108.. Gomulka made another bow in the direction of
Moscow, declaring that differences from other parties in
our appreciation of events in Hungary 2id7 not change the
common point of view hat thT Soviet Army's help in sup-
pressing counterrevolution was a regrettable but unavoidable
necessity. " Moscow may, however, have been less pleased
with his reference to the development of the creative teach-
ing of Marxism-Leninism by the Chinese Communist Party
and "its profound link with the people . . . The thesis of the
hundred blooming flowers also constitutes a bold step which
had until now been unknown in the practice of the construction
of socialism in other countries. "
109. Gomulka summed up his policy by reasserting
Polish solidarity with the "entire revolutionary movement of
the working class throughout the world . . . We reject . . .
all attempts to distort our ideology with any form of national-
ism or revisionism, or to distort it by stagnant dogmatism.
We reject . . . all the absurd attempts to seek 'national Com-
munism' in our party . . "
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110. Although Gomulka had made it abundantly clear
that he would not go along with the revisionists, and it was
generally expected that this would satisfy the conservatives,
the next day's debates revealed that they actually wanted a
return to the status quo ante. According to newspaper reportsl
the right-wing leaders Mijal, Klosiewicz, Lapot, Ruminski,
Dworakowski, 2 etc. argued in effect that there could be no
Polish road to socialism, that the agricultural policy was
wrong, that Gomulka's "road is a return to capitalism [and-7
capitulation to the Roman Catholic Church. " They demanded,
among other things, that the press be muzzled even more
tightly than heretofore, that the final resolution contain a
specific recognition of Soviet leadership of the Communist
bloc and an outright condemnation of the Hungarian "counter-
revolution, " etc.
111. Apparently surprised and angered by the fierce-
ness of the right-wing attack, Gomulka, supported by Zam-
browski, Ochab, and others, counter-attacked strongly.
Zambrowski suddenly discovered that the revisionists, although
still representing the greatest overall danger, were only an
ideological danger, while in practice the greatest present
threat came from the "conservatives., " Ochab defended the
freedom of the press.
112. Gomulka is reported to have declared the debate
had convinced him that dogmatism and revisionism were equal
dangers, and proceeded to answer Mijal point by point. He
appeared particularly aroused by Mijal's charge that his
policy violated proletarian internationalism, meaning that it
denied Soviet leadership. Gomulka asked whether true inter-
1The full texts of the speeches, with the exception of Gomulka's
opening-speech, have not been published.
2To the general surprise, Mazur declared himself in favor of
"October" and denied that he had ever supported the right wing.
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nationalism consisted in blind obedience to the Soviet Union
and whether the liquidation of the old Polish Communists in
1937, the devastation of the Western provinces, the lies
spread about Yugoslavia, anti-semitism, etc. were the
proper manifestations of internationalism. He even went so
far as to remark that in Budapest the "leading" position had
been occupied by Soviet tanks .and to imply that the last thing
he wanted to see in Poland was Communism fighting reaction
with..the support of Russian forces. Finally he defied Mijal
to go to a_ factory. and speak to the workers about "Soviet
leadership in the Socialist camp. " He would see the sort of
reception he would get. Gomulka 'ended by threatening to
publish the full record of the speeches. Thereupon Mijal
capitulated, withdrawing all his charges and urging that his
own speech be suppressed. One may ask, however, how
Gomulka's threat could be reconciled with the rule he had
laid down in his first speech, that all discussions between
Communists should remain private.
113. Mijal's capitulation apparently mollified
Gomulka and his followers, for the final resolution adopted
by the Ninth. Plenum stated inter alias
"In the present situation, revisionism constitutes the
main ideological danger in the Party, for it undermine
the ideological and political unity of the Party, and
sows, disbelief in the correctness and advisability of
.socialist construction among the party ranks and the
working class. While continuing the struggle against
manifestations: of dogmatism and paying the road for
creative Marxism, it is imperative to oppose with
full strength any manifestations of departure. from our
own ideology; it is necessary to combat them in Party
propaganda, in the press, at universities and at
research institutions.
114. Although in the above passage, "revisionism"
is declared the main danger, the rest of the resolution makes
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it clear that revisionists and reactionaries are now inter-
changeable words. "Reactionary elements" are accused of
having, after the Eighth Plenum, "let loose a witch-hunt
against Party activists, under the slogan of the fight against
so-called Stalinists, " the aim of these attacks being "to slow
up the framework L:,5 i_7 of the people's democracy in order
to go on to 'the next stage' - to undermine the socialist
achievements of the working people, to change the direction
of Poland's development back toward bourgeois power, toward
capitalism. " The Resolution also made it clear that "all
attempts to reestablish bourgeois parties and organizations,
as well as attempts by forces hostile to socialism to infiltrate
into our allied parties" would be opposed.
115. With regard to relations with other members
of the Bloc, the Resolution reaffirmed the "demand for full
respect of the sovereignty of People's Poland, and choosing
the road of the construction of a new socialist system cor-
responding to Polish conditions. " However, it "'linked up
this attitude inseparably with proletarian internationalism"
and "determinedly opposed the national interpretation of the
idea of sovereignty, as being contrary to the international
solidarity of socialist states and to the Polish-Soviet alliance."
116. Significant for conditions within the Party were
the following passages:
"The Party must overcome the organizational inertia
that has crept into many Party organizations. It is
impossible to condone a state of affairs in which they
do not hold meetings for whole months at a time, in
which their members are not executing any Party
tasks, in which many Party bodies do not refer to
these organizations or to their activists, in which they
are given no guidance and no concrete directives, in
which no ideological schooling is conducted and Party
members are not encouraged to take part in political
life .
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"A situation cannot be tolerated in which the most
valuable activists of the Party stand aloof from Party
life. . . Only with the assistance of these activists
. . , can the Party bodies and their apparatus estab-
lish close ties with the work establishments, with the
workers - the principal base of the Party."
117. The Resolution warned
"'. all. those who, against the appeal of the Party
leadership, would choose any forms of group and
factional activity, that sanctions will be taken against
them, reaching as far as exclusion from Party ranks.
The Party cannot tolerate: its members publicly pro-
claiming views. opposed to its political line, or appeals
to public opinion against the resolution of the Party."
118. The rest of the Resolution was a restatement,
in slightly modified form, of the recommendations made by
Gomulkai in his initial speech. Noteworthy was the admission
that speculation, corruption, bribery, thefts, and waste,
which had spread recently "as a result of the relaxation of
control and discipline, as well as because they can be done
with impunity and are tolerated by the organs called upon to
combat all kinds of abuses" - in other words, by the Party
organizations too - had become "acute social plagues. "
119. Two significant decisions were taken: by the
Plenum-. Berman and Radkiewicz got off with a three-year
exclusion from the Party. The special investigating com-
mittee found that "they were not aware of the system of
criminal methods of investigation and of foreign evidences
practiced in the 10th Department of the Ministry of Public
Security" but that they had failed to discharge their duties
"in the field of political supervision and guidance over the
work of the security organs. "
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120. The other decision was to appoint Morawski and
Kliszko, two of Gomulka's most devoted followers, to the
Central Committee secretariat. Although Ochab was
"released" from the secretariat, Gomulka's influence over
the Party machinery was considerably strengthened.
Relations with other Communist Countries
121. The peaceful revolution in Poland affected not
only the relations between that country and the USSR but
relations with other Communist countries as well.
122. Tito, in his Pula speech on 11 November 1956,
is authority for the statement that the Polish. events were the
cause of the untimely end of the second Soviet-Yugoslav
honeymoon. "When the Poznan affair happened, there occurred
among the Soviet people a sudden change of attitude toward us.
They started to prove colder. They thought that we, the Yugo-
slavs, were to blame. Yes, we are to blame . . because
/Yugoslavia's7 acts reverberate even beyond our country. . "
123. Conversely, Polish-Yugoslav relations had been
extremely cordial although Gomulka was careful to avoid
provoking Moscow by emphasizing them, and Tito of course
understood his position. Any public manifestations which
might have provoked suspicion in Moscow were carefully
avoided until Gomulka's September 1957 visit to Belgrade.
It was hardly a coincidence that it followed closely upon Tito's
Bucharest meeting with Khrushchev and therefore no surprise
that the speeches, particularly Gomulka's, betrayed an
extreme anxiety to reassure the Kremlin that -no anti-Moscow
faction was being set up which would violate the agreement
presumably reached in Bucharest.
124. As for Polish relations with the other Satellites,
Tito was undoubtedly right when he declared at Pula that he
could not say "that this positive development in Poland has
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met with much.joy in the remaining countries of the 'socialist
camp'. No, they criticize it secretly, but to some extent
openly as well. " Tito was of course referring to the Com-
munist leaders, not to the people of those countries.
125. Some students of Communist affairs believe
that China played an important role in the Polish developments.
The New York Times, in an editorial of 18 April 1957, went
so far as to claim that
'last September, the seeds of October's peaceful
revolution were fertilized in Peiping when Mao Tse-
tung and Chou En-lai told Edward Ochab they would
support Polish independence of the Soviet Union.
Without that support it is unlikely that Ochab and his
colleagues would have dared to stand up to Khrush-
chev . "
The editorial then mentioned Chou En-lai's visit to Warsaw
in January 1957 and the endorsement of the Polish changes
given on 11 April to Premier Cyrankiewicz at the close of
his visit to Peiping. It added that the Poles were assured
they could count on Peiping's continued support but were
asked only not to talk so much and to take care "to make
obeisance before Moscow's verbal formulae. " The editorial
expressed doubt that the Soviet leaders were pleased by these
developments, yet believed they had had to accept them to
avoid destroying the public image of unity.
126. It may be pointed out, however, that on the very
same day, Chou En-lai also expressed to a Nepszab.adsag
correspondent his "great satisfaction that the Hungarian
people have succeeded in defeating the insurrection led by the
imperialist and counterrevolutionary forces." While the
Polish-Chinese communique failed to mention Soviet leader-
ship, Chou En-lai referred to "the solidarity of the socialist
camp, guided by the USSR" in his interview with the Hungar-
ian journalist. Furthermore, it is difficult to believe that
the Chinese would have been prepared to break with Moscow
for the sake of the liberalization of Poland, or that anything
less would have been of decisive influence in Moscow or
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Warsaw. It may also be noted that, while according to
Philippe Ben in Le Monde of 2 March 1957 Chou En-lai
encouraged the Poles to assert greater independence from
Moscow and offered advice on the best way to proceed, he
mentioned no promise of assistance, either direct or indirect,
presumably for the very good reason that China could not
supply either food, raw materials, or military assistance
against Germany, and would have no reason to break with the
USSR over Poland after having swallowed the repression in
Hungary. But that does not mean that the Chinese leaders do
not sympathize with the "different roads to socialism" prin-
ciple, as implied by their statement of 1 November 1956 and
Mao Tse-tung's "100 flowers" principle, nor that they do not
exert themselves to mediate between Warsaw and Moscow,
nor that their views do not carry considerable weight in Mos-
cow. The Chinese appear to have influenced developments in
Poland, chiefly by the fact that until June 1957 when the
"counter-criticism" campaign started in earnest in China:
the Polish liberals derived great encouragement from their
illusions as to the support they were getting and could expect
to get from Peiping.
Analysis of the Polish Situation and Prospects after the
Ninth Plenum of the PZPR
127. Three questions will be examined in the follow-
ing pages:
a. The scope and significance of the "Polish
road to socialism. It
b. The political situation in the Party and the
country after the Ninth Plenum,
c. The prospects of the Gomulka experiment.
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a. The Polish Road to Socialism
The chief characteristics of the Polish road to social-
ism,, as they emerge from Gomulka's speech of 15 May 1957
and other authoritative sources, can be listed as follows:
respect for Polish sovereignty; peace with the Church; a new
agricultural policy; greater freedom of expression; workers'
councils; increased powers for local councils; legalization of
small private trade and crafts - and, above all, humaneness,
With regard to Polish sovereignty, it is obvious that
a nation which is not free to change its basic political and
social institutions or its foreign policy, as Gomulka himself
repeatedly admitted, enjoys only the trappings, but not the
substance of sovereignty. What the Poles have gained since
October 1956 is freedom from the cruder forms of Russian
interference and toleration of a limited latitude in the inter-
pretation. of Marxist-Leninist principles. The change is un-
doubtedly a. sop to Polish pride and susceptibilities, but it is
the form of Russian domination which has changed, not the
substance.
A more profound. change has come about in the economic
relations between the Soviet Union and Poland. Instead of
being an object of exploitation, Poland has become a recipient
of Soviet assistance However, this reversal was not peculiar
to the relations of Poland with the Soviet Union; rather, it
occurred in all the Satellites except relatively prosperous
Czechoslovakia. The USSR would be compelled to do the same
for any of its component republics if economic hardships pro-
duced a dangerous degree of disaffection. While it is of course
more agreeable for a country to be assisted than to be exploited,
nevertheless the net effect of Poland's reliance on Soviet raw
materials, supplied on credit, increases its dependence on
Moscow and may well outweigh the formal gains achieved in the
matter of sovereignty.
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In making peace with the Church, Gomulka could
invoke a precedent set by the Kremlin itself when it gave up
militant anticlericalism during the war. But, taking specific
Polish conditions into account, notably the much stronger
hold exercised over its faithful by the Catholic Church than
the Orthodox, he carried the policy considerably further.
Gomulka recognized, like many rulers before him, that one
cannot eradicate strong religious beliefs by force, and that
the fight against religion, instead of smoothing the path, of
Communism, had increased the hostility of the population
and sapped the indispensable foundation of morality, which,
as Nowe Drogi of May 1957 recognized, Communism was
unable to supply. The periodical wisely agreed that Com-
munism could hope to supplant religion only by making man
happier:
'The more man's life is secure from the economic
angle and the less he has to fear from authorities
whom he feels to be alien and un-understanding, the
less he will turn to divine intercession . . . We must
question religion from a scientific, rational, mater-
ialistic angle . . . The opposition of one fanaticism
to another has never done any good. "
The Catholic Church, on the other hand, has in modern
times quite consistently followed the principle "Give unto
Caesar . . " So long as the state does not interfere with
religion and the clergy, the Church has no cause to oppose
the state actively. There is no reason for the Church to
reject the coexistence offered by Gomulka, which seems to
grant it a better situation than it enjoys in some non-Commun-
ist countries.
The new Polish agricultural policy is a serious devia-
tion from the Soviet model, but not from Leninism. As a
matter of fact, it does not differ as radically as might seem
at first sight from the policy followed since Stalin's death in
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other Communist countries. (Rumania, for instance) which
have never claimed to follow their own road to socialism.
Favoring "simpler forms of peasants' association, " as a step-
ping stone to the higher forms, and assisting individual peas ants,
have been official policy in Rumania since 1954; Poland goes a
little further by encouraging the growth of individual farms and
the private acquisition of farm machinery. On the other hand,
the Polish government has so far only reduced compulsory
deliveries while the Rumanian government, not to mention the
Hungarian, actually abolished them in December 1956. The
official policy of both governments remains to offer financial
inducements to peasants joining collective farms, but it is true
that the Poles have encouraged the dissolution of uneconomic
collectives, while the Rumanians have made this exceedingly
difficult. The Rumanian Communist press, however, has
admitted that many farms classified as belonging to "the
socialized sector of agriculture" are socialized on paper only,
and it may well be that the proportion of real collective farms
is not much greater today in Rumania than in Poland
It is true that private economy in agriculture does not
fit very well into the Communist pattern, but Gomulka took
his stand on Communist realism: coercion of the peasants
failed to produce food, food was indispensable, and coercion
had therefore to be abandoned. The regime would still encour-
age voluntary cooperation and collectivization, continue its
educational work, and trust that in time most of the peasants
would join. If not, it could not be helped, and the "dictator-
ship of the proletariat" would, if need be, "effectively counter-
act the excessive enrichment of a small stratum of exploiters
in the countryside. " In other words, even if the regime could
not force Communism on the villages, it felt confident that it
could keep capitalism within narrow limits.
Gomulka can argue that his farm policy does not run
counter to any of Lenin's rules, and that besides, it continues
to offer every inducement to collectivization. There is
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nothing more he can be asked to do, for the abandonment of
forcible collectivization in the Satellites had been sanctioned,
in theory at any rate, by the Kremlin itself in 1953. The
peasants, although they never will embrace Communism, can
be expected in the foreseeable future to get along with its
dominance in the cities, provided their economic interests
are satisfied and they are otherwise left alone, free to farm
cooperatively or individually at their choice.
As has been pointed out above, the workers' councils
are, for the time being, at any rate, prevented from playing
any important part in the economy. The increased powers for
local councils are in line with the trend in other Satellite
countries and are therefore not peculiar to Poland. The same
is true of the legalization of small private trade, of small
service enterprises, and of handicrafts. Poland seems to have
gone further than most other Satellites with regard to private
trade, but it still lags behind the GDR.
In spite of the recent limitation of the freedom of the
press and of debate in the Sejm, the Poles certainly enjoy
considerably greater freedom of expression, both in the press
and in parliament, than any other satellite nation.
To sum up, the "Polish road to socialism" does not
really deviate very sharply from the road followed by the other
Satellites claiming no such originality. The greatest differ-
ence between them lies not in their policies, but in their spirit
and in the assertion by Poland of the right to differ, and to be
treated with the respect due to anybody enjoying that right.
b. The Political Situation after the Ninth Plenum
Gomulka's basic internal difficulties stem from the
fact that events in Poland were not allowed to follow their
natural course. Revolutions usually end either with the com-
plete victory of one of the opposing factions or with the pendulum
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coming to rest naturally somewhere in the middle. But in
Poland in October 1956, the swing of the pendulum was arti-
ficially arrested by an external factor, the USSR, with the
result that neither the right nor the left felt they had been
beaten. Consequently, the struggle goes on. Gomulka's only
asset, but a powerful one, is that he is the makeweight on the
balance. Whatever his popularity in the summer and sutumn
of 1956, there is no doubt that his followers are in a distinct
minority today, both in the country at large and in the Party.
The Gomulka group in the Central Committee of the Party,
numbering about eighty members, is reportedly only fifteen-
man strong, as against twenty-three members of the Natolin:.
group and only four or five members of the revisionist left.
The rest belong to the right or left center but they support
Gomulka because they have no choice. The left center cannot
support the revisionists for fear of a break with the USSR, and
the right center cannot support the Natolin group for fear of a
popular revolt. As a matter of fact, the Natolin bark seems to
be worse than its bite, and judging by the tone of the Soviet
press during these last months, coupled with the unexpected
intervention of Mazur fresh from a trip to Moscow in Gomulka's
support at the Ninth Plenum, the Kremlin appears to prefer to
put up with the present situation in Poland for the time being,
rather than to set off some more fireworks.
The Kremlin cannot but realize, as does the Polish
leadership, "the true state . . . of the feelings of the popula-
tion, " now that they have rejected "the r se-colored glasses
which we used to put on when assessing aem
7, " (Polityka
No. 13, May 1957). "There are probably only a few Commun-
ists who are not aware nowadays, " the periodical continued,
"what tremendous political work is in store for them regard-
ing the consolidation of Polish-Soviet friendship. We do not
hide the fact anti-Soviet feelings exist in various centers . . . "
As for the popularity of Communism in Poland, a striking
testimonial was supplied by Piasecki, the chairman of the Pax
Association, who declared on 7 May 1957: 'it is an objective
statement to say that opinion in Poland shows signs of an anti-
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socialist neurosis. It is also an objective statement to say
that this neurosis has to be allowed for in practical politics. "
Nowa Kultura of 20 May 1957, while bitterly attacking Piasecki
on a number of grounds, had to admit that he is of course right
"where he refers to the harm done by the anti-socialist
neurosis . . . " Particularly serious is the fact that disaffec-
tion seems strongest among the workers, disillusioned with
Communism in general and Gomulkaism in particular, as
evidenced by widespread unrest and strikes, any one of which
is a potential Poznan. If Zambrowski found it necessary to
appeal to the Party organizations to "develop the socialist
consciousness and activeness of the working class . . . and to
unite with their vanguard, the basic party organizations"
(Trybuna Ludu, 26 May 1957), it was obviously because the
workers and the Party are still "out of touch" with each other.
It is in vain that Gomulka can argue that, ever since
October, he has consistently stressed the impossibility of rais-
ing wages further before productivity had risen considerably.
Most workers apparently only remember that he promised a
radical improvement of conditions which has not materialized,
and find cold comfort in the fact that the wages of workers in
key industries have been raised. "Things are hard for people
in Poland, " Warsaw Radio conceded on 15 August 1957 after
the Lodz transport workers' strike. "There are many groups
of workers whose salaries are inadequate. " The next day,
Warsaw Radio frankly explained absenteeism: The allegedly
sick worker works two or three days a week in private work-
shops, where he earns 100 to 150 zloty daily, while. drawing
sickness benefits from the State. One worker admitted "with
naive honesty" that it did not pay to work in the factory. The
only reason he did not quit was not to lose his rights to family
allowances, medical treatment, etc.
Naturally enough, especially in a Communist state, the
people blame the government. And the government is Gomulka.
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According to Trybuna Ludul , Party members have now been
urged to launch a "persuasion campaign. " But, as the paper
also laments, the increasing apathy in Party ranks - whose
membership is estimated to have dropped to a maximum of
one-half the pre-October figure of 1.4 million - is such that
Gomulka can hardly hope to regain much of his popularity by
this method. This is particularly true in the light of the new
and more severe labor regulations which Gomulka, apparently
none too optimistic himself, found necessary to announce on
11 August 1957 in an effort to curb absenteeism and to enforce
work discipline.
Under the circumstances it is understandable that
Gomulka considers "revisionism" a greater. danger than con-
servatism of recent memory. "Revisionism" is but a euphem-
ism for "reaction, " as he himself declared. As "reaction" is
but another name for "anti- Communism; " Gomulka himself, a
sincere, albeit liberal, Communist, must fear anything that
might fan the embers into flames. Bf-sides, regardless of his
own inclinations, he is convinced that the Kremlin would not
tolerate a really free and non-Communist Poland. The Krem-
lin, on the other hand, has been able to convince itself since
last October that the soup is not eaten as hot as it is cooked,
as the German proverb has it, and has every reason to put up
with the Gomulka regime rather than to have to repeat its
Budapest exploit. After all, the Polish road to socialism
remains well within the limits set down in Pravda of 2 June
1956 on the occasion of Tito's visit, and remote control can
be just as effective as open interference. Moreover, today,
for all we know, the Russians themselves would not advise
the Polish Communists to collectivize agriculture by the same
means Stalin used in the USSR in the 1930s for they cannot be
anxious to go on feeding the Poles indefinitely nor can they let
them starve. As for the Polish agreement with the Catholic
Church, Marxism has always boasted of its realism and flex-
ibility,. and if the Kremlin can accept peaceful coexistence
As quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, 12 August 1957.
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with capitalism, it can equally well coexist peacefully with the
Church - with the same mental reservations, of course.
But the fact: that the Russians have decided to tolerate
the present situation in Poland does not mean that they are
reconciled with it, if for no better reason than the urge to
efface the October setback and to gratify the human domineer-
ing instinct; or, as Lenin called it, "great nation chauvinism,
of which the Ruasians have more than their fair share. Moscow
presumably calculates that if only Gomulka is given enough rope,
he will surely hang himself.
The defeat by Khrushchev of the Molotov-Malenkov-
Kaganovich group should not have anything but a superficial
effect on the political situation in Poland. Inasmuch as the
June 1957 resolution of the CPSU Plenum represented a slap
for the conservatives, it naturally gave great satisfaction to
the revisionists, and inasmuch as it reduced the danger of
forceful Soviet intervention in Polish affairs it gave equal
satisfaction to the government and to all Poles except the
conservatives. It is, however, difficult to see that the Moscow
purge made much practical difference in Poland. There is no
reason to assume that the Soviet attitude toward Poland had not
always been the one decided upon by Khrushchev, nor did the
policies for which his opponents were indicted have their coun-
terpart in Poland. There is, therefore, no incompatibility
between approval of the Natolin and condemnation of the Molo-
tov factions. Nevertheless, the June Resolution can be effec
tively represented as a disavowal of Natolinism, and the net
effect is likely to be a temporary chastening of Natolin trucu-
lence which would give Gomulka a freer hand to combat the
revisionists. In the words of Sokorski, chairman of the Polish
Radio Committee, broadcast over the Warsaw Radio on 5 July
1957, "we were always fully conscious of the fact that . . . the
victorious repelling of revisionist tendencies must take place
on the basis of overcoming dogmatism and sectarianism . . . "
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Gomulka remains confronted with two serious problems:
How to ensure efficient administration and a healthy economy?
And the difficulty is compounded by the fact that the two problems
are closely intertwined yet demand ideologically conflicting
solutions, A firm administration helps the economy, and a
materially satisfied population is easier to govern. Yet it is
very doubtful whether a strongly anti-Communist population
can be governed without the use, or the ever-overhanging
threat, of force, i. e. without Stalinism minus its psychopathic
excesses . On the other hand, the Polish and other satellite
standards of living with the possible exception of Czecho-
slovakia - can improve only if consumer goods are given a
high priority over heavy industry and the economy is allowed
much greater freedom, i. e. the opposite of Stalinism.
Gomulka's weakest point is not his failure to control
the majority of the Central Committee of the Party. The fact
that his group holds the balance of power and that both the left
and the right have moderate wings prepared to go along with a
middle of the road policy would enable him to secure in that
body the necessary support for his policies and remain in power
for a long time. The greater weakness of the Gomulka regime
comes not from the 23 Natolin adherents in the Central Com-
mittee, but from the fact that the majority of the Party appara-
tus are conservatives, controlling all but three voivodships,
even though most Party secretaries are Gomulka men. 1 And
the explanation why most of the apparatchik.i are conservatives
is to be found in the speeches of the regime leaders themselves:
they simply cannot see how they can impose their authority on a
recalcitrant population without the use of "administrative, " i. e.
forcible, methods. One must agree that they have a strong
case, for if the explanation and persuasion recommended by
Gomulka fail and force is ruled out, passivity seems the only
1How this situation is possible under party "democracy" has
never been explained.
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solution left. The inevitable consequence is administrative
anarchy and disrespect for authority as exemplified dramati-
cally by the Jaroslaw riot in early May, and the defiance of
the police in October by the Warsaw students protesting against
the suppression of Po Prostu, who were joined by numerous
"hooligans. "
The breakdown of authority naturally has a bad effect
on the country's already shaky economy. Whether the economic
situation is actually worse in Poland than in the other Satellites -
and in that case, why? - or whether the Poles simply have more
freedom to grumble about it, is hard to tell. But the fact is that
great discontent on that score is reported from Poland, even
though the national income is claimed to have increased 7% in
1956 over 1955. As a result of the reduction of total industrial
investments and their reallocation in favor of consumer goods
and a sharp drop in military expenditures, the share of individ-
ual consumption has increased by almost 12%, according to a
Warsaw broadcast of 18 February 1957. But this was the result,
Leon Kasman admitted to an economic conference of the PZPR
Central Committee on 17 April 1957, not only of planned regu-
lations but also of a loosening of wage discipline, spontaneity,
and arbitrariness in this field. " Warsaw Radio conceded that
the wage increases "were necessary and justified . . . But for
the development of the economy such a state of affairs is unten
able. " And, as of 2 June 1957, Warsaw Radio admitted further
that the increases had been very uneven, that the general pay
level was still low, and that it was difficult for the workers to
make ends meet. Many prices, including food prices, had
already risen, and although the major part of the raises ob-
tained by the favored groups in basic industries had not yet
been absorbed, "inflation threatens, and if it occurs it will
eat up the new raises and produce lower standards of living. "
Kasman conceded that even the limited success in
holding prices down had only been achieved by dipping into
reserves of goods and raw materials. The Minister of Foreign
Trade admitted that the increased imports had been financed
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by credits granted mainly by the USSR, but also by Czecho-_
slovakia, the GDR, Britain and France, 1 which would leave
a deficit of about a billion rubles in the. 1957 balance of trade.
Finally Gomulka completed the picture by his statement to :the
Ninth Plenum that the rapid pace in wage increases had been.,
achieved "through the reduction of planned expenditure for
national defence. We cannot repeat the operation.
The symptomatic increase in black market operations
was described by Trybuna Ludu of 19 April 1957 as the result
of "utter administrative confusion and the corruption existing
in people's. councils. " Loga-Sowinski, chairman of the Trade
Union Council, on 15 July complained of the further intensifi.-
cation of speculation - read inflation. - and other economic
abuses, and of the serious relaxation of wage discipline.
Nowe Drogi. for September 1957 explained the seriousness of
the prevailing "social evils'.' by the circumstance that "many
of the old principles of bourgeois morality have.broken. down,
but the principles of socialist morality are by no means suf-
ficiently consolidated . '"
The Ninth Plenum Resolution of 18 May bluntly warned
the people that "the limit of our possibilities to counterbalance,
the increased income of the population by an adequate volume
of -goods and services ,has now been reached, as proved by the
manifestations of speculation, the rise of certain prices and
the difficulties encountered in satisfying the demand for butter
and some other articles. " Yet, Yedrychowsk}, chairman of
the Planning Commission, conceded in a Warsaw, broadcast
of Z4 July that even in the last six months, "the increase in
wages was greater than in labor productivity" and "absentee-
ism has reached frightful proportions, considerably higher
than last year . . . A particularly tense situation prevails
1
Poland has since obtained additional. credits from the US,
Canada, etc.
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in foreign trade . . . and also on the house market .
The one bright spot in the Polish economic picture is
the success of the 1957 harvest, presumably as a result both
of good weather and the new agricultural policy, under which
grain deliveries have been reduced by one-third and the price
doubled.
Bad as Poland's economic situation.. is, it would
obviously be much -worse but for the foreign credits she has
obtained, chiefly from the USSR. 1 But, with the exception
of some Americancoal mining machinery, the money goes
to pay for consumable goods. Even if repayment of the credits
is not due to start for some years, Polish productivity, espe-
cially in agriculture, will have to increase sharply indeed, if
similar shortages are not to develop next year and further
appeals to Moscow are to be avoided. The Russians would be
superhuman if they did not seize the opportunity to exact a
gradual and unobtrusive swing toward the Natolin line. Go-
mulka's switch in the matter of the interpretation of the Hun-
garian uprising and the severe limitation of the powers of
workers' councils are signs pointing in that direction. The
sharp curtailment of the freedom of the press is certainly in
part at least also due to Russian pressure. It is, moreover,
significant that although Moscow agreed to supply Poland a
considerable amount of grain for 1957, the amount fell short
of the quantity needed to form a reserve permitting complete
abolition of forced deliveries, a step Moscow has made it
possible for Rumania to take.
The ultimate success or failure of the Gomulka exper-
iment in relative liberalism seems therefore to depend
1Credits from the "socialist" countries totalled $450 million,
according to Tr bung Robotnicza of 9 June 1957.
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primarily on economic developments. If it provides suffi-
cient incentives to raise management, labor, and farm
productivity; as well as the means to enforce wage discipline
and compulsory deliveries, the chances of the Gomulka
regime maintaining itself in power and pursuing its present
policy line seem good. However, its economic problems
are formidable. The Polish peasants are probably faixly
satisfied now for all practical purposes they are hardly
affected by Communism - but the politically active segment
of the population is the city people, and. if their standard of
living fails to improve with reasonable speed, the most likely
development in Poland is a reversion to neo-Stalinism. This
might happen gradually as a result of the inner.:logic of Soviet
style Communism coupled with Soviet economic pressure, or
violently, if popular discontent erupts,. for, in the words of a
high Polish official, "a little flare-up in some small place
can lead to a big explosion in a big place. " Should the Gomulka
regime prove unable to quell such disturbances unaided, the
Russians would certainly intervene as in Hungary. This knowl-
edge is actually Gomulka.?s greatest asset. against both the
Party extremists and the Polish people.
Theoretically, there could of course be another sdiu-
tion which would go far toward solving P=oland's problems,
over the next few years at any rate: massive economic assist-
ance from the United States. This, however, is not considered
likely, since the overriding fact is that Poland's possession of
the former German territories binds her politically and mili-
tarily.to the USSR and precludes the possibility of her align-
ment with the West or even of neutrality & la Tito. Giving
anything but token or moral support to any Polish regime be-
fore the territorial problem is solved in a manner tolerable
to both Poles and Germans could only mean strengthening an
ally of the USSR.
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c. Prospects
We have said above that the fate of the Gomulka exper-
iment depends primarily on economic developments. The
prospects do not seem favorable, and to achieve a real im-
provement a far more fundamental change may be required.
Probably the most penetrating and frank avowal. of
this problem yet made by a Communist in good standing is to
be found in an address delivered to the Association of Polish
Journalists by Wladyslaw Bienkowski, Minister of Education
and reputedly one of the men closest to Gomulka. I
Taking as his text Mao Tse-tung's metaphor of the
"hundred flowers, " Bienkowski examined its applicability to
"the Polish garden. " He started by pointing out the great
difference between Marx and Lenin's concept of the building
of socialism and Stalin's' the former imagined that after the
seizure of power by the workers, socialism would develop
naturally in its new constitutional framework, while Stalin
evolved the "concept of the artificial creation of a socialist
society on purely fabricated, doctrinaire lines, without any
regard for natural laws and objective reality. " Poland
rejected this Stalinist concept in October 1956 and the ques-
tion now was: what were the flowers suited to the Polish
garden? In plain language, the problem to be solved was
"the pattern of social forces, of the ways and means, the
meaning and the form of the class struggle and the way power
is wielded by the working class after the victory of the revol-
ution. "
Assumption of power by the people, Bienkowski con-
tinued, could only mean democracy. Spurning the usual Com-
Excerpts in Sztandar Mlodych of 4 June 1957.
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munist arguments, Bienkowski claimed that the dictatorship
of the proletariat was as compatible with democracy as was
the curtailment of liberties effected automatically in a bour-
geois; society when "EJ is rocked .. .. by a sharp class
struggle o . " He was even willing to admit that those who
would say: "This is how it always starts;. democracy is cur-
tailed because there happen to be some economic difficulties,
some trouble, and there develops a. dictatorship of a party,
then of a clique, then of an individual, " were right, for his-
tory taught that the danger had not been eliminated in the
socialist system.
"The situation has. changed now, EBknkowski sai~p but
the tragedy of the past. Lpre - Octobe period lay in
the fact that we. gradually paralyzed socialism . - .
What we are up against Eow that we are reverting to
a broad social initiatives is a universal paralysis
which outwardly assumes the forms of anarchy, of
extreme lack of discipline and economy. And we so
want, after all, to render this society active some-
how. We want the peasant to sow and plow- as best he
can . . . We want the craftsman or the worker to give
of his best. We want the factory to have the best
organization. We want everyone to feel responsible
for his sector."
And here, Bienkowski admitted, the Party stumbled
over the first big stone- The Party was the leading force and
must remain so for. an indefinite period. What method must
it use to discharge its role? Stalinism had led to paralysis
and had failed. Yet, he asked,
"what will happen if somewhere in the countryside five
peasants get together and decide jointly to buy a
machine, or somewhere else a club is formed for
some economic or cultural purpose., and as bad luck
would have it, there is not a single party man among
the initiators or else the party men are in a minority?
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'Then the party committees will raise a hue and cry,
because something is happening outside the scope and
control of the Party, and it assumes the semblance
of some counterrevolutionary scheme in the eyes of
people accustomed to vigilance. For you see, the day
after tomorrow these people may come out with some
political program, then they will ask for something
else, and eventually they will demand the restoration
of capitalism in Poland."
"To fear or not to fear the masses, because the
masses, you see, are an awful force, " that was the question,
Bienkowski stated :frankly.
"And the main problem is the extent to which the Party
can or should allow these initiatives, which are, above
all, economic, but may also be anything else, to
develop . . . Does party guidance mean that the Party
decides on everything that happens in Poland through
its executives and that there must be its initiative
behind everything? "
Whether, as some people held, the counterrevolutionary
forces in Poland were so large that extraordinary vigilance
was needed to prevent the restoration of capitalism, what were
the real chances of social forces threatening socialism making
their appearance? These were questions requiring an unequiv-
ocal reply, Bienkowski conceded. i- On the answer, he implied,
depended the solution of the "big issue at the present moment,
the still insufficiently analyzed problem of the ways and means,
the sort of internal-constitutional methods by which socialism
is to be built. "
Further confirmation of the serious consideration bein g
given this problem was supplied by the visit to Yugoslavia of
Finance Minister Tadeusz Dietrich, who made no secret of the
fact that he had come "to make an all-round examination of
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conditions under which social initiative in Yugoslavia finds.
expression, primarily in enterprises.
Rarely, if ever, have the magnitude of the. dilemma
facing a Communist regime and its own ineptness been
revealed:'with such frankness by its high officials. The facts
that in a "liberated" society, the last thing to develop natur-
ally and freely would be Communism, but that close "guidance"
by the Party led to economic and every other kind of stagna-
tion, have been obvious for some time. But this seems to be
the first time that a high Party authority admits that they
have no solution for this "antinomy, " as Bienkowski.called it,
for the ,validity of the Khrushchev solutions, more collective
leadership or decentralization, are rejected by preterition.
No wonder therefore that Warsaw Radio complained
(6 June) that although the Party had the "support of a.much
greater part of the`nation71 than a year ago, the tendency to.
indecision and to the avoidance of responsibilities" in the
Party was increasing rather than diminishing. Marian
Naczkowski wrote that "threatening features such as passivity
of the party branches, lack of unity and discipline in the Party
and ideological laxity" had increased recently and that the
"licentiousness of revisionist and liberal-bourgeois tendencies
in many settings, including, unfortunately, also parts of the
Party, has brought home to us how strong is the impact and
pressure. of bourgeois elements on the weaker links of the
working masses, especially the youth, and partly even of the
working class.." (Nowe Drogi, June 1957).
It emerges from these and similar statements that
the Polish Communist regime itself admits that it has not
found the solution of the basic dilemma- coercion and eco..:
1Reported over the.. Belgrade Radio on 15 July 1957.
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nomic stagnation, accompanied by the constant threat of revolt,
or adequate freedom of enterprise, possibly leading to the
restoration of capitalism - and that the steps taken so far in
the direction of liberalization have been insi4fficient.
The Gomulka regime is certainly more popular than
its predecessor, but that is not saying very much, and it is
noteworthy that even the official sources no longer enter the
standard denial that the "counterrevolutionary" forces are in
the majority. Silence means consent. All that one can say is
that Gomulka has not yet exhausted the relative popularity he
enjoyed as the lesser of two evils. But he is paying the price
of not being able to fulfill the expectations he raised, or rather,
which were raised by the revisionists, and he is expected to
fulfill. Gomulka himself has asserted that leaders whose
credit is exhausted have to go, and his capital seems to be
dwindling rapidly; his attempted compromise, like many
hybrid solutions, does not seem to work in practice.
It is, of course, possible that the economic situation
will improve somewhat and that the Polish raison d'etat on
one hand, and the Catholic Church on the other, will be suf-
ficiently strong to keep the Polish people quiet and allow
Gomulka to carry on along the present lines. But Nato:Linism,
whether the result of repression of revolts, of covert Soviet
pressure, or of the simple fact that an unpopular system can
only be made to work by forceful methods, cannot be excluded.
Gomulka himself has said that only a strong Party could grant
extensive freedoms;, and the PZPR is admittedly weak.
There is, however, another possibility, implied in
Bienkowski's address, which cannot be ignored. Proceeding
from the recognition that the key problem is stronger economic
incentives, Gomulka could follow the Yugoslav example and
even extend it to include ownership of the factories. by the
workers, a free market economy, and, of course, private
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ownership of land, as was advocated by Roman Jurys.
(Zycie Warszawy, 23 November 1956). That, in his opinion,
would be real Marxism, for, it would fulfill its essential
postulate, social control of the means' of production, and
would satisfy the demands of the working people.
The fact that Gomulka in his speech to the Ninth
Plenum found it necessary to marshal arguments against
ownership of the factories by the workerswould indicate that
the idea: does.. command support in Poland, and Bienkowski
could hardly have spoken as he did if Gomulka absolutely ruled
out any radical changes. His main objection is probably that
such a step might set off a process which would be difficult to
control and might end by depriving the Communist Party chiefs
of their dictatorial powers - a very unattrajetive prospect for
even the most loyal Marxist - or even end in something closer
to a "bourgeois" welfare state than to a Communist society.
Even if Gomulka were to change his mind, there would
still remain Moscow to be convinced. At first sight it would
seem most unlikely that Moscow would countenance such a
development going beyond Yugoslav lines, and quite certain
that Gomulka is determined not to break with Moscow. But
although a Polish initiative of that sort would obviously be
highly distasteful to the Kremlin leaders, history shows that
they have more than once surprised the world by their readi-
ness to swallow their principles and pride whenever necessity
or interest dictated such a course. Not to go too far back,
one may mention the alliance with Hitler, the toleration of a
western democratic regime in Finland since the Second World
War, the repudiation of Stalin, the reconciliation with Tito in
1955, the "reinterpretation" of Marxism-Leninism by the 20th
Congress, and last but not least, the acceptance of the Gomulka
regime itself in October 1956. Furthermore, they must be
already reconciled to the prospect of further deviations from
the Soviet pattern in China, deviations which.:they will perforce
have to accept.
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Faced with a choice between the necessity of support-
ing Poland economically for an indefinite number of years -
and such a Poland would be a poor advertisement for Com-
munism and always a potential Hungary - and stretching the
"different roads to socialism" concept further, the Kremlin
could conceivably choose the lesser of the two evils. Indeed,
it might be argued that on balance, Moscow would gain more
than it would lose. As Poland is inextricably bound to Russia
by an overriding raison d'etat, the problem of her Western
frontiers, no ideological differences can affect their alliance,
and the greater the economic prosperity of, and the better
the relations with, an ally, the greater his value. We believe
that the masters of the Kremlin are and will remain, in spite
of Marx, first and foremost "Great Russian Chauvinists, "
and in case of conflict between Marxism and the Russian raison
d'etat, would sacrifice the former.
If, in January 1957, the Soviet Kommunist could
single out Yugoslavia, along with Poland, in an extensive
denunciation of "national Communism, " yet on 2 June 1957,
theMoscow Radio could praise Yugoslavia's "contribution to
socialist construction" and note her "concrete and original
forms of management of the economy"; if, speaking of the
Finns who have rejected Communism in toto and have refused
to be allied to the Soviets, Bulganin could say after his visit
to Finland in June 11957 that "the friendly relations between
the USSR and Finland which have been established in recent
years are developing on principles of equality, mutual res-
pect of state sovereignty and independence, non-interference
in internal affairs, and mutually profitable, peaceful collabor-
ation"; if Pravda, in its 16 June 1957 editorial could write:
"there can be no doubt that similar good-neighborly relations
can exist between our state and all the countries without
exception bordering on the Soviet Union, " there is no reason
why Moscow should not adopt the same tolerant attitude
toward Poland, so long as the country gave lip service to
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socialism and remained bound by the Warsaw Pact. That
would be considerably more than Yugoslavia, not to mention
Finland. Unless Moscow were prepared to face a further
deterioration of conditions, with the likelihood of violent up-
heavals, it might have to choose between. continued economic
assistance coupled with a revival of "conservative" methods,
and toleration of still greater "creativeness" in the building
of socialism in Poland.
As it is safe to assume that the Russian Communists
are not very eager to support instead of to._ exploit: their
Satellites in the future, the chances of their accepting the
alternative solution depend on the answer to the question,
what do they most want from Poland? It would seem that it
is more important for them to have a valuable, because more
prosperous and friendly, ally, than an expensive and hostile
Satellite, even at the price of tolerating further variations
from the Moscow pattern of socialism. If it be true that the
reconciliation with Tito was somewhat less than sincere, the
chief reason is undoubtedly Tito?s political independence
which, unlike his social innovations, was never described
as a "valuable contribution" to socialism. And Poland hap-
pens to be the one Satellite which Moscow can politically
trust, Nevertheless, Moscow would. certainly draw the line
at open repudiation. of Communism in Poland, for it would
obviously encourage similar movements in the other Satel-
lite countries, which, with the possible exception of Czecho-
slovakia, can only be kept in the Russian camp through the
medium of Moscow controlled Communist regimes.
Summary
128. The only firm conclusion to be reached from a
study of the situation in Poland almost a year after the blood-
less. October revolution is that it is extremely labile. The
Gomulka program has removed a number of serious griev-
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ances of the population, notably in the spheres of religion,
national susceptibilities, and agricultural collectivization,
but has failed to reconcile the basic contradiction between
Communist Party leadership and individual initiative, to
establish, in Bienkowski's words, the sort of internal-
constitutional methods by which socialism is. to be built.
129. The result is ideological confusion within the Party,
administrative inefficiency, a critical economic situation,
and general discontent. An anti-Communist and traditionally
indocile population obviously cannot be made to submit to
Communist regimentation otherwise than by coercion, yet
Gomulka is attempting to perpetuate the basic features of the
Soviet system without "administrative" constraint, allegedly
relying on persuasion, but actually on the fear of Soviet inter
vention. The Party, which must at the very least be mono-
lithic to carry out its difficult task with any degree of success,
is notoriously split between the conservatives, enjoying the
moral support of the USSR and the backing of the Party
apparatus, and the revisionists backed by the masses and
the intellectuals, and is practically paralyzed. In the mean-
time, the country is run on sufferance by a small group of
middle-of-the-roaders gathered around Gomulka. He remains
in power mainly because he is, aside from Cardinal Wyczinski,
the only man in Poland enjoying a degree of personal popularity,
even if he has disappointed the irrational hopes put in his
ability to find a way out of the impasse in which history and
geography have placed Poland.
130. Politically, the Gomulka minority government
might last for some time, as have such governments in many
other countries, but economic improvement cannot wait and
palliatives cannot put off the day of reckoning indefinitely.
Except in the case of a noticeable and early change for the
better, it will be u:p to Moscow to choose between the burden
of continued economic assistance, for which Poland would
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have to pay with a revival of Natolin (conservative) influence,
and toleration of more far-reaching deviations from the Soviet
interpretation of Marxism. The Third Party Congress,
scheduled for December 1957, was generally looked forward
to as the opportunity for Gomulka to give some indications of
his views on the course he proposed to steer. But as of
October 1957, it seems more likely that the Congress will be
postponed, thus deferring the date when Gomulka will have
to give a formal account of his stewardship, face his critics
from the right and the left, and perhaps be 'forced to commit
himself prematurely to something more positive than the
middle way, which so far has not proved a short cut to general
well-being and contentment.
-119-
Approved For Release 1999/09/08 : CIA-RDP80-01445R000100070001-0
 Approved For Release 1999/09/08 : CIA-RDP80-01445R000100070001-0
Approved For. Release 1999/09/0 UJP1O-01445R000100070001-0