STRUGGLE FOR POWER IN POLAND

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 02022157
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: July 13, 2023
• Document Release Date: August 29, 2022
• Case Number: F-2022-01153
• Publication Date: September 1, 1968

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SECRET 68/9-1
STRUGGLE FOR POWER IN POLAND
The attached backgrounder provides a brief history of the internal
politics of the Polish United Workers' Party (Communist) so that the cur-
rent power struggle among its leaders may be a little more intelligible.
These maneuverings are obscure and esoteric enough to baffle most casual
observers and most journalists, and to cause even well-ihformed and close
observers of the scene to be very circumspect and cautious in making as-
sertions about the policies and alignments of the various supposed fac-
tions. We have abstained from choosing one or another line-up or policy
as truly representative of one or another faction, and have chosen to
depict these maneuverings as an opportunistic struggle devoid of any en-
nobling principle Gomulka's betrayal of the liberals and liberal causes
which permitted his return to power in 1956 can be justifiably portrayed
as opportunism. Anti-Semitism, thinly disguised as anti-Zionism, has
historically been used in the Soviet Union and Poland in an opportunistic
fashion, often to divert popular attention from policy failures, and
there seems little question that Moczar, as the prime mover in the con-
tinuing campaign, used the slogan to put his enemies in high places on
the defensive, and in some instances to purge them from influential posi-
tions. His appeal to patriotism by invoking memories of the wartime
underground can also be legitimately regarded (in this context) as a form
of cheap demagogy to garner support. Gierek is admittedly an obscure
character and it is not easy to speculate plausibly about his motivations,
but he is alleged by some to have supported Gomulka and by others to have
teamed up with Moczar, while another view is that he is playing his own
game.
Apart from trying to provide a reliable framework for understanding
the current power struggle, the emphasis on opportunism offers various
occasions to condemn this factional struggle as yet another
unsavory facet of modern-day Communism.
(b)(1)
(b)(3)
The Polish leadershi. has shown its sensitivity to the charges of
anti-Semitism,
The hypocrisy of an ideolOgy that pretends to be non- (b)(1)
discriminatory in terms of race, color, or nationality is revealed in (b)(3)
its anti-Semitism.
The contrast is vivid between a Gomulka regime riding a high wave of
popularity because of its supposed liberalism in 1956 and a regime that,
along with the most reactionary of regimes in East Germany, joins an in-
vasion of Czechoslovakia to extinguish the Czech experiment in humanizing
Communism.
Emphasis can be given the reality that the Polish Communist leadership
is ever further removed from the real aspirations of the Polish people. In
their ambitions to hold supreme power, these leaders increasingly lose touch
with their own people.
(b)(1)
(b)(3)
erP_IICT
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FOR BACKGROUND USE ONLY September 1968
Struggle for Power in Poland
On 11 November 1968 the Communist Party of Poland formally known as
the Polish United Workers Party (PZPR, after its Polish abbreviation) is
supposed to hold its Fifth Party Congress. The prospect of important
changes in the top echelons of the Party gives it more than ordinary in-
terest. A very real, but obscurely fought, factional struggle for power
in the upper echelons, gradually surfaced over the past year, should come
to its climax on the occasion of the Congress. The interaction of many
forces within the PZPR, most of them having roots in the early World War II
history of the Party, gives Polish Communist political intrigue a unique
character and at the same time complicates analysis of the scene which
seems to (and perhaps actually does) shift patterns like a kaleidoscope.
Therefore a brief look at this background will help in defining the issues
which clearly emerge from the current political scene. It is better to
leave the more obscure machinations of Polish Communist politics to the
speculative study of those whose affair it is to follow such developments
intensively in search of a rationale for the bizarre politics of Polish
Communism.
Wartime Communism in Poland
A Polish Communist Party formed in the early twenties pursued an inef-
fectual existence in the interwar period and was summarily wiped out by
Stalin and the Comintern in 1938 for reasons that are still not entirely
clear.
After Hitler's attack on the USSR in 1941, a handful of Polish Com-
munists in occupied Poland formed the Polish Workers' Party (PPR) and
started an anti-Nazi underground. Simultaneously Stalin reassembled a
Communist Party (which he called the Union of Polish Patriots) in the USSR
from pre-war members of the Party who were living in the Soviet Union and
from Communists who fled Nazi-occupied Poland to the USSR. He created this
group in order to challenge the claim of the Polish government-in-exile in
London to represent Poland. Communists now still prominent in Poland who
were members of the wartime underground are Wladyslaw Gomulka (who very
early became secretary general of the PPR) and his close colleagues Zenon
Kliszko (now a Politburo member), Marian Spychalski (now President of
Poland), and Ignacy Loga Sowinski, Mieczyslaw Moczar, then a nobody in
the underground PPR, is now a major contender for the top leadership of
Poland. The Communist underground movement, known as the Armia Ludowa
(AL--People's Army) was relatively insignificant* compared to the really
effective and much larger non-Communist underground known as the Armia
Krajowa (AK--Home Army), associated with the London government-in-exile.
*In fact, unable to make any significant military contribution, the AL re-
sorted to terror tactics against individuals and even hospitals, which pro-
voked severe Nazi reprisals damaging to both the innocent population and
the overall underground effort.
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Typical of the Communist rule of not sharing power, the AL refused to merge
its effort with that of the AK except on condition that it control the AK
(the tail wagging the dog!) and this condition, naturally enough, the AK
refused to accept.
In any case, the AL underground effort laid the groundwork for the
post-war rivalries among Communist leaders -- rivalries and jealousies
that persist to this day. After the defeat of the Germans, Communists
from Stalin's Union of Polish Patriots (many of them Jews) entered Poland
on the coattails of the Red Army and took prominent positions in the Com-
munist movement. These "Muscovites" in the postwar years gradually took
almost all the key positions and eventually became the instrument for
purging the ranks of the Party of the "domestic" communists such as Gomulka
and Spychalski.
Communist Seizure of Power
After the war, Gomulka, as Secretary General of the Party, followed a
policy of a nondoctrinaire, nationalistic appeal (including proclaiming a
special Polish "road to socialism") calculated to expand the ranks of the
Party, which numbered only some 20,000 in 1944. Stalin and the Muscovite
Polish Communists, who followed Moscow's orders like automatons, saw the
practical wisdom of such tactics to attract new members and though they
did not trust the overall strategy of Gomulka and his group for seizure of
power, they for the time being permitted him to pursue his tactics of col-
laborating with non-Communist elements.
In the meantime, the Muscovite Communists were not without power.
Over the protests of the Western allies, Stalin installed his own hand-
pi7.ked government (the so-called Lubin Committee) as the legitimate gov-
erning body of Poland. From the 7roup of Lubin Muscovite Poles, Boleslaw
Bierut became the first chairman (a post equivalent to the presidency),
Jakub Berman became a vice-minister, Stalinslaw Radkiewicz became head of
the security police. Other Muscovites taking prominent posts were Roman
Zambrowski, Aleksander Zawadski, and Edward Ochab (who just recently re-
signed as President of Poland in favor of Marian Spychalski).
The immediate post-war years were devoted to consolidating the Polish
Workers Party's power by the elimination of the political opposition.
Under Gomulka's leadership and with the ominous presence of Soviet military
power backing the PPR, it used a wide variety of tricks to emasculate the
strong Polish Peasant Party: terror, kidnapping, mass arrests, imprison-
ment, bribery, fraudulent electoral practices -- every conceivable legiti-
mate and illegitimate weapon. The present Party's power was finally broken
in November 1947 when its head, Stanislaw Mikolajzych, finally fled to the
west for his life.
The PPR's remaining rival, the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), was
eliminated by absorption when other tactics failed. Josef Cyrankiewicz,
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head of the PPS, on a government visit in January 1948 to the Soviet Union
agreed to a betrayal of his party and on his return led it into its fatal
merger with the PPR. The merger was consummated in December 1948 to form
the Communist party in Poland: the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR).
Cyrankiewicz was rewarded with the post of Secretary General of the Party.
This "socialist" has ever since played a prominent role in Polish politics,
holding many posts carrying high titles (he is currently premier).
Pro-Moscow Communists Victorious
In June of 1948, Tito was expelled from the family of obedient Soviet
satellites. He insisted on running his country's internal affairs inde-
pendently of Soviet direction (expressed in his jargon as following the
"Yugoslav road to Socialism" -- regarded by Moscow as a revisionist-
nationalist ideological deviation). Gomulka earlier had sought to advance
the Communist cause in part by using the same slogan of a special (Polish)
road to socialism, but having served his purpose of appearing as a national
Polish Communist to lure a modicum of popular support for the small and
distrusted Communist Party, Stalin decided that he was a potential Tito
and that his time had come. Gomulka was unequivocally criticized for short-
comings on the very occasion of the merger of the PPS and the PPR in Decem-
ber 1948. In the course of the next year, he was in turn deprived of his
party posts and his party membership. In 1951 he was put under house
arrest, which lasted until 1956. The Muscovites were victorious.
Gomulka: Neither Nationalist nor Liberal
The Muscovites' maladministration and unpopularity from 1950 to 1956
finally caught up with them in the student and worker riots in the summer
and fall of 1956 and the Stalinists were obliged to bring back Gomulka
(along with his comrades-in-arms Spychalski, Kliszko and others) because
of his reputation for being a nationalist and even anti-Soviet. Alarmed,
the Soviet leadership, led by Khrushchev, descended on Warsaw for a con-
frontation with Gomulka and his colleagues amid ominous Soviet troop move-
ments in and toward Poland. Unlike Dubcek in contemporary Czechoslovakia,
Gomulka succeeded in convincing the Soviet leaders to leave the solution
of the Polish unrest in his hands. He did not disappoint the Soviets.
Making use of his nationalist-liberal reputation and initially placing
known liberals in key positions in his government, he succeeded in holding
the lid on the widespread discontent among writers, students, and other
intellectuals who clamored for freedom of expression, among the workers who
wanted better wages, and among the peasants who, having themselves broken
up the extensive system of collective farming in favor of privately run
farms, were permitted by Gomulka to keep their farms.
Having gained his breathing spell, Gomulka gradually began moving
against many of his liberal supporters in key positions in the Party,
prevented the purge of Stalinist conservatives, and, in time, restored the
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tight pro-Soviet dictatorship prevailing before his ascent to power in most
sectors of national life, most notable of which perhaps is control of the
news media. He was careful, however, not to touch the land returned to the
peasants and to keep harassment of the Catholic Church within "acceptable"
bounds.
Whether or not Gomulka was sincere in his apparent nationalism of the
early and mid-1940's before his purge, what is one to say about his nation-
alism in 1956 when he was returned to power? The fact is that attempts at
liberalization made by persons of some prestige and political influence,
among them communists, in late 1955 and 1956 were made without Gomulka and
his immediate entourage, who were "shelved" at the time. The liberaliza-
tion efforts were made against the opposition of the hard-line faction
(among them Ochab and Bierut), those Muscovites of old who were obedient
to Moscow and brought up by Stalin and capable only of Stalin's type of
repressive rule. Gomulka reaped the benefit of the liberalization drive,
but it is doubtful that he ever was in sympathy with a liberalized form
of Communist dictatorship. The fallacy of many observers of the time was
their belief that a nationalist must also be a liberal. Gomulka may have
harbored nationalistic notions at one time, but neither his public posi-
tion nor his reimposition of a repressive dictatorship warrant the belief
that he is or was a liberal-minded Communist. In 1956 he had no choice
but to accept the liberalized national situation facing him. But it is
clear that this acceptance was a pragmatic choice and not one of principle.
His temporary alliance with the liberal Communist elements was a matter of
opportunism, as was his later reliance on the hardline faction with which
he may in fact have had more affinity and with whose help he removed many
of the liberals from positions of influence. Viewing his unswerving sup-
port of the Soviet Union in international affairs since his return to power,
most notably vis-a-vis the aborted effort of the Czechoslovak Communists
to follow their own road to socialism, it is hard to believe that at one
time he espoused a similar cause for Poland.
The Current Power Struggle
It is against this background of intrigue that the current power strug-
gle is being played out. Of the many uncertainties and obscurities which
are so difficult for the outsider to fathom, a few things seem fairly
certain. The most prominent contenders for power are Gomulka, Moczar, and
possibly Edward Gierek. In attempting to follow the maneuverings for power,
manifested outwardly by speeches, newspaper polemics by supporters of the
various protagonists, by personnel changes in key Party and government
positions, and by purges, little can be asserted with confidence about the
progress of one or another contender, about who his supporters are, or about
their relations to one another.
Another feature of this power struggle which seems indisputable is its
opportunistic nature, the total absence of adherence to any principle be-
sides self-advancement. Like Communism in power everywhere, the primary
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Objective is for the Communist Party not to share political power for
fear that the Party may be overthrown or relegated to a secondary position.
Beyond that, any means seem admissible in competing for leadership. Gomulka's
opportunism has been described above. (A more charitable view of Gomulka
has it that he is formulating policies in a day-to-day fashion, from hand
to mouth, making concessions now to this group, now to that group, all the
while bending an ear to Moscow and trying to conform to Moscow's require-
ments. Some observers have pointed out, too, that he is getting old and
tired and therefore perhaps not a serious contender for power at the forth-
coming party congress.)
What about Moczar? It is clear he is making his bid for power by
playing on two strong emotions of the Polish people, shared by many Comr
munist rank-and-file: patriotism and anti-Semitism, He has formed a
group known as the Partisans, a term which refers to the domestic under-
ground of World War II (of which Moczar was a part) and which evokes mem-
ories of camaraderie and the heroics of those bygone days. This large
group of Communists and non-Communists may be said to constitute Moczar's
power base. Hand in hand with this appeal and its chauvinistic and patri-
otic overtones, Moczar also has made effective use of anti-Semitism (des-
cribed in Polish propaganda always as anti-Zionism, with the implication
that Polish Communists of Jewish background are being condemned for loyalty
to a foreign power rather than for their Jewishness). Implicit in this
anti-Zionism is the patriotic theme that with Zionism he is condemning
those Muscovites (Jews and other outsiders) who returned to Poland from
the USSR with the Red Army. By invoking the anti-Zionist theme, he has
succeeded in recent months in purging the Polish Party and government
apparatus of a great number of his enemies (he was aided in this task by
the fact that he was the head of the secret police at the time as Minister
of Interior). It is interesting to specualte whether this attack on old,
Moscow-trained prominent Communists on the grounds of Polish nationalism
disturbs Moscow at all as being potentially expressive of anti-Soviet
sentiment. If not, it may be that Moscow recognizes the gambit for the
opportunistic gimmick that it most likely is. Meanwhile, critics of the
anti-Zionist campaign have also appeared (they are not speaking very
loudly), among them Gomulka himself, though it was he who kicked off the
campaign to begin with, (Gomulka has a Jewish wife.) The issue has quite
clearly become a political football in the power struggle.
It seems a mark of Moczar's progress toward the summit of power that
at the last Plenum of the PZPR Central Committee he was selected as a
candidate member of the Politburo and made a Secretary of the Central Com-
mittee. That he had simultaneously to relinquish his powerful post of
Minister of Interior took away some of the luster of these other promotions.
Edward Gierek is also considered by many observers to be a major con-
tender for power. He is something of an anomaly in that he spent most of
his adult life in the West and returned to Poland only after the war,. Ap-
parently on the basis of his personality and organizing and administrative
abilities, he has forged ahead to become Party boss of the populous and im-
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portant industrial region of Silesia, and is a member of the Politburo.
It is not clear What his power base is, but one may speculate that he
represents an element of the Polish Party, perhaps an educated managerial
group whose main preoccupation is to get on with the job of building up
Poland technically and economically, a kind of provincial industrial
bureaucracy. Gierek is sometimes identified with the Moczar faction,
sometimes with the Gomulka faction. Perhaps he switches allegiances,
playing the field as is typical of so many Communist opportunists in
Poland today.
To summarize the current outlook there seem to be three contending
factions: (a) the Gomulka faction, heading what might be called the Old
Guard, once "nationalist" and hardline, but now pro-Soviet, hardline when
it appears necessary but not merely as a matter of course or as a matter
of an automatic rule; (b) the Moczar faction, consistently hardline,
against relaxing controls on intellectuals and students, attacking the
old Muscovites as an appeal both to Polish nationalism-patriotism and
traditional anti-Semitism, with a powerful lever in the secret police;
and (c) the Gierek faction heading the new managerial class,
There is a growing feeling among some observers that a new group is
forming not identified with any of the above factions, but as yet without
leadership -- a group of young apolitical technocrats, pragmatists who have
little patience with old dogmatic or revolutionary slogans and who are
eager to move into positions of power to practice their innovative ideas.
They also have little respect for the three more prominent candidates for
leadership at the next Party Congress, feeling that these persons are too
old, too wedded to obsolete ideas, and too lost in mires of the power game
to be looked upon as providing viable leadership. It is a group looking
for a leader and will bear watching.
References:
1. M.K. Dziewanowski. The Communist Party of Poland, An Outline of
History, Harvard University Press, 1959. This is the most defini-
tive work on the subject, and is highly recommended.
2, Adam B. Ulam. Titoism and the Cominform, ,Harvard University
Press, 1962. This classic work of Tito's defection from the
Soviet Bloc contains an excellent section entitled: "Crisis in
the Polish Communist Party," which is reliable, interestingly
presented, and brief.
3. Jan Nowak. "The Struggle for Party Control in Poland," in East
Europe monthly magazine published by Free Europe Inc., New York,
June 1968. A more detailed examination of Polish leadership and
second-ranking Communizt personalities involved in the power
struggle, with an interesting theory of Gomulka's position in
the struggle.
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