1968 Polish Political Crisis

1968 Polish Political Crisis

The Polish 1968 political crisis, also known in Poland as March 1968 or March events (Polish: Marzec 1968; wydarzenia, wypadki marcowe) pertains to the major student and intellectual protest action against the government of the People's Republic of Poland. The crisis resulted in the suppression of student strikes by security forces in all major academic centres across the country and the subsequent repression of the Polish dissident movement, as well as a mass emigration following the "anti-Zionist" campaign waged by General Secretary Władysław Gomułka. The protests coincided with the events of Prague spring in neighboring Czechoslovakia – raising new hopes of democratic reforms among the intelligentsia – and culminated in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia on 20 August 1968.

The government's anti-Jewish campaign began already in 1967. It was a well-orchestrated response to the Soviet withdrawal of all diplomatic relations with Israel after the Six Day War – with factory workers across Poland forced to publicly denounce Zionism. The subsequent purges within the communist party, led by Interior Minister Mieczysław Moczar (b. Nikola Demko) and his faction, failed to topple Gomułka's government, but resulted in an actual expulsion from Poland of thousands of individuals of Jewish ancestry, including professionals, party officials and the secret police functionaries blamed "for a major part, if not all, of the crimes and horrors of the Stalinist period." Before the end of 1971, 12,927 Poles of Jewish origin emigrated. On the 30th anniversary of their departures a memorial plaque was placed at Warszawa Gdańska train station, from which most of exiled people took a train to Vienna.