History
The fate of Poland's Communist Party was decided by Joseph Stalin. In 1938, Stalin had the Communist Party of Poland purged of Trotskyites, just as was done in the All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks) in the Soviet Union. He executed or imprisoned 5,000 of its members.
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Stalin was persuaded by Wanda Wasilewska (a Soviet politician from Poland) to aid to the communists in Poland. In January 1942, an initiative group of Polish Communists which included Marceli Nowotko, Paweł Finder, and Bolesław Mołojec gained Stalin's permission to form a communist party for Poland, the Polska Partia Robotnicza, or PPR. They avoided using the word "communist" in the title to stay clear of the connotation of a party controlled by a foreign power. They were also aware of the broad unpopularity of communism among the Polish citizenry, especially among people who had experienced the Soviet system during the 1939–1941 Soviet occupation.
After Nowotko's death, and Finder's arrest, Władysław Gomułka became secretary of the Central Committee of the PPR from 1943 until its end in 1948.
Read more about this topic: Polish Workers' Party
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