Polish October - Development

Development

Gomułka's thaw was caused by several factors. The death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 and the resulting de-Stalinization and the Khrushchev Thaw prompted debates about fundamental issues throughout the entire Eastern Bloc. Nikita Khrushchev's speech, On the Personality Cult and its Consequences, had wide implications for the Soviet Union and other communist countries as well.

In Poland, in addition to criticism of the cult of personality, popular topics of debate centered around the right to steer a more independent course of "local, national socialism" instead of following the Soviet model in every detail. For example, many members of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) criticized Stalin's execution of older Polish communists during the Great Purge. Several other factors contributed to the destabilization of Poland. These included the widely publicized defection in 1953 of high-ranking Polish intelligence agent Józef Światło, resulting in the weakening of the Ministry of Public Security of Poland (Polish secret police).

Also, the unexpected death in Moscow in 1956 of Bolesław Bierut, the PZPR First Secretary (known as the "Stalin of Poland"), led to increased rivalry between various factions of Polish communists and to growing tensions in Polish society, culminating in the Poznań 1956 protests (also known as June '56).

The PZPR Secretariat decided that Khrushchev's speech should have wide circulation in Poland, a unique decision in the Eastern Bloc. Bierut's successors seized on Khrushchev's condemnation of Stalinist policy as a perfect opportunity to prove their reformist, democratic credentials and their willingness to break with the Stalinist legacy. In late March and early April, thousands of Party meetings were held all over Poland, with Politburo and Secretariat blessing. Tens of thousands took part in such meetings. The Secretariat's plan succeeded beyond what they expected. During this period, the whole political atmosphere changed.

Questions were now being asked about taboo subjects like the Polish communists' legitimacy, responsibility for Stalin's crimes, the arrest of the increasingly popular Gomułka, and issues in Soviet–Polish relations, such as the continued Soviet military presence in Poland, the Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact, the Katyn massacre, and the Soviet failure to support the Warsaw Uprising. A new Party Congress was demanded, as was a greater role for the Sejm and a guarantee of personal liberties. Alarmed by the process, the Party Secretariat decided to withhold the speech from the general public.

In June 1956, there was an insurrection in Poznań. The workers rioted to protest shortages of food and consumer goods, bad housing, decline in real income, trade relations with the Soviet Union and poor management of the economy. The Polish government initially responded by branding the rioters "provocateurs, counterrevolutionaries and imperialist agents". Between 57 and 78 people—mostly protesters—were killed, and hundreds were wounded and arrested. Soon, however, the party hierarchy recognized that the riots had awakened a nationalist movement and reversed their opinion. Wages were raised by 50 percent, and economic and political change was promised.

The Poznań protests, although the largest, were not unique in Poland, where social protest resumed its fury that autumn. On November 18, rioters destroyed the militia headquarters and radio-jamming equipment in Bydgoszcz, and on December 10, a crowd in Szczecin attacked public buildings, including a prison, the state prosecutor's office, militia headquarters, and the Soviet consulate. People across the country criticized the security police and asked for the dissolution of the public security committee and the punishment of its guiltiest functionaries. Demands were made for the exposure of secret police collaborators, and suspected collaborators were frequently assaulted.

In many localities, crowds gathered outside the secret police headquarters, shouted hostile slogans, and broke its windows. Public meetings, demonstrations, and street marches took place in hundreds of towns across Poland. The meetings were usually organized by local Party cells, local authorities, and trade unions. However, official organizers tended to lose control as political content exceeded their original agenda. Crowds often took radical action, in many cases resulting in unrest on the streets and clashes with police and other law-enforcement agencies. Street activity peaked during and immediately after the 19–21 October "VIII Plenum" meeting of the Central Committee of the PZPR, but continued until late in the year.

A concurrent upsurge in religious and clerical sentiment took place. Hymns were sung, and the release of Stefan Wyszyński and the reinstatement of suppressed bishops were demanded, as were the reintroduction of religious education and of crucifixes in classrooms. Nationalism was the cement of mass mobilization and dominated public meetings, during which people sang the national anthem and other patriotic songs, demanded the return of the white eagle to the flag and traditional army uniforms, and attacked Poland's dependence on the Soviet Union and its military. They demanded the return of the eastern territories, an explanation for the Katyn massacre, and elimination of the Russian language from the educational curriculum.

In the last ten days of October, monuments to the Red Army, despised by Poles, were attacked: red stars were pulled down from roofs of houses, factories and schools; red flags were destroyed; and portraits of Konstantin Rokossovsky, the military commander in charge of operations that drove the Nazi German forces from Poland, were defaced. Attempts were made to force entries into the homes of Soviet citizens, mostly in Lower Silesia, home to many Soviet troops. However, unlike the protesters in Hungary and Poznań, activists limited their political demands and behavior, which were not purely oppoded to communist and the system. The communist authorities were not openly and unequivocally challenged, as they had been in June, and anticommunist slogans that had been prevalent in the June uprising, such as "We want free elections", "Down with Communist dictatorship", or "Down with the Party", were much less prevalent. Party committees were not attacked.