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History of Poland (1945–1989)

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Recent History

   Stańczyk, symbol of Polish history
            History of Poland
   Chronology

   Until 966
   966–1385
   1385–1569
   1569–1795
   1795–1918
   1918–1939
   1939–1945
   1945–1989
   1989–present
   Topics

   Culture
   Demographics ( Jews)
   Economics
   Politics ( Monarchs and Presidents)
   Military ( Wars)
   Territorial changes ( WWII)

   The history of Poland from 1945 to 1989 spans the period of Soviet
   Communist dominance over the People's Republic of Poland following
   World War II. These years, while featuring many improvements in the
   standards of living in Poland, were marred by social unrest and
   economic depression.
   A Polish Communist Party poster.
   A Polish Communist Party poster.

   Near the end of World War II, German forces were driven from Poland by
   the advancing Soviet Red Army, and the Yalta Conference sanctioned the
   formation of a provisional pro-Communist Polish coalition government;
   many Poles see this as a betrayal of their country by the Allied Powers
   in order to appease the Soviet leader Josef Stalin. The new government
   in Warsaw increased its political power and over the next two years the
   Communist Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) under Bolesław Bierut
   gained control of the People's Republic of Poland, which would become
   part of the postwar Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. A
   liberalizing "thaw" in Eastern Europe following Stalin's death in early
   1953 caused a more liberal faction of the Polish Communists of
   Władysław Gomułka to gain power. Poland enjoyed a period of relative
   stability over the next decade, but by the mid-1960s, Poland was
   experiencing increasing economic, as well as political, difficulties.
   In December 1970, the government suddenly announced massive increases
   in the prices of basic foodstuffs in an attempt to prevent economic
   collapse. A wave of strikes followed as the outraged populace
   demonstrated against the heavy increases, and government introduced a
   new economic program based on large-scale borrowing from the West. The
   program resulted in an immediate rise in living standards and
   expectations, but it faltered because of the 1973 oil crisis. In the
   late 1970s the government of Edward Gierek was finally forced to raise
   prices, and this led to another wave of public protests.
   Lech Wałęsa received by Pope John Paul II in the Vatican in January
   1981.
   Enlarge
   Lech Wałęsa received by Pope John Paul II in the Vatican in January
   1981.

   This vicious cycle was finally interrupted by the 1978 election of
   Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II. This unexpected event had an
   electrifying effect on the opposition to Communism in Poland. In early
   August 1980, the wave of strikes led among others by an electrician
   named Lech Wałęsa, founder of the independent trade union " Solidarity"
   ( Polish Solidarność) forced government of Wojciech Jaruzelski to
   declare martial law in December 1981 and imprison most of the
   opposition leaders. However, change was inevitable. Eventually, with
   the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, increasing
   pressure from the Roman Catholic Church and trade unions, and massive
   foreign debts, the Communists were forced to negotiate with their
   opponents. In 1988, the Round Table Talks radically altered the
   structure of Polish government and society. In April 1989, Solidarity
   was again legalized and allowed to participate in the upcoming
   elections; its candidates' striking victory in those limited elections
   sparked off a succession of peaceful transitions from Communist rule in
   Central and Eastern Europe. In 1990, Jaruzelski resigned as Poland's
   leader. He was succeeded by Wałęsa in December. By the end of August, a
   Solidarity-led coalition government had been formed, and in December,
   Wałęsa was elected president and the Communist People's Republic of
   Poland again became the Republic of Poland.

Creation of the People's Republic of Poland (1945–1956)

   Poland's old and new borders in 1945.
   Enlarge
   Poland's old and new borders in 1945.

Wartime devastation

   Poland suffered enormous losses during World War II. While in 1939
   Poland had 35.1 million inhabitants, the census of February 14, 1946
   showed only 23.9 million. Over ninety percent of Poland's capital was
   destroyed in the aftermath of the Warsaw Uprising. Poland, still a
   predominantly agricultural country compared to Western nations,
   suffered catastrophic damage to its infrastructure during the war, and
   lagged even further behind the West in industrial output in the War's
   aftermath.

   The implementation of the immense task of reconstructing the country
   was accompanied by the struggle of the new government to acquire a
   stable, centralized power base, further complicated by the mistrust a
   considerable part of the society held for the new regime and by
   disputes over Poland's postwar borders, which were not firmly
   established until mid-1945. In 1947 Soviet influence caused the Polish
   government to reject the most successful post-war reconstruction
   motion, the Marshall Plan, and in 1949 to join the Soviet
   Union-dominated Comecon. At the same time Soviet forces have engaged in
   plunder on territories of Poland, striping it of valuable industrial
   equipment, infrastructure and factories and sending them to Soviet
   Union .

Consolidation of Communist power (1945—1948)

   The PKWN Manifesto, issued on July 22, 1944
   Enlarge
   The PKWN Manifesto, issued on July 22, 1944

   Even before the Red Army entered Poland, the Soviet Union was pursuing
   a deliberate strategy to eliminate anti-Communist resistance forces in
   order to ensure that Poland would fall under its sphere of influence.
   Stalin had severed relations with the Polish government-in-exile in
   London in 1943, but to appease the United States and the United
   Kingdom, the Soviet Union agreed at the Yalta Conference in 1944 to
   form a coalition government composed of the Communist Polish Workers'
   Party, members of the pro-Western Polish government in exile, and
   members of the Armia Krajowa ("Home Army") resistance movement, as well
   as to allow for free elections to be held.

   From its outset, the Yalta decision favored the Communists, who enjoyed
   the advantages of Soviet support, high morale, control over crucial
   ministries such as the security services, and Moscow's determination to
   bring Eastern Europe securely under its influence. With the beginning
   of the liberation of Polish territories and the failure of the Armia
   Krajowa's Operation Tempest in 1944, control over Polish territories
   passed from the occupying forces of Nazi Germany to the Red Army, and
   from the Red Army to the Polish Communists, who held the largest
   influence under the provisional government.
   Bolesław Bierut, President of Poland from 1947 to 1952.
   Enlarge
   Bolesław Bierut, President of Poland from 1947 to 1952.

   The Prime Minister of the Polish government-in-exile, Stanisław
   Mikołajczyk, resigned his post in 1944 and, along with several other
   Polish exiled leaders, returned to Poland, where a Provisional
   Government (Rząd Tymczasowy Republiki Polskiej; RTTP), had been created
   by the Communist-dominated Polish Committee of National Liberation
   (Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego; PKWN) in Lublin. This government
   was headed by Socialist Edward Osóbka-Morawski, but the Communists held
   a majority of key posts. Both of these governments were subordinate to
   the unelected, Communist-controlled parliament, the State National
   Council (Krajowa Rada Narodowa; KRN) and were not recognized by the
   Polish government-in-exile, which had formed its own quasi-parliament,
   the Council of National Unity (Rada Jedności Narodowej; RJN).

   In April 1945, the Provisional Government formed an alliance with the
   Soviet Union. The new Polish Provisional Government of National Unity
   (Tymczasowy Rząd Jedności Narodowej; TRJN) — as the Polish government
   was called until the elections of 1947 — was finally established on
   June 28, with Mikołajczyk as Deputy Prime Minister. The Communist
   Party's principal rivals were the veterans of the Armia Krajowa
   movement, along with Mikołajczyk's Polish Peasant Party (Polskie
   Stronnictwo Ludowe; PSL), and the veterans of the Polish armies which
   had fought in the west. But at the same time, Soviet-oriented parties,
   backed by the Soviet Red Army and in control of the security forces,
   held most of the power, especially in the Polish Workers' Party (Polska
   Partia Robotnicza; PPR) under Władysław Gomułka and Bolesław Bierut.

   Mikołajczyk and his colleagues in the Polish government-in-exile
   insisted on making a stand in the defense of Poland's pre-1939 eastern
   border (the Curzon Line and Kresy region) as a basis for the future
   Polish-Soviet border. However, this was a position which could not be
   defended in practice — Stalin was in occupation of the territory in
   question, and he had already been promised those areas by Churchill and
   Roosevelt in 1943. The government-in-exile's refusal to accept the
   proposed new Polish borders infuriated the Allies, particularly
   Churchill, making them less inclined to oppose Stalin on issues of how
   Poland's postwar government would be structured. In the end, the exiles
   lost on both issues: Stalin annexed the eastern territories, and took
   control of the new Polish government. However, Poland preserved its
   status as an independent state, despite the arguments of some
   influential Communists, such as Wanda Wasilewska, in favour of Poland
   becoming a republic of the Soviet Union.

   Stalin had promised at the Yalta Conference that free elections would
   be held in Poland. However, the Polish Communists, led by Gomułka and
   Bierut, were conscient of lack of support of their side in the Polish
   society. Because of that, in 1946 a national referendum, known as " 3
   times YES" (3 razy TAK; 3xTAK), was held instead of the parliamentary
   elections. The referendum comprised three, fairly general questions,
   and was meant to check the popularity of the communist rule in Poland.
   Because all of the important parties in Poland at that time were mostly
   leftists and could have supported all off the options, the
   Mikołajczyk's PSL decided to ask its supporters to oppose the abolition
   of the senate, while the Communist democratic bloc supported the "3
   times Yes" option. The referendum showed that the communist plans met
   with little support, with less than a third of the Polish population.
   Only vote rigging won them a majority in the carefully controlled poll.
   Following the forged referendum, the Polish economy started to become
   nationalized.

   The Communists consolidated power by gradually whittling away the
   rights of their non-Communist foes, particularly by suppressing the
   leading opposition party, Mikołajczyk's Polish Peasant Party. In some
   cases, their opponents were sentenced to death — among them Witold
   Pilecki, the organizer of the Auschwitz resistance, and many leaders of
   Armia Krajowa and the Council of National Unity (in the Trial of the
   Sixteen). The opposition was also persecuted by administrative means,
   with many of its members murdered or forced to exile. Although the
   initial persecution of these former anti-Nazi organizations forced many
   thousands of partisans back into forests, the actions of the Służba
   Bezpieczeństwa, NKVD and Red Army steadily diminished their number. In
   1947, an amnesty was passed for most of the partisans; the Communist
   authorities expected around 12,000 people to give up their arms, but
   the actual number of people to come out of the forests eventually
   reached 53,000.

   By 1946, rightist parties had been outlawed. A pro-government "
   Democratic Bloc" formed in 1947 that included the forerunner of the
   communist Polish United Workers' Party and its leftist allies. By
   January 1947, the first parliamentary election allowed only opposition
   candidates of the Polish Peasant Party, which was nearly powerless due
   to government controls. Results were adjusted by Stalin himself to suit
   the Communists, and under these conditions, the regime's candidates
   gained 417 of 434 seats in parliament ( Sejm), effectively ending the
   role of genuine opposition parties. Many members of opposition parties,
   including Mikołajczyk, left the country. Western governments did not
   protest, which led many anti-Communist Poles to speak of postwar "
   Western betrayal". In the same year, the new Legislative Sejm created
   the Small Constitution of 1947, and over the next two years, the
   Communists would ensure their rise to power by monopolizing political
   power in Poland under the PZPR. The Communists admitted in the last
   year of their rule that they had resorted to systematic vote rigging,
   both in a referendum in June 1946 that legitimized the provisional
   government, and in the 1947 parliamentary elections, which returned a
   massive majority for the Communist-controlled "Democratic Bloc".

   Another force in Polish politics, Józef Piłsudski's old party, the
   Polish Socialist Party (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna; PPS), suffered a
   fatal split at this time, as the communist applied the salami tactics
   to dismember any opposition. One faction, which included
   Osóbka-Morawski, wanted to join forces with the Peasant Party and form
   a united front against the Communists. Another faction, led by Józef
   Cyrankiewicz, argued that the Socialists should support the Communists
   in carrying through a socialist program, while opposing the imposition
   of one-party rule. Pre-war political hostilities continued to influence
   events, and Mikołajczyk would not agree to form a united front with the
   Socialists. The Communists played on these divisions by dismissing
   Osóbka-Morawski and making Cyrankiewicz Prime Minister. In 1948, the
   Communists and Cyrankiewicz's faction of Socialists merged to form the
   Polish United Workers' Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza;
   PZPR). Mikołajczyk was forced to leave the country, and Poland became a
   de facto single-party state and a satellite state of the Soviet Union.
   Two small façade parties, one for farmers ( Zjednoczone Stronnictwo
   Ludowe) and one for the intelligentsia ( Stronnictwo Demokratyczne),
   were allowed to exist, both subordinate to the Communists. A period of
   Sovietization and Stalinism started.

The Bierut era (1948–1956)

   The Warsaw Palace of Culture and Science, initially called "Stalin's
   Palace", was a controversial gift from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
   Enlarge
   The Warsaw Palace of Culture and Science, initially called "Stalin's
   Palace", was a controversial gift from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

   The new Polish government was controlled by Polish Communists who had
   spent the war in the Soviet Union. They were "assisted" — and in some
   cases controlled — by Soviet "advisers" who were placed in every part
   of the government. The most important of these advisers was Konstantin
   Rokossovsky (Konstanty Rokossowski in Polish), the Defense Minister
   from 1949 to 1956. Although of Polish parentage, he had spent his adult
   life in the Soviet Union, and had attained the rank of Marshal in the
   Soviet Armed Forces.

   This government, headed by Cyrankiewicz and economist Hilary Minc,
   carried through a program of sweeping economic reform and national
   reconstruction. In what became known as the battle for the trade, the
   private industry was nationalized, the land seized from prewar
   landowners was redistributed to the peasants, and millions of Poles
   transferred from the eastern territories annexed by the Soviet Union
   into the western territories, which Soviets transferred from Germany to
   Poland. By 1950, 5 million Poles had been settled in what the
   government called the Regained Territories. Warsaw and other ruined
   cities were cleared of rubble — mainly by hand — and rebuilt with
   remarkable speed.

   The reforms were greeted with relief by much of the population, though
   latent popular discontent remained present, with opinion varying. Some
   Poles adopted an attitude that might be called "resigned cooperation".
   Others, including the tens of thousands of Poles who had joined the
   Communist Party and some Social Democratic, Communist and Trade
   Unionist Poles, celebrated the opportunity to create what they saw as
   the society of the future. Others, particularly the remnants of the
   Armia Krajowa, led by Narodowe Siły Zbrojne and Wolność i Niezawisłość,
   known as the cursed soldiers, actively opposed the Communists,
   expecting a World War III that would liberate Poland. Although most had
   surrendered during the amnesty of 1947, the brutal repressions by the
   secret police led many of them back into the forests, where a few
   continued to fight well into the 1950s.
   Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński, imprisoned Primate of Poland.
   Enlarge
   Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński, imprisoned Primate of Poland.

   The Polish Communists themselves were divided into two informal
   factions, named Natolin and Puławy after the locations where they held
   their meetings: the Palace of Natolin near Warsaw and Puławska Street
   in Warsaw. Natolin consisted largely of ethnic Poles of peasant origin
   who in large part had spent the war in occupied Poland, and had a
   peculiar nationalistic-communistic ideology. Headed by Władysław
   Gomułka, the faction underlined the national character of Polish local
   communist movement. Puławy faction included Jewish Communists, as well
   as members of the old Communist intelligentsia, who in large part spent
   the war in the USSR and supported the Sovietization of Poland. The
   repercussions of Yugoslavia's break with Stalin reached Warsaw in 1948.
   As in the other eastern European satellite states, there was a purge of
   Communists suspected of nationalist or other "deviationist" tendencies
   in Poland. In September, Gomułka, who had always been an opponent of
   Stalin's control of the Polish party, was accused of "nationalistic
   tendency", dismissed from his posts, and imprisoned. However no
   equivalent of the show trials that took place in the other Eastern
   European states occurred, and Gomułka escaped with his life. Bierut
   replaced him as party leader.

   The Stalinist turn that led to the ascension of Bierut meant that
   Poland would now be brought into line with the Soviet model of a "
   people's democracy" and a centrally planned socialist economy, in place
   of the façade of democracy and market economy which the regime had
   preserved until 1948. The regime also embarked on the collectivization
   of agriculture, although the pace for this change was slower than in
   other satellites; Poland remained the only Soviet bloc country where
   individual peasants dominated agriculture. The Communists further
   alienated many Poles by persecuting the Catholic Church. The
   Stowarzyszenie PAX ("PAX Association") created in 1947 worked to
   undermine grassroot support from the Church and attempted to create a
   Communist Catholic Church. In 1953 the Primate of Poland, Stefan
   Cardinal Wyszyński, was placed under house arrest, although before that
   he had been willing to make many compromises with the government.

   Despite the fact that Polish historians estimate that between 200,000
   and 400,000 people died during the postwar period, Stalinism in Poland
   was not quite as severe as it was in the other satellite states. Many
   Poles believed that the reason for this was that Poland, unlike other
   Eastern European countries, did not need an additional phase of terror.
   Polish society had already been brought to the edge of disintegration
   by the Nazi occupation: Warsaw and other cities lay in ruins, and many
   smaller towns, which had been populated largely by Jews before the War,
   were empty. Half of the prewar Polish intelligentsia, mainly those of
   Jewish or middle-class origins, was dead or in political exile. Many
   children had gone six years without school. Under these circumstances,
   most people were willing to accept even Communist rule in exchange for
   the restoration of relatively normal life. Even the Catholic Church
   believed that any open resistance would be suicidal. In such
   circumstances a struggle for total control of every aspect of social
   and economical life in Poland started.

   In the early 1950's the Communist regime carried out major changes to
   the education system. The Nazi massacre of the prewar Polish
   intelligentsia, and the emigration of many other intellectuals and
   skilled people, had left Poland severely educationally lacking. As a
   result, the Communist program of free and compulsory school education
   for all, and the establishment of new free universities, received much
   support. Universities from the lost eastern territories were evacuated
   to the new western territories: from Wilno to Toruń and from Lwów to
   Wrocław. Many new universities were founded, including the famous Film
   University of Łódź. The Communists thus took the opportunity to create
   a new Polish educated class, taught in an educational system which they
   controlled. At the same time between 1951 and 1953 a large number of
   pre-war reactionary professors was dismissed from the universities.
   Among them were Maria and Stanisław Ossowski, Władysław Tatarkiewicz,
   Izydora Dąmbska and many of the most prominent Polish scientists of the
   epoch. At the same time the control over art and artists was extended
   and with time the Socialist Realism became the only movement that was
   accepted by the authorities. After 1949 most of works of art presented
   to the public had to be in line with the voice of the Party and present
   its propaganda.

   In 1948 the United States announced the Marshall plan, its initiative
   to help rebuild Europe. After initially welcoming the idea of Polish
   involvement in the plan, the Polish government declined to participate
   under pressure from Moscow. In 1953, following anti-Communist riots in
   the German Democratic Republic, Poland was forced by the Soviet Union
   to give up its claims to compensation from Germany, which as a result
   paid no significant compensation for war damages, either to the Polish
   state or to Polish citizens. The only compensation Poland received was
   in the form of the property left behind by the German population of the
   annexed western territories. This marked the beginning of the wealth
   gap, which would increase in years to come, as the Western market
   economies grew much more quickly than the centrally planned socialist
   economies of Eastern Europe.

   The new Polish Constitution of 1952 officially established Poland as a
   People's Republic, ruled by the Polish United Workers' Party, which
   since the absorption of the left wing of the Socialist Party in 1948
   had been the Communist Party's official name. The post of President of
   Poland was abolished, and Bierut, the First Secretary of the Communist
   Party, became the effective leader of Poland.

Minorities in Poland after the Second World War

   Before World War II, a third of Poland's population was composed of
   ethnic minorities. After the war, however, Poland's minorities were all
   but gone, due to the 1945 revision of borders, and the Holocaust that
   resulted in the extermination of the vast majority of Poland's Jews.
   Under the National Repatriation Office (Państwowy Urząd Repatriacyjny),
   millions of Poles were forced to leave their homes in the eastern Kresy
   region and settle in the western former German territories. At the same
   time, according to the provisions of the Potsdam Agreement,
   approximately 5 million remaining Germans (about 8 million had already
   fled or had been expelled and about 1 million had been killed in
   1944-46) were similarly expelled from those territories into the
   post-war borders of Germany. Ukrainian and Belarusian minorities found
   themselves now mostly within the borders of the Soviet Union; those who
   opposed this new policy (like the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the
   Bieszczady Mountains region) were suppressed by the end of 1947 in the
   "Wisła" Action.

   The population of Jews in Poland, which formed the largest Jewish
   community in pre-war Europe at about 3.5 million people, was all but
   destroyed by 1945. Approximately 3 million Jews (all but about 300,000
   to 500,000 of the Jewish population) died of starvation in ghettos and
   labor camps, were slaughtered at the Nazi extermination camps or by the
   Einsatzgruppen death squads. Between 40,000 and 100,000 Polish Jews
   survived the Holocaust in Poland, and another 50,000 to 170,000 were
   repatriated from the Soviet Union, and 20,000 to 40,000 from Germany
   and other countries. At its postwar peak, there were 180,000 to 240,000
   Jews in Poland, settled mostly in Warsaw, Łódź, Kraków and Wrocław.^

   The position of Jews in postwar Poland was precarious. Many of the
   Holocaust survivors shared the common fate of other people in post-war
   Communist Poland, and were not able to reclaim their property upon
   return. There were incidents of Jews who were returning to their old
   homes being attacked by people who had moved into their homes during
   the war. Jews were also sometimes associated with the Communists, as
   some Jews who returned from the Soviet Union, including Hilary Minc and
   Party security and ideological chief Jakub Berman, assumed prominent
   positions in Communist leadership and were as a result held responsible
   for the regime's repressions by many Poles. These issues fed into
   existing anti-Semitism, culminating in the Kielce pogrom of July 1946.
   Sparked by falsified rumors of Jewish blood libel, a crowd attacked a
   building housing Jews preparing to emigrate to Palestine while the
   police stood by and watched—even assisting in some cases—killing over
   40 and wounding approximately 50. Afterwards, the Communists,
   anti-Communists and Catholic Church all blamed each other for this
   outbreak of violence. Kielce became a turning point for the Jews in
   post-war Poland. Until the pogrom, large numbers of Polish Jews had
   intended to stay in the country, despite the general Zionist feeling
   after the war. After the pogrom, the majority of Jews wanted to
   leave—the number of Jews crossing the border illegally skyrocketed,
   going from an average of 1,000 a month prior to July 1946 to over
   20,000 a month for the three months afterwards.^ In total, 100,000 to
   120,000 Jews left Poland between 1945 and 1948. Their departure was
   largely organized by the Zionist activists in Poland, such as Adolf
   Berman and Yitzhak Zuckerman, under the umbrella of a semi-clandestine
   organization, Berihah ("Flight"). A second wave of Jewish emigration
   (50,000) took place during the liberalization of the Communist regime
   between 1957 and 1959.

Communist reform (1956–1970)

De-Stalinization

   Voivodeships of Poland between 1956 and 1975.
   Enlarge
   Voivodeships of Poland between 1956 and 1975.

   Stalin had died in 1953. Between 1953 and 1958 Nikita Khrushchev
   outmaneuvered his rivals and achieved power in the Soviet Union. In
   March 1956 Khrushchev denounced Stalin's cult of personality at the
   20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party. The de-Stalinization of
   official Soviet ideology left Poland's Stalinist hard-liners in a
   difficult position. In the same month as Khrushchev's speech, as unrest
   and desire for reform and change among both intellectuals and workers
   was beginning to surface throughout the Eastern Bloc, the death of the
   hard-line Bierut in March 1956 exacerbated an existing split in the
   PZPR. Bierut was succeeded by Edward Ochab as First Secretary of the
   PZPR, and by Cyrankiewicz as Prime Minister.

   In June 1956, workers in the industrial city of Poznań went on strike.
   Demonstrations by striking workers turned into huge riots, in which 80
   people were killed. Cyrankiewicz tried to repress the riots at first,
   threatening that "any provocateur or lunatic who raises his hand
   against the people's government may be sure that this hand will be
   chopped off." But soon the hard-liners realized that they had lost the
   support of the Soviet Union, and the regime turned to conciliation: it
   announced wage rises and other reforms. Voices began to be raised in
   the Party and among the intellectuals calling for wider reforms of the
   Stalinist system. The disgraced "national Communist" Władysław Gomułka
   re-emerged and placed himself at the head of the movement.
   Polish May Day poster.
   Enlarge
   Polish May Day poster.

   Realizing the need for new leadership, the PZPR chose Gomułka, a
   moderate who had been purged after losing his battle with Bierut, as
   First Secretary in October 1956, despite Moscow's threats to take
   action against Poland if the PZPR picked Gomułka; the Soviet Union did
   not intend to allow its influence on Eastern Europe to diminish. After
   some tough bargaining with Khrushchev, who came to Warsaw to oversee
   the transfer of power, the Soviets grudgingly decided not to resist
   Gomułka's rise to power. Even so, Poland's relations with the Soviet
   Union were not nearly as strained as Yugoslavia's. As a further sign
   that the end of Soviet influence in Poland was nowhere in sight, the
   Warsaw Pact was signed in the Polish capital of Warsaw on May 14, 1955,
   to counteract the establishment of the Western NATO.

   Hard-line Stalinists such as Berman were removed from power, and many
   Soviet officers serving in the Polish Armed Forces were dismissed, but
   almost no one was put on trial for the repressions of the Bierut
   period. The Puławy faction argued that mass trials of Stalin-era
   officials, many of them Jewish, would incite animosity toward the Jews.
   Konstantin Rokossovsky and other Soviet advisors were sent home, and
   Polish Communism took on a more independent orientation. However,
   Gomułka knew that the Soviets would never allow Poland to leave the
   Warsaw Pact because of Poland's strategic position between the Soviet
   Union and Germany. He agreed that Soviet troops could remain in Poland,
   and that no overt anti-Soviet outbursts would be allowed. In this way,
   Poland avoided the risk of the kind of Soviet armed intervention that
   crushed the revolution in Hungary that same month.

   There were also repeated attempts by some Polish academics and
   philosophers, such as Leszek Kołakowski, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Kazimierz
   Ajdukiewicz and Stanisław Ossowski, to develop a specific form of
   Polish Marxism. While their attempts to create a bridge between
   Poland's history and Soviet Marxist ideology were mildly successful,
   especially in comparison to similar efforts in most other countries of
   the Eastern Bloc, they were for the most part stifled due to the
   regime's unwillingness to risk the wrath of the Soviet Union for going
   too far from the Soviet party line.

The Gomułka period

   Poland welcomed Gomułka's return to power with relief, and even
   euphoria, despite his background as a lifelong Communist. Many Poles
   still rejected Communism, but they knew that the realities of Soviet
   dominance dictated that Poland could not escape from Communist rule.
   Gomułka, however, promised an end to police terror, greater
   intellectual and religious freedom, higher wages and the reversal of
   collectivization, and he fulfilled all of these promises. Gomułka also
   promised free elections, but this was a promise he knew he could not
   keep without seeing his party defeated. At the January 1957 elections,
   no opposition candidates were permitted to run. Voters were given the
   right to vote against official candidates, but Gomułka persuaded the
   Catholic Church to urge a vote of confidence in the government. In this
   way, the PZPR won 237 seats out of 459, while the rest went to
   satellite parties and a few independents.

   After the first wave of reform, Gomułka's regime settled into a phase
   of "consolidation" in which the power of the Party, and Party's control
   of the media and universities, were gradually restored, and many of the
   younger and more reformist members of the Party were expelled. The
   reform-promising Gomułka of 1956 was replaced by the original
   authoritarian Gomułka. Poland enjoyed a period of relative stability
   over the next decade, but the idealism of the " Polish October" had
   faded away. What replaced it was a cynical form of Polish nationalism,
   fueled by a propaganda campaign against West Germany over its
   unwillingness to recognize the Oder-Neisse line.

   By the mid-1960s, Poland was starting to experience economic, as well
   as political, difficulties. Like all the Communist regimes, Poland was
   spending too much on heavy industry, armaments and prestige projects,
   and too little on consumer production. The end of collectivization
   returned the land to the peasants, but most of their farms were too
   small to be efficient, so productivity in agriculture remained low.
   Economic relations with West Germany were frozen because of the impasse
   over the Oder-Neisse line. Gomułka chose to ignore the economic crisis,
   and his autocratic methods prevented the major changes required to
   prevent a downward economic spiral.

   Gomułka's Poland was generally described as one of the more "liberal"
   Communist regimes, and Poland was certainly more open than East
   Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania during this period. Nevertheless,
   under Gomułka, Poles could still go to prison for writing political
   satire about the Party leader, as Janusz Szpotański did, or for
   publishing a book abroad. Jacek Kuroń, who would later become a
   prominent dissident, was imprisoned for writing an "open letter" to
   other Party members. As Gomułka's popularity declined and his reform
   Communism lost its impetus, the regime became steadily less liberal and
   more repressive.
   The fourth congress of the Polish United Workers' Party, held in 1963.
   Enlarge
   The fourth congress of the Polish United Workers' Party, held in 1963.

   By the 1960s, other government officials had begun to plot against
   Gomułka. His security chief, Mieczysław Moczar, a wartime Communist
   partisan commander, formed a new faction, "the Partisans", based on
   principles of Communist nationalism and anti-Jewish sentiment. The
   Party boss in Upper Silesia, Edward Gierek, who unlike most of the
   Communist leaders was a genuine product of the working class, also
   emerged as a possible alternative leader.

   In March 1968 student demonstrations at Warsaw University broke out
   when the government banned the performance of a play by Adam Mickiewicz
   ( Dziady, written in 1824) at the Polish Theatre in Warsaw, on the
   grounds that it contained "anti-Soviet references". Moczar used this
   affair as a pretext to launch an anti-Semitic press campaign (although
   the expression "anti-Zionist" was the one officially used). By 1968,
   most of Poland's 40,000 remaining Jews were assimilated into Polish
   society, but over the next year, they became the centre of an organized
   campaign to equate Jewish origins with Zionist sympathies and thus
   disloyalty to Poland. Approximately 20,000 Jews lost their jobs and had
   to emigrate. The campaign, despite being ostensibly directed at Jews
   who had held office during the Stalin era and their families, affected
   most of the remaining Polish Jews, regardless of background. Gomułka
   had the option of resisting this campaign, but instead allowed it to
   continue, hoping that it would burn itself out. The campaign damaged
   Poland's reputation abroad, particularly in the United States. Many
   Polish intellectuals opposed the campaign, some openly, and Moczar's
   security apparatus became as hated as Berman's had been.

   There were several results of these March 1968 events. One was an
   official approval for demonstrating Polish national feelings, including
   the scaling down of official criticism of the prewar Polish regime, and
   of Poles who had fought in the anti-Communist wartime partisan
   movement, the Armia Krajowa. The second was the complete alienation of
   the regime from the leftist intelligentsia, who were disgusted at the
   official promotion of anti-Semitism. The third was the founding by
   Polish Emigrants to the West of organizations that encouraged
   opposition within Poland.
   Władysław Gomułka speaking.
   Władysław Gomułka speaking.

   Two things saved Gomułka's regime at this point. First, the Soviet
   Union, now led by Leonid Brezhnev, made it clear that it would not
   tolerate political upheaval in Poland at a time when it was trying to
   deal with the crisis in Czechoslovakia. In particular, the Soviets made
   it clear that they would not allow Moczar, whom they suspected of
   anti-Soviet nationalism, to be leader of Poland. Secondly, the workers
   refused to rise up against the regime, partly because they distrusted
   the intellectual leadership of the protest movement, and partly because
   Gomułka placated them with higher wages. The Catholic Church, while
   protesting against police violence against demonstrating students, was
   also not willing to support a direct confrontation with the regime.

   In August 1968 the Polish army took part in the invasion of
   Czechoslovakia. Some Polish intellectuals protested, and Ryszard Siwiec
   burned himself alive during the official national holiday celebrations.
   Polish participation in crushing Czech liberal communism (or socialism
   with a human face, as it was called at that time) further alienated
   Gomułka from his former liberal supporters. However, in 1970 Gomułka
   won a political victory when he gained West German recognition of the
   Oder-Neisse line. The German Chancellor, Willy Brandt, asked on his
   knees for forgiveness for the crimes of the Nazis: the gesture was
   understood in Poland as being addressed to Poles, although it was
   actually made at the site of the Warsaw Ghetto and was thus directed
   primarily toward the Jews. This occurred five years after Polish
   bishops had issued the famous Letter of Reconciliation of the Polish
   Bishops to the German Bishops.

   Gomułka's temporary political success could not mask the economic
   crisis into which Poland was drifting. Although the system of fixed,
   artificially low food prices kept urban discontent under control, it
   caused stagnation in agriculture and made more expensive food imports
   necessary. This situation was unsustainable, and in December 1970, the
   regime suddenly announced massive increases in the prices of basic
   foodstuffs. It is possible that the price rises were imposed on Gomułka
   by enemies of his in the Party leadership who planned to maneuver him
   out of power. The raised prices were unpopular among many urban
   workers. Gomułka believed that the agreement with West Germany had made
   him more popular, but in fact most Poles seemed to feel that since the
   Germans were no longer a threat to Poland, they no longer needed to
   tolerate the Communist regime as a guarantee of Soviet support for the
   defense of the Oder-Neisse line.

   Demonstrations against the price rises broke out in the northern
   coastal cities of Gdańsk, Gdynia, Elbląg and Szczecin. Gomułka's
   right-hand man, Zenon Kliszko, made matters worse by ordering the army
   to fire on workers as they tried to return to their factories. Another
   leader, Stanisław Kociołek, appealed to the workers to return to work.
   However, in Gdynia the soldiers had orders to prevent workers from
   returning to work, and they fired into a crowd of workers emerging from
   their trains; hundreds of workers were killed. The protest movement
   spread to other cities, leading to more strikes and causing angry
   workers to occupy many factories.

   The Party leadership met in Warsaw and decided that a full-scale
   working-class revolt was inevitable unless drastic steps were taken.
   With the consent of Brezhnev in Moscow, Gomułka, Kliszko and other
   leaders were forced to resign; if the price rises had been a plot
   against Gomułka, it had succeeded. Since Moscow would not accept the
   appointment of Moczar, Edward Gierek was drafted as the new First
   Secretary of the PZPR. Prices were lowered, wage increases were
   announced, and sweeping economic and political changes were promised.
   Gierek went to Gdańsk and met the workers personally, apologizing for
   the mistakes of the past, and saying that as a worker himself, he would
   now govern Poland for the people.

The Gierek era (1970–1980)

   Edward Gierek.
   Enlarge
   Edward Gierek.

   Gierek, like Gomułka in 1956, came to power on a raft of promises that
   now everything would be different: wages would rise, prices would
   remain stable, there would be freedom of speech, and those responsible
   for the violence at Gdynia and elsewhere would be punished. Although
   Poles were much more cynical than they had been in 1956, Gierek was
   believed to be an honest and well-intentioned man, and his promises
   bought him some time. He used this time to create a new economic
   program, one based on large-scale borrowing from the West—mainly from
   the United States and West Germany—to buy technology that would upgrade
   Poland's production of export goods. This massive borrowing, estimated
   to have totaled US$10 billion, was used to re-equip and modernize
   Polish industry, and to import consumer goods in order to give the
   workers more incentive to work.
   A propaganda poster that reads "The structures built for socialism
   should be our pride".
   Enlarge
   A propaganda poster that reads "The structures built for socialism
   should be our pride".

   For the next four years, Poland enjoyed rapidly rising living standards
   and an apparently stable economy. Real wages rose 40% between 1971 and
   1975, and for the first time most Poles could afford to buy cars,
   televisions and other consumer goods. Poles living abroad, veterans of
   the Armia Krajowa and the Polish II Corps, were invited to return and
   to invest their money in Poland, which many did. The peasants were
   subsidized to grow more food. Poles were able to travel—mainly to
   Germany, Sweden and Italy—with little difficulty. There was also some
   cultural and political relaxation. As long as the "leading role of the
   Party" and the Soviet "alliance" were not criticized, there was a
   limited freedom of speech. With the workers and peasants reasonably
   happy, the regime knew that a few grumbling intellectuals could pose no
   challenge.

   "Consumer Communism", based on present global economic conditions,
   raised Polish living standards and expectations, but the program
   faltered suddenly in the early 1970s because of worldwide recession and
   increased oil prices. The effects of the world oil shock following the
   1973 Arab-Israeli War produced an inflationary surge followed by a
   recession in the West, which resulted in a sharp increase in the price
   of imported consumer goods, coupled with a decline in demand for Polish
   exports, particularly coal. Poland's foreign debt rose from US$100
   million in 1971 to US$6 billion in 1975, and continued to rise rapidly.
   This made it more and more difficult for Poland to continue borrowing
   from the West. Once again, consumer goods began to disappear from
   Polish shops. The new factories built by Gierek's regime also proved to
   be largely ineffective. For instance, one of the major investments was
   in an Italian-built cake and sweets factory in Ryki. It was the largest
   such factory in the world, and was to produce 17 million cakes a week.
   However, it soon turned out that most of the ingredients had to be
   imported from abroad at high prices, and the factory was closed soon
   after its completion.
   A queue waiting to buy toilet paper, a common sight in Poland's
   shortage economy in the 1970s and 1980s.
   Enlarge
   A queue waiting to buy toilet paper, a common sight in Poland's
   shortage economy in the 1970s and 1980s.

   In 1975, Poland and almost all other European countries became
   signatories of the Helsinki Accords and a member of Organization for
   Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the creation of which
   marked the high point of the period of " détente" between the Soviet
   Union and the United States. Despite the regime's claims that the
   freedoms mentioned in the agreement would be implemented in Poland,
   there was little change. However, Poles were gradually becoming more
   aware of the rights they were being denied.

   As the government became increasingly unable to borrow money from
   abroad, it had no alternative but to raise prices, particularly for
   basic foodstuffs. The government had been so afraid of a repeat of the
   1970 worker rebellion that it had kept prices frozen at the 1970 levels
   rather than allowing them to rise gradually. Then, in June 1976, under
   pressure from Western creditors, the government again introduced price
   increases: butter by 33%, meat by 70%, and sugar by 100%. The result
   was an immediate nationwide wave of strikes, with violent
   demonstrations and looting at Płock and Radom. Gierek backed down at
   once, dismissing Prime Minister Piotr Jaroszewicz and repealing the
   price rises. This left the government looking both economically foolish
   and politically weak, a very dangerous combination.
   A typical meat shop in Poland in the 1980s.
   Enlarge
   A typical meat shop in Poland in the 1980s.

   The 1976 disturbances and the subsequent arrests and dismissals of
   worker militants brought the workers and the intellectual opposition to
   the regime back into contact. A group of intellectuals led by Jacek
   Kuroń and Adam Michnik founded the Committee for the Defence of the
   Workers (Komitet Obrony Robotników; KOR), which published an
   underground paper, Robotnik ("The Worker"—the same title as Józef
   Piłsudski's underground paper). The aim of the KOR was at first simply
   to assist the worker victims of the 1976 repression, but it inevitably
   became a political resistance group. It marked an important
   development: the intellectual dissidents accepting the leadership of
   the working class in opposing the regime. These events brought many
   more Polish intellectuals into active opposition of the Polish
   government. The complete failure of the Gierek regime, both
   economically and politically, led many of them to join or rejoin the
   opposition. During this period, new opposition groups were formed, such
   as the Confederation for an Independent Poland and the Movement for
   Defense of Human and Civic Rights (ROPCiO), which tried to resist the
   regime by denouncing it for violating Polish laws and the Polish
   constitution.

   For the rest of the 1970s, resistance to the regime grew, in the form
   of trade unions, student groups, clandestine newspapers and publishers,
   imported books and newspapers, and even a " flying university". The
   situation was similar to that of earlier periods of Polish resistance
   to foreign occupation, such as the partitions of Poland of the 19th
   century and the German occupation of 1939–1944, except that the regime
   made no serious attempt to suppress the opposition. Gierek was
   interested only in buying off dissatisfied workers and keeping the
   Soviet Union convinced that Poland was a loyal ally. But the Soviet
   alliance was at the heart of Gierek's problems: because of Poland's
   strategic position between the Soviet Union and Germany, the Soviets
   would never allow Poland to drift out of its orbit, as Yugoslavia and
   Romania had by this time done. Nor would they allow any fundamental
   economic reform that would endanger the "socialist system".

   In reality, however, Poland was already becoming increasingly
   capitalistic due to its Western money borrowing. The fact that the West
   would no longer give Poland credit meant that living standards began to
   sharply fall again as the supply of imported goods dried up, and as
   Poland was forced to export everything it could, particularly food and
   coal, to service its massive debt, which would reach US$23 billion by
   1980. By 1978, it was therefore obvious that eventually the regime
   would again have to raise prices and risk another outbreak of labor
   unrest.
   Millions cheer Pope John Paul II in his first visit to Poland as
   pontiff in 1979.
   Millions cheer Pope John Paul II in his first visit to Poland as
   pontiff in 1979.

   At this juncture, on October 16, 1978, Poland experienced what many
   Poles literally believed to be a miracle. The Archbishop of Kraków,
   Karol Wojtyła, was elected Pope, taking the name John Paul II. The
   election of a Polish Pope had an electrifying effect on what was by the
   1970s the last especially Catholic country in Europe. When John Paul
   toured Poland in June 1979, half a million people heard him speak in
   Warsaw, and about a quarter of the entire population of the country
   attended at least one of his outdoor masses. Overnight, John Paul
   became the de facto leader of Poland, leaving the regime not so much
   opposed as ignored. However, John Paul did not call for rebellion;
   instead, he encouraged the creation of an "alternative Poland" of
   social institutions independent of the government, so that when the
   next crisis came, the nation would present a united front.

   By 1980, the Communist regime was completely trapped by Poland's
   economic and political dilemma. The regime had no means of legitimizing
   itself, since it knew that the PZPR would never win a free election. It
   had no choice but to make another attempt to raise consumer prices to
   realistic levels, but it knew that to do so would certainly spark
   another worker rebellion, much better-organized than the 1970 or 1976
   outbreaks. In July 1980, the government gave in and announced a system
   of gradual but continuous price rises, particularly for meat. A wave of
   strikes and factory occupations began at once, coordinated from KOR's
   headquarters in Warsaw.

   The regime made little effort to intervene. By this time, the Polish
   Communists had lost the Stalinist zealotry of the 1940s; they had grown
   corrupt and cynical during the Gierek years, and had no stomach for
   bloodshed. The country waited to see what would happen. In early
   August, the strike wave reached the politically sensitive Baltic coast,
   with a strike at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdańsk. Among the leaders of
   this strike was electrician Lech Wałęsa, who would soon become a figure
   of international importance. The strike wave spread along the coast,
   closing the ports and bringing the economy to a halt. With the
   assistance of the activists from KOR and the support of many
   intellectuals, the workers occupying the various factories, mines and
   shipyards across Poland came together.

   The regime was now faced with a choice between repression on a massive
   scale and an agreement that would give the workers everything they
   wanted, while preserving the outward shell of Communist rule. They
   chose the latter, and on August 31, Wałęsa signed the Gdańsk Agreement
   with Mieczysław Jagielski, a member of the PZPR Politburo. The
   Agreement acknowledged the right of Poles to associate in free trade
   unions, abolished censorship, abolished weekend work, increased the
   minimum wage, increased and extended welfare and pensions, and
   abolished Party supervision of industrial enterprises. Only the façade
   of Party rule was preserved, which was recognized as necessary to
   prevent Soviet intervention. The fact that all these economic
   concessions were completely unaffordable escaped attention in the wave
   of national euphoria that swept the country. The period that started
   afterwards is often called the "Polish carnival".

The end of Communist rule (1980–1990)

   In September 1980, the increasingly frail Gierek was removed from
   office and replaced as Party leader by Stanisław Kania. Kania made the
   same sort of promises that Gomułka and Gierek made when they had come
   to power. But whatever goodwill the new leader gained by these promises
   was even shorter lived than it had been in 1956 and 1971, because there
   was no way that the regime could have kept the promises it had made at
   Gdańsk, even if it wanted to. The regime was still trapped by the
   conflict between economic necessity and political instability. It could
   not revive the economy without abandoning state control of prices, but
   it could not do this without triggering another general strike. Nor
   could it gain the support of the population through political reform,
   because of the threat of Soviet intervention. GNP fell in 1979 by 2%,
   in 1980 by 8% and in 1981 by 15-20% . Public corruption had become
   endemic and housing shortages and food rationing were just one of many
   factors contributing to the growing social unrest.

   The Gdańsk Agreement, an aftermath of the August 1980 labor strike,
   were an important milestone. They led to the formation of an
   independent trade union, " Solidarity" (Polish Solidarność), founded in
   September 1980 and originally led by Lech Wałęsa. In the 1980s, it
   helped form a broad anti-Communist social movement, with members
   ranging from people associated with the Roman Catholic Church to
   anti-Communist leftists. The union was backed by a group of
   intellectual dissidents, the KOR, and adhered to a policy of nonviolent
   resistance. In time, Solidarity became a major Polish political force
   in opposition to the Communists.
   Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law on December 13, 1981.
   Enlarge
   Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law on December 13, 1981.

   The ideas of the Solidarity movement spread rapidly throughout Poland;
   more and more new unions were formed and joined the federation. The
   Solidarity program, although concerned chiefly with trade union
   matters, was universally regarded as the first step towards dismantling
   the Communists' dominance over social institutions, professional
   organizations and community associations. By the end of 1981,
   Solidarity had nine million members—a quarter of Poland's population,
   and three times as many members as the PUWP had. Using strikes and
   other tactics, the union sought to block government initiatives.
   ZOMO paramilitary police units in Poland in 1982.
   Enlarge
   ZOMO paramilitary police units in Poland in 1982.

   On December 13, 1981, claiming that the country was on the verge of
   economic and civil breakdown, and fearful of Soviet intervention
   (whether this fear was justified at that particular moment is still
   hotly disputed by historians), Wojciech Jaruzelski, who had become the
   Party's national secretary and prime minister that year, started a
   crack-down on Solidarity, declaring martial law, suspending the union,
   and temporarily imprisoning most of its leaders. Polish police (
   Milicja Obywatelska) and paramilitary riot police (Zmotoryzowane Odwody
   Milicji Obywatelskiej; ZOMO) suppressed the demonstrators in a series
   of violent attacks such as the massacre of striking miners in the
   Kopalnia Wujek. The government banned Solidarity on October 8, 1982.
   Martial law was formally lifted in July 1983, though many heightened
   controls on civil liberties and political life, as well as food
   rationing, remained in place throughout the mid-to-late 1980s.
   A ration card for milk, from 1983.
   Enlarge
   A ration card for milk, from 1983.

   During the chaotic Solidarity years and the imposition of martial law,
   Poland entered a decade of economic crisis, officially acknowledged as
   such even by the regime. Rationing and queuing became a way of life,
   with ration cards necessary to buy even such basic consumer staples as
   milk and sugar. Access to Western luxury goods became even more
   restricted, as Western governments applied economic sanctions to
   express their dissatisfaction with the government repression of the
   opposition, while at the same time the government had to use most of
   the foreign currency it could obtain to pay the crushing rates on its
   foreign debt.

   In response to this situation, the government, which controlled all
   official foreign trade, continued to maintain a highly artificial
   exchange rate with Western currencies. The exchange rate worsened
   distortions in the economy at all levels, resulting in a growing black
   market and the development of a shortage economy. The only way for an
   individual to buy most Western goods was to use Western currencies,
   notably the U.S. dollar, which in effect became a parallel currency.
   However, it could not simply be exchanged at the official banks for
   Polish złotys, since the government exchange rate undervalued the
   dollar and placed heavy restrictions on the amount that could be
   exchanged, and so the only practical way to obtain it was from
   remittances or work outside the country.
   A Pewex shop.
   Enlarge
   A Pewex shop.

   As money came into the country by these channels, the government in
   turn attempted to gather it up by various means, most visibly by
   establishing a chain of state-run Pewex stores in all Polish cities
   where goods could only be bought with hard currency. It even introduced
   its own ersatz U.S. currency (bony in Polish). These trends led to an
   unhealthy state of affairs where the chief determinant of economic
   status was access to hard currency. This situation was incompatible
   with any remaining ideals of socialism, which were soon completely
   abandoned.

   In this desperate situation, all development and growth in the Polish
   economy slowed to a crawl. Most visibly, work on most of the major
   investment projects that had begun in the 1970s was stopped. As a
   result, most Polish cities acquired at least one infamous example of a
   large unfinished building languishing in a state of limbo. While some
   of these were eventually finished decades later, most, such as the
   Szkieletor skyscraper in Kraków, were never finished at all, wasting
   the considerable resources devoted to their construction. Polish
   investment in economic infrastructure and technological development
   fell rapidly, ensuring that the country lost whatever ground it had
   gained relative to Western European economies in the 1970s. To escape
   the constant economic and political pressures during these years, and
   the general sense of hopelessness, hundreds of thousands of Poles left
   the country and settled in the West, few of them returning to Poland
   even after the end of Communism in Poland. Tens of thousands more went
   to work in countries that could offer them salaries in hard currency,
   notably Libya and Iraq.
   A Polish ersatz American 2-cent bill.
   Enlarge
   A Polish ersatz American 2- cent bill.

   After several years of the situation continuing to worsen, during which
   time the Communist government unsuccessfully tried various expedients
   to improve the performance of the economy—at one point resorting to
   placing military commissars to direct work in the factories—it
   grudgingly accepted pressures to liberalize the economy. The government
   introduced a series of small-scale reforms, such as allowing more
   small-scale private enterprises to function. However, the government
   also realized that it lacked the legitimacy to carry out any
   large-scale reforms, which would inevitably cause large-scale social
   dislocation and economic difficulties for most of the population,
   accustomed to the limited social safety net that the communist system
   had provided. For example, when the government proposed to close the
   Gdańsk Shipyard, a decision in some ways justifiable from an economic
   point of view but also largely political, there was a wave of public
   outrage and the government was forced to back down.

   The only way to carry out such changes without social upheaval would be
   to acquire at least some support from the opposition side. The
   government accepted the idea that some kind of a deal with the
   opposition would be necessary, and repeatedly attempted to find common
   ground throughout the 1980s. However, at this point the Communists
   generally still believed that they should retain the reins of power for
   the near future, and only allowed the opposition limited, advisory
   participation in the running of the country. They believed that this
   would be essential to pacifying the Soviet Union, which they felt was
   not yet ready to accept a non-Communist Poland.

   The constant state of economic and societal crisis meant that, after
   the shock of martial law had faded, people on all levels again began to
   organize against the regime. "Solidarity" gained more support and
   power, though it never approached the levels of membership it enjoyed
   in the 1980–1981 period. At the same time, the dominance of the
   Communist Party further eroded as it lost many of its members, a number
   of whom had been revolted by the imposition of martial law. Throughout
   the mid-1980s, Solidarity persisted solely as an underground
   organization, supported by the Church and by funding from the CIA.
   Starting from 1986, other opposition structures such as the Orange
   Alternative "dwarf" movement founded by Major Waldemar Fydrych began
   organizing street protests in form of colorful happenings that
   assembled thousands of participants and broke the fear barrier which
   was paralysing the population since the Martial Law. By the late 1980s,
   Solidarity was strong enough to frustrate Jaruzelski's attempts at
   reform, and nationwide strikes in 1988 were one of the factors that
   forced the government to open a dialogue with Solidarity.
   The Round Table Talks of 1989.
   The Round Table Talks of 1989.

   The perestroika and glasnost policies of the Soviet Union's new leader,
   Mikhail Gorbachev, were another factor in stimulating political reform
   in Poland. In particular, Gorbachev essentially repudiated the Brezhnev
   Doctrine, which had stipulated that attempts by its Eastern European
   satellite states to abandon Communism would be countered by the Soviet
   Union with force. This change in Soviet policy, in addition to the
   hardline stance of US President Ronald Reagan against Soviet military
   incursions, removed the specter of a possible Soviet invasion in
   response to any wide-ranging reforms, and hence eliminated the key
   argument employed by the Communists as a justification for maintaining
   Communism in Poland.

   By the close of the 10th plenary session in December 1988, the
   Communist Party had decided to approach leaders of Solidarity for
   talks. From February 6 to April 15, 94 sessions of talks between 13
   working groups, which became known as the " Round Table Talks" (Polish:
   Rozmowy Okrągłego Stołu) radically altered the structure of the Polish
   government and society. The talks resulted in an agreement to vest
   political power in a newly created bicameral legislature, and in a
   president who would be the chief executive.

   In April 1989, Solidarity was again legalized and allowed to
   participate in semi-free elections on June 4, 1989. This election was
   officially rigged to keep the Communists in power, since only one third
   of the seats in the key lower chamber of parliament would be open to
   Solidarity candidates. The other two thirds were to be reserved for
   candidates from the Communist Party and its two allied, completely
   subservient parties. The Communists thought of the election as a way to
   keep power while gaining some legitimacy to carry out reforms. Many
   critics from the opposition believed that by accepting the rigged
   election Solidarity had bowed to government pressure, guaranteeing the
   Communists domination in Poland into the 1990s.

   The outcome of the election was largely unpredictable. After all,
   Poland had not had a truly fair election since the 1920s, so there was
   little precedent to go by. It was clear that the Communists were
   unpopular, but there were no hard numbers as to how low support for
   them would actually fall. The Communist government still had control
   over most major media outlets and employed sports and television
   celebrities for candidates, as well as successful local personalities
   and businesspersons. Some members of the opposition were worried that
   such tactics would gain enough votes from the less educated segment of
   the population to give the Communists the legitimacy that they craved.

   When the results were released, a political earthquake followed. The
   victory of Solidarity surpassed all predictions. Solidarity candidates
   captured all the seats they were allowed to compete for in the Sejm,
   while in the Senate they captured 99 out of the 100 available seats. At
   the same time, many prominent Communist candidates failed to gain even
   the minimum number of votes required to capture the seats that were
   reserved for them. With the election results, the Communists suffered a
   catastrophic blow to their legitimacy.

   The next few months were spent on political maneuvering. The prestige
   of the Communists fell so low that the two parties allied with them
   decided to break away and adopt independent courses. The Communist
   candidate for the post of Prime Minister, general Czesław Kiszczak,
   failed to gain enough support in the Sejm to form a government.
   Although Jaruzelski tried to persuade Solidarity to join the Communists
   in a "grand coalition", Wałęsa refused. By August of 1989, it was clear
   that a Solidarity Prime Minister would have to be chosen. Jaruzelski
   resigned as general secretary of the Communist Party, but found that he
   was forced to come to terms with a government formed by Solidarity: the
   Communists, who still had control over state power, were pacified by a
   compromise in which Solidarity allowed General Jaruzelski to remain
   head of state. Thus Jaruzelski, whose name was the only one the
   Communist Party had allowed on the ballot for the presidential
   election, won by just one vote in the National Assembly, essentially
   through abstention by a sufficient number of Solidarity MPs. General
   Jaruzelski became the president of the country, but Solidarity member
   Tadeusz Mazowiecki became the Prime Minister. The new non-Communist
   government, the first of its kind in Communist Europe, was sworn into
   office in September 1989. It immediately adopted radical economic
   policies, proposed by Leszek Balcerowicz, which transformed Poland into
   a functioning market economy over the course of the next year.

   The striking electoral victory of the Solidarity candidates in these
   limited elections, and the subsequent formation of the first
   non-Communist government in the region in decades, encouraged many
   similar peaceful transitions from Communist Party rule in Central and
   Eastern Europe in the second half of 1989.

   In 1990, Jaruzelski resigned as Poland's president and was succeeded by
   Wałęsa, who won the 1990 presidential elections. Wałęsa's inauguration
   as president in December, 1990 is thought by many to be the formal end
   of the Communist People's Republic of Poland and the beginning of the
   modern Republic of Poland. The Polish United Workers' Party dissolved
   in 1990, and the Warsaw Pact was dissolved in the summer of 1991. On
   October 27, 1991 the first entirely free Polish parliamentary elections
   since 1928 took place. This completed Poland's transition from
   Communist Party rule to a Western-style liberal democratic political
   system.

Changes in Polish society

   A Polish Communist propaganda poster. "Youth—forward to fight for the
   happy socialistic Polish village."
   Enlarge
   A Polish Communist propaganda poster. "Youth—forward to fight for the
   happy socialistic Polish village."

   The Communist years in Poland saw many dramatic changes, both political
   and social. There were a number of shifts in the social class
   composition, the role of women in society, and access to health and
   educational services. With expanded urban industrial opportunities in
   the early postwar years, agriculture steadily became less popular as an
   occupation and as a lifestyle. The service sector, like industry, grew
   rapidly in size in the postwar era, but much less than the service
   sectors of Western Europe. The result was a postwar exodus from the
   rural areas and increased urbanization, which split apart the
   traditional multigenerational families upon which rural society had
   been based.

   In the same period, the central planning system yielded impressive
   gains in the education level and living standards for much of the new
   urban industrial workforce. In the early postwar years, only a minority
   of new recruits from agricultural career were literate, but by the late
   1970s only 5% of workers lacked a complete elementary education.

   Postwar Poland, like the rest of socialist Eastern Europe, saw growing
   opportunities for higher education and employment and increased rights
   for women. In many respects, Poland offered women more opportunities in
   professional occupations than did many countries in Western Europe.
   Many professions, such as architecture, engineering and university
   teaching, employed a considerably higher percentage of women in Poland
   than in the rest of the West, and a majority of Polish medical students
   in 1980 were women. Communist propaganda, and sometimes reality itself,
   has created the stereotype of the "Communist woman worker", similar to
   the "woman miner" in Silesia.

   In the first two decades of Communist rule, the health of Poland's
   people improved overall, as antibiotics became available and the
   standard of living rose in most areas. The extension of medical
   services also contributed to this trend; codifying this trend, the
   constitution of 1952 guaranteed universal free health care. However, by
   the 1970s and 1980s, critical national health indicators showed many
   negative trends, as economic conditions deteriorated, which, combined
   with small wages in the medical system, led to rampant corruption.

   Founded in the late 1950s, the first workers' councils to voice
   opinions on industrial policy, based on the "Polish October" of 1956,
   marked a fundamental change in the social status of Polish workers. The
   increasingly literate leadership of these councils, dominated by the
   rising numbers of workers that had a secondary education at that time,
   led to the formidable labor and professional organizations that would
   gradually come to threaten the socialist order.

   Despite the gains in the living standards for much of the growing urban
   workforce after the World War II, with the increasing influence of
   outside ideas from the West brought by television, radio (such as Radio
   Free Europe) and magazines, often smuggled by Poles returning to the
   country, social dissatisfaction with the regime increased, as people
   became aware of viable alternatives to their lifestyle. By the 1980s,
   the modernization of Polish society would lead to a complete
   restructuring of Poland's political structure.
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