Poland

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2

Church-State Conflict

After the Vatican excommunicated all Communists in 1949, the Polish government confiscated many church properties, ordered the closing of church schools, and established a youth organization to counteract the influence of the church.

In the 1950s the government assumed supervision over the appointment of clergymen, requiring a loyalty oath of each candidate. Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński, archbishop of Warsaw and Gniezno and primate of Poland, resisted the measure and was suspended from office.

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Gomułka’s Return

During the postwar period, Poland became an active member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact, both Soviet-dominated organs. In 1952 Poland adopted a constitution modeled after that of the USSR but explicitly recognizing certain property rights.

During the liberalization that followed the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, Polish artists, intellectuals, students, and workers raised demands for government reforms and a greater measure of freedom from Soviet control. In June 1956 workers staged demonstrations in Poznań; the quelling of the uprising left 53 people dead and several hundred wounded. Leaders of the demonstrations received relatively light sentences. In October Gomułka, who had been readmitted to the party, was named first secretary with great popular support. Rokossovsky and other Stalinist officials in high Polish posts were dismissed, and Cardinal Wyszyński was freed from detention.

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Gomułka became the dominant figure in Poland, steering a careful course between pro-Soviet and nationalist sentiments and introducing limited political reforms. In the 1957 elections, slates included some non-Communists and independents; moreover, there were nearly twice as many candidates as posts to be filled. By the early 1960s, however, Gomułka had tightened the party’s hold on Poland and halted most of the reforms.

Popular discontent erupted once again in Poland in the spring of 1968, as demands by students and artists for greater freedom of expression were met by severe government repression. Student demonstrations began in Warsaw in March, at the university and at the polytechnic, and soon spread to the universities in Poznań, Lublin, and Kraków. The students demanded liberal reforms similar to those instituted in Czechoslovakia at the time. Seeking to stifle dissent, the government launched a campaign against Jews. Hundreds of Jews and reformers were dismissed from government, party, university, and newspaper positions, and many left Poland for the West or Israel. During the conferences in Warsaw in June and Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, in August 1968, the Warsaw Pact powers condemned the political and cultural reforms taking place in Czechoslovakia. On August 20 Poland participated in the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, sending a contingent estimated at 45,000 troops.

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Reconciliation with West Germany

Early in 1970 economic problems prompted the government to make a major adjustment in its foreign policy. Hopeful of obtaining economic and technological aid from prosperous West Germany (now part of the Federal Republic of Germany), the Poles opened political talks with West Germany in January, and the Polish and German foreign ministers reached agreement in November. In December Chancellor Willy Brandt of West Germany went to Warsaw to sign the resulting treaty, in which West Germany formally accepted the postwar loss of 103,600 sq km (40,000 sq mi) to Poland and the establishment of the Oder-Neisse line as Poland’s western frontier. In return, West Germany received informal Polish assurances that Polish residents who claimed German nationality (believed to number several tens of thousands) would be permitted to emigrate from Poland. Both sides agreed to settle disputes exclusively by peaceful means and to move toward full normalization of relations. Full relations were restored after the West German parliament ratified the treaty in May 1972.

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The Gierek Regime

An economic crisis assumed major proportions late in 1970. Polish industry had fallen short of planning goals. Bad weather again contributed to a poor harvest and resulted in the costly import of grain. In addition, the prices of coal, food, and clothing were drastically increased. Outraged at the increases, Polish workers, mainly from the Baltic seaports of Gdańsk, Gdynia, and Szczecin, staged demonstrations that led to riots, arson, and looting. A week-long state of emergency was declared, and the protests were forcibly suppressed with considerable loss of life.

In the aftermath of the rioting, party secretary Gomułka and other party leaders were removed from the Politburo (the executive committee of the Communist Party). Edward Gierek, a prominent Politburo member from Silesia, became party secretary. Prices were frozen at their previous levels, and in the early 1970s Poland enjoyed a period of political liberalization and economic prosperity based on foreign loans.

Improving relations with the West were symbolized by visits to Poland by U.S. presidents Richard M. Nixon in 1972, Gerald R. Ford in 1975, and Jimmy Carter in 1977. Also in the 1970s Poland began the repatriation of some 125,000 ethnic Germans to West Germany.

After a proposed price increase was prevented by strikes and demonstrations in 1976, political life stagnated and worker opposition developed. Karol Cardinal Wojtyła of Kraków was elected pope as John Paul II in 1978. Living standards deteriorated, and hundreds of thousands of Polish workers responded to a large food price hike by going on strike in the summer of 1980. In August the country was paralyzed when workers in Gdańsk and other Baltic ports conducted sit-in strikes in their shipyards for three weeks and started making political demands. At the end of the month the Communist authorities were forced into making unprecedented concessions to the workers. These included the right to strike, wage increases, the release of political prisoners, and the elimination of censorship. The recognition of the right to organize independent trade unions led to the formation of the Solidarity federation in mid-September. The ill and discredited Communist Party leader Gierek stepped down in favor of Stanisław Kania shortly afterward.

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Solidarity Triumphant

The standoff between Solidarity and the Communist Party took place during a period of increased economic decline, and social discontent caused a growing number of dangerous confrontations. Partly because of Soviet pressure, the government was unable or unwilling to carry out the necessary reforms. In February 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski was made premier, and in October he became the head of the Communist Party. To control the situation Jaruzelski used the demands of the Solidarity movement for economic improvements and greater political freedom as a pretext for imposing martial law. In mid-December the Solidarity organization was suspended, and its leader, Lech Wałęsa, was interned. Thousands of other Solidarity activists were either arrested or interned, and nine activists were killed.

All industrial and political opposition was banned and suppressed, and Communist Party reformers were also disciplined. Polish authorities retained many of the expanded emergency powers even after the lifting of martial law in 1983. Solidarity lost its mass base but survived as an underground opposition force with sufficient popular support to force gradual concessions from the regime. It was backed by the increasingly powerful Roman Catholic Church, which had been strengthened by papal visits in 1983 and 1987. The Jaruzelski government gradually loosened its grip on power and attempted to introduce economic reforms. These failed to gain sufficient social support, however, and were never completed.

The political and economic stalemate in Poland during the 1980s was broken by the appointment of Mikhail Gorbachev as Soviet leader in 1985 and the resulting liberalization of Soviet policy. Reform became possible in Poland. Spurred on by industrial unrest in 1988, Jaruzelski’s reformist Communists and Wałęsa’s Civic Committee negotiated an agreement in early 1989. Political and civic freedoms were conceded, Solidarity was relegalized, and a freely elected Senat (upper legislative house) was established. Jaruzelski was elected to the presidency with Solidarity’s approval.

In the 1989 legislative elections, Solidarity won 99 of the 100 Senat seats as well as the 35 percent of the Sejm (lower house) seats that it was allowed to contest. Although the political balance in the Sejm was now held by the Communists’ minor party allies (the peasant and democratic parties), these parties refused to endorse the Communist police chief, General Czesław Kiszczak, as prime minister. In August, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a close aide to Wałęsa, formed a coalition government in which Communists controlled the defense and interior ministries. Mazowiecki, Poland’s first non-Communist premier in more than 40 years, dismantled the Communist system and consolidated the transition to democracy. His influential finance minister, Leszek Balcerowicz, curbed the swelling hyperinflation and initiated Poland’s rapid transition to a free-market economy.