WHAT REBEL POLES BELIEVE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78-03061A000400020014-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 4, 1998
• Sequence Number: 14
• Publication Date: January 17, 1969
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 1999/08/24 :CIA-RDP78-03061A000400020014-2
What rebel Poles believe
~~5~t~IAL CORRESPONDENT
fill two young Warsaw
University lecturers, Jacek
~:uron and Karol 1lodzelewski,
ho were sentenced by a War?
aw court an Wednesday to
hree and a half Years'
mprisonment on charges of
nti -'state offences, are the
uthors of a remarkable docu-
ent, now being circulated in
ritain, which calls for a new
ocialist revolution to over-
hrow the "bureaucratic"
talinist system of their
ountry.
Their manifesto has been
ranslated by the far-left Inter-
ational Socialists in Britain
ho have arranged its distribu-
ion throughout Western
Europe and in Japan and
orth America. It is already
irculating in a number of
omrnunist countries including
zechoslovakia.
The writers, who were
escribed as "the spiritual
cadets " of last year's univer-
ity unrest, belong ~to a Lc:ft-
ing group which calls for
ompletc working-class
emocracy, the establishment
f workers' councils, and an
nd to " burcacratic class
u~le" by Poland's Communists.
hay ~tnakc little attempt to
isguise their sympathy with
he ideas of far-Left groups in
he West ~vho have been active
'n the universities and in pro-
est movements against the
ietnam war,
anifesto
The gist of their political
asc, which is now elaborated
'n their manifesto, caused a
ensation w}ten it was first
eleascd in Poland more than
wo years ago. They condemn
he Polish Communist bureau-
racy as a now class which
olds nothing in common with
anism, They document the
rowingg privileges of the
eaders'hip of the party and of
he managers of State factories
nd financial institutions.
They describe events since
October 1956, when the
Gomulka wing 'of the party
triumphed over the old-line
Stalinists. Kuron and
Biodzclewski claim that grow-
ing conflict has developed, not
only between the Polish' State
capitalist bureaucracy and the
workers, but also between the
bureaucracy and the rowing
professional and managerial
middle class. This latter group
they describe as the
"technocracy."
The authors describe how
the Gomulka leadership even-
tually fought against the
workers' demands for more
democratisation and for the
establishment o'f factory
'workers' councils. The workers'
opposition was crushed after
street batfles~ in Lodz- and
Warsaw between Government
forces and striking workers.
In addition they describe
the reimposition of press cen?
sorship and aclamp-down on
internal Communist Party dis-
cussion which had developed
temporarily after 195G. Kuron
and Modzelzwski comment
" In this way, all the achieve-
ments of October tivhich
exceeded the framework of an
internal reform of the system
were liquidated and the Octo-
ber Left was finally crushed."
The authors of the open
]eUter also give a mass of
factual material illustrating the
gulf between the livin~g tan-
dards of the working cla~',~and
of the bureaucracy. They also
cite the continuing shortage of
consumer goods and housing
for most workers.
They claim that the competi-
tive relationship between
Palish industry and the world
market is used by the bureau-
cracy to Justify sacrificing
hi.;her living standards to the
needs of investment, or capital
accumulation.
Of the need for a Socialist
"antibureaucratic " revolution
in Poland, Kuron and ~1lodze-
lewski say : " We do not con-
sider the antibureaucratic `
revolution to be 8 purely Polish
affair- The economic and
social contradictions appear in
a mature form in all the indus-
trialised bureaucratic coun-
tries: in Czechoslovakia, Uio
German Democratic Republic..
Hungary, and Russ7a."
The manifesto says that tho
regimes in Eastern F.uropo
have compromised socialism in
the eyes of workers in the