NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE SURVEY 14; POLAND; GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

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• Collection: NIS
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070029-7
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Page
C. Political dynamics 19
1. Communist party
19
a. Background
20
b. The politics of succession
22
(1) Genesis and aftermath
22
(2) The dynamics of consolidation
24
c. The new leadership
25
d. Organization and membership
29
2. Other parties and pressure groups
32
3. The electoral process
35
D. National policies
37
1. Introduction
37
2. Domestic policies
39
3. Foreign policies
43
a. U.S.S.R. and the Communist world
45
b. German policy
50
Page
c. The non Communist world 52
d. International organizations 55
E. Threats to government stability 56
1. Discontent and dissidence 53
2. Subversion 58
F. Maintenance of internal security 60
1. Police 60
2. Countersubversive and counterinsurgency
measures and capabilities 61
G. Selected bibliography 63
Chronology 64
Glossary 69
FIGURES
Page
Fig. 8
Composition of Seim (chart)
Page
Fig. 1
Party and government structure
37
Fig. 10
(chart)
4
Fig. 2
Residence of head of state photo)
9
Fig. 3
Party and government personnel
43
Fig. 12
interrelationship (chart)
12
Fig. 4
Party Central Committee in session
46
Fig. 13
(photo)
24
Fig. 5
Key members of the leadership
(photos)
26
Fig. 6
Party Central Committee building
55
(photo)
30
Fig. 7
Party membership and social
composition chart)
31
Page
Fig. 8
Composition of Seim (chart)
35
Fig. 9
Gierek goes to the polls photo)
37
Fig. 10
Gierek and the workers photo)
42
Fig. 11
Members of committee to rebuild
royal castle (photo)
43
Fig. 12
Prewar and 1972 boundaries of
Poland (map)
46
Fig. 13
Polish leaders in Moscow photo)
47
Fig. 14
Signing of Polish -West German treaty
(photo)
52
Fig. 15
President Nixon in Warsaw photo)
55
ii
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Government and Politics
A. Introduction (C)
Poland, whose people have c nsistently regarded
their nation as an outpost of Western civilization in
Western Europe, has been under the rule of a Soviet
supported Communist regime since World War 11.
Although the population traditionally has been Fnti-
Russian, anti- Communist, and deeply committed to a
unique blend of nationalism and Roman Catholicism,
the rulers of the nation are materially and
ideologically bound to the Soviet brand of
communism and profess to be convinced atheists. The
political life of the country and its governmental
apparatus, therefore, are based not on the popular will
but on the needs of the Communist regime in
maintaining power and in attempting to remold Polish
society along Communist lines.
After the rebirth of the Polish state in November
1918, internal politics were characterized by a
succession of weak parliamentary coalitions which by
1926 Finally gave way to a semidictatorial
government, first under Marshal Pilsudski and later
under a collection of military leaders called the
"colonels' regimes. Following World War II the
geographical position of Poland made its political
orientation a matter of vital concern for Soviet strategy
in Eastern Europe. Historical anti German feeling,
reinforced by the trauma of the Nazi wartime
occupation, was a major asset to the U.S.S.R. in its
promotion of Polish Soviet Communist collaboration.
At the Potsdam Conference in 1945 the Soviet Union
sponsored provisional territorial changes which shifted
prewar Polish boundaries to the west. Until the
conclusion of the Polish -West German treaty in 1970,
the Soviet Union's good will was the only major
guarantee of the territorial integrity of the postwar
Polish state.
The postwar political development of Poland has
gone through several distinct periods generally
paralleling the changing character of Soviet- Eastern
European relations in general. Thcse are: the
suppression of democratic forces and the consolidation
of Communist power immediately after the war; the
Stalinist period of political terror and total
subordina` ion of the Soviet Union; the uspsurge of
liberal impulses and popular hopes following the
upheaval of 1956; the ensuing popular disillusion-
ment, economic stagnation, and social and political
strain that ended in the workers' revolt of December
1970; and, since then, a period characterized by a new
generation of leaders who, though no less Communist
than their predecessors, appear committed to a more
open style of rule and are pragmatic rather than
doctrinal in their approach to the country's problems.
The transition from one to another of these periods
has been usually marked by different degrees of
violence. On entering Poland in 1944, the Soviet Red
Army participated in the forced dissolution of political
and military centers controlled by the non Communist
underground and by the London -based Polish
Government -in -exile and aAed in setting up a Soviet
sponsored body, the Committee of National
Liberation. Founded in Moscow and proclaimed in
Lublin on Polish territory, the Communist controlled
committee was recognized by the U.S.S.R. o� 5
January 1945 as the Provisional Government of
Poland. After the Yalta Agreement and the inclusion
in the government of four non Communist Poles from
abroad� including the strong Peasant Party leader
Stanislaw Mikolajczyk �this body was recognized on
5 July 1945 by the major Western powers as the
Government of Poland.
With most of the important governmental positions
under Communist control and with the Red Army and
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Soviet secret police actively helping to suppress anti
Communist opposition, the government ignored its
commitment to hold free elections promptly. Finally,
in January 1947, rigged elections were held and
Communist domination insured, after his unoven
had been liquidated by police terror, Mikolajczyk
escaped abroad in October 1947. Although armed
underground resistance to Communist domination
persisted for some years thereafter. Mikolajczyk's
flight marked the end of organized, legal, political
opposition to the Communist regime.
During the following 9 years the U.S.S.R.
succeeded, to a greater degree than any other foreign
power that has ever occupied Poland, in establishing
political control, exploiting the country economically,
and in suppressing resistance. The only leading Polish
Communist to oppose the Stalinist principle that
Soviet Communist doctrine and experience were
generally applicable to all Eastern European
Communist states specifically Poland �was Wlady-
slaw Gomulka, the Secretary General and former head
of the underground Polish Workers Party, the
Communist party. This opposition led to his removal
as Secretary General in 1948 and to his imprisonment
from 1951 to 1954.
The death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in March
1953 and the subsequent changes in the Soviet
leadership and its modus operandi caused major
cracks to appear in the Polish regime's control
apparatus, made popular dissatisfuc,. on more overt
and acute, and weakened the stability of the party and
government machinery. By 1956, some of the Polish
Communist leaders themselves became aware that a
substantial m.- ,defcation of their system was
imperative. Gornulka arip cored to be the only Polish
Communist leader able to undertake this task without
encouraging popular revolt or bringing on Soviet
intervention �and the only one willing to try. A series
of turbulent events in mid -1956 reached a climax in
October, when Gomulka was elected as party First
Secretary.
In external relations, a series of skillful political
moves !yelped the Gomulka regime in overcoming
initial Soviet hostility, and gradually it obtained
Soviet acceptance of Gomulka's formula of internal
diversity keyed to national distinctions and external
Communist unity under Soviet leadership. At home,
the relatively short post -1956 peroid of acute party
instability and weakness coincided with a revamping
of major sectors of the political, economic, and social
apparatus, awl a significant extension of individual
and collective freedoms. By mid -1957, however, the
relatively rapid consolidation of the regLne and its
2
reassertion of party control over all aspects of national
life signaled a gradual but steady retreat from the
liberal gains of 1956.
What followed were years of increasing bureauc-
ratization, policy immobilism, internecine party
strife, and social and economic stagnation. Some
feeble and mismanaged attempts were made to reform
the system after 1968, but the leadership's misreading
of the mood of the people resulted, in December 1970,
in an explosion of accumulated economic grievances
among the working class who saw their welfare further
endangered. The regime's ill- advised use of force led
to almost a week of bloody rioting in several cities
along the Baltic coast, the collapse of the Gomulka
regime, and the installation on 20 December 1970 of a
new party Irsdership, with Edward Gierek, an
experienced, tough, but pragmatic" technocrat," at its
head.
Under Gierek, a new style of rule, sharply
contrasting with the past, has appeared in Poland.
During his still relatively short tenure, Gierek has
successfully controlled the social, economic, and
political forces set loose in December 1970, and has
gained a substantial measure of support from the
people for a program of gradual reform. His concrete
actions indicate that his views on the need for a
continuing dialog between the rulers and the ruled, for
enlisting the talents of the broadest spectrum of the
population, for a freer flow of information, and for
humanizing the party's approach to internal political
and economic matters are genuine. Despite certain
unorthodox aspects of Gie -ek's style, he has continued
to strengthen the political and material support
initially gained from the U.S.S.R. and his other
Eastern European allies.
Gierek is no liberal and he has made it clear that the
political spontaneity accompanied loss of
Communist party control that characterized '.he
Czechoslovak heresy in 1968 will not be tolerated in
Poland. He has stressed that Poland's alliance with the
U.S.S.R., the basic features of the internal system, and
the party's monopoly of power are not to be tampered
with. While he has eschewed force, lie has hammered
home the need for greater national discipline,
particularly a dedication by the workers and all strata
of the population to a new "work ethic." His
moderate program of reform promises no miracles but
only hard work, which he has pledged will be justly
rewarded. As a result, the workers and the people in
general, though still skeptical and occasionally
militant in pressing for more positive improvement in
their lives, have shown themselves willing to give him
the time he needs to fulfill his promises. Most
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importantly, Gierek has succeeded in improving the
political and social climate and in releasing long
repressed popular energies along constructive
channels. Moreover, he has done this in ways that are
conducive rather than inhibiting to his program of
reform and to the prospects for stability.
The key to Gierek's long -term prospects evidently is
his ability to achieve results in the economic area.
Here, Gierek inherited an inert bureaucracy and a
backwardness which made Poland lag even behind
other Eastern European countries in introducing
technological change and improvements in manage-
ment and planning. Much has :already been
accomplished in terms of measurable consumer
welfare, but institutional shifts have been negligible
and there is no evidence that any major changes
toward even a modified market economy are in the
offing. Gierek's main intent seems to be a streamlining
of the economic apparatus and an "energizing" of the
workers and managers with only minimal changes in
the basic centralized structure.
While gradually introducing various innovations.
the new leadership has attempted to maintain a
delicate balance between sometimes contradictory
objectives �e.g., an improved "work ethic" within the
framework of greater national discipline as against a
freer internal atmosphere; the supremacy of the party
as against a reformed and democratized governmental
system; and greater initiative and r sponsibility by
management as against worker participation in the
decisionmaking process.
Even with the energetic measures that Gierek has
taken, he h-is not eliminated all the well- entrenched
domestic proponents of the old way of doing things.
Moreover, he mus': be even more careful of offending
similarly cu�servative elements among his allies,
especially in Moscow. Nevertheless, given the
embarrassing ideological circumstances of his coming
to power� when the proletariat overthrew one
Communist leadership and installed another Gierek
has been remarkably successful in obtaining an
apparently full measure of Soviet support and
confidence. Moreover, within the framework of his
firm commitment to the Polish Soviet alliance, he has
apparently obtained approval for a much more
energetic pursuit of Poland's st If- interest on the
hnternational scene, particularly in seeking a more
influential role in Europe. If Gierek can maintain the
momentu -n of his reform program and engage the full
energy of the people, Poland's prospects in the 1970's
may be brighter than host Poles believed possible at
the beginning of that decade.
B. Structure and functioning of the
government
The Polish governmental apparatus, divided into
legislative, executive, and judicial branches, is an
elaborate bureaucracy of state administration under a
facade of parliamentary rule. It is, however, devoid of
practical power, and is designed to implement policies
set by the Communist party whose parallel apparatus
controls that of the government on all levels. (U /OU)
Broad Communist party control over the entire
hierarchy of government bureaucracy is exercised in
several ways, and its extent always pervasive� varies
somewhat depending upon the issues and personalities
involved. At the national level, the Politburo
formulates policy with the First Secretary of the party
making the final decisions; the party Secretariat,
working with and through appropriate departments of
the Central Committee, controls the execution of the
policy by the corresponding levels of the government
system. The same pattern of party control is repeated
at lower levels of the party and government, with the
result that it is the first secretary of the provincial party
organization rather than the chairman of the local
government body who has the real authority in each
province. Effective party control has tended to be
more uneven at the lowest levels, primarily because
there have not been enough competent party
functionaries to staff all the positions; however, even
there the party rather than the local government
apparatus tends to be the locus of power. Figure 1
shows the structure of the government and the parallel
Communist party organization. (C)
There have been few structural changes in the
institutions of government since party leader Edward
Gierek came to power in December 1970. Gierek's
major accomplishment in attempting to restore
communication between the people and their rtilers
has been a change in the political and social climate,
and a change in the style of rule exercised by the
dominant Communist leadership. Nevertheless,
despite the commitment of continuity of Communist
institutions, the impact of the changes in Gierek's style
has resulted in some important modifications in the
practical as distinct from the theoretical relationship
between the tarty and governmental structure, as well
as in measures, some still tentative, to shift more of the
policy implementing responsibiiities from the
shoulders of the party onto those of the government.
Without prejudicing the party's controlling role, its
policymaking prerogatives, or its ultimate power to
intervene at any stage, Gierek appears genuinely
3
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FCAM 1. Parlr and Wvvr rr&ct ivvcfvie, 1972 {{j

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committed to establishing a streamlined and
somewhat more independent governmental ap-
panitus. (C)
By 1972, Gierek's moves to accord a more
significant role to parliament, local government, the
trade unions, and other representative organizations
gave credibility to his initial pledge to give the people
a wider voice in the system. For example, Gicrek has
made some gestures toward Poland's two non- Marxist
nuppet parties and toward various other groups by
soliciting their advice on matters affecting their
members. Similarly, he has taken steps to reinvigorate
the leadership of the several mass organizations to
make them more representative of their membership.
Most importantly, he has emphasized competence,
education, efficiency, and pragmatism in the staffing
of both party and government bureaucracies at all
levels, and has vnc- ouraged feedback between those
entrusted with the apparatus of rule and the people.
(C)
Although the party's controlling role has, if
anything, been strengthened, this does not contradict
Gierek's effort �still in the formai-c stage �to have
the party concentrate more fully on its policy
deliberating and policymaking role, and to divorce it
in large part from the daily running of the state. In
short, the government's role of administering the
country, enshrined in constitutional theory but so long
usurped by the party, is now to be given some
practical content. Politically, these measures are
designed to pay several dividends. The government,
by being more responsive to the people and more
representative of them, acts as the party's primary
public opinion agent, and provides a forum for a
greater degree of popular exp.ession. By derivation,
and probably by Gierek's deliberate calculation, the
enhanced interaction between the people and the
governmental apparatus may also help to shield the
party itself from inevitable daily friction and,
posssibly, to make it a less easily identified target for
such violent outbrusts of popular frustration as
occurred in December 1970. (C)
Despite general institutional continuity, Cierek's
efforts to give his varied new programs a legal basis has
resulted in a much increased level of legislative and
executive activity on the part of the government, as
well as in various structural changes. In keeping with
its pragmatic and measured pace, however, the regime
is deliberately avoiding inflexible deadlines. For
example, while Gierek's early commitment to a reform
of local government is being fulfilled, the amendment
of many unspecified "obsolete laws" is proceeding
more slowly, albeit as a first step the Council of
Ministers in January 19 77 3 invalidated some 800
outdated government resolutions passer! betv:cen 1947
and 1969. (C)
1. Constitution (C)
The most fimdamentai legal proposal put forward
by the Gicrek regime has been that a new constitution
be written h� replace the el :fisting one, which dates
from July 1952. Initially scheduled for completion
some time in 1973, the project, whilr, evidently not
nl,andoned, has been scarcely publicized, and appears
to have been delayed. Reasons for the delay are not
known, but it is likely these include the regime's
concern over a too hasty redefinition of governmental
institutions and relationships that are still only in the
formative stage. During this phase, Gierek evidently
would prefer to maintain a free hand in pragmatically
establishing a viable, de facto structure and only
thereafter to provide the basic constitutional charter
defining the new situation.
As a result, little has been made known as regards
the provisions of the envisaged new constitution. A
brief general statement on this subject was contained
in the Communist party's guidelines issued before its
national congress in December 1571. This document
averred that the 1952 constitution, "having fulfilled
its role in the period of construction of People's
Poland, and in view of the deve!,,pment of the
socioeconomic and political system in Poland," should
be replaced by a new basic charter. Tiic party
document also outlined other proposed provisions of
the new constitution, including a redefinition of the
rights and duties of citizens stressing the,. "socialist
character," and called for the anchoring of
Communist party primacy in constitutional law. This
and tentative other evidence suggests that the new
constitution, when written, will bring Poland abreast
of some other Eastern European countries that have
rewritten their constitutions to reflect the "hither"
stage of "socialist" development achieved since the
immediate postwar period.
So far, nothing in the present Polish constitution has
constrained the Gicrek regime from implementing its
new legislation; the only legal act necessitating a
constitutional amendment has been that of the reform
of the lowest level of local government, effective on 1
January 1975.
The constitution of the Polish Communist state
adopted in July 1952 brought the government
framework into close, though not complete,
correspondence with its Soviet prototype. In 1947 the
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Communists repudiated the quasi authoritarian
constitution of 19.35 and operated the state
provisionally on the basis of the French !t pe
constitution of 1921, modified by it brief set of
supplementary rules known as the little Constitution
of 194. By 1952, however. the form and content of
Communist ride had been stabilized, and the
constitution of that year did not involve any base
alterations in the existing structure of the Communist
system. its main effect %%as to codify and formalize the
political and social changes following the Communist
acces-,ton to poser and to outline future police goals.
rhe document is only secondarily it charter setting
forth the structure and operations of the government
and the rights and duties of citizens.
The 1952 constitution for the first time formally
designated the state as a "peeple's democracy," an
appellation used by the Communists even before
1952, and its official name was changed from Pol ;sh
Republic to Polish People's Republic (PRL). An
innovation of mole ceremonial than practical
importance was the replacement of the traditional
one -man presidency of the country with a
multimember presidential hoard. the Council of State.
This body is equivalent to the Presidium of the
Supreme Soviet in the U.S.S.R., it is headed by a
chairman, who exercises the ceremonial functions of a
head of state. in this and most other details the 1952
constitution is a copy..vith minor adaptations to the
less advanced state of communization in Poland, of
tlur 1936 Soviet constitution. Unlike the Soviet
constitution, however (and the "socialist" consti-
tutions of Czechoslovakia and Romania), the Polish
document contains coo specific reference to the leading
role of the Communist party in natie-u life. 'rhe
constitution does mention the existence of "political
on,anizations," however; this provision gives implied
c. +tstitutional sanction to the continued existence of
cer�uin non Communist political parties supporting
the Communist program. Despite these characteristics
of tit Polish constitution, the Communist party has
made it clear both in theory and in practice that it
arrogates to itself it "leading role' in the
determination of the country's political, economic,
and social policy.
It is here that the Gierck regime apparently proposes
to make the party's primacy an explicit provision of
the nev constitution, and, by derivation perhaps, to
define the party's role in national life. The intended
enshrinement of the party's "leading role" in
constitutional law does not contradict Gierek's parallel
intent to give the governmenta! apparatus a greater
role in the daily running of the country. While the
6
party "guides." the governrneuit rn.ther than the part
apparatus %%ill be charged "ith implementing the
party's guidance. While their is no question as to
Gierek's view of the supremacy of the� party and its
ultimate power to control, the specific institutional
role of the part and its relationship to the various
levels of government are still being slowly and
gradually redefined. Thc� fact that this process is far
from finished is probable a major reason for the slow
pace of drafting a new constitution.
The 19:52 constitution sets forth "socialism,'
defined in gene..d terms, as the goal toward which the
Polish stato is tending. Socialized farming, however, is
not specified a: the predominant system in agriculture
as it is in the Soviet constitution; rather, individual
farming by "working peasants is declared to he under
state protection. This provision did not prevent the
collectivization drive during the first half of the
1950's, but it did obviate a potential constitutional
inconsistency at the time of the spontaneous
dissolution of collectives in 1956. Unlike the specific or
implied provisions in the constitutions of some other
Communist states, the Polish document contains nc
blueprint for the means by which "socialism" i;
ultimately to be attained. Although it is far from clear
whether the present stage of "socialist development"
in Poland warrants or permits the proposA new
constitution's declaring Poland to be a "socialist state"
(as are Czechoslovakia and Romania), the new
ocument undoubtedly will spell out in greater detail
both the stage which the country ha-- ostensibly
reached and the next developmental goal to which it
will aspire.
The present constitution also inc;udes a bill of rights
of the Soviet type, stressing the social benefits and
clutics vvhich allegedly accrue to the citizen under a
Communist systern. Although the listed constitutional
rights of c;0zens are qualified and may be legally
bypassed or ignored at the Communist regime's
choosing, the bill of rights ;often has been used in the
past as the basis for public or private protests
addressed to the government by some of its vocal
critics, such as the powerful Roman Catholic Church,
the intellectuals, and youth. The party's statement
that the new constitution's provisions concerning the
rights and duties of citizens should "stress their
socialist character" suggests that little change in the
direction of liberalism is to be expected. Yet, if the new
doc more adequately defines both rights and
duties, provides for meaningful guarantees, and leaves
less room for arbitrary inte rpretation this alone would
be welcomed by the people whose articulate
spokesmen in the past have focused raore on the
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vagueness of constitutional language that permits
arbitrary interpretation than on any specifically
repressive provisions.
The 1952 constitution contains a structural
delineation of legislative, executive, and judicial
branches of the government, but there is no system of
checks and balances, either in theory or in practice, to
enforce an actual separation of powers. Nor are there
any other provisions which might prevent the arbitrary
abuse of power by the government's dominant
executive branch, whose key members are simul-
taneously either members of the Communist party
leadership or are their trusted colleagues. Similarly,
although the legislature is allegedly the supreme agent
of state power, it is in practice a tool in the hands of
the few leaders comprising the executive branch. Since
the government is, in theory, a parliamentary,
multiparty democracy, provisions for orderly
governmental succession are implicit in the
legislature's power to appoint the President as well as
the Premier. However, because parliament's role is
dictated and controlled by the Communist party,
where no practical provisions for succession exist, the
issue of governmental succession is meaningless and is
wholly dependent on intra- Communist Party Politics.
Despite the party's admitted control over the use of
the governmental apparatus at all levels as an
instrument to implement both its domestic and foreign
policies, the Polish regime has consistentiv put great
stress on the maintenance of correct legal form and
protocol in the relations between the top echelons of
the party and government 'hierarchies, and has insisted
or, the recognition of the theoretical separation of the
two systems when dealing with non- Communist
countries. The Gierek regime's emphasis on
rejuvenating government's role in the system and
perhaps on making its lower levels less subject to
ubiquitous party supervision suggests that the
theoretical separation of the party and government
may be imbued, if only tentatively and experimen-
tally, with some practical content. In addition,
Gierek's stress on safeguards against arbitrary abuses of
power by both party and government bureaucracies at
all levels may result in a more precise if not liberal
constitutional redefinition of the relationships of
governmental agencies on various levels between
themselves as well as with parallel party bodies.
2. Governmental structure and practice (C)
a. Legislature
The unicameral Polish legislature, known as the
Sejm (assembly, i.e., parliament) is elected by
universal suffrage for a 4 -year term, and by law must
be convened for plenary sessions at least twice a year
by the Council of State. Much of the work of the Sejm,
however. is done by its 19 specialized committees and
commissions, which may review legislation proposed
by the executive branch of the government, in sittings
outside of the regular plenary sessions. Although
parliament theoretically initiates legislation, in
practice draft bills are submitted to it by designated
deputies acting on behalf of titre executive, which in
turn acts on behalf of the Communist party. In
addition to a Rules and Mandate Commission, there
were in 1972 the following 18 specialized bodies
working within the Sejm:
Commission for:
Agriculture and Food Industry
Communications
Construction and Communal Economy
Culture and Art
Domestic Trade
Economic Plan, Budget, and Finance
Education and Science
Foreign Affairs
Foreign Trade
Forestry and Wood Industry
Health and Physical Culture
Heavy Industry, Chemical Industry, and Mining
Internal Affairs
Justice
Labor and Social Matters
Light Industry, Handicrafts, and Labor Cooperatives
Merchant Marine and Railroads
National Defense
Until 1960 the Sejm was elected on the basis of one
&putt' for every 60,000 inhabitants. A constitutional
amendment of December 1960 established a constant
number of 460 deputies. Because of the country's
growth in population, each deputy represents a
growing number of constituents. In 1972 this ratio
stood at one deputy for every 71,500 inhabitants.
Under Communist rule, the Sejm has never been a
genuine legislative and policymaking bodv; all these
functions heave been, in fact, performed by the inner
councils of the Communist leadership and presented
as finished acts for pro {orma approval by the
parliament. Within these circumscribed limits
parliament's deliberative role and its influence on the
character of legislation submitted to it has fluctuated
in direct relation to the political climate within the
Communist party, and to the willingness of the party
to air its policies before the population. In 1972,
following the first national elections under the Gierek
regime (held on 19 March 1972, a year in advance of
constitutional requirements), the Sejm once again
appeared to be assuming a more prominent role in the
Id
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discussion of proposed legislation, and its deputies
w ^re being increasingly charged by the iegime with
maintaining close contact with the opinions of their
constituents.
None of these changes in emphasis result from shifts
in the political spectrum of the legislature; in fact, the
apportionment of seats in the Sejm between the Polish
United Workers Party (PZPR, i.e., Communist party),
the two puppet parties, and the nonparty delegates is
predetermined by the regime in advance of the single
slate elections. indeed, the results of the last three
elections �in May 1965, June 1969, and March
1972 �have been identical in this respect. Of the 460
deputies elected in all three of these elections, 255
belonged to the PZPR, which controls the Sejm not
only through its numerical preponderance but through
a tightly organized caucus (called a "club of its
deputies. Similar "clubs" or executive-style organs
insure the responsiveness to Communist policies by
deputies of the puppet parties �the United Peasant
Party (ZSL) with 117 deputies, and the Democratic
Party (SD) with 39 deputies.
Of the 49 deputies without party affiliation who
were elected in the 1972 elections, 13 were lay
Catholics, but only five of the 13 were adherents to the
Catholic parliamentary group Znak (Sign), a grouping
with ties to the Roman Catholic episcopate, and one
which� unlike the remainder of the lay Catholic
deputies traditionally could not be depended upon
by the Communists for automatic support of their
policies. After an initial upsurge in Znak influence
within the more liberal atmosphere that followed the
coming to power of the Gormilka regime in 1956,
growing harassment by the increasingly conservative
Gomulka apparatus made the importance of Znak
more symbolic than real. Nevertheless. it remained the
closest approximation to an organized opposition in
any Communist parliamentary body. By 1972, the
departure from the political scene of some of Znak's
formerly prominent members, as well as the Gierek
regime's good relations with the church had further
diminish Znak's role of gadfly in the Sejm.
Despite the unchanged political spectrum of the
Sejm after the 1972 elections, these elections resulted
in an unprecedentedly large turnover of deputies and
a similarly increased proportior of younger and
working -class deputies. This characteristic of the new
par::ant-Mt parallels the rejuvenation of the top party
and government leadership under Gierek's tenure.
Indeed, in 1972 the average age of Poland's
parliamentary deputies, like its top leaders, was the
lowest in Eastern Europe.
The dramatic overhaul of the new Seim is reflected
in the fact that 291 of the 460 deputies elected in 1972
were freshmen, a turnover of approximately 63
Notably, in six of the total of 80 constituencies no
incumbent delegates even sought reelection, and only
one incumbent stood for reelection in each of IF ether
constituencies Not surprisingly, those constituencies
where the slate was completely or virtually new were
predominantly those of the Baltic coastal cities that
were the focal points of the December 1970 workers'
revolt. About two thirds of the total Sejm deputies are
under the age of 50, although only slightly over 2% are
under the age of 30; the average age is between 40 and
50. The most numerous occupation group is made up
of the 121 deputies who are party, central, or local
government officials, and leading rnembcrs of various
social and mass organizations. The remaining deputies
include 98 workers (an unusually large contingent), 66
peasants, and 175 journalists, teachers, doctors, and
representatives of other white collar occupations.
The Sejm elected in 1957 conducted genuine
debates and initiated legislation in practice as well as
in theory, and for a time was the only legislature
operating in the Communist world with a limited
voice in policymaking. By 1961, however, its
legislative powers were brought fully under the control
of the PZPR, its plenary sessions made less numerous
and shorter, and its capacity for debate curtailed
except when this served Communist purpose. Despite
regime strictures on its activity, however, the Sejm
never fully reverted to the rubberstamp pattern of the
pre -1956 period. Government draft bills, particularly
budgetary items and sensitive measures involving
potentially adverse public reaction, frequently got
thorough review in the Sejm commissions and were
subject to criticism and change in detail. In addition,
interpellations, occasional dissenting votes, and
carefully phrased criticism from the floor continued to
be tolerated, though not encouraged, by the
Communist leaders. This floor activity, however, was
generally unpublicized.
Under the more permissive and dynamic political
climate imparted by the Gierek regime. the newly
rejuvenated parliament shows renewed signs of
exercising its prerogatives and thus becoming a more
genuine deliberative body. Although it is unlikely that
the Sejm will play any more of a policymaking role
vis -a -vis the controlling Communist party leadership
than hitherto�nor can it hope to initiate major
legislation without the party's guidance and
approval parliament's more representative composi-
tion will enable it to keep in closer touch with the
tenor of public opinion. Moreover, the Gierek regime's
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desire to increase the prestige of the Seim within the
governmental apparatus �to be more in keeping with
its constitutional supremacy �is reflected in a new set
of parliamentary bv!aws and rules of procedure
adopted on 28 Ma: 1972 by the newly elected Sejm.
This legislation stresses the standing rights of deputies
to sit in on the deliberations of local government
organs in their constituencies, to present interpel-
lations on the floor of the Sejm, to direct questions to
specific cabinet ministries and heads of agencies; it
also newly charges these officials with responding in
detail and within specific time limits. Above all,
interpellations and answers, like the sessions of Sejm
committees and plenary session of the Sejm as a
whole, are to be published in full.
The Sejm is a member of the international
Interparliamentary Union, whose periodic sessions are
attended by Sejm representatives and which it
sometimes hosts. Because this activity results in often
close contact with Western and other non- Communist
parliaments, it is generally conducted under tight
Communist party control.
b. Executive
The Chairman and members of the Council of State
are chosen by each newly elected Sejm at its first
sitting. Although functioning primarily as a collective
presidency, the Council of State serves as a legislative
body as well, acting for the Sejm in the interim
between plenary sessions. It legisla`2s in response to
party directives and approves measures on a
"temporary' basis so that the government may
proceed without waiting for formal action by the
Sejm. The function of the head of state is exercised by
the Chairman of the Council of State, a post held since
March 1972 by Henryk Jablonski, who succeeded
Jozef Cyrankiewicz, a discredited holdover from the
Gomulka regime. Although a PZPR Politburo
member, Jablonski is politically uninfluential; he is a
respected scholar, a former Minister of Ed cation, and
a member the Polish Academy of Sciences. The
official residence of the Chairman of the Council of
State is shown in Figure 2.
In addition to Jablonski, the Council of State in
1972 consisted of four deputy chairmen, one secretary,
and 11 members. This membership as a whole is
representational in nature and deliberately multiparty
in composition. Unlike the strong presidential
executive system of the United States and some other
Western countries, the functions of the Chairman of
the Council of State in Poland are more ceremonial
than indicative of political power. Nevertheless, he is
the only member of the council with theoretical as
FIGURE 2. Residence of the Chairman of the Council of
State, Belweder Palace, Warsaw (C)
well as some practical prerogatives. Over the years,
membership in the council has come to be generally
considered as a form of political semiretirement.
Although some members still fit into this category,
three members of the 1972 Council of State, in
addition to Jablonski, are party Politburo members
and two of these are also party secretaries. This
suggests that under Gierek the council is to be imbued
with a greater measure of prestige if not power, as well
as indicating a desire for closer party supervision of its
activities. Indeed, one of the Politburo members on
the council, Franciszek Szlachcic, is probably Gierek's
closest confidant within the new leadership.
Nevertheless, the powers of the Council of State
remain largely formal, since it performs both its
executive and legislative functions on the advice of the
Council of Ministers. The constitution gives the
Council of State supervisory powers over regional and
local government, but these powers are severely
circumscribed by the Council of Ministers, to whom
the executive units of local government are
responsible. The reform of the lowest levels of local
government effective l January 1973 indicates some
dilution in this supervisory function of the Council of
Ministers, a factor that may become, even more
important in coming years if, as the regime has
indicated, the current reform is to be followed by a
similar overhaul of higher echelons of local
government. As of early 1973, however, it was unclear
whether these reforms would enhance the nominal
supervisory powers of the Council of State as against
those of the Council of Ministers.
In December 1957 the Sejm revived the Supreme
Chamber of Control, it prewar governmental control
body which had been abolished by the 1952
constitution. The nominally five member chamber is
in theory directly responsible to the Sejm which elects
M
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its chairman. Other memhers are designated by the
Coum.:il of State on nomination of the chairman. The
law which set up the chamber dissolved the Minist,
of State Control, an agency of centralized
administrative power during the pre -1956 era. Most
Poles, therefore, favored the chamber as a means of
Seim e!rntrol over the economic, financial, and
administrative activities of the government. In
practice, however, tho chamber has been purely a
formal institution and ha_+ been gradually shorn of
political power and put ender strict party control.
Over the years its main practical function has been
that of a repository for party and state leaders who had
become political liabilities.
The Council of Ministers is the principal executive
and administrative organ of the government,
comparable to a cabinet in Western parliamentary
systems. Unlike such a cabinet, however, and like the
Polish Government as a whole, it has no policymaking
powers; national policy is determined by the PZPR
Politburo, some members of which hold important
positions on the Council of Ministers. The council is
headed by a chairman, elected by the Sejm, who in
turn nominates the members of the coun(.,l, or his
cabinet, for Sejm approval. Since the December 1970
change of regime, the post of Chairman of the Council
of Ministers, or Premier, has been held by veteran
PZPR Politburo member and economic expert, Piotr
Jaroszewicz.
In 1973, the 35- member Council of Ministers
consisted, in addition to Jaroszewicz, of six deputy
chairmen, or deputy premiers, and 26 ministers. The
ministers were:
Agriculture
Chemical Industry
Construction and Construction Materials Industry
Communications
Culture and Art
Domestic Trade and Services
Education and Training
Engineering Industry
Finance
Food Industry and Purchases
Foreign Affairs
Foreign Trade
I�'orestry and Timber Industry
Health and Social Welfare
Heavy Industry
Internal Affairs
Justice
Labor, Wages, and Social Affairs
Light Industry
Local Economy and Environment
Mining and Power
National Defense
Science, Higher Education, and Technology
Shipping
Transportation
Veterans Affairs
10
In addition. there were tw ministeri"I level
portfolios �that of Chairman of the State Planning
Commission, and that of Under Secretary of State for
Information. t The latter is a post created by the Gierek
regime in specific response to the near cabalistic
secreev which characterized the activities of the
Gomulka regime and which came under direct fire by
the workers in December 1970. The incumbent of the
new information post, a close associate of Gierek,
serves as an intermediary between the party
government executive and the country's public
information media.
In addition to the ministerial core of the Council of
Ministers, there are attached to it 18 permanent and
numerous ad hoc specialized, nonministerial
committees, councils, and central agencies which deal
with detailed planning, recommendations, and
subsequent implementation of directives in various
sectors of governmental activity. Many of these
specialized bodies have been merged or overhauled
and others have been newly created since December
1970 in line with Gierek's commitment to a more
streamlined and efficient apparatr%s. One newly
created body is the so- called Legislative Council,
established in July 1972, which reports directly to the
Premier. The council has no legislative powers, but is
charged with continual review and analysis of the
viability and shortcomings of existing legislation, and
with submitting recommendations for improvement.
It may, under some circumstances, "initiate research
into the creation of laws," an advisory power which
gives a more formal underpinning to the executive's
long -held practical control over the legislative process.
Most significantly, however, the Legislative Council
reflects a genuine effort by the Gierek regime to verify
the effectiveness of legislation. This is a pragmatic step
that is a sharp departure from the practice of the
Gomulka regime when voluminous, unworkable, and
often contradictory legislation seemingly became an
end in itself.
The organizational structure as well as the focus of
activity of the Council of Ministers at any given time
have generally been determined by the primary area
of policy concern of the regime as a whole. Since the
late 1960's �and especially since the Gierek regime
came to power at the end of 1970 �this concern has
rested in the economic sphere; it is this issue that
resulted in several structural changes in the Council of
Ministers which, under Gierek, are being gradually
'For a current listing of key government officials, consult Chiefs
of State and Cabinet Members of Foreign Governments, published
monthly by the Directorate of Intelligence, Central Intelligence
Agency.
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refined. The najor change was the creation, in 1969,
of an inner executive of the council, known as the
Presidium of the Government. The Presidium is
headed by the Premier and comprises all the deputy
premiers, the Chairman of the State Planning
Commission, and, in 1973, the Minister of Science,
Higher Education, and Technology.
Until late 1964, there had existed the Economic
Council of the Council of Ministers, a Nigh -level
research body created during the more heady liberal
atmosphere of 1957 to study and make recommenda-
tions on Poland's economic system. The disappearance
of the Economic Council without fanfare in 1964
appeared to confirm reports that its liberal and far
reaching recommendations clashed with the orthodox
economic views of Gomulka. Such residual practical
functions as this organ still had by 1964 were
transferred to the then existing Economic Committee
of the Council of Ministers (KERM), headed by the
Premier, as well as to the State Planning Commission.
When the KERM was abolished in 1969, the newly
created Presidium assumed its functions.
The concept of a government Presidium in Poland is
not new. Prior to 19-56 the Council of Ministers never
met as it body, and all executive power was
concentrated in its core of ranking Communist leaders
also known as the Presidium. With the change of
regime in October 19:6, measures for some
decentralization and "democratization" of state
institutions changed the mode of operations of the
Council of Ministers; the Presidium lost its separate
institutional identity and power, w;iile the council
itself was reduced in size and hcgan to hold regular
sessions. The Presidium created in 1969 is not wholly
analogous to its historical coanterpart. Under
omulka, its functions were largely limited to the
economic sphere; moreover, these functions were
primarily those of coordination previously exercised
jointly by the abolished KERM and the existing State
Planning Commission., while most of the formerly
detailed responsibilities of these two bodies for
economic policy implementation were transferred to
appropriate ministries and, in some instances, to
groups of horizontally organized industrial "associ-
ations." The Presidium's main roie, therefore became
the supervision of regime efforts to streamline working
responsibilities in the economic area without
jeopardizing central control over policymaking.
The Gierek regime has retained this basic structure
and its main purpose generally intact; indeed, the new
regime's innovations have been few in the area of
structural reform of institutions, especially in the area
of the economy. Instead, it is focusing its attention on
new staffing, "cnergizing" the system, and improving
its lines of responsibility and individual initiative on
the working levels. The Presidium of the Government,
however, while retaining its primary economic
orientation, shows signs of functioning additionally as
a genuine intermediary between the cabinet and the
government bureaucracy on the one hand, and the
legislature �and through it, the people �on the other,
i.e., as a representative of the government structure as
a whole.
Despite Gierek's evident intent gradually to
enhance the prestige and responsibilities of the
government machinery within the regime as a whole,
the controlling role of the party is unquestioned.
Though Gierek does not hold any position within the
government (unlike Comulka who was a member of
the Council of State), the practice of interlocking some
high party and government positions (which was never
as blatant in Poland as in some other Eastern
European countries) remains a prominent feature of
the system. In 1972, the Premier, a deputy premier,
the Chairman of the Planning Commission who was
also a deputy premier, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs
and of National Defense, and the Chairman of the
Council of State were full members of the party
Politburo (Figure 3).
Although the feature of interlocking appointments
is retained, the party's control over key areas of foreign
and domestic policies is by no means dependent on
this practice. Gierek's firm hold over the party
government apparatus as a whole guarantees such
control with or without governmental portfolios being
held by key Politburo members. Despite this ultimate
control over all aspects of policymaking anti close
supervision over policy implementation, a major
feature of the Gierek regime's nwdus operandi is its
emphasis on the utilization of expertise, whether it be
found within or outside the party. Indeed, one of the
regime's highly publicized practices has been the
incorporation of nonparty expert; into various
positions in government agencies previously occupied
by party hacks. A newly reinstituted practice of
holding joint Politburo- cabinet meetings has been
supplemented by bringing into such sessions experts
who are members of neither body.
This more freewheeling, pragmatic and goal
oriented approach that tends to disregard orthodox
practice is also reflected in the creation of numerous
new ad hoc and semipermanent advisory bodies
loosely attached either to the Council of Ministers or
the party and composed of party and nonparty experts
as well as laymen directly concerned with the
problems at hand. These include such bodies as a
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12
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FIGURE 3. Party and government personnel interrelationship, 1972 (U /OU)

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party government team to advise on Poland's
socioeconomic development through the year 2000
and beyond; a party -state commission on education
and youth; a mixed study group on the social and
economic role of local government; and numerous
"task forces" of mixed composition analyzing specific
areas such as foreign trade, internal security, economic
planning, scientific technological research, manage-
ment, culture, transportation, and the social security
system. Gierek's pragmatic and measured implemen-
tation of reforms in all these fields dictates a flexible
institutional approach, which continues to be
characterized by the creation of government bodies for
specific purposes, dissolving them when their task is
accomplished or if they prove to be ineffective, and
the retention of only those`eatures of the new
apparatus that have withstood the test of time.
e. Local government
Poland theoretically has independent local self
government, operating through a hierarchy if
popularly elected local government bodies called
peeple's councils, with the Counci! of State at its apex.
In practice, the entire system has been highly
centralized and subject to executive direction by the
Council Ministers and to varying degrees of party
"guidance" at every level.
The people's councils are elected every 4 years in
direct elections that coincide in time wi'!t national
(parliamentary) elections. Each council has an
executive body and several functional commissions
their number 4s well as functions may vary depending
largely on the level of local government concerned and
on the extent and character of the council's
jurisdiction. These commissions execute central
ministerial directives in the areas of public order,
criminal administration, health and social welfare,
education, issuance of identity cards, housing and
commercial policy, fire prevention, and similar areas
of local competence. In addition, they administer all
ecot;onic enterprises of local (in contrast to national)
importance, local retail trade, and the implementation
of agricultural policy.
Although the commissions of the people's councils
are thus theoretically charged with the implementa-
tion of a wide range of lo-al administration, many of
their functions, especially in the areas of economic and
social policy and in the administration of public order,
have keen exercised jointly with, i.e., essentially under
the control of, the local representatives of other central
government agencies such as the trade unions and the
police apparatus. Moreover, despite the theoretical
competence of the commissions, it is the councils'
executive bodies, the presidiums headed by a
chairman and under the ultimate control of the
Council of Ministers, which have been the operative
agencies of local and regiona! administration.
Although Communist party members are in a minority
within the total number of councilors, party members
and other "reliable" personnel tend to make up the
majority on each council's presidium.
There are people's councils at every level of the
administrative divisions and subdivisions of Poland.
The level immediately below that of the central
government is that of the province (wojewodztwo), of
which there are 22 including five cities Warsaw,
Lodz,' Poznan, Krakow, and Wroclaw (Breslau)
which have separate status but are at the same time
capitals of the provinces in which they are located. In
1972, there were below the provincial level 391 district
(powiat, i.e., county) councils, 849 city and borough
(municipal) councils, and 4,313 gromada (village and
settlement) councils, the last category representing the
lowest level of local government.
It is the category of the basic unit of rural
government that is being reorganized and reformed by
the Gierek rego ie. The reform, effective 1 ianuary
1973, seeks by merger to reduce the number of rural
councils, reorganize local lines of authority, and create
larger, more seif- sufficient, and potentially more
independent economic and social microregions. This is
probably the most ambitious organizational measure
yet taken by the new leadership.
The reform is essentially a reversion on the rural
level to the local government structure of the
immediate postwar years, which did not differ greatly
from the traditional structure used in Poland between
the two world wars, when a single -man executive
called a voivode was in charge of a province, a starosta
of a district, and a woji of a parish. At each level there
were elected councils with advisory powers. After
World War II the Communist regime retained the
outer forms of this traditional system but altered the
real character of the agencies involved. Lacking
adequate administrative staffing, the party preferred
to leave administrative posts in the hands of
professiona!s who were often hostile to the political
system and to control their activities by using party
members on the corresponding levels of the people's
councils. This dual approach ultimately led to an
undermining of the prestige of authority in the rural
areas and to party careerists controlling affairs, often
against the interests of the party as a whole.
Tor diacritics on place mimes see the list of names on the apron
of the Summary Map in the Country Profile Chapter and the map
itself.
13
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A law of March 20, 1950 abolished the positions of
voivode, starosta, and rvo;t and transferred their
functions to the chairmen of the presidiums of
provincial, district, and parish people's councils. In
this manner the powers of the self government
agencies and those of the local administrators were
fused, simplifying and formalizing effective party
control over local government. It was, however, the
law of 1954 abolishing parishes and c -f ating rural
(gromada) people's councils that ultimately led to the
corruption, inefficiency and semiparalyzation of rural
local government.
In place of about 2,500 parishes, the 1954 law
created 8,790 gromadas with people's councils and the
average area within the jurisdiction of the lowest
administrative units became correspondingly smaller.
The statute reduced the powers of these units,
transferring many of them to the district people's
councils. As a result, a reform which was supposed to
give "power to the people" in fact conferred on the
district authorities the right to interfere directly in
village affairs. The bill was originally designed to
speed up the process of collectivization of the private
farms, but preparation of the draft took so long that
when the bill was finally passed the collectivization
project had already lost its impetus. Only 2 years later,
in 1956, the whole system of collective farms
collapsed.
Between 1954 and 1972 the total number of rural
people's councils decreased by about half, from 8,790
to 4,313. This reduction resulted both from the efforts
of the regime to streamline local government
operations as well as from the gradual but steady
absorption of the lowest level people's councils by the
next higher echelons as a result of urban annexations
and general urban growth. As such consolidation
progressed, the powers of the remaining gromada
people's councils were even further reduced until their
officials became virtua!ly powerless and dependent
totally on the district people's council for approval of
every detail of gromada a dministration.
It is this situation that the Gierek regime seeks to
remedy, spi!sred by general popular resentment
against n:iresponsive and useless state bureaucracy at
local levels, that was so much a feature of the
December 1970 upheaval. The local government
reform provides, therefore, for the replacement of the
4,313 gromada units with some 2,381 parishes
(gmina), a move that is essentially a return in both
number of rural administrative units as well as in
terminology to the situation obtaining before 1954.
The average parish area is generally twice as large as
that of the gromada and its average population
14
correspondingly increases to about 7,000. There are
three types of parishes: the first and most frequent
type is one whose area consists manly of individual
farms; the second is one in which state farms are in the
majority; and the third is one whose area consists of
nonagricultural land such as suburban areas and
health resorts. The reform applies also to small tow.-.s
of less than 5,000 inhabitants, which under the new
system are fused into one government unit with the
nearest rural parish. This move is designed to facilitate
the integration of neighboring villages and small
towns into naturally bounded economic microregions
equipped with all locally needed economic, social,
and cultural services.
The new parish councils consist of about 50
councilmen (as compared with 27 in a rural gromada)
including at least one representative of each village.
The parish councils took over from the district councils
the funds which support parish activities. The parish
councils and their presidiums have no executive
managerial duties but concentrate instead on
coordination, organization, and planning. Each
council has four commissions: the first for agriculture;
the second for problems of supply, budgeting,
planning, building, and communications; the third for
cultural and educational matters; and the fourth for
questions of law and public order.
;.t additicn to the parish council and its honorar}
elected chairman, there is a parish office representi;g
the state administration and headed by a chief
(naczelnik) appointed by the chairman of the
provincial people's council. Notably, the educational
qualifications for the post of the parish chief are
significantly higher than those for the pre -1973
gromada officials. According to regime spokesmen, the
parish chief is to be the central figure "in solving the
problems of parish development and in satisfying the
needs of its population." He will control agricultural
services, prepare the drafts of economic plans and
budgets, ensure that the people of the parish
"discharge their duties," und( -take "m-ves designed
to strengthen and preserve public order," supervise the
activities of organizational units subordinated to the
parish council, and take charge of the registry. The
essence of the reform, therefore, lies not so much in the
reduction of the number of units a: in the return to a
system of division of responsibilities between executive
and representative authorities, a sc paration wuuich was
abandoned in 1950.
The single most evident unresolved problem of the
new system is the still unclear manner in which local
executive authority will be exercised in practice. The
"parish chief' is appointed by the executive of the
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provincial people's council, is responsible for the
execution of the resolutions of the parish people's
council and, at the same time, is subordinate to the
people's council on the next higher level (i.e., the
district). This arrangement makes the parish chief
directly accountable to the higher echelons of local
government rather than the parish council and may
lead to considerable friction and frustration at the
local level. Moreover, the relationship between the
party apparatus at the parish level and the parish chief
is not clear. It is possible that the broad party control
at this level will be diminished, or that the parish chief
will be given more power vis -a -vis the party
organization than the regime is willing to admit, lest it
be accused of diluting party control.
It might have been easier to draw the lines of
authority more clearly had the reform not been
restricted to the lowest level of local government, but
even in its present restricted form, the reorganization
has far reaching implications. Concentration in the
parishes of managerial powers over a considerable
volume of investment funds, the subordination to the
parish authorities of all economic units which provide
services within a particular area, and other extensive
economic powers may eventually result in the real
economic and administrative integration of the
parishes. In time these economic microregions may
become to a large extent independent of outside
interference. This may create a material 'oasis for the
introduction of a real �not merely theoretical
decentralization.
d. judiciary
(1) Court system �The Polish court system is
generally aligned with the country's administrative
structure, being composed of 19 provincial courts, 320
district or county courts, and a number of special
courts such as the social security tribunals which deal
with disputes arising from the complex system of social
security benefits. The court system includes military
courts, which can try civilians in cases of espionage.
The Supreme Court �whose mciabers are appointed
by the Council of State for 3 -year terms �is at the apex
of the entire court system, which is administered as a
whole by the Ministry of justice. The jurisdiction of
the Ministry of National Defense over the military
courts is said to pertain "only" to cases involving
military discipline and to the "technical" supervision
of the military court structure, although its
competence undoubtedly is wider.
Cases within the regular court system may be
originated either in the country or provincial courts,
depending on their gravity. Normally, only one appeal
is possible, with the next higher court serving as the
court of appeal; unlike judicial systems based on
Anglo -Saxon common law, Polish judicial procedure
permits appeals against a sentence to be made by
either the prosecution or the defense. The Supreme
Court serves ordinarily as the court of appeals for cases
originating in the provincial courts, and as a court of
special appeal. An important part of its business is
elaboration on legal theory, although the judiciary as
a whole lacks anv power of legislative or constitutional
review.
In August 1972, the Gierek regime officially
announced that work was in progress "on a study of
the concept of judicial control over administrative
decisions," i.e., over various decrees and regulations
by government agencies having the force of law. The
aim of this effort was subsequently said to be dual: the
"protection of civic rights and social interests," and to
ensure conformity of ministerial decrees and
regulations with standing superior legislation. It does
not appear that this measure gives the judiciary any
significant power of legislative review in the Western
sense.
Sharing the practive prevalent in continental
Europe, the Polish judicial system does not employ a
jury; instead, cases are normally tried by a panel of
three judges, with sentences reached on the basis of
majority opinion. The panel of judges, or the court
bench, is composed of both professional and lay judges
with equal status. The latter represent a Communist
innovation common in one form or another in most
Communist countries: Under the guise of increasing
popular participation in the administration of justice,
deserving and politically reliable activists are elected
for 2 -year terms to serve as lay judges, a practice which
assures the regime of political control over the
professional judiciary. Two of the three judges in all
courts of first instance are lay judges; all other courts,
i.e., military courts, special courts, provincial courts
acting as court ^f appeal from the district level, and
the Supreme Court employ only professional judges.
Members of the professional judiciary are appointed
by the Council of State, although the 1952
constitution contains an unimplemented provision
making the office of judge elective. In 1970 Poland's
professional judiciary included 105 senior judges of the
Supreme Court, 758 judges on the provincial level,
and 2,097 judges in district courts.
The nominally independent Office of the Prosecutor
General is assigned the commanding role in the entire
judicial process. Appointed by the Council of State,
the Prosecutor General works through a system of
subordinate provincial and county prosecutors in close
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cooperation with the Ministr of Justice and the
Ministry of Internal Affairs (responsible for police
activities). A law of April 1967 further underscored the
claimed independence of the Prosecutor General's
office and entrusted it with the general supervision of
the entire government administration of justice. The
law also provided that the post of the chief military
prosecutor be subordinate to the civilian Prosecutor
General. These prc :�i.,ions in many ways paralleled the
February 1962 reorganization of the Supreme C-.rt,
which is composed of four "chambers" dealing with
criminal, civil, military, and social security cases,
respectively. Although berth the Supreme Court's
absorption in 1962 of the functions of the formerly
independent Supreme Military Tribunal and the 1967
subordination of the military to the civilian prosecutor
were propagandized as evidence of the supremacy of
the civilian system, it appears that the merger in both
cases was designed to bring those cases which remain
under military court jurisdiction (espionage and
security) under greater centralized control. Similarly,
the strengthening of the independent status of the
Prosecutor General's office, i.e., removing vestiges of
its organizational dependence on the Ministry of
Justice, has in fact enabled the party to exercise more
direct control over prosecutors on all levels and,
through them, over the entire judicial system.
Standing outside of the regular court system but
supplementing it are the "administrath a commis-
sions" of the local people's councils, which act as lay
courts and perform a judicial function similar to 61,_t
of magistrates' courts in the United States. In
addition, there exists a system of "social courts" which
are supposed to use social persuasion rather than
formal penal sanctions in cases of "antisocial"
behavior and other disputes and activities not
susceptible to direct legal prosecution. These "courts,"
in practice loosely organized groups of selected
wo,kers, were established over the years in many
factories and other places of work and were formalized
by the law of January 1965 which entrusted local trade
union bodies with supervising and assisting in their
activities. The formalization of the "social courts" and
public emphasis on the activities of the "administra-
tive commissions" of loca. government organs r,-'rlect
official efforts to curb hooliganism, offenses against
labor discipline, and other misdemeanors, as well as to
relieve some of the pressure on the overburdened
regular court system.
Prior to 1954 the entire judicial system was devoted
primarily to entrenching the Communist regime and
to suppressing all real and imagined popular hostility
to it. After 1954 the administration of justice gradually
16
improved, primarily as a result of the decline in the
power of the secret police and the gradual assumption
by both prosecutors and defense attorneys of their
formerly usurped functions. For some time after the
October 1956 change of regime Polish courts even
tended to side with the defense almost as a matter of
principle, and were frequently criticized by the regime
for extreme leniency.
By the early 1960's th;s tendency was largely
reversed, particularly with reference to economic
offenses. Although the judicial system remains
relatively free of dominance by the police apparatus, it
is not even relatively independent of party control. In
1960, largely as a result of its failure to curb
embezzlement and theft of state property, the
government reintroduced the death penalty for
economic crimes, but did not use it until 1965.
Summary court procedure �from which there is no
appeal �was introduced for this most prevalent
category of criminal activity in Poland. These
measures were part of the general overhaul of the legal
system which began in late 1960 and which was
designed to provide more aggressive prosecutions and
more severe sentenees for major offenses. There is no
indication that the Gierek regime plans to make m,.;or
changes in the court system or to deemphasize
ultimate party control. The new regime's stress on
"socialist democracy" and justice is viewed by most
Poles as a welcome and probably a genuine
commitment, but at the same time there appears to be
considerable popular support for the official emphasis
on law and ore.er in the general sense of curbing
nonpolitical crir.iinal behavior.
The relations of the legal profession with the regime
have gone thrc.ugh several stages similar to those
within the judicial system as a whole. During the
period prior to 1954 the influence and role of the
defense within judicial proceedings were cir-
cumscribed both by law and by the practical
intimidation practiced by the police apparatus.
Gradually, as the power of the security apparatus over
the courts declined and then virtually disappeared
with events of October 1956, the legal profession
regained much of its prewar prestige and its role
within the courts. In the late 1950's lawyers were in
the forefront of resistance to the gradual but
systematic reassertion by zhe regime �this time the
party and not the police �of power over the judicial
system. In many cases, the legal profession's
oppos %tion to retrogressive measures in both law and
procedure proposed after 1960 delayed their
implei.� ntation. By the same token, however, this
ol,position caused the regime to increase its
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intimidation of lawyers and slowly ied to legislation
designed to bring them once again under strict control.
The campaign against lawyers, accusing them of
peddling influence and charging excessive fees,
reached a climax with the passage in December 1963
of a law drastically curtailing the influence and
independence of the bar. Under the law's provisions,
remaining private law practice has been virtually
abolished, and all full -time trial lawyers must belong
to teams working under a fee sharing system and
under the g- vidance of the team's party representative.
The law of 1963 further provided that lawyers'
earnings, which irequently amounted to several times
the average worker's monthly wage, were to be
regulated to a level "recognized as socially correct.
The reassertion of party control over the judicial
system as a whole was thus symbolized by the passage
of the law on the bar despite the vigorous opposition of
the legal profession. Although the bar as a whole is no
less independent of the party then any other segment
of the judicial process, over the years, them has
developed a small number of prominent lawyers who
occasionally conduct a spirited and audacious defense
before the courts, even in cases with politically
sensitive overtones.
(2) Legal codes �For a long time after World War
II, Poland's civil and criminal codes were a
compendium of prewar legislation, repeatedly
modified and amended by postwar Communist
directives, regulations, and decrees. Attempt to
recodify this body of disparate legislation into unified
civil and criminal codes date from early 1950, when a
special Codification Commission composed of
committed Communist lawyers and other experts was
entrusted with the task. The political events of 1955
and 1956 temporarily halted the work of the
commission which by then had still produced no
results; this work resumed during 1957 in an
atmosphere of some political uncertainty and both
professional and lay suspicion and hostility toward its
intentions. The checkered history of the efforts at
recodification i:� illustrated by the fact that the new
civil code and cone of civil procedure were adopted
only in 1964 aad that corresponding criminal codes
were not' enacted until April 1969, effective from 1
January 1970.
As of late 1972, the Gierek regime has given no
indication of making major changes in the 1970
criminal code, which had been hailed by the Gomulka
regime as an example of progressive humanism, but
left no doubt of its intent to suppress any attempts to
challenge regime authority. The code had substan-
tially increased the number of crimes carrying long
prison sentences, and listed eight separate categories of
crimes� hitherto not so clearly defined carrying the
death penalty. Capital offenses under the code are as
follows:
1) high treason, including attempts to deprive Poland
of its independence;
2) high treason involving cooperation with a foreign
organization and aimed at detaching part of Poland's
territory, weakening its defense potential. or changing
its political structure;
3) espionage;
4) making an attempt on the life of a public official
or political activist;
5) sabotage (a saboteur is elsewhere vaguely de-
fined as one who "attempts to weaken the people's
power, sparks disturbances, or induces a mood of gen-
eral unrest, thereby hindering the normal functioning
of the state and its ecc,nomy'');
6) leading an organization which illegally acquired
property of substantial value, thereby hindering the
proper functioning of the state's economy "substan-
tial value" i:; elsewhere defined at over 100,000 zlotys,
i.e., about VS$5,000 at the official exchange rate);
7) leaL!ing a group whose activity is likely to do
gre ?t harm to the Polish economy (none of the op-
erative phrasing of this provision is elsewhere more
closely defined);
8) premeditated murder.
It is clear that the provisions calling for the death
sentence highlighted primarily the Gomulka regime's
preoccupation with protecting its political, social, and
economic controls. It is to be noted that the
innovations of the new code in this category of crimes
lie in its wording; provisions permitting the imposition
of the death sentence in virtually all of the above cases
were already included in the disparate postwar
legislation which the 1970 code replaced.
An important provision reflecting the regime's
preoccupation with youthful hooliganism is one
specifying that minors formerly subject to adult
procedures and penalties from the age of 17 may "in
certain circumstances" be so treated from the age of
16. At the same time, however, the former sentence of
"restriction of freedom" usually imposed in cases of
minor hooliganism and other misdemeanors was made
more lenient and now amounts to a period of
stringently supervised probation.
The criminal co clearly gives the education and
rehabilitation of cffE;nders priority over their
punishment. Nevertheless, in addition to categorizing
many previously less specific capital offenses as well as
those that carry the maximum 25 -yea: prison sentence,
the code substantially raised prison sentences
generally. For example, the holding of unauthorized
meetings, r iblic gathering, or demonstrations can be
punished with up to 10 years' imprisonment, in
17
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contrast to the 5 -year prison term permitted under
former legislation. Moreover, the code of criminal
procedure, otherwise virtually identical in content to
the welter of procedural regulations and decrees which
it replaces, contains a significant addition relating to
secret trials. Thus, Article 308 of the code states that a
court may order a trial to be held in camera "if in its
view an open hearing would be likely to corrupt good
manp_ers, cause public disorder, or make revelations
which for reasons of state security or other important
public interests should remain secret." Although in
practice the regime has always been able to conduct
secret trials at its own choosing, this specific
provision including the operative criterion of
"important public interests" --had never been a part
of the formal body of procedural law.
The 1970 Polish criminal code and code of criminal
procedure thus constitute relatively severe legislation
that in many instances contradicts the so- called bill of
rights embodied in the constitution of 1952. Its
importance is both legal and political. In the less
important legal sense, the unified legislation appears
to close those loopholes which in practice sometimes
enabled defense attorneys to obfuscate the prosecu-
tion's case by technical references to the mass of often
contradictory provisions in the formerly disparate
legislation. Politically, the new codes accurately reflect
the repressive mood of the Gomulka regime in its last
years, but they also reflect the strong disciplinary
elements in the party which in fact opposed Gomulka
for other reasons and which later supported Gierek.
This flexibility of the 1970 codes, the general if
sometimes qualified support of this legislation by
various political elements, and Gierek's own penchant
for discipline all suggest that the Gierek regime will
not seek rapid cIcanges in the existing legislation, but
rather will use its flexible features in the characteristic
pragmatic mariner.
(3) Prison system �The characteristics and modes of
operation of the Polish prisor system during the
postwar period have reflected the fluctuations in the
country's political atmosphere more obviously and
have had a deeper impact on the individual citizen
than those of other sectors of the governmental
apparatus. The prewar system, under the Ministry of
justice, approached model lines, making use of
convict labor for correctional purposes only. From the
end of World War II until the beginning of the post
Stalin "thaw" in 1954 the system was increasingly
punitive, brutal, and overcrowded. The entire system,
until 1954 under the feared Ministry of Public
Security, made extensive and admitted uFe of forced
labor camps, and, although they were neve- as severe
18
as those in the Soviet Union, during one of their peak
periods of occupancy, in 1949 -50, these camps
contained an estimated 200,000 f, laborers.
One result of the 1954 reorganization of the security
apparatus in Poland was the abolition of the Ministry
of Public Security and the consequent transfer of the
Prison Service to the newly created Ministry of
Intenial Affairs in December of that year. This transfer
marked the beginning of fairly rapid improvements in
the administration of the prison system, culminating
in its full reorganization in the fall of 1956. In
September of that year the Prison Service was placed
cinder the traditional jurisdiction of the Ministry of
justice; in subsequent months brutal prison personnel
were purged, and the majority of political prisoners
were released in a succession of amnesties. The most
important facet of the reforms, however, became the
abolition of the forced labor camps, which were
declared to be fully out of existence by mid -1957.
Because the only judicial body empowered during the
early 1950's to impose sentences of up to 2 years in
forced labor camps ceased functioning in mid -1955,
this official claim was probably true. Since 1957
convict labor has not been used except within prison
workshops and under the provisions of compulsory
vocational rehabilitation.
Basically, there are three types of correctional
institutions, all under the administration of the
Ministry of justice in coordination with the office of
the Prosecutor General: 1) major prisons for convicts
serving long sentences for serious crimes; 2) jails or
detention centers for less serious offenders or those
being held for pretrial detention; and 3) correctional
institutions for juveniles. The ministry also operates
directly �or supervises their operation by trade
unions �a number of juvenile "shelters" which are in
the nature of reform schools with vocational training.
No official data on the number of institutions with the
first two of the above categories are available. It is
estimated, however, that in 1970 there were at least 26
major prisons and over 100 major detention centers in
the country; together these institutions housed an
officially admitted number of 70,943 adult convicts or
temporary detainees. In addition, there were
approximately 75 correctional and rehabilitation
institutions of various kinds for juveniles, with about
6,000 juvenile inmates.
Since the mid- 1960's the regime has increasingly
stressed the functions of the prison system in the areas
of rehabilitation, vocational training, and even
academic schooling. Although some of this probably is
propaganda, it also reflects true efforts to relieve the
overburdened court system and the prisons of adult
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recidivists as well as juvenile delinquents. Reliable and
objective information on general p -ison conditions is
sparse, but there is evidence that in the administration
of the prison system there has been less retrogression
from the liberal post -1956 reforms than in other sectors
of the judicial apparatus.
C. Political dynamics
When in December 1970 the tumultuous workers'
riots along Poland's Baltic coast ended the 14 years of
continuous leadership of the Communist party by
Wladyslaw Gomulka and catapulted Edward Gierek
into power, there was more than a changing of the
ruling Communist guard in Warsaw. This was a
change from a generation dominated by aged,
orthodox. Communist politicians to one of younger,
pragmatic administrators committed to a new
relationship between the rulers and the ruled, and
committed to the proposition that popular welfare and
the country's development toward a modern
technological society comprise the ultimate test of
social, economic, and political theory. (C)
Despite Gierek's innovations in style, the tough and
thoroughly pragmatic new party leader has shown
that he intends to modify and improve the existing
system, not to set in train forces that would endanger
its continuity. Indeed, Gierek's reforms of the system
are prc,!;.-ated on loyalty to it, and on the premise that
the basic features of the system �the Communist
monopoly of power and a firm alliance with the
U.S.S.R. �are essentials not to be tampered with.
These essentials, which Gierek inherited and to which
he is committed, were by 1972 firmly rooted in history,
and few Poles, whether Communist or not, sought to
negate principles that had determined the political life
of the nation for over a generation. (C)
Communist rule imposed on Poland in the
aftermath of World War II resulted in the elimination
of prewar political, social, and economic patters, the
liquidation of all genuinely free political organizations
and institutions, and the superimposition of a Soviet-
style political framework alien to Polish experience.
Prewar political parties were for the most part not
permitted to resume their activities or were brutally
eliminated during the postwar consolidation of
Communist power, a consolidation accompanied by
prolonged sporadic armed struggle against anti
Communist elements. In December 1948 the
absorption of the Polish Socialist Party, once
independent but by then thoroughly purged, by the
Polish Workers Party to form the Polish United
Workers Party (PZPR) marked the end of the
consolidation process, and the formal establishment of
PZPR �i.e., Communist party dominance over all
aspects of national life. (C)
Throughout the postwar period, therefore, Poland
has been a one -party dictatorship in a modern
totalitarian state. The PZPR has an acknowledged
monopoly of political power in the country, with the
other two surviving parties, the United Peasant Party
(ZSL) and the Democratic Partv (SD), recognizing the
leadership of the Communists and being retained as
representative of the peas :nts and of the non- Marxist
middle class and intelligentsia, respectively. There has
been no postwar legislation dealing specifically with
political parties. The constitution guarantees citizens
the right to organize, and, in listing the types of
organizations which can be formed, refers also to
political organizations. Although this provision
sanctions the continued tolerance of a nominally
multiparty system by the' PZPR, the reality of
unquestioned Communist power negates the
theoretical right of citizens to organized political
expression. (C)
Despite the Gierek regime's willingness to give voice
to public opinion and to provide an institutional basis
for it through the government and the mass
organizations, these organizations remain under
ultimate control of the PZPR. Thus, the apparatus of
the state is parallel to but under the control of the
PZPR; the national parliament as well as local
governments are primarily committed to carrying out
PZPR policy and only secondarily to serving as
sounding boards for popular reaction to such policy.
Similarly, the function of the mass organizations,
which together with the political parties form the so-
called National Unity Front (FJN), is to mobilize the
support of various special interest groups within the
population. Despite Gicrek's measures to impart
greater prestige to the FJN and to make it more
broadly representative of its membership rather than
of the PZPR alone, its chief task remains the
presentation of a single list of Communist- approved
candidates at election time and the conduct of
preelection propaganda. Thus, in spite of the
apparently real concern of the Communist leadership
that political protocol be observed in interinstitutional
relationships, the 1rcus of political power is
unquestionably the PZPR's policymaking body, the
Politburo, a body unmentioned in the Polish
constitution. (C)
1. Communist party (PZPR) (S)
During much of its postwar existence, especially
during the Stalinist era of the early 1950'x, the PZPR
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appeared as a monolith, run with iron discipline by a
united leadership. The events of the "Polish October"
in 1956, when Gomulka regained power, and the
events of 1968, when this power passed through its
most profound crisis, publicly revealed endemic, deep
divisions within the party that were characterized by
genuine political differences and by large -scale
breaches of party discipline. Despite Gorr ulka's
temporary stabilization of the intraparty situation in
1968, his compromise with new, rising forces in the
party� Gierek's among them ultimately marked his
regime for a fall, more by its own deadweight than by
positive action of its adversaries. The nature of the
strains thai burst forth in 1956 and in 1968, and which
ultimately created the preconditions for a rejuvenated
regime under Gierek in 1970, had been shaped by the
origin and dev6opment of the Polish party.
a. Background
Until World War I1, when the Soviet party itself
shifted to stressing patriotism and nationalism, the
disparate predecessors of the Polish Communist party
were to various degrees antinationalist. Consequently,
they were in unequal contest with the rest of the Polish
socialist movement for the allegiance of the strongly
nationalistic workers. The nationalist tradition of the
Polish Socialist Party, its services on behalf of Polish
independence duri ng World War 1, and its subsequent
social and political program gained for it the support
of the majority of the Polish working class.
In marked contrast, the Communist Workers Party,
formed in Dectmber 1918, emphasized international-
ism and opposed the very existence of independent
Poland. This outlook, amidst the general elation over
newly won independence, stamped the Communist
Workers Party as an aiien body, and it was largely
regarded as such throughout the interwar period.
Although it was not specifically outlawed in interwar
Poland, the Communist Workers Party (renamed the
Communist Party of Poland in 1925) had to operate
semilegally under the cover of various front
organizations. 'Police persecution and increased
infiltration of the party's ranks after 1926 forced it to
become largely an underground organization.
Police penetration and intense intraparty factional-
ism made the Communist Party of Poland one of the
least respected members of the interwar Comintern
and subjected it to continual interference from
Moscow. Of the seven congresses held by this party, all
but the first were held in the Soviet Union, and these
were generally dominated not by "native" Polish
Communists but by those long resident and active in
the U.S.S.R., the so- called Muscovite wing of the
20
party. The resultant leadership struggles gained in
intensity during the Soviet party's own internal
struggles of the 1920's. Although a Polish party
leadership apparently acceptable to Stalin was
eventually installed, the losses ine by the party in
the subsequent round of Soviet directed purges in the
1930's were enormous. Between 1934 and 1937
virtually all party membrrs of any importance were
ordered to Moscow, arrested there, and many of them
executed. In March 1938 the Communist Party of
Poland was officially dissolved by the Comintern on
the double charge of being under Trotskyist influence
and of having been penetrated by Polish military
intelligence. The party had also become a clear
liability to Stalin, whose tactical policies leading up to
the signing of the nonaggression pact of 1939 with
Nazi Germany were already in the making. (The 1938
dissolution of the Polish party was reviewed in 1955 by
the Soviet and other parties who had rendered the
original verdict and declared to have been
unfounded.)
The Nazi attack on the Soviet Union in 1941
resulted in early Soviet approval for the attempts
already underway to revive the Communist Party of
Poland behind German lines. In 1943, Gomulka,
whose lack of rank had saved him from the purges of
the 1930's and who chose to stay in Poland during the
war rather than seek refuge in the U.S.S.R., assumed
leadership of the wartime party, which was organized
in January 1942 as the Polish Workers Party to
disassociate it from the party dissolved in 1938.
The Polish party, which spent as much of its
energies seeking to counter the influence of the vastly
larger and more effective non- Communist un-
derground as it did fighting the Nazi occupiers,
remained politically insignificant until the entry of
Soviet armies into Poland. It was solely owing to the
presence of Soviet troops on Polish soil that the
Communists eventually succeeded in taking over the
government of postwar Poland. The same factor,
however, revealed the basic split among the
Communist leaders who emerged from obscurity in
1944; one group under Gomulka comprised the
original membership of the party and of several other
"native" organizations, and the other was the
Communist group which returned from the U.S.S.R.
on the heels of the Red Army.
The growing split within the party took more
definite shape in the following 4 years, nurtured by the
Soviet party's increasing hegemony over Eastern
Europe and Stalin's intolerance of national deviations
from the Soviet model. Intraparty differences in
Poland centered on Gomulka's declared opposition to
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the supranational ch racter of the Cominform created
in mid -1947 and his criticism of the prewar party for
its insufficiently national character and program.
Gomulka's suL -equent obstinacy in defending his
position led to a prolonged party crisis in 1948.
Gomulka lost the leadership struggle to the Stalinist
element because he did not have sufficient control
over the party machinery, not because of his lack of
support from party ranks; most members apparently
shared his desire to place Polish Soviet relations on the
footing of close friendship between two sovereign
states rather than on the basis of total subservience.
Gomulka's defense of his position was the key factor
in the subsequent growth of the legend surrounding
him as a "liberal" and "nationalist" leader. The new
party leader, Boleslaw Bierut, and his colleagues
seemed aware of the dangers of the legend and
attempted to counteract it by dealing mildly with
Gomulka. Although removed from leadership,
Gomulka was never tried. He was not present at the
"merger congress" in December 1948 when the Polish
Workers Party in effect absorbed the Polish Socialist
Partv to form the PZPR; nor was he associated in the
popular mind with the rule of terror and economic
exploitation of the people during the Stalinist period
of the early 1950's. When he was released from strict
house arrest in 1954 Comulka's popular image was a
major factor in the developments which led to his
regaining the reins of power �in the face of Soviet
hostility �at the eighth plenum of the party in
October 1956.
The earliest harbingers of the 1956 political
upheaval, which culminated in the change of
leadership in October of that year, were the signs of
internal weakness in the terror apparatus after the
death of Stalin in 1953, signs which were
accompanied by more frequent manifestations of
intraparty and popular discontent throughout much
of Eastern Europe. In Pol"nd increasing pressure by
influential officials �both Communist and non
Communist� within existing regime institutions,
together with initially cautious popular pressure
undermined the seeming stability of Communist
controls and once again exposed the divisions within
the party. Traditional Polish nationalism reappeared
everywhere, although with less romanticism and
tempered with the realization of postwar Poland's
vulnerable geopolitical position; Polish Catholicism
revealed itself to have been strengthened by
persecution; the individualism of the Polish peasant
reasserted itself with a new determination born of his
experience with collectivization; the social democratic
bent of the workers and the intellectuals appeared
reinforced by the years of disillusionment with
Communism's "dictatorship of the proletariat and
the pro- Western sympathies of the nation appeared
heightened by the years of isolation under Stalinist
domination and economic exploitation.
When these accumulated factors burst forth in June
1946 during the workers' "bread and freedom" riots in
Poznan, the already shaken Polish party under the
leadership of Edward Ochab, the successor to Bierut
who died while attending the 20th Congress of the
Soviet Communist party the previous February,
realized that more than palliatives were needed to
reverse its crumbling hold over the nation. The
disarray within the security apparatus, the Soviet
Party Congress criticism of Stalin which fell on ready
ground in Polacd, the Poznan riots, the intellectual
turmoil which exceeded all formerly permissible limits,
and the general atmosphere of popular expectation
and willingness to bring about change by whatever
means gave every indication of coalescing into an
uncontrollable revolutionary situation, sweeping aside
the party and resulting in a bloodbath through Soviet
armed intervention �as occurred later in Hungary.
The factors which instead brought about a peaceful
change of regime were varied; they certainly included
the fear by the people as well as by all elements within
the party of direct Soviet intervention. The most
important factor, however, appeared to be the
availability of a once- deposed leader, reasonably
acceptable to all, who was able and willing to try in
effect to restore a "ruling" party to power.
Gomulka's reassumption of power in 1956 as First
Secretary of the PZPR resulted in a formal repudiation
of Stalinist methods, but not of Communist goals, and
was accompanied by a brief outburst of political
energy during which non Communist political
activity and non Communist press could and did
appear. These visible evidences of a reversal of former
policies were not, however, a measure of Gomulka's
I' 't- l.icized "liberalism," but rather of the extent to
which the party had lost control over the political life
of the nation. His main task in the months that
followed, apart from implementing the tangible
reforms of the party and government apparatus, was
to eliminate non- Communist political activity not
only for doctrinaire reasons but to preclude the real
possibility of belated intervention by a Soviet
leadership hostile to and deeply suspicious of the
"Polish experiment." Whatever the charges leveled at
Gomulka for his subsequent retreat from the liberal
innovations of 1956 �most of which he tolerated and
in part used but did not approve� achieved the
successful transformation of a terror ridden Soviet
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satellite into a more flexible dictatorship in strong
allianr:e with the U.S.S.R. Despite periodic setbacks
and appearances to the contrary, Gomulka attempted
to maintain this external relationship with the Soviet
Union. This process, however, was accompanied by
increased domestic controls and conflict both within
the party and between the party and the people.
b. The politics of succession
(1) Gcnes:s and aftermath�The antecedents and
immediate circumstances under which Gierek became
the First Secretary of the Polish party were
substantially different from those that ushered in the
Gomulka era in 1956. The character of these
differences was traceable to both the accomplishments
and failings of Gomulka's 14 years of rule. Having to
contend with Soviet hostility during his initial years in
power, Gomulka was instrumental in forging a new
Polish Soviet relationship that tltimately became a
model for Soviet- Eastern European relations in
general �that of internal autonomy and external
conformity to Soviet interests. Over the years,
however, Gomulka failed to keep pace with the
changes he himself initiated. Above all, he ultimately
misread the mood of his own people. This failing was
rooted in the legacy of October 1956 when Gomulka
was installed in power after a long preparatory process
marked by intense factional strife within the party,
which had been disorganized by the impact of de-
Staliniz.ition and the accompanying signs of internal
weakness within the apparatus of terror.
Because of the nature of the party he inherited,
Gomulka's energies during the decade of the 1960's
were increasingly sapped by the need to maintain
delicate factional balances within the ruling
hierarchy. The factional spectrum ranged from
reformed and unreformed Stalinists, nationalistic
hardliners and liberal revisionists, to moderates who
found themselves more and more isolated within,
though often the targets of, the internecine warfare.
Superimposed on this factional spectrum, and
sometimes cutting ticross political lines, was the division
of the party into "native" and "Muscovite" wings,
a division made even more complex by the
identification of the latter with the "Zionist" elements
of the party.
Thus preoccupied, Gomulka neglected the needs of
the country. Alarmed at the periodic outbursts of
popular dissatisfaction, Gomulka incorporated into his
regime increasing numbers of hardline elements to
control the population, but without taking steps to
identify and remedy the underlying grievances. This
22
situation fed upon itself and by 1967 had resulted in a
miasma of political repression, economic stagnation,
stifling bureaucratization, and moral corruption. Most
importantly, it also isolated Gomulka and his old
guard from the rank and file of the party and
heightened the regime's hostility to criticism and
change. Facing the isolated and anachronistic
leadership were politically apathetic but economically
dissatisfied masses, especially the working class.
Signific. however, the leadership also faced a
challenge from below �the younger generation of
party functionaries who proved to be the main force
behind the party crisis that nearly toppled the
Gomulka regime in 1968.
The crisis itself was generated indirectly. Israel's
victory in June 1967 over Moscow's Arab clients
focused Communist attention on the "Zionist"
element of the ruling parties of Eastern Europe, an
element that was nowhere as numerous as in Poland.
In early 1968, students supporting a writers' protest
against censorship engaged in sporadic demonstrations
throughout the country for almost 2 weeks. Gomulka's
opponer,:s in the party exploited these events by
blaming "Zionist" elements for fostering the unrest.
Poland's subsequent anti Semitic campaign of 1968
was merely a facet of the protracted political crisis that
featured a virtual revolt of the party "apparat"
against Gomulka's leadership, using as targets his
suddenly vulnerable Jewish supporters in the
hierarchy.
Of the two party leaders around whom the "young
Turks" seemed to cluster in 1968, the head of the
hardline and anti Semitic faction, security chief
Mieczyslaw Moczar, was the more publicized, but it
was Edward Gierek, the party boss of Poland's key
industrial province of Katowice, who was the more
important. Gierek drew to himself many of the same
elements that supported Moczar, i.e., tough, young,
relatively nationalistic party functionaries with
frustrated ambitions. Significantly, however, his
supporters also included most of the educated and
discontented technocrats and other elements who were
seeking remedies for Poland's mounting economic and
social problems. Numerous factors, especially the
thwarting of the Czechoslovak heresy by the Warsaw
Pact invasion in August 1968, eventually helped
Gomulka to reimpose a semblance of stability under
his leadership, but it was clear to most Poles that
change had been postponed, not prevented.
Gomulka's preoccupation with foreign affairs in the
2 years preceding December 1970 resulted in only
ineffective half -steps being taken to correct mounting
economic stagnation and popular dissatisfaction.
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oreover, although his moves �when they came
were economically defensible, they were profoundly
insensitive to the political and social mood of the
country. Above all, they were ill- timed. Thus, the
immediate cause of the relatively short crisis that led
to Gierek's remarkable smooth takeover of power was
Gomulka's miscalculation in raising prices of food
(mainly meat) and fuel just before the traditional
Polish Christmas feast.
Sparked by the price increases announced on 13
December, riots began among shipyard workers in the
Baltic city of Gdansk (formerly Danzig), spread to
nearby Gdynia and, having broken out also in
Szczecin (formerly Stettin) on the northwest coast, by
17 December were threatening to spread throughout
the country. The explosion of accumulated economic
and social grievances caught the Gomulka regime off
guard and unable to offer a viable alternative to open
warfare with the working class. On 17 December, 'he
then Premier Cyrankiewicz broadcast a condemns.tion
of the rioting workers as "hooligans" and announced a
government decision to authorize the security farces
and the army to quell the disturbances. The N"sults
were catastrophic for the old regime; the total number
of casualties resulting from the ensuing incidents
between the workers and the security forces are still
unknown, but rumors placed them in the thousands.
The Gierek regime's own subsequent tally placed the
number at 45 killed and 1,165 injured, of whom 564
were civilians, S31 policemen, and 70 soldiers. Of
those injured, 153 h,d been shot.
Most accounts of the events of 14 -20 December
1970 assume that some time in midcourse of the crisis
Gomulka asked for, l)ut was denied, Soviet assistance;
indeed, no Soviet forces took a direct part in the Polish
developments. With unrest spreading, bereft of Soviet
support, and with the power of his coterie
disintegrating, Gomulka apparently collapsed and was
hospitalized. The change of top leadership was
accomplished on 19 December, and formalized and
announced by a Central Committee plenum on 20
December. In addition to the replacement of Gomulka
by Gierek, the plenum ratified the ousters from the
party Politbur- of four of Gomulka's close associates;
ideologist Zenon Kliszko, head of state Marian
Spychalski, Boleslaw Jaszczuk, who was responsible
for the economy, and party cadre chief Ryszard
Strzelecki.
Gierek neither schemed to precipitate the crisis nor
welcomed the potential danger it posed to Communist
rule in Poland, but he seemed ready for the challenge
and may have long had in mind the possibility of
Gomulka's downfall on the heels of an economic and
social crisis. With the country on the brink of open
revolt, and with the ideologically embarrassing
spectacle of a Communist regime being overthrown by
the working class in whose name it purported to rule,
Gierek was faced with several immediate tasks. First,
he had to defuse the explosive situation among the
workers, who showed signs of improving and widening
their initially spontaneous strike organization. Second,
he had to show that his leadership was prepared to
respond quickly to the most acute needs of the people.
Thirdly, he had to gain control over the levers of
authority, the party and government bureaucracies.
Finally, and most importantly, he had to insure that
the Soviet Union and Poland's other allies would go
along with his new style of rule and that they would
not renege on their rapid initial endorsement of his
regime.
Gierek's success in achieving these goals stemmed
largely from several fortuitous factors that were not
present for Gomulka in 1956. Most importantly, the
worker's disturbances did not take on an anti- Sovic',
coloration and, although the workers laid their
grievances at the feet of the old party leadership,
neither the party as a whole nor Poland's socialist
system were the main targets of attack. Moreover, the
agitation was confined mainly to the urban working
class and, even more narrowly, to the skilled workers
who felt they had the most to lose from Gomulka's ill
considered price rises and changes in work rules. The
mass of the Polish peasantry, whose spontaneous
decollectivization of farmland had an important
political impact in 1956, remained quiet in 1970,
having been largely unaffected by Gomulka's
economic measures. Similarly, Polish intellectuals and
the youth remained largely inactive, possibly still
piqued over the failure of Polish workers to support
their cause in early 1968 when political and cultural
freedom, and not bread and batter issues, were
involved. Finally, the powerful Roman Catholic
Church, despite clear sympathies with the workers,
kept its peace except to counsel nonviolence.
Gierek could thus point to these factors as proof that
a change in leadership would not entail a danger to
the continuity of Communist control, that it would
not give rise to dangerous, nationalistic, anti Soviet
political action that had been the hallmark of 1956,
and that it did not inherently contain the seeds of a
politically runaway situation that Moscow tiad seen in
Czechoslovakia 2 years earlier. The fact that Gierek,
unlike Gomulka, assumed power with Soviet
endosement and not in the face of Soviet hostility
enabled him to gain substantial early economic
assistance from his allies and to turn his attention to
23
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urgent domestic tasks. Having weathered a second
wave of strikes in early 1971� primarily by rescinding
Gomulka's price increases Gierek cautiously began
to implement his program of domestic renewal,
stressing material well -being and social reform.
Although his initial steps treated the symptoms rather
than the causes of Poland's economic and political ills,
they brought about relative peace on the scene, a
situation which he needed in order to consolidate his
-rip on the party and government machinery and to
remold it into more effective instruments of rule.
(2) The dynamics of consolidation� Despite the
fortuitous political assets listed above, the domestic
climate remained tense and Gierek's hold on the
situation was tenuous. To consolidate his position in
the party and among the people, Gierek had to explain
the failures of the past and outline some guarantees
that they would not recur; to rid the party and
government bureaucracy of the ballast that had
accumulated during the Gomulka era; and to institute
gradual changes in the nature of party and
government operations so that the promised new
relationship between the regime and the people would
appear credible. Gierek's decision soon after taking
power to convoke a Party Congress in December
1971 �a year ahead of statutory requirements
suggested that he intended to be energetic ;in pursuing
his goals and that he hoped to obtain a fo!mal
mandate from the party as early as possible.
At a major Central Committee plenum in February
1971 (Figure 4), Gierek, turning to the causes of the
December 1970 crisis, forcefully divorced his regime
from its predecessor. He accused the former leaders of
mislabeling the riots as a counterrevolution, whereas,
Gierek said, they were actually the expression of
legitimate grievances. He blamed the clique
surrounding Gomulka for having lost touch with the
people and mismanaging social and economic policy.
Unlike Gomulka's purged old guard, which the
plenum unceremoniously ousted from the Central
Committee. Gomulka's own membership in that body
was merely suspended and remained so until the
December Party Congress when he was finally
dropped and relegated to the political shadows.
The party that faced Gierek after his assumption of
office bore some similarity to that which confronted
Gomulka in 1956, but there were also major, and to
Gierek favorable, differences. Unlike Gomulka, whose
initial support came from often mutually antagonistic
leaders with significant political influence, Gierek had
around him a group of important party men among
whom there was basic unity and none of whom, with
the exception of Moczar, has a measurable personal
following. At the same time, however, the new
leadership included several holdovers from the
Gomulka regime and reflected Gierek's deliberate
effort to form a team broadly representative of "party
opinion." Moczar's role within the new leadership was
initially ambiguous, but his reputed status as a
potential rival to Gierek was soon resolved both by his
own weakness and Gierek's positive skill. In any event,
there is strong evidence that Moczar had been
divested of his internal security responsibilities on the
Party Secretariat before he became ill in April 1971
FIGURE 4. PZPR Central Committee
in session, 6 -7 February
1971 (U /OU)
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and certainly before his ouster from the Secretariat the
following June. Moczar's ouster from the Politburo at
the Party Ccngri-ss in December was thus anticli-
mactic. With the passage of time, Gierek progres-
sively whittied away politically embarrassing hold-
overs from the previous regime and replaced them
with his own men.
Gierek's major task in advance of the Party
Congress, however, was in gaining firm control over
the lower and middle echelons of the party apparatus,
wl Pre, in Gierek's own words, "the struggle between
the old and the new" was most obvious. Gierek's
extensive cadre shifts focused on the 22 provincial
party organizations, where by mid -1971 he had
replaced half of the party leaders who were on the
scene in December 1970; on the eve of the Party
Congress, only four remained. Most of the new
regional party chiefs are you iger and better educated
than their predecessors and, unlike Gomulka's
appointees, most of them gained their experience
through work in the provinces they now head rather
than in the central party apparatus.
In addition to the changes in the leaderships of the
regional party organizations, there was a wholesale
infusion of new blood, mainly genuine workers and
peasants, into their organizational apparatus. This not
only reinforced Gie -ek's doctrine of reestablishing
bonds between the party and the masses, but in many
cases had the added value of incorporating working
class leaders into the establishment. These personnel
changes did not overcome all the passive resistance in
the local organizations, but they did result in a party
machinery that gave Gierek the delegates and the
endorsement he needed at the Party Congress.
Finally, these organizational measures were
accompanied by a relatively quiet purge of the rank
and file in line with Gierek's theme of "quality over
quartity." The carefully phased process of
interviewing the party's 2.3 million members (as of
December 190) resulted in an estimated 100,000
members dropped from the rolls or expelled.
With the stage thus set, the Party Congress was a
broad -brush affair that formalized what had alreadv
been accomplished. The congress endorsed both
Gierek and the outline of his reform program, and
included in the party hierarchy additional close
adherents to his style of rule. Moreover, with almost
60% of the new Central Committee composed of new
men, many of them workers, Gierek emerged from the
congress with both a leadership team and a central
party apparatus on which he could rely to support his
programs.
There can be little doubt that Gierek is no less
determined than was Gomulka to preserve the
"leading role" of the party; indeed, as explained
above in the discussion of plans for a new constitution,
he has committed his regime to enshrining this
principle in constitutional law. Nevertheless, Gierek's
practical i& on just how the party should function
within this framework are far different from those of
his predecessor. In general terms, he has lowered the
party's profile not only vis -a -vis the people, but also in
relation to the government. His statements indicate a
belief that the party should formulate general policy
guidelines� drawing heavily on nonparty expertise
monitor and mobilize public opinion, and pressure
both the public and the bureaucracy. Without
prejudicing the party's ultimate power to intervene,
the; practical implementation of policy should be left
as much as possible to the appropriate branches of the
government and to the mass organizations.
Streamlining the apparatus of rule and increasing its
efficiency appears to be the main consideration, but
by divorcing the party from the most visible aspects of
day -to -day management of national affairs Gierek
also apparently hopes to cushion the party leadership
against a future crisis of confidence such as that of
December 1970.
With regard to the modus operandi within the
party, Gierek has broken with Gomulka's methods by
stressing collegial if not collective leadership, and by
giving the party's theoretically democratic practices
some genuine content. While insisting on party
discipline at all levels and moving firmly against a
resurgence of old factional groupings, he has
encouraged constructive debate, a freer flow of
information and suggestions from below, and the
delegation of sufficient authority to lower echelons to
permit resolution of most local problems without the
need for obtaining approval from the central party
apparatus. The implementation of the last of these
principles has been perhaps the most difficult obstacle
to the internal rejuvenation of the party. The major
reason is that it is based on the concept of individual
and collective responsibility for decisions and actions
that goes fundamentally against the penchant of the
party bureaucracy for "passing the buck." Gierek has
repeatedly made clear that his determination to make
the party more responsive to the people will have to be
matched by a willingness of party officials at the grass
roots to assume commensurate responsibility.
e. The new leadership
Since December 1970 there has been a dramatic
change in the characteristics of the top leadership of
the Polish party (Figure 5) in comparison with both its
25
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FIGURE 5. Key members of the Po lish leadership,
1972 (C)
EDWARD GIEREK, 59
First Secretary PZPR: former Silesian miner; long residence in Western
Europe; pragmatic. tough. experienced administrator; unchallenged party
leader exercising overall executive responsibilities with an open. acces-
sible style of rule; degree in mining and metallurgy.
HENRYK JABLONSKI, 63
Chairman of the Council of State (president); politically uninfluentiai
former socialist performing largely ceremonial function; well travelled
scholar; Ph.D. In history.
26
Chairman of the Council of Ministers (premier); former teacher; most
active member of the Politburo; Gierek's alter ego in the governmental
apparatus; degree in education and science.
r
FRANCISZEK SZLACHCIC,
52
Party secretary and member of the Council of State; former Minister of
Internal Affairs (police and security); probably Gierek's closest and most
influential confidant; primary responsibility for party cadre, but also
active in science, education, and foreign affairs; M.Sc. in mining and
metallurgy.
u
4, x LY
Party secretary and member of the Council of State; like Gierek, a former
miner from Silesia: tough, talented bureaucrat responsible for party
organizational matters; M.A. in economics.
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JAN SZYDLAK, 47
Party secretary: Silesian born; responsible for Ideology, economy, and
partly for culture; tough. efficiency tninded; close to Gierek; headed
party investigation into December 1970 workers' rirts; 2 -year party
schooling.
F'
Minister of National Defense: possibly of landed gentry origin; respected,
thoroughly professional soldier: attained rank of major general at age 33:
reportedly refused to order army to fire on workers in December 1970:
military academy schooling.
STEFAN OLSZOWSKI, 41
Minister of Foreign Affairs: son of teacher; veteran activist in Communist
y"th organizations: intelligent, dynamic, and ambitious spokesman of
conservative party elements: M.A. in linguistics and literature.
MIECZYSLAW JAGIELSKI,
46
Deputy Premier. Chairman of State Planning Commi Sion, and permanent
represen ative to CEMA: peasant origin; veteran ei pert responsible for
implementing party economic policies: M.A. in agricultural economics.
Ph.D. in management.
Deputy Premier; peasant origin; capable and industrious official responsible
for culture. youth, and some aspects of foreign affairs: a liberal; M.A. in
history.
WLADYSLAW KRUCZEK,
62
Chairman of Central Council of Trade Unions; conservative but realistic
former Stalinist: reportedly one of the first politburo members to support
Gierek in December 1970: party schooling.
27.
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predecessors and other Eastern European elites.
Nowhere a:t the differences in the characteristics of
the Gierek and the Gomulka regimes more apparent
than in the contrast of the personalities of the two
leaders themselves. Gomulka's initial political
flexibility was soon neutralized by his need to counter
intraparty maneuvering, and by his inherent
authoritarianism, taciturn nature, and heated
temperament. He was largely ignorant and distrustful
of the West, which he visited only once when he and
other Communist leaders traveled to the United
Nations in 1960. Finally, although Gomulka was a
skilled politician to a fault, he was reluctant to
delegate authority and had none of the expertise to
understand the economic and social needs of a
developing technological society. By contrast, Gierek
had established a reputation as an efficient economic
administrator and tough party boss in industrial Silesia
long before he became a national leader. A former
miner, Gierek was long active in the Communist
movements, first in France, and then 'sn Belgium
where he spent the war years. His manner is
straightforward and sincere, and although he is far
from being a political liberal, he b (-lieves in listening
to the views of his subordinates as well as in issuing
orders. Above all, Gierek's approachability, pragma-
tism, and stated dedication to a just reward for hard
work are the same qualities that earned him the
respect of Silesia's industrial workers during his 13-
year tenure there.
As a group, the new Polish leadership is the only one
in Eastern Europe in which the postwar generation
predominates. Most of the new leaders are not
products of the "revolutionary" tradition, the
resistance movement, or Soviet training, but rather of
the universities and educational institutions of
Communist Poland. Few have suffered for their beliefs
and ideological misdemeanors either during the
Stalinist or the post -1956 periods. At the same time,
however, they have witnessed two major political
upheavals that must affect their outlook. Although the
impact of 1956 on them may be remote, they
undoubtedly are not unaffected by the developments
of the 1960's when Poland in effect stood still because
of the fundamentalism of Gomulka's views.
Although all 20 members of the Politburo and
Secretariat served in some capacity under Gomulka,
the vast majority attained their present positions on or
since 20 December 1970 when Gierek became party
leader. This applies to eight of the I1 full members of
the Politburo, all four candidate Politburo members,
seven of the eight secretaries (including Gierek), and
all three "members" of the Secretariat (a new category
28
created at the December 1971 Party Congress). The
only leaders whose positions antedated December
1970 are Gierek, a Politburo member since 1959, Jozef
Tejehma and Wladyslaw Kruczek, Politburo members
since 1968, and Jan Szvdlak, a secretary since 1968.
Perhaps the most striking features of the new
leadership are its low average age and high
educational qualifications. Of the 20 top leaders, 15
are in their 40's, with the average age being 48.3; in
the Politburo this figure stands at 49.7, and in the
Secretariat at 46.4. In education, tive of the 20 leaders
hold doctorates, eight have master's degrees, and three
have degrees from technical, teaching, and military
academies; the remaining four members of the
leadership studied at least 2 years at party higher
schools. Although the academic legitimacy of some of
the degrees may be questionable, and although Gierek
is not the youngest party leader in Eastern Europe (in
1973 Gierek was 60, but Romania's Ceausescu, at 55,
was the youngest), both the eductional status and the
general youth of the Polish leadership is unequaled in
Communist Europe.
The party careers of the members of the leadership
group are remarkably similar. Almost all joined the
party between 1945 and 1953; only two of them
(Gierek and Kruczek) were party members prior to
World War 11. Communist youth organizations
provided the first major executive positions for 13 of
the 20 leaders, with most of them subsequently
moving into the apparatus of the party proper.
Indeed, the party has been the principal proving
ground for two thirds of the present leaders, 14 of
whom developed their careers in the central or
regional party organizations. The other six members of
the leadership owe their advancement to the top to
long service in the government, such as veteran
economist, Premier Jaroszewicz, Defense Minister
Jaruzelski, and former security official Szlachcic.
Another notable common characteristic of the
present leadership is its general exposure to countries
and systems other than its own. Gierek himself lived
more than 20 years in Western Europe, and all the
members of the ruling group have traveled abroad
during the postwar period. Although much of this
travel was within the Soviet orbit, 17 of the 20 leaders
also visited non Communist countries, mostly in
Western Europe, on one or more occasions.
Despite the common characteristics of the Gierek
leadership, it is not a colorless collective. It contains
professional party apparatchiks such as Babiuch and
Szvdlak; economic specialist such as Jagielski and
Jaroszewicz; ideologues and academics; regional party
leaders; representatives of "law and order" populism;
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as well as Defense Minister Jaruzelski, the respected
spokeman for the military establishment. While
political control over the military remains undisputed,
some reports allege that under Gierek the status if not
the influence of the military within the party has
increased despite its unchanged numerical representa-
tion in the top leadership and in the Central
Committee.
As a result of the variety of special interests
represented within the leadership group, there must
inevitably he divergent views on questions of political
and socioeconomic development. Nevertheless, if
differences exist that cannot be resolved in the party's
councils, they have not become publicly apparent or
resulted in factional friction. The aura of unity that
surrounds the Gierek leadership is, perhaps, the major
feature that distinguishes it from Gomulka's faction
ridden regime. This appearance of unity rests not only
in the ability of the leaders to reach a consensus, but
also �and mainly �in the the crrmbling or
disappearance of the factional divisions of the past,
i.e., the struggle between the "native Communists"
and the "Muscovites," the generational conflicts, the
friction between economic rationalists and orthodox
standard bearers, the controversy over the Jewish
element in the leadership, and the perennial witch
hunt against "revisionists." By late 1970, and certainly
by 1972, these old forces were either irrelevant or
highly muted, thus reducing the potential grounds for
conflict within the leadership. To what extent basic
differences divide the present leadership is difficult to
determine, but the trauma and lessons of December
1970, and, most importantly, the power and influence
of Gierek, have combined to produce a remarkable
stable leadership structure, a situation notably unlike
that which faced Gomulka in 1956.
d. Organization and membership
In its organizational theory, the PZPR is o hierarchy
of democratically elected bodies, each elected by and
responsible to the one immediately below it, and
accountable to the membership as a whole. In its
procedural theory, the leading principle �as in other
Communist parties �is that of "democratic central-
ism," which means that there is freedom of discussion
by all echelons of the party before a decision is
reached, but that all decisions of the higher party
organs are thereafter binding on all subordinate bodies
and are not to be questioned except with regard to
their implementation. The basic rules for the
membership of the PZPR, as well as for its
organization and functions, are contained in the party
statute, a document that is adopted and may be
amended by the "supreme organ of the party," the
Party Congress meeting every 4 years.
After the assumption of power by the Gierek regime,
modifications were made affecting not so much the
locus of real power, which continues to rest with the
top leadership, but in the modus operandi of the party
to permit a more genuine flow of information .and
opinion upward as well as downward -ough, the
hierarchy. Most of these modifications are reflected in
the changes made in the party statute at the Sixth
Congress of the PZPR in December 1971.
Structurally, the organization of the party remains
unchanged. The "representative" bodies of the party
are the Party Congress at the national level, the
conference at the county and provincial levels, and the
general meeting at the local level. Prior to a Party
Congress (which despite statutory requirements has
rarely met at 4 year intervals) the local level general
meeting selects delegates to the conference at the
county level, which similarly selects delegates to the
conference at the provincial level. The provincial
conference then finally selects delegates to the
national Party Congress. An exception to this
hierarchical election process is made for party
organizations within eael, of Poland's three military
districts and in some 308 large economic enterprises;
these organizations send delegates directly to the Party
Congress. In all cases each delegate is supposed to
represent 1,000 party members. The rule has not been
strictly observed; at the time of the Sixth Congress in
December 1971, for example. the claimed party
membership stood at 2,272,000, but only 1,815
delegates were selected. Of these, 11 were peasants,
with the remainder equally divided between blue and
white collar workers �the latter category including the
full -time party functionaries at all levels who attended
the conclave.
At the end of its usually week -long meeting, the
congress elects the Central Committee and the Central
Auditing Commission; the latter supervises the party's
financial and administrative matters. The Central
Committee (Figure 6) then elects its executive bodies,
the Politburo and the Secretariat, which transact the
business of the party on a continuing basis. A s milar
structure prevails at the provincial and county levels.
The Basic Party Organization, or cell, at the lowest
level varies according to size, location (whether urban
or rural), and importance of the unit. A minimum of
five party members is needed to form a basic unit, of
which there were over 73,000 in December 1970.
The statutory flow of power upward from the
general meeting to the county and provincial
conferences and thence to the Party Congress and to
29
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FIGURE 6. Headquarters of the PZPR Central Com-
mittee, Warsaw (U/OU)
the Central Committee remains theoretical; none of
these bodies in fact have decisive power genuinely to
elect delegates to the next higher body, because
:acceptable candidates are in fact chosen from above.
Even the plenary sessions of the Central Committee,
which average two or three a year, are called at the
pleasure of the party leadership. The real locus of
power thus remains in the Politburo, which formulates
party policies, and in the Secretariat, which
implements them through the appropriate depart-
ments of the Central Committee apparatus. in
practice, therefore, power flows downward from the
Politburo on a continuing basis through its control
over subordinate party bodies at all levels.
A major feature of both the party crisis of 1968 and
that of December 1970 was a breakdown of the
practical flow of power downward and the attempted
reassertion by the membership and the party
apparatus of the theoretical principles of rule from
below. Although Gomulka, after temporarily
reasserting his position in 1968, failed to heed the
lesson this implied, Gierek has shown signs that while
keeping the helm of the party firmly in the hands of its
leaders, he intends to give its membership and the
apparatus a greater voice in the running of daily
affairs, establish a permanent dialog between the
upper and lower echelons, and make the regional
organizations more responsive to the opinions of their
members. For example, the changes in the party
statutes adopted at the Sixth Congress lay a much
greater stress than hitherto on the responsibility of
party organs at all levels to keep their members
informed, and to report to them periodically on the
organization's activities. New provisions for the
"recall" of leading functionaries of such organizations
have been included in the statutes. Moreover, the
30
word "election" rather than "appointment" is used
with respect to the process of selecting the executive
organs of party organizations at all levels. As a result,
the Central Committee, for example, is charged with
"electing" instead of "appointing" the Politburo, a
change implying at once a ne %v responsibility of the
Politburo to the Central Committee and the
possibility, still remote if not unthinkable, of a
nonunammous vote for the top leadership of the party.
Requirements for membership in the party have
been somewhat tightened by the new statute,
reflecting Gierek's priority of competence, effective-
ness, and dedication over sheer number. Although
membership remains open to all persons over 18 years
of age, all applicants under the age of 24 (hitherto age
21) are admitted "as a rule" from among deserving
members of the mass youth organizations. An
applicant must be nominated by a party member in
good standing who has known him for at least 3
(hitherto 2) years. Upon acceptance, he serves 2
(hitherto 1) years in the status of a candidate member
before being endowed with full membership
(essentially the right to elect and to be elected to party
posts). In addition, new sanctions are provided in the
statute against wrongdoers in the party, especially
against members who hold elective positions in the
local government machinery.
Membership figures of the PZPR reveal the impact
of the several crises that have affected the party. In
late 1956, the rank and file was in greater disarray
than at any time in the postwar period. Reduction in
the size of the party apparatus in 1957 made it less
unwieldy, but the subsequent "verification"
campaign (screening of party membership) of 1957 -58
and the exchange of party cards in 1959 led to a
significant drop in total party membership, and it was
not until the early 1960's that it again reached the pre
1956 totals (Figure 7). Thereafter, until 1967,
membership climbed steadily as the attractiveness and
necessity of party membership for opportunistic
reasons increased, and as the party itself put greater
stress on organizational and recruiting activity.
In mid -1965 the party decided gradually to
reval date all party membership cards issued prior to
1960. This decision was accompanied by some
indications that the party wished to case up on its
recruitment drive and enter a period of retrenchment
designed to stress ideological quality. Although party
sources simultaneously stressed that the exchange of
membership cards would not be accompanied by a
"verification" campaign similar to that of a decade
earlier, the dissension and turmoil which burst out
among the rank and file after the Arab Israeli war of
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01
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FIGURE 7. FIfit nwnbtr"p and "401 cwve*kwo 1956 -71 (VIOU)

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subsequent decline in the numbers of members
removed from the party together with the steady
influx of new members resulted in new growth. On 1
January 1970 the Polish party claimed 2.2 million
members, anO on the eve of the December 1970
change in regime, claimed party membership stood at
2.32 million members and candidates. A relatively low
key but thorough screening of the party membership
conducted by the Gierek regime throughout 1971
resulted in a purge of an estimated 100,000 members
and a diminished rate of new applications. By
December 1971, when the numbers of new applicants
again began to increase, the total membership of the
party was claimed to be 2.27 million, or about 11 of
the population over the age of 18.
Because the process of weeding out party deadwood
and inactive or unreliable members is still continuing
at a diminished rate, firm data on the internal
composition of the party is scanty. Nevertheless,
despite the adverse impact of the December 1970
crises and subsequent purges on the total membership
of the party, its social corposition appears to have
remained relatively stable. Workers were said to form
a somewhat higher percentage of new applicants in
1971 than formerly, but it is unlikely that workers in
fact represent more tha:, approximately 40% of ti;e
membership, a ratio which tended to be stable
throughout the 1960's. Peasants have shunned the
party almost as a matter of principle, with their
numbers never rising above 12% of the total
membership. Together, the workers and peasants thus
form a bare majority within the party's rank and file,
while the single most numerous group has consistently
been that of white collar workers who hold about 43%
of the membership. Some indication of the relative
attractiveness or the necessity of party membership for
certain professions is illustrated by official data
released in 1968 which claimed that 40% of all
engineers belonged to the party, 41% of all teachers,
25% of all scientists, and 17% of all doctors.
Significantly, it was also noted that only 4.7% of all
students and faculty in institutions of higher learning
were members of the Communist party.
The party has given much publicity to the slowly
declining average age of party members. As a result of
purges and of natural attrition among longtime
members over 58% of the membership in 1970 were
under 40 years of age, and less than 20% were persons
who were Communists before the creation of the PZPR
in 1948. About 25% of the membership were under 29
years of ape, and about 10% were between the ages of
18 and 24. The proportion of women in the party,
never high, is also slowly increasing; in 1970 women
32
formed about 20% of the membership, but almost
one -third of the candidates accepted that year. The
majority of party members have aiways tended to
reside in the industrial and administrative centers of
the country, although growing urbanization of
formerly predominantly agricultural areas has tended
to make the geographical distribution of party
members more even over the years.
Most Poles who are party members, -)Id and new
alike, have sought and maintained membership as a
matter of convenience, for purposes of career
advancement or enhanced material welfare though
not social prestige. These motives are often coupled
with a belief that by working through, instead of
against, the establishment they can better contribute
to national development. Probably less than 10% to
15% of the membership are ideologically convinced
Communists.
2. Other parties and pressure groups (C)
The PZPR's effective monopoly of power over
virtually all aspects of national life has precluded the
lasting existence of any of the variety of organized,
non Communist, political and social pressure groups
that flourished for a time in the period immediately
following October 1956 �a period when the
disintegration of party control in effect resulted in an
organizational vacuum. Since then, the one significant
exception to this rule has been the still powerful
Roman Catholic Church, whose ubiquitous presence
in Poland and consistent impregnability to
Communist infiltration and subjection has resulted in
the Polish regime's being the world's only ruling
Communist government forced to recognize an
organized, albeit unequal, social and political
authority in its midst Catholicism.
Because of Poland's historical struggle against
domination by Protestant Prussia and Orthodox
Russia, Catholicism became at once a powerful faith
and an embodiment of the national identity.
Following World War I1, the church again assumed its
traditional role as a rallying point for resistance
against alien rule imposed by a foreign power. Despite
the temporary church -state modus vivendi of 1956,
alternating truces and crises characterized church
relations with the state throughout the Gomulka era.
Since the assumption of power by Gierek, the new
regime has taken several major steps to place these
relations on a significantly different footing. Mindful
of the church's identification with Polish nationalism,
and realizing that the frontal attacks against it in the
past had proved counterproductive, the Gierek regime
made a public commitment as early as December 1970
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to normalize church -state relations. The regime's
major goal evidently remains to utilize Catholicism's
ability to unite the people in the pursuit of national
interest, and thus to gain popular supl;ort on behalf of
Gierek's programs. This iF particularly important in
rural areas, where party control over the peasantry is
often nonexistent and where the church as an
institution remains the strongest organized influence.
There are no mass Catholic organizations in the
country sponsored by the church hierarchy, despite the
continued existence of the once influential parliamen-
tary group Znak, and of such generally proregime
groups as the politically ambiguous organization PAX.
Although organized non Communist political
institutions, except as symbolized by the church, do
not exist, the variety of mass organizations, the two
non- Marxist puppet parties, and even social groupings
with avowed nonpolitical interests have an
importance in Poland beyond that of similar
institutions in other Communist countries. This is so
not only because of the tenuous hold of the PZPR on
the people but also because of the wide spectrum of
political attitudes within the party itself. These factors
have impelled the Polish Communists to make
generally wider use of ostensibly non- Communist
organizations in an effort to strengthen their control
over society. In addition to this goal, the regime has
taken significant steps with regard to the mass
organizations designed to mobilize non- Communist
support for Gierek's policy objectives, to give
credibility to his pledge to give the people a wider
voice in the social and political life of the country, and
to provide controlled forums for the expression of
dissenting opinions outside the framework of the
party. Gierek has already made some gestures toward
the two non- Marxist parties �the United Peasant
Party (ZSL), and the Democratic Party (SD) �by
soliciting their views on matters affecting the special
interest groups that they represent. In addition, he has
rejuvenated the leadership of the political umbrella
organization, the National Unity Front (FJN), to
make it more representative of the full spectrum of its
membership.
Since it was created in 1951 to provide a means of
Communist control over all political parties and mass
organizations, the FJN has been largely dormant,
mainly because d-rect Communist control over its
component organizations made it politically
superfluous. It was utilized primarily as a vehicle for
the regime's propaganda prior to national parliamen-
tary elections, which it norninally supervised. As a
rule, the chairman of the FJN was always the
concurrent head of state, who was simultaneously a
member of the Communist party leadership. In a clear
departure from this tradition, and in line with Gierek's
effort to mobilize the broadest strata of tht nation in
support of his programs, the chairman of the FJN
elected in June 1972 is a non Communist. He is Janusz
Groszkowski, the prestigious, 73- year -old former
chairmen of the Polish academy of Sciences, a member
of numerous foreign academies of science and
scientific organizations, and a former member of the
wartime, n Communist underground. in addition
to electing Groszkowski, the June 1972 meeting of the
FJN increased the number of deputy chairmen of the
organization from four to six, and the number of
presidium members from 18 to 22. The main
beneficiaries of these changes were representatives of
various Catholic groups, albeit none of them represent
the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
Despite the Gierek regime's gestures toward the
non Marxist parties and attendant publicity designed
to raise their prestige, Communist control over their
activities remains effective. As a result, both the ZSL
and the SD are echoes of the PZPR in terms of
organization as well as general policy. The ZSL, which
represents the interests of the peasantry, numbered
413,489 members in December 1970, about three
quarters of whom were peasants. Local ZSL
organizations included almost 28,000 basic organiza-
tional units, concentrated in Lublin, '.Warsaw, Poznan,
and Kielce provinces, i.e., some of the main
agricultural areas of the country. The numerically
almost insignificant SD, with 88,317 members in 1970,
is directed primarily at the non Communist middle
class, especially the professionals, craftsmen, and otner
self- employed persons. Although neither party is in a
position to serve as anything but a special interest
group in parliament committed to supporting
Communist policies, their role as transmission belts for
government directives to their membership has been
augmented under Gierek to include the transmittal of
non- Communist public opinion in the other direction.
The ZSL, for example, shows signs of increasing its
relatively important role in the countryside, where the
numerically weak PZPR has often relied on
experienced ZSL functionaries for meaningful contact
with the peasantry. Similarly, the SD, which
reportedly increased its membership to about 100,000
by late 1972, is benefiting from the Gierek regime's
encouragement of private, service- oriented economic
activity, and is useful in providing a legal political
outlet for many non Communist professional people.
Until early 1973, there were five mass youth
organizations, all under PZPR tutelage, but only three
33
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of them had any political importance. The first was
the principal Communist youth organization, the
Union of Socialist Youth (ZMS), which was formed in
1957 from splinter groups that arose from the defunct
mass youth organization of the pre Gomulka period.
From its founding the 7MS grew from some 50,000
members to almost 1.3 million in 1970. Its main
strength lay in its importance to young workers as an
indispensable stepping stone to party membership (as
provided in the party statutes) and to a promising
career. The second youth organization, with
somewhat over 1 million members in 1970, was the
Union of Rural Youth (ZMW), which accepted the
guidance of both the Communist party and of the
ZSL. The third organization, and the only one
relatively free of i ndoctri national activity and of
pervasive Communist control, was the Polish Students
Association (ZSP), which concentrated on satisfying
the material and recreational needs of students in
institutions of higher learning.
Communist stress on the function of ideological
indoctrination by the ZMS and the ZMW, as well as
efforts over the years to extend this role also to the ZSP,
resulted in slowly growing coordination between the
first two organizations, but only in continual friction
with the ZSP. These effors also resulted in a sporadic
public debate over the advisability of merging all the
youth organizations into one, on the model of the
Soviet Komsomol. This debate, which antedated the
Gierek regime, was apparently resolved at a PZPR
Central Committee plenum in November 1972 by a
proposal to form a strong youth federation within
which some of the existing youth organizations would
retain at least part of their separate status. The
reorganization went into effect in April 1973 with the
approval of the new federation's constituting
documents by its leadership. The ZMS and the ZM W,
the latter renamed the Union of Socialist Rural youth
(ZSMW), form the core of the new federation. The
major change, the one tha! appeared to be the main
intent of the regime, is the incorporation of the ZSP
into the Socialist Union of Polish Students (SZSP), into
which also are merged the students (mainly
vocational) who had formerl been members of the
ZMS and ZMW, and which is now the only,
organization to which students may belong. By means
of this device, the regime evidently hopes to streamline
its control over and facilitate indoctrination of the
generally non Communist and ideologically imper-
vious membership of the former ZSP. There are initial
indications, however, that membership in the new
SZS �which is not mandatory�will continue to offer
34
students many of the same material and recreational
benefits that made the ZSP attractive to them.
Because of the way the Gierek regime came to
power essentially on the shoulders of the working
class �labor has remained the single most important
pressure group within the populati in. As a result, the
manner in which the political power of this group
should be institutionalized, and its relationship to the
regime, has become a matter of major interest to both
sides. Poland's 10 million- member trade union
movement, which before December 1970 was merely a
transmission belt for regime exhortation of tabor,
virtually disintegrated during the workers' riots as the
workers formed strike committees which negotiated
with the new regime over the heads of the discredited
trade union functionaries. Since then, the Gierek
regime has taken a pragmatic and tolerant approach
to the trade unions, but has made firm effort to retain
the existing structure and, through it, to maintain
control. While Gierek has been successful in
employing this approach in other areas of national
life, however, the power relationship between labor
and the regime still remains an uneasy one, albeit
neither side is predisposed to seek a decisive test of
strength.
The first national trade union congress held under
the Gierek regime, in November 1972, dramatically
illustrated labor's new attutudes. At the congress,
regime spokesmen made clear that the December 1970
demands by the workers for independent trade unions
would not be satisfied, but they also made clear that
the regime now views the trade unions as representing
both labor and the government in equal measure, and
as a means of both upward and downward channeling
of information, opinion and grievances. For their part,
the workers' delegates showed an unwillingness simply
to rubberstamp regime proposals. They rejected a new
labor code on the grounds :hat it failed to adequately
define workers' rights, and only narrowly approved a
new trade union charter which merely streamlined
existing trade union machinery. The congress as a
whole proved that while Polish labor is pleased with
the material gains it has made under the Gierek
regime, it is equally intent on safeguarding its newly
found political influence. Labor has also served notice
that while it appreciates the regime's effort to boost
trade union prestige and to make the unions genuine
vehicles for articulating labor grievances, it will take
the regime's stated intent in this regard seriously and
will not allow the trade unions to become, once again,
a simple regime tool for the exploitation of the
working class.
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3. 1'he electoral process (C)
Under the constitution, simultaneous elections for
the national legislature as well as for local government
organs are held every 4 years. As in other Communist
countries, the electoral process uses the facade of
parliamentary procedure to mask what is essentialh
the appointment of Commu selected candidates to
predetermined positions on all levels of government
where they will cooperate well with the corresponding
level of the Communist party apparatus. Because the
exercise of the franchise is compulsory, and because
each voter is presented with a single slate of officially
approved candidates �none of whom are identified by
political part- -the electorate does not elect, it merely
votes, i.e., it approves or disapproves of predetermined
election results. Indeed, the distribution of seats in the
parliament (Sejni) between the MR, the ZSL, and
SD, and the nonparty delegates is predetermined and
has remained ess�ntially the same since the elections of
1961.
Since 1957, however, there has been sonic limited
choice among the official candidates, whose number
has exceeded the number of seats to be filled. Since the
"excess usually two or three candidates are listed
at the bottom of the list of about eight to 10 in each of
the 80 constituencies, the voter's scratching out of
sonic of the candidates heading the list usually
regime leaders does constitute it form of popularity
poll. Few voters, however, have exercised this right
since the 1957 elections, and fewer still take the option
of scratching out the entire list, a gesture representing
it "no" vote against the slate in its entirety. In the
latest elections, of 19 March 1972, this gesture was
made by 103,155 voters, or less than half of 1 of the
valid votes. In practice. therefore, the voters' ability to
cross off one or more names from the ballot does not
seriously jeopardize the election "prospects" of the
officially preferred candidates, but merely affects the
more or less overwhelming vote in their favor.
The National Unity Front (FJN) supervises the
distribution and dissemination of preelection
propaganda and the selection of candidates for local
government organs as well as for the Sejm. The
selection of nominees theoretically takes place at open
meetings at all administrative levels, but in reality
such meetings merely introduce the Communist
approved candidates to selected groups of their
potential constituents.
Postwar Poland has had seven national elections:
January 1947, October 1952, January 1957, April
1961, May 1965 June 1969, and March 1972 (Figure
8). The 1947 election, the last in which an organized,
genuinely non- Communist party contested the
consolidation of Communist power, was distinguished
by violence during the election campaign. The
Communists under Somulka's leadership employed
every n.ahod from rraud to murder to insure victory
for the officiai government list and to defeat the
Peasant P.:, of Stanislaw Mikalajczvk. The official
results of this election -90% in favor of the
Communist- sponsored list� marked an end to all legal
political opposition to Communist rule.
The 1952 parliamentary elections were held under
the new constitution's electoral provisions. These
specified that elections were to be lirect, by secret
ballot, under universal eyuai suffrage, and
without intimidation. All cii ,tens over 18 years of age,
of sound mind, and not deprived of their civil rights by
court action were declared eligible to vote. In
paractice, a single list of candidates exactly
corresponding to the number of seats to be filled was
presented to the voters by the National Unity Front.
The number of seats allowed to each of the three
political parties and to "independents" was decided
by the Communists even before nominations were
made, and party affiliation of candidates was in fact
largely ignored even by official propaganda. Together
with rampant police terror which made a voter
35
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FIGURE 8. Electo�al composition of the Seim (U /OU)

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boycott of the elections impossible, this system
resulted in a predictably overwhelming government
victory.
Both the new political atmosphere after Gomulka's
return to power in 1956 and the revised electoral law
of October that year made the January 1957
elections more of a genuine political contest. The new
electoral law changed little except to add a provision
designed expressly to facilitate some choice among
candidates; it stated that the number of candidates
"should" exceed the number of seats to be filled "by
not more that two thirds." Although the distribution
of seats between the political parties was still decided
upm. prior to the election, non -PZPR deputies were
assigned nearly 48% of the seats instead of the 36%
they had held previously. In all, 723 candidates were
permitted to contest the 459 Seim seats. The 264
"excess' candidates �all approved but not specifically
endorsed by the regime competed for about one
third of the total seats. The dramatic electoral
campaign stressed that anything short of an
overwhelming popular vote of confidence in the
Gomulka regime would bring about the restoration of
"Stalinist" rile, probably through Soviet intervention.
Apparently agreeing with the regime's assessment of
the available alternatives, and in the light of the
Catholic Church's urgings not to abstain from the
polls, Polish voters cast 98.4% of their votes in Tavor of
candidates specifically endorsed by the Gomulka
regime.
Despite this victory for the regime, many voters took
advantage of the opportunity to scratch out leading
names on the ballot. In one small community in
southern Poland voters in fact succeeded in totally
depriving a Communist candidate of his seat, the only
such instance of wholesale voter revolt in Communist
Poland. This and similar dangerous examples of
"democratization" impelled the Polish leaders to
enact changes in the electoral law in December 1960,
4 months before the scheduled elections of 1961.
Under the amended law, the PZPR's representation
within the National Unity Front was increased, thus
insuring increased representation in parliament; the
number of electoral districts was reduced from 116 to
80 in order to provide a greater concentration of
leading candidates per district; secret voting was
discouraged by urging "demonstrative and open
casting of ballots in support of People's Poland and,
most importantly, the number of "excess" candidates
was reduced. Moreover, the amended law stated that
the number of candidates "may" exceed the number
of seats to be filled "by no more than one- half." Thus
the new law permitted but no longer required that
36
extra candidates be included on the ballot. These
electoral provisions help explain why the results of the
1961, 1965, 1969, and 1972 elections have been virtual
carbon copies of one another.
The significance of the March 1972 elections, the
first held under the Gierek regime and a year in
advance of constitutional requirements, lay not in the
failure of the new regime to institute more democratic
procedure in the Western sense, but in their being a
necessary, legal prelude to Gierek's plamied restaffing
of the governmental apparatus to parallel the
reshuffling of the party leadership which was
formalized at the Party Congress in November 1971.
The 1972 elections, therefore, removed most of the
holdovers of the Gomulka regime form their remaining
governmental positions by the simple expedient of
excluding them from the 1972 ballot; at the same time
their seats were appropriated by men of Gierek's own
choosing.
In some respects, the 1972 elections were more
tightly controlled by the central Communist party
apparatus than earlier ones; for example, secrecy
surrounded much of the background of most but the
key candidates, and the prior selection process was
more rigid than ever before� probably in order to
assure that conservative Communist leaders at the
lower levels of the bureaucracy would not negate
Gierek's desire to put forward candidates more in tune
with his reform programs. On a countrywide basis, 625
candidates were approved to run for the 460 -seat
parliament; the number of "excess" or "expendable"
candidates -165 or slightly over one -third of the
total �was the same as in the elections of 1969.
The results of the 1972 balloting, which most Polish
voters combined with a Sunday outing in pleasant
spring weather (Figure 9 shows Gierek and his wife
going to the polls), were predictable. Of the country's
22,313,851 eligible voters, 97.94% went to the polls,
casting a total of 21,849,397 valid votes, 99.53% of
which were for the officially approved list of
candidates. Although a number of political leaders in
the new regime made a relatively "poor" showing
(albeit still in the 90 percentile range) as a result of
voters crossing their names off the ballots, the normal
limits of such practice established in previous elections
were not exceeded and there was no hint of concern
from any official quarter. In anv event, Gierek himself
received a personal endorsement from his constituency
in Silesia that was, at 99.8% of the votes cast, the
highest vote for any party leader ever, as well as the
highest for any candidate in the 1972 elections. By
contrast, the "lowest" winner in the 1972 elections
received 91.1% of the votes in his district.
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For the Polish voter, the 1972 elections, like others
preceding it since 1947, were not a means of expressing
his political preference in the Western sense, but
merely an opportunity to facilitate in greater or lesser
measure the Communist regime's determination to
plat^ its chosen personnel in positions of respon-
sibility. The public, inured to viewing the Communist
electoral process in this light, thus considers
participation in the process as a perfunctory
fulfillment of a civic duly and not as a means of
making known its opinions on the issues facing the
country or electing its leaders accordingly.
D. National policies
1. Introduction (C)
The basic concern of Poland's Communist leaders in
the postwar period has been to formulate domestic
policies designed to overcome the fundamental
weakness of communism in Poland as much as
possible, and to formulate foreign policies designed to
serve the country's national interests without violating
fundamental Soviet desiderata. Poland during the
Gomulka era played a major role in forging new
principles for Eastern European Soviet relations in
general� principles of relative domestic autonomy
balanced by uniformity of foreign policies. This
accomplishment, however, was soon outweighed by
Gomulka's conservatism which, together with the
energy sapping intraparty factionalism, gradually
resulted in Poland's lagging behind other countries in
the area with respect to social and economic
development. Moreover, as domestic conditions
worsened, Gomulka became increasingly less willing
to exercise even that degree of leeway that the
U.S.S.R. had granted to its allies.
The cumulative impact of domestic neglect and
policy immobility was brought home by the upheaval
of December 1970. In its wake the new regime of
Edward Gierek was faced with monumental tasks.
These tasks, however, did not consist of radically
revamping Poland's national policies, but rather of
bringing them up to date and of putting the country
once again in step with, and in some ways in the
forefront of, the gradual reformist trends prevailing
elsewhere in the Communist orbit.
In taking over power and asserting control, the
Gierek regime necessarily had to dwell on the failures
and mistakes of its predecessor. These were numerous
and undeniable, but the accomplishments within
the context of their own time �were equally
impressive, and in many ways set the stage for Gierek's
moderate reformist programs after 1970.
Whatever policy failures and setbacks Gomulka
may have suffered after his 1956 restoration to power,
his greatest accomplishment was to change himself
from a nationalistic outcast barely tolerated by
Moscow into perhaps its most sincere ally. After 1956
Gomulka gradually won Soviet acceptance of his ideas
and policies �at that time considered unorthodox �by
coordinating with Moscow his views on issues of
primary importance to the U.S.S.R. Essentially, these
issues concerned foreign policy toward the West and
mutual support within the Communist movement in
the face of polycentric trends in general and the
growth of the Chinese Communist challenge to
Moscow's primacy in particular. In order to
accomplish this, Gomulka not only had to reassert
party control at home, but to convince a hostile Soviet
leadership that his concept of "different roads to
socialism" posed neither a threat to the Polish Soviet
alliance nor an ideological challenge to the U.S.S.R.
Unlike the liberal Communist leaders of Hungary in
1956 and of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Gomulka
succeeded in convincing Moscow; that he did so was
partly the result of historical circumstances but mainly
37
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FIGURE 9. Party leader Edward Gierek and wife
Stanislowa on the way to the polls, 19 March
1972 (U /OU)

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a measure of the compromises that characterized
Polish- Soviet relations in the post -1956 period.
Because the process of Gomulka's accommodation
with Moscow paralleled the development of diversity
in Eastern Europe and the growth of nationalism
everywhere, Poland soon shed the appearance of being
a unique state within the Communist sphere. On the
contrary, Gomulka's increasingly close alliance with
the U.S.S.R. made him seem to turn his back on the
nationalistic legacy of 14136 and to be out of step with
the nationalistic trends elsewhere in Eastern Europe,
trends which persisted and grew despite the chastened
ideological atmosphere following the invasion of
Czechoslovakia. Nevertheless, Gomulka probably
believed that he was true to a special form of pro
Soviet nationalism which assumed that pursuit of
Poland's national interests was possible only with
explicit Soviet consent in each instance. For this
reason, Gomulka repeatedly stressed that Poland's
geopolitical position did not permit it to pursue
Romanian -style independence; he acted in the belief
that Poland does not have this option without
becoming a .weak pawn in the East -West confronta-
tion in central Europe. He believed Poland's alliance
with the U.S.S.R. to be historically unavoidable "for
better or worse" were his words at the Party Congress
in November 1968 �and the only alternative to
another of the national disasters which, in his view,
resulted from past Polish alliances with Western
power. His conviction on this score strengthened his
simultaneous efforts to seek such openings in Soviet
foreign policy as would permit Poland to press its own
persistent search for security in Europe.
After years of failure, this search gathered
momentum in 1969 -70 when historical circumstances
together with largely coinciding Polish and Soviet
interests permitted Poland not only to refurbish its
1964 initiative for a European security conference, on
behalf of the Soviet bloc as a whole, but also to initiate
a mutually long- sought dialog with West Germany
designed to reach a rapprochement on the basis of
West Germany's acceptance of Poland's postwar
borders. The resultant successful negotiation of the
Polish -West German treaty was at once Gomulka's
greatest foreign policy triumph and his swansong. In
the eyes of many Poles it came too late; even more
critically, it was bought at the price of social and
economic neglect and ineptitude at home. One week
after Gomulka observed Chancellor Brandt sign the
treaty in Warsaw �on 7 December 1970 �the Polish
leader was reaping the bitter fruit of his domestic
mismanagement, an uprising of the workers which
38
had resulted, by 20 December 1970, in Gomulka's
relegation to the pages of history.
When Edward Gierek came to power in Poland his
policy options were extremely narrow. The uprisings in
the coastal cities threatened to spread throughout the
country as restive workers in other industries began to
resort to work stoppages. Gierek's situation was
complicated by everal factors, not the least of which
was the disappointing performance of the economy.
Sorely needed measures to revitalize the economy had
been delayed so long that by 1970 drastic measures
had to be introduced, inflicting severe hardships on
the population. The Poles, however, after over two
decades of extensive industrialization and limited
consumption, were in no mood to accept further
deprivations and instead demanded to have their
sacrifices tangibly rewarded with an improved
standard of living. Against this background, it was
hardly surprising that the Gomulka regime's ill -timed
move to increase food prices sparked the December
1970 workers' riots. Gierek quickly reversed his
predecessor's harsh action, but as for further economic
relief :o the population at large, he could do little
more than promise better things some time in the
future.
Gierek also had to cope with the fact that the
credibility of the Communist regime had been
seriously undermined. The vast majority of Poles, who
had supported Gomulka in 1956 only to become
thoroughly disillusioned with him over the ensuing
decade and a half, were not disposed to place
unqualified trust in the promises of his successor. The
people, in short, demanded action rather than mere
promises, and the new leadership could no longer
count on their unlimited patience.
Finally, Gierek had to plan his new policies with
one eye on Moscow. True, the Soviet Union had acted
with unusual restraint during the December 1970
crisis, carefully avoiding any overt interference in
Polish affairs. The new Polish leaders %.ere promptly
endorsed by Moscow, and in February 1971 the
Soviets extended credits to help Gierek cope with the
country's most urgent economic problems. Yet,
heightened Soviet sensitivity to political changes in
the aftermath of the events of 1968 in Czechoslovakia
was doubtless a factor that Gierek could not ignore.
There was the danger that, if the situation in Poland
were to get out of hand, the U.S.S.R. might shed its
restraint and intervene militarily.
The combined effects of all these factors was to
impose severe restrictions on Gierek's room for political
maneuver. Yet, within a relatively short time, he
managed to bring the situation in the country under
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control. He acted energetically and with great
political skill, moving on a broad front to attack the
most urgent problems first, while not ignoring the
others. In this way he not only effectively defused
existing tensions but also began almost impercep-
tibly�to formulate and implement a long -range
program of economic and social reform. At the same
time he left no doubt that he remained in full charge
of the reform process.
By the beginning of 1973, Gicrek's measured pace
had generated impatience among some Poles, while
the implications of some of his reforms undoubtedly
created concerm among conservative Communists
both at home and abroad. Nevertheless, it is clear that
Gierek's policies are not based on a renunciation of the
past; indeed, continuity, especially in foreign policy,
remains the watchword. Thus, the basic principles of
Polish national policies in the early 1970's reflect
considerable �in most instances total� autonomy in
domestic affairs, guided by pragmatic considerations,
and a strong commitment to the Polish Soviet alliance
in terms of mutual support for common foreign policy
objectives. It is clear that in their general nature, these
policy principles are close to, if not identical with,
those prevailing during the Gomulka era. But, as
Gierek's reforms already suggest, he is intent on fully
utilizing the room for maneuver which these principles
furnish.
In their specifics, Gierek's policies are based on
undisputed party supremacy, a recognition of the
endemic popular hostility to communism, a
commitment to satisfy widespread popular pressure for
tangible increases in material welfare, acknowl-
edgment of the special effects of the social and
economic individualism of the Polish peasant on
agricultural production, acceptance of the traditional
role of the Roman Catholic Church as guardian of the
national identity, and, finally and most important, a
style of rule designed to elicit that degree of trust and
confidence between the rulers and the ruled needed to
fully harness the energies of the people. So far, Gierek
has given the appearance of a leader fully confident
that he can employ these principles of rule without
jeopardizing domestic stability or contravening the
letter or the spirit of the Polish- Soviet alliance. He
must also realize, however, that his long -term future
and that of Poland depend on his being correct in this
assessment.
2. Domestic policies (C)
Gierek's domestic policy has been focused on
improving the living conditions of the Polish people
and generating the popular support that would make
his plans for economic improvement successful. This
dual effort has evolved through a first stage of
basically stopgap measures into a broader program of
more fundamental but measured and moderate social
and economic improvements.
Gierek's immediate moves to defuse the December
1970 crisis and to gain support from his militant
worker constituency were hindered by the fact that he
had little more to offer them in concrete material
terms than did his predecessor. He began by scrapping
Gomulka's ill -fated wage- incentive system, which had
entailed a 2 -year freeze for most workers while
expanding bonuses for a few, and by raising the
incomes of 4 million of the lowest paid workers and
pensioners. But these were not the relatively better
paid workers who had sparked the riots, and those
workers remained skeptical and dissatisfied. A second
wave of strikes in January and February 1971 forced
Gierek into even more frequent personal appearances
before the workers throughout the country; he also
had to increase the tempo o` local efforts to improve
working conditions and, above all, the strikes forced
him, in March 1971, to rescind the price rises of the
previous December. Morf ^over, Gierek promised that
food prices would remain frozen for 2 years, a freeze
that has since been extended to cover 1973. To
reassure the workers and housewives about the food
supply, Gierek promised substantial increases in meat
supply and, largely with the help of a $100 million
hard currency loan from the U.S.S.R., managed to
raise meat consumption considerably. These
immediate measures, together with Gierek's strong
personal appeal, generated a positive response from
the workers and gave him time to fulfill his promises.
The workers, aware that persistence and boldness on
their part has bred success, have shown that they will
continue to hold the new regime accountable for its
promises of increased welfare and a new role for
themselves in the determination of economic policy.
The fact that Gierek's innovations in labor policy were
initially forced on him by the workers' militancy does
not detract from their novelty nor from the fact that,
despite continued shortcomings, a new institutional
and operational relationship appears to be developing
between the regime and labor in Poland.
Gierek a!so realized early in his tenure that though
the farmers were not involved in the initial
manifestations of the workers' discontent, the
cooperation of the peasantry would be vital to insuring
adequate food supplies. Abandoning Gomulka's long
and fruitless search for self- sufficiency in grain, a
search which had adversely affected meat and dairy
39
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production, Gierek immediately offered the peasants
substantial price increases for farm products and other
incentives to raise production, even while he was
publicizing a comprehensive reform of agricultural
policy that went into effect in January 1972. The
widely resented system of compulsory deliveries of
farm products to the state was abolished and replaced
by a contract system that gives the peasants
considerable leeway in production. A fundamental
change in land taxes was introduced, much red tape
that had previously enmeshed the private farmer was
cut, and the country's comprehensive system of health
insurance was extended to cover most of the previously
ineligible private peasants and members of their
families, a total of some 6.5 million persons. Most
importantly, Gierek eased the peasants' anxieties
about future farm policy by guaranteeing that the
policy of predominantly private ownership of land
would continue; indeed, property laws were revised
giving farmers a greater sense of security and many of
them received clear title to land which had previously
remained state property although they had been
tilling it. As a result, Poland remains unique in Eastern
Europe (with the exception of Yugoslavia) in the 83%
of agricultural land remains privately owned; the vast
majority of the remainder belongs to large state farms,
with only an insignificant portion composed of
collective farms.
These initial changes in the socioeconomic sphere
brought about a tangible improvement in the
standard of living. The supply of consumer goods
increased substantially: The shortages of meat and
butter were alleviated, and a greater variety of
clothing, including imported goods, was made
available. Yet, the government acknowledged that
these gains by themselves were insufficient. The year
1971 was described as a period of convalescence after
which many new efforts would be needed to attain full
economic recovery.
The shape of the next stage in Poland's economic
development� through 1975 �was worked out during
1971 by a commission of experts headed by Politburo
member Jan Szydlak and was adopted in December
by the Sixth Party Congress. Some of the more far
reaching proposals in the "Szydlak reforms" were
abandoned for several reason, among them reportedly
the opposition of both Soviet leaders and Polish
conservatives. In any event, no comprehensive, far
reaching reform of the Polish economy toward a
market system is in sight. Nevertheless, a planning and
management reform affecting a number of large
industrial units became effective on 1 January 1973.
40
Moreover the "Szydlak commission" reportedly began
the second phase of its work in March 1973.
Although Gierek's approach entails caution and
moderation, pragmatism, and as little tinkering with
existing institutional forms as possible, the goals of the
1971 -75 plan remain ambitious. Personal income is to
increase by 18% at the same time that working time is
reduced; full employment is to be sought; a
comprehensive review and reform of the educational
system is scheduled; the variety and quality of
consumer goods is to be improved, in part through
imports; a substantial number of i.iexpensive personal
automobiles are to be produced and marketed;
housing construction is to be stressed, and new
hospitals and health centers are to be provided for
both urban and rural areas.
It remains to be seen, of course, w) the
economic performance necessary to achieve these
goals will be forthcoming as a result of Gierek's efforts
to "energize" the existing system, or whether
fundamental reforms in the system will ultimately be
necessary�and, if so, whether Gierek will be inclined
to risk domestic and foreign opposition to any
significant unorthodoxy. Despite these pitfalls,
however, the new program for 1971 -75 implies a new
principle in the thinking of Poland's policymakers.
The essence of the new approach was published by the
regime in early 1972 in a pamphlet outlining the
leadership's hopes for the decade of the 1970's:
"The new socioeconomic policy is based on the assump-
tion that it is already possible for the present gen-
eration to benefit from the economic progress of
Poland. The crux of the problem is, while not
ignoring economic growth, to attain the maximum
possible standard of living. In short, the objective is
to promote parallel social and economic development
of the country."
The fundamentally consumerist concept that
underlies this policy was stated even more succinctly
in October 1971 by Szydlak, who said flatly that
"increased consumption is an important and necessary
factor in economic growth."
Although Gierek's major domestic policy inoves
have been directed at gaining the support of those
classes and special interest groups that have the
greatest economic importance �the workers and the
peasants �he has also struck a mutually acceptable,
though not close, relationship with the intellectuals,
students, and the "middle class" of artisans and white
collar workers. Initially, this relationship was
ambiguous. These special interest groups had far fewer
economic grievances to be remedied than the workers
and were not swept up into the workers' militancy.
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Nevertheless, Gierek was aware from the beginning
that he would 'need them, especially the intellectuals,
to mobilize the population at large as well as to
balance the dominant influence of the working class
on his regime. The new policy of encouraging private
service occupations and private or cooperative
enterprises, often under license to the state but
otherwise relatively unrestricted, was specifically
designed to elicit good will from these elements of the
population.
In the cultural field, no major departures from
former policies have been made, but the regime's o:ive
branch extended to the country's traditionally volatile
intellectuals appears to have been accepted, even
though cautiously. Gierek's spokesmen on cultural
policy have emphasized that although the principle of
party control over culture must remain intact and
censorship will continue to be exercised, there is
artistic freedom for all those who do not produce works
"hostile to socialism or challenge our fraternal
alliances," i.e., neither the basic orientation of the
domestic system nor Poland's alliance with the Soviet
Union must be questioned. Most Polish intellectuals,
especially the older generation, appear inclined to
accept the terms of this softer cultural policy,
especially since it has permitted many previously
banned authors to reappear in print and, more
importantly, has been accompanied by a liberalized
policy on foreign travel for intellectuals. Little
noticed, but also important, was the government's
extension of social security coverage to writers, artists,
and others who had previously been ineligible on the
grounds that they were self- employed.
A particularly significant policy departure by the
Gierek regime, and one designed to gain the support of
the majority of the population, has been its
commitment to improved relations with the Roman
Catholic Church, the institutional focus of the 95% of
the people who are Catholics. Three days after taking
office, the new government offered to "normalize"
church -state relations, which for decades had
alternated between uneasy truces and outright crises.
A meeting in early March 1971 between Stefan
Cardinal Wvszvnski, Primate of Poland, and Premier
Jaroszewicz symbolized at the highest level the
beginning of a dialog which has since then been
extended to negotiations both between the church and
state in Poland, and between the Polish regime and
the Vatican. The Wyszynski Jaroszewicz meeting
appears to have led to several government concessions.
In June 1971, ecclesiastical property in the former
German territories was formally turned over to the
Polish church. In February 1972, regulations requiring
the church to keep full inventory of its property for tax
purposes were abolished.
Although much of the improved domestic
atmosphere is cosmetic and church -state friction
continues to exist, especially at the parish level, the
steps taken by the regime have produced a climate in
which a formal domestic church -state accommodation
and a Polish- Vatican agreement� possibly a concor-
dat�no longer seem to be ruled out. In June 1972, the
Vatican regularized the church's status in the former
German territories, a move that was hailed by the
regime as a major step toward further progress.
Despite the significant policy reforms that Gierek
has initiated in the domestic area, the degree of his
success in obtaining popular support and generating
hopes for a better future stem less from specific policy
shifts than from his new style of rule, which is designed
to convince the people that he is genuinely dedicated
to overcoming the crisis of confidence between the
rulers and the ruled which developed during the
Gomulka era.
Since coming to power, Gierek has been consistent:
He has avoided repression, while indicating that social
discipline is one of the key elements for the success of
his policy of "national renewal." He has condemned
the errors of the past, but has stressed that the party
and its genuine accomplishments are unassailable
even though leaders may come and go. He has made
concessions, but has warned of the dangers for the
national interest inherent in excessive pressures from
below. He has stressed the need for increased
efficiency in government and its responsiveness to the
people, but has also emphasized that this is a two -way
street. During innumerable face -to -face meetings with
workers during his first months in office and with
people in all walks of life since then, Gierek has sought
to demonstrate an open style and to establish a direct
dialog between the party, the government, and the
people (Figure 10).
This more open style is characterized by the
practices initiated at the top levels of the party and
government. For example, meetings of the party's
policymaking Politburo under Gomulka were rarely
held and never publicized. Under Gierek meetings are
more frequent, often expanded to include nonparty
specialists, and the results are regularly published in
abbreviated form. Unlike the cabalistic practices of
Gomulka's top leadership, members of Gierek's
Politburo, Secretariat, and Central Committee
departments, as well as government ministers and
their deputies are accessible to each other, and
maintain contact with the workers and with other
41
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FIGURE 10. Gierek and his con-
stituents, the workers (U /OU)
elements of the people. Moreover, cabinet ministers,
party leaders, and leaders of mass organizations have
submitted to often critical interviews on radio and
television.
While Gierek has retained firm control over the
public information media, he has used more open
treatment of domestic problems as a safety valve for
popular dissatisfaction, a means to overcome public
apathy, and as a catalyst for constructive change.
Gierek's creation early in his tenure of a post of Under
Secretary of State for Information was a major step in
this direction. In the same vein, Gierek has tolerated,
and in some cases encouraged, mildly provocative
articles in the press bearing on and stimulating public
discussion of long -range social and economic problems
and options facing the country.
The degree to which Gierek has succeeded in
engaging persons from all walks of life in his program
reveals another major feature of his scheme for
improving the political climate so that his domestic
reforms can better take hold: his acceptance of the
concept, first articulated by Hungarian party leader
Kadar, that "all those who are not against us are with
us." Thus, Gierek has not only ostentatiously
appointed many workers and respected nonparty
professionals to numerous positions on all but the top
levels of government, but he has pledged himself to
eliminate discriminatory distinctions based on an
individual's class background or religious beliefs. This
concept appears designed not only to buttress his
policy of improving church -state relations, but also to
heal the wounds in the body politic that had been
rubbed raw during Gomulka's last years in power. The
42
politically motivated anti Semitic purges that
characterized the intraparty facticnal struggle of 1968
and the exodus of many of Poland's remaining Jews
that followed have fortuitously made the question of
domestic anti Semitism a moot one for the Gierek
regime. Notably, however, Gierek either did not take
part in or soon disassociated himself from the anti
Semitic excesses of 1968. Since Gierek came to power,
the element of anti Semitism has not discernibly
entered the large -scale housecleaning of officials in the
party and government bureaucracies.
These tangible changes in domestic policies, and in
the style of rule that is designed to make them
convincing, have been accompanied by a massive
public relations campaign to project a new image of
the party and the government �that of a responsible
and responsive servant of the people. While much of
this campaign has been self serving and disingenuous
in Western terms, its cumulative impact has had a
positive influence not only on the people's view of
their rulers, but also on the rulers' view of themselves.
Moreover, an important spinoff of this campaign has
been Gierek's cautious appeal to Polish patriotism and
pride in national accomplishment as a way to generate
support for his policies.
At first sight, this appears as a radical and
dangerous innovation for a Communist leader, and
one that flirts with the sin of nationalism. Gierek has
been careful, however, to emphasize the trappings
rather than the substance of nationalism and, together
with his repeated warnings against nonconstructive
agitation, has kept the popular response to this
campaign within permissible limits. For example,
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Gierek's decision to rebuild the ancient royal castle in
Warsaw� destroyed at the beginning of World War
11--has had a strong nationalistic appeal to Poles
everywhere, and for the same reason was avoided by
earlier Communist leaders throughout the postwar
period (Figure 11). The project, however, has
channeled nationalism into the constructive and
relatively harmless effort of restoring a natioaal
symbol. and has commended the Gierek regime even
to non Communist exiles. In addition, a special
national fund created to finance the project is helping
to bring in hard currency from ethnic Poles abroad.
Finally, early in his tenure Gierek directed that the
formerly omnipresent portraits of party and
government leaders in official buildings be replaced
by the centuries -old state seal �the Polish eagle. This
gesture perhaps best characterizes Gierek's satire
approach to domestic reform: that the regime's power,
though no less omnipresent in the lives of the people,
be represented by a symbol that generates pride and
acceptance rather than resentment.
FIGURE 11. Chairman of the Committee for Reconstruc-
tion of the Royal Castle in Warsaw Jozef Kepa (also
Warsaw party first secretary) and a member of the
committee, Jerzy Modzelewski, suffragan bishop of
Warsaw, at the inaugural meeting of the committee.
Note liveried footmen in background. (U /OU)
3. Foreign policies (S)
Because of ideological, political, and economic
imperatives, Polish foreign policy throughout the
postwar period has coincided in all important respects
with that of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the degree
of mutual support for and the underlying motivations
for common foreign policy actions have frequently
differed. These differences, which should not be
overstressed, have stemmed from the gradually
increasing role of national self interest in the foreign
policy actions of all Eastern European states, a feature
that has been the ;unction of the evolving nature of
Eastern European- Soviet relations since the Stalinist
era.
Former Polish party leader Gomulka played a major
role in generating the post- Stalin momentum toward
this new relationship. It was his accomplishment that
the automatic subordination of Polish foreign policy
interests to those of the U.S.S.R. prevalent during the
pre -1956 period was replaced by close cooperation
within the framework of a formal though unequal
alliance. This principle of Polish- Soviet relations was
formalized in the "mutual consultations" clause of the
renewed 20 -year Treaty of Friendship and Mutual
Alliance between the two countries signed in April
1965. The basic identity of Polish and Soviet foreign
policies has thus been the result of frequent
consultations in which specific Polish concerns and
interests in the trend of evolving East -West European
relation, Communist unity or lack of it, and other
international issues have been expressed.
The somewhat expanded area of maneuver for
Polish foreign policy after 1956 was used by the regime
to underscore its desire and capacity for semi
independent status in its relations with other
Communist countries as well as with the non
Communist world. Poland thus played a more
prominent, sometimes leading, international role
within the context of Soviet foreign policy, especially
in Europe and especially when in Gomulka's view
Polish interests were furthered by the joint foreign
policy move in question. Within specially defined
limits Poland was also the first Eastern European
country in the post Stalin era to enter into special
relationships with Western countries and those of the
nonaligned and developing world. This was
particularly true in the case of the United States, from
whom Poland sought and received (luring 1957 -67
particularly significant economic assistance. Despite
the gradual collapse of the "special relationship" with
the United States that Gomulka initially enjoyed and
despite frequent periods of especially sharp frictions in
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mutual relations the Polish regime continued to permit
a U.S. presence in P -iland far exceeding that permitted
by any other Communist country.
Gomulka's basic belief that Poland's foreign policy
interests not only must, but should, rest on active
membership in the "socialist alliance" headed by the
Soviet Union is clearly shared by his successor.
Despite, and, indeed, also because of the domestic
upheaval that accompanied Edward Gierek's
assumption of power in December 1970, the new party
leader immediately made clear his regime's
commitment to continuity in foreign policy and
ideological fealty to the U.S.S.R. As the immediate
domestic crisis that he inherited began to recede,
however, Gierek embarked on a foreign policy which
was markedly more active than that pursued by his
predecessor. It has been based on a thorough pursuit of
Poland's national self- interest, especially in, but not
confined to, expanded economic relations with the
West.
This new activism does not signify that Poland
under Gic�ek is intent on testing or straining its bonds
with the U.S.S. R., but rather it is a measure of the new
climate of Lastern European Soviet relations that has
gradually evolved, and which Gierek is exploiting to a
fuller measure than would have Gomulka. In doing so,
Gierek is the beneficiary of two major factors that
became operative after the 1968 invasion of
Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact powers. First, he
has inherited a new domestic confidence and a feeling
of greater security resulting from the conclusion of the
Polish -West German treaty, which in Polish eyes
finally established the territorial integrity of the
postwar Polish state. Secondly, he can function within
the framework of considerably more open Soviet
policies rooted in Moscow's drive toward detente with
the West. The logic of the evolution of Eastern
European- Soviet relations as a result of Moscow's
impulse toward detente evidently underscores Gierek's
onviction that Poland �as the second largest power
within the Soviet orbit �can exercise greater
independence of action provided that this is done
NOthin the framework of its Warsaw Pact alliance and
riot outside it �Le., that if does not contravene basic
Soviet strategic interests in the urea. Indeed, Gierek
seems to be tapping those impulses which existed in
Poland even in Gomulka's last years �and which
Gomulka resisted� toward the more vigorous assertion
of Poland's national interests within the Soviet bloc.
It is too early in Gierek's tenure and in the process of
his consolidation for him or for foreign observers to
speculate on what possible leverage vis -a -vis Moscow
Poland might eventually attain. Nevertheless, the
44
Soviet leadership's benevolent attitude toward Gierek
from the very beginning has contained some elements
of appeasement as well as being a genuine expression
of confidence in Gierek's ability to restore domestic
stability and protect Soviet int ^rests in Poland. This is
not to say that the Soviet commitment to Gierek is
ultimately any greater than it was to Gomulka;
indeed, the Soviet commitment appears to have been
always first to domestic stability in Poland and
compatibility of Polish and Soviet foreign policy, and
only then, by derivation, to a Polish leader who could
guarantee these conditions. While Gomulka fulfilled
these stipulations, he was treated as "first among
equals" in bloc councils and enjoyed bountiful Soviet
support; when he failed in December 1970, he found
himself abandoned by Moscow, whose support moved
to Gomulka's more capable successor. Since then,
Soviet trust in Gierek's ability to fulfill Moscow's
desiderata has been demonstrated by his inheritance
of Gomulka's mantle within the bloc. On the occasion
of the 50th anniversary of the Soviet Union in
December 1972, for example, Gierek was given pride
of place among other Warsaw Pact party leaders, all of
whom �with the exception of East Germany's
Honecker �are senior to him in tenure. Such
demonstrative Soviet gestures, however, are unlikely to
blind Gierek to the fact that Soviet trust, and the
expanded room for indigenous policy moves that
comes with it, remains contingent on the Soviet
assessment of the effectiveness of his stewardship of
the Polish state.
As is the case in all policy formulation, the
determination of foreign policy is the prerogative of
the Communist party Politburo. Policies that have a
direct bearing on the interests of other ruling
Communist parties are generally handled by the
appropriate section of the party's Secretariat. Other
aspects of policy, as all policy toward the non
Communist world, are implemented by the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs. Despite the existence of a
parliamentary committee of foreign affairs, there is no
true foreign policy debate in the Western sense, nor
does the governmental apparatus as a whole play a
role in the formulation of policy. As a result, the post
of Minister of Foreign Affairs in Poland has been
intrinsically no more important than is the case in
most other Communist countries. Whatever prestige
has accrued to the incumbent at any one time has
generally been the result of his being simultaneously a
member of the party Politburo rather than from his
ministerial portfolio. One possible exception was the
late Adam Rapacki, who headed the Foreign Ministry
from April 1956 to December 1968 and who gained a
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measure of international prestige because of his
sponsorship in 1957 -58 of the multifaceted "Rapacki
plan" for East -West disengagement in Europe, and
later for being the first (in December 1964) to broach
to the United Nations a proposal for a conference on
European security. Both the Gomulka and the Gierek
regimes have underscored the Polish origins of this
proposal which, though much modified and under
Soviet sponsorship in later years, seemed to be coming
to fruition in the early 1970's as the Conference on
Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). Rapacki
was succeeded by former economic planner Stefan
Jedrvehowski, a bland but able and responsive
individual who shepherded the ministry through the
negotiations on the Polish -West German treaty, and
who, to demonstrate continuity, was retained in that
post by Gierek until December 1971. The incumbent
since then has been Stefan Olszowski, a young,
ambitious, but personable conservative.
In 1971 the Polish diplomatic establishment under
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was in charge of
embassy level relations with 95 countries (including
the so- called Provisional Revolutionary Government
of South Vietnam). Poland, however, maintained
resident diplomatic missions in only two thirds (63) of
these countries; moreover, 13 of these resident missions
were headed by charges d'affaires. The relative
paucity of top foreign services staffing reflects in large
part reasons of economy and a reordering of priorities
in terms of foreign representation that took place in
the late 1960's and early 1970'x. This included the
closing of several resident embassies in the developing
countries, especially Africa. These reductions,
however, were partially offset by the staffing; needs in
those countries with which Poland succeeded, over the
same period of time, in establishing or reestablishing
diplomatic or consular relations. 'These include several
Latin American countries, Spain, and a number of
non- Communist nations in Southeast Asis �mast
prominently consular ties with Australia and New
Zealand. Poland is also one of the three Communist
countries �the others are Czechoslovakia and
Yugoslavia �that have maintained a resident military
mission in West Berlin since the end of World War I1.
a. U.S.S.R. and the Communist world
Despite the increasingly sophisticated nature of the
bonds between the U.S.S.R. and its Eastern European
allies� sophistication which should not be automati-
cally identified with relaxation �the basic identity of
Polish and Soviet foreign policies continues to be
conditioned by the similarity in world outlook, strong
ideological considerations, and by the social and
political goais shared by the Polish and Soviet
leaderships. Li tho Stalinist era, automatic subor-
dination of Warsaw to Moscow prevailed; under
Gomulka the factor of mutual consent and
compromise was introduced as a principle; under
Gierek this factor is dominant and growing.
Nevertheless, although permissible and perceptible
differences in emphasis and motive exist, and Poland
can, within a set framework, make indigenous foreign
policy initiatives as well as contribute to bloc policies
as a whole, both Gicrek and his Kremlin counterparts
realize that communism is in power in Poland despite
the popular will and not because of it and, as a result,
the present regime in Poland is ultimately a:;
dependent on the U.S.S.R. for its existence as was its
predecessor.
These fundamental political and ideological
imperatives constitute the basis of the bonds that
continue to tie Poland to the Soviet Union in an
unequal alliance, and are symbolized by Poland's
membership in the support of the Warsaw Pact, the
1955 collective security treaty which stands as the
formal political and military underpinning of the
system of Soviet alliances in Eastern Europe.
Poland's membership in the Warsaw Pact also
underscores its military ties to and dependence on the
Soviet Union, as well as the consequent absence of an
indigenous defense policy. The Polish armed forces
constitute the largest military establishment in Eastern
Europe after that of the Soviet Union, and they are
well organized and well trained, and are equipped
with Soviet and domestically produced weapons. They
are, however, logistically dependent on the Soviet
Union for extended and sustained operations. The
Chairman of the Council of Ministers (Premier) is
constitutionally vested with the general direction and
control of the military, but this and all other aspects of
national defense policy are determined in practice by
the top party leadership within the framework of its
political relations with the U.S.S.R. As a result, the
joint Palish- Soviet awareness of the importance of the
Polish armed forces to Soviet strategic interests in the
area and the basic identity of outlook by the Soviet
and Polish leaderships preclude any deviation in
Polish defense policy from the role assigned to it by the
U. S. S. R.
This is true despite the anomalous role of the regular
army units in the violence accompanying the
December 1970 workers' uprising along the Baltic
coast. When Gomulka reached his ill -fated decision to
fire on the striking workers, Defense Minister
Jaruzelski reportedly refused to relay the order, and
regular army troops (as distinct from militarized
45
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security components and the police) acted in a
relatively restrained manner. Whether this restraint,
which was subsequently highly publicized within the
framework of the military's loyalty to the precepts of
the party, was spontaneous and fortuitous, or whether
it was the result of timely knowledge of the Soviet
position, is still not clear. The fact remains, however,
that Moscow reportedly counseled compromise and
restraint� advice that Gomulka either did not hee(i or
received too late. In any event, the military's posture
was or appeared to be, fully in accord with that of the
Soviet Union and of the new regime in Poland. Soviet
troops stationed in Poland played no direct role in the
events of December 1970, apart from presumably
monitoring developments.
The presence of two Soviet divisions in Poland,
constituting the Northern Group of Forces (NGF), has
been justified over the years by the need of the
U.S.S.R. to maintain fines of communication with its
military establishment in East Germany_ and by the
general East -West military balance in Europe. The
Polish- Soviet Status of Forces Agreement of December
1956 provides the legal basis for the "temporary"
sta''.)ning of Soviet troops in Poland. Appointed
government plenipotentiaries theoretically are in
charge of conducting formal relations and resolving
potential disputes. Only once, in it Soviet declaration
of 30 October 19.36, were Soviet for,-as said to he in
Poland under Warsaw Pact auspices. The Status of
Forces Agreement refers neither to the Warsaw Pact
nor to any other treaties as forming the basis for the
Soviet military presence. A preliminary joint
communique of 18 November 1956, however, cited
the following reason for the Soviet presence: 1) the
existence of West German "militarism 2) West
German claims to Polish territory; and 3) support of
Soviet troops in East Germany. Whether the
conclusion of the Soviet and Polish treaties with West
Germany and the general spirit of detente in Europe
negate the first two points of this rationale is a moot
question since the third point remains operative.
Moreover, since the Potsdam Conference also justified
a Soviet military presence in Poland because of the
need to maintain lines of communication with Soviet
troops in East Germany the stationing of Soviet troops
in Poland retains four -power sanction so long as the
U.S.S.R. maintains a military establishment in East
Germany.
Just as Poland has been a strong supporter of the
Warsaw Pact for political and military reasons, it has
also sought. for economic reasons, to improve the
effectiveness of the Council for Economic Mutual
Assistance (CEMA), an organization which was
46
designed to stimulate Eastern European Soviet
economic cooperation and interdependence. Despite
CEMA's sluggishness and failings, Poland's member-
ship in the organization underscores the continuing
dependence of its economy on the U.S.S.R. and other
Communist countries for raw materials, markets, and
economic assistance. This has remained true
throughout the postwar period, despite the post -1956
cessation of the outright economic exploitation by the
Soviet ion that had been prevalent during the
Stalin era, the inability over the vears to satisfv the
technological requirements of Polish industry either
bilaterally or through CEMA, and the more recent
trend toward expansion of Poland's trade mainly for
technological reasons �with the developed non-
Communist countries.
Until the signing of the Polish -West German treaty
in December 1970 and its ratification in May 1972
there was also operative in the Polish Soviet
relationship another major factor, which cut across
political, economic, and military lines, hut, because its
essential element was psychological, was even more
pervasive. This was the realization of all postwar
Communist regimes, as well as of the population, that
the territorial integrity of the Polish state was totally
dependent on Soviet guarantees and good will.
Having lost some 70,000 square miles of territory to
the U.S.S.R. in the cast, Poland was compensated in
!945 with about 40,000 square miles of potentially
more valuable German territory in the west and north,
which the Potsdam Conference placed under
provisional Polish administration pending a final
peace settlement (Figure 12). This wholesale westward
LITHUANIA
'LATVIA''
former rier1r180
.1937)
(19371 I
aALTK SEA erritod s
KAU1 13 F
YI'nyus S
nsk.
)r
f
U.S.S.R.
.(1917).
ANNEXED
WARSAW
B
U. S. S. R. Y
CZECHOSLOVAKIA aka
L'VO9
(1937)
10 �I as d oww; raj
a. reuse 3937
Carard, HUNGARY
193( lat" At l IOOadary .r -rte
.1 ROMANIA
1 11937)
haat 1alalaallONl d POlaae (1937)
_1 -v
FIGURE 12. Prewar and 1972 boundaries of
Poland (U /OU)
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shift of the Polish state was Soviet sponsored, and the
U.S.S.R. remained for years �until 1959 when General
de Gaulle expressed French support for Poland �the
only great power participant in the Potsdam
Conference that supported Polish claims to the
permanent retention of the so- called Western, or
"Regained," Territories. Soviet support on this issue
was thus vital to any postwar Polish government, since
the state would have been neither politically nor
economically viable without the former German
territories.
Most importantly, however, the legally provisional
nature of nearly one -third of the postwar Polish state
nurtured profound psychological strains among the
people which were exploited by the Communist rulers.
The conclusion of the Polish -West German treaty�
whose border provisions are viewed as "final" by
Warsaw and, despite qualifications with regard to the
continuing four -power responsibilities for Germany as
a whole, have been welcomed by the West �has eased
these popular strains in Poland. The eventual impact
of the disappearance of this psychological factor on
Polish- Soviet relations and on Poland's role in Europe
is as yet difficult to gauge.
The fact that Gierek came to power with Soviet
support and not in the face of Soviet hostility �as did
Gomulka in 1956 �hi,s conditioned the Polish Soviet
relationship since December 1970. Although Moscow
neither engineered the change of regime nor dictated
the Polish party's decisions leading up to it, it publicly
supported Gierek within hours of Warsaw's
announcement of the change of leadership. Formal
endorsement of the new Polish team by the Soviet
leadership came during an inaugural trip by Gierek
and Premier Jaroszewicz to Moscow on 5 January 1971
(Figure 13). A month later, the U.S.S.R. extended
badly needed hard currency credits to the new Polish
regime, enabling the latter to rescind Gomulka's price
increases and quell i dangerous, second wave of strikes
that threatened to spread throughout the country.
Moscow's positive assessment of Gierek's ability to
handle the situation was subsequently reflected in
Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Brezhnev's
speech to the 24th Soviet Party Congress on 30 March
1971, when the Soviet leader expressed "deep
satisfaction that fraternal Poland has overcome the
difficulties which arose there." With public order and
regime control progressively restored in Poland,
Moscow's realistic appreciation of ierek's leadership
as probably the hest one under the circumstances
appeared to be vindicated. In December 1971,
Brezhnev made a personal appearance at the Sixth
Congress of the P'LPR to signify his approval of
FIGURE 13. Polish leaders' inaugural trip to Moscow,
5 January 1971. From left: Soviet party chief Leonid
Brezhnev, Edward Gierek, Sovi(.r Premier Aleksey
Kosygin, and Polish Premier Poitr Jaroszewicz. (U /OU)
Gierek's course. A year later, as noted, Gierek's status
as "first among equals" in Eastern Europe was
demonstrated by the Soviet leadership during the
observances of the 50th anniversary of the Soviet
Union in Moscow.
The Soviets stress on their noninvolvement in the
Polish crisis, their low -key handling of the change of
regime, and their subsequent quick public support
behavior which was undoubtedly in large part
conditioned by an unwillingness to risk derailing the
movement toward detente in Europe �did not mean,
however, that the Kremlin leaders embraced the new
Polish team� without reservations. Although both
Gierek and Jaroszewicz were known in Moscow and
were clearly acceptable. they were, after all, behaving
in unorthodox ways in Poland that Moscow could
hardly wish other Communist countries to emulate.
Statements by Soviet officials during the first months
of 1971 clearly showed that Moscow was anxiously
watching Gierek's evolving views on the role of the
party, on the party's relations with the people, and on
the role of Polish nationalism. The appointment in
March 1971 of a n. soviet ambassador to Poland,
Stanislav Pilatovich, a former secretary of the
Belorussian Party organization who reportedly knows
Polish, was probably at least in part designed to show
that Moscow wished to keep close touch with the
Polish situation. The Gierek regime's success in
overcoming Moscow's initial reserve probably was not
only it result of Polish concessions and mutual
compromises, but also of the character of the new
Polish leadership. Gierek's team appeared from the
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beginning to be more attuned to the present Soviet
leadership than Gomuika's group ever was, and thus
appeared to be in a better position to put relations
with the U.S.S.R. on a more equal footing. While
Gomulka has good rapport with Khrushchev, Gierek�
although he reportedly speaks Russian poorly-
probably finds it easier to reach an understanding with
Brezhnev. Both Gierek and Brezhnev belong to the
first postrevolutionary Communist generation, and
both tend to view the world as practical administrators
rather than doctrinaire ideologists.
The good relations which the Gierek regime
maintained with other Eastern European countries,
including Yugoslavia but exluding Albania, in early
1973 has a somewhvt more rocky beginning, and were
conditioned by Gomulka's sometimes intricate
maneuvering in Eastern Europe in the pursuit of what
he saw as the Polish national interest. Gomulka's
overriding concern for Communist unity was one
major reason for his early alarm at the installation of
the liberal regime of Alexander Dubeek in
Czechoslovakia in January 1968. Although internal
and important external reasons soon became the main
determinants of Gomulka's support for the August
1968 invasion, this support was suffused with some
reluctance to accept the full implications of the
Warsaw Pact action. Thus, while Gomulka stressed the
justification of the invasion as an act of safeguarding
the socialist community, his defense of the so- called
Brezhnev doctrine of "limited sovereignty" of socialist
states was lukewarm.
The fate of Czechoslovakia's "deviation" in 1968
probably vindicated in Gomulka's mind his own
longstanding views of Eastern European- Soviet
relations. These views were based on the belief that the
growing diversity of Eastern European national
interests and the established principle of internal party
autonomy should not be allowed to lead to needless
irritation o Moscow, preclude Soviet leadership of the
international Communist movement, and w gate the
U.S.S.R.'s role as the ultimate guarantor of the
Communist regimes of Eastern Europe. Even before
the Czechoslovak issue arose, Poland had shown pique
at Romania's apparent disregard of Soviet and Eastern
European interests in its independent moves toward
the West, which led in January 1967 to the
establishment of diplomatic relations with West
Germany. The Romanian move was made virtually
without preconditions, and set in train a series of Fast
German Polish- Soviet countermoves centering on the
conclusion of a series of new and renewed bilateral
treaties of friendship and mutual alliance among the
remaining Warsaw Pact members. These treaties were
48
designed primarily to insure that potential, piecemeal,
bilateral rapprochements between West Genranv and
individual Eastern European countries would not
undercut the vital interests of any of them or of the
area as a whole.
The "lesson" of Czechoslovakia came at what must
have seemed to Gomulka to be a propitious time for
reasons of foreign policy as well as for domestic
reasons. The hoped -for tightening of the anti- German
alliance by means of the treaties signed in 1967 had
not materialized. The net result was an unprecedented
Polish commitment to the inflexible demands of East
Germany, with the prospect that this virtual
identification of Polish with East German interests
would lead to their joint isolation in Eastern Europe.
It is singificant, therefore, that the invasion of
Czechoslovakia, a move supported for many of the
same reasons most strongly by Poland and East
Germany, should have ultimately resulted in a
deterioration of relations between the two regimes.
The long -term causes were disparate, but centered on
apparent East German overconfidence in the strength
of Poland's political commitment, and on the chronic
unwillingness of East Germany to cooperate
meaningfully with Poland iu the economic area. In
addition, serious frictions apparently arose over
Pankow's self- arrogated right to seek a dialog with
West Germany while denying the same right to its
Eastern European allies.
By contrast, Poland's efforts to shc;re up the image
of Eastern European solidarity in the postinvasion
period by improving relations with its rather allies bore
better fruit. Relations with Hungary party leader
Kadar, whose support of the invasion was most
reluctant, were fully repaired. Despite short -lived
polemics with Yugoslavia and Romania, the only
countries in the area who openly condemned the
invasion of Czechoslovakia, relations with both were
restored to an even keel by mid -1969. Finally, the
success of Polish efforts to cement relations with the
more orthodox Czechoslovak rf i.ne of Gustav Husak,
whom Gornulka had endorsed before Moscow had
fully done so, was symbolized by the sex, I political
and economic exchanges at the highest level which
took place in the late spring and summer of 1969.
Most of Poland's Eastern European allies were
gravely concerned over the turbulent December 1970
events that threatened to sha!ter the fragile stability
that was established in the area following the invasion
of Czechoslovakia. Moreover, noting the main lesson
of the Polish upheaval, i.e., that prolonged
indifference to public opinion can be fatal even to a
dictatorship, they feared the potentially unsettling
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impact of Poland's new policies on their own domestic
conditions. The East German regime of Walter
Ulbricht, for example, was deeply disturbed by the
riots in Poland, analyzed their causes, and attempted
to prevent a parallel situation from developing at
home. Similarly nervous reactions and furtive public
relations activity %vas noted among Romanian and
Bulgarian leaders. In Czechoslovakia dogmatists
among the leadership were particularly vocal in
alleging deep Soviet concern over the flow of events in
Poland, and, in the process, revealing their own. Only
in relatively prosperous Hungary were there few signs
of uneasiness.
Gierek took rapid steps to reassure his allies that
Polish foreign policy primarily loyalty to the Warsaw
Pact and 'o CEMA �would remain unchanged, and
that his domestic policies were neither as far removed
from the general reformist trend in Eastern Europe as
they seemed nor were the designed to serve as a
inodel for emulat;on elsewhere. Immediately after
coming to power Gierek sent leading members of his
new team to various Eastern European capitals to
establish contact with and brief the local Communist
leaders. He himself subsequently visited all the
countries concerned, beginning with East Germany
and Czechoslovakia and followed later by Hungary
and Bulgaria. Despite repeatedly scheduled visits to
Bucharest, as of Early 1973 Romania was the only one
among Poland's Eastern European allies that Gierek
had not visiteu. The need for solidarity with the
U.S.S.R. in expressing displeasure over Romania's
independent stance within bloc councils apparently
was the main reason. For example, Bucharest's
maverick stance in support of the interests of small
nations at the multilateral preparatory talks for a
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe,
held in late 1972 in Helsinki, apparently was the main
reason for ,vet another postponement of Gierek's visit
to Romania. Nevertheless, Poland's relations with
Romania have undergone marked improvement since
Gierek assumed power as the generally increased flow
of working -level delegations would attest. Outside the
Warsaw Pact, relations with Yugoslavia have
significantly improved, bolstered by the warm
welcome accorded to President '1; io when he visited
Warsaw in June 1972.
The focus of Gierek's Eastern European policy has
been on good relations with his immediate neighbors,
an emphasis that initially generated a better response
in Pankow than in Prague. Polish -East German
relations, which had been seriously strained under
Gomulka by the Polish policy of seeking reconciliation
with West Germany, seemed to improve� especially
in their economic aspects �even before Erich
Honecker replaced party leader Walter Ulbricht in
May 1971. Relations improved even further following
the Honecker leadership's decision to fall into line
with Moscow and the rest of the Warsaw Pact
countries on the issue of European detente. The new
atmosphere of friendliness was underscored in January
1972 by the decision to open the boundaries of the two
countries to tourist travel, as part of what were to have
been reciprocal agreements for such open visa -free
travel tietveen East Germany and Czechoslovakia,
and between East Germany and Poland. A PolisIL
Czechoslovak agreement on this score never came to
fruition. Czechoslovakia's unwillingness from the
beginning to permit its citizens to travel to the two
neighboring countries probably was caused by
political ass well as fiscal considerations.
Economic considerations, however, almost certainly
were the main reason for the reimposition of some
travel and currency restrictions ',y Poland and East
Germany in late 1972. Polish visitors to East Germany,
a total of some 9 million during the year (some 6
million East Germans visited Poland during the same
period), engaged in massive purchases of East German
consumer goods. This travel not only caused balance
of- payments difficulties, but also seemed to have
raised latent ethnic animosities in some areas of both
countries. When Premiers jaroszewicz and Stoph met
in November 1972 to review the situation, however,
they were quick to point out that permit -free travel
would not be abrogated, and they continued to hold
the program up as an example of intrabloc
cooperation.
Poland's policy toward Asian Communist states,
particularly China, has remained fully in line with
that of the U.S.S.R.; this results mainly from the
realization by Warsaw that overriding Soviet interests
are operative in this area, especially since the U.S.
opening to China and the bearing this has on the
process of U.S.- Soviet negotiations on wider issues of
detente. In the late 1950's and early 1960's, however,
Polish interest in China was more direct. Gomulka's
attempts after 1956 to help in maintaining at least a
facade of Communist ideological solidarity in the face
of growing polycentric tendencies included a stress on
the autonomous right of each party �by implication
also the Chinese Communist Party �to formulate its
own policies in accordance with its specific needs. This
helps to explain his initial 1956 flirtation with Peking
in search of support against Moscow (which soon
proved to be both futile and needless), as well as his
attempts beginning in 1960 first to mediate and later
to prevent the formalization of what he soon saw to be
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an irreconcilable breach between the U.S.S.R. and
China and between their respective allies. After 1965,
however, the increasing strains within the Communist
movement brought about in part by the Vietnam
conflict impelled Gomulka to give unequivocal and
vocal support to the Soviet position and to denounce
Peking's contribution to Communist disunity. He was
a keynote speaker in the burst of condemnation of
China by the Sovict Union's allies at the international
Communist meeting in Moscow in June 1969. Since
Gierek assumed power, Polish leaders, including
Gierek himself, have harshly denounced the Chinese
for splitting the international Communist movement,
and have ascribed devious anti- Soviet motives to
Peking for its positive responses to U.S. initiatives.
b. German policy
Poland's location between Germany and Russia has
not only conditioned the national consciousness of the
Polish people throuvh history, but has been the major
key to the foreign policy of the country. A country so
situated between powerful neighbors has a limited
number of options, and Poland has tried them all,
some more than once in combination. The first is to
ally itself with one of the neighboring powers against
the other, consenting to be used to a smaller or greater
degree in the larger ally's interests. The second option
is isolationism, a policy of total independence which
might suit it stronger and better situated state. The
leaders of interwar Poland, overimpressed with the
simultaneous collapse of the German and Russian
empires, attempted such a policy which ended in the
disaster of simultaneous occupation in 1939 by Nazi
Germany and Communist Russia. The third option,
which also played a role in the interwar policy, was to
seek an anchor in some third bloc or country. France
provided this alternative for much of the interwar
period. It is because postwar Polish leaders saw these
options as having failed to guarantee the security of
the Polish state that they have implemented a
combination of the first option� alliance with the
victorious Soviet Union �with a fourth option,
namely a search for a general and permanent
European settlement in which Poland's position
between Germany and Russia would become a mere
fact instead of a liability.
Since 1956, Polish diplomacy, whether under
Gomulka or under Gierek, has worked to this end.
Despite frequent pauses and setbacks in the 1960's, the
goal has been consistent: to .eek a general settlement
in central Europe which would remove Poland from
the field of East -West rivalry in which the Poles have
felt it would always play the role of a potential pawn.
R17
The specific proposals put forward were designed to
exclude, or postpone, the reunification of Germany; at
the same time these proposals generally have been
accompanied by separate approaches, on a bilateral
basis, to West Germany.
Like other Polish leaders conditioned by history,
Gomulka had a lingering distrust of the big powers,
including the U.S.S.R. The specter of another Soviet
German alliance at the expense of Poland was one of
the most important motives for Poland's efforts to
secure the central European status quo by means of
multilateral I'suropean security schemes guaranteed by
the major powers. Thus, beginning in 1957, Poland
introduced several versions of the Rapacki plan for
nuclear disengagement and later the Gomulka plan
for a nuclear freeze. Similarly, the concept of a
European security conference was originally
introduced by the Poles at the United Nations in 1964,
and reintroduced by the Soviet bloc as a whole after
the Warsaw Pact's Budapest Appeal of March 1969.
The failure of the West �in Polish eyes, especially
West Germany �to respond favorably to the Polish,
and later joint Polish- Soviet, proposals gradually led to
a stiffening of Warsaw's public posture and the
multiplication of conditions for the "normalization"
of the relations with Bonn.
A countervailing factor, however, was the general
unwillingness of Poland's Warsaw Pact allies to limit
their freedom of action by acceding to a common
policy toward Germany which gave seeming primacy
to Polish interests. Awareness of this problem led to an
early decision by Warsaw to supplement its various
miltilateral efforts by bilateral moves toward Bonn
designed to keep open channels of communication.'
Thus, the Poles in many respects led the way in
Eastern Europe for entering into a dialog with West
Germany. In 1963 they were the first, for example, to
conclude a bilateral trade treaty providing, among
other things, for the reciprocal exchange of trade
missions with the Federal Republic of Germany. Over
the years, West Germany became Poland's second
largest trading partner in Western Europe, after the
United Kingdom. Trade contacts with Bonn later
facilitated a sporadic but slowly increasing number of
contracts on political matters as well, often conducted
by private emissaries of both sides.
As early as February 1968 the Poles made
approaches to the head of the West German trade
mission in Warsaw, and exploratory talks ensued.
These talks were interrupted by Poland's intraparty
strife and the Czechoslovak crisis, but were resumed
early in 1969 on Polish initiative. At the same time, the
Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs reportedly prepared
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a series of policy papers on Germany, which included
contingency plans covering conditions for the
establishment of diplomatic relations. The Polish
press, too, began to present a revised view of West
Germany, characterized by a more complex and
differentiated analysis of West German political life
than the stereotypes of the past.
The ground was thus well prepared for Gomulka's
major initiative in a speech on 17 May 1969 when for
the first time he addressed himself publicly to the
German question in terms of Poland's minimum
instead of maximum negotiating position. The speech
led to a quickened pace of bilateral private and public
contacts. The first positive result was the initiation in
October 1969 of economic negotiations which, with
some interruptions, led to the signing in June 1970 of a
new 5 -year trade agreement.
Although elaborated and subjected to tactical
alterations in subsequent months, the core of the
Polish political position remained as stated by
Gomulka in his speech of Mav 1969. He then
reiterated Poland's new view of Germany possessed of
positive as well as negative forces, and proposed a
bilateral treaty, similar to that signed by Poland with
East Germany in 1950, through which the Federal
Republic would recognize in the "final" character of
the Oder Neisse frontier. The proposal was clearly
made with Soviet approval but bore no sign of a
coordinated Warsaw Pact move. Rather, it seemed to
reflect a new Soviet policy of permitting individual
Warsaw Pact countries to seek such settlements -f
selected, specific bilateral issues with West Germa iy
as would be satisfactory to themselves, while the
U.S.S.R. retained control of questions of common
interest.
Within this framework, Gomulka's proposal
represented simply the ultimate and genuine Polish
position vis -a -vis West Germany, stripped of its
hitherto accompanying ballast of East German
demands. It reflected the Polish desire that the
Government of the Federal Republic renounce all
claims to the territory east of the Oder- Neisse line
without reference to a future peace treaty, in language
clear and binding on itself as well as its successors, but
without undercutting East Germany �the only
Germany that borders on Poland. just as the Poles did
riot wish to undercut East Germany, neither did they
wish to violate the Potsdam Agreement which
awarded them the territories in question. On the
contrary, they wished the Potsdam signatories to
approve any agreement they reached with Bonn.
Gomulka speech found a positive response in a
formal proposal on 25 November 1969 by the newly
installed West German Government of Chancellor
Brandt to begin bilateral talks, and talks were initiated
in Warsaw on 5 February 1970. Both sides seemed to
realize from the beginning that the success of the
negotiations was largely dependent on simultaneous
West German talks with the Soviet Union, the then
incipient East -West German dialog, and the general
climate of relations between the superpowers in
Europe and elsewhere. Both sides were businesslike
and serious in exploring their objectives, the
limitations which bound them, and the possible areas
of compromise.
Polish leaders probably knew, as did those of West
Germany, that the problem of the Oder Neisse was
simple to state and difficult to resolve. For their part,
the Poles probably saw that they would have to be
satisfied with some form of de facto recognition of the
border which they themselves would be free to
proclaim de jure. Both sides were aware that if an
agreement in principle on this question could be
reached progress on other bilateral issues would follow.
These included the longstanding question of the Polish
regime's attitude toward the repatriation of the
remaining German minority in Poland and certain
categories of mutual restitution claims. The ultimate
establishment of diplomatic relations was understood
to stand at the end and not the beginning of the
negotiating process.
The negotiations on the treaty took place
alternately in Warsaw and in Bonn throughout 1970;
the negotiators were West German Under Secretary of
State Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz and Polish Deputy
Foreign Minister Jozef Winiewiez. A compromise
agreement on the crucial wording of Bonn's
acceptanc� of the Oder Neisse border was reached by
midyear, i.e., in advance of the initialing in August of
the West German- Soviet treaty. In November, a final
marathon negotiating session in Warsaw between
West German Foreign Minister Walter Scheel and his
Polish couterpart, Stefan Jedrychowski, led to the
initialing of the treaty on 18 November. Formal
signing of the document took place on 7 December
1970 during Chancellor Brandt's visit to Warsaw
(Figure 14).
When Gierek took office in Warsaw less than 2
weeks after the signing of the treaty, he allayed the
fears of some both at home and abroad by quickly
stating his commitment to bring the rapprochement
with West Germany to fruition. During 1971 the new
leadership continued active contacts with West
German representatives, welcoming to Warsaw not
only supporters of Chancellor Brandt but also several
ranking members of the opposition Christian
51
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FIGURE 14. Signing in Warsaw of
the Polish -West German treaty,
7 December 1970. From left,
seated: West German Foreign
Minister Walter Scheel, Chancellor
Willy Brandt, former Polish Pre-
mier Jozef Cyrankiewicz, and
former Foreign Minister Stefan
Jedrychowski. (U /OU)
Democratic Union, including the party's head, Rainer
Barzel. During the lengthy debate in Bonn over the
West German treaties with Poland and the U.S.S.R.
the Polish leadership reacted with relative restraint,
although the press did not conceal its apprehension
and occasionally lapsed into polemics. Meanwhile, in
line with an understanding technically separate from
but in reality intrinsically connected with the spirit of
the treaty, the Polish regime permitted the more rapid
repatriation of ethnic Germans from Poland �an
estimated 30,000 between December 1970 and mid
1972. Procedural, economic, and frequently tactical
considerations later reduced the number of expatriates
below West German hopes and expectations, but there
was no indication that the Polish regime was intent on
reneging in principle.
When in May 1972 the Soviet and Polish treaties
were finally ratified by the West German Bundestag
(parliament), Warsaw was quick to follow suit,
ratifying the Polish -West German treaty later the same
month and hailing it as a development that was
"opening new perspectives, even a new chapter, in the
postwar history of Europe." In this respect, there is a
significant difference between the Polish and Soviet
interpretations of West Germany's obligations under
the two respective treaties. While the U.S.S.R.
implicitly accepted the Bundestag resolution which
held that the treaties do not prejudice the ultimate
settlement of German boundaries at a peace
conference, Poland made it clear that it regards the
territorial provisions of its treaty with West Germany
as final. Indeed, the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs
(appointed December 1971), Stefan Olszowski,
explicitly stated before the Polish parliament in late
May 1972 that "all of the reservations of the unilateral
52
resolution of the Bundestag have no validity in
international law."
The ratification set in motion mutual moves toward
diplomatic ralations. On 5 June 1972 Polish Deputy
Foreign Minister Jozef Czyrek visited Bonn to
exchange ratification documents, and it was
announced that diplomatic relations would soon be
established by electing each country's established
trade mission to the status of embassy and by
appointing ambassadors. Following a delay, probably
as a result of Warsaw Pact pressures on Poland not to
get too far ahead of its allies (especially Pankow in its
negotiations with Bonn), formal diplomatic relations
were officially established on 14 September 1972
during Foreign Minister Olszowski's visit to Bonn
the first such visit by a Polish cabinet member to West
Germany in the postwar period. Ambassadors were
named in late October, and accredited in Warsaw and
Bonn on 7 and 8 November 1972, respectively.
c. The non Communist world
Immediately after taking power, the Gierek
leadership made it clear it would make more dynamic
utilization of the possibilities of the "new
international situation," in which Poland's alliance
with the Soviet Union and a policy of improved
relations with the West are not only compatible but
complementary. Indeed, a week after Gierek assumed
power an authoritative article in the Warsaw daily
Zycie Warszawy stated that:
"We are faced with a completely new situation in which
Poland's pro- Soviet course is no longer incompatible
with other international associations. At present, the
Polish- Soviet alliance is helpful to us in expanding
relations with other countries.... Our participation in
the socialist camp provides us with an opportunity to
reach a Polish- German reconciliation and to revive ties
with our traditional friends in the West"
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As rin other aspects of Gierek's foreign policy, the
new -found dynamism in seeking to expand and
improve relations with the non Communist world has
tended to obscure the basic factors of continuity and
the framework that Gierek inherited from his
predecessor. After 1956 Poland's role in presenting to
the West either indigenous or joint Warsaw Pact
initiatives such as the disarmament and European
security proposals provided Polish policymakers with
useful vehicles for increased diplomatic activity within
the non Communist world a, a whole. Although this
role in the international arena reflected the
predominantly European focus of Polish foreign
policy, often being viewed with justification as an
adjunct of its policy toward Germany, the Polish
regime also vocally supported such aspects of Soviet
foreign policy as "peaceful coexistence," general
disarmament, and other steps designed �in its view
to foster improved relations between the superpowers.
For example, on 3 May 1969 Poland became the first
Communist country whose parliament officially
ratified the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Polish
officials also privately indicated strong support for
U.S. Soviet strategic arms limitation talks and the
agreements reached in 1972, and for the continuation
of the negotiations.
Economic and cultural contacts with the West were
also maintained on a relatively high level throughout
most of the Gomulka period, albeit influenced by
internal as well as external political considerations,
and were welcomed by the Polish people. Largely
impelled by economic needs, Poland successfully
expanded its relations with most of the major Western
European countries, especially Italy, the United
Kingdom, and France. In the case of the latter, this
expansion was bolstered by the political factor of
French de facto recognition in 1959 of Poland's
western borders, a fact reiterated by former French
President de Gaulle during his visit to Poland in
September 1967. Poland negotiated significant long-
term trade agreements with France _aid Italy at the
end of 1969 and the beginning of 1970. Relations with
many of the smaller Western European members of
NATO were cultivated avidly, mainly on the basis of
what Poland believed to be their receptivity to its
various proposals for European security and
disarmament. Similarly based contacts have been
established and maintained with Europe's neutral
countries, especially Finland and Austria. In July 1969
Poland was the second Eastern European country,
after Romania, to take advantage of the Spanish
Government's willingness to supplement its existing
commerical ties with some Communist states by the
establishment of consular relations. Much of the
diplomatic activity by the Polish Government in 1969
was clearly an effort to reestablish some of the
momentum of its foreign policy prior to the internal
crisis of 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia,
events which seriously damaged Poland's image in the
international arena.
The Gierek regime has developed these established
and broad contacts with Western Europe with the
dual objective of expanding bilateral relations
especially economic �and paving the way for a
CSCE. Poland's relations with France, which had
chilled appreciably after 1968, significantly improved
and permitted an official visit to Paris by Gierek and
Foreign Minister Olszowski in early October 1972.
Warsaw viewed the visit, which included the signing
of a 10 -year agreement on cooperation in various
economic fields, as successful in political and cultural
terms as well. Relations with Italy were marked by the
signing in October 1971 of an agreement for the mass
production of small Fiat automobiles in Poland, and
in November of the same year a protocol guaranteed
long -term Italian credits for the project. In late 1971 a
Polish-U.K. venture for the joint production of
machine tools was agreed upon, and in mid -1972 a
major contract was negotiated with the British
Petroleum Company for participation in construction
of an oil refinery aF Gdansk.
Gierek has paid particular attention to expanding
Poland's traditionally close relations with the
Scandinavian countries. The Polish desire to broaden
contacts in all fields, but especially economic, was
perhaps symbolized in a tentative agreement with
Sweden which is to build a luxury hotel in Warsaw.
Political considerations, however, appear to have been
paramount in Poland's expanded ties with Finland,
which has been in close consultation with the Poles on
preparations for the CSCE. In early 1972 Warsaw
appointed a senior diplomat, former Deputy Foreign
Minister Adam Willman, as ambassador to Helsinki,
evidently already with an eye to the multilateral
preparatory talks on the conference which were held
there late that year. Polish views on European detente
and Warsaw's role in it also figured prominently in
Foreign Minister Olszowski's extensive travel in both
East and West during 1972. He visited Austria,
Norway, Romania, Bulgaria, and the U.S.S.R., and
later in the year he traveled to Bonn, Stockholm, and
the U.N. General Assembly �in addition to
accompanying Gierek to Paris. The idea of a CSCE
has also been vigorously promoted through numerous
informal contacts �such as discussions with foreign
diplomats, scholars and journalists �and through the
53
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airing of Western views on European problems in the
Polish press.
The Gierek regime has also continued the
established policy of active development of relations
with the non Communist developing countries
although never to the detriment of the predominantly
European focus of its foreign policy. Relations with
the developing countries, often accompa.ued by
sizable credits, have generally been governed by
considerations of economic advantage. Results for
Poland in this respect have been uneven, and
sometimes disappointing, and have caused some shifts
of emphasis. For example, in the early 1970's Poland
continued to redirect its interests from some African
countries to those of Latin America both in diplomatic
and economic terms.
Since Gierek came to power, reciprocal moves by
Warsaw and 1 4 1 ashington to bring about a thaw in the
generally cool climate that prevailed in U.S. Polish
relations during the last years of Gomulka's rule have
resulted in some of the most publicly visible,
significant, and popularly welcomed developments in
Polish foreign policy since December 1970. Here too,
Gierek's efforts were hindered as well as helped by the
legacy of the Gomulka era.
Poland and the United States have maintained full
diplomatic relations throughout the postwar period,
and after 1976 the Gomulka regime attempted to
expand those economic and cultural contacts which it
considered beneficial. This was true despite the wide
fluctuations in political relations which were
particularly marked during the peak of the Vietnam
conflict in the second half of the 1960's. In 1979
Poland and the United States agreed to the opening of
consulates in Poznan and Chicago. In December 1960
the United States restored the most- favored- nation
clause to bilateral trade with Poland, in part as a result
of the successful settlement of postwar U.S.
nationalization claims against the Polish Government.
Despite being periodically jeopardized by political
strains, the most favored- nation clause in large degree
helped Poland to achieve a favorable and rising
balance of trade with the United States. At the same
time it permitted Poland to maintain scheduled
repayments of sizable U.S. credits extended in the
decade following 19,.37. The bulk of these credits,
amounting to a total of about US$500 million, were
designated for the purchase of surplus U.S.
agricultural commodities, mainly grain. After long
negotiations, Poland agreed in April 1967 to the
utilization by the United States of a portion of the so-
called counterpart funds (Polish currency credited to
the United States and ultimately convertible into
54
dollars) for "mutually beneficial" projects in Poland.
Hopes for a future expansion of the relatively large
number of official and private exchange programs and
research projects operating between the two countries
were cut short by Polish indecisiveness and by the
general chill in relations that accompanied Poland's
internal crisis in 1968 as well as its participation in the
invasion of Czechoslovakia. The year 1968, coinciding
also with the peak U.S. involvement in the Vietnam
conflict, was thus one of particularly strained U.S.
Polish relations, especially on the working level.
During 1969, Poland's deliberate diplomatic efforts
to improve political and economic relations with the
West resulted also in Polish efforts to improve the
climate of relations with the United States. Working
level contacts improved, and by midyear Polish
officials, projecting a new appearance of reasonable-
ness and confidence, expressed belief that the time was
ripe for a major improvement of relations with the
United States. In May the regime r ^sponded to a
similar U.S. move 2 years earlier by partially lifting
restrictions on the travel of U.S. diplomatic personnel
in Poland. These restrictions were imposed in 1964 in
retaliation for restriction on Communist diplomatic
movements in the United States instituted in late
1963. Some progress subsequently was achieved in
settling or reaching tentative agreement on a number
of political and economic issues which had long been
irritants to mutual relations. The long- stalled
negotiations for a consular agreement were reopened,
and some specific questions in the area of Polish
indebtedness were resolved. Some relative progress also
was made in the area of cultural contacts, although
cultural exchanges remained about 40% below the
1966 level. Hinting that the Polish decision to
modernize its industry could involve significant
purchases in the United States as well as other Western
countries, Polish officials again privately urged the
United States to ease its credit policy to help Poland
finance the modernization of its obsolescent postwar,
Soviet equipped steel and petrochemical industries.
Not surprisingly, Gierek's first moves with regard to
Polish -U.S. relations centered on the economic sphere.
Warsaw's interest in developing commercial and
technical cooperation with the United States was
emphasized by reports in early 1971 that the regime
intended to appoint a leading economist, Witold
Trampezynski �a veteran of both the Ministry of
Foreign Trade and the State Planning Commission
as ambassador to Washington. (Because Trampezyn-
ski's expertise was needed in Warsaw, this
appointment was not formally announced until
October 1971.) Shortly thereafter, two high level
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Polish economic delegations, lore headed by the
Minister of Chemical Industry and the other by the
Chairman of the Committee on Science and
Technology, visited the United States. In June, Gierek
and Premier Jaroszewiez, paying a visit to the
American pavilion at the annual Poznan international
trade fair, expressed an interest in increased trade and
in gaining access to U.S. technological know -how. The
swift and positive U.S. response to these overtures was
received warmly in Warsaw. In August 1971 the
United States granted a request originally made by the
former Gomulka regime for an export license allowing
Poland to purchase a catalytic cracking plant, a key
element in Poland's plans to expand its petrochemical
industry; in October a credit was made available for
the purchase of U.S. agricultural products; in
November the then U.S. Secretary of Transportation
John Volpe visited Warsaw to sign an agreement on
cooperation in research on transportation problems;
and in December the then U.S. Secretary of
Commerce Maurice Starts went to Warsaw to explore
further the prospects for expanding mutual trade.
By early 1972 the new Polish leadership saw the way
clear for more dramatic steps. In it foreign policy
assessment before parliament in March Premier
Jaroszewicz publicly welcomed the "interest of the
United States in expanding economic, scientific, and
technical relations" with Poland. Less than a month
after the installation of the new Polish Government
following the elections of 19 `larch, the Polish
ambassador in Washington extviided all Invitation to
President Nixon to visit Poland, resulting in the
President's stopover in Warsaw out 31 May ant' t June
on his return from the summit meeting with oviet
leaders in Mosoutt
The official wrepAsou ue�Wod ll-,t President was
well in keeping with the grs-taty improved climate of
mutual relations (Figure 15). The offical communique
after President Nixon's two meetings with Polish
leaders acknowledged continuing differences, but
recorded significant agreement on a multitude of
issues. Notably, it cited agreement on the setting up of
an institutionalized framework for holding regular
bilateral consultations on trade and scientific
cooperation, increased personal contacts, and steps to
establish reciprocal air and sea connections. The long
stalled consular agreement was signed on 31 May,
paving the way, among the other things, to the
reciprocal establishment of new consular missions in
New York and Krakow, respectively. In it matter of
crucial interest to Poland, the communique placed the
United States on record as welcoming the treaty
between Poland and !Vest Germany "including its
border provisions" �and as endorsing the Polish view
on early multilateral consultations to prepare for a
CSCE.
The Polish regime showed undisguised pleasure at
the results of the visit, seeing it as having enhanced the
prestige of the Gierek leadership both at home and
abroad; the press, for example, stressed President
Nixon's invitation to Polish leaders to visit the United
States. More broadly, the visit was publicly hailed in
the media as the beginning of a "new chapter" in
Polish -U.S. r �lations, while giving appropriate credit
to the Moscow summit for having made this possible.
Most revealing of the Gierek regime's thinking,
however, was a press assessment which viewed the visit
as demonstrating that the role of Poland and other
"middle powers" on the international scene would
increase proportionately to the progress of detente in
East -West relations. In bilateral terms, the visit
opened even further the door to a wide range of
cooperative endeavors. "['his was reflected in the
conclusion on 30 October 1972 of it bilateral
agreement on scientific and technological coopera-
tion, and on 8 November of it wide- ranging trade
agreement which was expected to triple bilateral trade
by the second half of the 1970's.
d. International organizations
Poland has been a member of the United Nations
since October 1943. In 19.56 it rejoined a number of
specialized U.N. agencies from which, like other
Communist countries, it had withdrawn at the
outbreak of the Korean conflict. The International
Monetary Fund and the International Bank for
Reconstruction and Development are the only major
55
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FIGURE 15. President Nixon receiving a souvenir copy
of the Polish party daily Trybuna Ludu from Gierek
during talks in Warsaw, 31 May -1 June 1972 (U /OU)

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U.N. specialized agencies in whit�h Poland does not
have membership. Poland is a member of the U.N.
Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission for Korea. It
was also one of the three members� together with
Canada and India �of the International Control
Commission in Indochina, commonly known as the
ICC. This body, after years of ineffectiveness and
controversy, showed signs of passing out of existence
with the conclusion of the Vietnam cease -fire
agreement on 27 January 1973. At that time, Poland
became one of the four members (together with
Canada, Indonesia, and Hungary) of a new
International Commission of Control and Supervision
created to oversee the cease -fire.
In 1972 Poland's role in the United Nations was
highlighted by the election of Polish Deputy Foreign
Minister, Stanislaw Trepczynski, to the presidency of
the regular fall session of the General Assembly.
Trepczynski's competent and suave performance in
this post was generally assessed as having enhanced
Poland's image in the international organization. In
addition, Poland in 1972 was a member (until 1974) of
the Economic and Social Council, and a ranking
Polish jurist (whose term expires in 1976) was one of
the 15 members of the International Court of Justice.
Even more clearly than elsewhere. Poland's policy in
the United Nations has consistent,y followed that of
the Soviet Union and its other Communist allies. In
line with the general thrust of Poland's diplomacy over
the years, it has played a major role in behalf of the
Soviet bloc's disarmament and arms limitation
proposals and in pressing such aspects of Soviet
sponsored measures toward detente as have been
presented before the United Nations.
Poland has also sought expanded contacts with or
formal membership in non -U.N. Western, primarily
economic, organizations. On IS October 1967 Warsaw
succeeded in its long efforts to gain full membership in
the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT),
of which it had been an associate member since 1961.
Like some other Eastern European Communist
nations, Poland has dealt repeatedly although
informally with offices of the European Community.
E. Threats to government stability (S)
1. Discontent and dissidence
Coming to power on the heels of a working class
revolt against a regime theoretically representing the
"dictatorship of the proletariat," the Polish leaders of
the early 1970's are more aware than any of their
postwar predecessors of the limitations of their
56
doctrine, and, above all, of the limits of popular
'Olerance toward a dictatorship indifferent to public
opinion. This awareness probably is the Gierek
regime's strongest asset; if the leadership maintains its
apparently strong dedication to further reducing the
gap between the rulers and the ruled, it could achieve
a more broadly based stability while avoiding the
pitfalls of its immediate predecessor.
Given the circumstances under which Gierek came
to power, when the country was, in his own words, "on
the brink of civil war," his policies appear to have
achieved a remarkable degree of success. The
emergency stopgap measures taken to deal with the
immediate crisis proved effective. Subsequent moves
toward instituting longer range reforms have gone far
toward overcoming the apathy and stagnation of the
last years of the Gomulka era and in instilling a new
sense of direction in the people.
Nevertheless, Gierek's credit with the population
undoubtedly is not unlimited, and the ultimate
stability of his regime depends on his maintaining
momentum toward the implementation of an
effective, long -range program of reform. Indeed, the
main danger to stability is the possibility that sooner or
later the regime may become less cohesive and more
rigid in its thinking, and that material conditions will
not continue steadily to improve. In this regard, Polish
public opinion could be divided into three fluid and
sometimes overlapping segments. The first and most
prevalent view apparently is that Gierek will coniinue
to take effective steps to deal with the country's long
range problems, and will ultimately succeed. A second
segment, while also trusting the basic motives of the
new leadership, feels that Gierek as unlikely to succeed
in view of the magnitude of the difficulties that face
Poland over the long term. Finally, a third segment
simply appears to have no confidence in the new
regime, believing that once it has fully consolidated its
power it will revert, whether by design or unwillingly,
to the inertia of the later Gomulka period. Notably
younger people apparently display much more
confidence in Gierek's prospects than older persons.
The divergent trends in public opinion contain
elements that are at once conducive and inimical to
change in Poland, and thus to the long -term stability
of the regime. The existance of widespread confidence
in the Gierek regime generated by expectations of real
economic progress is a factor that not only induces the
regime to maintain its momentum and to fulfill its
pledges, but also contributes to increased productivity
and efficiency at all levels �the keys to the success of
the reforms. By contrast, however, the fact that
popular expectations almost certainly exceed the
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regime's ability to fulfill them creates a potentially
destabilizing situation. The people, especially the
older generation, are still disappointed by what they
regard as Gomulka's betrayal of the promises of 1956,
and may adopt an attitude which considers any
slackening of Gierek's course as an abandonment of
his entire program. Such skepticism could lead to a
self- accelerating shirking of efforts, and endanger the
very reforms that all of the people seem to want. In
short, Gierek's chances of succeeding are necessarily
dependent on maintaining a psychological climate
conducive to a high degree of broadly based popular
support.
In this respect, Gierek has been at the head of
regime spokesmen who have repeatedly pointed out
that they mean to remedy the mistakes of the past.
They have stressed that it is not so much the lack of
material or moral resources in the country but rather
the inability of former leaders to exploit them which
has been responsible for the stagnation of Poland's
social and economic conditions. At the same time,
they have emphasized that while the quality of
political leadership is all important, it is the work ethic
and the energy of the people that ultimately
determine the success of that leadership. At the partv
conference in January 1973, Gierek and other leaders
summed up their view by saying that alongside the
"creative unrest" and "constructive dissatisfaction"
which they welcome, there must also be among the
people a "patriotic feeling of responsibility for honest
toil.
In viewing the regimes own prospects for stability,
its leaders must recognize that the main key is the
future performance of the economy, with the attitudes
of both labor and management as the most important
elements. The regime is placing the most competent
people at all levels of economic management
regardless of party membership; at the same time it
must overcome the strong resistance of the middle and
lower echelon., of the bureaucracy �not all of which
has been, or could be, purged �to the adoption of
such new criteria. One of the main threats to regime
stability, therefore, continues to be the existence to
powerful vested interests in the political and economic
bureaucracy who feel that passive resistance to
Gierek's reforms will permit them to outlast even this
latest threat to their sinecures.
Most educated Poles ultimately are brought face to
face with the fundamental question of whether or not
the Gierek regime will be predisposed to expand the
limits of political freedom in Poland; and, if so,
whether this will enhance or detract from the prospects
for stability. The Gierek regime has so far trod very
carefully in the arena, certainly taking no irreversible
steps. Among the main factors that inhibit the regime
from taking positive and decisive measures to increase
political freedoms is Gierek's inherent caution in
assessing the degree of economic and political change
in the system that Moscow will tolerate. The fate of
the Czechoslovak heresy, which was rooted in the sin
of political spontaneity, is an ever present lesson.
More recently, the Soviet criticism of Hungarian
economic reforms must also make the Poles wary.
Moscow's concern that the gradual Western
acceptance of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe will
weaken the ideological justification for it may be
another reason why any meaningful overhaul of the
political system in Poland is unlikely. An ancillary
factor inhibiting change in this area is the very success
of the Gierek leadership in gaining its present degree of
stability. Despite the marked difference in outlook
between the new leaders and those of the Gomulka
regime, there is probably a strong tendency among
them, as in any totalitarian regime, to view internal
stability as a mandate to disregard public opinion.
Moreover, the Communist system, with its inherent
tendency toward inertia, is one to which the present
leaders �no less then their predecessors�are wed; i.e.,
the desire of the party to protect its power is, as it has
been in the past, the main inhibitor of political reform.
Finally, there is the issue of the "proper" degree of
popular pressure on the regime, and its relation to that
kind of stability which would enhance and not inhibit
chances for reform. Too little pressure could generate
overconfidence in the leadership and produce a
regression toward the former inertia. Too much
pressure could raise anew the specter of a loss of party
control, possibly bringing about a situation in which
the use of force �by the Polish regime itself and /or the
Soviet Union �would become the only recourse.
On balance, the Gierek leadership probably feels
that the second of these possibilities is remote, despite
the vestiges of militancy among the working class and
the regime's own measured encouragement of
"creative unrest." Not only are the Polish masses, after
a generation of Communist rule, psychologically
handicapped when facing a determined and cohesive
leadership (by December 1970 Gomulka's group had
possessed neither of these characteristics), but the
political realism of a great number of the Polish people
also inhibits them from exerting what they would now
regard as counterproductive pressure. Whether thii-
political realism and resultant restraint will continue
to be an important factor of stability remains to 1w
seen. The new generation that will gradually become
dominant during the 1980's could well fall under the
77
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influence of a new psychological climate born of East
West detente and, if this materializes, lose sight of
such constraints as are nriw O on Polish leaders
and are likely to continue Ai 0W jr
2. Subversion
Except for the immediate kitilll,ll 1 ,.rj/ 1. a the
advent of Communist rule was retie 'ety of
active subversive networks, there have known
subversive organizations operating in 'Poland on a
national scale. The rapid decline in subversive activity
by the early 1950's was primarily a result of the
effective terror tactics used by the Communist regime.
Gradually, however, the main reason for the absence
of active subversion has become the enhanced
political realism of the Polish people which has created
a climate inhibiting the formation of organized
subversive organizations intent on a violent overthrow
of the regime. No organized subversive activity was
involved in the two instances of postwar social,
economic and political change �those of 1956 and
1970 �both of which were characterized by
spontaneous outbursts of repressed popular grievances,
but neither of which was essentially subversive in
intent.
This situation contrasts significantly with that of the
immediate postwar period, when Poland was the only
country in Eastern Europe where Communist rule was
for a time effectively resisted by fe *-'e of arms and by
subversion, accompa:: ;ed by ctF"* Western help.
Initially, this stemmed not ott, I �,m the anti
Communist, anti- Russian, strongly individualistic,
and religious attitudes of the people, but also from the
predisposition of most Poles to regard themselves as
part of the West. Circumstances surrounding the
outbreak of World War II and the subsequent
occupation of the eastern half of the country by the
U.S.S.R. strengthened these attitudes, and wartime
underground resistance against Nazi rule was
predominantly Western- oriented.
Until 1918, open combat between armed non
Communist partisan bands and the regimes's forces
prevailed in many areas of the country. Thereafter,
consolidation of Communist political power, skillful
Communist penetration of the subversive networks,
unit a series of amnesties combined to liquidate armed
resistance. The noncombatant subversive networks
which supplemented the armed pups persisted for
ral ears, but by H''i tg"t' l "I"t' loss of
el l. ness of the L +elan- 1�t4ttl ht hxh (:o ehment-
in- exile, lax securih and the' uhxetev of ommon
operational guidane contributed to the diappear
ance of these netwokh,
58
Under the post -1956 Gomulka regime, the rapidly
tightened internal discipline and the fading away of
the liberal atmosphere that characterized the regime's
first months in power combined to create both
dissidence on the one hand and apathy and fear on the
other. Dissent, however, was generally concentrated
within small and generally ineffective groups
advocating often contradictory remedies, and factors
making for dissent were outweighed by the people's
political realism, general public apathy, and the
increased effectiveness of the police apparatus. Thus,
although there were a variety of elements within the
Polish population which could serve as the basis for
subversive activity if united in a popular cause, their
internal lack of cohesion and organization together
with the popular conviction that nationwide
subversive activity would have no chance of success
prevented these elements from constituting a
meaningful threat to Communist rule.
Small, localized groupings of articulate individuals
that existed on both sides of the political spectrum
were most often not even subversive in intent, but the
Gomulka regime portrayed them as such for political
and propaganda reasons. For example, the regime's
raising in 1968 of the straw man of a "Zionist,
revisionist conspiracy" had no basis in fact, being
merely a public propaganda cloak behind which a
factional struggle within the party took place. Because
of the chronic internal disunity of the Gomulka
regime, the greatest potential for serious "subversive"
activity in fact rested within the party itself.
Disappointing economic conditions, growing
restrictions on personal expression, bureaucratic
corruption, and policy stagnation had over the years
engendered the existence of small, semisecret groups
among university students devoted to an often overt
spread of philosophically idealistic but generally
"democratic" alternatives to the Communist system.
Probably few if any of these groups survived the
regime's countermeasures following the student
demonstrations of March 1968 and the invasion of
Czechoslovakia in August that year.
There is no hard evidence that pilm ottlaet with
students in Czechoslovakia or elsewhere played a
major role in sparking the 1968 unrest in Poland,
although during the initial stages of the student
demonstrations clear support was shown for the then
newly installed liberal regime in Prague. There is also
little to suggest that interest among Polish students in
various Western student movements had a significant
influence on the course of the ferment in Poland.
In late 1968 the number of alleged student leaders
of the March unrest still awaiting trial was augmented
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by additional students and youth charged with
sporadic protests against the invasion of Czecho-
slovakia that August. One group of these was tried
and sentenced in October 1969 for distributing leaflets
protesting Polish participation in the invasion. In
February 1970 the Gomulka regime brought to trial a
related and allegedly major group of young people
accused of smuggling subversive material from
Czechoslovakia into Poland, passing these and other
materials to Polish emigree organizations in Paris,
working on behalf of "foreign intelligence," and
finally, of preparing a "plot" to overthrow the Polish
Government. There is no evidence, however, that
more than smugglb g and disseminating of proliberal
and antiregime pulr ications was involved in this case.
The Polish regimes blatant escalation of the charges
against the group, the wide propaganda exploitation
of the open trial, and the relatively lenient sentences
all suggested that the major function of the trial was to
provide an opportunity for a propaganda barrage
against alleged Western "centers of intelligence
activity against Poland" and to further intimidate the
Polish public.
There appeared to be a similar propaganda intent in
the publicity surrounding the occasional arrest and
trials of persons charged with serving Western
intelligence organizations. These alleged spies were
never said to operate as part of a widespread network,
nor was it said that they were members of an
underground organization. The press unually stressed
their individual recruitment, deliberately leaving the
impression that material gain and not anti
Communist sentiment was the main motive for
espionage. These cases invariably were used to
underscore other official propaganda designed to
increase popular "vigilance" against Western
intelligence afforts in the country.
Since the Gierek regime came to power in December
1970, the party's and the government's more open
style of rule, encouragement of "constructive dissent"
by the people, and the eased political and social
climate in the country have further reduced the
potential for subversive activity. More simply, the
Gierek regime's willingness to provide legitimate
political and social channels for the controlled
articulation of dissent has reduced the need of its
critics to organize clandestinely.
At the same time, however, the new leadership has
made it abundantly clear that it remains just as
intolerant and just as watchful of activity aimed at the
primacy of the party, the Communist system, or
Poland's alliance with the Soviet Union as was its
predecessor. Moreover, the regime's clear willingness
to continue taking its lead from Moscow in terms of
bloc -wide campaigns against "ideological penetra-
tion" by the West has been demonstrated. This has
been especially true with regard to the Soviet
campaign for vigilance that has paralleled the
momentum toward detente in Europe. While Polish
official echoes of this campaign have been weak and
pro forma compared with Moscow's exhortations, fe v
Poles doubt that a full -scale "vigilance' campaign
could be mounted at any time in conformity with
Soviet desiderata.
The danger of subversion from elements favoring
the Chinese Communist ideological position has
always been minimal both within the Polish party and
among the people in general. In early 1966, however,
China working through its sole European ally,
Albania� initiated a propaganda campaign designed
to exploit the sentiments of the remnants of Gomulka's
Stalinist opponents. This campaign was facilitated by
the defection in February 1966 of formerly prominent
Polish Stalinist Kazimierz Mijal to Albania. Since that
year, Mijal's activities have centered on anti Gomulka
(later anti Gierek) and anti Soviet broadcasts beamed
to Poland by Radio Tirana. These broadcasts generally
attack the "revisionist, neocapitalist clique" that has
allegedly ruled Poland since 1956, making apparently
no distinction in its value judgments between
Gomulka and his successor. In early 1966, Mijal also
extolled the alleged formation in Poland of a so- called
"Provisional Central Committee of the Polish
Communist Party" and of numerous "cells" of its pro
Chinese Communist adherents.
Although Mijal's activities were evidently designed
at most to cause embarrassment for the Polish regime,
Gomulka demonstrated little serious concern over the
impact of this propaganda and Gierek has shown
none. The new Polish leadership is probably aware
that, while receptiveness to criticism of some of its
po;icies remains, the essentially Stalinist remedies
advocated by Mijal are unlikely to find fruitful
ground among the population. In the lute 1960's some
pro Chinese, anti- Gomulka and anti- Soviet printed
propaganda reportr..dly was disseminated in Poland
probably through the Chinese and Albanian embassies
in Warsaw �but there is no evidence that organized
groups of Mijal's supporters actually were operating
within the county at any time. In general, therefore,
these developments can be viewed more as a
propaganda facet of the Sino Soviet dispute than as
actual subversion. Broadcasts similar to Mijal's have
in fact been beamed by Radio Tirana to the U.S.S.R
and to all other Eastern European regimes with the
exception of Romania. These broadcasts have also
59
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hailed the alleged formation of similar "clandestine,
truly Marxist- Leninist" parties in most of these
countries.
F. Maintenance of internal security W
1. Police
The regular, blue uniformed police, called the
Citizens Militia (MO), is responsible for the
maintenance of normal public order and safety,
including traffic control. Although theoretically the
MO is at the service of, and in practice indeed
cooperates closely with, the executive units of local
government organs in both urban and rural areas, it is
in fact a unified, national, and closely centralized
police force under the direct operational control of the
Ministry of Internal Affairs (MSW). The MO
generally, but not always, patrols in pairs, whether on
foot or in vehicles, and is normally armed with side-
arms. In times of civil disturbance, truncheons,
helmets, submachinegtins, and teargas are among the
equipment available.
The MO is functionally and organizationally a
component of Poland's integrated internal security
and intelligence system, whose broad functions are the
protection of state and party power and the collection
of foreign intelligence to serve Polish and Soviet
interests. The entire system has been modeled on the
Soviet pattern in purpose, organization, and
techniques, although several organizational variations
were introduced after 1956 and in 1965. The MO is a
component of that part of the system which is
subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs; this
group of services is charged with the peacetime
security of the state in both its domestic and foreign
aspects and with foreign political, economic, and
scientific technical intelligence. Services under the
control of the Ministry of National Defense (MON)
are responsible for military intelligence, for security
within the armed forces, and for broad rear area
defense including population control and the
security of key installations� during time of crisis or
war. At such times, as in December 1970, both the
services under the MON and the MSW are brought
into coordination. Thus the MO is merely the most
publicly visible component of the regime's system for
Public order and security of the state.
Although piecemeal improvements in the efficiency
and facilities of the MO were noted after 1957, more
significant measures to strengthen the organization
were particularly evident after 1965. These gains
included an increase in wages and salaries, especially
60
for the lowest paid policemen, increased educational
qualifications, and a recruitment campaign among
reservists leaving the regular armed forces. Crimino-
logical facilities, which are generally pooled by the
MO and the secret police, also were improved.
Organizationally, a new plainclothes detective service
was formed within MO units in the larger cities, with
plans for eventual expansion throughout the country.
This element evidently was created in part to free the
secret police from conducting detective work and
investigations in routine, nonpolitical cases. In
addition, special MO units, the so- called Frontier
Service, were created to perform customs control at
frontic entry and exit points.
The secret police, or the Security Service (SB),
remains the most important and most powerful arm of
the regime's security and intelligence apparatus. Since
1956 the SB has been theoretically subordinate to the
MO commands on the local level in the performance
of its internal security functions. Although the SB
functionally cooperates with the MO, its organiza-
tional links to the MO are tenuous at best. Only
slightly camouflaged, the SB is the successor to the U B
(Security Bureau), the main agency of police terror
that existed before 1956, and is sometimes informally
called by its former name or called Bezpieka
(Security), which was also the nickname of the UB.
Except for a period from late 1954 until late 1956, it
has remained, in practice, an autonomous service
within the Ministry of internal Affairs. It is
responsible, as in them pp't- qua gonmilitary foreign
intelligence aril' co l ence, domestic
political secuily and countv-,pionage, and
surveillance of foeioAers.
The Voluntee Re_cerve of t1 011Y11M Militia
(ORMO) contitllt`\ M b an imporhild III1011im of the
MO. Its officitllx ctimt'tl tlttt11111 IN .1:970 was
379,400. Accord%, h,, IIIe II II� i,mic 1967, control
over the activities of ORMU is vested in the executive
bodies of local government organs, although close
operational coordination with local MO units is
maintained. The organization, whose members are
distinguished by a red armband bearing the letters
ORMO in white, is in effe( regular police reserve
whose core consists of former police informers, and
includes citizens frequently pressured into s- rvice. As
such, it is highly unpopular.
A thriving adjunct of police terror during the
Stalinist period, ORMO steadily declined in numbers
after 1956, reaching a low point of some 99,000
members in 1960. Thereafter, however, the regime has
stressed its changed role in the support of "socialist
justice" and the need for its revitalization because of
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the rising incidence of hooliganism, economic crimes,
and "social indiscipline." The law of June 1967
evidently was designed to transform ORMO into an
"independent social organization" and improve its
public image by disassociating it from the general
police apparatus of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Nevertheless, the role played by the hard core of
ORMO's thugs during various crises, including
participation in some of the instances of brutality
during the workers' riots of December 1970, has
hindered official efforts to give this organization a
better public image.
No reliable figures on the strength of the MO are
available, in keeping with the various degrees of
public secrecy surrounding the security apparatus as a
whole. The entire Ministry of Internal Affairs,
excluding ORMO elements, reportedly employs close
to 200,000 persons. The SB (UB) components are
estimated to number about 23,000, and the strength of
the regular police is estimated at about 100,000
uniformed militiamen.
The responsibility of the Ministry of Internal Affairs
for law enforcement brings it into ecntact with all
other governmental agencies. In addition, the ministry
is responsible for "assisting" local government
organizations. At this level, close contact exists
between the MO, especially the local component of
the SB, and the appropriate commissions of the local
people's council. It also centrally administers all vital
statistics, issues and controls personal identity
documents, investigates and passes on applicants for
passports for foreign travel as well as visas for visitors,
and conducts mail censorship, wiretapping, and other
physical means of surveillance. These activities
necessarily call for close coordination with other
central government agencies on a continuing basis.
The attitudes of the public toward the MO have
most often been only a facet of attitudes toward the
entire apparatus of internal security and, by
derivation, the political forces which it served. These
general attitudes thus fluctuated from fear, -uspicion,
and hate during the pre -1956 period, to plea ure over
the apparent weakening of the system dui ng the
initial months of Gomulka's rule. As the security
forces �the MO included� regained their power, the
average citizen again became highly resentful of their
ubiquitous nature and their practices, which were
characterized by arbitrariness and intimidation.
Nevertheless, many P(,les� especially the edu-
cated �have tended to differentiate between the MO
and the rest of the security apparatus, which they view
as being far more culpable for the excesses of the past
and more symbolic of the potential for repression that
rests in the hands of the regime. Moreover, they tend
to understand that members of the MO, being
inevitably in the "frontlines" of any violent or
potentially violent confrontation between the people
and the regime, would likely be motivated in their
action as much by fe:.r of an aroused populace as by
loyalty to their commanders. For example, popular
resentment against what was acknowledged police
brutality during the riots of December 1970 has been
tempered in some quarters by the passage of time and
by the realization that because the MO was first on
the scene its members were also among the first
casualties of the violence These considerations,
however, do not obscure the widespread resentment,
especially among workers, of the role of the MO �in
conjunction with the militarized security units �in
December 1970. This legacy helps in parts to explain
the relatively intensive public relations campaign
subsequently employed by the Gierek regime to
refurbish the image of the police. This campaign has
sought to stress the normal responsibilities of the MO
for public order and for crime fighting. Combined
with a campaign to foster a new sense of police
community relations, this approach has had some
success in differentiating in the public mind between
those elements of the security apparatus which are
viewed as repressive of the people as a whole, and
those �like the MO �who are charged with protecting
the population against crime and politically
unmotivated antisocial behavior.
2. Countersubversive and counterinsurgency
measures and capabilities
The internal security forces of the country are well
trained, adequately equipped, and sufficiently loyal to
the precepts of state and party power to fulfill their
mission of safeguarding Communist rule in Poland.
The ultimate failure of these security forces to prevent
political upheaval in December 1970 was not a result
of their own lack of efficiency, but rather of the
weaknesses and strains inheriat in the political
leadership, the absence of Soviet support for that
leadership, and the subsequent collapse of clear
command channels. Indeed, the acknowledged
brutality of the internal security components �as
distinct from the bulk of reguiar army units deployed
during the disturbances� demonstrated that these
security forces were responsive to the Gomulka regime
even as its power was crumbling. Despite a politically
motivated housecleaning of some of the upper
echelons of the security forces by the new regime of
Edward Gierek, the prominence and power of these
61
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forces under Gierek indicates a mutual trust and
confidence between the regime and the internal
security apparatus.
In addition to the regular, uniformed police and the
secret police, both subordinate to the Ministry of
Internal Affairs, athe internal security forces consist of
fully militarized units cJled the Internal Defense
Forces (WOW) which, as an integrated component of
the armed forces, are subordinate to the Ministry of
National Defense. The WOW was created in mid
1965 as a result of the merger of the former Internal
Security Corps (KBW), a highly militarized police
guard, and the Border Guard (WOP), which was
charged with the security of state frontiers. At the
same time, the command of these merged services
passed from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the
Ministry of National Defense where they became the
core of an integrated system of rear area defense under
the command of a vice minister. In 1972, however, the
WOP was resubordinated to the Ministry of Internal
Affairs.
For 10 years after the establishment of the
Communist regime in 1941 the internal security
apparatus concentrated on successfully combating
armed resistance by anti- Communist subversive
groups and in suppressing other antistate activity.
Changes in the political climate beginning in 1951
resulted in a period of organizational flux, and a
decline: in the efficiency and morale of the security
forces. These factors contributed materially to the
political instability and outbursts of popular
dissidence that accompanied the coming to power in
October 19.56 of the regime of Wladyslaw Gomulka.
Parallel with the consolidation of .;omulka's power,
the security apparatus gradually regained much of its
former preeminence though steady increases in its
sire, effectiveness, and morale. Nevertheless, it no
longer employed the widespread terror tactics of the
Stalinist era. More importantly, unlike the period of
the early 1950's when it often effectively usurped the
party's power in many areas, the security forces were
brought under effective party control.
After 19 59, however, the security apparatus became
increasingly dominated by the part hardline faction
which, tinder the leadership of security chief
Mieczyslaw Moczar, advocated greater national
discipline. Moczar's increasing dominance over the
security forces paralleled the growth of factionalism in
the party in general, and the development of
increasing friction between Moczar and Gomulka in
particular. This friction erupted into a full -scale party
crisis in 1968, which Gomulka survived in part by
62
reaching a compromise with the party elements
represented by Moczar.
On the eve of the December 1970 workers' revolt the
militarized security forces� specifically the WOW
component of the armed forces �were under the
command of Vice Minister of National Defense
Korczynski who had long been considered a
sympathizer of Moczar, but loyal to Gomulk::. Despite
the complexities of political allegiances involved, the
fact remains that Korczynski's forces, together with
the police, responded brutally to Gomulka's fateful
order to suppress the workers' riots, while his
immediate superior, Minister of National Defense
Jaruzelski, reportedly either demurred or openly
opposed such action. When the Gomulka leadership
devoid of support both at home and in the Soviet
Union collapsed of its own weight, the prescient
attitude of Jaruzelski stood vindicated while
Korczynski and the security forces under his command
bore the brunt of public rage and Gier--k's displeasure.
When Gierek took power, therefore, one of the
innumerable problems he faced was how to maintain
the effectiveness and morale of the security apparatus
while establishing his own control over its command
structure and satisfying the popular clamor for an
accounting of its past excesses. Gierek's moves to solve
this problem were characteristically pragmatic and in
the end successful. As a first step he made known his
basic decision to avoid the use of force in the future
unless recourse to "all available political means"
failed. To make this decision credible, the police and
security apparatus kept an extremely low profile.
While the restraint of the regular army units in
December 1970 was highly publicized, the brutal
measures against the workers by the security forces
were roundly condemned; culpability for the excesses,
however, was skillfully deflected from the security
apparatus itself to the ousted Gomulka regime.
Scapegoats were also provided, although in a
relatively low -key fashion. Korczynski %vas uncere-
moniously ousted from his position and "exiled" as
ambassador to Algeria where he later died. A thorough
review of security practices and a purge of personnel in
the upper echelons of the security apparatus in 1971
served a dual purpose: to weed out those persons with
lingering loyalties to Moczar, and to change that
image of the security forces so that public cooperation
would be enlisted in the maintenance of law and
order. The major tool in this public relations campaign
has been it balanced, relatively sophisticated, and
moderate approach to what might be called "police
community" relations. This approach includes
projecting an image of greater contact between the
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securiiy forces and the populatit, i, and the open
solicitation of public help in maintaining law and
order. While there may be more appearance than
substance to this campaign, the Gierek regime has
shown in other ways that it seeks public respect, not
fear and hate, for all organs of state and party
authority.
G. Selected bibliography (U /OU)
A rich library exists on Poland's politics and their
place in the European context both before and after
World War II. The 1956 upheaval and the subsequent
Gomulka era has also been well covered both
sympathetically and critically. Understandably,
perhaps, no single work has yet been produced
analyzing the causes of the December 1970 change of
regime, its innovations and prospects.
Zbigniew Brzezinski's Soviet Bloc -Unity and
Conflict (Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
Mass., 1967) discusses trends in the Soviet bloc since
the death of Stalin. It also serves as a well- documented
historical analysis of the postwar development of
Eastern European communism as a whole, the
changing relationships of individual parties with
Moscow, and the role of Poland in this process.
William F. Reddaway (et al. ed.). The Cambridge
History of Poland (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, England, 1911) in two volumes, is the
classic history of Poland up to the end of the Pilsudski
era and provides the necessary insights into the
political and social antecedents of the postwar
Communist takeover. A shorter and more readable
version, although more uneven, is Oscar Halecki's
History of Poland (J.M. Deut, London, 1961).
Marian Dziewanowski's History of the Communist
Party in Poland (Harvard University Press, Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1959) is a basic work on Polish political
dvnamics, and the role, characteristics, and
contradictions of communism in Poland. Adam
Bromke's Poland's Politics: Idealism vs. Realism
(Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1967),
analvzes the historical factors influencing Poland's
political thought and the dichotomy which has
contributed at different times to the country's strength
and weakness. A work of high scholarship and insight,
it is particularly germane to the understanding of the
broad political factors that were in play before,
during, and after the events of December 1970. A
more general and less scholarly assessment of Polish
communism is found in Richard Hiscocks' Poland
Bridge for the Abyss (Oxford University Press, London,
1963); its usefulness lies in its analysis of the impact of
communism on Polish institutions and the extant
threads of political continuity from the interwar
period.
Seve.al useful works have been written on the 1956
political upheaval in Poland, its antecedents, and its
aftermath. Flora Lewis' A Case _History of Hope
(Garden Citv, N.Y., 1958), is a highly readable and
reliable journalistic account of the events. Paul Zinner
(ed.) National Communism and Popular Revolt in
Eastern Europe (Columbia University Press, New
York, 1956), provides a selection of documents on
political events in Poland and Hungary in the critical
months from February to November 1956. A readable
and reliable account of the first decade of Poland
under communism (1917 -56) is to be found in Frank
Gibnev's The Frozen Revolution (Farrar, Straus and
Cudaliv, New York, '�.959). Insight into Poland's
Political, social, and economic developments in the
decade following 1956 is available in The
Independent Satellite (Fredrick A. Praeger, New York,
1965), by Hansjakob Stehle, a respected West German
journalist formerly stationed in Poland.
The single most authoritative work available on
Gomulka, including an analysis of his strengths,
weaknesses, and motivations, is Nicholas Bethell's
Gomulka (Longman's, New York, 1969). It is a
generally sympathetic biography, but it falls short in
its analysis of Gom ulka's policies and his role in the
party's factional struggles.
A more recent, factual, and concise review of the
political scene is available in Bernard Newman's The
New Poland (Hale, London, 1968); in its effort to be
objective with regard to Gomulka's accomplishments,
however, it tends to understate his failings and the
social and political strains they generated. William
Woods' Poland: Phoenix in the East (Hill and Wang,
New York, 1972) is a useful study by a well
intentioned author, but the work shows signs of
official guidance.
Since the advent of the Gierek regime, incisive
analyses of the shift in generations, policies, and new
style of rule have appeared almost exclusively in
various journals and periodicals; most notable are
articles by established scholars of the Polish scene in
Foreign Affairs, East Europe, Problems of Commu-
nism, and others. A timely volume on Communism in
Eastern Europe which includes a highly useful though
short re ;ew of the 1970 change of regime in Poland is
Adam Brornke and Teresa Rakowska Harmstone
(eds.) The Communist States in Disarray, (University
of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1972).
63
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Chronology (ulou)
966
Prince Mieszko unites several Polish tribes (Polanie, or
dwellers of the plains) into a political union, accepts
Christianity, and places Poland under the protection of the
papacy �thus establishing traditional relationship between
Polish state and the Roman Catholic Church.
1025
Mieszko's son, Boleslaw I, crowned as first king of the Piast
dynasty; extends Polish rule from Oder Neisse rivers in the
west to Dniepr in the east, and from, Pomerania to
Carpathian mountains. Boleslaw's death signals a period of
internal division, and decline of kingdom into principalities.
1241
1772
The first partition of Poland; about one quarter of Polish
territory is lost to Prussia, Russia, and Austria.
1791
Model constitution adopted on 3 May providing for
hereditary monarchy, elected parliament, judicial autonomy,
and gradual abolition of serfdom.
1793
Intrigue between domestic opponents of 1791 constitution
and Prussia and Russia leads to second partition of Poland
by these two powers; remainder of Poland becomes a puppet
state of Russia.
1794
Devastation of much of Poland by Tatar invasions, which
are stemmed with the help of Teutonic Knights; influx of
Germanic settlers ensues.
1320 -1370
Cultural revival and political reunion takes place under
Kings Ladislas I and Casimir III the Great; royal power
consolidated; administration, justice, and currency are
remodeled after Western models, and University of Krakow
is founded in 1347; Jews, persecuted in Western Europe, are
allowed to settle in Poland.
1386
Jagiello, Grand Duke of Lithuania, accepts Christianity
and is crowned Ladislas II, King of Poland �the first ruler
of the Jagiellonian dynasty; Poland and Lithuania formalize
political union after defeating Teutonic Knights at Grunwald
in 1410.
1500 -1560
Golden age of the Polish state, the largest and most
powerful in east central Europe; flourishing culture under
King Sigismund II centers in Krakow, which becomes a
major European center of science, humanist scholarship,
art, and for a time, of the Reformation.
1573 -1733
Age of Poland's "elective kings" is characterized by steady
decline of internal cohesion, debilitating wars with Sweden,
and general upsurge of foreign intervention; growing power
of the nobility, gentry, and the clergy progressively erodes
royal power and Poland's ability to keep Protestant
Prussia and Orthodox Russia at bay.
1768
Count Casimir Pulaski leads Catholic patriotic uprising
against growing Russian control.
M
Patriot Tadeusz Kosciusko leads futile national revolt
against Russian rule.
1795
Third partition by Prussia, Russia, and Austria results in
the disappearance of the Polish state.
1807 -1815
Grand Duchy of Warsaw is created by Napoleon but
liquidated by the Congress of Vienna; theoretically
autonomous "Congress Poland" under Russian control is
created.
1830
Uprising against Russian rule initially successful; rebellious
Poles dethrone Czar Nicolas I, but revolt is eventually
suppressed and autonomy revoked.
1846 -1848
Attempts at further uprising in Russian dominated areas
are quashed.
1863 -1865
Two years of guerrilla warfare against Russian rule ends in
defeat.
1914
Outbreak of World War I makes Poland a main battlefield
and puts Poles in opposing camps.
1917
January
President Woodrow Wilson endorses creation of independent
Poland.
October
Polish National Committee, organized in France, is
recognized as the representative of Poland by the Allied
Powers.
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1918
January
President Wilson makes independent Poland with access to
the sea one of the 14 points constituting Allied war aims.
November
Polish Republic proclaimed on 3 November; General Jozef
Pilsudski, supreme commander of Polish forces, arrives in
Warsaw.
December
Creation of Communist Workers Party.
1919
January
Pilsudski becomes head of state; Versailles Conference
draws borders of Poland, but frontier with revolutionary
Russia remains unsettled.
1920
April
Russo- Polish border war between Bo'shevik forces and
Pilsudski, who seeks to extend Poland into Ukraine along
Jagiellonian concept; Polish forces advance to Kiev, but are
rolled back to Warsaw where, on 15 August, they defeat the
Red Armies.
1921
March
Treaty of Riga embodies Polish- Soviet territorial compromise
1919 -1926
Succession of weak coalition governments results in
domestic instability and emboldens Germany to territorial
demands.
1925
March
Communist Workers Party is renamed Communist Party of
Poland.
1926
May
Pilsudski engineers military coup d'etat, and rules until his
death in 1935 via a series of surrogate presidents.
1932
July
Nonaggression pact signed with U.S.S.R.
1934
January
Nonaggression pact signed with Nazi Germany.
1935
April
New constitution, greatly increasing the power of the
President, is proclaimed, but is vitiated by political
controversies; a succession of authoritarian military cliques,
the "colonels' regimes," rules Poland until outbreak of
World War II.
1938
Communist Party of Poland is dissolved by the Comintern,
having become a liability to Stalin. The Comintern action,
shrouded in silence and never precisely dated, was declared
invalid in 1955.
1939
August
German- Soviet (Molotov Ribbentrop) nonaggression pact
concluded; secret clauses provide for partition of Poland
between the two powers.
September
Nazi Germany attacks Poland and defeats Polish forces in 3
weeks of "blitzkrieg U.S.S.R. occupies eastern half of the
country.
1940
July
Polish Government -in -exile formed in London and headed
by General Wladyslaw Sikorski; recognized by Western
Allies but not by U.S.S.R.
1941
July
Under Allied pressure Sikorski agrees to establish relations
with Moscow.
1942
June
Communist party reestablished in Poland as the under-
ground Polish Workers Party, led by Wladyslaw Gomulka.
1943
April
Uprising begins 19 April in the Warsaw Ghetto; ends on
10 May with systematic destruction of the area by Nazi
forces.
Moscow breaks diplomatic relations with Sikorski's govern-
ment over latter's appeal to the International Red Cross to
investigate the massacre of 10,000 Polish officers in the
Katyn Forest.
65
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July
Communist controlled Committee of National Liberation
formed in Moscow.
Sikorski dies in an air crash; Stanislaw Mikolajczyk
succeeds him as Premier of the London -based Polish
Government -in- exile.
December
Tehran summit conference agrees that Curzon Line, roughly
corresponding to Nazi Soviet boundary of late 1939, should
be Poland's postwar, eastern frontier.
1944
July
Soviet troops enter territory of present -day Poland, install
Polish Committee of National Liberation as de facto
government.
August
Warsaw uprising 1 AugcKt -3 October, led by non
Communist underground and supported by the West, is
crushed by Nazi forces while Soviet troops stand inactive
on eastern approaches to the city.
1945
January
U.S.S.R. recognizes Committee of National Liberation as
the Provisional Government of Poland.
July
Government of National Unity, formed in June after
international negotiations in pursuance of the Yalta
Agreement, is recognized by major Western powers.
August
Potsdam Conference places German territories east of Oder
Neisse line under Polish administration pending a peace
treaty.
September
Poland denounces Concordat with Vatican.
1947
January
Fraudulent elections result in demise of non Communist
political opposition led by Mikolajczyk, who flees Poland in
October.
1948
September
Gomulka, as exponent of "Polish road to socialism," is
removed from post of Secretary General of the Polish
Workers Party.
66
December
Polish Socialist Party is absorbed by Polish Workers Party
to form Polish United Workers Party; Boleslaw Bierut
becomes party leader.
1949
November
Konstantin Rokossovskiy, Soviet marshal of Polish birth, is
appointed Minister of National Defense.
1952
July
Constitution of Polish People's Republic is promulgated.
1953
September
Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, Primate of Poland, is placed
under house arrest.
1955
May
Warsaw Pact is signed on 14 May.
1956
March
Bierut dies in Moscow; Edward Ochab succeeds him as
party leader.
June
Workers' "bread and freedom" uprising in Poznan.
October
Gomulka is elected as party First Secretary in face of Soviet
hostility, Marshal Rokossovskiy and Polish Stalinists are
removed from power, Cardinal Wyszynski is released,
spontaneous dissolution of collective farms is sanctioned by
Gomulka, and the party's weakness permits wide non
Communist activity.
November
Polish- Soviet Declaration is signed as basis of more equitable
relations between the two Communist parties and states;
long period of mutual ideological accommodation begins.
1957
January
Elections result in 98.4% vote for Gomulka- sponsored
candidates; gradual tightening of domestic controls ensues.
June
United States grants first interest -free credits for purchase of
U.S. surplus agricultural commodities.
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1959
March
At Third Polish Party Congress Gomulka reaffirms
consolidation of his regime and restoration of party control
over national life.
July
Khrushchev's first official visit to Poland results in full
Soviet endorsement of Gomulka regime and its autonomy
in domestic affairs.
1960
June
Gomulka backs Soviet stand in developing Sino- Soviet
ideological rift but begins mediation attempts.
November
United States restores moat favored- nation treatment to
Polish exports, which had been withdrawn in 1952.
1961
April
Regime sponsored candidates receive over 98% of the vote
in elections marked by public apathy and disillusionment.
1963
March
Polish -West German trade agreement signed, providing for
exchange of trade missions with semidiplomatic status.
1964
June
At Fourth Polish Party Congress Gomulka reasserts leader-
ship over diverse party factions and continuation of con-
servative- moderate line.
1965
February
Deeper U.S. involvement in Vietnam strains relations with
Warsaw, but wide U.S. "presence" in Poland is maintained.
April
Renewed 20 -year Polish- Soviet Treaty of Friendship and
Mutual Alliance stresses formulation of common foreign
policy objectives by mutual consultations.
May
Fifth postwar elections result in virtual carbon copy of 1961
balloting.
1966
May
Polish -West German trade agreement is renewed.
May �June
Public disturbances mark church -state crisis brought on by
rival celebrations marking the millennium of Christianity in
Poland and of Polish statehood.
1967
June
Impact of Arab Israeli conflict kindles new intraparty
discord with anti Semitic overtones; officially encouraged
emigration of Polish Jews begins.
1968
March
Student demonstrations are repressed but spark acute party
crisis and anti Semitic purges lasting most of year.
August
Poland participates in Warsaw Pact invasion of Czecho-
slovakia.
November
At Fifth Party Congress Gomulka reasserts his leadership
but yields some influence to young pragmatic elements.
1969
May
Gomulka publicly opens door to dialog with West Germany
by proposing negotiations on treaty to formalize Poland's
western border; diplomatic approaches to West on European
security are intensified.
June
Sixth postwar elections produce results identical to 1965
balloting.
Gomulka leads Soviet bloc condemnation of Chinese Com-
munist leadership at International Communist Conference
in Moscow.
October
Polish -West German economic negotiations are initiated;
Polish goals include new trade treaty and credits.
1970
February
Polish -West German political talks start in Warsaw.
June
New Polish -West German 5 -year trade agreement concluded.
67
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October
Cumulative impact of poor harvests and agricultural
disincentives leads to meat shortages and mounting popular
disgruntlement.
December
Polish -West Germany treaty, initialed in November, is
signed in Warsaw on 7 December by Chancellor Brandt and
Premier Cyrankiewicz; despite Western qualifications,
treaty is viewed by the Poles as definitive recognition of the
territorial integrity of the postwar Polish state.
Gomulka regime announces price increases on 13 December,
as part of economic measures that include onerous work
rules and potential reduction of take -home pay.
Strikes and riots begin among shipyard workers in Gdansk
on 14 December, spread to Gdynia on 16 December, and
Szczecin and other northern cities on 17 December.
Party Central Committee meets on 20 December to approve
and announce replacement of Gomulka leadership by that
of Edward Gierek; shift is promptly endorsed by the Soviet
Union which, though anxious and watchful, retains posture
of strict nonintervention.
New government installed on 23 December, with Piotr
Jaroszewicz as Premier and Cyrankiewicz as head of state;
Jaroszewicz offers to "normalize" relations with Roman
Catholic Church.
1971
January
Gierek and Jaroszewicz are warmly
inaugural visit to Moscow.
February
Party Central Committee plenum conden. rs'
policies and pledges broad program of gradual �dally
far reaching economic, political, and social reforius.
New wave of strikes by militant workers brings Soviet
hard- currency credit and rescission of December 1970 price
increases.
March
Jaroszewicz and Cardinal Wyszynski meet to explore
avenues toward inproved church -state relations.
M:-]
June
Regime grants the Roman Catholic Church legal title to
church property in former German territories.
December
Sixth Party Congress endorses Gierek and his program;
visiting Soviet leader Brezhnev gives Gierek full support.
1972
March
National elections, with a rigged, single slate as in the past,
result in no change in party repre3entation; however, heavy
turnover of deputies bolsters regime claim that new parlia-
ment is more representative of the people. New government
appointed with Henryk Jablonski replacing Cyrankiewicz
as head of state.
Period of rapidly improving U.S. Polish relations is climaxed
by President Nixon's visit to Warsaw -31 March -1 June
following Moscow summit.
June
Following West Germany's ratification of the treaty with
Poland in mid -May, the Holy See reorganizes and
regularizes ecclesiastical administration in the former
German territories �in effect recognizing Poland's postwar
frontiers.
September
Poland and West Germany establish diplomatic relations;
ambassadors exchanged in November.
October
Gierek pays official visit to France.
November
Major U.S.- Polish trade agreement concluded.
December
Gierek is accorded rank of "first among equals" vis -a -vis
other Eastern European party chiefs attending observances
in Moscow of 50th anniversary of the U.S.S.R.
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SECRET
Glossary
ABBREviATioN POLISH
CEMA........
CRZZ......... Centralna Rad4 Zwiazkou+ Zawodowych.
CSCE.........
FJN.......... Front Jednosci Narodu
KBW......... Korpus Bezpieczenstwa iVewnetrznego..
KERM....... Kumitet Ekonomiczny Rady Ministrow.
MO...........
MON.........
NISW.........
MSZ..........
ORMO........
PRL..........
PZPR.........
SB...........
SD...........
SZSP.........
U B...........
WOP.........
WOW.........
ZHP..........
ZMS..........
ZMW.........
ZSL..........
ZSMW........
ZSP..........
Jfilicja Obywatelska
Ministerstwo Obrony Narodowej.
Ministerstwo Spraw Wewnetrznych....
Dfinisterstwo Spraw Zagranicznych.....
Ochotnicza Reserwe. Milicji Obywaiel-
skicj
Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa........
Polska Ljednoczona Partia Roboinicza.
Sluzba Bezpieezenslwa
Stronnictwo Demokratyczne...........
Soejalisticzny Zwiazek Studentow
Polskich
Urzad Bezpieczenstwa
Wojsko Ochrony Pogranicza..........
Wojsko Obrony Wewneirznej..........
Zwiazek Harcerstwa Polskiego........
Zwiazek Mlodziezy Socjalistycznej.....
Zwiazek Moldziezy Wiejskiej.........
Zjednoczone Stronnictwo Ludowe......
Zu+iazek Socjalisticne Mlodziezy
Wiejskiej
Zrzeszenie Studentow Polskich........
SECRET'
ENGLISH
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance
Central Council of Trade Unions
Conference on Security and Cooperation
in Europe
National Unity Front
Internal Security Corps
Economic Committee of the Council of
Ministers
Citizens Militia
Ministry of National Defense
Ministry of Internal Affairs
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Voluntary Reserve of the Citizens
Militia
Polish People's Republic
Polish United Workers Party
Security Service
Democratic Party
Socialist Union of Polish Students
Security Bureau
Border Guard Troops
Internal Defense Forces
Polish Scouting Union
Union of Socialist Youth
Union of Rural Youth
United Peasant Party
Union of Socialist Rural Youth
Polish Students Association
69
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