FACULTATEA DE ŞTIINŢE POLITICEUNIVERSITATEA BUCUREŞTI

-SPE I-

Eastern Europe;

Case Studies: Poland and Hungary

Students:

Stefanache Sabina-Aurora, Iorga Alexandra, Niculae Raluca-Maria, Cernea Ioana-

Antonia, Iorga Raluca-Elena, Novac Luciana, Dragan Alina-Mihaela, Popescu Alexandra-

Elena, Preda Florin-Alexandru

Coordinator:

Lect. Dr. Dragos Petrescu

11/04/2012

1

Summary

Chapter I

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………3

Chapter II

Hungary………………………………………………………………………………………..4

Under Soviet Domination……………………………………………………………………...6

The Revolution of 1956………………………………………………………………………..7

The Kadar Regime……………………………………………………………………………..8

The Reforms…………………………………………………………………………………...9

The Fall of Communism……………………………………………………………………….10

Chapter III

Poland…………………………………………………………………………………………11

Chapter IV

Debate Questios………………………………………………………………………………..19

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………20

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Chapter I

Introduction:

The 20th century was marked by various periods , not only the political stage had known a lot of

changes , but also the geographic map had changed .In the first period of the century , the

Chinese, Russian, German, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian empires collapsed , the First World

War had also a big influence on the world , so during it , the British , the French and the Japanese

also collapse , but Russia has been transformed into the Soviet Union .The 20 th century meant

transition from the democracy to totalitarianism and vice –versa . This switch had a big

influence on the Eastern Europe, because this part of the Europe had been the most damaged by

the shifts of the political regimes.

Both Russians and Germans used repression as a tool to stop any form of resistance coming from

the anti-totalitarian regime. The bands that tried somehow to disobey the orders coming from the

communists or the Nazis were shot, imprisoned in special camp or deported. It was estimated

that in Poland existed about 100,000 anti-communists between 1944 and 1947.”Apart from the

Baltic States, opposition was scattered and ineffectual “1.

After 1947, the Russians started to impose upon the Eastern Europe, so Stalin used the

Yugoslavs to attack other communist parties ‘for their fetish of coalitionism’2. A year before

Gomulka in Poland and Gottwald in Czechoslovakia tried to explain that each country must

create a path for achieving socialism.

After the death of Stalin, his successors followed a different course of communism. Stalinism

was gradually replaced by a more moderate approach both in the Soviet Union and in the satellite

states.

1 Alexander DALLIN, German Rule in Russia, 1941-1945: A Study of Ocupation Politics, London, Maximillan, 1957, pp. 542 Mark MAZOWER, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century London: Penguin Books,1998, pp. 268

3

Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, repudiated his policies and delivered a four-hour, strictly secret

speech in which he spelled out in amazing detail the horrors of the 1930s and 1940s, for which he

blamed Stalin and instituted desalinization. Consequently, most of the world's Communist

parties, who previously adhered to Stalinism, abandoned it and, to a greater or lesser degree,

adopted the positions of Khrushchev3

Politically, the death of Stalin ended that chapter and led to a “collective leadership” both in

Moscow and in the other eastern states. One of the former most important instruments of power,

the secret police, was discredited and lost part of its repressive character. The labour camps were

shut down and the prisoners were liberated. In Poland, 30 000 prisoners were liberated in April

1956 and at the same time with a purge in the leadership of the security services4.

That was considered liberation within the communist system and represented in some

independence from Moscow. In others, the communist parties tried to rebuild the initial

movement and tried to take a side in the de-Stalinization process. The debate between Stalinists

and liberalizers was elaborated in an atmosphere of explosions of popular protest in East

Germany (1953), Poland and Hungary (1956). The Party became more moderate, but it preserved

its control over the security apparatus.

Chapter II

Hungary

German occupation was over and Hungary fell under Stalin's "jurisdiction". The thing

that made this happen was the convergence of several previously existing factors, and not the

3 Eric HOBSBAWM, Age of the Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991. London:Abacus, 1995, pp. 312

4 Mark MAZOWER, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century London: Penguin Books,1998, pp. 278

4

Yalta Conference. The Italian armistice from September 1943 created the precedent that Stalin

explained as the one who occupies a territory, imposes its system. The Anglo-Saxons took over

the Peninsula and later Japan and the Soviets would claim countries their army had occupied,

such as Romania, Finland, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany and their zones in Austria, Vienna

and Berlin. In Hungary, the Allied Control Commission had to act according to the principle of

division meaning that its president, Marshal Kliment Voroshilov exercised the authority of

occupation. A provisional government concluded an armistice with the Soviet Union and

established the Allied Control Commision, under which Soviet, American and British

representatives held complete sovereignty over the country.

The provisional government, dominated by the Hungarian Communist Party, was

replaced after elections which gave majority control of a coalition government to the

Independent Smallholder's Party. Its leader, Zoltan Tildy, formed a coalition government out of

the four National Independent Front parties, which consequently included the Communists. Even

if the Smallholder's Party could have governed alone, found itself with only half of the

ministries, arrangement imposed by Marshal Voroshilov, president of the Allied Control

Commission. After the fall of the Republic of Councils, repression had decimated its cadres and

during twenty-five years of clandestine existence, several hundred militants had been arrested,

some sentenced to death and executed, others sufficiently intimidated to cut ties with the illegal

party. The number of victims in Hungary was considerably fewer than victims of Stalin. Horthy's

jails weren't so dangerous and several party leaders, among them Matyas Rakosi who was in

prison for sixteen years, came out alive and well. The Hungarian Communist Party was

completely marginalized and had no popular base. The future leader of the party, Janos Kadar,

secretary in 1943-1944, concluded that after successive waves of arrests and defections, the party

had been literally reduced to a handful of members. In the USSR, probably the single largest

group, numbered several thousand people.

5

Under Soviet Domination

Upon returning to Hungary, the Communist Party had to start from scratch. Thanks to

circumstances and organizational methods, the party was back on its feet and, with Soviet

support, enjoyed a disproportionately high political profile, though not as high as its ambitions.

The dictatorship of the proletariat was banned from the vocabulary and the memory of 1919

condemned to shameful silence. The party, a pawn on Moscow's chessboard and caught up in

Stalin's larger game, played its game as best it could. The Hungarian Party was restricted by

Stalin and four Muscovite comrades-of Jewish origin-were appointed to head the Hungarian

party and were instantly stripped of any authority in the country of St Stephen's Crown. No one

knows why Hungary received such mild treatment.

The communists ultimately undermined the coalition regime by discrediting leaders of

rival parties and through blackmail and framed trials. In elections tainted by fraud in 1947, the

leftist bloc gained control of the government. Initially, the party humoured the Church, despite

the latter's far from sympathetic attitude and in1948, church schools were brought under state

control and convents were shut down. Two years later, the Churches, signed a concordat and

various agreements with the state, securing around fifteen gymnasia (sixth-form colleges).On

May 15th 1949, 96.27 per cent of electors "obediently" voted for the candidates of an artificial

Popular Front, nominated in reality by the Communist Party. The free elections clearly

demonstrated that at least 83 per cent of Hungarians mistrusted the Communists and voted for

bourgeois democratic and Social Democratic parties. The new democracy enjoyed a solid

credibility, mixed with the precarious hope that it would last. When Hungary became a single

party state and proclaimed the dictatorship of the proletariat, it became a Soviet state which did

not speak its name. Stalin's secret order to act was received by the Hungarians in late 1948, after

the congress in Warsaw, when they found out that their "popular democracy" was a dictatorship

of the proletariat and a Socialist state in construction. In the political sphere, the transition to

brutality affected everyone: there were mass dismissals in the ministries, municipalities, army

and publishing houses. The imprisonment of several Social Democratic leaders, added to the

already numerous politicians and officers in prison, was an important stage. By February 1949,

all opposition parties had been forced to merge with the Hungarian Communist Party to form the

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Hungarian Worker's Party. In 1949, the communist held a single-list election and adopted a

Soviet-style constitution which created the Hungarian People's Republic. In just one year,

195.277.000 detention sentences were pronounced and thousands of people were interned on the

basis of administrative decisions.

The number of political executions and political prisoners incarcerated, beaten and

tortured is not known. One of the main victims of the "People's State" was the working class.

Forced industrialization and land collectivization soon led to serious economic difficulties, which

reached crisis proportions by mid 1953, the year Stalin died.

Imre Nagy, a little known member of the Politburo, replaced Rakosi as prime minister in

1953 and repudiated much of Rakosi's economic program of forced collectivization and heavy

industry. He also ended political purges and freed thousands of political prisoners. However, the

economic situation continued to deteriorate, and Rakosi succeeded in disrupting the reforms and

in forcing Nagy from power in 1955. Hungary joined the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact Treaty

Organization the same year. Rakosi's attempt to restore Stalinist orthodoxy then foundered as

increasing opposition developed within the party and among students and other organizations

after Khrushchev's 1956 denunciation.

The Revolution of 1956

Pressure for change reached a climax on October 23, 1956, when security forces fired on

Budapest students marching in support of Poland's confrontation with the Soviet Union. The

ensuing battle quickly grew into a massive popular uprising. Gero called on Soviet troops to

restore order on October 24. Fighting did not abate until the Central Committee named Imre

Nagy as prime minister on October 25, and the next day Janos Kadar replaced Gero as party first

secretary. Nagy dissolved the state security police, abolished the one-party system, promised free

elections, and negotiated with the U.S.S.R. to withdraw its troops. Faced with reports of new

Soviet troops pouring into Hungary despite Soviet Ambassador Andropov's assurances to the

contrary, on November 1 Nagy announced Hungary's neutrality and withdrawal from the

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Warsaw Pact. He appealed to the United Nations and the Western powers for protection of its

neutrality. Preoccupied with the Suez Crisis, the UN and the West failed to respond, and the

Soviet Union launch a massive military attack on Hungary on November 3. Some 200,000

Hungarians fled to the West.

The Kadar Regime

On 4 November, Janos Kadar proclaimed the "Hungarian Revolutionary Worker-Peasant

Government". His statement declared: "We must put an end to the excesses of the counter-

revolutionary elements. The hour for action has sounded. We are going to defend the interest of

the workers and peasants and the achievements of the people's democracy."5 Later that evening,

Kadar called upon "the faithful fighters of the true cause of socialism" to come out of hiding and

take up arms. However, Hungarian support did not materialize; the fighting did not take on the

character of an internally divisive civil war, but rather, in the words of a United Nations report,

that of "a well-equipped foreign army crushing by overwhelming force a national movement and

eliminating the Government."6

Imre Nagy obtained asylum at the Yugoslav embassy in Budapest. Janos Kadar promised

Nagy and his followers (George Lukacs, Geza Lodonczy and Julia Rajk), safe passage out of the

country and that he could return to the political life. Kadar did not keep his promise and on 22rd

November, 1956, Nagy and his followers, “were kidnapped by the KGB and taken to Romania”7

after leaving the Yugoslav embassy. Following an agreement between the Kadar leadership and

5 UN General Assembly, Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary (1957), Chapter VIII.B, paragraph 596, p. 185

6 UN General Assembly, Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary (1957), Chapter VIII. B, (The Political Background of the Second Soviet Intervention), paragraph 600, p. 186

7 Miklos Molnar, “Under Soviet Domination, 1945-1990” in IDEM, A Concise History of Hungary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p 322

8

the Russian Politburo, Nagy and his associates were formally arrested on April 14th, 1957, and

transferred to Budapest, where they were tried in secret.

The charges and eventual death sentences had also been decided well in advance, in the

summer of 1957, but the trial was repeatedly postponed because the Soviet leadership had

increasing trouble reconciling it with wider political considerations. In February 1958, Moscow

even toyed with the idea of clemency, but Kadar doggedly held out for the death sentences. All

through this process, Imre Nagy rejected the charges of crimes against the state that were brought

against him. “He defended his ideas and actions with extraordinary steadfastness, while refuting

accusations which completely distorted the truth and went to the scaffold without renouncing the

revolution in any way.”8 He was sentenced to death on June 15th, 1958. Because of the waves of

protests more than 300 people were executed, hundreds more were deported to the Soviet Union,

and around 13,000 were jailed.

The Reforms

Kadar obeyed and was loyal to the Soviet Union however he started to loosen the reins

in the 1960s. Over the next few years Kadar did introduce a series of economic reforms which

helped to raise living standards. From 1962, the regime in Budapest started liberalizing society

and the economy, permitting some freedom of speech and the freedom to trade on the open

market. In 1962 he introduced the phrase 'he who is not against us is with us'.

As a result of Kadar's reforms Hungary became a relatively prosperous country.

Generally the Hungarians had a higher standard of living than people in other Communist

countries. Most economic activity was conducted by state-owned enterprises or cooperatives and

state farms. In 1968, Stalinist self-sufficiency was replaced by the "New Economic Mechanism",

which reopened Hungary to foreign trade, gave limited freedom to the workings of the market,

and allowed a limited number of small businesses to operate in the services sector.

8 Miklos Molnar, “Under Soviet Domination, 1945-1990” in IDEM, A Concise History of Hungary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p 324

9

However in the 1980s things turned sour. Hungary began to suffer from inflation, which

particularly hurt people on fixed incomes. Furthermore Hungary ran up a huge foreign debt.

Poverty became widespread. “By the mid-1980s, Hungary has already overtaken Poland in terms

of debt[…]by the end of the regime (1990) it had reached the astronomical figure of 20 billion

390 million US dollars.”9 As conditions deteriorated Kadar fell from power in 1988.

He was the first East European leader to develop closer links with the Social Democratic

parties of Western Europe. He tried to mediate between the leaders of the Czechoslovak reform

movement of 1968 and the Soviet leadership to avert the danger of a military intervention.

When, however, the decision was taken by the Soviet leaders to intervene in order to suppress

the Prague Spring, Kadar decided to participate in the Warsaw Pact operation.

The general level of education improved under Kadar’s regime. In 1986 the country had

3,540 elementary schools, 587 secondary schools, 278 apprentice schools, and 54 institutions of

higher education, of which 18 were universities with several faculties and programs extending

five or more years.

The fall of communism

In 1988, Kadar was officially replaced as General Secretary by Prime Minister Karoly

Grosz who strove to continue Kadar's policies in a modified and adjusted form adapted to the

new circumstances. In July 1989 Imre Nagy was reburied and rehabilitated. A national

roundtable, comprising representatives of the new parties, some recreated old parties and

different social groups, met in the late summer of 1989 to discuss major changes to the

Hungarian constitution in preparation for free elections and the transition to a fully free and

democratic political system.

The Hungarians managed the transition to freedom peacefully. In 1990 the first free

elections were held and Jozsef Antall became prime minister but he died in 1993. However the

Socialists (former Communists) returned to power in 1994.

9 Miklos Molnar, “Under Soviet Domination, 1945-1990” in IDEM, A Concise History of Hungary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p 328

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Chapter III

Poland

After the Second World War emerged a new Polish state, different from the pre war one

in point of territory, size, composition of its population, political and social order. The new

Poland lost territory in the East and expanded in the North and West. Poland suffered heavy

losses during World War II. “The new Poland had just under 24 million inhabitants in 1946, as

opposed to 35 million in 1939, but it now contained an overwhelmingly ethnic Polish

population”10.

Poland, still a predominantly agricultural country compared to Western nations, suffered

catastrophic damage to its infrastructure during the war, and lagged even further behind

the West in industrial output in the War's aftermath. The losses in national resources and

infrastructure amounted to over 30% of the pre-war potential.

The implementation of the immense task of reconstructing the country was accompanied

by the struggle of the new government to acquire a stable, centralized power base, further

complicated by the mistrust a considerable part of the society held for the new regime and by

disputes over Poland's postwar borders, which were not firmly established until mid-1945. In

1947 Soviet influence caused the Polish government to reject the American-sponsored Marshall

Plan, and to join the Soviet Union-dominated Comecon in 1949. At the same time Soviet forces

had engaged in plunder on the former eastern territories of Germany which were to be

transferred to Poland, stripping it of valuable industrial equipment, infrastructure and factories

and sending them to the Soviet Union.

10 Jerzy Lukowsky and Hubert Zawadzki, “Communism and the Cold War, 1945-1989” in IDEM, A Concise History of Poland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 280

11

Even before the Red Army entered Poland, the Soviet Union was pursuing a deliberate

strategy to eliminate anti-Communist resistance forces to ensure that Poland would fall under its

sphere of influence. In 1943, following the Katyn massacre, Stalin had severed relations with

the Polish government-in-exile in London. However, to appease the United States and the United

Kingdom, the Soviet Union agreed at the February 1945 Yalta Conference to form a coalition

government composed of the Communist Polish Workers' Party, members of the pro-

Western Polish government in exile, and members of the Armia Krajowa ("Home

Army") resistance movement, as well as to allow for free elections to be held.

Stalin had promised at the Yalta Conference that free elections would be held in Poland.

However, the Polish Communists, led by Gomułka and Bierut, were aware of the lack of support

for their side among the general population. Because of this, in 1946 a national plebiscite, known

as the "3 times YES" referendum , was held instead of the parliamentary elections. The

referendum comprised three fairly general questions, and was meant to check the popularity of

communist initiatives in Poland. Because most of the important parties at the time were leftist –

and could have supported all three options – Mikołajczyk's PSL decided to ask its supporters to

oppose one of them: the abolition of the senate. The Communists voted "3 times YES". The

referendum showed that the communist side was met with little support; less than a third of

Poland's population voted in favor of their proposed options. Only electoral fraud (vote rigging)

won the communists a majority in the carefully controlled poll, which led to the nationalization

of industry, land reform, and a unicameral (not the bicameral) Sejm. Following the forged

referendum, the Polish economy started to be nationalized.

The Communists consolidated power by gradually whittling away the rights of their non-

Communist foes, particularly by suppressing the leading opposition party – Mikołajczyk's Polish

People's Party (PSL). In some widely-publicized cases, their perceived enemies were being

sentenced to death on trumped up charges — among them Witold Pilecki, the organizer of

the Auschwitz resistance; and numerous leaders of Armia Krajowa and the Council of National

Unity (see: the Trial of the Sixteen). Many resistance fighters were murdered extrajudicially, or

forced to exile. The opposition members were also persecuted by administrative means.

Although the ongoing persecution of the former anti-Nazi organizations by state security,

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forced thousands of partisans back into forests, the actions of the UB (Polish secret

police), NKVD and Red Army steadily diminished their numbers.

By 1946, all rightist parties had been outlawed, and a new pro-government Front of

National Unity was formed which included only the forerunner of the communistPolish United

Workers' Party and its leftist allies. On January 19, 1947, the first parliamentary elections took

place featuring PPR candidates and a token opposition from the Polish People's Partyalready

powerless due to government control. Results were adjusted by Stalin himself to suit the

Communists. Through rigged elections, the regime's candidates gained 417 of 434 seats in

parliament (Sejm), effectively ending the multi-party system in politics. Many opposition

members, including Mikołajczyk (threatened with arrest), left the country. Western governments

did not protest, which led free-spirited Poles to speak about a continued "Western betrayal"

regarding Central Europe. In the same year, the new Legislative Sejm created the Small

Constitution of 1947. Over the next two years, the Communists monopolizied their political

power in Poland.

Additional force in Polish politics, the long-established Polish Socialist Party (Polska

Partia Socjalistyczna, PPS – once led by Piłsudski), suffered a fatal split at this time, as the

rulling Stalinists applied the salami tactics to dismember their opposition. Communist politicians

supported a PPS faction led by Cyrankiewicz who personally visited Stalin with the idea of a

party merger, securing his own place for the future. In 1948, the Communists and Cyrankiewicz's

own faction joined ranks to form the Polish United Workers' Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia

Robotnicza; PZPR) in power for the next four decades. Poland became a de facto single-party

state, and a satellite state of the Soviet Union. Only two other parties were allowed to exist

legally, a small one for the farmers (Zjednoczone Stronnictwo Ludowe) and a token one for the

intelligentsia, called Stronnictwo Demokratyczne. Aperiod of Sovietization andStalinism started.

Meanwhile in 1951 Wladyslaw Gomulka the First Secretary of the Party was deposed and

imprisoned. In October 1956 he was released and the Polish Communists made him their leader -

without consulting Moscow. The Russians were enraged that the Poles had dared to take

independent action and they came close to invading Poland.

Regarding the economy, the government, headed by Cyrankiewicz and Marxist

economist Hilary Minc embarked on a sweeping program of economic reform and national

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reconstruction. The Stalinist turn, that led to the ascension of Bierut meant that Poland would

now be brought into line with the Soviet model of a "people's democracy" and a centrally

planned socialist economy, in place of the façade of democracy and market economy which the

regime had preserved until 1948. Fully Soviet-style centralized planning begun in 1950 with

the Six-Year Plan. The plan focused on rapid development of heavy industry and (eventually

futile) collectivization of agriculture. The land seized from prewar large landowners was

redistributed to the poorer peasants, but subsequent attempts at taking the land from farmers met

wide resentment. In what became known as the battle for trade, the private trade and industry

were nationalized. Within few years the private shopkeeper disappeared from Poland. The

regime embarked on the campaign of collectivization (as seen in the creation of Państwowe

Gospodarstwo Rolne), although the pace for this change was slower than in other

satellites. Poland remained the only Soviet bloc country where individual peasants would

continue to dominate agriculture.

In 1948 the United States announced the Marshall plan initiative to help rebuild Europe

and thus gain more political power in postwar situation. After initially welcoming the idea of

Poland's participation in the plan, the government declined the offer of help under pressure from

Moscow. Also, following the uprising of 1953 in East Germany, Poland was forced by the Soviet

Union to give up its claims to compensation from Germany, which as a result paid no significant

compensation for war damages, either to the Polish state or to Polish citizens. Although Poland

received compensation in the form of the territories and property left behind by the German

population of the annexed western territories, it is disputed whether they were enough

compensation for the loss of Kresy territories. This marked the beginning of the wealth gap,

which would increase in years to come, as the Western market economies grew much more

quickly than the centrally planned socialist economies of Eastern Europe.

By the late 1950’s, even though the political problems and the demonstrations against the

soviet leaders were still a great deal, for the pole exiles it became much more important to

preserve their language and culture among the nation’s children.

They found as a better solution to stop blaming the communism and to start thinking in terms of

evolutions. The monthly journal “Kultura”, owned and edited by Jerzy Giedroyc, a political

thinker, and his associate Juliusz Mieroszewski, became the most influential Polish émigré

publication of the entire Cold war period. Even though they found it hard to adjust their paper to

14

the new reality in Poland, for the paper were writing some of the best exiled writers and Russian

writers banned in USSR. Kultura discussed even the Jewish issue, a subject mostly ignored by

the Poland’s official publications. Despite the communist border controls, Kultura and its

message reached numerous scholars and students in Poland, which was from the beginning its

target.

Freed from ideological restraints, the field of culture was blooming: the innovative

musical compositions of Lutostawski and Penderecki, Wajda’s epic war films and Mrozek’s

satirical works. Greater pluralism was tolerated in the academic world. Poland became

effectively the most liberal country of the Soviet bloc, or as some wits put it “the most cheerful

barrack in the camp”.

But there was only disappointment for those who expected further liberalization of the

system. For all his courage in 1956, Gomulka remained adamantly hostile to revisionism, that is

democratization withing the Party and worker self-rule. In 1965 the young revisionist Kuron and

Modzelewski, who had argued openly that the country’s ruling class was the Party bureaucracy

and not the workers, were expelled from the Party to be followed the next year by the eminent

philosophy professor Leszek Kotakowski.

The expectations of economic reform led nowhere. Gomulka’s incompetence in

economic matters and the fact that he emphasized only on the heavy industry allowed only a

modest improvement in living standards. The agriculture continued to stagnate, the

modernization of private farming was impossible cu achieve, while the highly subsidized farms

remained inefficient.

There was also a retreat from the concession made to the Catholic Church. By the

beginning of the 1960s religious instruction in schools had ended and drastic official limits had

been placed on the building of new churches.

The Catholic Pole Cardinal tried to remember the germans about the atrocities suffered by the

Poles during WW2, but for Gomulka this was unacceptable because he didn’t want the Church to

interfere in foreign affairs. Despite the fact that Gomulka won some points against the Church,

they were lost the next year during the celebrations organized by the Church to commemorate

the millennium of Christianity in Poland and this confirmed the loyalty of the faithful to the

Church.

15

Within the next year, the country lurched intro another phase of turmoil. The so-called

“Partisans” emerged into anti-German, anti-Ukrainian, anti-Semitic phase and even offered a

partial rehabilitation to former AK soldiers. The Partisans targeted liberalization pro-reforms

within the Party. Poland didn’t share the condemnation of Israel and Zionism during the Arab

Israeli war, Gomulka didn’t have any record of anti-semitism (and his wife was of jewish

origins)

Because of the protests of the students against the Stalinist movement and the party,

Gomulka ordered some staged demonstrations against the Zionists, the students and the Stalinist

criminals. Protests against these came from the Church, the Union of Polish Writers and the

small Catholic Znak parliamentary group. Gomulka next tried to limit the wild anti-semitism, but

the damage was already done. Convinced that Tttc0munist system could not be reformed from

within, the revisionists began to turn their backs on Marxism and to seek collaboration with non-

Marxist student activists, Giedroyc’s Kultura in Paris and the liberal Catholic intelligentsia.

Poland signed a treaty with West Germany in 1970, which recognized de facto Poland’s post-war

western border, enhance his domestic position. The strikes in the shipyards of Gdask evaporated

the self-satisfaction Gomulka felt at the signing of the treaty with Bonn. A large increase of

goods prices just before Christmas was considered nothing less than crass stupidity.

Because of the authorities inept and bloody responses to the strikes led to a workers

revolt all over northern Poland. Faced with the prospect of a general destabilization of the entire

country, Moscow agreed to the dismissal of Gomulka. The new party leader was Gierek and

became the party’s rising star since 1968.

New strikes continued to broke out in January 1971, but the one in Lodz by the textile workers

managed to withdraw the prices on 15 february.

The growing debt burden became insupportable in the late 1970s, and economic growth

had become negative by 1979. The Workers' Defense Committee (KOR) established in 1976

consisted of dissident intellectuals willing to openly support industrial workers struggling with

the authorities.[ In October 1978, the Archbishop of Kraków, Cardinal Karol Józef Wojtyła,

became Pope John Paul II, head of the Roman Catholic Church. Polish Catholics rejoiced at the

16

elevation of a Pole to the papacy and greeted his June 1979 visit to Poland with an outpouring of

emotion.

On July 1, 1980, with the Polish foreign debt at more than $20 billion, the government

made another attempt to increase meat prices. A chain reaction of strikes virtually paralyzed the

Baltic coast by the end of August and, for the first time, closed most coal mines in Silesia.

Poland was entering into an extended crisis that would change the course of its future

development.

On August 31, workers at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, led by an electrician

named Lech Wałęsa, signed a 21-point agreement with the government that ended their strike.

Similar agreements were signed at Szczecin and in Silesia. The key provision of these

agreements was the guarantee of the workers' right to form independenttrade unions and the right

to strike. After the Gdańsk Agreement was signed, a new national union movement "Solidarity"

swept Poland.

The discontent underlying the strikes was intensified by revelations of widespread

corruption and mismanagement within the Polish state and party leadership. In September 1980,

Gierek was replaced by Stanisław Kania as First Secretary.

Alarmed by the rapid deterioration of the PZPR's authority following the Gdańsk

agreement, the Soviet Union proceeded with a massive military buildup along Poland's border in

December 1980. In February 1981, Defense Minister Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski assumed the

position of Prime Minister, and in October 1981, was named First Secretary of the Communist

Party. At the first Solidarity national congress in September–October 1981, Lech Wałęsa was

elected national chairman of the union.

On December 12–13, the regime declared martial law, under which the army

and ZOMO riot police were used to crush the union. Virtually all Solidarity leaders and many

affiliated intellectuals were arrested or detained. The United States and other Western countries

responded to martial law by imposing economic sanctions against the Polish regime and against

the Soviet Union. Unrest in Poland continued for several years thereafter.

Having achieved some semblance of stability, the Polish regime in several stages relaxed

and then rescinded martial law. By December 1982, martial law was suspended, and a small

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number of political prisoners (including Wałęsa) were released. Although martial law formally

ended in July 1983 and a general amnesty was enacted, several hundred political prisoners

remained in jail.

In July 1984, another general amnesty was declared, and two years later, the government

had released nearly all political prisoners. The authorities continued, however, to harass

dissidents and Solidarity activists. Solidarity remained proscribed and its publications banned.

Independent publications were censored.

The government's inability to forestall Poland's economic decline led to waves of strikes

across the country in April, May and August 1988. With the Soviet Union increasingly

destabilized, in the late 1980s the government was forced to negotiate with Solidarity in

the Polish Round Table Negotiations. The resulting Polish legislative election in 1989 became

one of the important events marking the fall of communism in Poland. ”Although many hardline

Solidarity supporters resented the lack of a clean break with the communist past and no settling

of scores with the communists, the constitutional changes and the elections of 1989 are now

generally accepted as marking the birth of the Polish ‘Third Republic'.”11

Chapter IV

11 Jerzy Lukowsky and Hubert Zawadzki, “Communism and the Cold War, 1945-1989” in IDEM, A Concise History of Poland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 319

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Debate Questions:

1. What was the result of revolts against Communism in Poland and Hungary?

2. How did Poland and Hungary struggle for independence affect the Soviet control?

3. Who were the major “figures” that led to the collapse of Communism governments in the

2 countries?

Bibliography

DALLIN, Alexander, German Rule in Russia, 1941-1945: A Study of Ocupation Politics, London, Macmillan, 1957

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HOBSBAWM, Eric, Age of the Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991. London:Abacus, 1995

LUKOWSKI, J and ZAWADZKI, H, A Concise History of Poland , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001

MAZOVER, Mark, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, London: Penguin Books, 1998

MOLNAR, Miklos, A Concise History of Hungary, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001

UN General Assembly, Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary (1957), Chapter VIII. B, (The Political Background of the Second Soviet Intervention)

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