Communist Poland

[PolishTrotsky]

I know the Title is very vague, but I would like some good information on the People's Republic on Poland, Specifically during the Bierut era and Gomulka era. I would also like to know about major events during that time period. Thankyou!

[communard resolution]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piotr_%C5%9Amieta%C5%84ski

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozna%C5%84_1956_protests

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mieczys%C5%82aw_Moczar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Polish_political_crisis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_1970_protests (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_1970_protests)

http://libcom.org/history/1970-71-uprising-poland

http://libcom.org/library/migration-industry-and-struggles-in-poland-1956-2005

[redSHARP]

my question is: did the poles hate communism or just the soviet union and by extension "communism".

[Q]

my question is: did the poles hate communism or just the soviet union and by extension "communism".

The latter basically. Solidarnosc at the beginning of its development was leading a mass movement for a more "humane" version of the regime, the consciousness was still clearly within the bounds of "socialism" (even given its malformed meaning) and looking for alternatives within it. Only after the Polish regime repressed the movement ruthlessly did Solidarnosc started to move towards capitalist restauration.

This article may be helpful (http://www.socialismtoday.org/133/solidarity.html).

[Zanthorus]

The latter basically. Solidarnosc at the beginning of its development was leading a mass movement for a more "humane" version of the regime,

Yes, a 'mass movement' which diverted the working-class from the organs of mass struggle. The ICC has written about Poland and Solidarnosc, showing the counter-revolutionary nature of the union:

http://en.internationalism.org/node/3025

[Red Future]

Solidarnosc was funded by and kept alive by the Reagan Administration at a startling rate of $8 million per year, with even more money pouring in from the Vatican and other third-party sources (1 (http://books.google.com/books?id=rfia4MnyOykC&pg=PA76&vq=solidarity&dq=peter+schweizer+reagan+victory&source=gbs_search_s&cad=0#v=onepage&q=solidarity&f=false)). Reading over recently disclosed Department of State documents, as well as the "tell-all" memoirs of the Reagan state officials involved really demonstrates how much of a US-orchestrated coup d'etat the ascension of Solidarnosc actually was.

scum

[Red Commissar]

In Italy, the Banco Ambrosiano (a mess on its own right) helped move a lot of funds from the Vatican's bank (IOR) to various contacts, ranging from pro-Catholic dictators and the Contras to the Lech Walesa's grouping in Solidarity. It significantly helped to the final shape that Solidarity took in the end because they were acting in tandem with foreign interests.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

I dont know so much either about Poland, but if i get things right it wasnt really a good example of building socialism very much thanks to that they never recovered frome the dissasters of WWII.

[Dimentio]

I dont know so much either about Poland, but if i get things right it wasnt really a good example of building socialism very much thanks to that they never recovered frome the dissasters of WWII.

They did it surprisingly well. The reconstruction of Warszaw was impressive.

[Arlekino]

I would not put entire Polish population in one road, the Polish population are too religious and of course they hate communism and Soviet Union.

[Kiev Communard]

Basically the Communist Party of Poland was abolished by Stalinists back in 1938, so the real Polish Communists didn't have even a chance to come to power on their own. The Polish Party of Labour was either completely subordinated to the USSR (up to 1956), or crypto-Titoist (after that time), so I don't think the adjective "Communist" (besides usual confusion between ideology and social formation) could be applied there.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Comrade, the Soviets didn't have the guts to "send in the tanks" (better yet, MVD/MGB/KGB operatives) and fix the Polish economy back in the very early 1950s.

The notion that Poland was "crypto-Titoist" may be questionable. I'm not sure Yugoslavia had the kind of extensive private farming shit that Poland had.

[Rocky Rococo]

Polish socialism/communism was repeatedly subject to division and splits over the issue of nationalism. Thus, famously, Pilsudski's statement "I got off the streetcar marked Socialism at the stop known as Independence". The wing of the Polish Socialist Party that disagreed with Pilsudski became in its turn the basis for the Polish Communist Party, which itself from 1920 through the Post-WWII shotgun reunion with the PPS into the Polish United Workers Party, was repeatedly riven with these divisions. During WWII the Soviets created a "leadership" of the Polish Communists from those who had fled to the Soviet Union, despite an active Communist partisan movement within Poland itself, with its own indigenous Communist leadership. That Indigenous leadership was largely suppressed in the early years of PUWP, until after the Poznan events of 1956, and the rehabilitation of Gomulka, who was identified with the nationalist faction of the PUWP.

Nor can Solidarnosc be, on the opposite hand, tarred as solely a nationalist-Catholic movement, much less as some sort of gigantic American inspired and controlled black op. As with Socialists and Communists of the early and mid-century period, Solidarnosc in the 1980-81 period was an extraordinarily diverse movement, as a reading of the proceedings of their national gatherings will show. (Some of those are available in a book edited by Stan Persky, The Solidarity Sourcebook.) Influences such as Luxemburgism and syndicalism were consciously understood by Solidarnosc members and leaders themselves as part of the active debate. What killed the "left" of Solidarnosc and froze it as a rightist-nationalist-Catholic movement was Martial law. The left, progressive, and revolutionary elements in Solidarnosc had no means of sustaining and rebuilding themselves under the conditions of martial law, while the rightist, religious nationalist elements continued to receive crucial material and political support from the west and the Vatican.

For an interesting working-class perspective on the 1980-81 Solidarnosc period, I strongly recommend Stanislaw Starsky's Class Struggle in Classless Poland.

[Kaze no Kae]

The latter basically. Solidarnosc at the beginning of its development was leading a mass movement for a more "humane" version of the regime, the consciousness was still clearly within the bounds of "socialism" (even given its malformed meaning) and looking for alternatives within it. Only after the Polish regime repressed the movement ruthlessly did Solidarnosc started to move towards capitalist restauration.

This article may be helpful (http://www.socialismtoday.org/133/solidarity.html).
As I understand it, Solidarnosc's turn to capitalist restoration was also influenced by CIA infiltration, made more effective by the organisation's hierarchial structure which allowed a relatively small number of people to have a massively disproportionate influence on it's direction by getting elected or appointed to official positions within the organisation (of course, with all the resources of the CIA behind their election campaigns)