22PARTIA:
The Communist Movement
It is often said that the Polish Communist movement had few native roots. It can
be regarded as a plant grown mainly in a foreign frame and transplanted into the
post-war Polish garden by Soviet political gardeners. In this light, it need not
occupy too prominent a position in Polish history. At the same time, one should
not underestimate the chances which once existed for a successful transplant,
nor the degree to which it adapted itself to the inimitable conditions of the
Polish political soil after 1945.^1
In its origins, the pedigree of the Polish Communist movement is usually
traced to the beginnings of Polish Socialism as a whole, from which for sixty or
seventy years it was not clearly distinguished. In the early nineteenth century,
Polish socialists belonged to a tiny Utopian elite, which had more influence in the
Emigration than at home. Most characteristically their very earliest organiza-
tion is thought to have been formed in 1832 in a disused naval barracks in
Portsmouth, by a group of refugees from the November Rising.^2 They appeared
in the persons of Lelewel, Worcell, and the Revd Aleksander Pulaski (1800-38)
in the ranks of the Democratic Society, and of the Zemsta Ludu (People's
Revenge), and formed a distinct branch of radical opinion amongst the 'Reds'
of the two Risings. In the absence of an industrial society, their interests were
focused on agrarian problems. Nothing in the nature of a mass organization can
be observed until after the January Rising. The very first Polish trade union was
established in Lwow in Galicia, by Polish printers in 1870. The first socialist
strikes were organized in Poznari in Prussia in 1871 and 1872. In Warsaw, the
first consciously socialist groups were organized in the form of private debating
societies in this same period.
Already in the 1970s, however, two distinct trends were observable. The
majority trend, inspired by Boleslaw Limanowski (1835-1935), continued an
earlier tradition where Polish national demands were seen as a natural part of
the socialist programme. It was patriotic, empirical, and practical in its
approach to social problems. Its first organization, a revived hud Polski (Polish
People), was formed in Geneva and took Limanowski's pamphlet Patriotism
and Socialism (1881), as its guiding text.^3 The minority trend, inspired by
Ludwick Warynski (1856-89) specifically rejected Polish national demands. It
was cosmopolitan, ideological, elitist, and not averse to terrorism, having close
ties with the Russian 'People's Will'. One of its earliest public meetings, held in
Warsaw on 29 November 1880 on the fiftieth anniversary of the November