THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC 417The Provisional Government of National Unity (TRJN) resulted from the
declaration of the Yalta Conference for the union in Poland of 'all democratic
and anti-Nazi elements'. Its details were decided during negotiations held in
Moscow between on the one side Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, the leader of the
Peasant Party and the only former member of the exiled Government in London
willing to accept the terms of Yalta, and on the other Bolestaw Bierut, as the
spokesman of the RTRP, the KRN, and the PPR. They decided that Osobka-
Morawski should continue as Premier, with Mikolajczyk as Second Deputy
Premier and Minister of Agriculture, and with Gomulka as First Deputy Premier
and, from November 1945, Minister for the Recovered Territories. Of twenty-
one Ministries, only seven were directly in the hands of the PPR although sev-
enteen were held by pro-Soviet figures. The task of the new government,
approved by the Potsdam Conference, was to govern the country until free elec-
tions could be held and a permanent constitutional system established. It took
office on 2.8 June 1945, and lasted until February 1947. During these two years,
its activities attracted little attention in the West. In Britain and America,
wartime sentiments of gratitude and admiration for the Soviet Union were still
strong. Only at the very end of the period, in 1947, when the TJRN had already
fallen, did Western observers take stock of what had actually happened in
Poland; and then they reacted in a fit of fierce, but impotent frustration.^10
The TRJN was formed in the same week of June 1945 in which 'the Sixteen'
Polish underground leaders were forced to stand trial in Moscow. The coinci-
dence cannot have been accidental. Stalin was laying on a piece of political the-
atre to demonstrate how his clients were rewarded and his opponents were
scourged. The setting was obscene. In the courtroom. Soviet soldiers stood
guard with fixed bayonets over a group of defendants who were totally innocent
of any offence but who were being subjected to ritual humiliation. British and
American diplomats, allies of the accused, watched silently from the gallery,
making no protest. The accusations centred on the absurd fiction of the prison-
ers' alleged collaboration with the Nazis. (In reality, they had spent the whole
war fighting the Nazis.) General Okulicki alone, one of the few persons ever to
withstand the preparations for a Soviet show trial unbroken, defied the court
and asserted the propriety of his conduct. It did him no good. The guilty verdicts
were a foregone conclusion. They were only surprising because they contained
no death sentences. The magnanimity of Soviet justice had been written into the
script, perhaps to ensure Western compliance. Polish democracy died in the
dock. General Okulicki died in his cell the following year.
Economic and social policy in the immediate wake of 'Liberation' was neces-
sarily limited. The communists were concerned firstly that the vast amount of
property accumulated by the German Occupation regime should be retained as
a base for future nationalization, and secondly, that the larger landed estates
should be parcelled out among the poor peasants. A decree to this effect was reg-
istered by the PKWN on 6 September 1944. In many cases, the peasants were
taking the land without being invited to do so. Forced requisitioning was less