426 POLSKA LUDOWA
its way towards its goal of acting, as Gomulka put it, as 'the hegemon of the
nation'.^20 After two years of preparation, it finally agreed to hold the long-
delayed Elections on 19 January 1947.
Economic and social policies were inevitably obstructed by the political strug-
gle in progress. The PPR could not launch fully-fledged communist policies of
its own until it held a more secure position in the government and in the coun-
try as a whole. The two major developments of these years - the Nationalization
Law of January 1946, and the launching of the Three Year Plan for 1947-9 -
were inspired not by the communists but by the socialists. The former national-
ized all enterprises capable of employing more than 50 workers per shift, and
put nine out of ten enterprises under state control by the end of the year. The
latter was based on western rather than Soviet economic methods. On the agrar-
ian front, Mikolajczyk limited himself to attempts at obtaining legal title deeds
for peasants who had received land from parcellized estates. This was an obvi-
ous safeguard against future collectivization.
The January Election of 1947 gave the communist-led Democratic Bloc 80 per
cent of the poll. From the official point of view, this represented an adequate if
not a brilliant performance. Compared with wonders achieved by Soviet elec-
toral managers in the Baltic States or in Lwow seven years earlier, or by Party
mathematicians in 1952., it was a poor showing. But it served its purpose. The
Election was neither 'free' nor 'unfettered'. The list of candidates was vetted in
advance by the government. Two million voters had been struck from the regis-
ter by government-controlled electoral committees. Factory workers were
marched to the polls by their foremen, and told to vote for the government on
pain of their jobs. The rules of secret balloting were ignored. The count was
organized exclusively by government officials. The result was a foregone con-
clusion. The British and American governments protested against the blatant
disregard for the provisions of Yalta and Potsdam. The Soviet government
rejected the protests, on the grounds that western sources of information in
Poland were unreliable.^21
As a result of the Election, the PPR assumed a dominant position in Polish
politics for the first time. Henceforth all business could be conducted legally and
constitutionally, on the basis of a subservient majority in the Sejm, where the
government held 394 seats against the PSL's 28. On 5 February, Bierut was
elected President of the Republic. On 6 February a new government was sworn
in with J. Cyrankiewicz as Premier. On 19 February, special powers were given
to a new Council of State. From now on, all practical prospects for 'bourgeois'
parties operating on the basis of popular consent came to an end. Over the next
year or so, the cruder elements of the communist movement celebrated their tri-
umph by vilifying their defeated rivals, and driving them from the scene alto-
gether. In the Sejm, Mikolajczyk was publicly denounced as 'a foreign spy' and
'collaborator' by an ex-General recruited from the ranks of the Sanacja. The
Censorship succeeded in censoring the Premier's protest on censorship, not only
from the press but also from the minutes of the Sejm. In the courts, a group of