(^466) POLSKA LUDOWA
history. The landmarks - from the Old Town Square and St. John's Cathedral
in the north to Lazienki and Wilanow in the south — were, for the most part,
modern replicas. Few of the people one met in the street, even those in middle
age, had been resident there before the War. Everything had to be reconstructed
afresh, and in the course of the reconstruction many important details were
changed in accordance with political considerations. The casual visitor could
not be aware of the careful way in which monuments of the past were given
prominence, or were consigned to oblivion, in conformity with political criteria.
There were still spots - beside the Zygmunt Column, for example, or before the
Sobieski statue in Lazienki Park - where one could sense the spirits of the past.
Yet all was not as it seemed. Few people would have known that the highly sym-
bolic statue to Feliks Dzierzyriski on the former Bank Square stood near the site
of several equally symbolic predecessors. From 1841 to 1898 a monument raised
by Tsar Nicholas I 'To the Poles who perished for loyalty to their Sovereign'
stood there. Few people know that the nearby shrine of the Unknown Soldier
sheltered the remains of one of the teenage defenders of Lwow from 1919. Few
had time to compare the numerous but selective public memorials to the victims
of Nazi oppression with the more telling contents of the city's cemeteries. Few
of the younger generation, whilst retailing the endless jokes about the intrusive
proportions of the Palace of Arts and Sciences, would realize that their grand-
fathers had harboured exactly the same sort of feelings about the equally pre-
tentious Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky before it was
demolished in 1923. Plus Ca change.
The People's Republic participated in a wide range of international organiza-
tions. As a founder member of the United Nations, Poland was the 51st nation
to sign the Charter on 16 October 1945.,:" The Polish Delegation claimed its seat
on the. Security Council in 1946—7, i960, and 1970—1, and supplied the
Chairman of the General Assembly in 1972. Polish representatives contributed
to the work of UNESCO, FAO, WHO, UPU, and GATT, and to the
International Court of Justice at The Hague.
Poland's major international commitment, however, derived from its mem-
bership of the main institutions of the Soviet Bloc - since 1949 of the Council of
Mutual Economic Aid (COMECON) and since 1955 of the Warsaw Pact.
Although the interdependence of these two organizations was officially denied,
there can be little doubt that they formed the twin pillars of the military-indus-
trial complex on which Soviet strategic planning was based. The launching of a
long-term plan for accelerated socialist integration by the XXV Session of
Comecon at Bucharest in July 1971 would seem to have marked a new stage in
the growth of Soviet hegemony. Coupled with the Brezhnev Doctrine, which
- The United Nations Charter was signed on 26 June 1945 in San Francisco and took effect on
24 October 1945. Poland's status in the UN is that of a founder member, but because of the
rival authorities at the time, it was not represented at the Founding Conference in San
Francisco. The Polish representative signed the Charter on 16 October 1945.