4°4 PARTIA
Guard were suppressed by the Polish Army. The KPRP's peak trade union mem-
bership of 77,000 in 1919, compared to the 93,000 of the PPS at that time. In the
following years, a number of obscure but congenial communist fragments were
either integrated into or associated with the Party. These included the Polish-
orientated 'CP of Upper Silesia'; the Kombund, an offshoot of the Warsaw
Bund; the 'CP of Western Ukraine', a pro-Soviet reincarnation of the 'CP of
Eastern Galicia'; and the 'CP of Western Byelorussia'.^7
The Party's history in the inter-war period makes sorry reading. A series of
catastrophic, strategic blunders paved the road to annihilation. The Polish
Communists were as unsuccessful in attracting the support of the Polish people
as they were in winning the confidence of their Soviet patrons.
The years 1918-21 were filled with bitter disillusionment. From their refuge
in Minsk, the Party leaders had daily awaited news of the Revolution in
Warsaw. Six regiments of Polish Riflemen were formed in the Red Army's
'Western Division'. Yet the spontaneous revolution, and the Red Army's vic-
tory, both failed to materialize. Lenin spurned the KPRP's advice in matters of
diplomacy and of social policy alike. In the summer of 1920, in the brief months
of the Red Army's advance into Poland, he entrusted his political plans to
Dzierzynski's Cbeka (Political Police), and kept control of the Provisional
Revolutionary Committee at Bialystok in the hands of his own Bolshevik Poles.^8
His desperate instructions to Dzierzynski to shoot one hundred Poles for every
Communist executed by the Polish Army, and 'to destroy the landowners and
kulaks ruthlessly and a bit more quickly and energetically', and to turn the land
over to the poor peasants, were as offensive to the KPRP, which at that juncture
was demanding instant collectivization, as they were to the population at large.^9
The Treaty of Riga, whereby the Bolshevik government formally recognized the
Polish Republic, overturned the declared policy not only of the KPRP but also
of the Comintern. Shock after shock eventually convinced the Party's Second
Congress (1923) that their original analysis of the internal and external situation
had been woefully mistaken. In recognition of this fact, they had agreed to par-
ticipate in parliamentary elections in 1922, and in 1925 changed their title to that
of 'The Communist Party of Poland' (KPP).
In May 1926, the KPP gave open support to Pilsudski's coup d'etat. In so far
as the Coup was intended to forestall a right-wing Coalition, the decision
was entirely logical. Yet it was rewarded in Warsaw by the prompt action of
Pilsudski's gendarmes, who brutally dispersed the Communist demonstrations
of support. In Moscow, it was savagely denounced as an act of betrayal of the
socialist camp. This 'May Error' remained an embarrassment to Communist
historians for decades.^10
In the 1930s, the predicament of the KPP rapidly grew critical. In Poland, its
members were popularly regarded as traitors to the national cause. Their two
parliamentary deputies elected in 1922 had long since lost their seats. The
intransigent hostility of the PPS effectively excluded them from practical work-
ing-class politics, and they failed to make any real progress towards a united