THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC 427socialist leaders were charged with treason, and removed. In the countryside,
the last remnants of the anti-communist underground were destroyed. In
October 1947, Mikolajczyk who, malgre lui, had acted as a general focus for
opposition, fled for his life. In London, he was told by Churchill, who had urged
him to go to Poland in the first place, that it was a surprise to see him alive.^22
However, the mere elimination of their opponents did not automatically give
the communists the means to rule and develop the country as they wished; and
it is highly significant that the initiative for creating a new party organization,
suited to the new conditions, came less from the PPR itself than from the pro-
communist rump elements of the former radical parties. Here, the key man was
Jozef Cyrankiewicz, leader of the resprayed PPS, and since February, Prime
Minister. In 1947, one may suppose that Cyrankiewicz faced an uncomfortable
future. At any point, he could have been discarded as lightly as his predecessor,
Osobka-Morawski. He could not possibly hope to beat the communists - nor,
in the Leninist game, to join them and still retain any semblance of influence. His
only hope was to muscle in from the start on the creation of the new organiza-
tion. He saw a ready ally in the Kremlin, which was watching Gomulka and the
PPR with increasing unease. In March 1948, Cyrankiewicz travelled to Moscow
to see Stalin, and it is clearly from this meeting that the project for creating a
united Polish Workers Party (PZPR) reached its point of departure. Hence it is
quite erroneous to imagine the PPR organizing a merger with the PPS 'in the
manner of a hungry dog merging with a loaf of bread'. In this case, the weevils
from the loaf walked off on their own legs and persuaded the dog's master to
strap them firmly to the dog's back in a position where they could not be eaten.
In this way, the PPR was linked with the PPS for the duration; the eventual emer-
gence of the PZPR was assured; and Cyrankiewicz ensured himself a place in the
sun which lasted until 1972..^23
Over the same period, the two other elements of the government's
Democratic Bloc, the bogus SL and the SD (Democratic Movement) were merg-
ing with the remnants of their anti-communist parent organizations. The SL and
the SD became integral parts of the communist system in Poland, but not of the
PZPR. The triumph of the one-party system was never perfectly complete.
In the economic, as in the political sphere, radical change was delayed by the
lack of appropriate organizational structures and personnel. The Three Year
Plan did not envisage any further industrial nationalization. There was no sign
whatsoever of collectivization in agriculture. In 1947 the harvest failed, and every
possible concession had to be made to the peasants in order to feed the nation.
At this time, the peasant co-operative movement was flourishing. The state sec-
tor was advancing rapidly into the internal wholesale trade, reaching a virtual
monopoly by the end of 1948. The retail trade, was also 'socialized' through the
so-called Bitwa o Handel or 'Battle over Commerce'. In the countryside, it was
taken over by the Peasant 'Self-help' Organizations. In Foreign Trade, the
USSR's role was dramatically increased. In the era of Marshall Aid, for which
Poland was a prime candidate, the Soviet Union was obliged to make a