440 POLSKA LUDOWA
PZPR was to take control of the People's Republic without direct supervision
from Moscow. The Polish Road to Socialism was to be respected by the Soviet
leaders, on condition that the unity of the bloc was not impaired. In this way,
the Polish 'Spring' bloomed in October. The Polish Party achieved maturity,
asserted its autonomy, and freed the country from Stalinism; and it continued to
rule the country for more than thirty years.^37
Twenty years of National Communism in Poland provided an era of relative
stability, but failed to devise any definitive solutions to pressing political and
economic problems. The Party had to learn the art of government the hard way,
and had had to shed some of its more fanciful ideological vagaries. Apart from
1956, there were serious political crises in 1968, 1970, and 1976.
Gomulka's assumption of power was accompanied by bitter recriminations
among the Party's competing factions. If the Soviet puppets had been
re-exported, the native Stalinists headed by Zenon Nowak still formed a pow-
erful, if subdued, caucus. Known henceforth as 'Natolinists', after the former
Branicki palace at Natolin where they held their meetings, they had been thrown
into direct conflict with Gomutca's supporters, who had received the label of
'Revisionists'. Factional in-fighting rumbled on for months. The Natolinists
attempted to divert attacks against them by blaming the large number of Jews
who had prospered in the Party under the Stalinist regime. A whispering cam-
paign 'to oust the Abramo-vitches' caused a number of minor casualties.^38 At
the other end of the scale, a determined attempt was launched to purge Piasecki
and his ex-Fascists, and to suppress PAX. The November issue of Po prostu
(Quite Simply), a radical intellectual journal, denounced PAX as an organiza-
tion practising 'the powers of the Mafia', and the blind cult of the leader. On this
front, nothing happened. Despite a widespread popular outcry, Piasecki stood
firm, presumably as a result of confidential Soviet lobbying on behalf of the
KGB's favourite Polish son. For this, and other offences, Po prostu was closed.
In January 1957, Piasecki's sixteen-year-old son, Bogdan, was abducted on his
way home from school in Warsaw by unknown persons. His mutilated body
was eventually discovered in a disused cellar.
The progress of 'Destalinization' was kept within severe limits. A new elec-
toral law was designed, in Gomutka's words, 'to permit the people to elect and
not merely to vote'. The General Election of 20 January 1957 offered the voters
a choice between 722 candidates, some of them non-party figures, standing for
459 seats. But the Candidates' List had been drawn up, as always, by the Party:
there was no possibility that the PZPR could have been defeated. The National
Front, rebaptized as the 'Front of National Unity' (FJN), remained the con-
troller and manager of political life. An important Codification Commission set
to work to create the proper legal framework of public life which was lacking.
Important codices of Administrative Law (1961), Family Law (1965), and