administrative officials of the Communist Workers’
Party.
In parts of the countryside, fighting escalated
into civil war. Civilian administrators and police
were attacked and killed. Jewish survivors once
more became the murder victims. Not until 1948
could this violence be broken. Until then, the ter-
rorist attacks served the interests of the commu-
nists, for they made the postponement of elections
plausible.
By fair means and foul the communists did all
they could to undermine support for their polit-
ical opponents, who happened also to be their
coalition partners in government. Nevertheless,
the road to socialism was to be Polish and not
Soviet. The economic plans were publicly
declared to be based on the coexistence of a
private, a cooperative and a public state sector. All
the same, there was not much left but the state
sector of industry by 1947. All industrial under-
takings employing more than fifty workers per
shift were nationalised, which effectively brought
91 per cent of industry and banking under state
control. The land question was the most immedi-
ately important. In ‘old’ Poland all the large farms
and estates were broken up and distributed to the
peasantry. In the ‘new lands’, vacated by the
Germans, peasant settlers were encouraged to join
collective farms. This largesse politically neu-
tralised the peasantry. Few lamented that the pre-
war gentry and wealthy industrialists would not
be allowed back their possessions. Intimidation of
political opponents did the rest. Despite the
appalling conditions, huge efforts were made to
rebuild the devastated economy and the towns
and villages of Poland, especially Warsaw.
In the election, finally held in January 1947,
the communists won and almost eliminated their
principal rivals, the Peasant Party, many of whose
candidates had been intimidated or imprisoned.
The Catholic Church remained intact, however,
sustaining its links with the majority of the Polish
people. Gomulka tried to reconcile the Poles to
communist rule, but his efforts were to be
negated by the need to abandon the Polish road
to socialism. During the barren harshness of
Stalin’s last years the Communist Party was dis-
rupted by purges and Gomulka was disgraced in
January 1949.
Soviet policies in Romania exemplified a different,
gradualist approach determined by internal events
and by the military situation. At first, Stalin may
well have planned a ruthless and simple takeover,
with communist-trained Romanians such as Anna
Pauker setting up an administration in the wake of
the Red Army’s conquest. But the unexpected
happened. In August 1944, King Michael led a
coup that overthrew the fascist government and
then changed sides, from Hitler’s Germany to that
of the Allies. This threw the country open to the
Red Army which, with Romanian troops, chased
the Wehrmacht into Hungary. Romania again lost
Bessarabia to the Soviet Union, but was rewarded
by the return of Transylvania, which in 1940 had
been transferred to Hungary by Hitler. Mean-
while a Romanian government, including pre-war
Romanian communists, was established, though
these ‘native’ communists were not trusted by
Stalin. At Moscow’s behest, the popular-front-type
governments, which included non-communist par-
ties, were reshuffled in December 1944 and March
1945 to provide the communists with greater
though still incomplete power.
Soviet army intervention in local administration
eroded popular support for the non-communist
parties. Joint Soviet–Romanian companies were
founded, landed estates were broken up, commu-
nists and fellow travellers were labelled ‘demo-
cratic’ and other parties showing any signs of
independence were stigmatised as ‘fascist’. So-
called ‘free elections’ were held in November
- There was intimidation, and the results may
well have been doctored, but the communists had
won for themselves a sufficient power base to
make their overwhelming electoral victory accept-
able to the Romanian people. In any case the
people had little choice beyond acceptance since
Western protests would be limited to words.
Britain and the US had already recognised the
communist-controlled government before the
elections. Despite the unsatisfactory elections and
the Anglo-American detestation of communist
regimes, Romania had been written off as
inevitably forming part of the Soviet camp, and a
peace treaty was signed in February 1947 which
recognised this. King Michael was forced into exile
and Romania became a ‘people’s democracy’, the
beginning of four terrible decades.
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