Stalin’s Russia was determined to turn Poland into
an obedient Soviet-controlled state; all vestiges of
democratic influence were to be swept away. A
Tito-like defiance could not be tolerated in
Poland, which was strategically far more vital to
the USSR than Yugoslavia. Fearful that the ortho-
dox communist but nationally minded Polish
first secretary of the Communist Party, Wladysav
Gomulka, could cause trouble, Stalin had him
removed and imprisoned. Gomulka’s rival for
power, the president of Poland, Boleslaw Bierut,
a former Comintern man, was placed in the crucial
position of first secretary. To make doubly certain,
a Soviet general, Marshal Konstanty Rokossowski,
installed as deputy premier and minister of
defence, ensured that Poland did not stray from
the Soviet fold. Rokossowski could call on a Polish
army of 400,000 men and on the Soviet divisions
stationed in Poland, which was ruled by the party
rigidly on the Stalinist model. Fears of West
German demands for the recovery of Germany’s
‘lost’ territories of Silesia and East Prussia could
be used to make Poland the most important
member, besides the Soviet Union, of the Warsaw
Pact alliance, which the Russians had set up in
1955 to counter the formation of NATO in the
West. Economically, too, Poland was closely
linked to the Soviet Union through bilateral
treaties. It was also a member of Comecon, the
Soviet-dominated Council of Mutual Economic
Assistance, set up in 1949. In its early years
Comecon hardly bestowed ‘mutual’ benefits on
its members but was largely inactive, a propa-
ganda answer to Western cooperation and
Marshall Aid.
Industry and small workshops were almost
totally nationalised in Poland. The economy was
directed by a central plan which gave greatest
emphasis to heavy industry and armaments. The
workers suffered from the exploitation of their
labour, and independent trade unions had been
crushed. To these privations, the easiest responses
were absenteeism, petty theft and shoddy work.
Thus the Polish socialist state in this command
economy did not win the support of the class on
which communism was supposed to be firmly
built – the industrial workers. The party tried to
push state agriculture too, imposing prices and
exacting taxes. Stalinist collectivisation made only
slow progress, however: less than 10 per cent of
arable land had been collectivised by 1955. The
rest remained in the hands of small farmers, but
they were defenceless against rigid state controls
and reacted by producing less and less.
The Catholic Church, traditional custodian of
Polish culture, came to embody national inde-
pendence and resistance to communism and
Russification. Relations between state and Church
rapidly got worse after 1949; the Church’s privi-
leges and possessions were curtailed and in 1952
bishops and priests were arrested and imprisoned.
Then in 1953 the primate of Poland, Archbishop
Stefan Wyszynski, was forced to retire to a
monastery.
(^1) Chapter 43
EASTERN EUROPE AND THE
SOVIET UNION
THE POLISH CHALLENGE AND THE
HUNGARIAN RISING