192 PIOTR H. KOSICKI
munist Poland in fact shared the same position of wanting to see
the border recognized.208
Nonetheless, Gomułka had taken personal offense at what
he saw as ecclesiastical meddling in foreign affairs of the high-
est importance. Moreover, he felt increasing pressure within his
own party to take a tough stance in the face of competition from
Interior Minister Mieczysław Moczar.209
The church-state thaw was over. Gomułka went after Wy-
szyński’s pride and joy: the millennial celebrations. The PZPR ran
its own “millennial” campaign, designed to substitute the mil-
lennium of Polish statehood for the millennium of Polish Chris-
tendom. In tandem with the Communists’ own celebrations, the
Politburo wanted a “propaganda campaign that would reveal the
falsehoods contained in the [bishops’] letter, as well as the po-
litical harm done by the episcopate.”210 State officials disrupted
Catholic pilgrimages to Częstochowa, and one of the corner-
stones of the Great Novena—the peregrination of the Icon of the
Black Madonna around Poland—was interrupted at every stop
with a competing Communist rally.
Wyszyński, like Gomułka, took all of this personally. Pulling
back entirely from Polish-German reconciliation, he became con-
vinced of one overriding priority: to fight the Communists for
the soul of the Polish nation. This was a direct response to the
campaign that the PZPR had unleashed in the months following
the end of Vatican II.211
It is in this context that one must evaluate the Council’s con-
sequences for Communist Poland. For Polish bishops and laity
- Stefan Wyszyński to Władysław Gomułka, March 12, 1966, reprinted in
Antoni Dudek, Państwo i Kościół w Polsce 1945–1970 (Kraków: PiT, 1995), 247. - On Gomułka and Moczar, see Jerzy Eisler, “March 1968 in Poland,” in 1968:
The World Transformed, ed. Carole Fink, Philipp Gassert, and Detlef Junker (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 237–52. - Quoted in Friszke, Koło posłów “Znak” w Sejmie PRL, 67.
- Kosicki, “Caritas across the Iron Curtain?,” 224–27.