Communism in Poland

Communism in Poland can trace its origins to the late 19th century: the Marxist First Proletariat party was founded in 1882. Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (Socjaldemokracja Królestwa Polskiego i Litwy, SDKPiL) party and the publicist Stanisław Brzozowski (1878–1911) were important early Polish Marxists.

During the interwar period in the Second Polish Republic, some socialists formed the Communist Party of Poland (Komunistyczna Partia Polski, KPP). Most of the KPP's leaders and activists perished in the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge in the 1930s, and the party was abolished by the Communist International (Comintern) in 1938.

In 1939, World War II began and Poland was conquered by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The government of the Polish Republic went into exile. In 1942, Polish communists backed by the Soviet Union in German-occupied Poland established a new Polish communist party, the Polish Workers' Party (Polska Partia Robotnicza, PPR). Władysław Gomułka soon became its leader. In the Soviet Union, Stalin and Wanda Wasilewska created the Union of Polish Patriots as a communist organization under Soviet control. As Germany was being defeated, the Polish communist minority collaborated with the Soviet Union, in opposition to the legitimate Polish government-in-exile, to establish a Polish socialist state, albeit subordinate to the Soviet Union. This led to the creation of the Polish People's Republic. The Polish Workers' Party merged with the Polish Socialist Party (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna, PPS), to form the Polish United Workers' Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza, PZPR), which ruled Poland until 1989. In post-World War II Poland, the communists initially enjoyed popular support due to the land reform, a mass scale rebuilding program, and progressive social policies. The popular support eventually eroded because of repressions, economic difficulties, and lack of freedoms, however the PZPR was kept in power for four decades under Soviet influence.

Towards the end of World War II, with the approval of the United States and the UK, the PPR (under the command of the USSR) started its program of Polonization following the changes of the Polish borders; it was decided that Poland would cede the Eastern Borderlands to the Soviet Union in exchange for the Recovered Territories (formerly German lands) in the west. By the time Władysław Gomułka was appointed General-Secretary of the PPR, the regime had begun cementing its tenuous power by exuding an ethno-nationalist ethos to unite a homogenizing Poland against threats to the country, i.e. minorities such as Germans. This was accomplished by the expulsion of such minorities to neighboring countries, such as Belarus.

Much of this came about through the support of the Catholic Church. The then-Primate of Poland August Hlond actively worked to push Germans out of positions within the church and the newly acquired land in tandem with the Party, while simultaneously asserted the church's autonomy by holding a Mass in 1945 which attracted up to four million people. This assertion of independence allowed the Church to establish its own institutions such as schools, as well as enabling it to undermine the state by supporting anti-PPR organizations. After the 1947 Polish parliamentary election, the PPR felt secure enough to begin targeting its only major rival for control within the country, by imprisoning eighty-one priests in 1948 and seizing church properties two years later.

Poland was one of the first Warsaw Pact countries to abandon the totalitarianism of Stalin's regime, in part due to the stronger nationalist ideas present within it. Krushchev emphasized the continued role of communism - but in a new, revitalized form - whereas Gomulka's government established their position as being one serving the interests of Poland.

With Krushchev now serving as leader of the USSR, having delivered his secret speech in 1956, anti-Stalinist ideas began to spread as resentment boiled over into the first of several protests in Poznań at the Stalin Factory (ZiSPO). Its workers and many residents of the city all marched towards the city center on June 28 in expression of their many grievances such as wage cuts, demanding to meet with party leaders - leaders who did not show up. Further incensing the crowd, they stormed the prison and seized its weapons as well as freeing many inmates before descending upon the radio station. The Politburo approved action by Marshal Rokossovsky to send 10,000 troops in to quell the revolt, resulting in 73 deaths as order was restored to the city. Unrest still lingered within a population desperate for reform, leading the PPR to elevate Gomułka as the new leader to assuage the population.

During this period, some Polish academics and philosophers, including Leszek Kołakowski, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, and Stanisław Ossowski, tried to develop a form of "Polish Marxism", as part of the revisionist Marxist movement. These efforts to create a bridge between Poland's history and Marxist ideology were mildly successful, especially in comparison to similar attempts elsewhere in the Eastern Bloc. But they were stifled by the regime's unwillingness to risk stepping too far in the reformist direction.