Polish Workers' Lon Struggle Against Sta

Scan page 6

Red Army troops liberate Poland 1944: 600,000 Soviet soldiers Polish 'reforming' leader Gomulka (right) with E. German leader Ulbricht in 1957.

In latte 1939, while Nazi troops invaded Poland from the West, the Red Army in accordance with the Hitler-Stalin Pact and under the pretence of protecting the Soviet Union's borders and defeating the war of 'Polish landlords', ', invaded from the East.

There is no question of there being any progressive content to the invasion. Six years later, under a different pact and following the agreement with imperialism over the allocation of spheres of influence in Europe, the Red Army was the overseer of the installation of a government dominated by the Polish Stalinist Party.

That Party had, in fact, been hastily resurrected a short time previously. In 1938 Stalin's purges had totally destroyed the Communist Party: virtually the entire leadership was arrested and shot. In April 1938 the Comintern officially decreed its dissolution as it "had been infiltrated by agents provocateurs, Trotskyites and other enemies of the working class".

when Stalin found it desirable to reform it as the Polish Workers Party (now the Polish United Workers Party followed its forced amalgamation with the Socialist Party in 1948) it grew in a bureaucratic fashion as to satisfy even him.

The Polish resistance to Nazi occupation was not led by the Communists, who • played small though increasingly important role. But Poland, with a 400-mile border with the USSR was to be a vital part of the East European buffer.

Bureaucratic

The transformation of Poland into a deformed workers' , state was carried through in a totally bureaucratic manner under the watchful eye of the Red Army. Where revolutionary actions had been taken by the working class they were reversed, and the forms only of these actions later taken again in a controlled and bureaucratic manner.

In Poland, as in the other Eastern European states allotted to the USSR at Teheran and Yalta, the structural transformational process which led to the creation of the deformed workers' states was definitively set in motion from about 1947.

"In the period following 1947 the Stalinists, acting largely independently of the working class, in a reactionary way carried through the historically progressive task of removing from power the bourgeoisie which had remained in power only because of their own treacherous policies in the previous period.

It is in this and this alone that lies the progressive content of the Stalinist transformations of the period. And this progressive task they carried through in such a reactionary manner as to totally alienate the working class itself so that within seven years of the completion of the main aspects of this process the working class was in armed revolt against the Stalinist regime"

(Wohlforth, The Theory of Structural Assimilation, p.31).

Industrial growth

A central feature of the "planned socialist economy' in post-war Poland as in the other deformed workers' states, Was an enormous industrial growth. An increase . of 158% was claimed for the years 1949-53 Paying the cost of this growth was the working class. As it itself quickly grew in accordance with industrial development, the proletariat not only saw targets for growth in popular consumption increasingly abandoned in favour of heavy industry, but its real income fell by as much as 10%. By the mid 1950s workers were in revolt against economic and political repression.

The subterranean growth of proletarian anger, the semichaos that bureaucratic mismanagement produced in the national economy, something of an agricultural crisis, and the in creased scope for political and economic reform following Stalin's death in 1953, were reflected in the ruling bureaucracy.

Concessions

In 1948 Gomulka had been deposed, not only because he seemed to the Soviet leadership to be a Titoist nationalist deviationist but, particularly, because he had argued for a policy of concessions (especially to the peasanty) as a counterweight to rapid industrialisation and a fairly limited agrarian collectivisation.

In 1953 the workers' revolt in East Germany argued his point; Polish developments continued to do so. A 'reformist" wing developed in the ruling caste, and 1954-56 saw tentative steps towards 'liberalisation' 'democratisation' and 'de-Stalinisation'-urged on by a reluctant Peasantry and a disaffected intelligentsia, and made imperative by a seething working class.

The new Party leader Ochab, elected as a compromise candidate following the timely death of Bierut in early 1956, raised the wages of the lowest-paid workers and claimed that was all that could be afforded. A tour of S'ilesia, though, revealed the reality of the growth of the working class opposition and he announced a 15% increase for miners. There had already been strikes in Gdansk.

The liberals' and the 'Stalinists'-that is, the reformist and conservative wings of Stalinism -were both warned alarmingly of what could happen, by a workers' rebellion in the town of Poznan. There, 15,000 workers had for some time been threatening action in the Zispo locomotive, carrriage and armaments factory.

Conflict

Irregular supply of raw materials affected earnings; oppressive taxation and above all, increased production schedules which lowered their miserable wages still further, brought the workers into direct conflict with the management. The local PUWP organisation -to which a third of the workers belonged-and the bureaucratic trade union organisation showed which side they were on. A delegation was despatched to the Ministry and the metallurgical union headquarters in Warsaw.

In the capital the government agreed to refund excessive tax deductions and to pay full bonuses, but rejected the delegation's central demandfor an immediate 20% wage increase. An (unfounded) rumour that their delegates had been arrested deepeend the Zispo workers' reaction to the rejection of their pay demand.

On 28 June the workforce marched to the city centre, gathering on their way thousands of other workers. To the original slogans demanding higher wages were added others: "Down with the USSR" "Down with false communism" ... "Down with Soviet occupation". • Different groups of demonstrators invaded police headquarters and seized weapons, attacked the radio building and broke into the prison. "Armed provocateurs" (as the government afterwards explained) made for the security police building.

Hundreds of "provocateurs' were cut down by bullets. Armed battles continued throughout the day; but army tanks, units of the internal security forces and the civil militia gained control of the streets and crushed the last Tanks in Poznan, 1956.

flickerings of resistance the next day. The working class were given an indication of the price of more bread: 54 were dead, 300 wounded and about 300 arrested.

The "progressive" Stalinist wing understood the significance of Poznan. Strikes were already occurring in Gdynia, Gdansk and Silesia, and military brutality might not be able to contain many Poznans at once.

If the workers were not given bread and the illusion of some control over their existence then the bureaucrats might end up losing the caviare and power which suited their own tastes.

So the inquiry into the Poznan uprising modified the analysis which had appeared throughout the Stalinist bloc

Scan page 7

Delegates to the 20th Congress of the CPSU hear Kruscher denounce Stalin in 1956. ructober 1990, and the hard- movements to the masses, and ners removed from promising insurrection, Wednesday (excepting Yugoslavia) which spoke of it as incited by imperialist and reactionary Polish underground agents" (Pravda), a *carefully prepared provocative diversionary action . . . organIsed by enemies oi our fatherland" (Trybuna Ludu, the Polish Party daily).

It was now conceded that "the strike action of the Poznan wOIkeIs... was to a considerable extent caused by bureaucratic distortions of the proletarian state" . The reformists, by the time of the Central Committee Seventh Plenum in mid-July 1956, were convinced of the need for economic and political. concessions to the masses: increasing food and ponsumer goods production, encouraging the peasants, and oromoting 'workers' participafion' in management.

In opposition to this wing of the bureaucracy there emerged the minority Natolin group'drawn mostly from the police, the military and the management of heavy industry, all lefending their sectional intersts. They had the comfort of laving, if not an increasing level if support from rank and file Party militants, intellectuals and rade union bureaucrats, then at east the support of the Soviet bureaucracy, which feared the ponsequences of an acceleration if the reforms' permitted in the Stalinist bloc by Kruschev.

Popularity Gomulka, when expelled rom leadership and the PUWP n 1948, had somehow evaded he fate of Rajk in Hungary, pansky in Czechosiovakia, and hany others. In 1956 all he had b do was wait for the reformsis to claim him ana make use if his popularity-as a nationalst who had earlier 'defied' the JSSR, as a friend of the rich leasants, as a symbol (a symbol inly, workers soon learned) of ipposition to Stalinism.

Gomulka was to be relected Secretary General at a lentral Committee meeting on Politburo. The Natolinians in turn prepared a coup. They drew up a list of 700 reformists to be arrested before the Central Committee meeting. Moscow was informed; sections of the army under sympathetic generals marched towards Warsaw.

The Gomulkaists rallied their own armed forces. But the source of their success was the basis they established for themselves in the masses, through the Warsaw Party Committee, the lesser Party and union bureaucrats, in the intellectual centres and, most importantly, in the big Warsaw factories.

They threatened an insurrection. It was a dangerous, though necessary, move: the level of discontent in the working class threatened to remove not only the 'hard-line Stalinists from power, but the whole of the parasitic bureaucracy. For the moment, though, the Stalinist party and union organisations were in control of the factories they mobilised.

Arms were distributed to the factories, but were under lock and key. The keys were in the pockets of the party and union bureaucrats as they exerted themselves to keep the workers off the streets and under control. This was the situation in the factories on 19 October; workers were not told of the Russian and Polish tanks moving towards Warsaw.

While mass meetings were mobilising workers in the factories in case the 'reformists' needed them, the Central Committee was meeting with almost the entire Soviet Politburo and military leadership who had arrived that morning , to strengthen the hard-line position.

Broadcast Gomulka, threatening to broadcast the news of troop persuaded Kruschev to back down. The troops turned back and Kruschev and Co flew home -still somewhat unconvinced that the rehabilitated traitor' would and • could secure the Polish working class as a peaceful cog in the Eastern European machine they operated from Moscow.

That cog was beginning to act independently of the bureaucracy which had sought to harness its movement to its own ends. On 22 October there were riots in Wroclaw and, the next day, demonstrations in Gdansk. In the Zoran motor works in Warsaw there were strikes.

On 23 October, as revolution painted the streets of Budapest in Hungary red, Gomulka was finally given complete Soviet backing. He was then able to turn his attention to controlling the movement which was developing in his own factories.

The Polish workers, though duped by the promises of the 'anti-Stalinist' Gomulka, who was for the time being genuinely popular, had been fighting a real battle and were determined to claim their own.

Their support for the TT Hungarian revolution, manitestea in demonstrations and popular subscriptions, threatened to extend that revolution and set fire to the whole deformed Stalinist structure of Eastern Europe. The victorious Gomulkaists themselves found it desirable to announce their support for their fellow-reformer in Hungary, Nagy; until Nagy's reformism began to go a little further than Gomulka's in terms of independence from the Warsaw Pact and the USSR.

After the second invasion of Budapest by the Soviet Army on 4 November, when it became clear that the Hungarian revolution would be crushed, Gomulka publicly dissociated himself from Nagy.

The central feature of the workers' struggle in the Polish October' was the formation of workers' councils in the factories, largely independent of the official party and union organisations.

Primarily they were an expression of working class consciousness of the necessity for organs responsive to their independent class interests-and, as such, they looked forward to similar developments in future struggles.

But to the extent that the Incal bureaucrats were able to control the development of these councils, and use them as implements to bring the reformists to power, the enormous gain they represented was vulnerable.

Gomulka was forced to recognise the existence of the workers' councils, prior to destroying them. His phrasemaking about workers' selfmanagement' and the councils as a form of participation by workers in the administration of the enterprises' was accompanied by an allout campaign to limit their functions to small administrative details, to infiltrate them and, generally, to transform them - into their opposite: bureaucratic organs whose only relevance to the working class was that they were part of the grotesque machinery of the deformed workers' states and, as such, instruments of the ruling bureaucracy to maintain the oppression and alienation of the proletariat.

In April 1958, long after their real death, the councils formed by workers in struggle were formally subordinated to party/union control.

The success of Gomulka in controlling the development of the workers' struggles is primarily due to the continued presence and organisation of apparently radical reformists' in the factories and workplaces throughout the period. Although the demands of the workers continually threatened to transcend the limits of reformism, their illusions in the lefts' allowed for the dissipation of their movement towards a revolutionary affirmation of an independent class position.

Illusions

That is to say, in the absence of an organised revolutionary leadership, the reformists were able to place themselves at the head of the workers at a shop floor and national level.

There can also be no doubt that Gomulka personally was popular amongst most sections of the population. His rhetoric, his actual reforms, made more substantial the illusions about his anti-Stalinism that were subtly woven during the period of his exile from government.

And he was able to grant the workers some gains-including wage rises-as part of his 'liberal' initiative.

The peasantry did even better out of the Polish October', ', as collectivisation was abandoned. The intelligentsia were given more of their precious 'freedoms'. Increased scope for small private enterprise was announced.

Ominously foreshadowing the present balance of payments crisis, the Polish bureaucracy won from the USSR a greater autonomy in foreign relations and opened negotiations with the USA for 'economic aid'that is, imperialist insinuation into the economy of the deformed workers' state.

From the Soviet Union itself, Gomulka obtained an inadequate compensation for its rape of the Polish economy during the previous ten years.

Church

(For example, Poland had been selling the Soviet Union coal at one-tenth of the world price. The Poles, always ready with a joke about their sufferings as the Western media like telling us, spoke thus of PolishSoviet trade in the time of Stalin: 'The agreement was, we send them our corn and they take our wheat".) This was, inevitably, rather more popular than Gomulka's announcement that Soviet troops would remain in Poland-despite the dismissal of Russian generals from the Polish army.

The inauguration of a closer bond between the state and the Catholic Church also resulted from October, and was to have a glorious future-another delight for the bourgeois press. An early expression of Gomulka's rise to power was the release of Cardinal Wyszynski from house arrest and, soon afterwards, the signing of a new Concordat with the Church.

This was a popular move, and the large role of the Church in the consciousness of the Polish masses cannot be denied. it can, however, be better understood than by simply suggesting that the Poles (like the Irish) are inherently religious.

The ideological role played by the Church in the long history of Poland as an oppressed nation was easily able to continue in the subservience of Poland to the Soviet bureaucracy, and in the continued oppression and alienation of the Polish masses.

When 'Marxism' renounces Marxist humanism and declares that the most profound social revolution in history consists simply in the nationalisation of property and the dictatorship of a bureaucratic clique, the Cardinal has an obvious and easy role to play in the 'defence' of workers' and peasants' interests. The nature of the Church as an organisation apparently outside the hated Stalinist structures of the state is an invaluable asset to God and his clergy.

And, very often, an aid to the bureaucracy. In 1956 the Church willingly and spontaneously gave its aid to Gomulka's drive to thwart mass struggle. Wyszynski, on 4 November, while the Hungarians were fighting tanks and huge demonstrations of support for them arose in Poland, urged his congregation: "Poles know how to die magnificently. But, beloved, Poles need to know how to work magnificently. A man dies but once and is quickly covered in glory. But he gives long years in trouble, hardship, pain and suffering. This is a greater heroism"

In the elections of January 1957 (which were more of a plebiscite, based on appeals to national independence and the as yet continuing popularity of comulka) the Church, in company with the imperialist Radio Free Europe, urged Poles to vote in line with Gomulka's appeals. It was an alliance that was to continue, in its essence, beneath the mutual recriminations of the struggle for influence over the masses.

The Polish workers had • 11UC11 oi wyszynski's trouble macho Wasn ask trouble, inflicted on them in the years atter 1956, as Gomulka's reformism revealed itself fully as the perpetuation of Stalinist oppression. In 1970 they opted out of 'greater heroism'; they revolted against oppression, throwing aside as they did so the man who had clawed himself up, whip and bridle ready, to ride on their backs to power in 1956.

Concluded

next week