Talk:Polish October
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Piotrus, here is some material you may wish to include. I've adapted it from Paweł Machcewicz, "Social Protest and Political Crisis in 1956", which appears on pp.99-118 of Stalinism in Poland, 1944-1956, Ed. and tr. by A. Kemp-Welch, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1999, ISBN 0-312-22644-6. It also has material on the factional Puławy-Natolin struggle within the Party, and more on Poznań, if you're interested in more material.
After a scandal, the Ministry of Public Security was dissolved in December 1954; the number of employees of the Committee for Public Security, set up to replace the dissolved ministry, was cut by 30% in central headquarters and by 40-50% in local structures. The huge network of secret informers was also substantially reduced and the most implicated functionaries of the Ministry of Public Security were arrested. Surveillance and repressive activities were reduced; in the majority of factories, special cells of public security, set up to spy on workers, were secretly closed. Gomułka was released in December 1954, though this was not made public. Journalists started criticising "bureaucrats" and calling for "more democracy within the Party"; writers and artists abandoned socialist realism. Still, change was very restricted until the Secret Speech. Incidentally, Bierut died on March 12, 1956, while still on a visit to the 20th Party Congress, helping provide even more impetus for reforms.
In March 1956, the Soviet leadership sent copies of the speech to other Soviet bloc leaderships. One was sent to Bierut's successor Edward Ochab. On March 21, the Party Secretariat decided that the speech should have wide circulation in Poland, a unique decision in the bloc. Bierut's successors seized on Khrushchev's condemnation of Stalinist policy as a perfect opportunity to prove their reformist, democratic credentials, and their willingness to break with the Stalinist legacy. In late March and early April, thousands of Party meetings were held all over Poland, with Politburo and Secretariat blessing. The speech was read out, and non-Party members were allowed to attend these open sessions. In Łódź, some 10,000 took part in such meetings between March 21 and April 4. Łódź Party Committee activists participated in meetings at 60 large enterprises. In the Zielona Góra voivodship, 1,800 activists were engaged in the campaign to publicise the speech. In Białystok voivodship, the speech was publicly read at 420 meetings. Many questions were asked, so the meetings often lasted for hours. For instance, on March 26 at Szczecin Technical University, a meeting began at 5pm and ended at 2am; 110 questions were asked. Alarmed by the process, the Party Secretariat decided to withhold the speech from the general public. During this period, the whole political atmosphere changed and tough questions were asked about Polish communists' responsibility for Stalin's crimes, Gomułka, the Soviet Union (its continued presence in Poland, the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, Katyn, the Warsaw Ghetto, etc.); a new Party Congress was demanded, as was a greater role for the Sejm and a guarantee of personal liberties.
Public meetings, demonstrations and street marches took place in hundreds of towns across Poland. The meetings were usually organised by local Party cells, local authorities and trade unions. However, official organisers tended to lose control as political content exceeded their original agendas. Crowds often took extremely radical action, in many cases resulting in unrest on the streets and clashes with police and other law-enforcement agencies. Political activity peaked during and immediately after the Plenum but continued until late in the year. For instance, demonstrators destroyed the militia headquarters and radio-jamming equipment in Bydgoszcz on November 18, and a crowd in Szczecin attacked public buildings including a prison, the state prosecutor's office, militia headquarters and the Soviet consulate on December 10.
People across the country expressed very strong hatred toward the security police and asked for the dissolution of the public security committee and the punishment of its guiltiest functionaries. Demands were made for the exposure of secret police collaborators, and suspected collaborators were frequently assaulted. In many localities crowds gathered outside the secret police headquarters, shouted hostile slogans and broke its windows. The concurrent upsurge in religious and clerical sentiment meant that hymns were sung, Cardinal Wyszyński's release and the reinstatement of suppressed bishops was demanded, as were the reintroduction of religious education and crucifixes in classrooms. Nationalism was the cement of mass mobilisation and dominated public meetings, where patriotic songs and the national anthem were sung, the return of the white eagle to the flag and traditional army uniforms were demanded, and Poland's dependence on the Soviet Union, along with its military occupation, were attacked. The return of the eastern territories was demanded, as were an explanation for the Katyn massacre and the elimination of Russian-language education. In the last ten days of October, monuments to liberation by the Red Army were desecrated, red stars from roofs of houses, factories and schools were pulled down, red flags were destroyed and portraits of Rokosovski were defaced. Mostly in Lower Silesia (home to many Soviet troops), attempts were made to force entries into the homes of Soviet citizens. However, unlike in Hungary and in Poznań, there was a self-limitation of political demands and behaviour, which were not purely anti-communist and anti-system. The communist authorities were not openly and uneqivocally challenged, as in June, and slogans such as "We want free elections", "Down with Communist dictatorship", or "Down with the Party" were much less prevalent. Party committees were not attacked.
The leadership's stance contributed to the relatively moderate political dimension of social protest in October. Also crucial, though, was the relative impact of nationalism and national emotions. They spurred social protest in June but dampened it in October, when the threat of Soviet invasion against Gomułka and his supporters tranformed the social image of Polish communists. In June, they were still treated as the puppets and servants of alien, anti-Polish interests, and hence excluded from the national community. In October, they became a part of the nation opposing Soviet domination. Gomułka was enthusiastically supported by the great majority of society not primarily as a communist leader, but as a leader of a nation, who by resisting Soviet demands, embodied a national longing for independence and sovereignty. For instance, leaflets found in Świdnica on October 22 read, "Red Army, go home. Long live Władysław Gomułka, First Secretary, Hero of the Polish Nation!" His name was chanted, along with anti-Soviet slogans, at thousands of meetings. While his anti-Soviet image was obviously mythical and exaggerated, it was justified in the popular imagination by his anti-Stalinist line in 1948 and years of subsequent internment. Thus Polish communists found themselves unexpectedly at the head of a national liberation movement, and the enthusiastic public support offered to Gomułka contributed to the legitimization of communist rule in Poland, which managed to incorporate mass national, anti-Soviet feelings into the prevailing power structures. In Hungary, social protest destroyed the political system; in Poland it was absorbed within it. Biruitorul 03:21, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
- Tnx - I will see about adapting it in the future, we certainly need articles on Puławy and Natolin factions. PS. What scandal?-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk 04:14, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
- Very interesting article! I wonder whether one could add a paragraph (or perhaps even a separate section) at the end about the effects of the Polish October on Polish culture. For example, weren't great movies such as Ashes and Diamonds made possible by the (relative) liberalization of 1956? (I'm not sure though about Kanał, probably that was done beforehand.) Also, didn't these events allow Stanisław Lem and others to start writing more freely? This may all be explained elsewhere, but it may be worth telling the story here, briefly. After all, all those politicians come and go, but movies such as Andrzej Wajda's remain... Turgidson 03:35, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
- I think you are right, but our culture in modern Poland article is seriously underdeveloped. By all means, feel free to add material to it or enquire on its talk page.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk 04:14, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Layout
A question about layout: why put all images on the right? I would alternate them, right/left, for variety. Turgidson 16:26, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Be my guest.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk 20:02, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- OK, done that -- see how it loooks. BTW, the first sentence in that section, "Edward Ochab, the Polish Prime Minister, proposed the now-rehabilitated Gomułka to become as First Secretary of the Party" is not clear. Can the meaning be clarified, perhaps by dropping "as"? Turgidson 20:33, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Disambiguation
It is my proposal that the redirect from a search of "October 1956" be removed from this article. The October of 1956 was a time of widespread global occurance, and a person using these search words is more likely to be seeking information on the general time frame, rather than Polish politica. It isnt my intent to derrogate this topic, but to facilitate research.