Background
Wladyslaw Gomulka was born Feb. 5, 1905, in Krosno, southeastern Poland, the son of an oil worker.
Wladyslaw Gomulka was born Feb. 5, 1905, in Krosno, southeastern Poland, the son of an oil worker.
At the age of 14, after three years of schooling, he became a mechanic.
He began organizing Communist labor groups and soon became a professional party "activist" and agitator; in his 20's he was arrested for these activities, but sentence was suspended. He then went to the Soviet Union but returned in time to escape Stalin's liquidation of the Polish Communist Party elite on charges of Trotskyism. GomuikaGomulka alternated between prison and labor-movement work until World War II, when he helped defend Warsaw against the Germans. When the city fell, he settled in Lvov in 1941, then occupied by the Red Army. After Lvov, too, was taken, he went underground, in 1942 joining the resistance movement. When the first two secretaries of the resurrected Communist Party were killed, GomuikaGomulka became secretary and later secretary general. In 1944, when the Soviet government set up the National Liberation Committee for Poland, GomuikaGomulka joined it. With most of the Polish Communist elite liquidated by the Russians, his rise was assured. After the liberation, he returned to Warsaw with the so-called Lublin government as deputy premier and helped the Russians install Communist rule at the point of Red Army bayonets. He earned the nickname "little Stalin" for his zeal in the suppression of the Polish party system; he presided over the fraudulent postwar elections, was in charge of resettling former German territories with Poles, and became, with Hilary Minc and Jakub Berman, one of the three most powerful men in Poland. Taciturn, and a rather bad orator, Gomulka succeeded by his stubbornness and ruthless sense of organization. After the start of the cold war and Tito's expulsion in 1947 from the Cominform for having attempted to travel an independent road to socialism,Gomulka, who himself advocated a "Polish road to socialism," found himself in a difficult position. In 1948, although he confessed his errors, he fell victim to the "rotation of cadres" that followed a change in the party line. He was replaced by Boleslaw Bierut as secretary general and ousted from the party. In August 1951 he was arrested and imprisoned.
Gomulka's second rise to power, more spectacular than his first, began when, three years after Stalin's death, the new leaders of the Soviet Union denounced Stalin and proclaimed the right of every nation to its own road to socialism. On Apr. 6, 1956, Warsaw radio announced Gomulka's release from prison; on August 4 he was readmitted to the party; on October 19 he was restored to his position in the party central committee; on October 21 he was reappointed first secretary of the party, thus becoming the top leader of Poland.
At first Gomulka's policy was one of internal liberalization and relative independence from the Soviet Union. He dissolved most of the collective farms, evolved a tenuous compromise with the Roman Catholic Church, and allowed more freedom of expression. Gradually, however, Gomulka reverted to more orthodox Communist policies and firm support of the Soviet Union. By the late 1960's increasing repression of intellectual freedom had cost Gomulka the support of the intelligentsia, as evidenced by violent demonstrations by students in March 1968. Moreover, economic hardships caused by the failure of rigid economic policies had resulted in widespread discontent. To strengthen Poland's economy, Gomulka sought credits and technology from Western Europe. The signing in December 1970 of a treaty with West Germany recognizing Poland's western border as the Oder-Neisse line was a first step toward negotiating for West German economic aid. As part of an attempt to promote exports, so that Poland might pay for imported technology, the government also announced a drastic increase in the prices of food and fuel just before Christmas in 1970. This step was a miscalculation of the national mood, for it resulted in a week of rioting by workers. As a result, Gomulka was forced to resign on Dec. 20, 1970. He was replaced by Edward Gierek, the party's first secretary for Katowice province.