THE POLISH 'OCTOBER': A RE-APPRAISAL THROUGH HISTORIOGRAPHY Author(s): GEORGE SAKWA Source: The Polish Review, Vol. 23, No. 3 (1978), pp. 62-78 Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the Polish Institute of Arts & Sciences of America Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25777588 Accessed: 05-05-2019 11:48 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms University of Illinois Press, Polish Institute of Arts & Sciences of America are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Polish Review This content downloaded from 213.226.233.49 on Sun, 05 May 2019 11:48:20 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GEORGE SAKWA THE POLISH 'OCTOBER': A RE-APPRAISAL THROUGH HISTORIOGRAPHY Apart from Yugoslavia's break with the Soviet Union in 1948 three other major convulsive events stand out in the postwar history of Eastern Europe. These are the Polish developments of 1956, the Hungarian revolu tion of the same year, the Czechoslovak "Spring," and the Warsaw Pact occupation of 1968. The importance of Poland's 1956 experience is gen erally conceded and it is widely accepted that her apparent transformation from a Stalinist to a reformist form of National Communism was a development of prime importance. As a London Times editorial put it succinctly at the time: What is at stake is whether Poland shall be free to follow her own path to Socialism under the leadership chosen by the Polish Communist Party or whether Russia shall interfere. It is the biggest question to be posed in Eastern Europe since Marshal Tito was expelled from the camp in 1948.1 Yet it is a surprising paradox that the Polish case in many respects has not been studied and examined as comprehensively and in the same depth as the Hungarian and Czechoslovak experiences. The latter in particular has been particularly well covered by serious academic work in the main Western languages.2 This state of affairs can only partly be explained by the great number of Hungarians and Czechoslovaks who went into exile as a result of these crises. In my view it is not a reflection of the intrinsic respective importance of these three revolutionary situations. A prelimi nary explanation might be that the Polish October was not an event limited in time but stretched out over the period 1954-1959 at the very least. The issue whether the year 1956 can be abstracted from the wider sweep of Polish history remains admittedly a highly controversial matter. My con tention however will be first, that the interpretation of the events of February to October 1956 is crucially important; and second, that in one This article was first read at a Seminar at St. Antony's College, Oxford. Editorial, "Warsaw and Moscow" in the Times, London, Oct. 20, 1956. 2"Since the Czechoslovak Spring of 1968, over two hundred studies dealing with that subject have appeared in print," Jan Triska, Foreword to Otto Ulc, Politics in Czecho slovakia, San Francisco, 1974. 62 This content downloaded from 213.226.233.49 on Sun, 05 May 2019 11:48:20 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Polish 'October' 63 major respect it has not been carried out satisfactorily; and last, that almost two decades later it is both a possible and a necessary exercise. The purpose of this study is to examine the historiography of the Polish October. By discussing the explanations and interpretations which have been proposed I hope to examine their validity and to isolate the omissions and the areas which still remain speculative or controversial. Without attempting to supply a comprehensive and convincing interpretation of my own, I hope that this discussion of the historiography will help to set up a framework for distinguishing between questions which on the one hand may now safely be accepted as established and aspects which on the other hand remain cloudy and not satisfactorily explained. Writing contem porary history in the period between the time of the events and the opening of archives much later is always a difficult operation. But in the case of communist regimes, in particular, the lapse of time and the consequent unfolding of events, such as the replacement of the Gomulka regime in 1970, makes the exercise of attempting a new synthesis especially necessary. The most striking initial characteristic of the historiography on the Polish October is the absence of an authoritative let alone accepted aca demic study of the standing of the work of Golan, Kusin, Skilling or Brown on Czechoslovakia.3 This is not to deny the quantity of material, most of it written as one would expect in the mid and late 1950's, but it is scattered around in the form of chapters in wider studies, articles in journals and occasional pieces in Polish language publications, both regime and emigre. There are only two books devoted solely to the year 1956 in Polish political history. Both are written by journalists but they differ considerably in their respective approaches and relative merit. Konrad Syrop's Spring in October, published in 1957, immediately after the events it describes, is a serious and balanced attempt to write con temporary history.4 In the absence of anything better, it must with a number of reservations be accepted as the initial starting point for dis cussion of the subject. But one must continually bear in mind that Syrop's account is strongly influenced by, or at least runs parallel to the reports of Philippe Ben in Le Monde which in themselves are a major source for 1956. Ben was certainly one of the best journalists on the Polish scene in 1956 but his excellent contacts with the supposedly liberal or Pulawy faction pro duced information, which I will argue later, contributed to the formation of a specifically tendentious and one-sided ? not to say optimistic ? inter pretation of October in the West. The other account, Flora Lewis's The 3 See Zdenek Hejzlar and Vladimir Kusin, Czechoslovakia 1968-69. Chronology, Bibliog raphy, Annotation, New York, 1975. 4Konrad Syrop, Spring in October. The Story of the Polish Revolution 1956, London, 1957. This content downloaded from 213.226.233.49 on Sun, 05 May 2019 11:48:20 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 64 The Polish Review Polish Volcano. A Case History of Hope (1959), is not surprisingly influenced by the reports of the second major correspondent on the Polish scene in 1956, Sydney Gruson of The New York Times, her husband.5 Lewis's book has some good pen-portraits of personalities such as Wlady slaw Gomulka and Jozef Cyrankiewicz and sets out the historical back ground in a very readable, and one might add, simplified journalistic way. The book is strong in terms of evoking the atmosphere and the excitement of the time but it is nowhere near as solidly based in the published sources as Syrop's. Nor does it produce anything like as coherent and balanced an explanation of the events which it describes. The second major point is that, in my view, there are three distinct and separate levels of interpretation of the Polish October. The first of these is fairly non-controversial. It describes the general significance of these events as the peaceful transformation of Stalinist communism under satellite conditions into a flexible and semi-independent form of National domestic communism which foreshadowed developments after 1960 in some of the other East European states. Poland, according to this expla nation, pioneered a novel model of domestic communism as well as a new relationship with the Soviet Union. In the words of H. J. Stehle, probably the best informed observer of the early years of Gomulka's rule, "History will undoubtedly regard 1956 as marking the beginning of a period in which the Soviet postwar Empire assumed more the form of a commonwealth."6 The second level of interpretations is concerned with the autonomous movements of Polish society during 1956. The emphasis here is usually placed on the intellectual currents in the period 1955-57 as the role of writers, poets, economists, academics, and so on are much easier to chronicle than the discontent of industrial workers with low living stand ards and excessive work-norms let alone that of peasants and agricultural workers. This level has again produced something close to a consensus although vast gaps still remain in our knowledge of the changes and movements within Polish society during 1956. It is partly the absence of comprehensive knowledge of these developments which has contributed to the almost complete overshadowing of the very original Polish reform socialist models of 1956 proposed for the economy, and for ensuring socialist democracy by the Czechoslovak ideas and models of 1968. The two preceding levels of explanation have however to be matched by another one: a satisfactory understanding of the mechanics of the power 5 Flora Lewis, The Polish Volcano: A Case History of Hope, London, 1959. A similar, but somewhat poorer, account by another observer is Frank Gibney, The Frozen Revolution in Poland, New York, 1959. 6 Hans-Jakob Stehle, The Independent Satellite. Society and Politics in Poland since 1945, London, 1965, p. 221. This content downloaded from 213.226.233.49 on Sun, 05 May 2019 11:48:20 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Polish 'October* 65 transfer in 1956 and of the very complicated and shifting nature of the political in-fighting between the factions. This problem area in my defini tion includes Soviet policy. It is my view that this particular range of problems which covers the Polish communist factional conflict and the correct definition of the balance struck in October between the alleged victors and vanquished is the key to understanding Gomulka's subsequent political evolution and thus to explaining Polish political history up to the 1968 crisis. In the absence of reliable communist sources and given the welter of Warsaw political gossip and misinformation, this level was bound to remain the most controversial, the most speculative, and the most superficially dealt with of the three levels which have just been set out. Moving on now to survey the literature on the subject one can start with Nicholas Bethell. He quite rightly says that "the Polish October, one of the most dramatic political events of this century, is less understood and recorded than it deserves to be."7 His compressed narrative description of about thirty pages highlights the main points of the course of events but does little to illuminate the balance of power struck behind the scenes. Stehle, like Bethell, emphasizes the "charismatic aspect" of Gomulka's public support in 1956. Stehle writes that Gomulka "had become a symbol of hope for the Poles, an alternative to the regime of terror. ... In that October 1956 it was as if the Polish people had found a new Chieftain. Even the Church gave him its blessing. This had never happened to a communist leader before."8 BeneS's and Pounds's rather longer analysis gets on to the third level by latching on to the theme of factional conflict between Stalinist "Muscovites" on the one hand and liberal reformers on the other. They fail to follow the thread up in any detail however and their categoriza tion is highly confusing and probably inaccurate in the context of 1956.9 A better sketch of an analysis is provided by Hans Roos who indicates the compromise solution achieved in October 1956 "which gave the PZPR [Polish United Workers Party, hereafter referred to by its Polish initials] ? and hence the Polish state which it ran ? extensive internal independence while preserving its close links with the CPSU and the Soviet Union."10 Roos also ties in this compromise on issues with the balance struck between the factions in the PZPR thus explaining how the "irrevocable renuncia tion of Stalin's dictatorial dogmatism" was counterbalanced by Gomulka's "sound pragmatism" which "was bound to prove a bitter disappointment to many enthusiastic supporters of the October 'revolution.'"11 This pro vides an important clue which will be taken up later. 7Nicholas Bethell, Gomutka. His Poland and His Communism, London, 1969, p. 212. 8Stehle, op. cit., p. 32. 9V. L. Bene? and N. J. Pounds, Poland, London, 1970, pp. 291-311. 10 Hans Roos, A History of Modern Poland, London, 1966, p. 250. "Ibid., pp. 253-254. This content downloaded from 213.226.233.49 on Sun, 05 May 2019 11:48:20 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 66 The Polish Review Two other useful accounts of October, both of which are part of larger political histories, are supplied by Francois Fejto and Zbigniew Brzezinski. They do not provide new material but are competent syntheses and inter pretations of the existing documentation. Fejto emphasizes Gomulka's value as a political symbol linked with his independent capacity, once the crisis had passed, to restore the PZPR's authority and monopolistic posi tion. He also takes the possibility of a coup d'etat by the Muscovite or Natolin faction in the second week of October more seriously than most commentators.12 Brzezinski also considers that "Gomulka was the symbol but not the architect of the Polish October "n On the matter of the attempted coup he judges that "the domestic resources of the Natolinites thus proved inadequate to the task. What remained to be tested was the degree of Soviet involvement and the capacity of the Poles to resist it";14 having got over the October crisis, Gomulka then went on to oscillate from the very start between a very mild form of national communism and the more restricted orientation of domesticism. With neither the capacity nor the will to become a full-blown national communist regime, Gomulka increasingly reverted to the earlier pattern of domesticism in which the policy outlook of his regime was characterized by an inward perspective.15 Brzezinski here has provided us with a crucial distinction between Gomulka's (and Nagy's) domesticism and Tito's National Communism. The latter can be defined as independent political control by a native Com munist Party which produces its own political measures and usually justifies them in terms of some revision of Marxist-Leninist ideology. Domesticism is marked by the almost complete absence of the latter element and the former characteristic is very much more restricted. I have left what are perhaps the three basic English-language analyses till last as it is now easier to situate them within the literature. M. K. Dziewanowski's short account of our subject is fairly orthodox in ap proach and content.16 It adds very little to our knowledge of the internal factional struggle.17 To Adam Bromke the Polish October was "essentially 12Francois Fejto, A History of the Peoples Democracies. Eastern Europe since Stalin. Penguin Books, London, 1974, pp. 100-111. ^Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc. Unity and Conflict, New York, 1961, pp. 236 265 and pp. 333 ff. "Ibid., p. 253. 15 Ibid., p. 262. Similar points emerge from Hugh Seton-Watson, Neither War nor Peace, pp. 341-2, London, 1960, and Walter Laquer, Europe since Hitler, London, 1970, pp. 307-10. 16 M. K. Dziewanowski, The Communist Party of Poland: An Outline of History, New York, 1959, pp. 252-281. "Ibid., pp. 272ff. This content downloaded from 213.226.233.49 on Sun, 05 May 2019 11:48:20 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Polish 'October' 67 nationalist" and revolution was only avoided by "adroit leadership."18 He also confirms the basically compromise nature of 1956 by telling us that it "ended in an uneasy truce."19 Richard Hiscocks's is undoubtedly the most comprehensive and detailed account particularly of the social and intel lectual developments.20 However he is not as perceptive as Brzezinski or Bromke on the power politics aspect and his interpretations are somewhat colored by what hindsight now tells us was an excessive amount of optimism concerning the 1956 changes. In my judgment Syrop, Brzezinski and Hiscocks provide the best general English-language accounts of the Polish October. If we now turn to other sources we find that the Polish emigre press was, not unexpectedly, very variable in quality. The Polish community's press in England was particu larly poor at that time. This remark applies especially to the Dziennik Polski (Polish Daily) which seems to have had no original sources of information of its own and which for the most part belatedly reported the English or French press. Its commentary was uncompromisingly hard-line. The struggle between the two communist factions for power in Poland was of little interest to it. The paper's demands were for the rollback of Soviet power in Eastern Europe and for free elections in Poland.21 Gomulka was merely considered to be "the regime's last card."22 The net result of the October events in the Dziennik's judgment was the replacement of obvious Stalinists by somewhat less discredited Stalinists.23 One turns with relief from this low level of political analysis to the Polish language, Paris monthly, Kultura. Its political columnist at the time was Juliusz Miero szewski whose commentaries during 1956 and 1957 are still one of the most interesting sources for the period. Mieroszewski took issue with the hard line emigre enemies of communism who refused to differentiate between what they considered to be different levels of evil. Any Polish Government laboring under the existing international conditions, he argued, would have to be pro-Russian. Gomulka's fate however was tied to producing a degree of national autonomy for Poland and to that extent one should welcome him.24 "The revolution imposed on Poland by force in the year 1945 ? in October 1956 has taken on its independent characteristics."25 18 Adam Bromke, Poland's Politics: Idealism v Realism, New York, 1967, pp. 92 and 94. "Ibid, p. 107. 20 Richard Hiscocks, Poland, Bridge for the Abyss?, London, 1963, pp. 170-254. 2lDziennik Polski (Polish Daily), Sept. 20, 1956. 22Dziennik Polski, Oct. 5, 1956, p. 1. 2*Dziennik Polski, Oct. 22, 1956, p. 1. 24Juliusz Mieroszewski, "Lekcja wegierska" (The Lesson of Hungary), Kultura, Paris, 12/110, Dec. 1956, p. 90. 25Juliusz Mieroszewski, "Ewolucjonisci i 'wyzwolency'" (Evolutionists and "Liberation ists"), Kultura, 1/111-2/412, January 1957, p. 3. This content downloaded from 213.226.233.49 on Sun, 05 May 2019 11:48:20 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 68 The Polish Review Mieroszewski proved less perceptive as a prophet: "either communism plus permanent revolution and terror (the Stalinist model) ? or communism plus democracy. I do not believe in the credibility of any intermediate model."26 An intermediate model was however exactly what was provided by the Gomulka regime in due course. Other commentators in Kultura provided an early key to understanding the Natolin faction's anti-Semitism and opposition to what they called "2ydoliberalizm." Konrad Jelehski demonstrated how anti-Semitism was a technique for getting at liberal, reforming communists, a percentage of whom could always be pointed to as Jews, now that the Kremlin had banned the original form of Stalinist police terror.27 The tricks attempted in 1956 and the techniques of communist power struggle then evolved were to be applied with far more telling effect by Moczar and his Partisan faction in 1967-68.28 Kultura also provided one of the best early interpretations of October by Zdzislaw Broncel.29 Discussing the connection between de satellization and de-Stalinization Broncel demonstrated how the two had to go together. Domestic reforms such as a rapprochement with the Roman Catholic Church for example could not have been carried out by Soviet agents of the Natolin type but only by National Communists who had gained popular support for their policies and personalities. The non sequitur in this argument, however, was that the choice in 1956 only appeared to be between Soviet agents and genuine National Communists. The optimism of this early period needed to be replaced by a more realistic and differentiated appraisal of the domestic and international forces in play.30 The interpretation of its contemporary history is clearly one of the most sensitive subjects as far as a Communist Party is concerned. It is almost a truism that the definition of recent political history in a communist state is heavily dependent upon ongoing political events and personalities. Thus one is not surprised to find that the present, official view of the Gierek 26 Ibid., p. 6. 27Konrad Jeleriski, "Od Endekow do Stalinistow" (From the National Democrats to the Stalinists), Kultura, 9/107, September 1956. 28 The events of 1968, as well as those of 1970, in Poland provoked a lively re-examination of the nature of "October" in Kultura. La. see Pierre Olfenius "Wrazenia z Polski" (Impressions from Poland), Kultura, 10/252, October 1968, pp. 91-95. Leon Szuiczyriski, "Sukcesy i porazki Mieczyslawa Moczara" (The Successes and Defeats of Mieczyslaw Moczar), Kultura, 1 /256/2/257 Jan.-Feb. 1969, pp. 115-127. Zygmunt Bauman, "Ofrustracjii kuglarzach"(On Frustrations and Frauds), Kultura, 12/255, December 1968, pp. 5-21. 29Zdzislaw Broncel, "Polska Rewolucja Pazdziernikowa" (The Polish October Revolu tion), Kultura, 12/110, December, 1956. 30 One can cite the following as a good example of this type of analysis: Stanislaw Strzetelski, "The True Force behind the October Revolution in Poland," The Polish Review, II, 2-3, 1957, pp. 19-31. This content downloaded from 213.226.233.49 on Sun, 05 May 2019 11:48:20 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Polish 'October' 69 regime on October differs in some important respects from that of his predecessor. Taking the interpretation provided by Wladyslaw G6ra as approximating to the early 1970's PZPR line, one finds the emphasis placed on the lead taken by the Party in shifting economic priorities to improving the standard of living as early as the Second PZPR Congress in March 1954, and on the rooting out of Stalinist abuses at the third plenum in January 1955 leading to the opposition of "conservatives" within the Party to these PZPR-inspired reforms.31 G6ra blames Khrushchev's over emotional and oversubjective condemnation of Stalin's "cult of the per sonality" for aggravating the situation in Poland; "in Poland it deepened the political crisis which had been growing since 1955."32 This included excessive criticism of the Six-Year Plan. The Gierek line now is to criticize aspects of Gomulka's speech to the eighth plenum and to argue that the right line was the PZPR resolution following the seventh plenum in July 1956. The social outburst and the intra-party division in Poland is now explained away not by the failures in economic planning but by Khrush chev's irresponsibility, bureaucratism, and by Ochab's failure to produce the correct political measures in time. Gierek's party historians, however, accept the centrist Gomulka line on the need to battle on two fronts, on the one hand against dogmatic sectarianism within the PZPR and on the other against Imperialist-supported anti-socialism especially in its most insidious and dangerous political form of revisionism. Other points to note in this analysis is the significance attached to First Party Secretary Boleslaw Bierut's death in Moscow following the Twentieth CPSU Congress which is considered to have increased the PZPR's political difficulties. Ochab, his successor, is now held to have made a good try at producing a united and coherent party line but to have failed owing to division within the top leadership. The result was a consecutive aggravation of the crisis including the Poznah riots in late June 1956 which, on the whole, is accepted as a genuine workers' uprising and thus a useful warning to the PZPR leader ship. The parallel with the Gierek line on the Baltic seacoast riots in December 1970 is fairly obvious. The seventh plenum, at which Gietek entered the politburo, then took the correct and useful decisions which were sabotaged by dogmatic, sectarian opposition and by the failure of the still disunited leadership to assert itself. The eighth plenum thus merely marked "the decisive turning point" as it confirmed the leading role of the party, which initiated the necessary reform measures in an internally 31 Wladyslaw G6ra, "PZPR na czele budownictwa socjalistycznego w Polsce" (The PZPR Leading the Building of Socialism in Poland), Antoni Czubinski (ed.), Polski ruch robot niczny, Zarys historii(The Polish Working Class Movement. A Historical Outline), Warsaw, 1974, 2nd edition, pp. 420-470. 32 #>/