People’s Poland

Yalta and the shift west 11 February, 2 August, 16 August turning point

At Yalta and Potsdam the Allies move Poland several hundred kilometres west: the eastern borderlands go to the USSR, Silesia and Pomerania to Poland. Millions of people are resettled and the country lands in the Soviet sphere.

The West withdraws recognition from the London government 28 June, 5 July loss

Britain and the United States recognise the Provisional Government of National Unity — agreed in Moscow and dominated by the communists — and withdraw recognition from the Polish government in exile. That government carries on for 45 more years, recognised by a handful of states; the one the world recognises governs under Moscow’s supervision.

The Kielce pogrom 4 July turning point

A mob roused by a rumour of a kidnapped boy, joined by militiamen and soldiers, murders thirty-seven Jews in Kielce by the count of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance (other sources give 42); three Poles die too, and that day more Jews are killed on trains in the region. The pogrom speeds the exodus: within months tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors leave Poland.

The “Three times yes” referendum 30 June turning point

Instead of the promised election the communists hold a referendum on three questions: abolishing the Senate, land reform with the nationalisation of industry, and the border on the Baltic, the Oder and the Neisse. They falsify the result: 68 per cent are announced for abolishing the Senate, while in Kraków, where the true figures were published, 84 per cent voted against. The Senate returns only in 1989.

The rigged election 19 January turning point

The election to the Legislative Sejm, held amid terror against the Polish People’s Party and rigged, gives the communist bloc an official 80 per cent of the vote. In the autumn Mikołajczyk flees the country and legal opposition is over.

The United Workers’ Party is founded 15 December turning point

At a unification congress in Warsaw the communists of the Polish Workers’ Party swallow the Polish Socialist Party, purged of its opponents first. The result is the Polish United Workers’ Party, which will rule the country for forty years; Gomułka has already been pushed aside that summer, and Bierut leads the party.

The Treaty of Zgorzelec 6 July treaty

Poland and East Germany recognise the Oder–Neisse line as the border between them. West Germany recognises it only in 1970, and united Germany in 1990.

The border exchange with the USSR 15 February treaty

Poland gives the Soviet Union 480 km² on the Bug, with Belz and its coal, and gets as much in return in the Bieszczady, with Ustrzyki Dolne. It is the last major change to Poland’s borders — later adjustments with Czechoslovakia and East Germany moved only scraps of land and water; the people of both areas were resettled.

The constitution of People’s Poland 22 July constitution

The Sejm passes a constitution modelled on the Soviet one of 1936, with amendments in Stalin’s own hand. The state is renamed the Polish People’s Republic, and a collegial Council of State replaces the presidency.

The Warsaw Pact 14 May treaty

Eight Eastern Bloc states sign a treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance in Warsaw. Poland is formally bound into a military alliance under Soviet command; in 1968 Polish troops will enter Czechoslovakia under it.

Poznań June 28 June uprising

A strike at the Cegielski works turns into a city-wide revolt put down with tanks, killing dozens. One of the first mass workers’ protests in the Eastern Bloc, after East Berlin and Plzeň in 1953; by autumn it produces Gomułka’s thaw.

The Polish October 21 October turning point

Gomułka, once jailed for “right-wing nationalist deviation”, returns to lead the party despite Khrushchev flying in and Soviet troops on the move. Stalinism ends: collectivisation is dropped, Primate Wyszyński is freed and Rokossovsky goes back to the USSR.

March 1968 8 March turning point

The closing of a staging of Forefathers’ Eve and the expulsion of two students bring the young onto the streets, where police and party "worker activists" beat them. The regime answers with an antisemitic campaign that drives some thirteen thousand citizens of Jewish origin out of the country.

December 1970 14 December, 17 December uprising

A food-price rise just before Christmas puts the coastal shipyard workers on the streets; the army and the police fire into the crowds in Gdynia, Gdańsk, Szczecin and Elbląg, killing forty-five. Gomułka falls, and the memory of the dead becomes a foundation of Solidarity.

The Treaty of Warsaw with West Germany 7 December treaty

The Federal Republic of Germany recognises the Oder–Neisse border, though with the reservation that it binds only West Germany. On the day it is signed Chancellor Willy Brandt kneels before the Ghetto Heroes Monument.

June 1976 25 June uprising

Announced steep rises in food prices set off strikes across the country, fiercest in Radom, Ursus and Płock. The government withdraws the rises within a day but beats and jails the workers — and the Workers’ Defence Committee is founded to defend them, the start of an organised opposition.

A Polish pope 16 October turning point

Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, Archbishop of Kraków, is elected pope. A year later, on his first pilgrimage home, millions saw for themselves how many of them there were — and Solidarity put that lesson to use in August 1980.

The August Accords and Solidarity 14 August, 31 August uprising

The strike at the Gdańsk shipyard ends with the government conceding independent trade unions — an impossibility in the Soviet bloc. Within months Solidarity has close to ten million members.

Martial law is declared 13 December loss

On 13 December Jaruzelski declares martial law, interns thousands of activists and suspends Solidarity, dissolved by law in October 1982. Martial law is suspended at the end of 1982 and lifted in July 1983.

The Second World War war

Germany and the Soviet Union divide Poland; both occupiers destroy its elites, and Germany murders the Polish Jews in ghettos and death camps. The Underground State works at home, the government and army in exile fight beside the Allies — and still Poland comes out of the war in new borders, under a government the USSR imposed, and without close to six million of its citizens.

The German reign of terror repression

Germany annexes the western provinces to the Reich and expels hundreds of thousands of Poles from them; in the General Government it closes the secondary schools and the universities. Operations against the educated class, street round-ups and public executions, concentration camps, more than two million people taken for forced labour, the expulsions from the Zamość region and children kidnapped for Germanisation: by most estimates the occupation cost close to two million ethnic Poles their lives.

The Polish Underground State social movement

Under the occupation a clandestine state answers to the government in exile: the Government Delegation, an underground parliament, courts, secret schooling, a press and the Home Army, more than 300,000 sworn soldiers by 1944. Its last great effort is the Warsaw Uprising; the Home Army is disbanded in January 1945, and the Council of National Unity dissolves itself in July.

The Holocaust atrocity

After shutting them into ghettos, Germany moves on to murder: first the shootings in the east, from December 1941 Chełmno, and in 1942 Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau, all on occupied Polish soil. About three million Polish Jews are killed, nine in every ten.

The Volhynia massacres atrocity

The Ukrainian Insurgent Army murders the Polish population of Volhynia and then Eastern Galicia, to clear them from lands meant to become Ukraine’s; the peak is July 1943. Estimates of the Poles killed run from sixty to a hundred thousand; in Polish reprisals, several thousand to more than ten thousand Ukrainians.

The post-war resettlement resettlement

The new borders move people along with the state: over a million Poles leave the old eastern lands for the new Poland, Germans are expelled from the Recovered Territories, Ukrainians sent from Poland to the USSR, and in 1947 Operation Vistula scatters those who stayed across the west. A country of many nations comes out almost uniform.

The anti-communist underground uprising

Part of the underground does not lay down its arms when the Red Army arrives: Freedom and Independence, the National Armed Forces and dozens of forest units fight the NKVD, the security police and the army. Tens of thousands pass through the units in their busiest years; the amnesty of 1947 and terror break the movement, though the last partisan, Józef Franczak, is killed only in 1963.

Stalinism repression

After the Socialist Party is swallowed into the PZPR and Gomułka pushed aside, the regime rebuilds the country on the Soviet model: forced collectivisation, the Six-Year Plan, show trials, tens of thousands of political prisoners, Primate Wyszyński locked up. It ends in October 1956, when Gomułka returns to power.

The Gierek decade crisis

Under Gierek growth runs on credit: Western loans pay for factories, flats and the small Fiat. From 1976 debt and empty shelves grow — sugar rationing, price rises — and by the end of the decade the debt is over twenty billion dollars. It ends in the strikes of 1980.

The democratic opposition social movement

After the reprisals against the workers of Radom and Ursus, intellectuals found the Workers’ Defence Committee; the Movement for the Defence of Human and Civic Rights, the Free Trade Unions of the Coast, the Flying University and an underground press that dodges the censor follow. Its people advise the strikers of August 1980.

The Solidarity carnival social movement

Sixteen months between the August Accords and martial law, when a communist state has a legal, independent union with close to ten million members, and censorship, strikes and free speech are matters of daily argument rather than taboo.

Martial law repression

From 13 December 1981 to 22 July 1983: close to ten thousand interned, a curfew, militarised workplaces, dozens killed — nine miners at the Wujek colliery. Solidarity goes underground; martial law is lifted, but much of it was carried over into ordinary law.

Solidarity underground social movement

Banned in October 1982, Solidarity works in secret: a Provisional Coordinating Commission, an underground press, Radio Solidarity, help for the persecuted. The country stays in crisis — meat rationed until 1989, inflation, emigration — until the strikes of 1988 force the regime to talk, and in April 1989 the union is legal again.