The Crisis in the Polish Communist Party

Abstract

Just as the Russo-Yugoslav dispute was reaching its climax, and before the meeting of the Cominform, which issued a detailed condemnation of the Yugoslav Party, a plenum of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers' Party took place. What happened at this plenum of June 3, 1948 is known to us, not directly but from many accounts given at the August 31—September 3 plenum. At the June meeting Secretary General of the Party and Deputy Prime Minister of Poland Gomulka-Wieslaw, (Wieslaw was the party name of Gomulka during the war and it is used throughout the debate), delivered the main report, ostensibly an “historical analysis” of the character of the Polish working class movement. In his speech Gomulka took as the basis of Polish Socialism the tradition of the fervently nationalistic Polish Socialist Party, and condemned the internationalist and Pro-Russian Social Democratic Party of Poland, and by implication as well the pre-1938 Polish Communist Party of which the Workers' Party was supposed to be a continuation in everything but name.