User:Walking OSHA Violation/Communism in Poland

Post-war years (1945-1950)
Near the end of World War 2 in 1944, the PPR under the command of the USSR started its program of Polonization with approval from the United States and UK due to changes in its borders; ceding territories in its east in exchange for formerly German lands in the west called the "Recovered Territories". Beginning with the expulsion of minorities to neighboring countries such as Belarus, by the time of the war's end in 1945 and the ascendancy of Władysław Gomułka to General-Secretary of the PPR, it had begun cementing its tenuous power by exuding an ethno-nationalist ethos to unite a homogenizing Poland against threats to the country, i.e. minorities such as Germans. This all came with the support of the Catholic Church which also inflamed resentment against not only ethnic minorities, but religious minorities like Jews as well. The then-Primate of Poland August Hlond actively worked to push Germans out of positions within the church and the newly acquired land in tandem with the Party, but asserted its autonomy when it held a Mass in 1945 attracting up to four million people. This independence also allowed the Church to establish its own institutions such as schools, but also enabled it to undermine the state by supporting anti-PPR organizations. After the 1947 elections in which the PPR won, it finally felt secure enough to begin targeting its only major rival for control within the country, imprisoning eighty-one priests in 1948 and seizing church properties two years later. [5]

Post-Stalin
With Krushchev now serving as leader of the USSR, having delivered his secret speech in 1956, anti-Stalinist ideas began to spread as resentment boiled over into the first of several protests in Poznań at the Stalin Factory (ZiSPO). Its workers and many residents of the city all marched towards the city center on June 28 in expression of their many grievances such as wage cuts, demanding to meet with party leaders - leaders who did not show up. Further incensing the crowd, they stormed the prison and seized its weapons as well as freeing many inmates before descending upon the radio station. The Politburo approved action by Marshal Rokossovsky to send 10,000 troops in to quell the revolt, resulting in 73 deaths as order was restored to the city. Unrest still lingered within a population desperate for reform, leading the PPR to elevate Gomułka as the new leader. [12][6]

Poland was one of the first Warsaw Pact countries to abandon the totalitarianism of Stalin's regime, in part due to the stronger nationalist ideas present within it. Krushchev emphasized the continued role of communism - but in a new, revitalized form - whereas Gomulka's government established their position as being one serving the interests of Poland. [2]

Pope John Paul II and Solidarity (1979-1989)
On June 2, 1979, then Pope John Paul II began his pilgrimage to his native country of Poland seeking to reinvigorate faith in the country after decades of encouraged atheism by the Soviet government. Beginning in Warsaw, John Paul II made frequent connections to Polish identity and the Catholic faith which had been intertwined for essentially all of the country's history, reminding Poles that they were, at their core, a very spiritual people [4]. The protests at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk reflected this with religious imagery prevalent throughout, such as pictures of the pope on display [4]. John Paul II's pilgrimage led to a revitalization of religious and nationalist fervor within the country, two aspects which formed the backbone of Solidarity.

On August 7, 1980, crane operator Anna Walentynowicz was fired for supporting trade unions which, aside from the party-approved ones, were illegal. Lech Walesa incited a strike amongst her coworkers in response one week later, and presented their manifesto "Twenty-one Demands" on August 17, 1980. While mostly focusing on the rights of trade unions and their members, it also included demands for the recognition of the right to free speech and other reforms for liberalization, forming the roots for what would become the Solidarity movement. [3] Though it signed the Gdansk Agreement with the PPR, legalizing its status as an independent trade union, and reached 10 million members by 1981, the government imposed martial law that same year on December 12 in an attempt to crush the rapidly growing anti-communist movement. The following year saw several thousand civilians arrested including Walesa himself as crackdowns seemed to push Solidarity further underground, but when John Paul II made another visit to Poland in 1983, whose presence fueled another wave of fervor for the distinctly Catholic union, martial law was lifted in July as Walesa earned the Nobel Peace Prize in October. [4]

Gorbachev became the new General Secretary of the USSR in 1985 and introduced his reforms of glasnost and perestroika, encouraging reform within the Warsaw Pact, especially Poland. A new generation of young people who had not borne witness to the brutal crackdown on Solidarity was also coming of age but still held much anti-communist sentiment, as exemplified by the Freedom and Peace Movement (WiP): a pacifist movement born from student organizers in 1980 who opposed the nuclear arms race and championed human rights, independence and self-determination. It was students like these who helped revive Solidarity, and by 1988 the PPR was willing to compromise with its leadership with Waɫesa by entering discussions rather than utilizing the armed forces in order to stop the strikes. This would eventually result in the Round Table talks in February 1989, where after two months a compromise was hammered out, re-legalizing Solidarity, creating a new free senate, and opening 35% of the seats in the Sejm to outside parties. On the day of the elections on June 4, Solidarity won almost every single senate seat available. Realizing how much power this new opposition had, another compromise was formed where the PPR would provide a president - General Jaruzelski - and Solidarity would provide the prime minister - Tadeusz Mazowiecki - as an agreement which the Kremlin would agree to. By the next year when presidential elections were held however, Jaruzelski was soundly defeated by Waɫesa, establishing Poland's first non-communist government in roughly 45 years.[1][6] This landmark event would lead to the subsequent removal of the regimes in the other Warsaw Pact countries, eventually culminating in the dissolution of the USSR and Gorbachev's resignation in 1991.

References:

 * 1) Hayden, Jacqueline. “Explaining the Collapse of Communism in Poland: How the Strategic Misperception of Round Table Negotiators Produced an Unanticipated Outcome.” Polish Sociological Review, no. 136 (2001): 397–424. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41969421.
 * 2) Walicki, Andrzej. “Totalitarianism and Detotalitarization: The Case of Poland.” The Review of Politics 58, no. 3 (1996): 505–29. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1408010.
 * 3) Kubow, Magdalena. “The Solidarity Movement in Poland: Its History and Meaning in Collective Memory.” The Polish Review 58, no. 2 (2013): 3–14. https://doi.org/10.5406/polishreview.58.2.0003.
 * 4) Kraszewski, Gracjan. “Catalyst for Revolution Pope John Paul II’s 1979 Pilgrimage to Poland and Its Effects on Solidarity and the Fall of Communism.” The Polish Review 57, no. 4 (2012): 27–46. https://doi.org/10.5406/polishreview.57.4.0027.
 * 5) Fleming, Michael. “The Ethno-Religious Ambitions of the Roman Catholic Church and the Ascendancy of Communism in Post-War Poland (1945-50).” Nations and Nationalism 16, no. 4 (2010): 637–56. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8129.2009.00427.x.
 * 6) McDermott, Kevin, and Matthew Stibbe. The 1989 Revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe: From Communism to Pluralism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016.
 * 7) Bloom, Jack M. Seeing through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution: Solidarity and the Struggle against Communism in Poland. Leiden: Brill, 2013.  Through interviews with members of Solidarity, details its formation and its opposition to Communist rule in Poland.
 * 8) Kemp-Welch, A. Poland under Communism a Cold War History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.  A history of Poland from 1945 to 1989.
 * 9) Prazmowska, Anita. Poland: A Modern History. London: I.B. Tauris, 2013.  A history of Poland from before World War 1 to 2013.
 * 10) Kotkin, Stephen, and Jan Tomasz Gross. Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment. New York: Modern Library, 2009.  An analysis of why Communist rule collapsed in the Warsaw Pact countries, focusing on Poland, East Germany, and Romania.
 * 11) Ornatowski, Cezar M. “‘Let Thy Spirit Renew This Earth’: The Rhetoric Of Pope John Paul II And The Political Transformation In Poland, 1979-1989.” Journal for the Study of Religion 14, no. 1 (2001): 67–88. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24764208 .  Analyzes Pope John Paul II’s rhetoric used in his speeches during his trips to pland from 1979-1989 as the political landscape shifted.
 * 12) Kemp-Welch, Tony. “Dethroning Stalin: Poland 1956 and Its Legacy.” Europe-Asia Studies 58, no. 8 (2006): 1261–84. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20451317.