Poland and the crisis of Stalinism (continued): The fall of Gomulka

GOMULKA'S was a ref bureaucracy. It had this in in the USSR and the D slovakia in 1968.

That is why, after a few days of hostility, the Soviet bureaucracy accepted the change-over in Poland and later came to be Gomulka's fervent supporter against his rivals on the Party Central Committee (the group led by General Moczar of the self-styled 'Partisans').

To solve Poland's economic problems—a backward industrial sector and an investment-starved agriculture-it was necessary to give full rein to the initiative of the working class and especially But it would also require a communist leadership breaking with the Stalinist strategy. of 'peaceful co-existence' with imperialism, a leadership, that saw the final solution of Poland's problems in the victory of the socialist revolution in the technically more advanced capitalist states in W Europe.

Tied as he was to Stalin's conception of 'Socialism in one country', there was never any prospect of Gomulka striking out along this road.

Step by step, leaning on the old, discredited, forces in the bureaucracy (the remnants of the so called 'Natolin' faction) he drove the working class back from the positions it had conquered in 1956.

Already the Polish working class had been gravely weakened by the crushing of the Hungarian workers' councils following the Kremlin invasion of November 4, 1956.

The installation of the puppet Kadar regime in Budapest gave new heart to the Stalinist die-hards in the Polish party.

Soon they were forcing Gomulka's hand against the workers' councils in Poland.

Gradually their powers were limited. The demand by workers for a national congress of councils was denounced as an "anarchist Utopia' (it was this that seized held the power Russian Revolution of 1917).

Bureaucracy hits back October Year after the Polish strong enough to hit bäck.

Strikes, which had previously been tolerated by the regime, were now crushed violently. In Lodz, the police were called in to break a strike of tramway The same month (October 1957) the left-wing student journal Po Protsu' was closed down. It had been most outspoken in its defence of the Hungarian revolution and was a constant thorn in the side of the Gomulka leadership, which hated to be reminded of its own sharp attacks on • Stalinism durrm movement within the common with Khrushchev bcek 'liberals' of Czechorepressive measures Dy tne Gomulka regime.

Left-wing student leaders had been jailed in 1965 and Marxist opponents of the bureaucracy shared the same fate a year later.

Student clashes The student clashes of March 1968, saw the present Polish rulers in full cry. The immediate issue was the banning of a play with an anti-(Tsarist) Russian theme, but it rapidly broadened out into a struggle against Stalinist censorship and for political freedoms.

At all costs, the regime, had to prevent the workers coming in on the side of the students (as they had just begun to_do in Czechoslovakia and were about to in France).

One example of the propaganda used to isolate the student and intellectual critics of the regime from the mass of the working class is an article by Andrzej Werblan in 'Miesiecznik Literacki' in June 1968.

'Why is it that a relatively large number of people of Jewish origin can be found among certain groups of intelligentsia... and in responsible posts in some central institutions [universities]?

"Their number is not so large as is generally believed, but all the same it is much larger than one might expect on the basis of the percentage of Jewish population in our society ..:

Already, on March 14 (only a few days after the student clashes with the police the present party leader Gierek had weighed-in with his own contribution:

'The dirty scum which floated on the vortex of the October events 11 years ago has not been completely removed from the tide of our life?

This is the same man who Shadow Foreign Minister Dennis Healey recently tried to present as a 'liberal' anti-Stalinist!

The 'Partisans', with whom Gierek is closely allied, have always been ready to make common cause with the Catholic Church against leftward developnients in the working class, students and youth. Their main instrument is the 'Pax' (peace) organization, which publishes its own daily paper 'Slowo Powszechne'. suppor sure against In credite many refusal for pc factori Whi in the kept and it again studen Its then b and M Gomul Alle bureau demon by an rebutte manife 1968. reads:

ought politic: THE FALL OF BURNT IN PRAGUE, 1968 rtea every of the Stalinist regime t the working October 1956, it dised itself in of or the m by its support and it only bone a 93 class, This 'Pax' after the 1968 anti-Semitism useful to those such as Gierek gations made by the icracy that the student istrations were motivated iti-communism re are easies Led by the Warsaw student isto, released on March 28, Its third and final point : students' organization to be assured freedom of al action by, among other ARMOURED CARS PA , the creation of clubs and sion centres. view of the ideological and iably socialist character of udent movement, this freewill be used within those that the socialist character : state creates. wever, it is necessary to Isize, as strongly as posthat the acceptance of the premises of socialism not does not absolve one from sion and reflection on the Is ways of realizing these tory but it even makes it ses, Students crushed Isolated from the working class, sections of whom were either confused by the slanders of the press and radio, reluctant to break openly with Gomulka leadership, the students were crushed.

The regime swung even more to the right as economic problems worsened and the movement in Czechoslovakia threatened to escape the control of the Dubcek 'liberals' and turn into a GOMULKA HUNGARY, 1956 POZNAN UPRISING, JUNE 1956

working class revolt against the entire bureaucracy.

Together with the E German Stalinist leader Walter Ulbricht, Gomulka pleaded with the Kremlin to intervene massively against the anti-bureaucratic movement in Czechoslovakia.

Both leaders feared the impact of the Czech revolt on the working class in their own countries. The result was the Kremlin invasion of August 21, 1968, an operation in which Polish troops, along with German, Bulgarian and Hungarian, were also involved.

Gomulka had now crossed the Rubicon. His sending of tanks and troops against the strikers of Gdansk and the other Baltic cities WAN continuation of counter-revolutionary strategy.

The "liberal' of 1956 had turned into the ruthless hardliner of 1968 and 1970, a man ready to rely on the most reactionary, - anti-working-class TROL THE STREETS OF SZCZ UO-8230' forces to keep his regime in power. And that applied not only to his 'Pax' allies, but to his contacts abroad.

1968 was also the year when the Gomulka regime established diplomatic relations with fascist Spain. No doubt his allies in 'Pax' were helpful here.

Then, at the end of 1969, when miners the Asturian coalfield in N Spain began Hunts on many, Gomulka strike against the exported coal to Franco to help him break the strike.

Six months later, cement was exported to Ireland at the height of the cement workers' strike.

Here again, the 'clerical Stalinists' may well have been instrumental in establishing links between the two regimes.

More orthodox methods were undoubtedly used to further the Kremlin's overall stratégy of namective security en Europenamely those secret diplomacy.

Following the election of Willy Brandt's Social Democratic-Liberal coalition in September 1969, the Soviet bureaucracy stepped up its campaign to secure better political and trade relations with the European NATO powers.

Poland at once fell into line and began its own separate negotiations with Brandt, who finally initialled the Polish-W German treaty in Warsaw only two weeks before the strikes in the Baltic ports began.

Even more than the Kremlin, Gomulka needed his alliance with W German imperialism. It was his last attempt to get desperately needed investments for industry, still lagging chronically behind the West in quantity and quality of output.

This is where the British trade unionist finds common cause with his brothers in Poland.

Both are fighting to defend what has already been gained. In the case of the British worker, he is fighting to defend his trade union rights, won over more than a century of battles against the employing class and its state.

Everything else that he has won- -decent living and working conditionsbased on the power of the right to a job his trade unions. In the last analysis, this is all a British worker can truly call his own.

But the Polish workers fighting defend someevery bit important as the right to strike and belong to a trade union.

The Polish working class This means, above all, in both countries, a fight to the death against counter-revolutionary Stalinism.

The Polish working class need no convincing on that score.

And in Britain, where, because of , post-war boom, CP leaders have been able to hide behind many illusions of the class, the sharp turn in the political situation since the return of the Tories has opened many workers' eyes to the real nature of British Stalinism.

Heré again, the two struggles supplement each other. When the Gdansk workers took on Gomulka's tanks with almost their bare hands, they drove yet another nail into the coffin British Stalinism, whose 'Morning Star' was compelled to déscribe the crushing of women and children by tanks as a It is the immense economic, military and political pressure which imperialism exerts on the USSR, China and E Europe which is, in the last analysis, responsible for the bureaucratic distortions and repressions in these countriés.

The overthrow of capitalism in Britain and W Europe is therefore a pre-condition for the building of a genuine socialist society in Poland and the rest of the Soviet bloc countries.

This is a fundamental axiom of Marxism. The construction of socialism requires the utilization of the international division of labour, based upon democratic planning under the control of the working class. This is the goal for which the Polish working class is struggling. It is ours too.

So every step forward we take in the struggle to build the mass revolutionary party in this coun-