The history of Poland from 1945 to 1989 spans the period of Marxist–Leninist regime in Poland after the end of World War II. These years, while featuring general industrialization, urbanization and many improvements in the standard of living, were marred by early Stalinist repressions, social unrest, political strife and severe economic difficulties.

Near the end of World WarII, the advancing Soviet Red Army, along with the Polish Armed Forces in the East, pushed out the Nazi German forces from occupied Poland. In February 1945, the Yalta Conference sanctioned the formation of a provisional government of Poland from a compromise coalition, until postwar elections. Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, manipulated the implementation of that ruling. A practically communist-controlled Provisional Government of National Unity was formed in Warsaw by ignoring the Polish government-in-exile based in London since 1940.

During the subsequent Potsdam Conference in July–August 1945, the three major Allies ratified a massive westerly shift of Poland's borders and approved its new territory between the Oder–Neisse line and the Curzon Line. The area of Poland was reduced in comparison to its pre-World WarII extent and geographically resembled that of the medieval early Piast dynasty era. Following the destruction of the Polish-Jewish population in the Holocaust, the flight and expulsion of Germans in the west, resettlement of Ukrainians in the east, and the expulsion and resettlement of Poles from the Eastern Borderlands (Kresy), Poland became for the first time in its history an ethnically homogeneous nation-state without prominent minorities. The new government solidified its political power, while the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) under Bolesław Bierut gained firm control over the country, which would remain an independent state within the Soviet sphere of influence. The July Constitution was promulgated on 22 July 1952 and the country officially became the Polish People's Republic (PRL).

Following Stalin's death in 1953, a political "thaw" allowed a more liberal faction of the Polish communists, led by Władysław Gomułka, to gain power. By the mid-1960s, Poland began experiencing increasing economic as well as political difficulties. They culminated in the 1968 Polish political crisis and the 1970 Polish protests when a consumer price hike led to a wave of strikes. The government introduced a new economic program based on large-scale loans from western creditors, which resulted in a rise in living standards and expectations, but the program meant growing integration of Poland's economy with the world economy and it faltered after the 1973 oil crisis. In 1976, the government of Edward Gierek was forced to raise prices again which led to the June 1976 protests.

This cycle of repression and reform and the economic-political struggle acquired new characteristics with the 1978 election of Karol Wojtyła as Pope John Paul II. Wojtyła's unexpected elevation strengthened the opposition to the authoritarian and ineffective system of nomenklatura-run state socialism, especially with the pope's first visit to Poland in 1979. In early August 1980, a new wave of strikes resulted in the founding of the independent trade union "Solidarity" (Solidarność) led by Lech Wałęsa. The growing strength and activity of the opposition caused the government of Wojciech Jaruzelski to declare martial law in December 1981. However, with the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, increasing pressure from the West, and dysfunctional economy, the regime was forced to negotiate with its opponents. The 1989 Round Table Talks led to Solidarity's participation in the 1989 election. Its candidates' striking victory gave rise to the first of the succession of transitions from communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe. In 1990, Jaruzelski resigned from the presidency following the presidential election and was succeeded by Wałęsa.

Establishment of communist-ruled Poland (1944–1948)

Border and population shifts

left|thumb|Poland's [[Territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II|old and new borders, 1945]]

Before World War II, a third of Poland's population was composed of ethnic minorities. Poland had about 35 million inhabitants in 1939, but fewer than 24 million within its borders in 1946. Of the remaining population, over three million were ethnic minorities such as Germans, Ukrainians and Jews, most of whom soon left Poland. Estimated deaths of Polish citizens from war-related causes between 1939 and 1945 range up to 6 million.

Rebuilding of infrastructure and economy

thumb|left|upright=1.0|[[Destruction of Warsaw|Destroyed Warsaw, January 1945]]

Poland suffered catastrophic damage to its infrastructure during the war, which caused it to lag even further behind the West in its industrial output. During the PPR Central Committee Plenum of May 1945, Gomułka complained that the Polish masses regard the Polish communists as the "NKVD's worst agency" and Edward Ochab declared the withdrawal of the Soviet Army from Poland a high priority.

Rigged elections, defeat of Mikołajczyk

thumb|[[ORMO paramilitary police unit during street parade at the Victory Square, 9 June 1946, Warsaw]]

Stalin had promised at the Yalta Conference that free elections would be held in Poland. However, the Polish communists, led by Gomułka and Bierut, while having no intention of giving up power, were also aware of the limited support they enjoyed among the general population. To circumvent this difficulty, in 1946 a national plebiscite, known as the "Three Times Yes" referendum (Trzy razy tak), was held first, before the parliamentary elections. The referendum comprised three fairly general, but politically charged questions about the Senate, national industries and western borders. It was meant to check and promote the popularity of communist initiatives in Poland. Since most of the important parties at the time were leftist or centrist – and could have easily approved all three options – Mikołajczyk's Polish People's Party (PSL) decided, not to be seen as merging into the government bloc, to ask its supporters to oppose the first one: the abolition of the Senate. Under interrogation he defiantly defended himself, threatened to reveal "the whole truth" if put on trial, and remained unbroken. Gomułka was imprisoned without the usual show trial and was released in December 1954. The ORMO began as a popular self-defense effort, a spontaneous reaction to the explosion of crime in the power vacuum of 1944–45. In February 1946, the PPR channeled and formalized this citizen militia movement, creating its ostensibly crime control voluntary ORMO structure. Former Home Army commander Emil August Fieldorf was subjected to several years of brutal persecution in the Soviet Union and Poland before he was executed in February 1953 just before Stalin's death. and the Polish Stalinist economy was born. The government of President Bierut, Prime Minister Cyrankiewicz and Minc embarked on a sweeping economic reforms and national reconstruction. Among the rights it guaranteed was universal free health care. The large state-owned enterprises provided to employees an extensive range of welfare and leisure activities, including housing, sports facilities and hospitals, which started to diminish in the 1970s. As the 20th Congress inspired also partial democratisation of Polish political and economic life, Ochab engaged in reforms intended to promote industrial decentralization and improve living standards. Berman, dismissed in May, by Gomułka's decision was never prosecuted. Of the 746 people officially detained during and in the aftermath of the disturbances, almost 80% were workers. The authorities launched an investigation, attempting to uncover a claimed premeditated instigation and involvement by Western or anticommunist underground centers. Such efforts were unsuccessful and the events were found to have been spontaneous and locally supported. The Natolin faction consisted largely of communist officials from the army and state security, including Franciszek Jóźwiak, Mieczysław Moczar, Zenon Kliszko and Zenon Nowak, who advocated the removal of "Stalin's Jewish protégés", but were themselves of Stalinist sympathies. Other forms of collective community expression and a legally guaranteed academic autonomy (based on the 1958 statute of higher learning)

Polish Pope John Paul II

thumb|right|Millions cheer [[Pope John Paul II in his first visit to Poland as pontiff in 1979]]

On 16 October 1978, Poland experienced what many Poles literally believed to be a miracle. Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, the archbishop of Kraków, was elected pope at the Vatican, taking the name John Paul II. The election of a Polish pope had an electrifying effect on what was at that time one of the last idiosyncratically Catholic countries in Europe. The bankers made it clear that the state could no longer subsidize artificially low prices of consumer goods. The government gave in after two months and, on 1 July, announced a system of gradual but continuous price rises, particularly for meat. A wave of strikes and factory occupations began at once, with the biggest ones taking place in Lublin in July.

v.David Ost identified Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Bronisław Geremek, Jacek Kuroń and Adam Michnik as the most influential members of the (formerly opposition) intellectual elite during the early post-communist period. He characterized them as liberals in the political, but especially in the economic sense. They "sponsored Leszek Balcerowicz and persuaded Wałęsa to approve. ... Their aim was to ... allow painful economic changes and unpopular capitalist class formation to occur".

<!-- -->

Bibliography

  • Biskupski, M. B. B. (2018). The History of Poland. Westport: Greenwood Publishing.
  • Curry, J., & Fajfer, L. (Eds.). (1996). Poland’s Permanent Revolution: Peoples vs. Elites, 1956–1990. Washington, D.C.: American University Press.
  • Domber, G. F. (2014). Empowering Revolution: America, Poland, and the End of the Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press
  • Fidelis, M. (2010). Women, Communism, and Industrialization in Postwar Poland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Fidelis, M. (2022). Imagining the World from Behind the Iron Curtain: Youth and the Global Sixties in Poland. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Huener, J. (2003). Auschwitz, Poland, and the Politics of Commemoration, 1945–1979 (Polish and Polish American Studies). Athens: Ohio University Press.
  • Kemp-Welch, A. (2008). Poland under Communism. A Cold War History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Kenney, P. (1997). Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists, 1945–1950. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
  • Kersten, K. (1991). The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 1943–1948. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Kornbluth, A. (2021). The August Trials: The Holocaust and Postwar Justice in Poland. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Kozdra, J. R. (2017). “What sort of communists are you?” The struggle between nationalism and ideology in Poland between 1944 and 1956. Edith Cowan University.

  • Labedz, L. (Ed.). (1984). Poland under Jaruzelski. New York: Scribner.
  • Lebow, K. A. (2013). Unfinished Utopia: Nowa Huta, Stalinism, and Polish Society, 1949–56. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
  • Lemańczyk, M. (2019). The Plight of German Residents of Post-War Poland and Their Identity Issues. The Polish Review, 64(2), 60–78.
  • Lepak, K. J. (1988). Prelude to Solidarity: Poland and the Politics of the Gierek Regime. New York: Columbia University Press.
  • Leslie, R. (2009). The History of Poland Since 1863 (Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Lipski, J. J. (1985). A History of Kor: The Committee for Workers’ Self-Defence. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Lukowski, J., & Zawadzki, H. (2019). A Concise History of Poland (3rd edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Meng, M. (2011). Shattered Spaces: Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  • Monticone, P. R. C. (1986). The Catholic Church in Communist Poland 1945-1985. Boulder: East European Monographs.
  • Nomberg-Przytyk, S. (2022). Communist Poland: A Jewish Woman’s Experience (H. Levitsky & J. Włodarczyk, Eds.; P. Parsky, Trans.) (Lexington Studies in Jewish Literature). London: Lexington Books.
  • Plocker, A. (2022). The Expulsion of Jews from Communist Poland: Memory Wars and Homeland Anxieties. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  • Prażmowska, A. (2010). Poland: A Modern History. London: I. B. Tauris.
  • Rogalski, W. (2019). The Polish Resettlement Corps 1946-1949: Britain’s Polish Forces. * Lipski, J. J. (1985). A History of Kor: The Committee for Workers’ Self-Defence. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Warwick: Helion and Company.

  • Stehle, H. (1965). The Independent Satellite: Society and Politics in Poland Since 1945. New York: Frederick A. Praeger.
  • Szczerski, A. (2016). Global Socialist Realism: The Representation of Non-European Cultures in Polish Art of the 1950s. In J. Bazin, P. D. Glatigny, & P. Piotrowski (Eds.), Art beyond Borders: Artistic Exchange in Communist Europe (1945-1989) (pp.&nbsp;439–452). Budapest: Central European University Press.
  • Tismaneanu, V. (Ed.). (2009). Stalinism Revisited: The Establishment of Communist Regimes in East-Central Europe (New Edition). Central European University Press.
  • Torańska, T. (1987). Oni: Stalin’s Polish Puppets. New York: Random House.
  • Will, J. E. (1984). Church and State in the Struggle for Human Rights in Poland. Journal of Law and Religion, 2(1), 153–176.
  • Wojdon, J. (2012). The Impact of Communist Rule on History Education in Poland. Journal of Educational Media, Memory & Society, 4(1), 61–77.
  • Zysiak, Agata (2015)Modernizing science: between a liberal, social, and socialistic university--the case of Poland and the University of Łódź (1945-1953), Cambridge University Press 28(2):215-36. doi: 10.1017/S0269889715000083.

Fall of communism and Solidarity

  • Ascherson, N. (1982). The Polish August: The Self-Limiting Revolution. New York: Penguin Books.
  • Bloom, J. M. (2014). Political Opportunity Structure, Contentious Social Movements, and State-Based Organizations: The Fight Against Solidarity Inside the Polish United Workers Party. Social Science History, 38(3–4), 359–388.
  • Braun, K. (1993). The Underground Theater in Poland under Martial Law during the Last Years of Communism (1981-1989). The Polish Review, 38(2), 159–186.
  • Garton Ash, T. (1990). The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of ’89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague. New York: Random House.
  • Garton Ash, T. (2002). The Polish Revolution: Solidarity (Third Edition). New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • Gompert, D. C., Binnendijk, H., & Lin, B. (2014). The Soviet Decision Not to Invade Poland, 1981. In Blinders, Blunders, and Wars: What America and China Can Learn (pp. 139–150). Rand Corporation.
  • Hayden, J. (2012). Poles Apart: Solidarity and the New Poland. London: Routledge.
  • Kamiński, B. (2016). The Collapse of State Socialism: The Case of Poland (Princeton Legacy Library). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Kubik, J. (1994). The Power of Symbols Against the Symbols of Power: The Rise of Solidarity and the Fall of State Socialism in Poland. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press.
  • Laba, R. (2016). The Roots of Solidarity: A Political Sociology of Poland’s Working-Class Democratization (Princeton Legacy Library). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Lipski, J. J. (2022). KOR: A History of the Workers’ Defense Committee in Poland 1976–1981 (O. Amsterdam & G. M. Moore, Trans.). Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Mastny, V. (1999). The Soviet Non-Invasion of Poland in 1980-1981 and the End of the Cold War. Europe-Asia Studies, 51(2), 189–211.
  • Raina, P. (1985). Poland 1981: Towards Social Renewal. New York: Unwin Hyman/HarperCollins.
  • Stachura, P. D. (1999). Poland in the Twentieth Century. New York: St. Martin's Press.
  • Zamoyski, A. (2009). Poland: A History. New York: Hippocrene Books.
  • Photos and films of PRL
  • Presentation The Solidarity Phenomenon (PL, EN, DE, FR, ES, RU)
  • Commonwealth of Diverse Cultures: Poland's Heritage
  • Soviet Archives concerning Poland (1980–1984) by Vladimir Bukovsky