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satellite into a more flexible dictatorship in strong alliance with the USSR. Despite periodic setbacks and appearances to the contrary, Gomulka attempted to maintain this external relationship with the Soviet Union. This process, however, was accompanied by increased domestic controls and conflict both within the party and between the party and the people.
b. The politics of succession
(1) Genesis and aftermath - The antecedents and immediate circumstances under which Gierek became the First Secretary of the Polish party were substantially different from those that ushered in the Gomulka era in 1956. The character of these differences was traceable to both the accomplishments and failings of Gomulka's 14 years of rule. Having to contend with Soviet hostility during his initial years in power, Gomulka was instrumental in forging a new Polish-Soviet relationship that ultimately became a model for Soviet-Eastern European relations in general - that of internal autonomy and external conformity to Soviet interests. Over the years, however, Gomulka failed to keep pace with the changes he himself initiated. Above all, he ultimately misread the mood of his own people. This failing was rooted in the legacy of October 1956 when Gomulka was installed in power after a long preparatory process marked by intense factional strife within the party, which had been disorganized by the impact of de-Stalinization and the accompanying signs of internal weakness within the apparatus of terror.
Because of the nature of the party he inherited, Gomulka's energies during the decade of the 1960s were increasingly sapped by the need to maintain delicate factional balances within the ruling hierarchy. The factional spectrum ranged from reformed and unreformed Stalinists, nationalistic hardliners and liberal revisionists, to moderates who found themselves more and more isolated within, though often the targets of, the internecine warfare. Superimposed on this factional spectrum, and sometimes cutting across political lines, was the division of the party into "native" and "Muscovite" wings, a division made even more complex by the identification of the latter with the "Zionist" elements of the party.
Thus preoccupied, Gomulka neglected the needs of the country. Alarmed at the periodic outbursts of popular dissatisfaction, Gomulka incorporated into his regime increasing numbers of hardline elements to control the population, but without taking steps to identify and remedy the underlying grievances. This situation fed upon itself and by 1967 had resulted in a miasma of political repression, economic stagnation, stifling bureaucratization, and moral corruption. Most importantly, it also isolated Gomulka and his old guard from the rank and file of the party and heightened the regime's hostility to criticism and change. Facing the isolated and anachronistic leadership were politically apathetic but economically dissatisfied masses, especially the working class. Significantly, however, the leadership also faced a challenge from below - the younger generation of party functionaries who proved to be the main force behind the party crisis that nearly toppled the Gomulka regime in 1968.
The crisis itself was generated indirectly. Israel's victory in June 1967 over Moscow's Arab clients focused Communist attention on the "Zionist" element of the ruling parties of Eastern Europe, an element that was nowhere as numerous as in Poland. In early 1968, students supporting a writers' protest against censorship engaged in sporadic demonstrations throughout the country for almost 2 weeks. Gomulka's opponents in the party exploited these events by blaming "Zionist" elements for fostering the unrest. Poland's subsequent anti-Semitic campaign of 1968 was merely a facet of the protracted political crisis that featured a virtual revolt of the party "apparat" against Gomulka's leadership, using as targets his suddenly vulnerable Jewish supporters in the hierarchy.
Of the two party leaders around whom the "young Turks" seemed to cluster in 1968, the head of the hardline and anti-Semitic faction, security chief Mieczyslaw Moczar, was the more publicized, but it was Edward Gierek, the party boss of Poland's key industrial province of Katowice, who was the more important. Gierek drew to himself many of the same elements that supported Moczar, i.e., tough, young, relatively nationalistic party functionaries with frustrated ambitions. Significantly, however, his supporters also included most of the educated and discontented technocrats and other elements who were seeking remedies for Poland's mounting economic and social problems. Numerous factors, especially the thwarting of the Czechoslovak heresy by the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, eventually helped Gomulka to reimpose a semblance of stability under his leadership, but it was clear to most Poles that change had been postponed, not prevented.
Gomulka's preoccupation with foreign affairs in the 2 years preceding December 1970 resulted in only ineffective half-steps being taken to correct mounting economic stagnation and popular dissatisfaction.
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070029-7
