APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070029-7
FIGURE 7. PZPR membership and social composition, 1956-71 (U/OU) (chart/picture)
June 1967 adversely affected party rolls far beyond what might have been provoked by a simple "verification" campaign. The Jews within the party became targets immediately, but the process of exchange of party cards served as a useful vehicle to dismiss other party members as well - to settle old scores, remove deadwood from sinecures, and get rid of apathetic and ineffective functionaries. In July 1967 the PZPR claimed 2 million members and candidates, or about 6% of the population. By January 1968 the party officially admitted a decline to 1,951,000, the first absolute decline in party membership since 1960. Even then, the official figures probably fell far short of the facts. Although no reliable data are available, it is estimated that at least 300,000 members and candidates, including some very influential and prominent members, both Jewish and non-Jewish, were either removed or resigned from the party in the months following the June war.
Because of the party's simultaneous, renewed recruitment drive among the workers and the lower middle classes which resulted in a heavy influx into the party in 1969, even as the purges continued and intensified, reliable figures on party membership trends during that year were probably not available even to the party organizers themselves. By June 1968 claimed membership stood at only 2,030,000 or about the same as a year earlier, despite the party's official statement that some 150,000 new members had been admitted during the first half of 1968 alone. The
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070029-7
