Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/39069

This article examines political dynamics in Poland immediately after World War II, paying particular attention to the multiparty system in that period and the communists' policies toward non-communist parties. Postwar Poland started in July 1944 with the establishment of the Polish Committee of National Liberation (the Lublin Committee) in which the communists exercised hegemonic power. The Lublin Committee and its successor, the Provisional Government, were nominal coalition governments that consisted of four parties: the communist Polish Workers' Party (PPR), the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), the Peasant Party (SL), and the Democratic Party (SD). Postwar Poland was initially characterized by coalition government and political pluralism, which both the domestic and foreign environment made necessary. As for the latter, the Soviet Union had in particular elaborated a "national front" strategy in order to help weak communists in Eastern Europe to participate in postwar administrations, a strategy which was intended to relax the Western Allies' vigilance against the establishment of puppet communist governments. In Poland, the communists, who seized power in spite of their lack of mass support and who, at the same time, had to follow the Soviet "national front" strategy, created for themselves their "allied" parties and adopted their prewar party names. In this "multiparty" system, which this article calls "the Lublin system," the communists allowed only those who accepted the hegemony of the PPR and had no intention to struggle for hegemonic power to be an allied partner. They carefully nipped in the bud any intention by their "allies" to be independent. It was often the case that they used the "plug," the party member dispatched to allied parties as an executive in order to control these parties. These tactics helped the communists to make the SL and the SD their satellite parties, though the excessive use of the "plug" tactic, which took the teeth out of the multiparty system, aroused criticism even in the PPR leadership. The formation of the Provisional Government of National Unity in June 1945, which was to be set up according to the Yalta agreement, together with the return of Mikołajczyk, the former prime minister of the Polish government in exile and an outstanding leader of the Polish peasant movement, caused a change in the Lublin system and the political situation as a whole in Poland. The communists made an effort to draw Mikołajczyk and his followers into their Lublin system, but he refused to be involved in a political framework initiated by the communists and founded a new party in substantial opposition, the Polish Peasant Party (PSL), relying on wide support from the masses. Confronted with the challenge of the PSL, the communists tried to modify the Lublin system into a bipolar structure which would compel the PSL to play the role of the only legal opposition. In this way, they intended to limit the energy required in dealing with scattered targets in struggles for power. At the same time they continued efforts to induce the PSL into the platform of the Lublin system. They offered the PSL an electoral bloc which assured the PSL the same number of seats in the parliament as the PPR and the PPS would occupy, but again Mikołajczyk and his party refused to accept the proposal and decided to enter the general election on its own. In such a situation, the communists played for time by carrying out a referendum. The result of it, however, disappointed the communists, revealing a largely hostile attitude which forced them to falsify the official results in favor of the communists. This falsified referendum cast a shadow on the stability of the Lublin system, activating the socialists (PPS) who intended to mediate between the PPR and the PSL and, by doing so, find their way out of dependency on the communists. Facing such a crisis of the Lublin system, the communists reaffirmed the bipolar structure of the political scene and aimed both to shake the PSL and to bring the PPS back to their side by the time of the forthcoming general election. They succeeded at the latter task, but failed at the former. After recognizing the difficulty in reaching an agreement with Mikołajczyk, the communists decided to destroy the PSL by resorting to underhand means, including far more intensified violence. In the end, the general election was won by force. The collapse of the PSL marked the beginning of the last stage of a political pluralism which had somehow functioned within the limitations of the communist hegemony. It was indeed a significant step toward the establishment of a substantial single-party system in Poland, but this process did not proceed smoothly according to any blueprint. The political unification in postwar Poland was not a linear process of realization of the initial, clear and unchanging purpose of the communists, but rather the result of a series of reactions to circumstances the communists came up against. The political dynamics contributed by various elements, including non-communists, should not be overlooked. It would be more appropriate to say that the series of events which took place in the first period of postwar Poland reveal the problems and obstacles faced in establishing their desired system of hegemonic communist rule.