Gomulka, Vladislav

Born in the family of the Polish socialist worker Jan Gomulka (1873-1941). Vladislav Gomulka received only primary education, worked as a mechanic. In 1926-1929 he was one of the leaders of the trade union of workers in the chemical industry, in 1926 he joined the Communist Party of Poland . In 1932 he was sentenced to 4 years in prison for participating in an underground organization of communists. He served half his term and was released due to illness ^[6] . In 1934-1935 he studied at the Lenin School in Moscow .

During the defense of Warsaw , together with other communists from the Warsaw organization, Gomulka defended the capital in the ranks of the Warsaw defense brigade formed from volunteers ^[7] , and after the surrender of the garrison, fled to Lviv , where he later became a member of the Resistance movement. In 1941 he became a member of the CPSU (b) .

In July 1942 he joined the Central Committee of the newly formed Polish Workers' Party (PDP), and from November 1943 he was Secretary General of the PDP. After the entry of Soviet troops into Poland in July 1944 he arrived in Lublin , where he became a member of the Polish Committee for National Liberation .

Since December 1944 - Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Returned Territories. Gomulka was called “Little Stalin ” for his zeal in planting the Soviet system in Poland. But on September 3, 1948, Gomulka, who upheld the idea of ​​a “Polish path to socialism,” was accused of a “right-wing nationalist deviation” and removed from his post as general secretary of the PPR. In December 1948 he “admitted his mistakes”, but after the creation of the Polish United Workers Party (PUWP) he was not elected a member of the Politburo. In January 1949, he was removed from all public posts, and in November of that year he was expelled from the PUWP.

In July 1951, Gomulka was arrested and imprisoned until 1954. In August 1956 he was reinstated in the party, and in October 1956 he was elected first secretary of the PUWP Central Committee at the VIII plenum of the Central Committee of the PUWP. Gomulka became the ideologist of the "Polish road to socialism", which provided for the revision of agricultural policy, the normalization of relations with the Catholic Church, the development of workers' self-government, which was adopted by the party and implemented in Poland until the 1980s.

In 1959 and 1961, two assassination attempts were made against Gomulka by the Polish terrorist Stanislav Jaros .

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he organized an anti-Semitic ^[8] campaign in Poland related to the Polish political crisis of 1968 . The anti-Semitic campaign in Lodz began with a speech by Gomulka on June 19, 1967, where he declared that there was an imperialist-Zionist fifth column in Poland ^[9] . The anti-Semitic speeches of Polish leaders of the Communist Party led to the dismissal and emigration of thousands of citizens of Jewish origin and this campaign is regarded as a “communist crime" ^[9] . A grand ideological campaign was launched on the model of the Stalin era, but without human casualties. ^[6]

March 19, 1968 , Gomulka spoke at a rally and declared:

At a meeting of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee on November 10, 1966, Y. Andropov , among other things, noted: “Recently, Gomulka said that Lenin’s doctrine of collectivization, you see, is not suitable for Poles” ^[10] .

In 1970 , due to unrest of workers, he was removed from his post at the plenum of the Central Committee of the PUWP. Edward Gerek was elected to the post of Secretary General. September 1, 1982, Vladislav Gomulka died.

• Bukharin N.I. , Yazhborovskaya I.S. Vladislav Gomulka: at the turns of history // New and modern history. 2011. No. 4. P. 146-168.

• Biography on the Chronos website