POLAND: Case History

How does an unprincipled politician get along in a Communist-dominated country? Should he join ’em or fight ’em? Poland’s Edward Osubka-Morawski tried it both ways, lost both times. The Communists made him Premier of Poland and last week they forced him out of Polish politics. His is the case history of an opportunist.

When war began, Osubka-Morawski was a small-fry organizer in the left wing of Poland’s Socialist Party. In the wartime underground he teamed with the Communists, went to Moscow, and returned as Socialist Premier in the Moscow-created provisional government. To repay the Reds he hatched an inept, ill-timed and abortive plot to merge his Socialists with the Communists. His blundering displeased the Communists; his intent angered the Socialists. Osubka-Morawski was demoted from Premier to the rank of Minister of Public Administration. Communist displeasure deepened when he snatched a choice government apartment coveted by Secret Police Boss Stanislaw Radkiewicz.

Osubka-Morawski then decided to fight the Communists; he moved over to the Socialist right wing and opposed the Socialist-Communist merger which he had once tried to bring off.

Last week in Warsaw the Socialists, under Communist orders, purged their party officials to pave the way for the merger which was now a certainty, thanks to manipulators more skillful than Osubka-Morawski had been. First to be bounced off the Socialists’ Central Committee was Osubka-Morawski. His ministerial job and his housing situation also looked uncertain.