Poland: A Break for a Company Man

Few Communists, whatever their feelings about the invasion of Czechoslovakia, managed to turn a profit by it. But for Poland’s aging, doctrinaire Party Boss Wladyslaw Gomulka, Russia’s tanks and troops performed an invaluable eleventh-hour salvage job. As one who has recently based his career on being Moscow’s company man, Gomulka rates especially warm treatment from the Kremlin during times of Communist stress—and the Soviets have never needed him more. As a result, Czechoslovakia has enabled Gomulka to overcome— for the present—the most serious challenge to his leadership in his twelve years as party boss. Last week, in a droning five-hour speech at the meeting that once loomed as a trial of strength for his job, Poland’s No. 1 Communist felt secure enough to dispense advice to comrades throughout Europe.

Second-Class Berths. Whether intentionally or not, Gomulka’s words set off an unprecedented debate among hard-lining Poles and many of the 250 foreign Communist guests at their Party Congress. The nonruling parties of Western Europe, Gomulka announced haughtily, should not expect to carry any weight with Eastern Europe’s Communist rulers, “who carry the direct responsibility for the development of power in their countries as well as of the socialist system.”

In effect, Gomulka was suggesting second-class berths for weaker parties, and Western European Communists were furious. The leaders of French and Italian delegations both rose to announce that their parties intended to travel “our road toward socialism,” as Italian Giancarlo Pajetta put it. Rumanian Delegate Chivu Stoica also declined to line up behind Gomulka’s thesis. Russian Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev plumped for the Kremlin’s long-sought Communist summit, which was postponed indefinitely after the invasion. But it was all too clear that European Communists are in no mood to convene in harmony.

Kremlin Image. For Gomulka, the squabbling among his visitors provided a welcome change in agenda from the showdown involving his leadership that seemed inevitable three months ago. His challenger was Mieczyslaw Moczar, chief of Poland’s secret police and head of its influential partisans’ organization, who had exploited several areas of Polish dissatisfaction to gain impressive leverage for himself. Chief among these issues was the Kremlin’s overbearing influence, which has kept the economy geared to heavy industry and Russian-bound exports at a time when Poles, like other Soviet-bloc countries, were demanding consumer goods. Moczar also exploited Poland’s latent antiSemitism, and in a skillful campaign against “Zionism” forced a purge that cost several thousand Jews their jobs in the party and government.

For the time being, Gomulka is obviously the man the Russians rely on, and there is some doubt that they would feel entirely comfortable with Moczar’s brand of ultranationalism. Still, he recently showed up at a ceremony honoring Polish patriots in Moscow and sought to polish up his Kremlin image with an effusively pro-Russian speech. More of that, combined with Gomulka’s rock-bottom popularity at home, may eventually convince the Kremlin that Moczar is the wiser choice. Even at last week’s reassuring meeting, Gomulka was careful to nod in Moczar’s direction with a ritualistic warning against the “threat of Zionism.” But that was the only charity he showed: Gomulka successfully prevented Moczar from gaining full membership in the Politburo (he retains deputy status) and maneuvered his own men into two of the three empty Politburo seats.