A communist leader who helped shape postwar Poland's state
At Bierut's funeral in March 1956 he said, "Bierut has died, but our party, united as a monolith, lives on." That month the Sixth Plenum chose Edward Ochab as First Secretary; Władysław Gomułka became First Secretary only at the Eighth Plenum of October 1956.
A Polish communist politician and divisional general, born into a steelworker's family and a member of the Communist Party of Poland from 1923. Arrested in 1925 and again in 1936, he served years in prison, then from 1939 worked in the USSR, helping found the Union of Polish Patriots and the Polish Workers' Party and serving as a political officer of the Polish Army formed there. After the war he was voivode of Silesia and deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers, working to halt Soviet removals of people and equipment from Silesia. On 20 November 1952 he was appointed chairman of the Council of State, an office he held until his death. In March 1956 he was the other major candidate for First Secretary at the Sixth Plenum, which chose Edward Ochab; he was thereafter counted among the party's hardline natolin faction. He died of cancer on 7 August 1964.
Career timeline
- 1923–1939Communist Party of Poland activist; imprisoned
- 1943–1945Political officer in the Polish forces formed in the Soviet Union; deputy commander for political affairs
- 1944–1948Politburo member of the Polish Workers' Party
- 1945–1948Voivode of the Silesian-Dąbrowskie Voivodeship
- 1948–1954Polish United Workers' Party Central Committee secretary and Politburo member
- 1949–1952Deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers
- 1952–1964Chairman of the Council of State of Poland
The national communist who returned in the Polish October of 1956 to test a 'Polish road to socialism'
To the Politburo, October 1956 — 'You can govern a nation with bayonets, but whoever realizes that possibility also realizes that he has lost everything.'
Born in 1905 in Galicia, in the Austrian Partition, into a worker's family, he was a plumber from the age of fourteen. He joined the Communist Party of Poland in 1926 and became general secretary of the underground Polish Workers' Party in 1943. In 1948 he was removed for 'rightist-nationalist deviation' and imprisoned from 1951 to 1954. After the June 1956 Poznań workers' protests were harshly suppressed, he was elected first secretary on 20 October 1956; he insisted Poland would resist advancing Soviet troops but keep the alliance, and the Soviets yielded. The 1967-68 antisemitic campaign and support for the invasion of Czechoslovakia ended the reform line, and in December 1970 he ordered the army to shoot striking shipyard workers in Gdańsk and Gdynia. Death caused by lung cancer.
Career timeline
- 1926Joins the Communist Party of Poland
- 1934–1935Studies at the International Lenin School, Moscow
- 1943–1948General Secretary, Polish Workers' Party
- 1948–1951Purged for 'nationalist deviation'; arrested 1951
- 1954–1956Released, rehabilitated; returns in the Polish October
- 1956–1970First Secretary, Polish United Workers' Party
- 1970.12Bloody suppression of strikes against price rises; heart attack; removed from office 20 December
A party cadre shaped by the youth movement
In July 1980, he joined the government delegation sent with Mieczysław Jagielski to negotiate with striking workers in Lublin.
Zdzisław Kurowski was a Polish politician who rose through the communist youth movement into the middle ranks of the party and state apparatus. His work connected agricultural, youth, and economic administration, first in Białystok and then in the PZPR Central Committee. When strikes spread through Lublin in July 1980, he was sent with Mieczysław Jagielski on the government delegation that negotiated over wages and living conditions. He later remained a manager of the Polish People’s Republic, serving in external economic posts.
Career timeline
- 1950–1956Activist, Union of Polish Youth
- 1957–1972Chairman, Union of Rural Youth
- 1969–1985Deputy, Sejm of the Polish People’s Republic
- 1972–1975First secretary, Białystok Voivodeship PZPR Committee
- 1975–1980Member of the PZPR Central Committee Secretariat
- 1977–1980Head, PZPR Central Committee Department of Light Industry, Trade and Consumption
- 1980Head, PZPR Central Committee Organizational Department
- 1982–1989External economic official, CMEA and foreign-trade ministries
