The PZPR Warsaw first secretary whose unauthorized print run of 15,000 copies broke Khrushchev's Secret Speech out of party control
At a Central Committee plenum break in March 1956, he pressed Khrushchev on Stalin's anti-Semitism; Khrushchev, his hands trembling, disclosed that Stalin had been planning pogroms against Soviet Jews.
Born to a Jewish merchant family in Warsaw, he joined the communist youth movement at 14, studied at the International Lenin School, and alternated between underground party work in Poland and extended stays in the USSR. Arrested by the NKVD in 1938, he spent eight years in the Kolyma camps before returning to Poland in 1945, where he enforced the Stalinist line in propaganda, the press, and agricultural procurement. As PZPR Warsaw first secretary from 1955, he pivoted after the Twentieth Congress: he urged rank-and-file members to study the secret speech and authorized 15,000–20,000 unofficial copies, turning the speech from a closed party document into a global one. He clashed with Gomułka after the Polish October, was dismissed in 1957 and expelled in the 1968 anti-Semitic campaign, and later backed the democratic opposition, converting to Catholicism.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1921Joins the Young Communist League of Poland
- 1926–1929Studies at the International Lenin School, Moscow
- 1930–1932Secretariat of the Central Committee, Communist Party of Poland
- 1938–1945Arrested by the NKVD; 8-year sentence in Kolyma labour camp
- 1945–1948Propaganda secretary, Katowice Voivodeship PPR; editor of Trybuna Robotnicza
- 1948–1954Head of the Press and Publishing Department, PZPR Central Committee
- 1955–1957First Secretary, PZPR Warsaw Committee
- 1957–1958President of the Polish Press Agency (PAP)
- 1968Expelled from the PZPR in the anti-Semitic campaign
Related historical events
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeArrested and imprisoned in the Great PurgeThe NKVD arrested him in 1938, and he spent eight years in the Kolyma camps.
- 1956.02The Twentieth Party Congress and the Secret SpeechLeaked Khrushchev's speech in WarsawHe proposed that rank-and-file party members study the secret speech, and he oversaw the production of 15,000 to 20,000 unofficial copies that circulated beyond party control.
Disseminating Khrushchev’s secret speech in 1956
In March 1956, Khrushchev’s speech criticizing Stalin’s rule at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union reverberated through the leadership of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR). After Edward Ochab became party leader, Stefan Staszewski, first secretary of the PZPR’s Warsaw committee, proposed that party members be allowed and encouraged to study the speech and discuss its implications for Poland. On March 21, the PZPR Secretariat approved distribution of the Russian text and a full Polish translation to party organizations; on March 27 it authorized wider distribution and public meetings.
The decision reflected an effort to address public interest in the speech and information spreading through Western radio broadcasts, while the leadership initially treated the text as material for controlled party study. According to Mark Kramer of Harvard’s Davis Center, in Warsaw about 3,000 official copies were printed, alongside 15,000 to 20,000 unofficial copies produced at Staszewski’s initiative. Many unofficial copies went beyond the party. His proposal and the print run helped carry the speech beyond the distribution initially planned by the party leadership, although its wider circulation also resulted from interacting channels, including party discussion in Poland and Western broadcasts.