[18], Gomułka's anti-Soviet image was exaggerated but was justified in the popular imagination by his anti-Stalinist line in 1948 and years of subsequent internment. The Kremlin viewed this situation with concern. People across the country criticised the security police and asked for the dissolution of the public security committee and the punishment of its most guilty functionaries. This decision was made despite Moscow's threats to invade Poland if the PZPR picked Gomulka, a moderate who had been purged after losing his battle with Bierut. [1][4], The leadership's stance contributed to the relatively-moderate political dimension of social protest in October. [7], Gomulka's pledge to follow a "Polish road to socialism" more in harmony with national traditions and preferences caused many Poles to interpret the dramatic confrontation of 1956 as a sign that the end of the dictatorship was in sight. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree.... …heads; a violently suppressed workers’ strike in Poznań in June 1956 shook the whole country. Riots soon broke out, the local offices of the secret police and party functionaries were attacked, and a police security officer was lynched. The Poles, in recognising the cries of the public, needed to keep the Soviets from direct control but could not raise their demands to a point that endangered their relationships in the bloc. For example, many members of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) criticised Stalin's execution of older Polish communists during the Great Purge. College students even held debating meetings with foreigners, many of whom turned out not to be communists. But their position in this struggle is much different than the positions they were in during the earlier suppressions of uprisings in East Germany (1953) and Poland (1956) and the invasions of Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia … October Crisis in Poland 1956. The … In Warsaw crowds gathered to read and discuss Poland's new move in her long struggle for freedom. The communist authorities were not openly and unequivocally challenged, as they had been in June, and anticommunist slogans, which had been prevalent in the June uprising, such as "We want free elections", "Down with Communist dictatorship" or "Down with the Party", were much less prevalent. The meetings were usually organized by local party cells, local authorities and trade unions. He analyzed the situation from a social, grass roots, level, moving beyond the initial studies of top level politics and into the effects … [8], In June 1956, there was an insurrection in Poznań. Nonetheless, the era of Stalinism in Poland had ended. Dallin, Alexander. A new Party Congress was demanded, as were a greater role for the Sejm and a guarantee of personal liberties. In 1956, talking to President Eisenhower by telephone about the crisis in Hungary, Secretary of State Dulles had said that it was "very difficult to know how to handle the situation." Get this stock video and more royalty-free footage. They demanded the return of the eastern territories, an explanation for the Katyn massacre and the elimination of the Russian language from the educational curriculum. Vicious street fighting broke out, but the Soviets’ great power ensured victory. Street activity peaked during and immediately after the 19–21 October "VIII Plenum" meeting of the Central Committee of the PZPR but continued until late in the year. In 1968, the Polish Communist party declared thousands of Jews enemies of the state and forced them to leave Poland. The demonstrations were suppressed but they did afford reformist Communists the opportunity to advance an agenda that included significant concessions to … The Soviet Union directed the products that Poland manufactured, bought the products and exported goods to Poland that were no longer produced in it. The first two titles were Prague Spring '68 , edited by Jaromír Navrátil et al (1998), and Uprising in East Germany, 1953 , edited by Christian Ostermann (2001). The Polish Crisis and the Hungarian Rebellion, October 20-November 3, 1956: The Advent to Power of Gomulka in Poland and Nagy in Hungary; Soviet Military Intervention in and Subsequent Withdrawal From Hungary; Discussion of the Hungarian Question in the U.N. Security Council (Documents 93-161) Tens of thousands took part in such meetings. The revelations may even have contributed to the Polish uprising in June 1956 and the Hungarian revolution of October 1956. [2], For the People's Republic of Poland, 1956 was a year of transition. [4] Gomułka proved to be acceptable to both factions of Polish communists: the reformers, who were arguing for liberalization of the system, and the hardliners, who realised that they needed to compromise. The power elite was paralysed by internal conflicts and public feelings were strongly anti-Soviet. ", 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, On the Personality Cult and Its Consequences. 1956 Polish and Hungarian Crises. [2][16] The Polish leadership made it clear that the face of communism had to become more nationalised and that the Soviets could no longer directly control the Polish people. Omissions? [15] The Soviet delegation was led by Nikita Khrushchev and included Anastas Mikoyan, Nikolai Bulganin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich and Ivan Konev. [2] Timothy Garton Ash calls the Polish October the most significant event in the post-war history of Poland until the rise of Solidarity. The protests of the workers within the communist framework seemed to recall the 1956 protests in Poland. The following day the minister of defense, Konstantin Rokossovsky (a former Soviet officer), ordered the local military commander to suppress the uprising, and within a few days nearly 60 people were killed, more than 200 were wounded, and order was restored in Poznań. Some social scientists term it the Polish October Revolution, which was less dramatic than the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 but may have had an even deeper impact on the Eastern Bloc and on the Soviet Union's relationship to its satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe. Poznań Riots, (June 1956), uprising of Polish industrial workers that caused a crisis among the Polish communist leadership as well as in the Soviet bloc and resulted in the establishment of a new Polish regime headed by Władysław Gomułka. This essay will compare the events of 1956, drawing on recently declassified materials from Hungarian, Polish and Russian archives.While the recently accessible archival sources do not call for a radically new interpretation of events, they do yield The 1956 Hungarian Revolution is the third in the "National Security Archive Cold War Reader" series published by Central European University Press. The peasants responded with sullen passive resistance; bad harvests and reluctance to plant crops or breed livestock reduced agricultural production. Alarmed by the process, the Party Secretariat decided to withhold the speech from the general public. The country had been forced to rely on the Soviets for so long that breaking away completely would prove disastrous. That integration made any reform, whether political or economic, in country inevitably have a great impact on the other. Hungarian Revolution, popular uprising in Hungary in 1956, following a speech by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in which he attacked the period of Joseph Stalin ’s rule. [4] Initially very popular for his reforms,[23] which were optimistically referred to at the time as "Gomułka's thaw", Gomułka gradually softened his opposition to Soviet pressures, and the late-1950s hopes for major political change in Poland were replaced with growing disillusionment in the 1960s. The Uprising was an almost spontaneous revolt by the Hungarian people against the ruling Communist Party of the time and the Soviet policies which were … In June, protests by workers in June in Poznań had highlighted the people's dissatisfaction with their situation. Attempts were made to force entries into the homes of Soviet citizens, mostly in Lower Silesia, which was home to many Soviet troops. What appeared as his confrontation with Khrushchev and other top Soviet leaders who descended on Warsaw in…, …communist rule was staged in Poznań. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Riots broke out that left dozens dead by the time the military suppressed the uprising.…. Thus, Polish communists found themselves unexpectedly at the head of a national liberation movement. Numerous events of protest and revolt, especially among students reverberated across the continent in 1968, but many followed rather than preceded the Polish crisis. In Hungary, social protest destroyed the political system, but in Poland, it was absorbed into it. [20], In the aftermath of the October events, Rokossovsky and many other Soviet "advisers" left Poland, signaling that Moscow was willing to grant Polish communists slightly more independence. After denouncing Stalinism so vehemently in his speech, Khrushchev could not regress to the Stalinist position by forcing more Russians into the Polish leadership. Having failed to persuade the Polish peasantry to collectivise, the government adopted instead, a policy of systematic discrimination and harassment against private farmers. Poland - The Historical Setting: Chapter 6: The Polish People's Republic. Khrushchev's speech worked against him. Corrections? This page was last edited on 13 January 2021, at 04:51. Workers' delegations met to consider the return of a former leader, ousted and … The Soviet Union was not worried about only the political implications of reform but also its economic implications. Therefore, any reform in the Polish government would have to concede to some Soviet demands, but the Soviets concurrently would have to concede to a vital partner.[14]. They spurred social protest in June but dampened it in October, when the threat of Soviet invasion against Gomułka and his supporters transformed the social image of Polish communists. In June 1956, workers in the Polish city of Poznan demonstrated against cuts in wages and the insensitivity of local authorities to their grievances. The documents, most of which are working notes, are from 1956 and come from Russian and Bulgarian archives. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Hungary in 1956 seemed to sum up all that the Cold War stood for. Demands were made for the exposure of secret police collaborators, and suspected collaborators were frequently assaulted. This video looks at the Polish Revolution of 1956 and how the Soviet Union dealt with the attack. The Polish Crisis 1956. Mage's polemic thus sharply highlights the Spartacist tendency's line in the present Polish crisis, where the constellation of counterrevolutionary forces which were in Hungary a distinct ly subordinate element today wield the Polish Crisis, Warsaw, Poland,... ️Best Price Guaranteed ️Simple licensing. Ring in the new year with a Britannica Membership, This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/event/Poznan-Riots, The New York Times - Rioting Over Hard Life in Poland Led to ‘Golden October’ of 1956. Public meetings, demonstrations and street marches took place in hundreds of towns across Poland. Journalists and foreign party members, including Italy's communist leader Togliatt, were not allowed to attend. Gruson, Sydney. [5] Several other factors contributed to the destabilisation of Poland, such as the widely publicised defection in 1953 of high-ranking Polish intelligence agent Józef Światło, which resulted in the weakening of the Ministry of Public Security of Poland, the secret police. Okupant w roli sojusznika, LOC: From Stalinism to the Polish October, Russian Revolution, Russian Civil War, Polish–Soviet War, 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance, 19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Aggravation of class struggle under socialism, National delimitation in the Soviet Union, Demolition of Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization, 1906 Bolshevik raid on the Tsarevich Giorgi, Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland, 1987 Polish political and economic reforms referendum, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Polish_October&oldid=1000029692, Articles with Polish-language sources (pl), Articles with unsourced statements from August 2020, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Diffusion of Polish-Soviet tensions; armed conflict averted. [21] The Polish legislative election of 1957 was much more liberal than that of 1952 although still not considered free by Western standards. He was executed in 1958 What happened on the 23rd of October, 1956? 1956 Polish and Hungarian Crises The uprising began in Hungary as a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the People's Republic of Hungary and its Soviet-imposed policies, while in Poland similar political uprisings began in October 1956. [2], Society became more liberal (as seen, for instance, in the achievements of the Polish Film School and the creation of such controversial movies as Ashes and Diamonds), and a civil society started to develop, but half-hearted democratization was not enough to satisfy the Polish public. [5][12][13], The Poznań protests, although the largest, were not unique in Poland, where social protest resumed its fury that autumn. [16][17], Eventually, when Khrushchev was reassured that Gomułka would not alter the basic foundations of Polish communism, he withdrew the invasion threat and agreed to compromise, and Gomułka was confirmed in his new position. After the death of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (March 1953), the rigidly authoritarian communist regime in Poland relaxed some of its policies. [citation needed]. [8], In October, Edward Ochab, the First Secretary of the Party and the Polish Prime Minister, proposed Władysław Gomułka for election for the First Secretary of the Party during the 8th Plenum meeting. [19] The events of the Hungarian November also helped distract the Soviets and ensure the success of the Polish October. Poland, 1956. Soviets put a brutal end to Hungarian revolution A spontaneous national uprising that began 12 days before in Hungary is viciously crushed by Soviet tanks and … Poland and Hungary. Because Poland was inextricably connected to the Soviet Union economically, the thought of an independent Polish economy was unrealistic. However, the real attractions for the Polish people were the foreigners, many of whom were from Western Europe and contrasted starkly with local Poles because they shared a similar culture but were much richer and more open. Also, party committees were not attacked. Poland, 1956. The 1956 crises in the Soviet Bloc states, and the Hungarian October events in particular, had a profound impact on China’s international and domestic policies. In Moscow, the belief was that any liberalisation in one country could lead to the destruction of communism and the ruin of Soviet influence in the region as a whole. The people of Hungary and the rest of Eastern Europe were ruled over with a rod of iron by Communist Russia and anybody who challenged the rule of Stalin and Russia paid the price. Gomułka was enthusiastically supported by the great majority of society not primarily as a communist leader but as a leader of a nation who, by resisting Soviet demands, embodied a national longing for independence and sovereignty. With the more exotic visitors, Poles also socialised in private apartments all around the city. Having failed to persuade the Polish peasantry to collectivise, the government adopted instead, a policy of systematic discrimination and harassment against private farmers. For Poland, that meant a temporary liberalisation, but eventually, hopes for a full liberalisation were proven false, as Gomułka's regime gradually became more oppressive. On November 18, rioters destroyed the militia headquarters and radio jamming equipment in Bydgoszcz, and on December 10, a crowd in Szczecin attacked public buildings, including a prison, the state prosecutor's office, militia headquarters and the Soviet consulate. 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