Boleslaw Bierut
For three months a dangerous state of crisis in the Party leadership has prevailed in our Party. The Political Bureau has tried to overcome this crisis, to restore organisational and ideological unity in the leadership of our Party. The July plenary meeting of the Central Committee gave our Party a clear, Marxist-Leninist analysis and appreciation of the problems which are at the root of the ideological crisis in the Party leadership.
The work of the July plenary meeting was not shared in by the General Secretary, Comrade Wieslaw Gomulka, whose erroneous, anti-Marxist position was in effect the cause of the crisis in the leadership of the Party. The main problem before the last plenary meeting was the struggle against the Right nationalist deviation in the Party leadership, an analysis of what was at the root of this deviation and what were its origins, and the question of overcoming it.
In a revolutionary party it often happens that vacillations and ideological errors which are not overcome in time, which are concealed from the party or stubbornly defended, grow inevitably into a deviation from the basic party line, develop into a serious danger to the party and the working class, are exploited by the class enemy and turn in his hands, into a weapon against the Communists, a weapon which is used to weaken the party and, if possible, make it leave the path it was following.
Accordingly the Political Bureau and the last plenary meeting of the Central Committee found it necessary to face the Party squarely, without leaving anything unsaid, with the question of the Right nationalist deviation in the leadership of our Party, so that by the concerted efforts of the entire Party that deviation might be fully and completely overcome.
A whole year ago, during the first conference of delegates from nine Communist and Workers’ Parties at which the Information Bureau of nine Parties was set up, Comrade Gomulka betrayed vacillations which followed from an under-estimation of the international situation at that time. He retreated from his positions only under pressure from other comrades and from the Political Bureau, and did not abandon his doubts and reservations. At the time of the painful crisis in the Yugoslav Party, a crisis which impelled that Party onto a false path, Gomulka’s ideological vacillations made themselves still more strongly felt. There can be no doubt that the development of the Yugoslav events provided the stimulus for Com. Gomulka’s speech at the June Plenum of our Party’s Central Committee.
Lenin and the Polish Workers’ Movement
The history of our working-class movement has developed in close and immediate association with the theory and practice of the Bolshevik Party led by Lenin. Lenin’s critical appreciations of the different trends in the Polish working-class movement are unequalled in their insight and Marxian analysis. Lenin disclosed the ideological sources of the sectarian theories of Rosa Luxemburg—theories which perverted the activity of the revolutionary Marxist, though not consistently Marxist, political party of that day, the Social Democracy of Poland and Lithuania. He ruthlessly exposed the chauvinism and bourgeois nationalism of the right wing in the Polish Socialist Party of those days as a bourgeois agency in the working class.
Probably no other section of the revolutionary movement was so exhaustively and comprehensively examined in Lenin’s publicist and theoretical writings as the revolutionary movement of Poland. To this day there is no more penetrating analysis of our movement and its traditions, an analysis rooted more firmly in the methods of historical materialism, than that given in Lenin’s works.
Com. Gomulka’s speech at the June meeting was undoubtedly a deliberate revision of Lenin’s analysis of the history of our movement, a revision springing from total divorce of the national liberation struggle, from the class struggle.
Com. Gomulka’s whole appreciation of the traditions and, history of the working-class movement in Poland is one-sided and incorrect. He presents the main problem of Poland’s independence without linking it up with the class struggle of the proletariat. But the revolutionary working-class movement in Poland, while fighting for national liberation, set itself far- reaching objectives aimed at overthrowing bourgeois rule and the capitalist system and at winning political power; and in that it encountered not only the savage resistance of the bourgeoisie, but also the equally furious resistance of the bourgeois agencies in the working-class movement. Foremost among these agencies was the right-wing of the Polish Socialist Party.
National Independence and Class Struggle
For the Polish bourgeoisie, the winning of its own statehood, even if restricted and dependent on the Powers which shared in the partition of Poland, would have value principally from the standpoint of firmly securing its political rule. The right-wing tendency of the Socialist Party, in accordance with these basic aims of the bourgeoisie, strove to limit the development of the revolutionary movement only to the stage of winning independence as the foundation for a bourgeois State system, in which the working class could at most develop its economic and political slogans within the framework principally of parliamentary tactics.
And Com. Gomulka was prepared to take this un-Leninist, but Polish-Socialist-Party, conception of the struggle for independence as the ideological foundation of the joint Party. The absence of the class and revolutionary criterion, in Com. Gomulka’s utterances on the question of independence, and his persistent defence of patently false conceptions, led him to belittle the decisive importance which the victory of the 1917 Revolution in Russia had for giving Poland her independence.
[Beirut went on to speak of Gomulka’s false views on the slogans of the Communist Party of Poland between the two wars.]
The Communist Party of Poland was a revolutionary and Marxist Party, and it is hard to understand how a Marxist can impugn it for having tied up the question of independence and of the Government with the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is clear that when Hitlerism was getting ready for its assault on Europe—an assault which threatened Poland, too—the Polish Communist Party had to advance the slogan of defending Poland’s independence, and this it did.
At such moments the problem of class struggle itself undergoes a change in principle. A common national front develops in the struggle against the imperialist brigands who seek to subordinate weaker nations to their will. At such times war becomes a national, just war against the imperialist brigands, who constitute the greatest menace under these conditions. And this was the position adopted by the Polish Workers’ Party at the moment of its inception. Advancing to the forefront of the national liberation struggle, the Polish Workers’ Party linked up the fight for the liberation of Poland with the struggle for winning power for the labouring masses, with the working class at their head. This found expression in the establishment of the National People’s Council as the representative organ of the people.
People’s Democracy
During the period of struggle for political power for the National People’s Council and the local People’s Councils, we found a particularly successful co-operation between the internal forces of the Polish masses of the working people of town and country and the revolutionary forces of the Soviet State, which grew into an armed force on the basis of the Socialist system—that is a system which developed out of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It was precisely thanks to this co-operation of international revolutionary forces that the specific form of political power which we have named the people’s democracy could grow up in Poland and other countries.
The class character of these forces and the class character of the political power in the lands of people’s democracy—a power resting on the hegemony of the working class, which marches at the head of a broad front of working classes, and first and foremost of the poor and middle peasantry— that class character is beyond any doubt.
Opportunist Group within the Party Leadership
Incorrect estimation of the peculiar relation of class forces gave rise to the vacillations reflected in the attempts to distort the conception of the National People’s Front. The nature of these vacillations is best revealed in Comrade Bienkowski’s article “Our Position,” which was published with Gomulka’s consent on July 1, 1944, in the “Tribuna Wolnosci,” the central organ of our Party. In this article, which sets forth the Party’s position on the cardinal issue—the issue of political power—practically on the eve of Poland’s liberation, the conception of the National People’s Council is absent altogether. On the eve of Poland’s liberation, at the decisive moment of struggle for State power, we see the author of this article banking quite obviously on political groups which were followers of the reactionary camp, on the right wing of the Stronnictwo Ludowe headed by Mikolajczyk, and on the CCL, that subversive off-shoot of the London Delegatura set up in order to disrupt the National People’s Council.
What way out did the opportunists in our Party see at that time? They called in effect for reconstruction of the reactionary London Government by changes in the posts of President and Commander-in-Chief in order to ensure the positions of Mikolajczyk and the other leaders of the Stronnictwo Ludowe and of the Wolnosc, Rownosc Niepodleglosc organisations.
Such was the opportunist programme which the right-wing group in our Party advanced at the moment of struggle for State power and which Com. Gomulka did not oppose. I must say that what has been called “Our Position’’ was not the position of the Party, but the position of the right- wing group in the Party. The Party at that period was creating local People’s Councils all over the country, building new detachments of the People’s Army and consolidating the victory of the workers’ and peasants’ alliance, not by combination at the top but by mass campaigns and organisational work among the rank and file.
With faith and conviction our Party was preparing to fight for State power. There were no signs that anyone in the local organisations had doubts as to victory. Why then did the opportunist group in the leading body of the Party, a group which enjoyed the patronage of Com. Gomulka, seek other paths in those days?
Basis of Gomulka’s Mistakes
I believe that, briefly, there are two main reasons for this lack of confidence. In the first place, under-estimating the strength of the working class, under-estimating the strength of the workers and peasants’ alliance, which under the leadership of our Party had grown and become more powerful in the struggle against the occupation. In the second place, it was the result of failure to understand the essence of the social, emancipatory aspirations of the USSR, following from the ideological principles of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and its role in the international front of the struggle that all the nations were waging, the struggle of all the forces of democracy against imperialism.
We consider this lack of understanding of the ideological principles of Marxism-Leninism—principles which always guided the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and which today determine its leading role in the international front of the struggle against imperialism—-we consider this lack of understanding to be one of the main sources of Com. Gomulka’s ideological vacillations.
What was behind Com. Gomulka’s vacillations, behind his opposition to that part of the Information Bureau’s resolution which set forth the ideological programme and principles of the Marxist parties on the question of the Socialist reconstruction of agriculture and the emancipation of the poor and middle peasants from exploitation by profiteering and capitalist elements?
This position betrays an unmistakable opportunist tendency to avoid class struggle with capitalist elements in the countryside—and without this struggle any victorious struggle for Socialism is impossible.
The same opportunist tendency is clearly evident in Com. Gomulka’s recent statements on the question of merging the Polish Workers’ and the Socialist Parties, on the methods of merging the two workers’ parties. These statements betray the erroneous conception of uniting the two parties without eliminating the ideologically rallied right-wing elements existing among part of the old membership qt the old Polish Socialist Party, who were only recently connected with the Wolnosc, Rownosc Niepodleglosc organisation, of uniting them without putting up a sharp fight against the influence of alien ideology.
What were the sources of these mistakes? Where do they originate, and why did they become fully discernible in recent months? Com. Gomulka’s line of thought bears evidence of a national narrow-mindedness he has not overcome, and, of a national provincialism, which narrow down his political horizon and do not permit him to notice the close ties existing today between national aspirations and internationalism, and which lead to mistaken political conclusions that are extremely harmful in practice.
This accounts for the fact that in his appraisal of the Polish working- class movement there is a tendency to isolate the struggle for independence from the class struggle of the proletariat. This accounts for his misunderstanding of the essence of people’s democracy. This accounts for his tendency to hush up and not bring out the truth that the Polish road to Socialism, despite certain specific features, is not something different in quality, but only a modification of the common road to Socialism—a modification which arose thanks to the preliminary victory of Socialism in the USSR, a modification which is based on the experience of Socialist construction in the USSR and which takes into consideration the possibilities of a new, historical period and of specific conditions in Poland’s historical development. This accounts for the misunderstanding of relations uniting the countries of people’s democracy with the land of victorious Socialism, and the profound solidarity of their interests. This accounts for the misunderstanding of the struggle for sovereignty, which is threatened by expansion from American imperialism and its German agents.
These mistakes proceed from an utterly incorrect, anti-Leninist stand in the national question, from an utterly incorrect, opportunist position in the peasant question. These mistakes bear a striking resemblance to similar phenomena which were not rebuffed and hence led to complete degeneration in Yugoslavia.
Why is it that these mistakes only became apparent recently? While the entire struggle our Party was waging was directed against the reactionary Fascist forces, which were often openly striving for a restoration of the landowners’ and capitalist system, Com. Gomulka’s views did not betray the ideological opportunism they concealed. But when the main reactionary Fascist forces in our country were defeated, people’s democracy in Poland entered the next phase in its development.
At the moment when the capitalist and profiteering elements were rising and gaining strength, taking advantage of the difficulties of the post-war period and exploiting the village poor, there appeared a new, fundamental contradiction. This was a contradiction between the forces of the people, the consistently democratic forces — that is, the workers and the toiling peasantry, — on the one hand, and the capitalist forces in town and country side on the other. There arose the question of class struggle- with the capitalist elements, which was becoming more acute, especially in the countryside. It was then that cracks began to show in Com. Gomulka’s position. His ideological weakness became apparent.
Opportunism and Nationalism Hand-in-Hand
The capitalist forces are striving to freeze the present relation of class forces, pending conditions more advantageous for them. They want stabilisation, they wish to preserve the people’s democratic system at least with its present opportunities for the capitalist elements. They count on the flexibility of these elements and capitalist forces arising from small commodity production and, finally, on possible support from, abroad.
On the other hand, working class is steadily fostering Socialist elements further still while squeezing out and eliminating’capitalist elements. As for the poor and middle peasants, they want to get rid of Kulak exploitation and the burdensome superiority of the rich peasantry; and this is conducive to the consolidation of the workers’ and peasants’ alliance on a deeper foundation.
The experience of the working-class movement over a period of many years proves that opportunism usually marches hand- in-hand with nationalism—chiefly in the form of social nationalism. This is the case with us, too.
Owing to the growing polarisation of forces between the imperialist and the anti-imperialist camps all over the world, the attitude towards the USSR is today more than ever before the acid test of genuine internationalism, the acid test of loyalty to the cause of Socialism and, at the same time, the only and reliable pillar of our independence and sovereignty.
The class content of this opportunism and nationalism is some point of agreement or rapprochement with the bourgeoisie. In 1915, during his controversy with the well-known Menshevik Potresov, Lenin wrote that there could be no doubt about the ideological and political kinship relations and even identity of opportunism and social nationalism. Lenin wrote that social nationalism had arisen from opportunism, which had given it strength. Perhaps, he wrote, certain individuals of this type may sincerely consider themselves internationalists; but people are judged not by what they think of themselves, but by their political conduct—and the political conduct of such “internationalists,” who are not consistent and resolute opponents of opportunism, will only help and lend support to the nationalist trend.
What brilliant foresight! How poignant these views are for us today! Does this not prompt the idea of applying this analysis of Lenin’s to the presumptuous, empty and false “internationalist” phraseology of Tito? Should not an understanding of this question serve as a danger signal to the whole Party? Should it not mobilise all Party members faithful to the fine traditions of our movement for a resolute struggle?
It must be said that the opportunist and right-wing vacillations of Com. Gomulka, before they became a deviation, did not always meet with a sufficiently vigorous rebuff from the Party leadership. This gave rise to the tolerant attitude of the Party leadership towards separate manifestations of disregard of the sharpening class struggle in the countryside and of the growth of capitalist elements in the village. The tolerant attitude of the Party leadership towards various right-wing nationalist mistakes of Com. Gomulka, and first and foremost towards his tendency to isolate the path of people’s democracy from the path of the USSR, and the consequent opportunist glossing-over of the acuteness of the class struggle in the development of people’s democracy, was bound to have a harmful effect on the Party’s practical activities and the education of its members.
Fearless criticism and self-criticism will not injure the Party. On the contrary, it will strengthen it ideologically. Concealing or glossing over errors, on the other hand, is liable to weaken it—and stubborn persistence in mistaken views creates a grave danger which, if not combated, may lead to the most painful crisis, to tremendous and irreparable injury not only to the Party but to the country as well.
Yugoslav Communist Leaders Abandon Marxism-Leninism
An instance of such a painful crisis—which is causing irreparable damage to the peoples of Yugoslavia, is breaking ideological and organisational ties with the Soviet Union and the people’s democracies, and is reinforcing the aggressiveness of the imperialists—is the anti-Marxist position of the leaders of the Yugoslav Party. The leaders of the Yugoslav Party denied the right of criticising their mistakes to the Parties which together with them were members of the Information Bureau. By doing so, they shrank from the ideological control of the international organisation and put themselves outside that organisation,
The July plenary meeting of the Central Committee, after discussing the position in the Yugoslav Party, defined the nature of this mistake and condemned leaders who did not shrink from splitting the united front, of the revolutionary struggle against imperialism and against increasing aggressive attacks on the part of the imperialists. Since then the Yugoslav leaders have held a Party congress which was entirely devoted to an attack on the people’s democracies and the USSR. Persons in Yugoslavia who oppose this fatal policy of the Party leaders are compelled to silence by terror and reprisals.
What Communist or democratic features remain in a Party whose leaders ardently proclaim that this is the best and the most revolutionary of Parties, that it will build Socialism faster and better than other countries, that it makes no mistakes and never did make any, and that it will not have any Party criticise it? No such features remain. All that remains is a hostile attitude to the Parties of the Information Bureau, instead of solidarity and ideological contact.
Such are the consequences of abandoning the Leninist method of criticism and self-criticism in an international ideological organisation.
Forward to Socialism
On the other hand, the example of the last plenary meeting of the Central Committee of our Party showed us how correct and beneficent open and sincere criticism and self-criticism of mistakes is for the growth of a Party’s ideological forces. Over a period of four days the plenary meeting held a general review of the path along which the Party is leading the Polish working masses backed by unity in action of the entire democratic bloc. Our guiding star on this path is the idea of a people’s Poland, developing in the direction of a new social system. The new system is Socialism.
Benefiting by the 80 years’ experience of the development of the Polish working-class movement, over a hundred years struggle of the working- class movement of the world, the experience of the victorious Russian Revolution and the 30 years’ experience of victorious Socialist construction in the USSR, and resting on the ideological basis of Marxism-Leninism, a great historic step is being taken the amalgamation of the Polish Workers Party and the Polish Socialist Party, the political unification of the Polish working class.
Not for a moment must we rest content with what we have achieved, because the achievements we have so far made in the work of building the people’s Poland are only the beginning in attaining the great aims and great objectives which still confront the people.
Advancing further, under the banner of Marxism-Leninism, at the head of the Polish working masses, our Party, as the main force of the future amalgamated Party, will readily and victoriously fulfill its historic task.
Boleslaw Bierut was General Secretary of the Polish Workers’ Party from 22 December 1948 – 12 March 1956.
“Communist”, Bombay, Vol. 1, No 11, October-November 1948, pages 510-519.
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