Władysław Gomułka (; 6 February 1905 – 1 September 1982) was a Polish communist politician. He was the de facto leader of post-war Poland from 1956 to 1970.
Gomułka was born in 1905 in Galicia. A plumber from the age of fourteen, he joined the revolutionary movement, made propaganda in the trade unions and suffered the rigours of the Witos government, then of the Pilsudski dictatorship. During the textile strike at Łódź in 1932, he was seriously wounded in the leg by the police, which ultimately left him with permanent walking impairment. Held as a political prisoner for several years, he was released during the invasion of Poland in 1939 and took refuge in Lwów.
He was ordered to Warsaw and became one of the most energetic organisers of the resistance against the Nazis. In 1943, he became the leader of the left-wing resistance fighters, the general secretary of the underground Polish Workers' Party (PPR). When Poland was occupied by the Red Army, it collaborated with the Lublin government, formed by the Soviets with the Polish Bierut group, which received Stalin's blessing.
Following the Polish October, he became leader again from 1956 to 1970. Gomułka was initially very popular for his reforms; his seeking a "Polish way to socialism"; and giving rise to the period known as "Polish thaw". He put an end to the forced collectivization of land, eased relations with the Catholic Church, and secured the departure of Soviet advisers. During the 1960s, however, he became more rigid and authoritarian — afraid of destabilising the system, he was not inclined to introduce or permit changes. In 1967 to 1968, Gomułka allowed outbursts of anti-Zionist and antisemitic political campaignJudt, Tony (2005). Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. New York, Penguin Group, pp. 434–435. Many of the remaining Polish Jews left the country. At that time, he was also responsible for persecuting protesting students and toughening censorship of the media. Gomułka supported Poland's participation in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968.
In the treaty with West Germany, signed in December 1970 at the end of Gomułka's period in office, West Germany recognised the post-World War II borders, which established a foundation for future peace, stability and cooperation in Central Europe. In the same month, economic difficulties led to price rises and subsequent bloody clashes with shipyard workers on the Baltic coast, in which several dozen workers were fatally shot. The tragic events forced Gomułka's resignation and retirement. In a generational replacement of the ruling elite, Edward Gierek took over the Party leadership, and tensions eased.
Childhood and education Władysław Gomułka was born on 6 February 1905 in Białobrzegi Franciszkańskie village on the outskirts of Krosno, into a worker's family living in the Austrian Partition (the Galicia region) (now Poland). His parents had met and married in the United States, where each had immigrated to in search of work in the late 19th century, but returned to occupied Poland in the early 20th century because Władysław's father, Jan, was unable to find gainful employment in America. Jan Gomułka then worked as a laborer in the Subcarpathian oil industry. Władysław's older sister Józefa, born in the United States, returned there upon turning eighteen to join her extended family, most of whom had emigrated, and to preserve her citizenship of the United States. Władysław and his two other siblings experienced a childhood of the proverbial Galician poverty: they lived in a dilapidated hut and ate mostly potatoes.Jerzy Eisler, Siedmiu wspaniałych. Poczet pierwszych sekretarzy KC PZPR [The Magnificent Seven: first secretaries of the PZPR], Wydawnictwo Czerwone i Czarne, Warszawa 2014, , pp. 174–175 Władysław received only a rudimentary education before being employed in the oil industry of the region.
Gomułka attended schools in Krosno for six or seven years, until the age of thirteen, when he had to start an apprenticeship in a metalworks shop. Throughout his life, Gomułka was an avid reader and accomplished a great deal of self-education, but remained a subject of jokes because of his lack of formal education and demeanor. In 1922, Gomułka passed his apprenticeship exams and began working at a local refinery.
Early revolutionary activities Involvement with labor unions and first imprisonment The re-established Polish state of Gomułka's teenage years was a scene of growing political polarization and radicalization. The young worker developed connections with the radical Left, joining the Siła (Power) youth organisation in 1922 and the Independent Peasant Party in 1925. Gomułka was known for his activism among the metal workers and, from 1922, the chemical industry unions. He was involved in union-organised strikes and in 1924, during a protest gathering in Krosno, participated in a polemical debate with Herman Lieberman. He published radical texts in leftist newspapers. In May 1926, the young Gomułka was arrested for the first time but soon released because of worker demands. The incident was the subject of a parliamentary intervention by the Peasant Party. In October 1926, Gomułka became a secretary of the managing council in the Chemical Industry Workers Union for the Drohobych District and remained involved with that communist-dominated union until 1930. He around this time learned on his own basic Ukrainian.Jerzy Eisler, Siedmiu wspaniałych. Poczet pierwszych sekretarzy KC PZPR, pp. 175–178Andrzej Werblan, Władysław Gomułka. Sekretarz Generalny PPR [Władysław Gomułka: Secretary General of the PPR], Książka i Wiedza, Warszawa 1988, , pp. 20–25
In late 1926, while in Drohobych, Gomułka became a member of the illegal-but-functioning Communist Party of Poland (Komunistyczna Partia Polski, KPP) and was arrested for political agitation. Technically, at this time, he was a member of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine, which was an autonomous branch of the Communist Party of Poland. He was interested primarily in social issues, including the trade and labor movement, and concentrated on practical activities.Andrzej Werblan, Władysław Gomułka. Sekretarz Generalny PPR [Władysław Gomułka: Secretary General of the PPR], pp. 25–44 In mid-1927, Gomułka was brought to Warsaw, where he remained active until drafted for military service at the end of the year. After several months, the military released him because of a health problem with his right leg. Gomułka returned to communist party work, organising strike actions and speaking at gatherings of workers at all major industrial centers of Poland. During this period, he was arrested several times and lived under police supervision.
Gomułka was an activist in the leftist labor unions from 1926 and in the Central Trade Department of the KPP Central Committee from 1931. In the summer of 1930, Gomułka illegally embarked on his first foreign trip with the intention of participating in the Red International of Labor Unions Fifth Congress held in Moscow from 15 to 30 July. Traveling from Upper Silesia to Berlin, he had to wait there for the issuance of Soviet documents and arrived in Moscow too late to participate in the deliberations of the Congress. He stayed in Moscow for a couple of weeks and then went to Leningrad, from where he took a ship to Hamburg, stayed in Berlin again and through Silesia returned to Poland.
In August 1932, he was arrested by the Sanation police while participating in a conference of textile worker delegates in Łódź. When he later tried to escape, Gomułka sustained a gunshot wound in the left thigh, which ultimately left him with permanent walking impairment.
Journey to the Soviet Union and second imprisonment Despite being sentenced to a four-year prison term on 1 June 1933, he was temporarily released for surgery on his injured leg in March 1934. Following his release, Gomułka requested that the KPP send him to the Soviet Union for medical treatment and further political training. He arrived in the Soviet Union in June and went to the Crimea for several weeks, where he underwent therapeutic baths. Gomułka then spent more than a year in Moscow, where he attended the Lenin School under the name Stefan Kowalski. The ideology-oriented classes were arranged separately for a small group of Polish students (one of them was Roman Romkowski (Natan Grünspan [Grinszpan]-Kikiel), who would later persecute Gomułka in Stalinist Poland) and included a military training course conducted by Karol Świerczewski. In a written opinion issued by the school, Gomułka was characterised in highly positive terms, but his extended stay in the Soviet Union caused him to become disillusioned with the realities of Stalinist communism and highly critical of the agrarian collectivisation practice. In November 1935, he illegally returned to Poland.
Gomułka resumed his communist and labor conspiratorial activities and kept advancing within the KPP organization until, as the secretary of the Party's Silesian branch, he was arrested in Chorzów in April 1936. He was then tried by the District Court in Katowice and sentenced to seven years in prison, where he remained jailed until the beginning of World War II. Ironically, this internment most likely saved Gomułka's life, because the majority of the KPP leadership would be murdered in the Soviet Union in the late 1930s, caught up in the Great Purge under Joseph Stalin's orders.
Gomułka's experiences turned him into an extremely suspicious and distrustful person and contributed to his lifelong conviction that Sanation Poland was a fascist state, even if Polish prisons were the safest place for Polish Communists.[Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation's Life and Death in Marxism, 1918–1968, p. 149] He differentiated this belief from his positive feelings toward the country and its people, especially members of the working class.
World War II Invasion of Poland The outbreak of the war with Nazi Germany freed Gomułka from his prison confinement. On 7 September 1939, he arrived in Warsaw, where he stayed for a few weeks, working in the besieged capital on the construction of defensive fortifications. From there, like many other Polish communists, Gomułka fled to eastern Poland, which was invaded by the Soviet Union on 17 September 1939. In Białystok, he ran a home for former political prisoners arriving from other parts of Poland. To be reunited with his luckily found wife, at the end of 1939, Gomułka moved to Soviet-controlled Lwów.Jerzy Eisler, Siedmiu wspaniałych. Poczet pierwszych sekretarzy KC PZPR, pp. 178–182
Like other members of the dissolved Communist Party of Poland, Gomułka sought membership in the Soviet All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). The Soviet authorities allowed such membership transfers only from March 1941 and in April of that year, Gomułka received his party card in Kiev.
The circumstances of the Polish communists' lives changed dramatically after 1941 German attack on the Soviet positions in eastern Poland. Reduced to penury in now German-occupied Lwów, the Gomułkas managed to join Władysław's family in Krosno by the end of 1941. However, a momentous development soon took place in the sphere of communist political activity: in January 1942, Joseph Stalin reestablished in Warsaw a Polish communist party under the name of the Polish Workers' Party (PPR).