Credit & Control

The western Allies had stood up to Russia, insisting on the Yalta agreement that Poland's Warsaw Government be broadened to include representatives of democratic parties. Last week they had the credit for a good deed, and Russia still had control of the broadened Warsaw Government, which the U.S. and Great Britain somewhat wryly prepared to recognize.

Of the 20 ministers in the revamped Warsaw Government, 13 were members of the former Lublin Government. Of the seven additions, only three (Second Vice Premier Stanislaw Mikolajczyk. Minister of Public Administration Wladyslaw Kiernik and Minister of Labor Jan Stanczyk) had any political stature.

All the key posts (First Vice Premier, War, Foreign Affairs, Security. Justice, Finance) were held by Communists or fellow travelers. The strongest man in the Government was still Boleslaw Bierut, head of the Presidential Council; he is reported to have been the former chief of the Polish section of the OGPU (now NKVD, Russian secret police). Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, as Second Vice Premier and Minister of Agriculture, exercised little power. Premier Edward Osubka-Morawski was generally regarded as a nonentity useful to the Russians. He is known as a left-wing Socialist.

Said a U.S. official last week: Poland's real democratic leaders were among the 15 Polish resistance leaders recently tried and sentenced for anti-Soviet activities in Moscow (TIME, July 2); that trial removed the Lublin Poles' stiffest opposition.

Meanwhile Labor Minister Stanczyk spoke out boldly in a public meeting in Warsaw. Said he: the Poles can be good friends of the Soviet Union, "but we are exceedingly unsuitable material for subjects or slaves." He was sure that the new Polish Government would soon make it clear that Poland is not "the 17th Soviet republic." The audience burst into spontaneous applause. Premier Osubka-Morawski, who was sitting on the same platform, made the conventional speech about Polish unity with Russia, received conventional applause.

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