Gomulka: The Man Who Meant Poland

THROUGHOUT the week of rioting in Poland, the name of Wladyslaw Gomulka was conspicuously absent from the hortatory broadcasts of Radio Warsaw. To students of Communist behavioral psychology, the silent treatment was sure evidence that the remarkable and rebellious compromiser was struggling mightily behind the scenes to save his job.

There were ironies aplenty in the situation. As every Pole knows, it was the "bread and freedom" riots of Poznan that carried Gomulka to power in 1956; he was heralded then as the man who could hold the country together. In his own cautiously individualistic way, Gomulka did just that. His 14 years in office are proof that he has retained the wily political acumen that led Poles to describe him as "The Maestro." No wonder that so many thoughtful Eastern Europeans have said: "To understand Poland, understand Gomulka."

That is easier said than done. Dour and ascetic, commonsensical and un imaginative, intensely secretive about his private life--his wife Zofia has never been interviewed--Gomulka is totally a product of Poland's experience with Socialism. He was born 65 years ago in the small industrial town of Krosno, the son of an oilworker who had returned to the homeland after failing as an emigrant to America. The family was poor; young Wladyslaw left school at 14 and became a locksmith and a Socialist almost simultaneously.

After World War I, he began to work as a Communist labor organizer and in 1932 received the first of his many jail sentences from a right-wing Polish government. All told, Gomulka has spent about ten years of his life in confinement or prison. When Warsaw surrendered to the Germans at the onset of World War II, Gomulka joined the resistance movement under the Soviet aegis. At war's end, he became First Secretary of the party and a minister in Poland's new Communist-dominated Government of National Unity. But Gomulka, an ardent nationalist as well as a Communist, soon ran afoul of the Stalinist tendencies in the Polish party. He had long insisted that his homeland must follow the "Polish road to Socialism," that it could not imitate the Soviet Union. He opposed collectivization and supported Tito. For this behavior he was forced to acknowledge "selfcriticism" in 1949 and was relieved of his posts. He was arrested in 1951 and remained a virtual prisoner until 1956, when the party, shattered by the Poznan riots, saved itself by choosing Gomulka to rebuild Polish Communism.

Initially hailed as a Red liberal, Gomulka proved to be far more complex than that easy description suggested. True, he brought about a period of liberalization in the late 1950s that, for a time, made Poland the most open of the East bloc nations. After he brought some Stalinists into the Politburo in 1959, he began gradually to snipe at the church and the intellectuals. Conditions reached their worst in 1968 after the suppression of the student demonstrations.

In recent years, the few jokes told about Gomulka have been malicious and cruel--befitting a hero who has disappointed his followers. To his credit, though, are a number of major achievements. He guided Poland through a peaceful transition out of Stalinism, banishing the police terror and permitting a climate of mild intellectual freedom. He succeeded in persuading Nikita Khrushchev to remove Soviet "advisers" from Polish ministries and to limit the role of Russian troops stationed in Poland. He established a modus vivendi with the Catholic Church, which still baptizes 98% of all Polish infants. The Treaty of Warsaw, which he argued for, ended the state of hostilities between Poland and West Germany.

Although his most notable failure is on the economic front, Gomulka made other mistakes that gradually whittled away the size of his constituency. His acceptance of the Moscow line condemning Israel for its role in the Six-Day War angered many Poles who, despite their country's long tradition of antiSemitism, regard the Israelis as fellow victims of Hitler's aggression. After the "Prague springtime" of 1968, Gomulka urged Warsaw Pact intervention to restore Czechoslovakia to orthodoxy. The specter of Polish troops participating in the invasion of a neighboring country--and marching side by side with East German soldiers--horrified the Polish public.

If the Soviets decide to drop Gomulka because of the riots--as they did Czechoslovakia's Antonin Novotny in 1968--they may have some trouble picking a strong successor. Mieczyslaw Moczar, a fervent anti-Zionist and also a wartime hero of the Communist partisans, has long been regarded as the Soviets'--and Gomulka's--enemy. Gomulka's protege and Vice Premier, Stanislaw Kociolek, had special responsibility for the Gdansk area, and thus has been discredited by the rioting. A more likely candidate is Edward Gierek, 57, the Politburo's leading technocrat, who as the party boss of Katowice has made the Polish mines the safest and most automated in the world.

The Soviets know full well that Polish workers last week attacked Gomulka's party headquarters and burned the party records--even as rebelling Polish peasants in former times used to race to the manor house to burn the tax rolls and debtors' rolls. Gomulka has survived defeat before, but after such exquisite humiliation, the day of this durable dictator may be almost over.

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