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 APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070029-7

Government and Politics

A. Introduction (C)

Poland, whose people have consistently regarded their nation as an outpost of Western civilization in Western Europe, has been under the rule of a Soviet-supported Communist regime since World War II. Although the population traditionally has been anti-Russian, anti-Communist, and deeply committed to a unique blend of nationalism and Roman Catholicism, the rulers of the nation are materially and ideologically bound to the Soviet brand of communism and profess to be convinced atheists. The political life of the country and its governmental apparatus, therefore, are based not on the popular will but on the needs of the Communist regime in maintaining power and in attempting to remold Polish society along Communist lines.

After the rebirth of the Polish state in November 1918, internal politics were characterized by a succession of weak parliamentary coalitions which by 1926 finally gave way to a semi-dictatorial government, first under Marshal Pilsudski and later under a collection of military leaders called the "colonels' regimes." Following World War II the geographical position of Poland made its political orientation a matter of vital concern for Soviet strategy in Eastern Europe. Historical anti-German feeling, reinforced by the trauma of the Nazi wartime occupation, was a major asset to the USSR in its promotion of Polish-Soviet Communist collaboration. At the Potsdam Conference in 1945 the Soviet Union sponsored provisional territorial changes which shifted prewar Polish boundaries to the west. Until the conclusion of the Polish-West German treaty in 1970, the Soviet Union's good will was the only major guarantee of the territorial integrity of the postwar Polish state.

The postwar political development of Poland has gone through several distinct periods generally paralleling the changing character of Soviet-Eastern European relations in general. These are: the suppression of democratic forces and the consolidation of Communist power immediately after the war; the Stalinist period of political terror and total subordination of the Soviet Union; the upsurge of liberal impulses and popular hopes following the upheaval of 1956; the ensuing popular disillusionment, economic stagnation, and social and political strain that ended in the workers' revolt of December 1970; and, since then, a period characterized by a new generation of leaders who, though no less Communist than their predecessors, appear committed to a more open style of rule and are pragmatic rather than doctrinal in their approach to the country's problems.

The transition from one to another of these periods has been usually marked by different degrees of violence. On entering Poland in 1944, the Soviet Red Army participated in the forced dissolution of political and military centers controlled by the non-Communist underground and by the London-based Polish Government-in-exile and aided in setting up a Soviet-sponsored body, the Committee of National Liberation. Founded in Moscow and proclaimed in Lublin on Polish territory, the Communist-controlled committee was recognized by the U.S.S.R. on 5 January 1945 as the Provisional Government of Poland. After the Yalta Agreement and the inclusion in the government of four non-Communist Poles from abroad - including the strong Peasant Party leader Stanislaw Mikolajczyk - this body was recognized on 5 July 1945 by the major Western powers as the Government of Poland.

With most of the important governmental positions under Communist control and with the Red Army and

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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070029-7