Władysław Gomułka
Władysław Gomułka led the Polish communists twice, was jailed by them between, came back in October 1956 as the man who would stand up to Khrushchev and was cheered by a crowd of half a million, and was thrown out fourteen years later after his police shot striking shipyard workers on the Baltic coast; he is the one Polish communist whose name meant hope for a while. He was born in 1905 near Krosno, the son of an oil worker, was a locksmith and a union organiser, joined the communist party in 1926 and was twice jailed under the pre-war republic, which saved him from the purge in which Stalin killed most of the party's leadership in Moscow. He led the underground party from 1943, was deputy prime minister after 1945 and the advocate of a Polish road to socialism without collectivisation, and in 1948, when Stalin turned on Tito and wanted no national roads, was removed, expelled and in 1951 arrested; he was held for three years without trial and not shot, which was unusual. Stalin died, the Poznań workers rose in June 1956, and in October the party's central committee elected him first secretary while Khrushchev flew unannounced into Warsaw with Soviet tanks moving on the city. Gomułka told him the Poles would fight, Khrushchev believed him, and the tanks turned round. The Polish October gave the peasants their land back, the church its primate's release from internment, the intellectuals a year of freedom, and Gomułka a standing he then spent on governing as the Russians preferred. By 1968 his answer to the students of March was an antisemitic campaign that drove out most of the Jews who remained, and his army went into Czechoslovakia in August. In December 1970, with the treaty recognising the Oder-Neisse border with West Germany just signed, he raised food prices before Christmas. The shipyards of Gdańsk, Gdynia and Szczecin struck, the militia fired, at least forty-four died, and the politburo replaced him with Gierek within the fortnight. He died in 1982, having been allowed to write his memoirs and not to publish them.
- Lived: 1905 CE – 1982 CE
- Nationality: Polish
- Roles: politician, party_leader
