Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Eastern Europe; Finland; Greece; Turkey, Volume X, Part 2

49. Airgram From the Embassy in Poland to the Department of State⁰

Warsaw, July 25, 1958.

G–43. One test by which to measure the last six months ending roughly with the Polish National Holiday on July 22 when outward political activity normally pauses, is to examine how well the Gomulka program has stood up and how successful Poland has been in maintaining its identity as a different kind of communist state. The best that can be shown from our point of view is that the last six months have been a holding operation with no evidence that a further liberalizing evolution in regime policy is in process or in prospect.

It is difficult to believe that Gomulka and the important Centrists who now support him intended a significantly greater deviation from Bloc norms than now obtains in Poland. He would doubtless claim that a “stabilization of October” has been achieved under Party control on the limited basis of his consistently held views. He would not regard as a defeat the retrogression which has taken place in matters with which he is not identified.

The most obvious retrenchment (starting almost a year ago) has been in the field of intellectual life (as opposed to the strictly academic) which receives special notice since it is advertised by some of the most articulate groups active in Poland today. It is the writing intelligentsia, mostly with Party ties, who are discouraged with tightened press controls, censorship and bans on foreign authors. Their frustration is all the greater because the public repudiates the newly officially boosted products. Neither press freedom nor intellectualism per se are of course among Gomulka’s main preoccupations.

An assessment of the key points of the Gomulka program is a pertinent measure of his success or failure to date. Many of them were instituted as emergency measures to adapt communism to Poland’s internal needs and its international situation. The main elements are:

Status of the Secret Police. Gomulka has still refrained from invoking the police or “administrative measures” to curb individual private expression, although he would no doubt use the police to save the regime. Academic freedom notably prospers, although under a new sense of general caution, the circulation of ideas is carried out through lectures, discussion and mimeographed bulletins rather than published works. Poles going abroad speak freely and are apparently a disruptive element in Iron Curtain countries where they boast of the comparative freedoms enjoyed in Poland today.

Church and State. The main balance between the Government and the Catholic Church continues, based on the agreement of December 1956.¹ Relations are subject however to recurrent strains due to new Church efforts to obtain additional concessions (return of Caritas, a daily newspaper, etc.) which the regime resolutely opposes. There is some apprehension, not as yet general, that the Government may counter Church moves by using loopholes in the 1956 agreement to promote, by gerrymandering on the local level, an increase in the number of schools where there is no religious teaching.

Agriculture. With the sale of additional land to farmers, agricultural policy based on private ownership is unlikely to change. Possibly for the record, more official statements have been made recently that complete socialization of agriculture is the ultimate goal but for the time being the process is likely to be pushed through development of cooperatives and agricultural circles, without touching land ownership. Larger farm incomes have been offset by higher prices for fertilizers and building materials, which have been made more readily available. Total abolition of compulsory deliveries apparently awaits the formulation of new tax laws in 1959 designed to keep farm incomes in proportion to urban wages.

Economic. Rigid planning and control continue to be the norm, with public announcements that private enterprise ultimately will be tolerated only in so far as socialist sectors are unable to meet the country’s requirements.

Some slight improvement can be noted in the living standard largely generated by increased agricultural production, primarily livestock. Per capita industrial efficiency remains unimpressive and housing shortages acute.

The Eleventh Plenum² recognized the basic problems of low productivity and overstaffing, and promulgated a limited counter program. Efforts however to liquidate over-employment have not been pursued vigorously.

Polish economists state that the principal 1958 task is strengthening market equilibrium and maintaining currency value. Some success has been achieved and consumer stocks although inferior in quality are in greater volume. Additional industrialization remains a principal objective.

Organizational changes in industrial management have been made to transfer control functions to factory combines but not to decrease ministerial overall supervision. Other highlights first half 1958 include Gomulka’s discouragement of strikes and relegation downward of Workers’ Councils. Wage freeze still in effect except for isolated categories. Contemplated reform of prices and wages has apparently been deferred until 1959.

While trade officials emphatically claim interest in expansion Western trade, recent emphasis on Soviet Bloc trade relations creates the likelihood that the share of the Bloc in total trade will increase.

Relations with Western Countries. Poland’s shrewd policy of normalization of relations and maintenance of beneficial contacts with the West has been adhered to. While Gomulka is known to have little understanding or sympathy for the West, he seems to tolerate the policy for its realistic advantages, among which can be enumerated: opportunities for alternative outlets to ease the economy and make it less dependent on the USSR; enrichment of technical experience; establishment of a protective Western interest in Poland’s future; enhancement of prestige to permit Poland to play a limited role in international affairs; and finally, the promotion of a relaxation of East-West tensions from which Poland hopes to abstract benefit as a small state in its delicate geographical position. The fact that contacts with the West are popular within Poland probably plays only a secondary role in the Party’s thinking and indeed serves as a curb to completely free exchanges.

Polish officials privately profess that their effort toward normalization has so far been disappointing. They bear less ill will against the West for some of the new obstacles to trade caused by Western payment difficulties, than for what they regard as abrupt rejection of Poland’s diplomatic initiative as represented by the Rapacki Plan. There are some who hoped the Plan could be maneuvered to lead to Soviet troop withdrawals, it being said that since Hungary showed the West would not use force, it should try diplomacy. This egocentric view fails to appreciate that the West’s security interests take precedence over its relations with a single state.

Nevertheless as long as Poland is permitted to do so it is likely to retain the “opening to the West” as an important element of policy, with special attention to opportunities for outside support, represented at this particular time by the hope of obtaining further credits from the United States.

An inherent countervailing factor to Poland’s development of Western relations lies in the other key point of policy discussed immediately below.

Bloc Solidarity. The shift in emphasis from “the Polish road to socialism” to “Bloc solidarity” which accelerated from the beginning of the year had been made explicit in Gomulka’s more frequent professions of Bloc allegiance and in the price he has shown himself willing to pay for that purpose in recent weeks.

In brief the regime has eschewed any gesture which seems openly to put it at odds with the Soviet Union. Illustrations are: adherence to the November Moscow Declaration;³ censure of Tito for “undermining socialism”; renewed approval of the suppression of the Hungarian Revolt as a betrayal of socialist unity; and instantaneous endorsement of Soviet policy on the Middle East.

On the other hand tacit and quiet nuances of difference with Soviet policy continue, as for instance Poland’s explanation of its motives and scope of initiative in the development of the Rapacki Plan; refusal to approve the Nagy execution; disregard of Soviet strictures on the general subject of accepting U.S. credits; Poland’s calmer and businesslike attitude toward Yugoslavia; and its policy of Western contacts.

Against local Yugoslav complaints that they could have done more, the Poles assert with some evidence for support that they occasionally argue the Soviets out of extreme positions; they are probably boasting when they say they have succeeded in moderating internal Soviet trends by Polish examples.

The geographical and military compulsions against Poland’s straying far outside the Bloc are too obvious to mention but have been especially sharpened by the warning of the fate of the revolutionary leaders in Hungary. Added to this however are very real reasons for the maintenance of the Soviet alliance, among them: Germany’s division and containment, which for many Poles means peace is at least half won; the profitable economic relationship for which Poland sees no immediate Western substitute; the feeling Poland has a constructive role to play in the Bloc; and the possible hope that professions of loyalty will condone and protect Poland’s internal deviations.

The Party and the Polish Road to Socialism. A continuing threat to Gomulka’s position and program has been his inability to organize the Party as a cohesive group and the effective force he said he would rely on to carry out communist aims instead of by use of “administrative methods”. This is the basic reason he has not convoked the long overdue Party Congress. A subsidiary reason of especial moment now, which probably also caused the cancellation of the Party Plenum planned for July, is that a Congress called under present pressures would have to produce a program either meaningless or possibly offensive to the Soviets, like that of the Yugoslavs.

The Gomulka program is a pragmatic one, as acknowledged in a heretical private remark by a leading theoretician who hoped however for the day when it could be given formal doctrinal basis. For the present Gomulka seems satisfied with his reported precept: “do much, talk little”. The Polish road to socialism in essence represents, rather than a platform, Gomulka’s compromise with the conflicting forces within the country and the Party, as well as from the outside. It is an expedient which it is now inexpedient either to define or to talk about. Its eclipse is also a sign of Gomulka’s distancing himself ideologically from Titoism in favor of the advantages of Bloc solidarity.

The Party is still unpopular, opportunistic and demoralized, with its organization dependent on a bureaucracy to whom all kinds of special favors are due. The small but still active Natalin Group⁴ who can be controlled in auspicious times remain secure in their tenure by Soviet support and openly claim to represent the interests of the Soviet alliance and the limits of socialist permissibility. They are an auxiliary instrument through which Soviet pressures can be stepped up.

Against his enemies Gomulka has been aided by defenses such as the following: his present indispensability, since no other figure for the time being appears equipped or willing to assume his tasks; his national prestige which almost attains popularity when it becomes known he is pressed by the Soviets; his public acceptability as the best available alternative; and finally the Party’s hesitancy to put public discipline to the test by a return to “pre-October”.

Conclusion. As to the future it is the view of informed opinion, which we share, that Poland will do well enough if not pressed too strongly from either side (East or West). Gomulka seems to be giving the Soviets satisfaction in supporting their foreign policy, safeguarding their military position and maintaining outward Bloc unity. While the Soviets can hardly be pleased with the Polish internal pattern which stands as a signpost of comparative freedom within the Bloc, they may continue to be willing to concede it within limits to the necessities of Polish nationalism and capacity for inflammatory reaction.

As to Soviet pressures, it is difficult to find specific evidence among the Diplomatic Corps and informed Polish officials as to how they are being applied. There is a feeling that Poland’s present attitudes, sensitive to a tightening of the international situation, could in large part be anticipatory and shaped in the hope of gaining credit with the Soviets for making the necessary accommodations, and with the West, by the appearance of being forced to yield. Realistically, it is recognized that a major threat to the Soviet Union’s security interests would probably cancel out the risks restraining intervention in Poland.

Most Poles seem reluctant to face up to the prospect of Gomulka’s departure from the scene through illness or natural death. This prospect is generally considered a political disaster which would open up unpredictable but generally dark possibilities. Our best guess on present evidence is that Ochab would return as First Secretary and that the Party leadership would at least proclaim continued dedication to the program of the Eighth Plenum “turning point”.⁵

Among many Poles, conservatism passing by way of disillusionment is taking the place of the fond hopes of 1956 which have been deferred to a better day (foreseen by few) when the Soviet Union itself benefits by an evolution still resisted by the Polish leaders. At the same time, most Poles continue to oppose the communist system passively, through apathy and indifference to the Party and its exhortations, through devotion to their Church, and through an individualistic concentration on their private interests. Although there has been mounting deception with the idea that the West could completely liberate Poland from Soviet influence, the Poles will continue to look to the West for friendship and understanding, for cultural and intellectual encouragement, for economic and technical assistance.

Department please pass as desired.

Beam

0. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 748.00/7–2558. Confidential.
1. Reference is to the agreement of December 6, 1956, between Gomulka and Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, Primate of Poland, which established a modus vivendi between the Government of Poland and the Catholic Church.
2. The Eleventh Plenum of the Central Committee of the United Workers Party (UWP), which met at a plenary session February 27–March 1, adopted a resolution on economic policy for 1958 that included proposals for radical changes in the organization of industry and emphasized that in 1958 the rise in wages in industry must be closely linked with the increase in production. (Department of State, INR Files, Soviet Affairs)
3. Reference is to the declaration published on November 21, 1957, in Moscow by 12 members of the Sino-Soviet bloc following a conference of the bloc leaders November 14–16. The declaration reaffirmed the revolutionary nature of the world Communist movement and the Soviet Union’s leadership of the bloc.
4. The Natalin faction of the Polish United Workers Party, or the Stalinist faction, opposed liberalization and the more independent course favored by Gomulka.
5. See footnote 2, Document 46.