Posted on 06/28/2006 1:08:41 PM PDT by lizol
Poznan 1956 – beginning of the end of communism?
28.06.2006
How important were the Polish 1956 workers revolts in bringing down communism forty year later?
Michal Kubicki reports
Popular textbooks on Polish history describe the workers’ revolt in Poznan 59 as the first in a series of crises which eventually led to the collapse of communism in 1989. How important was it for Poland and the entire Soviet bloc?
The other key events in Poland’s post-war history are the workers’ riots on the Baltic coast in 1970, the protests of 1976 which gave rise to the establishment of the Workers’ Defense Committee, the most important opposition centre in the Soviet bloc and the birth of Solidarity in 1980. But clearly for the roots of all these events we have to go to Poznan and 1956.
Some two years after Stalin’s death in 1953, the unity of the Polish communist regime was beginning to crack. In the summer of 1955, the World Youth Festival in Warsaw broke a hole in Poland’s isolation. In February 1956, Khrushchev delivered his secret speech in which he denounced Stalinist crimes. A few months later the workers in Poznan rebelled.
According to historian Pawel Machcewicz, the Poznan revolt was different from all the other workers protests in communist Poland.
‘It would call it a national uprising, though with some reservations. It was a very spontaneous movement, without any planning, without any coherent political programme. It was the only moment in Poland’s post-war history when a social movement used arms against the communist system.
There were street clashes with automatic machine guns which the demonstrators took over from the militia and army. The people took over three tanks and tried to use them against communist functionaries. It never happened again in Polish history after 1956’.
Historians put the death toll in the Poznan revolt at 70 to around one hundred. Some one thousand people were injured. According to official reports, 135 demonstrators were tried and jailed. Historian Antoni Dudek says that one of the most important consequences of the revolt was a change in the way the communist exercised their power.
‘ Without June 1956, there would be no October 1956 and the political thaw which ensued. With party leader Gomułka back in office, the communist regime took a much softer line, the security services were no longer so omnipresent and there were not so many political prisoners as elsewhere in the Soviet bloc’.
During the commemorative events in Poznan, Polish politicians were joined by the presidents of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Germany. Their presence in Poland on this occasion is only natural, Pawel Machcewicz claims, considering the international significance of the Polish revolt.
‘It was a part of the process which started in early 1956 with Khrushchev’s speech in Moscow. The impact of the Poznan events was very profound in Hungary. The Poznan revolt was very similar to what happened in Berlin, in East Germany in June 1953, and also in Czechoslovakia. There was a whole range of popular risings in Eastern Europe’.
Polish historian Pawel Machcewicz. A multi-media exhibition documenting the workers’ revolt in Poznan in 1956 is now on in the European Parliament in Brussels.
Those are some powerful pictures!
Thanks for the history lesson and piks.
I don't know - there's just something about this picture that really strikes me.
These pictures which have blackened corners were taken by communist security service agents, or traitors (or both).
I sometimes wonder just how different Europe would really have been if Hitler had won on the eastern front and stopped short of trying to take Great Britain.
It is said that the Soviets were actually more ruthless than the Nazi's regarding Jews and their own citizens (yes, even taking into account the holocaust), but they won.
He who wins gets to write the history books.
Poznan was hardly the "beginning". There were anti-Soviet uprisings all over eastern europe. Many of them before Poznan, like the East Berlin riots in 1953., and the Czech battles against communism before that.
OK with Berlin riots, but Czech battles?
Never heard of.
Should really have said "political battles".
The statism is there, lurking beneath the surface, hidden by a veneer of capitalistic camoflage. How else was Putin able to wipe out Yukos Oil so fast? Who are you really buying those WalMart geegaws from? (The PLA--the Chinese Army).
Communists have learned to make money by exploiting the power of the state while appearing to be capitalists. The money goes where the power is, not the other way around.
If it (Communism) were dead, the Left in the United States would not take their objectives and goals right out of the book.
Who was the guy on the T-shirts last Mayday? Che. Fidel's running buddy. Look at Bolivia and Venezuela and the siezure of assets there as well.
Communism may blend in better, but the fifth column in America is willingly abetting that, too.
"It is said that the Soviets were actually more ruthless than the Nazi's regarding Jews and their own citizens (yes, even taking into account the holocaust), but they won.
He who wins gets to write the history books."
Oh sure. They made Adolf looks like a bad guy :(
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