Bolesław Bierut

Career

Youth and early career

Bierut was born in Rury, Congress Poland (then part of the Russian Empire), now a part of Lublin, to Wojciech and Marianna Salomea (Wolska) Bierut, peasants from the Tarnobrzeg area, the youngest of their six children. In 1900, he attended an elementary school in Lublin. In 1905, he was removed from the school for instigating anti-Russian protests. From the age of fourteen, he was employed in various trades, but obtained further education through self-study. Influenced by the leftist intellectual Jan Hempel, who in 1910 arrived in Lublin, before World War I, Bierut joined the Polish Socialist Party – Left (PPS – Lewica).

From 1915, Bierut was active in the cooperative movement. In 1916, he became trade manager of the Lublin Food Cooperative, and from 1918 was its top leader, declaring the cooperative's "class-socialist" character. During World War I, he stayed at times at Hempel's apartment in Warsaw and took trade and cooperative courses at the Warsaw School of Economics. In Warsaw, he established contacts with Maria Koszutska and in December 1918 some form of association with the newly created Communist Workers' Party of Poland (KPRP), from which, according to his later testimony, he withdrew in fall 1919. Bierut kept assuming ever higher offices in the cooperative movement. In 1919, he and Hempel went to Prague, where they represented the Polish cooperatives at the congress of their Czechoslovak counterparts. Bierut's increasingly radical views, however, eventually hindered his cooperative career and caused his departure from the leadership of the movement, beginning in 1921. From 1921, he officially functioned as a member of the KPRP.

In July 1921, Bierut married Janina Górzyńska, a preschool teacher who had helped him a great deal when his illegal activities forced him to hide from the police. They were married by a priest at the Lublin Cathedral, even though the priest, according to Janina, excused them from the confession requirement. In February 1923, their daughter Krystyna was born, followed by their son Jan in January 1925.

Communist Party activism until 1939

In 1922–1925, Bierut was a member of the Cooperative Department of the KPRP Central Committee. He worked as an accountant and was active in Warsaw at the Polish Association of Freethinkers. In August 1923, he was sent for party work in the Dąbrowa Basin, to manage the Workers' Food Cooperative. He lived in Sosnowiec, where he brought his wife and daughter and where he experienced the first of his many arrests. Detained repeatedly in various parts of the country, in October 1924, he moved to Warsaw. He had become a full-time conspiratorial party activist and, in 1925, was a member of the Temporary Secretariat of the Central Committee and then the head of the Cooperative Department there.

Already trusted by the Soviets and knowing the Russian language well, from October 1925 to June 1926, Bierut was in the Moscow area, sent there for training at the secret school of the Communist International.

Arrested in Warsaw in January 1927, he was released on 30 April, based on personal assurances issued on his behalf by Stanisław Szwalbe and Zygmunt Zaremba. During the Fourth Congress of the Communist Party of Poland (KPP, the new name of the KPRP), which took place from 22 May to 9 August 1927, Bierut became a member of the Temporary Secretariat of the Central Committee again. In November, the party sent him to the International Lenin School in Moscow. He received positive evaluations there, except for not being entirely free of ideological right-wing errors, characteristic, in the school's opinion, of the Polish communist party.

In 1930–1931, Bierut was sent by the Comintern to Austria, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria. Many details of his activities are not reliably known, but from 1 October 1930, he was an instructor at the executive committee of the Comintern. He later claimed having lived in Moscow in 1927–32, except for a nine-month period in 1931, and having been enrolled at the Lenin School until 1930. Jerzy Eisler wrote: "[...] in light of the Soviet archival materials, in 1927–32 Bierut was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), with his party seniority counted from 1921, the moment he formally joined the Polish communist party." In Moscow he met Małgorzata Fornalska, a KPP activist. They became romantically involved and had a daughter, named Aleksandra, born in June 1932. Soon afterwards, Bierut left for Poland, leaving in Moscow for the time being also his legal family, whom he had brought there.

In the Soviet Union

On 1 September 1939, Nazi Germany attacked Poland. On 6 September, the Polish military command issued a radio appeal for all able-bodied men to head east;

Bierut left Warsaw for Lublin, from where he proceeded to Kovel. Eastern Poland was soon occupied by the Red Army and Bierut was about to spend a part of World War II in the Soviet Union. From early October, he was employed by the Soviets in political capacities, including vice-chairmanship of a regional election commission before the Elections to the People's Assemblies of Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. The two assemblies, once established, voted for the incorporation of the previously Polish territories into the respective Soviet republics.

Bierut spent the rest of 1939, 1940 and the first part of 1941 in the Soviet Union, in Kiev and Moscow, working, making efforts to sanitise his record as a communist and searching for Fornalska, whom he met in Moscow in July 1940 and again in May 1941 in Białystok, where she had moved with Aleksandra. The mother and daughter were evacuated to Yershov in the Soviet Union after the June 1941 outbreak of the Soviet-German war, but Bierut ended up in Minsk.[a] From November 1941, he was employed there by the German occupation authorities as a manager in the trade and food distribution department of the city government. In the summer of 1943, Bierut arrived in Nazi-occupied Poland, likely dispatched there as a trusted Soviet operative. He came to join the leadership of the Polish Workers' Party (PPR), a new communist party founded in January 1942. He may have been recommended for the job by Fornalska; parachuted into the General Government in the spring of 1942, she was in charge of the PPR's radio communications with Moscow. Bierut became a member of the party Secretariat on 23 November 1943.

While there are many accounts and stories relating to Bierut during the 1939–1943 period, not much is known with certainty about his activities and the accounts are often speculative or amount to hearsay.

In occupied Poland from 1943

Upon his arrival in Warsaw, Bierut became a member of the Central Committee of the PPR, which comprised several individuals. The Secretariat had three members: General Secretary Paweł Finder, Franciszek Jóźwiak and Władysław Gomułka, whom Bierut did not know, but who quickly became his principal rival. Bierut lost his first confrontation over the management of Trybuna Wolności ("The Tribune of Freedom"), the party's press organ.

In a major blow to the re-emergent Polish communist party, Finder and Fornalska were arrested by the Gestapo on 14 November 1943. They were executed in July 1944. They were the only people with the knowledge of radio codes needed to communicate with Moscow and such communications were indeed interrupted for several months. On 23 November 1943, the PPR chose Gomułka as its general secretary.

On 31 December 1943, Bierut assumed an important office: chairmanship of the State National Council (Krajowa Rada Narodowa, KRN), a communist-led body established by Gomułka and the PPR. The KRN was declared to be a wartime parliament of Poland and some splinter socialist and agrarian activists were co-opted. Starting with the KRN post, with Gomułka and others, Bierut would play a leading role in the establishment of communist Poland.

In May 1944, the KRN delegation flew into Moscow. They were officially received at the Kremlin by Joseph Stalin; supremacy of the KRN was recognised by the Union of Polish Patriots, which operated in the Soviet Union under communist leadership.

In June 1944, Bierut wrote a letter, meant for the Soviet leadership and addressed to Georgi Dimitrov in Moscow. He accused his Polish communist rival Gomułka of dictatorial tendencies and numerous offences contrary to Marxist–Leninist orthodoxy; if taken seriously, the accusations could have cost Gomułka his life, but they were not, and Gomułka did not find out about the letter until 1948, when it was used against him in Poland.

In July 1944, the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN) was established in liberated Lublin province. Just before the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, on 31 July 1944, Bierut came to Świder. The next day, he crossed the front line and arrived in Lublin, the seat of the PKWN.

In Soviet-dominated Poland

Continuing as the KRN president, from August 1944, Bierut was secretly a member of the newly created Politburo of the PPR; he was officially presented to the public as a nonpartisan politician.

After the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, Bierut arrived in Moscow. On 6–7 August 1944, together with Wanda Wasilewska and Michał Rola-Żymierski, he conducted negotiations with Prime Minister Stanisław Mikołajczyk of the Polish government-in-exile. Mikołajczyk refused their offer of the job of prime minister in a coalition government, which otherwise would be dominated by the communists. Bierut's daughter, Krystyna, participated in the uprising as a soldier of Armia Ludowa and was gravely wounded.

A KRN and PKWN delegation, led by Bierut, was summoned to Moscow, where it stayed from 28 September to 3 October. Stalin, assisted by Wasilewska, had two meetings with the leaders from Poland, during which he lectured them on a number of issues, but was especially displeased by the lack of progress in implementing the land reform decree passed by the PKWN on 6 September. Stalin urged them to proceed forcefully with the agrarian revolution and to eliminate the great land owners class without further delay or undue legal concerns; Bierut felt that the remarks were addressed to him in particular.

On 12 October, the anniversary of the Battle of Lenino, the KRN for the first time deliberated in Lublin. The proceedings were interrupted to allow the deputies (including Bierut), together with officials of the PKWN and Nikolai Bulganin representing the Soviet Union, to participate in a field mass celebrated for the occasion and in the military parade that followed. Such participation in religious ceremonies by leading communist politicians continued for a while; it was one of the manifestations of the officially proclaimed, after the war, democratic and pluralistic policies, which included preservation of religious freedoms. Marshal Rola-Żymierski recalled kneeling together with Bierut before the altar at another field mass in May 1946, on the first anniversary of World War II victory. In conversations with Stanisław Łukasiewicz, his press secretary, Bierut expressed his support for moderate and liberal policies. His personal views were anti-clerical and he thought the reform proposals put forward by Mikołajczyk's Polish People's Party (PSL), the legally existing opposition, would be abandoned in the event of PSL victory.

Referendum and election, Bierut's presidency

On 30 June 1946, the Polish people's referendum took place. It was done in preparation for the Yalta-mandated national elections; affirmative answers to the three questions given were supposed to demonstrate public support for the issues promoted by the communists. The results were falsified.

On 22 September 1946, the KRN passed the electoral rules and in November set the date; the delayed legislative elections were held on 19 January 1947. The PPR-led coalition, running as the Democratic Bloc, was opposed by Mikołajczyk's PSL.

Mikołajczyk's Peasant Party, although it also had progressive overtones, had grown to be publicly associated with the traditional Polish right, which had engaged in antisemitic and anti-communist repressions before the war. The government dissolved the explicitly antisemitic right-wing parties still active after the war, but many of their supporters joined PSL since it was the only remaining legal opposition. The long-standing trope of the "Judeo-Bolshevik", or Żydokomuna, was used by the far-right in anti-communist propaganda to cast Polish communism as a plot to control Poland by Russian Jews.

The government also engaged in heavy interference with the election. Due to the electoral rules passed in September, 1 million people, or about 8% of the electorate, were disqualified on the grounds that they collaborated with the German Nazis during the occupation or with underground fascist organisations still active in the country. Additionally, the Peasant Party lists in 10 of the 52 districts were disqualified on the basis that they were composed of rightists. In places where Peasant Party observers were not allowed to oversee the election process, results were directly falsified. Lastly, peasant participation was limited by the fact that the elections were set in January, when most rural roads were covered in snow. The falsified results saw the Democratic Bloc receiving 80.1% of the vote, and Mikołajczyk only getting 10.3%. The PSL was practically eliminated as the legal opposition.

The newly elected Sejm convened on 4 February 1947 and on the following day, it elected Bierut President of the Republic of Poland. The installation ceremony was done in a traditional format and ended with the new president uttering the words "so help me God".

Top leader of Stalinist Poland

Gomułka, general secretary of the PPR (and until that time the principal figure in post-war Polish communist establishment), was accused of a "right-wing nationalistic deviation" and removed from his position during a plenary meeting of the Central Committee in August 1948. The move was Stalin-orchestrated and Stalin's choice to fill the vacated job was President Bierut, who had thus become both the top party leader and top state official.

The historic PPS was practically taken over by the PPR at the Unification Congress, held in Warsaw in December 1948. The resulting "Marxist–Leninist" Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) was nearly synonymous with the state and Bierut became its first general secretary. The Three-Year Plan of post-war rebuilding and economic consolidation ended in 1949 and was followed by the Six-Year Plan, which intensified the industrialisation process and brought extensive urbanisation of Poland.

In November 1949, Bierut asked the Soviet government to make available Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, a Polish-Soviet politician and famous World War II commander, for service in the government of Poland. Rokossovsky subsequently became a Marshal of Poland and Minister of National Defense.

In early August 1951, Bierut had his main rival, Gomułka, arrested. Gomułka, though imprisoned, refused to cooperate with his accusers and displayed a remarkable ability to defend himself, while Bierut's people bungled the prosecution. According to Edward Ochab, though, Stalin and Beria ordered the arrest and trial of Gomułka, while Bierut and Jakub Berman tried to protect him and caused delays in the proceedings. Informal political reforms, slow to take hold after Stalin's death, eventually materialised, and in December 1954, Gomułka was released.

During the lifetime of Stalin, Bierut was strictly subservient to the Soviet leader. Bierut routinely received instructions from Stalin over the telephone or was summoned to Moscow for consultations. Bierut still had far more power in Poland than any of his successors as First Secretary of the PZPR. He ruled jointly with his two closest associates, Berman and Hilary Minc. Security issues he also consulted with Stanisław Radkiewicz, head of the Ministry of Public Security.

Bierut's 60th birthday, constitution of the Polish People's Republic

The apogee of Bierut's cult, promoted by the authorities over a number of years, was the celebration of his sixtieth birthday on 18 April 1952. It included various industrial and other production or accomplishment commitments undertaken by institutions and individuals. The University of Wrocław and some state enterprises were named in his honour. The History Department of the party's Central Committee prepared a special book about Bierut and his life, while Polish poets, including some notable ones, generated a book of poems dedicated to the leader. Many postage stamps dedicated to Bierut were issued.

As the PZPR leadership felt ready to sanction its rule in a fundamental legal document, a new constitution was being worked on. On 26 May 1951, the Sejm passed a statute concerning the preparation and passing of the constitution. The Constitutional Committee, led by Bierut, commenced its deliberations on 19 September. In the fall of 1951, a Russian translation of the draft constitution was examined by Stalin, who inserted dozens of corrections, subsequently implemented in the Polish text by Bierut. The officially proclaimed national public discussion resulted in hundreds of other proposed changes. After all the delays and the necessary extension of the term of the Sejm, the Constitution of the Polish People's Republic was officially proclaimed on 22 July 1952.

The Polish People's Republic (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa) was the new name of the state. The Sejm was designated as the highest national authority; it represented "the working people of towns and villages". The office of the president was eliminated and replaced with the collegial Council of State, elected by the Sejm from its members. The first chairman of the new council was Aleksander Zawadzki. Bierut replaced Józef Cyrankiewicz as prime minister in November 1952. The constitution, amended many times, remained in force until a new Constitution of Poland came into effect in October 1997, in what was then the Republic of Poland.

Bierut's last years

In March 1953, Bierut led the Polish delegation for Stalin's funeral in Moscow.

The regime's relations with the Catholic Church kept deteriorating. The authorities imprisoned Bishop Czesław Kaczmarek and interned Poland's primate, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński.

In the Soviet Union, changes were initiated by the new leader of the communist party, Nikita Khrushchev. The collective leadership concept, promoted first in the Soviet Union, made its way to other communist countries, including Poland. It meant, among other things, giving top party and state functions to different officials.

The Second Congress of the PZPR deliberated from 10 to 17 March 1954 in Warsaw. Bierut's party chief's title was changed from general secretary to first secretary. Because of the separation of functions requirement, Bierut remained only a party secretary and Józef Cyrankiewicz returned to the post of prime minister. The Six-Year Plan was modified and some of the heavy industrial investment resources were shifted toward the production of consumer articles.

When Khrushchev, a guest at the congress, inquired about the reasons for the continuing imprisonment of Gomułka, Bierut professed his own ignorance on that issue.

Death and funeral

The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union deliberated on 14–25 February 1956. Afterwards, Bierut did not return to Poland with the rest of the Polish delegation, but remained in Moscow, hospitalised with bad influenza, which turned into pneumonia and heart complications.

On 3 March, during a conference of PZPR activists in Warsaw, Stefan Staszewski and others severely criticised the contemporary party leadership, including the absent Bierut.

Bierut died of a heart attack on 12 March 1956, having read the text of Nikita Khrushchev's "Secret Speech", in which Khrushchev criticised Stalin's cult of personality.

Bierut, however, would not die until sixteen days after that speech and four members of the delegation of Polish students who studied in Moscow, who met him on 25 February 1956, told Eisler that the first secretary showed signs of physical distress already at that time.

The deceased leader was given a splendid funeral in Warsaw. A period of national mourning was declared. Catholic bishops conceded to the demand that church bells ring all over the country on the day of the funeral.

In a radio address on 14 March, Helena Jaworska, chairperson of the board of the Union of Polish Youth, eulogised Bierut on behalf of the Polish youth. She recalled Bierut's war and post-war activities and declared that "the beloved friend of the youth has departed". She spoke of the "great son of the Polish nation" and "a beautiful, loved person".

The funeral, which took place on 16 March, was transmitted by the Polish Radio for many hours. Warsaw residents were given a day off from work to be able to participate. Large crowds of people gathered and joined the funeral procession, which began at the Palace of Culture and Science and proceeded toward the Powązki Military Cemetery, where the burial took place and where, for logistical reasons, only guests and delegations could enter.

Remembrance in communist and post-communist Poland

Khrushchev, who participated in Bierut's funeral, stayed in Warsaw for several days and attended the Sixth Plenum of the PZPR Central Committee. On 20 March, Edward Ochab was chosen there as the party's new first secretary. Prime Minister Cyrankiewicz delivered a detailed account of the history of Bierut's illness, going back to the early spring of 1950, when Bierut experienced his first myocardial infarction. The report was not made public.

According to historian Andrzej Garlicki, Bierut died just in time to make possible the political demise of Berman and Minc and the triumphal return of Gomułka. Had Bierut lived much longer, the de-Stalinization process in Poland could have been stalled.

Soon after Bierut's death, on 18 April 1956, a merchant ship newly built in Gdańsk Shipyard was named Bolesław Bierut.

During Gomułka's rule as first secretary (1956–70), the memory of Bierut was marginalised. After 1970, First Secretary Edward Gierek brought Bierut back into public consciousness. Some books about him were published and in July 1979, on the 35th anniversary of communist Poland, Bierut's monument was erected in Lublin. Bierut's legend was sustained and cultivated during the 1970s. Gierek and his team, according to Eisler, idealised Bierut and his period and introduced a soft version of Stalinism, lacking the terror component of the original.

During the brief but turbulent Solidarity period, the University of Wrocław attempted to reclaim its original name, but the Ministry of Higher Education declined to implement the faculty resolution in January 1982.

On 1 June 1987, a factory in Skierniewice was given Bierut's name, which was likely the last such outcome. In 1989, the University of Wrocław got its old name back, Bierut's monument in Lublin was taken down, and soon all mention of Bierut was removed from public space. However, memorials dedicated to countless many public and other figures and groups, judged compromised by their activities or connections with the communist regime, as well as other objects and names, including monuments of Soviet World War II soldiers or Polish Eastern Front soldiers, met the same fate.

Decorations and awards

Order of the Builders of People's Poland

Order of the Cross of Grunwald (1st class)

Partisan Cross

Medal of Victory and Freedom 1945

Medal for Warsaw 1939–1945