Władyslaw Gomułka: One of the most influential of the East European Communist Party leaders
Władyslaw Gomułka: One of the most influential of the East European Communist Party leaders

Summary/Abstract: Władyslaw Gomułka, was a first secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party. He born in Białobrzegi, near Krosno in former Austro-Hungarian Kingdom (actual in Poland) on February 6, 1905 and he died in Warsaw on September 1, 1982. From 1956 to 1970 he ruled the communist party of Poland. He was the creator of the concept – the Polish road to socialism. Władyslaw Gomułka is appreciated to be one of the remarkable men in Polish politics after the second war. Władysław Gomulka has been one of the most important men in Polish politics of the 20th century. In a same time he performed an important act in his quality of the leader of the East European Communist Party. In 1926, Gomulka became a member of the Polish Communist Party (Communistyczna Partia Polski, KPP), so during World War II he played a crucial role in the resistance struggle. By the other hand Gomulka played in post-war Polish politics and the “de-Stalinization” process. Although he will be the artisan of Poland's deStalinization process, Gomulka will not give up the Soviet bloc. Gomułka represented a very distinct kind of communism and his slogan the “Polska Droga” (the Polish Road, or Polish Way was understood by the other communist countries in the Eastern bloc that everyone must choose their own path to socialism. An undoubted achievement of Gomulka's politics was the negotiation of a treaty with West Germany, signed in December 1970. The crisis at the end of Gomułka's tenure coincided with great success in foreign policy. The economic difficulties facing Poland in the late 1970s will lead to prices hikes. In these circumstances, in December 1970, violent clashes will take place between law enforcement and workers at the shipyards on the Baltic Sea coast. Several dozen workers will lose their lives, Gomułka being forced to resign.

• Details
• Contents