46 Facts About Edward Ochab

In 1939 Ochab participated in the Defense of Warsaw but afterwards moved to the Soviet Union, where he became an early organizer and manager in the Union of Polish Patriots.

Between 1949 and 1950, General Edward Ochab was deputy minister of defense and led the political branch of the Armed Forces.

Edward Ochab remained a member of the Politburo until 1968 and worked as minister of agriculture from 1957 to 1959, and later as the secretary of the Central Committee for agricultural affairs.

Edward Ochab's father was a clerical official at the central offices of Krakow police.

In Krakow Edward Ochab completed elementary and in 1925 secondary education.

Edward Ochab was drafted and in June 1928 sent to a military school, but was judged there to be of a subversive attitude, apparently a declared communist, permanently employed in worker cooperatives.

Edward Ochab returned to manage his Radom cooperative until February 1930.

Edward Ochab became a member of the Communist Party of Poland in the summer of 1929.

Edward Ochab married a fellow communist activist, Rachela Silbiger, a nurse from a "poor and simple" Jewish family.

On 7 September 1939, the German forces were approaching Warsaw and the guards in the Warsaw prison where Edward Ochab was held fled.

Edward Ochab had met "thousands of comrades", was thoroughly familiar with the situation on the Polish Left and was ready to get engaged in the rebuilding of the Polish revolutionary movement.

However, Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Edward Ochab volunteered for the Red Army and was assigned to an auxiliary unit.

Edward Ochab became active in the newly formed Union of Polish Patriots there, leading its administrative-economic department.

In July 1944 in Lublin Edward Ochab became an official plenipotentiary of the command of the First Polish Army.

Edward Ochab claimed having participated in the military struggle for Warsaw and in the drive to push across the Vistula at that time.

From January 1950, at the time of increasing Sovietization of the Polish military, Edward Ochab led the political division of the armed forces.

Edward Ochab was secretary of the Central Committee from 1950, responsible for the area of ideology.

At that time and later in his career Edward Ochab had a tendency to express his views in radical and uncompromising terms.

When Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski was arrested on 25 September 1953, Edward Ochab published an article fiercely critical of the primate in Trybuna Ludu, the party's official newspaper.

At the PZPR's Second Congress in March 1954, Edward Ochab finally became a full Politburo member.

In June 1956 Edward Ochab attended a Comecon gathering of leaders in Moscow.

Edward Ochab displayed there his confrontational style when responding to accusations of the supposedly inadequate supplies of coal from Poland.

Edward Ochab gave Minister of Defense Rokossovsky permission to bring military units to the city and use the force necessary to bring the "counterrevolutionary" revolt under control.

Edward Ochab objected to the timing and refused to make the trip.

Under the direction of Edward Ochab, who "stood firmly in defense of Poland's sovereignty", the Polish Army and internal security forces were placed in defensive positions on the approaches to Warsaw, and the buildings where the PZPR Plenum and the meetings with the Soviet delegation were to take place were secured.

Edward Ochab replied that the Soviet leaders themselves would not consult changes in their leadership with the Poles.

Edward Ochab could have easily allied himself with Marshal Rokossovsky and other discarded Politburo members, but he placed Poland's interests over his own career.

Edward Ochab remained a member of the new, reduced in size Politburo.

At that time Edward Ochab supported individual farmers and their small associations, not the large cooperatives previously favored by the state.

The weaker of the state-owned State Agricultural Farms Edward Ochab turned into cooperative units.

In October 1959 Edward Ochab gave up his ministerial position, but continued his supervisory role in the same area as a secretary of the Central Committee responsible for agricultural affairs.

In March 1966, Edward Ochab notified Primate Stefan Wyszynski that Pope Paul VI was being denied his request to visit Poland for the celebrations of the Millennium of Polish Christianity because of the Vatican's continuing diplomatic relations with the Polish government-in-exile.

Edward Ochab insisted that the term should be deleted from the published transcript of the speech, and it was.

Edward Ochab wrote of the "antisemitic campaign organized by the various reactionary elements, yesterday's phalangists and their today's highly placed protectors".

Edward Ochab first proceeded to safeguard the documents that secured his historical role, the forty years he had been active in the communist movement.

Edward Ochab carefully observed the dealings of the new leadership of Edward Gierek.

Edward Ochab called for measures preventing such "deformations" now and in the future.

Edward Ochab proposed a radical reduction in the scope and budget of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and a removal from positions of responsibility of "non-reformable bureaucrats, career-minded people, hooded ONR followers, anti-semites, nationalists and morally deprived people".

The peculiarities of Edward Ochab's proposed solutions included advocating the original "Leninist" ways, such as an establishment of Worker Delegate Councils in enterprises, and his belief that old comrades from the prewar Communist Party of Poland ought to be returned to power.

In October 1977, Edward Ochab was one of the signatories of the letter addressed to First Secretary Gierek and the Politburo.

In November 1979, as the PZPR's Eighth Congress was approaching, Edward Ochab wrote a ten-page letter To Comrades Communists, which Jerzy Eisler characterizes as highly ideological, detached from practical usefulness.

Later in the letter Edward Ochab engaged in polemics with the recent works of Polish historians, which he interpreted as a creeping rehabilitation and legitimization of the Sanation regime.

Finally Edward Ochab denounced the current "anti-socialist groups", which slandered the people's democracy and Marxism; "they dream of anti-socialist activation of the Polish ayatollahs".

Edward Ochab felt uneasy about both the emerging great independent worker movement, the future Solidarity, and his own "communist" party that he had found so much fault with.

Edward Ochab died on 1 May 1989, between the conclusion of the Round Table groundbreaking negotiations and the historic elections of 4 June, which marked the beginning of the systemic change in Poland.

Edward Ochab was deeply disappointed by the Sino-Soviet split, Jedrychowski said, and welcomed Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms as long-awaited and giving reasons for hope.