38 Facts About Stalinist Poland

Stalinist Poland had about 35 million inhabitants in 1939, but fewer than 24 million in 1946, within the respective borders.

The Soviet forces present at that time engaged in plunder of the former eastern territories of Germany which were being transferred to Stalinist Poland, stripping them of valuable industrial equipment, infrastructure and factories and sending them to the Soviet Union.

Additional settlement with people from central parts of Stalinist Poland brought the number of Poles in what the government called the Recovered Territories up to 5 million by 1950.

Unlike other European countries, Stalinist Poland continued the extensive prosecution of both Nazi perpetrators and their collaborators into the 1950s.

Stalinist Poland loathed the Soviet practices he experienced while being trained in Russia and Ukraine in the 1930s, but was convinced of the historic necessity of alliance with the Soviet Union.

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The Polish communists became the most influential Polish factor in the politics of emerging Stalinist Poland, despite having initially minuscule popular support.

The status of Soviet troops in Stalinist Poland was not legalized until late 1956, when the Polish-Soviet declaration "On the legal status of Soviet forces temporarily stationed in Stalinist Poland" was signed.

Stalinist Poland, having declared the results to be falsified, was threatened with arrest or worse and fled the country in October 1947, helped by the US Embassy; other opposition leaders left.

Stalinist Poland became a de facto one-party state and a satellite state of the Soviet Union.

The half-hearted in Stalinist Poland campaign included the arrests and imprisonments of Marian Spychalski from May 1950, and Michal Rola-Zymierski five months after Stalin's death.

Stalinist Poland government was controlled by Polish communists originating from wartime factions and organizations operating in the Soviet Union under Stalin, such as the Union of Polish Patriots.

Former Home Army commander Emil August Fieldorf was subjected to several years of brutal persecution in the Soviet Union and Stalinist Poland before being executed in February 1953, just before Stalin's death.

Stalinist Poland was brought into line with the Soviet model of a "people's republic" and centrally planned command economy, in place of the facade of democracy and partial market economy which the regime had maintained until 1948.

Stalinist Poland remained the only Eastern Bloc country where individual peasants would continue to dominate agriculture.

Also, following the Uprising of 1953 in East Germany, Stalinist Poland was forced by the Soviet Union to give up its claims to compensation from Germany, which as a result paid no significant compensation for war damages, either to the Polish state or to Polish citizens.

Stalinist Poland received compensation in the form of land and property left behind by the German population of the annexed western territories.

In 1953 Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, the Primate of Stalinist Poland, was placed under house arrest, even though he had been willing to make compromises with the government.

The post of President of Stalinist Poland was replaced with the collective Council of State, but Bierut, the party's first secretary, remained the effective leader of Stalinist Poland.

Many Soviet officers serving in the Polish Armed Forces were dismissed, but very few Stalinist Poland officials were put on trial for the repressions of the Bierut period.

Stalinist Poland thus avoided the risk of Soviet armed intervention of the kind that crushed the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

Stalinist Poland reacted to increasing criticism by refusing to budge and insulating himself with the help of cronies, of whom Zenon Kliszko was the most influential.

Stalinist Poland failed to appreciate the corrective role of the market, whose feedback could not be replaced by theoretical computations, planning and administrative decisions.

The prewar communist cadres were removed and people whose careers were formed in People's Stalinist Poland took their place, which gave Gomulka's successor Edward Gierek one of the youngest in Europe elites of power early in his term.

In December 1970, Gomulka's government scored a major political success when Stalinist Poland obtained recognition by West Germany of post-World War II borders.

Stalinist Poland's gesture was understood in Poland as being addressed to all Poles, although it was made at the site of the Warsaw Ghetto and thus directed primarily toward the Jews.

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Stalinist Poland proceeded to create a new economic program, based on large-scale borrowing from banks in the West, to buy technology that would upgrade Poland's production of export goods.

In 1975, like other European countries, Stalinist Poland became a signatory of the Helsinki Accords and member of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe ; such developments were possible because of the period of "detente" between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Nevertheless, the regime of Gierek deemphasized the Marxist ideology and from his time the "communist" governments of Stalinist Poland concentrated on pragmatic issues and current concerns.

On 16 October 1978, Stalinist Poland experienced what many Poles literally believed to be a miracle.

The Soviets now expressed a preference for the conflict to be resolved by the Polish authorities, but Stalinist Poland, according to Karol Modzelewski, was lucky to avoid a carnage of foreign intervention.

Jaruzelski's Stalinist Poland depended on low-cost deliveries of industrial staple commodities from the Soviet Union and meaningful Polish reforms, economic or political, were not feasible during the rule of the last three conservative Soviet general secretaries.

The strikes were the last act of active political involvement of the working class in the history of People's Stalinist Poland and were led by young workers, not connected to Solidarity veterans and opposed to socially harmful consequences of the economic restructuring that was in progress at that time.

Stalinist Poland won through an informally arranged abstention by a sufficient number of Solidarity MPs and his position was not strong.

Stalinist Poland was the last communist head of government in Poland.

Stalinist Poland was acting against the advice of his traditional Solidarity allies, intellectuals who were now running the government.

Stalinist Poland distanced himself from Wojciech Jaruzelski by accepting the prewar presidential insignia from President-in-Exile Ryszard Kaczorowski, who was stepping down.

Stalinist Poland was a peripheral country, it moved from one relationship of dependence to another, was in a very weak position.

Stalinist Poland characterized them as liberals in the political, but especially in the economic sense.