Polish Workers Party
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Polish Workers' Party
Polska Partia Robotnicza |
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| Leader | Władysław Gomułka |
| Founded | 1942 |
| Dissolved | 1948 |
| Succeeded by | Polish United Workers' Party |
| Ideology |
Communism Marxism–Leninism |
| Political position | Far-left |
| International affiliation | Communist International |
| Colours | Red |
The Polish Workers' Party (Polish: Polska Partia Robotnicza, PPR) was a communist party in Poland from 1942 to 1948. It was founded as a reconstitution of the Communist Party of Poland, and merged with the Polish Socialist Party in 1948 to form the Polish United Workers' Party. From the end of World War II the PPR ruled Poland, while the Soviet overall control and the Communist (also characterized as state socialist) system were being established in the country.
The Communist Party of Poland (KPP, until 1925 the Communist Workers' Party of Poland) was a conspiratorial organization of the radical Left. The views adhered to and promulgated by its leaders (Maria Koszutska, Adolf Warski, Maksymilian Horwitz, Edward Próchniak) led to the Party's difficult relationship with Joseph Stalin already in 1923–24. The Communist International (Comintern) condemned the KPP for its support of Józef Piłsudski's May Coup of 1926 (the Party's "May error"). From 1933, the KPP was increasingly treated with suspicion by the Comintern. The Party's structures were seen as compromised due to infiltration by agents of the Polish military intelligence. Some of the Party leaders, falsely accused of being such agents, were subsequently executed in the Soviet Union. In 1935 and 1936, the KPP undertook a formation of a unified worker and peasant front in Poland and the Party was then subjected to further persecutions by the Comintern, which arbitrarily accused the Polish communists of also harboring Trotskyists elements in their ranks. The apogee of the Moscow-held prosecutions, aimed at eradicating the various "deviations" and ending usually in death sentences took place in 1937–38, with the last executions carried out in 1940. The KPP members were persecuted and often imprisoned by the Polish Sanation regime authorities, which turned out to likely save the lives of a number of future Polish communist leaders, including Bolesław Bierut, Władysław Gomułka, Edward Ochab, Stefan Jędrychowski and Aleksander Zawadzki. During the Great Purge, seventy members and candidate members of the Party's Central Committee fled or were brought to the Soviet Union and were shot there, along with a large number of other activists (almost all prominent Polish communists were murdered or sent to labor camps). The Comintern, in reality directed by Stalin, had the Party dissolved and liquidated in August 1938.
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