Polish legislative election, 1952

← 1947

October 26, 1952 (1952-10-26)

1957 →

All 425 seats in the Sejm

Turnout

95.00%

	First party

Leader	Bolesław Bierut
Party	FJN - PZPR
Leader since	December 22, 1948
Leader's seat	Warsaw-Prague
Seats won	388 (PZPR - 273, ZSL - 90, SD - 25), 91.2%

Premier before election

Józef Cyrankiewicz
PZPR

Premier

Józef Cyrankiewicz
PZPR

Parliamentary elections were held in Poland on 26 October 1952. They were the first elections to the Sejm, the parliament of the People's Republic of Poland. They were also the first under undisguised Communist rule; the government had dropped all pretense of being a coalition after the fraudulent 1947 election. The official rules for the elections were outlined in the new Constitution of the People's Republic of Poland and lesser acts.

The Communists had spent the five years since winning the flagrantly rigged 1947 elections tightening their grip on the country. A little more than a year after the election, what remained of the Polish Socialist Party, nominally a partner in the Communist-dominated "coalition," merged with the Communist Polish Workers' Party to form the Polish United Workers' Party. However, the merger was concluded almost entirely on PPR terms, and by this time the PPS was largely subservient to the PPR. However, former Socialist Józef Cyrankiewicz remained as prime minister. By 1949, the Polish People's Party, which had led the opposition in 1947 (and claimed that it would have won in a landslide had the election been honest), had been emasculated when it was forced to merge with the pro-Communist People's Party to form the United People's Party (ZSL).

PPR leader Władysław Gomułka, who had been largely responsible for the PPR's heavy-handed suppression of opposition, believed he was now free to pursue a more independent course. He wanted to adapt the Soviet blueprint to Polish circumstances, and believed it was possible to be both a Communist and a Polish patriot at the same time. He was also wary of the Cominform, and opposed forced collectivization of agriculture. For this, he was pushed out as party leader in 1948 for "rightist-nationalist deviation." He was succeeded by President Bolesław Bierut, a hardline Stalinist.

...
Wikipedia