Abstract
This chapter analyses the ways in which the communist regime in Poland created and propagated the cult of Boleslaw Bierut. The Polish Communist party faced a formidable obstacle in seeking to legitimise its rule in Poland. The party at the end of the war was numerically small and had only a very limited base of popular support. It had been devastated by the Great Purges in 1937–38, its leadership shot and, on Stalin’s instructions, the party itself was disbanded.1 It was only re-established during the war. Coupled with this it faced the problem of winning the support of a Polish public that was strongly antithetical to the Russians and to the whole communist experiment. Socialism was brought to Poland in the wake of the Red Army. It is against this background that we need to examine the role of Bierut’s cult as a device intended to overcome this antipathy and to broaden the base of public support for the reconstruction of Poland along socialist lines.
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Notes
William J. Chase, Enemies Within the Gates? The Comintern and the Stalinist Repression, 1934–1939 (New Haven, Conn., 2001), pp. 217–92.
Andrzej Garlicki, Bolesław Bierut (Warsaw, 1994).
Andrzej Albert (Wojciech Roszkowski), Najnowsza historia Polski 1918–1980 (London, 1991).
Stanislaw Karboński, W imieniu Kremla (Paris, 1956), p. 257.
Michał Głowiński, Rytuał i demagogia. Trzynaście szkiców o sztuce zdegradowanej (Warsaw, 1992), pp. 110–13.
Trybuna Ludu, 18 April 1952, p. 1; Życie Lubelskie, 30 April 1952, p. 5; Krzysztof Mazurski, Karpacz i okolice (Wroclaw, 1978), p. 14.
The physical and symbolic competition between the party-state and the Catholic Church continued throughout the entire period of communist rule. See Izabella Main, National and Religious Holidays as the Clashing Point of the State, the Church and Opposition between 1944 and 1989: The Case of Lublin’, PhD dissertation, Central European University, 2002; on Częstochowa: Damien Thiriet, Marks czy Maryja? Komuniści i Jasna Góra w apogeum stalinizmu (1950–1956) (Warsaw, 2002).
On the reinvention of Wroclaw as a Polish city after 1945, see Gregor Thum, Die fremde Stadt. Breslau 1945 (Berlin, 2003).
Robert Kupiecki, ‘Natchnienie MilionówKult Józefa Stalina w Polsce (Warsaw, 1993). pp. 76, 79.
David Crowley, ‘People’s Warsaw/Popular Warsaw’, Journal of Design History, 10: 2 (1997), pp. 203–23.
Marcin Zaremba, Komunizm, legitimizacja, nacjonalizm. Nacjonalistyczna legitimizacja władzy komunistycznej w Polsce (Warsaw, 2001).
Trybuna Ludu, 28 March 1952, pp. 1, 3. On the cult surrounding Karol S´wierczewski (‘Walter’): Jerzy Kochanowski, ‘“… doch diesen Namen werden sie preisen”: Der General Karol Świerczewski’ in Silke Satjukow and Rainer Gries (eds) Sozialistische Helden. Eine Kulturgeschichte von Propagandafiguren in Osteuropa und der DDR (Berlin, 2002), pp. 193–202.
Lipiński, ‘Boleslaw Niejasny’, pp. 26–7; Jan Chyliński, Jaki był Bolesław Bierut. Wspomnienia syna (Warsaw, 1999).
Karol Jr. Estreicher, Dziennik wypadków 1946–1960 (Cracow, 2002), p. 97.
Maria Dąbrowska, Dzienniki powojenne 1945–1949 (Warsaw, 1996), p. 285.
Pawel Machcewicz, ‘Urodziny Bolesława Bieruta’, Karta, 7 (1993), p. 50; APK, KM PZPR 39, p. 73.
Dąbrowska, Dzienniki powojenne 1955–1959, p. 89. This brief moment of popularity is also pointed out by Pawel Machcewicz, Polski rok 1956 (Warsaw, 1993), pp. 42–51.
Józef Stepnień (ed.) Listy do Pierwszych Sekretarzy KC PZPR (1944–1970) (Warsaw, 1994).
Robert Perks and Alistair Thompson, The Oral History Reader (London, 1998).
See also Katherine Lebow, ‘Nowa Huta 1949–1957: Stalinism and the Transformation of Everyday Life in Poland’s “First Socialist City”’, PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2002.
Stefan Czarnowski, Kult bohaterów i jego społeczne podłoże. Święty Patryk bohater narodowy Irlandii (Warsaw, 1956).
Anna Wójcik (ed.) Lublin w fotografii Zbigniewa Zugaja (Lublin, 1988), photograph 77; APL, KW PZPR 100/VIII/15/4, p. 32.
Aleksander Wallis, Socjologia przestrzeni (Warsaw, 1990), p. 229.
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Main, I. (2004). President of Poland or ‘Stalin’s Most Faithful Pupil’? The Cult of Bolesław Bierut in Stalinist Poland. In: Apor, B., Behrends, J.C., Jones, P., Rees, E.A. (eds) The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorships. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230518216_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230518216_10
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