The Peasant & the Tommy Gun

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On the narrow wooden bridge that crosses the Vistula at Warsaw, a ruddy-faced, wide-eyed girl named Stenia, with a Tommy gun slung across her back, stood guard. Past her flowed a bustling traffic of carts, bicycles, UNRRA trucks, Red Army vehicles and pedestrians.

Stenia was 23, but she had lived a lifetime of terror. She was a left-winger, a militiawoman, a veteran of the resistance and of Gestapo torture. The Nazis had knocked out two of her front teeth; now, when she smiled, she showed shiny, stainless-steel replacements.

TIME Correspondent John Scott asked Stenia what she thought of the Communist-dominated Polish Provisional Government. The answer was not unexpected: "Good democratic leaders. They fight fascists."

Would most Poles agree with her? Stenia shrugged. "Most Poles are peasants. We will see when the elections come. But if they elect any reactionaries, any fascists. . . ." She scowled.

But in a democracy doesn't everyone accept the people's vote? The wide eyes widened. "You know, I've read about people like you, but I have never met one. We don't believe in allowing fascists to use democratic machinery in order later to destroy it. We have seen what it brings. We want democracy, but if any fascist gets elected by hoodwinking the people, we'll shoot the sonofabitch, like this--" And Stenia swung her Tommy gun around as if firing a deadly burst.

Men of Violence. A year after Warsaw's liberation, in the thick of an epic and revolutionary reconstruction, Poland still struggled to define her freedom. Theoretically, the definition would be given in national elections. Theoretically, as the Big Three had pledged at Yalta, the vote would be "free and unfettered." But, as Stenia's Tommy gun witnessed, theory for Poland was much simpler than fact.

Even as Stenia spoke, the crack of gunfire could be heard on the bridge. It attracted little attention; political murder was almost a commonplace in Poland. A complex, undeclared, ideological civil war was raging under the shadow of the Red Army's continuing occupation of the country it had liberated. Seven of prewar Poland's 35 millions had died in World War II; life had become so cheap that the struggle for Poland could scarcely be confined to the ballot box.

Britain's Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin had bluntly charged that the Polish Government's secret police used wholesale murder in order to intimidate the Polish electorate. The victims were members of the middle-of-the-road Polish Peasant Party, led by Vice Premier Stanislaw Mikolajczyk. Last week U.S. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes repeated the charge.

"Recent reports indicate that a number of murders have taken place, of which in some instances prominent members of political parties have been the victims. ... It is regrettable that the Polish Security Police appear to have been implicated. ..." U.S. Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane was ordered to remind the Warsaw Government that "freedom and security . . . are essential to the successful holding of free elections."

Man of the Soil. The man for whom London and Washington were speaking was the symbol of another new Poland. This one too was antifascist, but democratic, willing to be Russia's friend but not its vassal. At 45, sturdy, strong-shouldered Stanislaw Mikolajczyk is unquestionably his country's most popular political leader. Barring a rigged election or sudden death, he and his peasant followers seemed likely to emerge from any fair test at the polls as Poland's No. 1 political faction.

The secret of Mikolajczyk's popularity lies in his origins. His roots in Poland's life go deep--deeper than the Red Army's. He was born a peasant in a nation that is 75% peasant. He came up politically as a peasant spokesman. He has never lost his peasant temperament; he is solid, slow in speech and thought, stubborn in principle and action. His chief political defect is a peasant's sly caution, often carried to the point of hesitation at moments of decision. Even his only known hobby has the peasant touch: he is a beekeeper.

Mikolajczyk was 17, fresh from his father's 50-acre farm in Poznan, when he joined the Polish uprising against the crumbling German Army. Two years later (1920), he was a private in the new Polish Army that beat the new Russian Army back from Warsaw.

Man of the People. Mikolajczyk became the first peasant to be elected president of the Poznan Farming Association--an event that raised the provincial gentry's eyebrows. He also became a follower of Wincenty Witos, greatest of Polish peasant leaders. Grand, gruff old Witos watched his disciple with peasant skepticism. "Mikolajczyk is no peasant," he once growled. "He has neither the peasant's character, nor his sense of humor, nor his bad habits." But the peasants dissented. They kept voting for their Poznan farmer; in 1930 they sent him to the Sejm (Parliament) in Warsaw. When Witos was forced into exile, Mikolajczyk took over as chief of the Peasant Party, the largest of prewar Poland.

In World War II Mikolajczyk fought again as a private, escaped from the military debacle to Hungary, thence to France. There President Ignace Paderewski made him Vice Premier of the Polish National Council, the Parliament of the Polish Government in Exile.

Mikolajczyk's activities in exile led to 'the arrest of his wife Cecylia and his son Marjan, who were still in the homeland. Both survived long imprisonment. Both are now in England. Until Mme. Mikolajczyk dies, she will bear upon her hand Slave Number 64023, branded there by the Nazis of Oswiecim.

Man of Distinction. The years of exile were decisive for Mikolajczyk. They broadened his horizon, gave him his first direct contact with Western democrats and with the foreshadowed ideological struggle for Europe bound to come with the end of the war. He learned English by doggedly rising each morning at 6 a.m. 'for an hour's study, impressed the British as a "man of distinction." In London Mikolajczyk's arguments with dynamic Premier General Wladyslaw Sikorski brought out his special qualities. Slow, verbose Mikolajczyk always lost the verbal bouts to Sikorski. Mikolajczyk would withdraw in confusion, then write a laborious answer weighted with political idealism. Sikorski would read it, then sharply ask: "Well, what do you want to do about it?" Mikolajczyk always stuck to his guns.

When Sikorski died in an airplane crash at Gibraltar, Mikolajczyk, at 42, became Prime Minister of the exile government. When Moscow created the rival puppet Polish government, which is still the hard core of the provisional regime in Warsaw, Mikolajczyk shuttled across half the globe --from London to Washington to Moscow--to see on what terms the Poles of London and the Poles of Lublin could get together. He talked and chain-smoked with Joseph Stalin in the Kremlin, parleyed with the Lublin left-wingers, worked out a compromise disowned by the right-wingers in London. He resigned in November 1944, to be resuscitated seven months later after Harry Hopkins worked out a compromise government with Stalin.

As the London Polish Government fell into History's dust bin, Mikolajczyk returned to Poland as Vice Premier and Minister of Agriculture. He has ranged indefatigably from Warsaw up & down the countryside, busier with building up his political strength than with his administrative job.

Out of Travail. That Mikolajczyk and the Western democracy he represents have survived the shock of war and revolution is another testimonial to Poland's national stamina. Once Poland was the mightiest nation of eastern Europe. Jan Karol Chodkiewicz's fearsome Winged Hussars (see cut) defeated the Turks at Chocim in 1621, and 62 years later Jan Sobieski beat them back from Vienna. The Polish military tradition still burns bright; World War II's Warsaw and Monte Cassino will be remembered. And yet, as Poland under her conquerors has gone from disaster to disaster, the tradition of struggle by patience and stealth has replaced the tradition of chivalry. Last week a Western diplomat, commenting on the stories of subterranean terror by both left and right in Poland, said: "The Poles fight better underground."

Of all the disasters in the long road from Poland's 16th-Century grandeur to its present ruin, the most grievous was World War II and its aftermath. Cities and towns have been looted and burned. The entire country has been shoved by the Soviet bulldozer some 200 miles westward across Europe. Even now the country still lies on the Red Army lines to Germany; every Polish provincial capital has a Russian garrison which lives off the land. But under the burden, life is rebuilding.

Warsaw, 90% destroyed and almost deserted, is now a busy, noisy, dirty city of half a million (prewar pop. 1,300,000). It is hard at work erecting new houses and bridges. Its thousands of rubble-framed stores sell radio sets, toys, butter, Dutch cheese, cameras, furniture, sausage, cigarets and wines. Its streets are packed with raucous vendors selling bread, jewelry, plumbing fixtures, haberdashery.

In the villages, where two-thirds of Poland lives, people are desperately poor, but quietly pleased with land reform (6,000,000 acres have been redistributed among 382,000 peasant families)--and yet displeased because their individual share (five to 25 acres) has not been greater. They grouse: "Too large to be buried in, too small to live on."

Out of Poverty. The villager presents the sharpest picture of how far Poland must yet go to rise out of abject poverty. A TIME correspondent visited little Dobrzanowice and reported:

"We talked to 40 kids in their cold schoolroom. Only three had eaten meat during the previous two days; only four had had milk that morning, 25 had had no bread, only gruel.

"I talked to a few of the villagers. The richest had 22 acres, the poorest little more than an acre. The village had three radio receiving sets. A half-dozen farmers read a newspaper regularly. Most were very much interested in politics. Except for one Communist and one Socialist, all were solidly for Mikolajczyk's party.

"Almost to a man the peasants are against collectivization a la russe; they sniff at official 'favors' for urban workers. They are thankful the Russians chased out the Germans, but they will be glad when the last Red Army man pulls out. As a practical countryman put it:

" 'Under the Germans we had to deliver 480 liters of milk per cow per year. The Russians take only 160 liters. Grain deliveries are in the same proportion. It is still not easy, but it is much better.' "

Out of Chaos. The wreck of national economy can be expressed as 3,000,000 cattle left out of a prewar 10,000,000. Public finances are in chaos, inflation out of control. Transport, coming out of paralysis, is still the economy's worst bottleneck.

Five million transients (almost a quarter of the population) clog the roads, seeking a new place in the homeland. Some of those uprooted from the Soviet-seized lands in the east to the once-German lands in the west are uneasy. "How long will these new frontiers last?" they ask. "In a few years the Germans will chase us out again. Then we have nothing."

The shifting population, the economic distress stimulate disorder and crime. Political murders in recent months number at least 3,000, perhaps as many as 10,000. The Bezpieczenstwo (security police), under Security Minister Stanislaw Radkiewicz, does not admit the murders charged by London and Washington. But it does admit that it stages at least 150 major raids monthly and that it has jailed at least 10,000 "enemies of the people"--a Communist Catchword for political opponents. It blames the terror on the extreme nationalist, anti-Communist underground, links it to its bete noire, General Wladyslaw Anders, commander of the Polish Army in Italy, and symbol of the old Poland.

Through the political melee three main parties, all of which reject Anders as a reactionary, are wrestling to a decision.

The Polish Workers Party (as the Polish Communists label themselves) claims 220,000 members. It still controls all key posts (police, foreign affairs, economics, foreign trade), dominates the nation's life.

Until a year ago its leader was President Boleslaw Bierut, 54, a veteran Communist, who now, because of his official position, adopts an air of aloofness towards rough-&-tumble politics. Currently, the party's most brilliant performer is Industry Minister Hilary Mine (rhymes with quince), 41, a blond, bespectacled intellectual who spent the war years teaching economics in Russia. He drafted the drastic Nationalization Bill. His avowed objective is "the liquidation of feudalism and also capitalism in Poland." The son of a wealthy Warsaw businessman, Mine was brought up in comparative luxury. Old Madame Mine used to brag about her eccentric boy. "My Hilary," she would tell her friends, "started showing Communist leanings at a very early date. When he was 17, he would never light a cigaret before offering one to our maidservant."

The party's strongman is a onetime oilfield mechanic, stocky Vice Premier Wladyslaw Gomulka (party name "Wies-law"), 41, who says: "We are carrying out a revolution. ... In the interests of democracy, order and also expediency, we must accommodate open vocal opposition. It will be much more dangerous if we suppress it."

Meanwhile, Gomulka & Co. have issued a handy decree setting up courts-martial (no appeal, sentences executed in 24 hours, penalties from one year in prison to death) for all crimes against public security, public order or the economic interests of the state.

The Polish Socialist Party is pledged to cooperate with the Communists in a united front. Its leader is Premier Edward Osubka-Morawski, 37, the slim, boyish left-winger whom everyone regards as honest but whom no one regards as strong.

The Polish Peasant Party, with Mikolajczyk at the helm, last month showed where it stands in the official coalition. In Warsaw's only remaining auditorium, the Roma movie theater, 444 Deputies to the Polish Provisional National Council gathered to legalize the revolution. Communist Mine proposed to nationalize all essential industries and all others employing more than 50 workers. Mikolajczyk did not oppose the bill. He asked that it be moderated by raising the limit of workers from 50 to 100. When his amendment was defeated, 17440-82, his party joined in voting for the original measure, which will make 40% of the nation's industrial workers employes of the state. The session ended with all the delegates on their feet, singing the Internationale and the tragedy-encrusted anthem Jeszcze Polska Nie Zginela (Poland Is Not Yet Lost).

The scene was typical of Mikolajczyk's situation and tactics. His middleway program of land reform, limited nationalization, friendship with Russia (he once said: "Stalin knows Poland well. We get along. ... I think he is the kind of a man I can do business with") and warm relations with the Western democracies is undoubtedly popular. But even with the people supporting him, he dares not risk a showdown with the party-line left wing, as long as Russia's Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky has some 200,000 Red Army men in Poland. And he must bear in mind that the left wing can manipulate the electoral machinery through a single list (a device to lump all votes under a united front) or by postponement of the ballot. At the earliest, says the left wing, the election cannot be held before June i, and some time in 1947 might be preferable. On Mikolajczyk's willingness to join a single list with the united front the election date may well depend.

Whatever his decision, it will be not only for party but for country. This month Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, like every Pole, will celebrate the 200th birthday of the nation's greatest peasant leader, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, who once said: "All that the Poles have done . . . and all that they will still do in the future to gain back their country . . . proves that albeit we, the devoted soldiers of that country, are mortal, Poland is immortal."

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