Behind the Golden Curtains

"All our misery," said a defense lawyer in a tense Poznan courtroom last week, "stems from the fact that we have not told the truth for many years and that now we must tell it." Then, as the court handed down a series of lenient sentences (18 months to 6 years, and some suspensions) on young men charged with the heinous crime of fighting against the Communist authority, all Poland began to feel that the time might soon come when the truth about Poland would be told. Said an old Communist, blighted by years of purgings: "This is the beginning of a renaissance of justice in Poland."

This was the frame of mind which the Polish Communists had deliberately set out to create when they decreed free and fair trials, unprecedented in a Communist country, for the rioters of Poznan.

Party on Trial. But the trial had got out of hand as accused and witnesses, conscious of their wide audience, poured out evidence of the people's hatred of their Communism. Typical was the testimony last week of a witness who told how, on the fateful day of the workers' riots, he had heard shouts of "Away with the dictatorship" and "Away with the occupation," and had seen people destroying court records, judges' robes and golden chains of legal office. "Why is there so little respect for justice in our country?" this witness asked.

By a subtle alchemy of words, it was no longer the young men but the Communist Party on trial. This was made even clearer when the prosecution described the young men as "criminal elements who had dirtied the workers' demonstration." "It is not the accused who have fine cars to go on mountain holidays and nice apartments," retorted a defense lawyer. "The accused are certainly closer to the working class than those [i.e., the Communist elite] who hide behind their golden curtains."

No one was surprised when the government halted the public spectacle last week. The trials (of 22 defendants in 2 1/2 weeks) had served their purpose by giving expression to two momentous conflicts that are now going on in Poland. One is the already old and durable struggle between the Polish people and their oppressors. The other is a new and ferocious conflict among the Polish Communists themselves.

A section of the Polish Communist Party is committed to a course of liberating Poland, not from Communism but from the brand of Communist satellitism thrust on Poland by the Russians. These "liberal" Communists are young and few in number outside Warsaw, though for the moment they wield a dominating influence in the regime. They are handicapped, first by the fact that Stalin's purging of the Polish party has left them few competent leaders, and secondly by the fact that the Polish people are in no mood to make a distinction between "good" and "bad" Communists. The Poznan trial was an effort to establish what the "liberal" Communists believe to be a valid distinction.

In Search of Heroes. Despite powerful opposition from a large number of unreconstructed Stalinists, the "liberals" scored notable victories in the recent demotions of Police Boss Stanislaw Radkiewicz, Kremlin Agent Jacob Berman and Economic Czar Eugene Szyr. Last week they forced out of office Deputy Premier Hilary Mine (rhymes with wince), a doctrinaire Stalinist responsible for much of the repressive economic measures of the last six years. The new forces are now gathering around the figure of onetime Vice Premier and Party Leader Wladyslaw Gomulka, who recently emerged from the obscurity to which he was banished by Stalin seven years ago for his Titoist, i.e., independent, tendencies. Because he bears no responsibility for the savage oppression that distinguished the last years of Stalin's reign, granite-faced Gomulka is something of a hero today, not only among Polish party members, but to a public long-starved of popular heroes. Gomulka is being carefully built up as national Communist leader and at the Party Congress next March is expected to take over his old office of Party Secretary. It is conceivable, although not by any means certain, that he can lead the "liberals" to a decisive break with Russia and a kind of Titoist independence. So far, all the evidence from Poland has pointed to a struggle over purely internal affairs, but there was at least a small hint last week of a new and independent foreign policy. In 1947 the U.S. offered Poland Marshall Plan aid, but before the Poles could accept, the plan was slapped down by Stalin. A leading Polish Communist editor wrote in Poprostu that the Communist Party line opposing the Marshall Plan had been wrong. The Polish Communists, looking ahead to the day when they might achieve independence, were possibly thinking how the U.S. might then aid them, as it has aided Yugoslavia.

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