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In the factories, as party control has slipped, so has production. Unpopular bosses have been roughly ridden out of town in wheelbarrows, and there have been some near lynchings. The mood of the country has not been improved by the 36,000 prisoners released from U.B. prisons and the 16,000 Poles repatriated from Soviet slave-labor camps, each with a bitter story of Soviet brutality. To these must be added the serious preachments of the score of Polish correspondents who were in Budapest during the Soviet siege and, unable to publish their stories in their own newspapers for fear of offending the Soviet leaders, are now touring the country telling workers, peasants and students what happened in Hungary. Russian street names are torn down, and banners appear: "Stop Soviet Domination." At Bydgoszcz last week an anti-Soviet demonstration ended with an attack on the police station, and for a few hours, until troops were brought in, the rioters controlled the city.
It is Poland's present acceptance of Gomulka that prevents another Poznan riot from flaring up into a general revolt like that in Hungary. But if such a revolt should take place, Poland's intellectuals, students and soldiers would play a key part just as their counterparts did in Budapest. But what would Gomulka's role be? Would he play Nagy or Kadar? The answer to the question lies somewhere in Gomulka's curious balance between Communism and patriotism.
Burn & Crush. The twelve years of Soviet depredations which have impoverished Poland to the point of desperation are part of a deliberately conceived Russian policy not very different from that of the Czars. Through 400 years the great powers surrounding Poland, seeking to exploit its estates and mines, have sought to crush Polish independence. From Russia's Ivan the Terrible, who invaded under the pretext of "gathering in of the Russian lands," to Sweden's Charles XII, whose declared Polish policy was "burn, destroy, rob and arrest," the invaders, as though fearing Poland's unquenchable spirit, have sought a "final solution."
In the 18th century Poland was partitioned on three occasions, the third partition being successfully resisted for a time under the leadership of the Polish patriot Kosciuzko, only to fall to Russia, Austria and Prussia again. The Congress of Vienna gave Poland nominal independence, but after a period of "watchful waiting" the Russians were back again with a program of wholesale executions and Russification. Napoleon had used Poland ("my second Polish war") as an excuse to attack Russia, but it was Otto von Bismarck, master of Realpolitik, who saw Poland's festering hatred of Russia as a means of keeping the great eastern power in bounds. "If one helped the Poles a little, they could rise in revolt and win their freedom," he whispered to Italy's Premier Crispi.