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Unlike Czechoslovakia's Slansky, Hungary's Rajk and Bulgaria's Kostov, who went to the gallows after dutifully confessing their party errors, there was no great public show trial of the Polish "Titoist" Gomulka. One of the reasons for this was that the stubborn Gomulka could not be broken, stubbornly refused to make an abject confession. Fearing that some of his ad-lib remarks in court might involve others in their wartime duplicity, his Politburo comrades found reasons to delay Stalin's orders for a trial. They delayed the arrangements so long that Stalin died before the trial could take place.
Send for Gomulka. With the old Dictator's death came that "wavering" in Soviet power which he had always feared. When destalinization got out of hand, the long-disciplined Polish intellectuals broke loose. The unrest spread to the workers and peasants. All Stalin's successors could think of was to order Jakub Berman and other hated leaders to disappear. Party Secretary Bierut died fortuitously in Moscow, Deputy Premier Mine took ill. In July came the riots at Poznan. Someone in Moscow remembered Gomulka, the one man who, because of his war record, his persecution, but most of all his patriotism, could perhaps win public sympathy and stem the rising tide of revolt. Ailing Gomulka was taken from his cottage and sent to Sochi on the Black Sea for recuperation. But when the Politburo invited him to become party secretary he said: "I do not wish to enter your Politburo. The Politburo I enter will have to be changed entirely."
They offered him various heads on a platter, but held out on Marshal Rokossovsky because they were afraid of Russian reaction. Gomulka was unmoved. "You fear the Russians?" he said. ''It is only necessary to know how to handle them. I remember when in 1944 Comrade Bulganin, at that time Soviet military commander in Poland, arrived in Lublin and sent word that I should call on him immediately. I told the general, 'If the general is in such a hurry, let him come to me.' Imagine, he arrived some minutes later with a smile on his lips."
But Gomulka had his chance to get tough with the Russians a few weeks later when Moscow took umbrage at his cavalier firing of Marshal Rokossovsky. A delegation of the Soviet Party Presidium came flying into Warsaw and Khrushchev stepped out, arms flailing, shouting insults at the Poles. Gomulka was calm. When Khrushchev asked, "Who is that?" Gomulka replied, "It is I, Gomulka, the man you sent to jail." The Russians' coup de théâtre flopped because one of Gomulka's supporters had taken the precaution of arming the workers of the Zeran works, and another, the new secret police boss, had put a discreet cordon of tanks around the parliament house and changed the guard at Radio Warsaw. After listening patiently to Khrushchev's harangue, Gomulka said quietly: "Now it is my turn. I don't want to speak here, but in a radio studio. Tonight I am going to tell the people the truth—what you're demanding and what we're refusing." Khrushchev climbed down, agreed to talk over pressing economic questions later in Moscow.