As the week began, the people of Poland were headily engaged in a life-and-death gamble with their nation's future. They had for the first time made a hero out of a Communist: taut, bald Wladyslaw Gomulka. He promised only to take . them on the "Polish road to Socialism." Now everything turned on whether or not the U.S.S.R. would accept the new order peaceably.
To this deadly contest of wills, 51-year-old Communist Gomulka brought the twin advantages of an iron nerve and an unpleasantly intimate knowledge of Moscow's methods. This was Gomulka's second appearance as first secretary of the Polish party; his first tour wound up in his imprisonment in 1951 on charges of Titoism. And he had risen to party leadership in the first place largely because he was one of the few prewar Polish Communists of any stature available when Poland fell under the domination of the Red army at the end of World War II. This lonely eminence he owed to the fact that he had been in a Polish prison in 1938 and hence unable to accept a pressing invitation to Moscow from Joseph Stalin. None of Gomulka's colleagues who made the trip returned alive.
This time Gomulka maneuvered with practiced adroitness to insure his own survival and that of Poland's newly proclaimed sovereignty. His supporters encouraged Polish crowds to give full vent to their exuberance at Gomulka's bold expulsion of Soviet Marshal Rokossovsky from the Politburo and Gomulka's personal defiances of Nikita Khrushchev (TIME, Oct. 29).
Most of these mob scenes, organized or spontaneous, began as what one Pole called "demonstrations of happiness." But as they continued, their temper turned bitter. In Wroclaw (formerly the German Breslau) demonstrating students who started off shouting "Long live Poland" gradually progressed to "Tell the truth about the Katyn murders"* and a steady chant of "Rokossovsky, go home." ("What do they want from me?" lamented the dejected Soviet proconsul. "After all, I was born in Poland and my parents are buried here.")
Chastened Caller. While his enemies in the party apparatus reeled under the mob's hostility, Gomulka quickly began to consolidate his new position. Though he did not yet dare to dismiss Rokossovsky from his other post as Defense Minister, Gomulka installed as Deputy Defense Minister General Marian Spychalski, who in 1951 was jailed along with Gomulka for Titoism.
From Moscow a chastened Khrushchev telephoned to make his peace. Like wildfire word spread through the country that Khrushchev had apologized for his intemperate outbursts during his flying visit to Warsaw the week before. Most important of all, he was now prepared to accept Gomulka's "national Communism."