Sejm election in Poland in 1947
The parliamentary elections in Poland in 1947 took place on January 19, 1947. It was the first election after World War II . The elections were massively falsified and were intended to formally legitimize the communist seizure of power.
History of choice
The party system in the Soviet occupation Poland
In World War II, Poland was by the Red Army conquered. Since the Communist Party of Poland had been dissolved as part of the Stalinist "purges" in 1938, Moscow founded the Polska Partia Robotnicza (PPR) as the new Communist Party of Poland. Its general secretary Bolesław Bierut was also chairman of the Lublin Committee , the provisional government of Poland from 1944.
In addition to the PPR, other parties were admitted in the course of 1944 and 1945. On the one hand, this served to create the appearance of party pluralism ; above all, these new parties were intended to give the communists access to the layers of the people that they themselves could not reach (the CPP had been a splinter party before the war). The new parties were based on the parties of the interwar period . However, they were all under the control of the PPR. The
- Polish Socialist Party (Polish Polska Partia Socjalistyczna , PPS)
- Stronnictwo Ludowe "Wola Ludu" (SL) (a communist split from the Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe ("Bund der Bauernpartei"))
- Stronnictwo Demokratieyczne (SD) (Democratic Party)
In addition, the Stronnictwo Pracy (SP), which had retained some independence, and the Polish People's Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe, PSL), which was the only one able to play the role of an opposition. The PSL, which saw itself as the successor to Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe and thus as a party of the rural population, was shortly after its founding the largest party in the country; in May 1946 it had 800,000 members.
All bourgeois parties were not allowed under the pretext that they were "fascist".
The Yalta Conference
At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Poland was added to the Soviet sphere of interest . The Western powers dropped the Polish government in exile and gave Joseph Stalin a free hand. However, free elections had been agreed in Yalta . Due to the mood in the population and based on the results of the parliamentary elections in Hungary in 1945 (which the farmers' party, the Independent Party of Small Farmers, Farmers and the Bourgeoisie had won by a huge margin) and the state elections in the Soviet Zone in 1946 , it was clear that free elections would be a victory for the PSL would effect.
The 1946 referendum
Instead of the elections actually planned for 1946, a referendum was scheduled for June 30, 1946 . In it, the population was supposed to give their consent to three fundamental decisions of the communist regime (all three of the questions were formulated in such a way that an answer in the sense of the regime meant a yes; therefore the campaign for the referendum also ran under the slogan "three times yes").
The question was:
- the abolition of the Senate ,
- the nationalization of the main economic sectors and the implementation of agricultural reform,
- the Oder-Neisse border .
The vote gave the communists the opportunity to exercise their potential to suppress the opposition. Similar to later in the elections, PSL supporters were systematically arrested and forced out of their positions, advertising against the referendum was suppressed and the count was falsified.
The official approval rates were 68%, 77% and 91.4% yes-votes.
According to the opposition, 27% voted three times yes, but 33% voted no three times. The opposition was only represented in three of the 17 district electoral boards and in 1,800 of the 21,000 district electoral boards, which is why the estimates of the correct result are only based on random samples.
According to research by Prof. Andrzej Paczkowski, 30.5% of voters in the western and northern regions of the country voted "yes" to the first question, 44.5% to the second and 68.3% to the third.
The formation of the electoral bloc
At first the PPS tried to force the PSL to agree to a " choice " according to unit lists. There, PPR, PPS, PSL and SL should each receive 20% and SP and SD each 5% of the mandates. Since this would have meant a two-thirds majority for the communists and their vassals, this was unacceptable to the PSL.
So a block of four made up of PPR, PPS, SL and SD competed against the PSL and SP. According to the Communists' plans, the PPR and PPS were to receive 32%, the SL 25% and the SD 10% of the mandates. The elections should be rigged in such a way that the opposition would collectively only get 15%. Stalin changed the results personally: Now PPR and PPS each accounted for 31%, SL 27% and SD 11%.
Reprisals and election fraud
Stalin's target could only be achieved with massive repression and election fraud . First, the electoral rolls were "cleaned up" . The electoral law contained rubber paragraphs according to which collaborators with the National Socialists and fighters against the (communist) regime ( e.g. Armia Krajowa or the members of the Polish resistance who remained loyal to the London government in exile) were to be struck off the electoral roll. Over half a million voters were deprived of the opportunity to vote. 98 PSL candidates were also affected by the deletions.
In preparation for the election fraud, the election commissions were extremely one-sided. As a rule, they consisted exclusively of PPR members or members of the block parties. In none of the 52 district commissions was even a representative of the PSL represented. In the 6,726 district commissions, the PSL was only approved in 296 and did not have the chair anywhere. Even where PSL representatives sat in the district commissions, they were almost always refused to take part in the vote count. PSL representatives were only allowed to count in 35 electoral districts (the PSL's share of the vote in these districts then averaged 62% of the votes!).
The next instrument was the non-admission of many PSL candidates.
The closer to election day, the more violent was the terror against the opposition supporters. Over 80,000 members of the PSL were arrested on flimsy grounds surrounding the election, and around 100 of them were murdered by security forces ( Urząd Bezpieczeństwa , UB).
On election day itself, members of the PPR took the voters in groups to the polling stations, where they cast their votes collectively and publicly. Individual and secret voting was possible, but these voters had to stand in long queues. Security forces were present at each polling station and noted the form of voting.
However, none of these measures could prevent a majority of 60 to 70% of voters from voting for the opposition. These figures are not official, but are extrapolated from the fragmentary information on actual voting behavior. In his report to Josef Stalin, the KGB agent Aron Palkin , who was involved in the election fraud, reported that the real results for the bloc would have been around 50% of the vote. The opposition, on the other hand, assumed 80% opposition votes.
In order to guarantee an election victory for the bloc and to suggest a high voter turnout, forged ballot papers were thrown into the polls at the electoral district level. The election results obtained in this way were not published, but only given to the Central Election Commission for control. This "corrected" deviations from the final result specified by Josef Stalin and distributed votes and mandates between the parties and electoral districts until exactly the specified result was achieved.
The top candidates
Bolesław Bierut
Stanisław Mikołajczyk Tadeusz Michejda
(Official) election results
| Political party | be right | % | Seats |
|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic bloc | 9,003,682 | 80.1 | 394 |
| Polish People's Party | 1,154,847 | 10.3 | 28 |
| Stronnictwo Pracy | 530.979 | 4.7 | 12 |
| Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe "Nowe Wyzwolenie" | 397.754 | 3.5 | 7th |
| Local lists | 157.611 | 1.4 | 3 |
| Invalid votes | 96,610 | - | - |
| total | 11,341,483 | 100 | 444 |
| Eligible voters / turnout | 12,701,058 | 89.3 | - |
| Source: Nohlen & Stöver | |||
consequences
With the "election" the co-ordination of the remaining opposition parties had begun. After the PSL was brought into line in 1948, the “peasant parties” SL and PSL merged to form “ Zjednoczone Stronnictwo Ludowe ” (ZSL) as a satellite party of the communists and participated in the national united front (comparable to the “democratic bloc” in the GDR). For the next 40 years, only sham elections were carried out according to unit lists. Semi-free elections to the Sejm were not held again until June 4 and 18, 1989 .
literature
- Andrzej Kaluza: The Polish party state and its political opponents 1944-1956 . 1998, ISBN 3-465-02769-8 , pp. 64-84
Web links
- Results of the 1947 election
- Pułkownik Pałkin raportuje: Sfałszowanie wyborów w Polsce never zbulwersowało opinii Zachodu.
- Wybory 1947 Instytut Pamięci Narodowej
- Jak sfałszowano pierwsze powojenne wybory . Polityka, 20 stycznia 2007 r.
Individual evidence
- ^ D Nohlen , P Stöver: Elections in Europe: A data handbook . 2010, ISBN 978-3-8329-5609-7 , p. 1491
- ↑ Czesław Osękowski: Referendum z 30 czerwca 1946 r. na ziemiach przekazanychPolsce po II wojnie światowej . In: Dzieje Najnowsze, Rocznik XXVII . 1995, ISSN 0419-8824 , p. 95. Retrieved October 21, 2014.
- ↑ Barbara Polak: Do wyborów w 1947 r. PSL wchodzi już mocno osłabione. ( Memento from November 25, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Cena Wygranej. Biuletyn IPN , No. 1 - 1.2002 (Polish)
- ↑ CHH.pl "Domena internetowa e-hurtownia.pl . Konstytucje.pl. Archived from the original on September 28, 2006. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved August 22, 2009.
- ↑ Dariusz Baliszewski: Wprost 24 - Demokracja urn . Wprost.pl. Archived from the original on February 8, 2009. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved August 22, 2009.
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