Stanisław Mikołajczyk

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Stanisław Mikołajczyk

Stanisław Mikołajczyk [ staˈɲiswaf mʲikɔˈwaɪ̯ʧɨk ] (born July 18, 1901 in Holsterhausen-Amt Eickel , Westphalia province , † December 13, 1966 in Washington DC , USA ) was a Polish politician. He was Prime Minister of the Polish government in exile during World War II and Deputy Prime Minister of Poland after the end of the war.

Life

youth

His family owned a farm in the Poznan Province , historic Greater Poland . He was born in the Ruhr area , where his parents worked. In 1908 his mother went back to the home farm with him.

As a teenager he worked in a sugar beet factory and was active in the patriotic organization Sokół . Poland gained independence when he was 18 years old. In 1920 he joined the Polish Army and fought in the Polish-Soviet War . After being wounded near Warsaw in 1921, he took over the management of the family farm.

Party politician

From 1921 Mikołajczyk was active in the Polish Peasant Party ( Polish Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe , PSL), wrote for agricultural and peasant magazines. After holding a few offices in the Poznan provincial government, he was elected the youngest member of the Sejm in 1933 . In 1935 he became deputy chairman of the Executive Committee of the PSL, in 1937 he became party chairman. He was an active opponent of the authoritarian regime that was established in Poland after the death of Józef Piłsudski in 1935.

After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Mikołajczyk joined the Polish army and took part in the defense of Warsaw as a private . After the Wehrmacht conquered Warsaw, he fled to Hungary , where he was interned. He escaped again and went to Paris via Yugoslavia and Italy . Immediately after his arrival he was asked to make himself available to the Polish government in exile as deputy chairman of the Polish National Council. In 1941 he was appointed Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister under Władysław Sikorski .

prime minister

After Sikorski's death in a plane crash in July 1943 , Mikołajczyk was appointed Prime Minister. In his introductory speech, which was also broadcast for occupied Poland with British help, he said: We don't want to see a mere formal democracy in Poland, but a social democracy that not only safeguards political, religious and individual freedoms, but also social and political freedoms economic freedom. These are the four freedoms Franklin Delano Roosevelt really spoke about. In any case, there is and will not be a place in Poland for any form of totalitarian government.

But Mikołajczyk faced major challenges. At the time of his inauguration it was clear that it was not the Western Allies but the Soviet Union who would liberate Poland from German occupation. The government-in-exile feared, however, that Stalin intended to impose communism on Poland and to annex those eastern territories of Poland in which the majority of the population was Ukrainian or Belarusian.

In April 1943, the German government announced that the Wehrmacht had found mass graves with the bodies of Polish officers in the Katyn forest. While the Soviet Union declared that the Germans had forged the Katyn massacre and that the Western Allies did not publicly contradict this version for diplomatic reasons, the Polish government in exile demanded clarification. An occasion for the Soviet Union to withdraw recognition from the government-in-exile and to build up a new pro-Soviet leadership for the future Poland.

Differences with Churchill and Stalin

In July 1944, at the instigation of Winston Churchill , the western allies tried to initiate talks between Mikołajczyk and Stalin. The talks failed because of irreconcilable differences of opinion: it was impossible to agree on responsibility for the Katyn massacre or on post-war European borders. Stalin demanded of him to accept the annexation of the former eastern Poland to the Soviet Union. Poland could get German territories to compensate for this. Mikołajczyk refused to accept this proposal. He also insisted that Stalin should not set up a communist government in post-war Poland.

Vice Premier

After the talks, Stalin agreed to a coalition government for the liberated areas of Poland. The Socialist Edward Osóbka-Morawski became Prime Minister of the newly created Provisional Government of National Unity . Communist Party leader Władysław Gomułka became one of two deputy prime ministers. Mikołajczyk resigned as Prime Minister of the government-in-exile in November 1944, he returned to Warsaw and became the second Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture in the new Polish government.

Many Polish exiles were convinced that the new government was just a facade behind which communist rule in Poland was being built. The Polish government in exile therefore continued to exist, even if it was no longer recognized by the Western powers as the legitimate government of Poland.

Mikołajczyk immediately began to revive the Polish Peasant Party (PSL) , which within a few months became the strongest party in Poland. In May 1946 it had 800,000 members. Mikołajczyk was helped by the radical land reform that was implemented with the help of the communists. It created a new class of small farmers who became a permanent base of the PSL. Knowing that they would never win free elections in Poland, the Polish communists began to do everything possible early on to prevent them, although Stalin had promised them at the Yalta conference .

In June 1946, referendums were held in Poland on a number of subjects. The PSL decided to oppose the referendum to abolish the Senate to test the strength of the communists. Two-thirds of voters supported Mikołajczyk's PSL, but the Communist-dominated Ministry of the Interior issued fake election results claiming otherwise. Between the referendums in June 1946 and the parliamentary elections in January 1947, the PSL was subjected to ruthless persecution. Hundreds of their candidates have been prevented from campaigning.

The Polish parliamentary elections in 1947 brought 394 seats for the Communist-controlled Democratic Bloc and 28 seats for the PSL. Everyone knew that it was massive election fraud. Mikołajczyk resigned as deputy prime minister and left the government.

Escape to the USA

When he was threatened with arrest in April 1947, he left Poland. The Polish government-in-exile in London regarded him as a traitor because he had formed a coalition with the communists. So he emigrated to the USA. In 1948 he was elected chairman of the international farmers' union , the Green International . The organization represented emigrated farmers from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. He held this position until 1964.

Mikołajczyk died in Washington DC in 1966. In June 2000, his remains were transferred to Poland. They were laid out in public in the Warsaw Royal Castle and then reburied in Poznan. His documents are kept at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University in the USA.

Fonts

  • The war on freedom. From the memoirs of Stanislaw Mikołajczyk, former Polish Prime Minister . Der Tagesspiegel publishing house, Berlin-Tempelhof 1948
  • The Rape of Poland: Pattern of Soviet Aggression . Whittlesay House [u. a.], New York [u. a.] 1948
  • The Pattern of Soviet Domination . Sampson Low, Martson & Co., London 1948

literature

  • Andrzej Paczkowski: Stanislaw Mikołajczyk, czyli kleska realisty . Agencja Omnipress, Warszawa 1991, ISBN 83-85028-82-X
  • Roman Buczek: Stanislaw Mikołajczyk . Century Publ. Co., Toronto 1996
  • Janusz Gmitruk: Stanislaw Mikołajczyk: trudny powrót . Muzeum Historii Polskiego Ruchu Ludowego, Warszawa 2002, ISBN 83-87838-59-4
  • Wolfgang Viehweger: "Stanislaw Mikolajczyk - Fighters for Freedom" Ed .: Society for local history Wanne-Eickel / Herne,

published by FRISCHTEXTE Verlag, Herne 2014, ISBN 978-3-933059-51-2

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Mikołajczyk, Stanisław
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish premier in exile, member of the Sejm
DATE OF BIRTH July 18, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Holsterhausen , Germany
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 1966
Place of death Washington, DC , USA