Stronnictwo Ludowe "Wola Ludu"

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Stronnictwo Ludowe “Wola LudU” (German: farmers party “Volkswille”, SL for short) was a communist bloc party in Poland from 1944 to 1948 .

history

In 1944 some communist members split off from the peasant movement under the name "Wola Ludu" (German will of the people). This resulted in the Stronnictwo Ludowe "Wola Ludu", which in the party structure of communist Poland had the function of integrating the rural population into the new communist dictatorship.

In November 1944, the party joined the newly created Central Understanding Commission of the Democratic Parties ( Centralna Komisja Porozumiewawcza Stronnictw Demokratycznych ), which was supposed to ensure the hegemony of the PPR over the other parties,

The SL received the agriculture department in the PKWN . Minister was Andrzej Witos . The deputy chief of the ministry was a member of the PPR for control purposes. Land reform was a key issue in this policy area. The SL spoke out in favor of waiting with a land reform until after a victory the German eastern territories captured by the Germans to be driven out would also be ready for distribution. The PPR, on the other hand, was interested in giving land to as many peasants as possible and pushed through an immediate distribution of the expropriated property in the areas controlled by the Red Army. This was a tactical measure: the real goal of the PPR was a collectivization of agriculture, which was rejected by the SL.

As a result of this discussion, Witos was dismissed as minister and the party newspaper "Zielony Sztandar" was confiscated. The PPR feared for its hegemony over the SL. At the Politburo meeting of the PPR on October 9, 1944, Bolesław Bierut referred to the SL as an “enemy” and supported the thesis that the SL assumed “characteristics of the opposition”.

On the side of the SL, Stanisław Kotek-Agroszewski resisted the measures of the censorship authority and criticized the PPR's hegemony efforts . The SL was then forced to remove him from his party offices by means of a SL party court that consisted of people loyal to the PPR. This was possible because the PPR had sent its own members to the block parties to ensure control of the PPR there. The third member of the SL in the PKWN was Jan Czechowski .

With the approval of the PSL on August 22, 1945, the situation for the SL changed fundamentally. The PPR had initially tried to bring about a merger of the two farmer parties. In the common party, the offices should be distributed equally. Stanisław Mikołajczyk initially rejected such parity due to the different sizes of the parties. Despite the propaganda of the PPR that Mikołajczyk had sacrificed the unity of the peasant movement, the PSL grew rapidly, but the SL fell into disrepair.

Now the PPR changed the strategy: A merger of the farmers' parties, in which the SL would be marginalized, was no longer pursued. Instead, the SL's weakness served to control the PPR over them. She was allowed to keep her functions and mandates.

After the experience of the elections in Hungary in November 1945 , in which the Peasant Party had received 57% of the vote, the socialist rulers decided to rely on massive election fraud in the first election to the post-war Sejm on January 19, 1947 .

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. PPR and PPS should receive 32%, SL 25% and SD 10% of the mandates. The elections should be rigged so that the opposition would get 15%. Stalin changed the results: Now PPR and PPS each accounted for 31%, SL 27% and SD 11%. After massive election fraud, the official final result showed 80.1% for the “Democratic election bloc”, 10.3% for the PSL and 4.7 for the SP.

After this election result, the SL received 109 seats in the Sejm .

In the presidential election in Poland in 1947 , the SL MPs (like the other parties in the bloc) supported Bolesław Bierut.

After the DC circuit of the PSL in 1948, the "peasant parties" merged to Zjednoczone Stronnictwo Ludowe (ZSL). This communist satellite party was active in the National United Front until the fall of the Wall in 1989 (comparable to the “ Democratic Bloc ” in the GDR).

literature

  • Andrzej Kaluza: The Polish party state and its political opponents 1944–1956, 1998, ISBN 3-465-02769-8 , pp. 46–94