Zenon Nowak

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Zenon Nowak (born January 27, 1905 in Pabianice , † August 21, 1980 in Warsaw ) was a politician of the Polish United Workers' Party PZPR ( Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza ) in the People's Republic of Poland , who was Vice President of the Council of Ministers between 1952 and 1968. He was also ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1971 to 1978 .

Life

Party official, World War II and Vice Prime Minister

Zenon Nowak worked in a mine in Westphalia from 1917 to 1920 and as a farm worker after his return. He later worked in a weaving mill in Pabianice before he worked as a miner in mines in Silesia . In 1924 he joined the Communist Party of Poland at the time, KPP (Komunistyczna Partia Polski) . After the attack on Poland and the subsequent German occupation of Poland in 1939 , he was in a labor camp in the Sudetenland between 1942 and 1945 . After the end of the Second World War he joined the Polish Workers' Party PPR ( Polska Partia Robotnicza ) in 1945 and was a member of the Soviet Army from 1945 to 1947 . After his return to Poland he became a member of the party apparatus of the PPR and initially acted as secretary of the PPR committee in Poznan and then as first secretary of the PPR committee in Katowice .

At the 1st (founding) party congress of the PZPR (December 15-22, 1948) Nowak became a member of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party (ZK der PZPR) and was a member of this body until his death on August 21, 1980. Between 1948 and 1950 he was head of the Central Committee's department for cadres and then from 1950 to 1954 a candidate for the Central Committee's Politburo . On November 20, 1952, he became a member of the Sejm for the PZPR in constituency No. 54 Gliwice and belonged to it until November 20, 1956. On November 21, 1952 he was in the government of Prime Minister Bolesław Bierut Vice President of the Council of Ministers and was thus one of the Deputy Prime Ministers (Wicepremier) .

Politburo member, disempowered and ambassador to the USSR

At the Second Party Congress (March 10-17, 1954) he was elected a member of the Politburo, to which he belonged until the plenary session of the Central Committee on October 21, 1956. At this second party congress he admitted the total failure of the collectivization policy and proposed a radical change in agricultural policy. Nowak said at the time: “We have come to believe that we will not achieve our production goals without the work and support of the independent farmers. This is the simple reason why the government asks the party to every possible assistance for the individual processing of land, achieved the better in recent years results than the state collective farms. "In the second government of Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz he held then from March 18, 1954 to October 24, 1956 as Second Vice-President of the Council of Ministers and was then again Vice-President of the Council of Ministers in the second, third, fourth and fifth Cyrankiewicz government between October 24, 1956 and December 22, 1968. During the time of the Polish October 1956 he was in the power struggle within the PZPR next Franciszek Jóźwiak , Viktor Klosiewicz , Hilary Chełchowski , Aleksander Zawadzki , Władysław Kruczek , Władysław Dworakowski , Kazimierz Mijal , Franciszek Mazur , Bolesław Ruminski and Stanisław Lapot the influential Natolin- faction of . This so-called Natolin group was formed weeks ago on his initiative. The name comes from a small castle outside Warsaw that once belonged to Count Stanisław Kostka Potocki . After the Poznan uprising, the party's Stalinists met there for a secret conference, at which it was decided to return to "hard" methods. The Natolin group formed the Stalinist wing in the Central Committee, and it was Zenon Nowak who most vehemently opposed the removal of Konstantin Konstantinowitsch Rokossovsky from the Politburo in the morning session of October 19, 1956 .

Zenon Nowak's grave in the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw .

On May 15, 1961 Nowak was again a member of the Sejm in constituency no. 47 Pabianice and belonged to it until December 22, 1971, where he last represented the constituency no. 9 Białystok since June 27, 1969 . During the third to fifth legislative period (1961 to 1972) he was also a member of the Presidium of the PZPR parliamentary group . After leaving the government, he was chairman of the Central Party Control Commission of the PZPR between 1968 and 1971 and, at the same time, as the successor to Konstanty Dąbrowski from June 28, 1969 until his replacement by Mieczysław Moczar on June 22, 1971, President of the Supreme Control Chamber ( Najwyższa Izba Kontroli ) . He then succeeded Jan Ptasiński as ambassador to the Soviet Union in June 1971 and held this position until March 1978. The dismissal of the diplomat, which the Polish government had planned in 1976 , had repeatedly been delayed at the request of the Soviet Union . Protocol reason: The Pole, as the longest-serving diplomat also doyen of the Diplomatic Corps in Moscow, would have been replaced in this capacity by the Ambassador of the People's Republic of China to the USSR , Liu Xinquan , when he left, which the Moscow leadership for political reasons at any cost wanted to avoid. In August 1977 Beijing had replaced his husband in Moscow with Ambassador Wang Youping ; The new doyen was Robert Arthur Douglass Ford , the ambassador of Canada . After his return he was a member of the Presidium of the National Committee of the Front of National Unity FJN (Front Jedności Narodu) from 1978 until his death .

For his services, Nowak received the Order of Builders of People's Poland (Order Budowniczych Polski Ludowej) as well as the Order of the Banner of Labor (Order Sztandaru Pracy) First Class, the Order of Polonia Restituta (Order Odrodzenia Polski) as a commander with a star and the Soviet Order of the October Revolution . After his death he was buried in the Powązki cemetery in Warsaw .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Poland: Key Ministries in Rulers
  2. MOSCOW INVITATION / INTERNATIONAL: The fifth partition of Poland . In: Spiegel Online from June 29, 1955
  3. OSTBLOCK / WARSAW: O Poland, your torment! . In: Spiegel Online from October 31, 1956
  4. POLAND: Wolf as a shepherd. General Moczar, who tried twice to coup against party leaders, is disempowered. He has kept secret dossiers on the private enrichment of his top comrades, including Jaruzelski. . In: Spiegel Online from May 9, 1983
  5. PROFESSIONAL: Zenon Nowak . In: Spiegel Online of March 13, 1978