Many Poles, almost literally, loved Edward Gierek. Completely different feelings towards him were felt by his party colleagues who removed him from power in September 1980. And then they prepared a fate worse than that of many opposition political prisoners.
Gierek's ten-year term as the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party ended with the shock of the birth of Solidarity in August 1980. In December of the same year, he was removed from the Central Committee. In the spring, a special party commission was established, chaired by the secretary of the Central Committee, Tadeusz Grabski. Its main task was to find the culprits of the August crisis.
As a result of her work, Gierek was struck with the strongest blow - in July 1981, during the PZPR congress, he was expelled from the party . Interestingly, Grabski's committee did not apply for it at all, leaving the decision in the hands of the party assembly. This provision was therefore the result of popular belief, and not the result of political pressure from a narrow group.
"Now I will show you how it ends up"
While the debates regarding the final dismissal of Gierek were underway, he ended up in a government clinic with symptoms of a heart attack. It was there, at the Institute of Cardiology in Warsaw in Anin, that he learned about the decision he had made outside of it. After losing power - unlike his predecessor Gomułka - Gierek immediately fell victim to a real political campaign. And it is mainly on the part of one's own environment.
It was here, in the Anin hospital in Warsaw, that Edward Gierek learned about the loss of power. For the leaders of the People's Republic of Poland, deprivation of the highest office in the state was often such a blow that they ended up in the hospital with a suspicion of a heart attack (like Gierek) or a stroke (like Gomułka).
The story told by the politician himself is significant in this context. Shortly after the end of the government, Gierek called the new first secretary, Stanisław Kania, from whom he was to hear the following words:
Comrade Gierek, do you recall how you and Jaroszewicz wanted to finish me off? You may have forgotten it, but I remember and now I'll show you how it ends. You will remember me until you die .
It is not known how true this story is, but one fact remains undeniable:subsequent events confirm the thesis about the planned political revenge on the former First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party.
The fact that Gierek was liked in the society did not protect him from the revenge of his political rivals within the party. The photo shows Edward Gierek visiting the state-owned farm in Rząśnik while he was still the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party.
Only Gierek was treated like that
It started with pointing out to the man the alleged luxuries in which he was supposed to live with his family during the exercise of his function. There were rumors in Poland that his wife was flying to her Parisian hairdresser . There were also a number of formal accusations regarding Gierek's political activities.
Removal from the communist party did not happen to any other 1st secretary and was a phenomenon not only in the history of the People's Republic of Poland, but also in the history of all Eastern bloc countries. It was certainly the most severe political punishment for a man at the time.
After losing power, not only Gierek himself but also his family were humiliated. There were rumors about the life of the former First Secretary in great luxury and about his wife's plane trips to ... a hairdresser. The photo shows Stanisław and Edward Gierków during the Party Deed Day in Warsaw (1974). The photo comes from the book by Leszek Wysznacki "Warsaw from liberation to our days".
As if this was not enough humiliation, on the night of December 12-13, 1981, when martial law was imposed across the country, the police knocked (or basically hammered) on the door of the former First Secretary. Edward Gierek was interned . This is how he recalled those events:
They shuffled us from place to place all week to finally take us to our permanent place of residence. It was near Drawsko, in the village of Głębokie. On the other side of the lake, in better conditions, former Solidarity activists (...) were chased away from at least a platoon of Zom soldiers with dogs and machine weapons directed at us (...) The building (...) was significantly devastated. There was only one urinal and one toilet open. .
Zdzisław Grudzień, whose death shocked Gierek, was a member of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party and the Political Bureau. After the imposition of martial law, interned; he died because he was not given medical treatment. In the photo December at a meeting with members of the staff of the Coal Mine Sosnowiec in 1973.
After a month of staying in these terrible conditions, one of Gierek's companions, Zdzisław Grudzień, died. Only then were the inmates sent to a better developed center near Warsaw. In December 1982, Gierek was released home. However, he was still under constant surveillance. The campaign continued.
Revenge of the blind crow
In the second half of the 1980s, he was sued for the alleged appropriation of a plot of land and a house in Silesia. Due to the lack of evidence, the case was eventually discontinued, but the propaganda message in this situation was unequivocal: the former leader of the PZPR is an embezzler and a fraud .
It is worth noting that the attack lasted basically throughout the reign of Wojciech Jaruzelski. Some believe that the general's reluctance was due to the fact that years ago Gierek refused to grant him the rank of Marshal of Poland. Gierek himself claimed that he blocked that promotion because he was not satisfied with the pressure from the USSR in this matter.
Better times for the former first secretary came only after the breakthrough of 1989. In 1990, an interview by Janusz Rolicki was published, entitled "Przerwana dekada". The book became a hit and can be described as a real bestseller of the Third Polish Republic.
The grave of Edward and Stanisława Gierek at the cemetery in Sosnowiec-Środula. The former First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party died at the age of 88.
Gierek was then over eighty years old and his health problems made him feel more and more strongly. The former First Secretary fell ill with pneumoconiosis, a chronic respiratory disease caused by prolonged inhalation of dusts. It was the result of many years of work in the mine. On July 29, 2001, Edward Gierek died. He was 88 years old .
Nearly 10,000 people attended the funeral at the Sosnowiec cemetery. At that time, part of the society still longed for the rule of Gierek, which - according to the conditions of the People's Republic of Poland - is considered to be "golden times". After all, to this day he is the most liked of the leaders of the communist era.
Bibliography:
- Eisler Jerzy, The Magnificent Seven. First secretaries of the PZPR Central Committee , Warsaw 2014.
- Gajdziński Piotr, Gierek. The Coal Man , Poznań 2014.
- Rolicki Janusz, Edward Gierek. The life and birth of a legend , Warsaw 2002.
- Rolicki Janusz, An Interrupted Decade, Warsaw 1990.