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Stanisław Mikołajczyk | |
|---|---|
 Mikołajczyk in 1946 | |
| Prime Minister of Poland | |
| In exile 14 July 1943 – 24 November 1944 | |
| President | Władysław Raczkiewicz |
| Deputy | Jan Kwapiński Jan Stanisław Jankowski |
| Preceded by | Władysław Sikorski |
| Succeeded by | Tomasz Arciszewski (Polish government-in-exile) Edward Osóbka-Morawski (in country) |
| Deputy Prime Minister of Poland | |
| In office 28 June 1945 – 6 February 1947 | |
| President | Bolesław Bierut |
| Prime Minister | Edward Osóbka-Morawski |
| Preceded by | Stanisław Janusz |
| Succeeded by | Antoni Korzycki Aleksander Zawadzki Hilary Minc Hilary Chełchowski Stefan Jędrychowski Tadeusz Gede |
| Minister of Agriculture and Agricultural Reforms | |
| In office 28 June 1945 – 6 February 1947 | |
| President | Bolesław Bierut |
| Prime Minister | Edward Osóbka-Morawski |
| Preceded by | Edward Bertold |
| Succeeded by | Jan Dąb-Kocioł |
| Leader of thePolish People's Party | |
| In office 31 October 1945 – 27 October 1947 | |
| Preceded by | Wincenty Witos |
| Succeeded by | Józef Niećko |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 18 July 1901 |
| Died | 13 December 1966 (aged 65) Washington, D.C., United States |
| Party | People's Party Polish People's Party |
Stanisław Mikołajczyk (Polish:[staˈɲiswavmikɔˈwajt͡ʂɨk]ⓘ; 18 July 1901 – 13 December 1966) was aPolish politician. He was aprime minister of thePolish government-in-exile duringWorld War II, and laterDeputy Prime Minister in post-war Poland until 1947.
Mikołajczyk's family came fromPoznań in western Poland, which in the 19th century was part of theGerman Empire and known as theProvince of Posen. He was born inWestphalia in western Germany, where his parents had gone to look for work in the wealthy mining regions, as many Poles—known asRuhr Poles—did in the 19th century. He returned to Poznań as a boy of ten.
As a teenager, he worked in asugar beetrefinery and was active in Polish patriotic organisations. He was 18 when Poland recovered its independence, and in 1920 he joined thePolish Army and took part in thePolish–Soviet War. He was discharged after being wounded near Warsaw and returned to inherit his father's farm nearPoznań.
In the 1920s, Mikołajczyk became active in thePolish People's Party "Piast" (PSL), and after holding a number of offices in the government of Poznań province, he was elected to theSejm (the Polish Parliament) in 1929. In 1935, he became vice-chairman of the executive committee of the PSL, and in 1937 he became party President. He was an active opponent of the authoritarian regime established in Poland after the death ofJózef Piłsudski in 1935.
WhenNazi Germanyinvaded Poland in September of 1939, Mikołajczyk was aprivate in the Polish army,[1] and served in thedefence of Warsaw. After the fall of Warsaw he escaped to Hungary, where he was interned.[2] He soon escaped and made his way to Paris via Yugoslavia and Italy.[2] By the end of November, Mikołajczyk had reached France where he was immediately asked to join thePolish government in exile as deputy Chairman of thePolish National Council.[3] In 1941, he was appointed Minister of the Interior and became Prime MinisterWładysław Sikorski's Deputy Prime Minister. In April 1943, the Germans had announced that they had discovered the graves of almost 22,000 Polish officers who had beenmurdered by the Soviets at Katyn. The Soviet government said that the Germans had fabricated the discovery. The Allied governments, for diplomatic reasons, formally accepted this, but Mikołajczyk's government refused to do so, andStalin then severed relations with the government in exile.
When Sikorski was killed in a plane crash in July 1943, Mikołajczyk was appointed as his successor.[4] "We do not wish to see only a formal democracy in Poland," he said in his broadcast to Poland on taking office, "but a social democracy which will put into practice not only political, religious and personal freedom but also social andeconomic freedom, theFour Freedoms of whichFranklin Delano Roosevelt spoke so finely. In any case, there is and will be no place in Poland for any kind oftotalitarian government in any shape or form."
However, Mikołajczyk faced daunting challenges. It was obvious by this time that the Soviet armed forces, not those of the western Allies, would seize Poland from German occupation, and the Poles feared that Stalin intended both imposingCommunism on Poland and annexingPoland's eastern territories.
During 1944 the Allied leaders, particularlyWinston Churchill, tried to bring about resumption talks between Mikołajczyk and Stalin, but these efforts broke down over several issues. One was the Katyn massacre. Another was Poland's postwar borders. Stalin insisted that the eastern territories should remain in Soviet hands. Mikołajczyk also opposed Stalin's plan to set up a Communist government in postwar Poland.
As a result, Stalin agreed that there would be a coalition government in the Soviet seized territories of Poland. A Socialist,Edward Osóbka-Morawski, became Prime Minister of the newProvisional Government of National Unity, and the Communist leaderWładysław Gomułka became one of two Deputy Prime Ministers. Mikołajczyk resigned as Prime Minister of the government in exile to return to Poland and become the other Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Agriculture. Many of the Polish exiles opposed this action, believing that this government was a façade for the establishment of Communist rule in Poland. The government in exile maintained its existence, although it no longer had diplomatic recognition as the legal government of Poland.
Following his return, Mikołajczyk immediately set about reviving thePSL, which soon became by far the largest party in Poland. Some have argued he was further aided by the radicalland reform pushed through in accordance with the PPR's[clarification needed] project, because it "created a new class of small farmers who became a firm political base for the PSL." Poland had been a largely rural society in any case and Mikołajczyk's programme was not a conservative smallholder programme. The Communists knew they would never win a free or fair election in Poland, and so they set about preventing one, despite the nominal pledges given by Stalin at theYalta Conference.
In June 1946, the3xTAK referendum was held on a number of issues. The PSL decided to oppose the proposal calling for the abolition of the Senate as a test of strength against the Communists: two-thirds of voters supported Mikołajczyk, but the Communist-controlled Interior Ministry issued faked results showing the opposite result.
Between then and theJanuary 1947 general elections, the PSL was subjected to ruthless persecution, and hundreds of its candidates were prevented from campaigning. From 1946 to 1948, military courts sentenced 32,477 people, most of them members of democratic parties, for 'crimes against the state'. Only then the elections were held. In order to be sure that the elections would produce the 'correct' results, the Polish security apparatus recruited 47% of the members of electoral committees as agents.[5][6]
The elections produced a parliament with 394 seats for the Communist-controlled "Democratic Bloc" and 28 for the PSL, a result which everyone knew could only be obtained through massive electoral fraud. Indeed, the opposition claimed that it would have won as much as 80 percent of the vote had the election been conducted in a fair manner.[7]
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Mikołajczyk, who would have likely becomePrime Minister had the election been honest, immediately resigned from the government in protest. Facing arrest, he left the country in October. Winston Churchill, upon seeing him in London, remarked: "I am surprised you made it out alive." In London, the Polish government in exile regarded him as a traitor for having co-operated with the Communists. He emigrated to the United States, where he died in 1966.
In June 2000, his remains were returned for burial in Poland. His papers are in theHoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace atStanford University.
A film,The Right to Vote (O Prawo Głosu, 2008, directed by Janusz Petelski), tells the story of Mikołajczyk's (played byAdam Ferency) struggle.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Prime Minister of the Polish Republic in Exile 1943–1944 | Succeeded by |
