The Second Step of a Ladder: The Cult of the First Secretaries in Poland

Abstract

In communist Poland not only was Boleslaw Bierut surrounded by a cult, but there were also attempts to manufacture an atmosphere of adoration, modelled on comrade Tomasz’s cult, around Wladyslaw Gomulka, Edward Gierek and Wojciech Jaruzelski.² But between the leader cult of the Stalinist era and the cults of the party secretaries after 1956 there was a significant difference, with an obvious desacralisation of the first secretary’s image. One might question as to whether regarding Gomulka’s rule in the 1960s it is possible to speak of a leader cult, or perhaps only of a ‘specific court culture’, more akin to the presumptions of monarchical authority.³ Was the celebration of Gomulka’s birthday in 1965 a renewal of his crumbling charisma, or rather the strengthening of his authority? If one follows Max Weber’s definition of charisma, one should consider the creation of an atmosphere of boundless worship, quasi-religious in form, as applying only to Stalin and his Polish ‘faithful pupil’ Bierut, while the word ‘authority’ or rather ‘authoritarian rule’ would apply to Gomulka, Gierek and Jaruzelski better. In reality, however, it is difficult to point precisely to a place where the manufacturing of authority ended and charisma began. In the Polish case the Communist Party’s ability to stake a claim to charismatic authority was complicated by the real authority and popular support wielded by the Catholic Church.

In writing this chapter I have drawn on seminar essays of students attending Professor Marcin Kula’s seminar at Warsaw University History Institute in 1999/2000. Those who assisted in my research were: Jakub Dąbrowski, Michał Oziękłowski, Łukasz Stokłowski, Elżbieta Wiązowska, Magdalena Agnieszka Zając and Hubert Zakrzewski