Józef Cyrankiewicz
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Józef Cyrankiewicz (April 23, 1911 - January 20, 1989) was a Polish communist political figure. He served as premier of the People's Republic of Poland between 1947 and 1952, and again between 1954 and 1970. He served as head of state of Poland from 1970 to 1972.
Born in Tarnów, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Cyrankiewicz attended Kraków's Jagiellonian University. He became the secretary of the local branch of the Polish Socialist Party in 1935.
[edit] World War II
Active in the Armia Krajowa, the Polish resistance, from the beginning of Poland's 1939 defeat at the start of World War II, Cyrankiewicz was captured by the Wehrmacht in the autumn of 1942 and sent to Auschwitz. He arrived on September 4, 1942, and received registration number 62,993.
Working closely with another prisoner, Witold Pilecki, against whom he would later testify in a Communist show trial leading to Pilecki's death, Cyrankiewicz organised a mass breakout. By the end of the year, they had 500 prisoners ready to overthrow the guards. However, a few inmates escaped by themselves on December 29, and the capture of a dentist by the Gestapo led to the revealing of the conspirators' plans. Pilecki escaped by feigning typhus and then running away from the hospital, but Cyrankiewicz would remain in various camps for the rest of the war. After a transfer to Mauthausen, Cyrankiewicz was eventually liberated by the US Army.
[edit] Rise to power
Following the end of the war, he became secretary-general of the Polish Socialist Party's central executive committee in 1946, and the following year, became premier. However, soon there was factional infighting in the Party and eventually it split in two: one faction lead by Cyrankiewicz, the other by Edward Osóbka-Morawski, who was also the head of the Polish government.
Osóbka-Morawski thought that the PSP should join with the other non-communist party in Poland, the Polish Peasant Party, to form a united front against communism.
Cyrankiewicz argued that the PSP should support the communists (who held most of the posts in the government) in carrying through a socialist programme, while opposing the imposition of one party rule. The communists played on this division in the PSP, dismissing Osóbka-Morawski and making Cyrankiewicz prime minister of the country.
Upon the formal merger of the Polish Socialist and Communist Parties in 1948, Cyrankiewicz was named secretary of the central committee of the new Polish United Workers' Party. By this time, there was little left of Cyrankiewicz the socialist, as evidenced during the 1956 upheaval following Nikita Khrushchev's "secret speech." He tried to repress the rioting that erupted across the country at first, threatening that "any provocateur or lunatic who raises his hand against the people's government may be sure that this hand will be chopped off."
Cyrankiewicz died in 1989, a few months before the collapse of the regime that he had served so faithfully.
[edit] See also
| Preceded by Edward Osóbka-Morawski |
Prime Minister of Poland 1947–1952 |
Succeeded by Bolesław Bierut |
| Preceded by Bolesław Bierut |
Prime Minister of Poland 1954–1970 |
Succeeded by Piotr Jaroszewicz |
| Preceded by Marian Spychalski |
Chairman of the Polish Council of State 1970–1972 |
Succeeded by Henryk Jabłoński |
 |
| Chairmen of the Polish Council of State |
| Bolesław Bierut • Aleksander Zawadzki • Edward Ochab • Marian Spychalski • Józef Cyrankiewicz • Henryk Jabłoński • Wojciech Jaruzelski |
