Communist Party of Poland
[1] The views adhered to and promulgated by the leaders of the KPP (Maria Koszutska, Adolf Warski, Maksymilian Horwitz, and Edward Próchniak) led to the party's difficult relationship with Stalin.
[4] The Communist International (Comintern) condemned the KPP for its support of Józef Piłsudski's May Coup of 1926 (the party's "May error").
In 1935 and 1936, the KPP undertook a formation of a unified worker and peasant front in Poland and was then subjected to further persecutions by the Comintern, which also arbitrarily accused the Polish communists of harboring Trotskyists elements in their ranks.
The apogee of the Moscow-held prosecutions, aimed at eradicating the various "deviations" and ending usually in death sentences, took place in 1937–38, with the last executions carried out in 1940.
KPP members were persecuted and often imprisoned by the Polish Sanation regime, which turned out to likely save the lives of a number of future Polish communist leaders, including Bolesław Bierut, Władysław Gomułka, Alfred Lampe, Edward Ochab, Stefan Jędrychowski, and Aleksander Zawadzki (among former KPP members transferred during World War II from the Soviet Union to Poland for conspiratorial work were Mieczysław Moczar and Marian Spychalski).
During the fighting, the KPRP's legal status was legislatively taken away; the communist party would remain an underground organization in Poland until its demise.
Due to the support for the government provided by pro-independence socialists of the PPS, efforts by the KPRP to agitate for workers' solidarity with the Red Army were forestalled.
Gains in membership were initially made from the ranks of the reformist workers' organisations and in the late 1920s from a left-wing faction of the PPS, led by Stanislaw Lancucki and Jerzy Czeszejko-Sochacki.
In the area of operation of KPP proper (western and central Poland numerically dominated by ethnic Poles), 22–26% of the members were Jewish, according to the party sources.
[3] In 1922, the leadership consolidated around Adolf Warski, Maksymilian Horwitz, and Maria Koszutska of the "majority" faction, more moderate and dominant in the party until at least 1924.
An electoral list called the "Union of Town and Country Proletariat" was constructed and the party managed to win 130,000 votes and two parliamentary seats in the legislative election of November 1922.
Within the Communist International (Comintern), the Polish leaders aligned with Grigory Zinoviev and not with the embryonic Left Opposition.
[13] During Piłsudski's May coup, the KPP engaged in street battles with troops loyal to the government of Wincenty Witos, which it called fascist.
In the aftermath, two representatives of the Comintern were placed on the Polish party's Central Committee: the Finn Otto Wille Kuusinen and the Ukrainian Dmitry Manuilsky; the KPP was no longer in a position to exercise any independence of thought and action.
[15] Despite the internal factional struggles, the party grew during this period, attracting support from the minorities and among the working class.
Endorsed by the KPP's Fifth Congress in 1930, the Third Period saw the party routinely describing the PPS as fascist and revolution was claimed to be imminent.
The Dąbrowski Battalion, named for the hero of the Paris Commune, was led by the KPP but counted among its members many PPS workers and other non-KPP volunteers.
In the mid and late 1930s, the KPP became a victim of paranoia and suspicion that engulfed the communist movement led by Joseph Stalin.
Among those killed were: Albert Bronkowski, Władysław Stein-Krajewski, Józef Unszlicht, Adolf Warski, Maria Koszutska, Maksymilian Horwitz, Julian Leszczyński, Stanisław Bobiński, Jerzy Heryng, Józef Feliks Ciszewski, Tomasz Dąbal, Saul Amsterdam, Bruno Jasieński, and Witold Wandurski.
