He served as the seventh and final First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party from 1989 to 1990.

He began his political career in 1946 as a member of the Polish Workers' Party, and from 1948 to 1990 he was a member of the communist Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR), serving on its Central Committee from 1975 to 1990.

[1] Rakowski served as the second-to-last communist Prime Minister of Poland from September 1988 to August 1989 (Czesław Kiszczak then served less than a month as the last Communist to hold the post, before the accession of Tadeusz Mazowiecki).

However, he was not, unlike his predecessors, the de facto leader of the country; the PZPR had given up its monopoly on power in early 1989.

[3] Prior to becoming Prime Minister, he had been divorced from the violinist Wanda Wiłkomirska, with whom he had two sons.