With communist rule being relaxed in neighbouring countries, the PZPR systematically lost support and was forced to negotiate with the opposition and adhere to the Polish Round Table Agreement, which permitted free democratic elections.

Until 1989, the PZPR held dictatorial powers (the amendment to the constitution of 1976 mentioned "a leading national force") and controlled an unwieldy bureaucracy, the military, the secret police, and the economy.

The Political Bureau established during the Unification Congress included: Bierut, Jakub Berman, Józef Cyrankiewicz, Hilary Minc, Stanisław Radkiewicz, Adam Rapacki, Marian Spychalski, Henryk Świątkowski, Zambrowski and Aleksander Zawadzki.

It is believed that it was Joseph Stalin who put pressure on Bolesław Bierut and Jakub Berman to remove Gomułka and Spychalski as well as their followers from power in 1948.

[8] Bolesław Bierut, an NKVD agent[9] and a hardline Stalinist, served as first Secretary General of the ruling PZPR from 1948 to 1956, playing a leading role in imposing communism and the installation of its repressive regime.

General Emil August Fieldorf, as well as 40 members of the Wolność i Niezawisłość (Freedom and Independence) organisation, various Church officials and many other opponents of the new regime including Witold Pilecki, condemned to death during secret trials.

Bierut's mysterious death in Moscow in 1956 (shortly after attending the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) gave rise to much speculation about poisoning or a suicide, and symbolically marked the end of Stalinism era in Poland.

Yet, in connection with the strengthening of the sole rule of Bolesław Bierut, the deliberations were largely dominated by aggressive criticism of Władysław Gomułka and people from his circle.

After the events of Poznań June, they successfully backed the candidature of Władysław Gomułka for First Secretary of party, thus imposing a major setback upon Natolinians.

The centrist Edward Ochab, who enjoyed the full trust of the Kremlin, was elected First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party.

Gomułka, who was formally re-elected to the position of First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party, sharply criticized the leaders of the Chinese communists for their splitting activities.

On November 11-16 of that year, the 5th Congress of the Polish United Workers' Party was held with the participation of Leonid Brezhnev, Walter Ulbricht and Todor Zhivkov.

[19] Gierek promised economic reform and instituted a program to modernize industry and increase the availability of consumer goods, doing so mostly through foreign loans.

Unable to refer to the condemned times of Gomułka, they reached for the tradition of the fifties, glorifying people from that period such as Bierut and Rokosowski, a situation which led to the decade of the seventies being sometimes called "Stalinism without terror".

Besides himself, Edward Babiuch, Henryk Jablonski, Mieczyslaw Jagielski, Jaroszewicz, Jaruzelski, Wladyslaw Kruczek, Stefan Olszowski, Franciszek Szlachic, Jan Szydlak and Jozef Tejchma became members of the Political Bureau.

[23] This short-term development was accompanied by a careful policy of indoctrination and total ordering of the society of the PZPR, whose institutional and ideological monopoly was expanded throughout the decade.

The ranks of the PZPR grew rapidly: in 1970 it had 2.3 million members, the party was the price paid for promotions, careers, and its activists gained the title of "owners of the PRL".

[25] At that time, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party issued "guidelines" regarding the nomenclature of management staff, which by the end of the decade included half a million people.

Its existence and functioning proved the party's total monopoly, and at the same time exposed the superficiality of the state, administrative and scientific structures operating in the Polish People's Republic.

Detailed lists included positions whose appointment was dependent on the "recommendation" of a given party body - from the Political Bureau to the city and district committees.

On 15 February of that year, the 13th Plenum of the Central Committee was held, devoted to the topic of "Ideological and educational tasks of the party in the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the People's Republic of Poland".

Gierek delivered the programmatic report of the Political Bureau "for further dynamic development of socialist construction - for higher quality of work and living conditions of the nation".

On 9-10 June 1981, amidst much social and economic unrest, the IX Plenum of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party convened, under an attack by the "concrete", demanding a change of leadership to a more decisive one.

Jaruzelski, preparing an operation to win over some of the opposition as jointly responsible for the terrible state of the country, removed six activists from the fifteen-member Political Bureau of the Central Committee, considered to be "hardliners", i.e. those opposed to the planned talks at the Round Table.

The regime used this incident to its own ends and two days later Ciosek, in a conversation with Mazowiecki and Father Orszulik, presented the dispute at the Central Committee session as a dangerous attempt at a coup aimed at restoring the rule of an iron fist.

By the close of the tenth plenary session in December 1988, the Polish United Workers Party was forced, after strikes, to approach leaders of Solidarity for talks.

Jaruzelski was unsuccessful in convincing Wałęsa to include Solidarity in a "grand coalition" with the Communists and resigned his position of general secretary of the Polish United Workers Party.

The PZPR' two allied parties broke their long-standing alliance, forcing Jaruzelski to appoint Solidarity's Tadeusz Mazowiecki as the country's first non-communist prime minister since 1948.

[33] The former activists of the PZPR established the Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland (in Polish: Socjaldemokracja Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej, SdRP), of which the main organizers were Leszek Miller and Mieczysław Rakowski.

Up to the end of the 1980s, it had considerable incomes mainly from managed properties and from the RSW company ‘Press- Book-Traffic’, which in turn had special tax concessions.