ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the development of the armed forces in Communist Poland. The growth over time of the role of the military in Polish politics may be analyzed with the help of a framework that distinguishes four separate stages in the military's development: cooptation, subordination, accommodation, and participation. In Poland, each of the changes in the military's role coincided with major phases in the process of the country's political development: nation- and state-building, participation, and subsystem autonomy. The chapter focuses on the stages of cooptation and subordination. The first step in the Communist takeover of Poland was the announcement on July 22, 1944, of the formation of the Polish Committee of National Liberation in the city of Lublin, which was the first major Polish city liberated by the Red Army. The period 1948-1953 coincided with the process of sovietization and subjugation of the Polish military that followed roughly the conventional Stalinist pattern also imposed on the other satellite countries.
