ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the process of interaction between the Polish United Workers’ Party and the Polish military. This is both an easy and a difficult task. The stage of cooptation coincides roughly with the period of communist takeover of Poland which began in 1944 and ended in 1949. The period of 1949–56 coincided with the process of sovietization and subjugation of the Polish military which followed roughly the conventional Stalinist pattern that was also imposed on the other satellite countries in the region. The partial recovery of the military’s standing and prestige that reached its peak in October 1956, and ultimately led to a process of accommodation with the Polish United Workers’ Party was an integral part of the process of destalinization that in Poland appeared to have started later than in the rest of the Soviet bloc.
