Promoting the ‘China Way’ of communism in Poland and beyond during the Sino-Soviet Split: the case of Kazimierz Mijal

Abstract

Kazimierz Mijal – a promoter of the “China Way” in Polish communism during the Sino-Soviet split – was not only a nuisance to Warsaw’s leadership domestically but had a certain effect on international politics within the communist world. He was used as a political tool by both Albania and China, and complicated Poland’s delicate diplomacy with both Beijing and Moscow. His long biographical and personal journey – forced but also intentional, grounded in belief and shaped by geopolitics – embodies contradictions and paradoxes of the international communist movement which often spread beyond the reach and control of the Kremlin during the cold war.

Keywords:

• China
• Poland
• Soviet Union
• Kazimierz Mijal
• Sino-Soviet split

Notes

¹ See especially Alexander C. Cook, ed. Mao’s Little Red Book: A Global History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). The volume devotes chapters to East Germany, Albania, and Yugoslavia, as well as Western European, Asian, and African countries.

² Biuletyn Informacji Publicznej, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej [The Institute of National Remembrance, hereafter: IPN]. https://katalog.bip.ipn.gov.pl (Accessed 19 February 2017).

³ Kazimierz Mijal, Autobiography, November 1946, Archiwum Akt Nowych [Archives of Modern Records in Warsaw, hereafter AAN], Akta Osobowe [Personal Files] 3985 [hereafter: Mijal, Autobiography], 1–2.

⁴ Ibid., 4.

⁵ Ibid., 6.

⁶ M. K. Dziewanowski, The Communist Party of Poland: An Outline of History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976) and Gabriele Simoncini, Ethnic and Social Diversity in the Communist Party of Poland, 1918 – 1938 (Hoover Institution, Stanford University Press, 1992).

⁷ Mijal, Autobiography, 5–6; Władysław Gomułka (Andrzej Werblan, ed.), Pamiętniki, tom II (Warszawa: Polska Oficyna Wydawnicza ‘BGW’, 1994), 259.

⁸ Mijal, Autobiography, 13–16; Gomułka, Pamiętniki, tom II, 159.

⁹ Ibid., 17–19; Ibid., 343; 368. On the formation of the communist rule in Poland after WWII, see: Piotr Gontarczyk, Polska Partia Robotnicza: Droga do władzy, 1941–1944 (Warszawa: Fronda, 2006); Krystyna Kersten, The Establishment of Communist rule in Poland, 1943–1948 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991); Andrzej Paczkowski, Zdobycie Władzy 1945–1947 (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Szkolne i Pedagogiczne, 1993); Anita Prażmowska, Civil War in Poland, 1942–1948 (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

¹⁰ See especially, Shen Zhihua and Yafeng Xia, Mao and the Sino-Soviet Partnership, 1945–1959: A New History (Harvard Cold War Studies) (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015).

¹¹ Andrzej Paczkowski, Spring Will Be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University, 2003), 205.

¹² ‘Ostatni Towarzysz,’ Robert Mazurek, Interview conducted with Kazimierz Mijal in 2001. This was the last major interview given by Mijal. https://tj1111.wordpress.com (Accessed on 11 November 2015). [Hereafter: Mazurek, Interview with Mijal, 2001].

¹³ Mieczysław F. Rakowski, Dzienniki Polityczne, 1958–1962 (Warszawa: ISKRY, 1998), 88.

¹⁴ Antoni Marek, ‘Kazimierz Mijal – Dogmatic Diehard or Political Adventurer,’ 6 June 1967. https://www.osaarchivum.org/files/holdings/300/8/3/text/42-3-217.shtml (Accessed May 13, 2011); Piotr Gontarczyk, et al., eds. Marzec 1968 w dokumentach MSW Tom I, Niepokorni (Warszawa: IPN, 2008), 699.

¹⁵ Grzegorz Sołtysiak, ‘Żołnierze Partii.’ Gazeta Wyborcza, 11 December 1993; Robert Skobelski, PRL wobec państw socjalistycznych w latach 1956–1970: współpraca-napięcia-konflikty (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 2010), 40–41.

¹⁶ Mazurek, Interview with Mijal in 2001.

¹⁷ Li Danhui and Xia Yafeng, Mao and the Sino-Soviet Split, 1960‒1973: A New History (forthcoming 2017); Jeremy Friedman, Shadow Cold War: the Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2015); Austin Jersild, The Sino-Soviet Alliance: An International History (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2014); David Tompkins, ‘The East is Red? Images of China in East Germany and Poland through the Sino-Soviet Split’ in Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 62/3 (2013): 393–424; Shen Zhihua and Li Danhui, After Leaning to One Side: China and Its Allies in the Cold War (Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Centre, 2011); Sergey Radchenko, Two Suns in the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962–1967 (Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Centre, 2009); and Lorenz M. Lüthi, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Odd Arne Westad, Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945–1963 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998).

¹⁸ Elidor Mëhilli, ‘Mao and the Albanians,’ in Mao’s Little Red Book, 165–184; Elidor Mëhilli, ‘Defying De-Stalinisation: Albania’s 1956,’ Journal of Cold War Studies 13, No. 4 (2011): 4–56 and Mircea Munteanu, ‘When the Levee Breaks: The Impact of the Sino-Soviet Split and the Invasion of Czechoslovakia on Romanian-Soviet Relations, 1967–1970,’ Journal of Cold War Studies 12, No. 1 (2010): 43–61; Larry L. Watts, ‘A Romanian INTERKIT? Soviet Active Measures and the Warsaw Pact “Maverick” 1965–1989,’ Working Paper No. 65 (Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Centre, December 2012).

¹⁹ Shen and Li, After Leaning to One Side, 165.

²⁰ ‘Secret, Note from the CC CPSU re: recent Sino-Soviet relations,’ AAN, KC PZPR: XIA/86, p. 332–345; Confidential, „Soviet Comrades and the current policy of the Chinese leadership (Internal Summary of the informational-instructional material received from the Soviet embassy in Berlin, 22 March 1972), Archiwum Ministerstwa Spraw Zagranicznych [Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Warsaw, hereafter AMSZ] Dept. II, Chiny, z-24/76, w-2; James Hershberg, Sergey Radchenko, Peter Vamos, and David Wolff, ‘The Interkit Story: A Window into the Final Decades of the Sino-Soviet Relationship,’ CWIHP Working Paper No. 63, Woodrow Wilson Centre, Washington, D.C., April 2011.

²¹ Margaret K. Gnoinska, ‘Czechoslovakia and Poland: Supervising Peace on the Korean Peninsula, 1953–1955,’ Journal for the History of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (Slovansky Prehled), 98 (2012): 293–320; Margaret K. Gnoinska, ‘Poland, Intra-Communist Dynamics, and the Second Geneva Conference on Laos, 1961–1962’ in L’échec de la paix. The Failure of Peace in Indochina (1954–1962), ed. Christopher E. Goscha and Karine Laplante (Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2010), 305–325; and Margaret K. Gnoinska, ‘Poland and the Cold War in East and Southeast Asia, 1949–1965’, (PhD diss., The George Washington University, 2010), 167–260; 452–517; and 643–703 and Shu Guang Zhang, Economic Cold War: America’s Embargo against China and the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1949–1963 (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Centre Press, 2001), 165; Gnoinska, ‘Poland and the Cold War in East and Southeast Asia,’ 39–102.

²² Cable from the Chinese Embassy in Poland, ‘Polish Celebration of Our National Day, the Polish Communist Party’s Attitude toward China, and Our Views,’ 17 October 1961, PRC FMA 109–02311–01, 13–16, accessible at https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/119518.

²³ Li Danhui, ‘Guanyu 1960 Niandai Zhongguo Yu Dongou Wuguo Guanji Deruogan Wenti Laizi Zhongguo Dangan Wenxian De Xin Zhengju,’ Eluosi Yanjiu. 2011 No. 4, 105–129 [Li Danhui, ‘Several Issues in China’s Relations with Five East European Countries in the 1960s – New Evidence from Chinese Archives,’ Russian Studies No. 4 (2011): 105–129].

²⁴ ‘Dealing with China in the 1960s and the 1970s: Two Different Approaches by Władysław Gomułka and Edward Gierek’ in Enrico Fardella, Charles Kramer, and Christian Ostermann, eds. Same Dreams, Different Beds: Sino-European Relations and the Transformation of the Cold War (Stanford University Press/Woodrow Wilson Centre, forthcoming 2017).

²⁵ See especially, Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

²⁶ Political Report of the Polish Embassy in Beijing, 62.11.01–63.09.20, AMSZ, z-32/66, w-3, pp. 44–63; Top Secret Cable, Polish Embassy in Beijing, Ambassador Jerzy Knothe to Zenon Kliszko and Foreign Minister Adam Rapacki, 29 October 1963, AMSZ, z-6/77, w-105, t-614.

²⁷ Mazurek, Interview with Mijal, 2001.

²⁸ Walery Namiotkiewicz, Byłem Sekretarzem Gomułki (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Comandor, 2002), 43.

²⁹ ‘Józef Śnieciński’ in Gazeta Wyborcza, 13 May 1996. https://wyborcza.pl/1,75248,138749.html (Accessed 22 June 2015).

³⁰ Ibid.

³¹ Sołtysiak, ‘Żołnierze Partii,’ 1993.

³² Ibid.

³³ ‘Józef Śnieciński Collection’ obtained in 2013 by the Hoover Institution Archives of Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. https://pdf.oac.cdlib.org/pdf/hoover/2013C29.pdf.

³⁴ The actual authorship has been disputed by Mijal and Śnieciński, both claiming credit.

³⁵ Sołtysiak, ‘Żołnierze Partii’, 1993.

³⁶ IPN BU 0365/99 t. 1., Biuro Udostępniania i Archiwizacji Dokumentów, IPN; Sołtysiak, ‘Żołnierze Partii,’ 1993.

³⁷ Andrzej L. Sowa, Historia Polityczna Polski, 1944–1991 (Krakow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2011), 304.

³⁸ See, for example, Information 1/70/63 re: propagating and publishing materials of the embassies of the PRC and Albania, as well as some anti-party tendencies and activities of reactionary elements which are using [Sino-Soviet] divergences for harmful purposes], IPN, 0296–61 t.1, Tajne, Dept. III, 12 November 1963, MSW, p. 58 and See, for example, Quinn Slobodian, ‘Badge Books and Brand Books: the Mao Bible in East and West Germany,’ in Alexander C. Cook, Mao’s Little Red Book, 206–224. Comments by Dr. Bernd Schaefer at an International Conference, China and the World in Mao’s Last Decade, 1966–1976, The University of Hong Kong, 9–10 January 2009.

³⁹ Sowa, Historia Polityczna Polski, 1944–1991, 303.

⁴⁰ Mazurek, Interview with Mijal, 2001.

⁴¹ Zofia Strug, ‘Za Wielkim Sternikiem,’ [With the Great Helmsman], Nowy Robotnik, No. 3, 2002.

⁴² Franciszek Dąbrowski, Piotr Gontarczyk, and Paweł Tomasik, eds. Marzec 1968 w Dokumentach MSW: Tom 2 Kronika Wydarzeń, Część I (Warszawa: IPN, 2009), 353; 431.

⁴³ Namiotkiewicz, Byłem Sekretarzem Gomułki, 45.

⁴⁴ ‘Telegram from the Embassy in Poland to the Department of State,’ Warsaw, 19 November 1964, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume VVII, Eastern Europe.

⁴⁵ Document No. 19, ‘Transcript of Polish-Soviet Talks in Moscow, 13–15 April 1964, Secret of Special Significance,’ in Andrzej Paczkowski, Tajne Dokumenty Biura Politycznego PRL-ZSRR, 1956–1970 (London: Aneks, 1998), 220.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 220.

⁴⁷ Namiotkiewicz, Byłem Sekretarzem Gomułki, 45.

⁴⁸ ‘Poland’s “Chinese” Faction,’ Radio Free Europe (Munich) June 20, 1964, https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/poland/poland-chinese.pdf (Accessed 4 March 2017).

⁴⁹ Namiotkiewicz, Byłem Sekretarzem Gomułki, 43.

⁵⁰ Strug, ‘Za Wielkim Sternikiem,’ 2002.

⁵¹ Paczkowski, Spring Will be Ours, 295.

⁵² Ibid., 298.

⁵³ ‘The Programme of the Communist Party of Poland,’ Radio Free Europe (Munich), January 16, 1967 https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/poland/cpp-programmeprogram.pdf (Accessed 4 March 2017).

⁵⁴ See especially, Jerzy Eisler, ‘March 1968 in Poland,’ in Carole Fink, Phillip Gassert, and Detlef Junker, 1968, The World Transformed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Dariusz Stola, Kampania antysyjonistyczna w Polsce, 1967–1968 (Warszawa: IPN, 2000); Piotr Gontarczyk, et al., eds. Marzec 1968 w dokumentach MSW Tom I: Niepokorni (Warszawa: IPN, 2008); and Bożena Szaynok, Z historią i Moskwą w tle. Polska a Izrael 1944–1968 (Warszawa: IPN, 2007).

⁵⁵ Enrico Fardella, Charles Kramer, and Christian Ostermann, eds. Sino-European Relations During the Cold War and the Rise of the Multipolar World: A Critical Oral History (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Centre, 2015), 12–13; 71–72.

⁵⁶ Antoni Marek, ‘Kazimierz Mijal – Dogmatic Diehard or Political Adventurer?’ 26 June 1967, Radio Free Europe. https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/poland/cpp-diehard.pdf (Accessed 22 August 2016).

⁵⁷ Kazimierz Mijal – marksista bezkompromisowy, Interview conducted with Przemysław Gasztold-Seń on https://histmag.org/Kazimierz-Mijal-marksista-bezkompromisowy-10590 (Accessed 20 June 2015) [Hereafter: Marksista Bezkompromisowy].

⁵⁸ Mieczysław F. Rakowski, Dzienniki Polityczne, 1963–1966 (Warszawa: ISKRY, 1999), 350–357.

⁵⁹ Skobelski, PRL wobec państw socjalistycznych w latach 1956–1970, 156–161.

⁶⁰ Mazurek, Interview with Mijal, 2001.

⁶¹ Ibid.

⁶² Li Danhui, ‘Several Issues in China’s Relations with Five East European Countries,’ 105–129; on Bulgaria, see especially, Jordan Baev, ‘Bulgaria and the Coordination of the East European Policy Toward China after the Soviet-Chinese Discord (1960–1989), paper prepared for the “Interkit’ Workshop organised by FRIAS in Freiburg, Germany, May 12–13, 2011.

⁶³ ‘Transcript of Soviet-Polish Conversations in Moscow 10–15 October 1966, Secret,’ AAN, KC PZPR: XIA/83, pp. 373–474; also in Paczkowski, Tajne Dokumenty, 379.

⁶⁴ Ibid., 379.

⁶⁵ Top Secret Telegram, Piotr Jaroszewicz in Moscow to Władysław Gomułka and Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz in Warsaw, 26 February 1964, AMSZ, z-6/77, w-118, t-683.

⁶⁶ Interview by the author with Janusz Lewandowski (the Head of Asia Department within the Polish Foreign Ministry in the 1960s), 25 October 2006, Warsaw.

⁶⁷ Li Danhui, ‘Several Issues in China’s Relations with Five East European Countries,’ 105–129.

⁶⁸ Mazurek, Interview with Mijal, 2001.

⁶⁹ Marksista Bezkompromisowy (Accessed 12 November 2015).

⁷⁰ Ibid.

⁷¹ Chinese Endorsement of pro-Peking CP, 20 September 1968, Radio Free Europe Report. https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/poland/cpp-endorsement.pdf (Accessed 24 August 2016).

⁷² Sowa, Historia Polityczna Polski, 1944–1991, 304; Marksista Bezkompromisowy (Accessed 20 June 2015).

⁷³ Mieczysław F. Rakowski, Dzienniki Polityczne, 1967–1968 (Warszawa: ISKRY, 1999), 33.

⁷⁴ Mao Zedong met Kazimierz Mijal on December 21, 1966. See Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi, ed., Mao Zedong nianpu (yijiusijiu-yijiuqiliu), vol. 6, 18.

⁷⁵ Li Danhui, ‘Several Issues in China’s Relations with Five East European Countries,’ 105–129.

⁷⁶ Mazurek, Interview with Mijal, 2001.

⁷⁷ ‘Delegation of Communist Party of Poland Concludes Visit in China,’ Peking Review, No. 47, 21 November 1969. https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/poland/cpp-delegation.pdf (Accessed 4 March 2017).

⁷⁸ ‘The Communist Party of Poland is a Working-Class Party,’ released by the Communist Party of Poland and reprinted in The Beijing Review, 30 August 1968. https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/poland/cpp-working-class.pdf (Accessed 25 August 2016). and ‘Magnificent Victory of China’s Great Cultural Revolution Inspires Polish Working Class,’ Beijing Review, 18 October 1968. https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/poland/cpp-cr.pdf (Accessed 4 March 2017).

⁷⁹ See, for example, ‘Mijal’s Communist Party of Poland in the Chinese Media’ prepared by Dr. Jan Rowiński, Warsaw, 21 January 1976, AMSZ, Dept. II, Chiny, 22–1-75.

⁸⁰ Secret, Urgent Note of the Conversation between [Foreign Minister Stefan Jędrychowski] and the newly nominated PRC ambassador to Poland – Comrade Yao Guang on September 4, 1970], AMSZ, Chiny 1970, 46/75, w-1, pp. 1–5 and "Urgent Note Regarding ‘the Visit’ of K. Mijal in Beijing," January 31, 1975, Historyand Public Policy Programme Digital Archive. https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/117847 (Accessed 18 August 2016).

⁸¹ ‘Poland’s Communists Will Defeat Revisionist Rule – An Interview with Kazimierz Mijal, Chairman of the Communist Party of Poland,’ Class Struggle, No. 7, 1977, 113–119; ‘Theory of Three Worlds – Excerpts from an Article by Kazimierz Mijal,’ Beijng Review No. 51, 16 December 1977. https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/poland/3-worlds.pdf (Accessed 4 March 2017).

⁸² ‘They Condemned me to Passivity and Silence,’ an Interview with Kazimierz Mijal Revolution Vol 4. No.2 January 1980, https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/poland/cpp-interview.pdf (Accessed 4 March 2017).

⁸³ Enver Hoxha, Reflections on China II 1973–1977 (Tirana, Albania: «8 NËNTORI» PUBLISHING HOUSE,1979), 443–456.

⁸⁴ Mazurek, Interview with Mijal, 2001

⁸⁵ Ibid.