Gomu?ka, W?adys?aw

Gomu?ka, W?adys?aw (1905–1982) leader of Communist underground in Poland W?adys?aw Gomu?ka was born near Krosno, Poland, to a Socialist oil field worker and his wife. Gomu?ka joined the Socialist youth movement, then, in 1926, became a member of the clandestine Communist Party of Poland. He worked as a professional union organizer and, during the 1930s, organized strikes throughout Poland. Arrested in 1932, he was sentenced to four years of imprisonment but was released in 1934 because of his poor health. He left Poland for Moscow, where, during 1934–35, he studied at the International Lenin School. Returning to Poland, he resumed revolutionary agitation in Silesia. Arrested again in 1936, he was sentenced to seven years of imprisonment, a fortuitous incarceration that allowed him to escape execution when Joseph Stalin dissolved the Communist Party of Poland in 1938. Gomu?ka was released, however, during the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and participated in the defense of Warsaw. He then moved to the Soviet-occupied portion of the country and found work in a paper mill in Lvov. With the invasion of the Soviet Union and outbreak of war between Germany and the USSR in 1941, Gomu?ka resumed his Communist political activities, organizing the Communist under-ground in and around Krosno. He moved to Warsaw in July 1942 and became district secretary and a member of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers' Party. Working within this organization, he planned and executed attacks against the Nazi occupiers. When the party's secretary general was arrested in November 1943, Gomu?ka took over, wrote the party's ideological manifesto, and established the National Home Council, which became the basis for Communist domination of the provisional government after the liberation of Poland. In January 1945, Gomu?ka was appointed deputy premier of the provisional government, and in June, after the surrender of Germany, he was given responsibility for the administration of all Polish lands now recovered from Germany. During the postwar years, Gomu?ka ruthlessly rose to dominate Polish politics, clashed bitterly with Stalin, was stripped of all power, and was imprisoned. In 1954, a year after Stalin's death, he was released, and began his rise anew. He served as first secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish Communist Party from 1956 until 1970, when he was forced into semiretirement.