Fission

The Polish Peasant Party, once the largest in Poland, began to show distinct signs of fission last week. Through the German occupation it stood stoutly against pressure from without; now it was splitting from pressure from within.

The pressure centered mainly about the greying heads of the two Peasant Party Ministers who had joined the new Government of National Unity; Vice-Premier Stanislaw Mikolajczyk (who had come from London) and Wladyslaw Kiernik. A lot had happened since Mikolajczyk finally heeded the bidding of the U.S. and Britain to join the Warsaw regime. Most significant: the new 21-man Government (16 of them members of the old Moscow-sponsored Lublin regime) had won recognition from the Allies.

But as the Lublin influence waxed, the Party's waned. Mikolajczyk himself received only the secondary portfolio of Agriculture. Kiernik, his Party colleague, who was to have had the important Ministry of the Interior, got an emasculated Ministry of Public Administration, stripped of police-control powers. The Peasant Party's principal pillar, septuagenarian, independent Wincenty Witos, thrice Premier of Poland, joined the Home National Council but received no Cabinet office at all.

Last week Witos, Mikolajczyk and Kiernik struck out for themselves, proclaimed the formation of a new Polish People's Party. Their aim: to capture the old Peasant Party before it was captured by the Communists.

The pro-Communist wing of the Peasant Party also tried a little fission of its own. In Warsaw it set up a new party policymaking body called "Peasant Self Aid." "Conservatives" would not be included.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.