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Leftist party wants 2013 to be communist leader 'Edward Gierek year'

PR dla Zagranicy
Peter Gentle 02.01.2013 12:03
The Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) opposition party is to celebrate 100 years since the birth of 1970s communist leader Edward Gierek on 6 January.

Edward
Edward Gierek: photo - wikipedia/CC

SLD - formerly the communist Polish United Workers Party (PZPR) - also plans to open an exhibition on 1 May, celebrated as Labour Day in much of Europe, of photographs and other materials from the Gierek-era.

“We will challenge the thesis that Gierek left a legacy of supposedly massive debts,” party secretary-general Krzysztof Gawkowski has told the Rzeczpospolita daily.

“We also want parliament to adopt a resolution in January dedicating 2013 as the year of Edward Gierek,” he adds.

The chances of the resolution passing in parliament are slim, however.

Gierek replaced Władysław Gomułka as communist party first secretary in Poland in 1970, following rioting and protest over the massive price rises of basic commodities.

Gierek developed relations with western leaders, particularly France's Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and West Germany's Helmut Schmidt.

Foreign loans from western credit fuelled a short-lived consumer boom in Poland, which petered-out by the middle of the decade.

Protests again broke out in 1976, laying the foundations for the growth of the Solidarity movement four years later.

Gierek was replaced as party leader in September 1980 by Stanisław Kania and died, in July 2001, a highly controversial figure in Poland. (pg)

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