Dwie wizje komunistycznej Polski czy spór o sposób sprawowania władzy? Refleksje o myśli politycznej Władysława Gomułki i Bolesława Bieruta

Abstract

The article refers to two theses that exist in the communist historiography: 1) since the first years of the Polish People’s Republic, and even in the time of war, two fractions developed among the Polish communists with different viewpoints on how to introduce socialism in Poland: the so-called dogmatists wanted to copy the soviet model, while revisionists were looking for new ways of constructing the socialism, 2) derogation from the Polish road to socialism was to be the cause of failures that affected the state. 
Differences between Bierut and Gomułka were related to the verbal sphere as well as the style of governance and derived from the external conditions, namely the changes that were introduced in 1948 by the Soviet Union. Both politicians were orthodox communists. Distinctiveness of Gomułka’s political thought, described in the so-called Polish road to socialism, affected neither the functioning of the state nor the foundations relevant to the takeover of power in Poland by the Polish Worker’s Party.