Józef Cyrankiewicz

Cyrankiewicz and Joseph Stalin, 1947

Following the end of the war, he became secretary-general of the Polish Socialist Party's central executive committee in 1946. However, factional infighting split the Party into two camps: one led by Cyrankiewicz, the other by Edward Osóbka-Morawski, who was also prime minister.

Osóbka-Morawski thought the PSP should join with the other non-communist party in Poland, the Polish Peasant Party, to form a united front against communism. Cyrankiewicz argued that the PPS should support the communists (who held most of the posts in the government) in carrying through a socialist programme, while opposing the imposition of one party rule. The Communist Polish Workers' Party (PPR) played on this division within the PSP, dismissing Osóbka-Morawski and making Cyrankiewicz prime minister.

The PPS merged with the PPR in 1948 to form the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR). Although the PZPR was the PPR under a new name, Cyrankiewicz remained as prime minister. He was also named a secretary of the PZPR Central Committee.[10]

Although like Witold Pilecki Cyrankiewicz had been a concentration camp inmate during the war, their political and power differences played out after hostilities ended and he failed to intercede in the false conviction of war hero Pilecki. The show trial took place on 3 March 1948.[11] Pilecki was charged with illegal border crossing, use of forged documents, not enlisting with the military, carrying illegal arms, espionage for General Władysław Anders and espionage for "foreign imperialism" (British intelligence).[12] He was sentenced to death on 15 May with three of his comrades, and was executed with a shot to the back of the head at the Mokotów Prison in Warsaw on 25 May 1948 by Staff Sergeant Piotr Śmietański (nicknamed "The Butcher of Mokotow Prison" by the inmates).[13][14]In 1990 Witold Pilecki (and others convicted at the show trial) were rehabilitated.[15] Witold Pilecki was posthumously awarded the Order of the White Eagle in 2006, the highest Polish decoration.[16][17] On 6 September 2013, Pilecki was posthumously promoted to the rank of Colonel by the Minister of National Defence.[18]

Cyrankiewicz gave up the prime minister's post in 1952 because party boss Bolesław Bierut wanted the post for himself. He did, however, become a deputy premier under Bierut.

However, in 1954, after Poland returned to "collective leadership," Cyrankiewicz returned to the premiership, a post he would hold until 1970. By this time, there was little left of Cyrankiewicz the socialist, as evidenced during the 1956 upheaval following Nikita Khrushchev's "secret speech." He tried to repress the rioting that erupted across the country at first, threatening that "any provocateur or lunatic who raises his hand against the people's government may be sure that this hand will be chopped off."[19]

Cyrankiewicz was also responsible for the order to fire on the protesters during the 1970 demonstrations on the coast in which 42 people were killed and more than a 1,000 wounded. A few months after these demonstrations, Cyrankiewicz went into semi-retirement and was named chairman of the Council of State—a post equivalent to that of a ceremonial president. He held this post until he retired in 1972.

Cyrankiewicz died in 1989, a few months before the collapse of the communist regime. However Cyrankiewicz (and others involved in the 1948 show trial) was posthumously charged in 2003 with complicity in Witold Pilecki's murder.