Word: kania
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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When all the debates had ended and the last votes were counted Stanislaw Kania had a sobering thought for the delegates to the Ninth Extraordinary Congress of the Polish Communis Party. Unless they could now move from words to actions, warned the newly re-elected party leader in a tough closing speech, "history might brand us as those who talked Poland to death...
...Warsaw last week may ultimately be remembered less for what it did than for what it did not do: draft a concrete program for solving the country's awesome problems, including by far the most important, an economy that is tottering on the verge of total collapse. As Kania warned his comrades, "Outside the doors of this hall, we will face hard reality...
...goals of the congress was to persuade the Soviet Union not to intervene in Poland to seize control of the faltering government. Moscow, for its part, seemed to be taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the Polish liberalizations that it had tried, and failed, to discourage. After sending Kania a terse congratulatory telegram upon his reelection, omitting the customary expression of confidence, Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev cabled somewhat warmer greetings to Warsaw's leaders as the Poles celebrated their national day last week. The message declared the Polish party "undoubtedly capable of rallying all the working people...
...Polish party leadership has passed into the hands of a new and largely unknown group that lacks experience. Fewer than 10% of the members of the outgoing Central Committee, the party's main administrative unit, were re-elected to the expanded 200-seat body. Though the moderate Kania kept his post as party leader, only four incumbent Politburo members remained in the new 15-member Politburo...
Most of the incoming Politburo members appear to share Kania's centrist position. Two important exceptions: Interior Minister Miroslaw Milewski and Construction Worker Albin Siwak, both conservatives. They are expected to ally with the old Politburo's one surviving hardliner, Stefan Olszowski, to resist further political reforms...