Word: kania
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Fight they did. First they waged a battle to reverse the order of business. Party Boss Stanislaw Kania had hoped to ram through his re-election on the first day of the congress, and thus gain effective control over all subsequent proceedings. The delegates would have none of it. Instead, they decided to elect a new 200-member Central Committee first and then choose a leader by secret ballot from among its ranks. Never before in the Soviet bloc had such a tactic been used. Said one congress official: "They tried to push the delegates too far too fast...
...heads rolled in the Central Committee voting, when candidates on the liberal and conservative extremes were rejected, leaving the centrists in control. Among the prominent officials who went down to defeat were Politburo Hard-liners Mieczyslaw Moczar and Tadeusz Grabski; the latter had led an unsuccessful drive to oust Kania last month and was deemed a strong challenger for the party leadership. One of the highest vote tallies, 1,615, went to Premier Wojciech Jaruzelski-a solid expression of support for his pragmatic policies...
...disastrous labor-government confrontations. The hierarchy has made some significant gains of its own, such as getting the right to broadcast Sunday Mass and erect new churches. Still, some observers feel that the church's political effectiveness may be diminished as other popular institutions develop within Poland. But Kania, who last week praised the country's religious leaders for the "responsibility they showed during the crisis," has called for a "national unity front" in which the church would join hands with the party and the unions to solve Poland's formidable problems...
...sudden rash of work stoppages, the first cases of labor unrest in Poland since March, could hardly have come at a worse time for Party Boss Stanislaw Kania. Not only is he trying to grapple with the country's worst postwar economic crisis, amid shortages of everything from basic foodstuffs to vodka and cigarettes, but he faces a key test at this week's crucial party congress. Renewed unrest could create a hard-line backlash at the session, one which will determine the party's leadership and policies at a crucial juncture for the nation...
Following the ouster of Party Boss Edward Gierek in September, the Kania regime dismissed hundreds of officials for corruption or incompetence. Many local party units began demanding more internal democracy and "horizontal" relations among themselves, reversing the orthodox Leninist top-to-bottom party structure. Unable to stamp out such trends, Kania has endorsed a series of reforms that, if approved by this week's congress, would make the Polish Communist Party the most liberal in the Soviet bloc. The Sejm, Poland's parliament, is already the most representative and outspoken legislative body among the Warsaw Pact nations...