Word: sejm
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...frail, greying man stood up under the subdued lights of Poland's Sejm last week and said: "People are tired and impatient because they are not sure of the future, and have not been told, even in general terms, what the future is to be." The speaker was Stanislaw Stomma, leader of Poland's twelve-man Catholic parliamentary group, and his words illuminated the strange image of today's Poland: the double image of a worried, unhappy country, yet the only Communist-ruled country where a man can stand up in Parliament and say such things...
Like any other Communist-dominated parliament, Warsaw's glass-domed Sejm is a house of political zombis. Last week, meeting for the first time since the general election, the Sejm was still Communist-dominated, but this time it was Wladyslaw Gomulka's Polish Communists, and not Moscow's stooges, who were in command. The difference was startling...
...right twelve Catholic and 51 unaffiliated Deputies. U.S. television crews swarmed over the floor. The first sign of change came in the voting for the 15 members of the State Council (which functions as a national presidency and has been, in the past, the real government of Poland). The Sejm buzzed with excitement the first time two hands were raised in abstention. After this first tentative show of independence, few State Council candidates got unanimous support. One Catholic writer collected seven abstentions and a former active Stalinist got two outright nays. The worst treatment was given former Stalin Prizewinner Leon...
Poles do not compare the new Sejm to a Western parliament, for there is no organized parliamentary opposition. The most they hope for-and it is a hope which already gives a certain pride to the faces of the Sejm Deputies-is that it will become a place in which some men may raise their voices...
Coming to power last October on a wave of popular resentment against the Soviet Union, Party Secretary Wladyslaw Gomulka had been forced to promise that the postponed Polish general election would be "free" and held forthwith. Gomulka arranged that the 459 seats in the Sejm (Parliament) would be contested by 723 candidates (chosen from a list of 60,000 names), about half of whom would be members of the Polish Workers (Communist) Party. Although the slate was rigged in such a way that the Communists would obtain a majority, for the first time in a Soviet country the electorate...