Warsaw, 15 December 1948. The 1st Congress of the Polish United Workers Party (PZPR). President Bolesław Bierut speaking.
/PAP

In this episode of The Debrief, John Beauchamp speaks to Dr Łukasz Bertram, a researcher who has just published a book on the history of Polish communists.

Bertram writes that before 1989, the study of the communist movement was an area reserved for historians closely associated with the Polish United Workers’ Party. Neither they nor their political overseers were interested in going too deep into that history for obvious reasons.

After 1989, there has also been a debate on how far to go when looking at the histories of prominent Polish communists. But no matter which way you look at it, there’s no escaping the fact that they existed and held sway over the country for decades.