MAY 30 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

MAY 30

1939

The funeral of Aleksander Bruckner took place in Berlin. Brucker was born in Brzeżany (Berezhany) in Galicia, Austrian Empire. He was a Polish scholar of Slavic languages, historian of literature, and a philologist and lexicographer. He was among the most notable Slavicists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and was the first to prepare complete monographs on the history of Polish language and culture. He published more than 1,500 titles and discovered the Holy Cross Sermons - parchments which are the oldest extant prose text written in the Polish language (circa 13th to 14th century.) Bruckner strove to elevate the prestige of the Polish language and culture in the eyes of the Germans, and though he was not political, he was opposed to Russian autocracy and the centralized Russian state of his time.

1965

Legislative Election in Poland.  Władysław Gomułka was re-elected as leader of the Polish United Workers Party until 1970 (he was succeeded by Edward Gierek) The electoral lists were controlled by the Front of National Unity, which in turn was controlled by the  Polish United Workers' Party. The distribution of seats were decided in advance of the elections and electors had no possibility to change it. The results of the 1965 election was duplicated in each of the elections from 1969 and 1972 where the change in the distribution of seats was negligible. The number of seats won was 411 out of  528.  (Gomulka was the de facto leader of post-war Poland until 1948. He came leader again from 1956 to 1970, after the Polish October.  Initially, Gomułka enjoyed popularity with his reforms (Polish way to socialism) but during the 60s his policies became authoritarian. He also sanctioned persecution of the Catholic Church and Polish intellectuals (for instance, he forced Leszek Kolakowski into exile.) In the period from 1967 to 1968 Gomułka permitted the surge of "anti-Zionist" propaganda and tried to use the momentum to his political advantage. He tried to avert public attention away from the realities of the stagnating economy by propagating anti-semitism.  A majority of surviving Polish Jews left the country at this time.  Gomulka was also responsible for persecuting protesting students and tightening censorship of the media. Gomułka supported Poland's participation in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968.