GOVERNING (1945-1956)')">

REFERENDUM (June 1945)

According to Jalta's decisions, democratic elections were to be held in Poland. The Polish Workers' Party, which had known that it had no chance to win the election, put it off. In the end Stalin and the opposition put pressure on PPR, which gave rise to the proposal to carry out the referendum. It took place in June 1946. People were supposed to answer three questions:

  1. Do you want to abolish the Senate?
  2. Do you want to include the social and economic reforms in the new constitution?
  3. Do you want to confirm western borders of Poland at Baltic Sea, Odra and Nysa Luzycka ?

PPR would have won if the result of referendum was 3x YES and it would have meant the legality of its authority. PSL, which wanted to prevent this, appealed to its allies to reply NO to the first question. And then communists from PPR started to terrorize: people were threaten, bribed, they were murdered, the villages were burned... In spite of all these reprisals, people voted against PPR. However the final results were falsified. Appeals to western countries brought no effects. On July 4th 1946 - before announcing the results of the referendum - tragic events took place in Kielce, in which about 40 thousands Polish Jews were killed. The Kielce events had been planned by UB.