Kazimierz Mijal

Kazimierz Mijal
Born (1910-09-15)15 September 1910
Wilków Pierwszy, Warsaw Governorate, Congress Poland, Russian Empire
Died 28 January 2010(2010-01-28) (aged 99)
Warsaw, Poland
Nationality Polish
Political party Polish Workers' Party,
Polish United Workers' Party,
Communist Party of Poland (Mijal)

Kazimierz Mijal (September 15, 1910 – January 28, 2010) was a Polish communist politician and dissident, best known for founding the illegal Communist Party of Poland (Mijal) in opposition to the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP) in 1965. He was born in Wilków Pierwszy.

Biography

Graduating from a Tradesmen's Association Commercial School in Warsaw, Mijal became active during World War II, collaborating with Paweł Finder, Marceli Nowotko and Bolesław Bierut. He served as Mayor of Łódź, chief of the Presidential Chancellery, chief of the Bureau of the Council of Ministers, Minister of Communal Economy, and director of the Investment Bank. He was a long-time member of the CC of the Polish Workers' Party and then the PUWP. Following Nikita Khrushchev's condemnation of former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, Mijal aligned with the anti-revisionist movement then led primarily by Mao Zedong. He condemned Władysław Gomułka, First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party over his siding with Khrushchev and was an important figure in the so-called Natolin faction of the party. He created various pamphlets condemned by the party as dogmatic and Stalinist, and used a fake passport to leave for Albania, whose leader Enver Hoxha led the anti-revisionist movement along with Mao Zedong.

He founded a new communist party, the Communist Party of Poland (Mijal), declared himself Secretary General of the "Temporary Central Committee of the Communist Party of Poland" and took control of Radio Tirana's Polish wing. Mijal's Maoist rhetoric proved unpopular to both Polish workers and the intelligentsia, and with the Sino-Albanian split in 1978, Mijal gave up on the party and secretly returned to Poland in 1983. He was arrested in 1984 for distributing pamphlets but was released after three months. He attempted to revive the Communist Party in 1997 but lacked backing. He was also accused throughout his political career of anti-Semitic remarks, a charge that continues to this day.

In 2007 he received honorary membership to the Front Narodowo-Robotniczy. He has written for the Fatherland Weekly, a left-nationalist newspaper. Mijal was an opponent of the EU.

He died in January 2010 in Warsaw, Poland. He was buried on the grounds of Warsaw Reformed Cemetery on Zytnia street.

References

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