Adam Rapacki (24 December 1909 – 10 October 1970) was a leading Polish Communist politician and diplomat from 1947 to 1968. He started in the socialist movement but in 1948 joined the
Central Committee
Central committee is the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, of both ruling and nonruling parties of former and existing socialist states. In such party organizations, the ...
of the new
Polish United Workers' Party
The Polish United Workers' Party ( pl, Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza; ), commonly abbreviated to PZPR, was the communist party which ruled the Polish People's Republic as a one-party state from 1948 to 1989. The PZPR had led two other lega ...
(PZPR), and became a member of its
Politburo
A politburo () or political bureau is the executive committee for communist parties. It is present in most former and existing communist states.
Names
The term "politburo" in English comes from the Russian ''Politbyuro'' (), itself a contracti ...
. It had very close ties to the Kremlin. He is best known for his 1957 proposal for the creation of nuclear-free zones in Europe; it was never adopted. He maintained good relations with East Germany while warning against West German expansionism. Piotr Wandycz finds that he was well educated, cosmopolitan, pragmatic, liberal and ambitious, and imbued with a sense of patriotism and belief in cooperation with the left in Western Europe.
Biography
Rapacki was born by Marian Rapacki and Maria Rapacka in
Lemberg
Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukrain ...
,
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...
(modern Lviv, Ukraine) on 24 December 1909. Due the start of
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
, he and his parents moved to
Piotrków Trybunalski
Piotrków Trybunalski (; also known by alternative names), often simplified to Piotrków, is a city in central Poland with 71,252 inhabitants (2021). It is the second-largest city situated in the Łódź Voivodeship. Previously, it was the capita ...
, and to
Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officiall ...
in 1919. During his early life in the city, he attended gymnasium from 1920 to 1929, and the
SGH Warsaw School of Economics
SGH Warsaw School of Economics ( pl, Szkoła Główna Handlowa w Warszawie, ''SGH''Union of Independent Socialist Youth, a Socialist group operating in Warsaw.
After graduating university in 1932, he joined the 28th Infantry Division, and continuing his career in the Union, he shortly became a member of its council. He often took part in fights with the
National Radical Camp
The National Radical Camp ( pl, Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny, ONR) refers to at least three groups that are fascist, far-right, and ultranationalist Polish organisations with doctrines stemming from pre- World War II nationalist ideology.
The ...
and demonstrations. Recruited to the army on the 24 August 1939, he fought in the
invasion of Poland
The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week af ...
by Germany as a second lieutenant and the leader of a platoon in the 36th Infantry Regiment of the Academic League. He was taken into captivity on the 22 September near the
Modlin Fortress
Modlin Fortress ( pl, Twierdza Modlin) is one of the largest 19th-century fortresses in Poland. It is located in the town of Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki in district Modlin on the Narew river, approximately 50 kilometers north of Warsaw. It was o ...
and spent the rest of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
in prisoner-of-war camps. Rapacki engaged in many rebellious activities, such as writing anti-Nazi books and secret newspapers, joined leftist groups and learnt Russian. Freed in April 1945, he returned to Poland in July.
He joined the Polish Socialist Party in August 1945 and moved to Warsaw in January 1946. In August, along with a group of Polish socialists, he entered the party's Central Committee. He joined the preparation for the upcoming elections to the Legislative Sejm, and during the
1947 Polish legislative election
Parliamentary elections were held in Poland on 19 January 1947, Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) ''Elections in Europe: A data handbook'', p1491 the first since World War II. According to the official results, the Democratic Bloc (''Blok ...
, he was appointed an envoy. He was appointed
Minister of Shipping The Minister of Shipping was a British government post created in the First World War and again in the Second World War. In 1941 it was merged into the position of Minister of Transport which was then renamed Minister of War Transport.
Minister of ...
on 16 April, 1947. From 11 January to 15 December 1948, he played an important role in the PSP. He then was elected as part of the
Politburo of the Polish United Workers' Party
The Politburo (abbreviation for ''Political Bureau'') of the Polish United Workers Party (PUWP; pl, Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza, ''PZPR'') was the chief executive body of the ruling communist apparatus in Poland between 1948 and 1989. Ne ...
.
During his term as the Minister of Shipping, he focused mainly on rebuilding and expanding the trading fleet. He was Minister of Higher Education (Higher Education and Science to 1951) from 1950 to 1956.
From 1956 to 1968, he was the foreign minister in the cabinet of
Józef Cyrankiewicz
Józef Adam Zygmunt Cyrankiewicz (; 23 April 1911 – 20 January 1989) was a Polish Socialist (PPS) and after 1948 Communist politician. He served as premier of the Polish People's Republic between 1947 and 1952, and again for 16 years between ...
. As a Foreign Minister, he was especially close to the director-general of the Foreign Ministry,
Przemysław Ogrodziński
Przemysław Antoni Ogrodziński (4 May 1918 – 11 May 1980), also known by his pseudonyms 'Stanisław', 'Dyplomata', and 'Agapit' was a Polish diplomat and activist.
Early life
Przemysław "Przemek" Ogrodziński was born to a Polish family in L ...
, a man whose background as a socialist turned communist was precisely as same as his. Ogrodziński served as his principal adviser.
As Foreign Minister, Rapacki was considered be one of the leaders of the liberalising wing of the United Workers' Party that was known for favouring an ease of repression and censorship, which gave him a certain popularity.
Radio Free Europe, a radio station owned by the American government had making claims throughout the 1950s that the US stood behind the "rollback" of Communism and promised the peoples of Eastern Europeans that if they rose up against their communist regimes, the Americand would intervene with military force. In 1956, the Hungarians followed the advice of Radio Free Europe and rose up, only to be crushed by the Red Army: the US did not intervene for fear of causing a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. From the Polish perspective, the hollowness of the claims of Radio Free Europe, together with crushing of the Hungarian uprising, showed there was no point in trying to overthrow the communist regime, and the best that could be done at present was to improve the it. At the same time, the Polish October uprising, which seen the Stalinist leadership in Warsaw overthrown by a reformist faction of the United Workers's People over the face of Soviet objections, gave hope that Poland would become more independent.
The principal concerns of Polish foreign policy in the 1950s was the rejection by the West German government of the Oder-Neisse line as Germany's eastern frontier and the claim that all areas of Poland that had been part of Germany in 1937 were being illegally occupied by Poland. In 1955, at a meeting of the NATO Council, the West German government requested for the ''Bundeswehr'' to be armed with nuclear weapons, a request that caused much alarm in Warsaw.
The 1956 Suez Crisis revealed the unity of the West were less than what it had proclaimed. That certainly gave Rapacki hope that disagreements between Britain and France with the United States might be exploited by Polish diplomacy to achieve its goals, the most important of which was to prevent West Germany from acquiring nuclear weapons, which might someday be used against Poland.
On 2 October 1957, he presented at the United Nations his plan for a nuclear-free zone in Central Europe (comprising
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
, East and West Germany), known as the "
Rapacki Plan
The Rapacki Plan (pronounced Rapatz-ki) was a proposal presented in a speech by Polish Foreign Minister Adam Rapacki to the United Nations General Assembly on 2 October 1957 as a limited plan for nuclear disarmament and demilitarization in Centra ...
". The West rejected the plan because it feared the massive conventional forces in the East.
Rapacki died in Warsaw, aged 60, on 10 October 1970.
Order of the Banner of Work
The Order of the Banner of Labor ( pl, Order Sztandaru Pracy) was a governmental award in Poland during the 20th-century era of the Polish People's Republic, a former Marxist-Leninist state.
The order was established by the Sejm (a chamber of th ...
. He also got the
Order of the Southern Cross
Emperor Pedro I of Brazil founded the National Order of the Southern Cross ( pt, Ordem Nacional do Cruzeiro do Sul) as a Brazilian order of chivalry on 1 December 1822. The order aimed to commemorate the independence of Brazil (7 September 1 ...
, and in 1965 he received the
Order of Merit of the Italian Republic
The Order of Merit of the Italian Republic ( it, Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana) is the senior Italian order of merit. It was established in 1951 by the second President of the Italian Republic, Luigi Einaudi.
The highest-rankin ...
. He was awarded the Order of the People's Republic of Bulgaria by
Todor Zhivkov
Todor Hristov Zhivkov ( bg, Тодор Христов Живков ; 7 September 1911 – 5 August 1998) was a Bulgarian communist statesman who served as the ''de facto'' leader of the People's Republic of Bulgaria (PRB) from 1954 until 1989 ...
in 1967.
See also
*
List of Poles
This is a partial list of notable Polish or Polish-speaking or -writing people. People of partial Polish heritage have their respective ancestries credited.
Science
Physics
* Czesław Białobrzeski
* Andrzej Buras
* Georges Charpa ...
Notes
References
Bibliography
*Ozinga, James R., ''The Rapacki Plan: the 1957 Proposal to Denuclearize Central Europe, and an Analysis of Its Rejection,'' Jefferson, NC, McFarland & Co, 1989, .
* Rapacki, Adam. "The Polish Plan for a Nuclear-Free Zone Today" ''International Affairs'' 39#1 pp. 1-1 online a primary source.
* Stefancic, David. "The Rapacki Plan: A Case Study of European Diplomacy." ''East European Quarterly'' 21.4 (1987): 401–412.
*