Adam Rapacki

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Adam Rapacki
Adam Rapacki.jpg
25th Minister of Foreign Affairs
In office
27 April 1956 – 22 December 1968
Preceded by
Succeeded byStefan Jędrychowski
1st
In office
15 May 1950[a] – 27 April 1956
Succeeded byStefan Żółkiewski
2nd
In office
16 April 1947 – 15 May 1950
Preceded byStefan Jędrychowski[b]
Succeeded by

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 of the new Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR), and became a member of its Politburo. 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.[1] 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.[2]

Biography[]

Rapacki was born by Marian Rapacki and Maria Rapacka in Lemberg, Austria-Hungary (modern Lviv, Ukraine) on 24 December 1909.[3] Due the start of World War I, he and his parents moved to Piotrków Trybunalski, and to Warsaw in 1919. During his early life in the city, he attended gymnasium from 1920 to 1929, and the SGH Warsaw School of Economics from 1929 to 1931. In 1931, he joined the , 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 and demonstrations. Recruited to the army on the 24 August 1939, he fought in the Invasion of Poland 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 and spent the rest of World War II in POW camps. Rapacki engaged in many rebellious activities, such as writing anti-Nazi books and secret newspapers, also joining leftist groups. He also learnt Russian. He was freed in April 1945, returning to Poland in July.

He joined the Polish Socialist Party in August 1945 and moved to Warsaw in January of the next year. In August 1946, along with a group of Polish socialists, he entered the Central Committee of the party. In relation with preparation for the upcoming elections to the Legislative Sejm, Rapacki joined it, and during the 1947 Polish legislative election, he was appointed an envoy. He was appointed Minister of Shipping on 16 April, 1947. From 11 January to 15 December 1948, he played an important role in the PSP and on the 15th of December, he was elected as part of the Politburo of the Polish United Workers' Party.

During his term as the Minister of Shipping, he mainly focused 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. As a Foreign Minister, he was especially close to the director-general of the Foreign Ministry, Przemysław Ogrodziński, a man whose background as a socialist turned communist was precisely as same as his, and who served as his principle adviser.[4] As the Foreign Minister, Rapacki was considered be one of the leaders of the liberalising wing of the United Workers' Party, known for favoring easing repression and censorship, which gave him a certain popularity.[4]

The Radio Free Europe radio station owned by the U.S government had making claims all through the 1950s that the United States stood behind the "rollback" of Communism, promising the peoples of Eastern Europe that if they only rose up against their Communist regimes, the United States would intervene with military force.[5] In 1956, the people of Hungary followed the advice of Radio Free Europe and rose up, only to be crushed by the Red Army while the United States did not intervene out of fear of causing a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.[5] 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 present regime.[5] 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 was to be more independent.[5]

One of the principle 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 together with that rejection the claim that all of the 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 that the Bundeswehr be armed with nuclear weapons, a request that caused much alarm in Warsaw.[5] The 1956 Suez war revealed the unity of the western states were less than what it had proclaimed, and certainly gave Rapacki hope that disagreements between Great Britain and France on one side and 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 that might be used against Poland one day.[4]

On 2 October 1957, he presented at the United Nations his plan for a nuclear-free zone in Central Europe (comprising Czechoslovakia, Poland, East and West Germany) — known as the "Rapacki Plan".[6] [7][8]

Rapacki died in Warsaw, aged 60, on 10 October 1970.[3]

Civilian, national and military orders[]

Rapacki was awarded multiple orders, such as the Order of the Builders of People's Poland[9] and the Order of the Banner of Work. He also got the Order of the Southern Cross,[10] and in 1965 he received the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.[11] He was awarded the Order of the People's Republic of Bulgaria by Todor Zhivkov in 1967.[12]

See also[]

  • List of Poles

References[]

  1. ^ Stefancic, 1987.
  2. ^ Piotr Wandycz, "Adam Rapacki and the search for European security." in The Diplomats, 1939-1979 (Princeton University Press, 1994) pp. 289-318.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b "Adam Rapacki". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 13 June 2013.
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b c Wandycz 1994, p. 294.
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e Wandycz 1994, p. 291.
  6. ^ 1987.
  7. ^ Tobias Hochscherf; Christoph Laucht; Andrew Plowman (2010). Divided, But Not Disconnected: German Experiences of the Cold War. Berghahn Books. p. 100. ISBN 978-1-84545-646-7.
  8. ^ Ruud van Dijk; William Glenn Gray; Svetlana Savranskaya; Jeremi Suri; Qiang Zhai (2013). Encyclopedia of the Cold War. Taylor & Francis. p. 373. ISBN 978-1-135-92311-2.
  9. ^ "Wręczenie odznaczeń w Belwederze". Nowiny. vol. 170: 1. 20 July 1964. Retrieved 27 June 2021. |volume= has extra text (help)
  10. ^ Potęga, Józef (1 May 1975). "Komunista" (PDF). Dziennik Łódzki. no. 99: 1. Retrieved 27 June 2021.
  11. ^ "Order Odrodzenia dla G. Saragata. Odznaczenia włoskie dla przywódców polskich". Dziennik Polski. vol. 246: 1. 16 October 1965. Retrieved 27 June 2021. |volume= has extra text (help)
  12. ^ "Sofia gorąco powitała delegację polską". Trybuna Śląska. no. 79: 1. 4 April 1967. Retrieved 27 June 2021.
  1. ^ Minister of Education and Science until 31st December 1951.
  2. ^ Jędrychowski was Minister of Shipping and Foreign Trade.

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, ISBN 0-89950-445-0.
  • Rapacki, Adam. "The Polish Plan for a Nuclear-Free Zone Today" International Affairs 39#1 pp. 1-12 online, a primary source.
  • Stefancic, David. "The Rapacki Plan: A Case Study of European Diplomacy." East European Quarterly 21.4 (1987): 401–412.
  • Wandycz, Piotr. "Adam Rapacki and the search for European security." The Diplomats, 1939-1979. Princeton University Press, 2019. 289-318., Piotr (1994). "Adam Rapacki and the Search for European Security". In Craig, Gordon A.; Loewenheim, Francis L. (eds.). The Diplomats, 1939-1979. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 289–318. ISBN 0691194467.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) online

External links[]


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