Propaganda in the Polish People's Republic

Communist propaganda played an important role in the Polish People's Republic, one of the largest and most important satellite states of the Soviet Union following WWII. Together with the use of force and terror it was instrumental in keeping the country's communist government in power and was designed to shape Polish society into a communist one.[1]

A post-WWII Polish communist propaganda poster showing a giant soldier of the communist-leaning Armia Ludowa anti-Nazi resistance striding over a little soldier of the Armia Krajowa (also against Nazi Germany but loyal to the non-communist Polish government-in-exile), stating: "The Giant and the spat-dwarf of reactionism."

The language of Poland's communist propaganda was extremely violent, as with many others like in communist nations. All those who disagreed with the voice of the Polish United Workers' Party were dubbed as "fascists" and "reactionary thugs". For example, already towards the end of World War II, political officers (similar to Soviet political commissars in the Soviet Red Army) in the Soviet-backed Polish Army received specific guidelines for the training of their soldiers, ordering them to refer to all anti-Nazi resistance on Polish lands – other than those they allied with or similarly communist – as the "bastards of the NSZ and AK," and "Hitler’s emulators".[2] The insurgents of anti-German uprisings (such as at Warsaw and in the city's Jewish ghetto) became synonymous with "bandits,", "traitors,", "anti-Semites" and "Jew-killers." Since 1944, the Polish communist propaganda campaigns were usually followed by jarring abuses of human rights and the application of physical, mental and psychological torture in the communist legal system.[2]

Starting from the 1970s, Polish propaganda was significantly altered and then dominated by the form known as "propaganda of success".