Drafting of the Constitution of the Polish People's Republic of 22. July 1952

Abstract

The genesis of the Constitution of the Polish People's Republic has not been sufficiently studied and analysed. This is partially due to the fact that the most vital solutions and decisions regarding its contents were made in and by a very narrow group of representatives of the party and state leadership. The official work on the drafting of the Constitution continued from May 1951 to July 1952 and was carried out within and by the Legislative Seym, its Constitutional Commissions and several sub-commissions. All those, however, were only face organs. Their main role was to create an appearance of legality and social acceptance of the decisions that had been earlier proposed and agreed outside Parliament, and even outside Poland, i.e. in the Soviet Union.

The main contents of the final draft of the Constitution was determined by the leaders of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) and two commissions of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party that were operative between June 1949 and March 1951. Some formulations in the Constitutions were drafted under direct influence by Joseph Stalin who proposed about 50 amendments to the draft presented in the early autumn of 1951.

The contents and genesis of the Constitution of the Polish People's Republic indicate that its main purpose was to confirm the political transformations imposed in Poland after 1944. Thus the Constitution reflected Stalin's concept of constitution as a so-called constitution of a balance sheet. All in all, the way in which the Constitution of 1952 was drafted and adopted confirms a non-democratic and not-sovereign character of the Polish state in that period.