Boleslaw Bierut

Boleslaw Bierut (1892-1956), a Polish Communist leader, born near Lublin. In 1925 he went to Moscow to be trained at the school of the Communist International. When the Polish Communist Party was dissolved by Joseph Stalin in 1938 he was lucky to survive. After German invasion against the Soviet Union in 1941, he worked for the German administration in Minsk Belaruss. Recalled to head the new Polish Workers Party in 1943, he was head of the Polish provisional government from 1944 to 1947. Bierut was instrumental in the Soviet take-over of Poland by the Communists. Under the Bierut Decree of March 8, 1946 all lands and properties belonging to German state or German citizens, were confiscated. From 1947 to 1952 he was President of the Republic of Poland. Although he imposed Stalinist Communism on Poland, he somehow failed to stage show trials in 1948, sparing his successor Wladyslaw Gomulka. In 1956 he died suddenly after a visit to Moscow. The rumor said he died from eating "A Kremlin Cake" (a pun based on the similarity of the words "cream" and "Kremlin" in Polish).