Kremlin approves of Polish party purge

Press, 16 January 1982, Page 6

Kremlin approves of Polish party purge

NZPA-Reuter Moscow The Kremlin signalled yesterday that it approved of a purge of the Polish Communist Party structure, but said the party would have an uphill battle to win the confidence of Poles. The Soviet Communist Party daily, “Pravda,” indicated that a purge was already under way in Poland among the party’s rank-and-file members. ■

It quoted the head of a Communist Party cell in a Warsaw factory as saying: “We must rid the party of ballast.”

In a later report from Warsaw the Soviet Government newspaper, “Izvestia,"

said popular confidence in "counter-revolutionaries” in Poland had been undermined but said enormous problems still faced the party. '-Tn the fight for hearts and minds, the strugglers on the ideological front still have a great deal of work to do,” “Izvestia” said. The comment was a clear signal of concern in the Soviet leadership that the discredited Polish United Workers’ Party (Communist Party) had an uphill task on its hands to recover face, informed sources said.

The Polish party lost support during the growth of the reform movement in Poland from August, 1980, and ap-

pears, to have been pushed further'into the background by the military crackdown..

The Soviet press reports strengthened the impression that the prospects of a sweeping shake-up in the party structure figured large in talks between the Polish Foreign Minister (Mr Jozef Czyrek) and the Kremlin’s top ideological expert, Mikhail Suslov, in Moscow this week.

There has been no official announcement on this meeting, a sign that there was some tough talking from Mr Suslov on the need for an ideological offensive in Poland, the sources said.