The Path to Power: Notes on a New Biography of Edward Gierek

Edward Gierek served as the Secretary of the Communist Party’s Regional Committee in the Katowice Voivodeship from 1957 to 1970. He was regarded as the most influential local leaders and, by the end of the decade, one of the key politicians in the country. He was brought into central politics by the First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) Bolesław Bierut, and in December 1970 he contributed to the overthrow of Władysław Gomułka’s leadership and replaced him as the head of the party. Mirosław Szumiło describes Gierek’s path to power from the second decade of the twentieth century to the early 1970s.