Present status of the Polish Socialist Party [POL3178]

For information on the activities of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), please see the attached articles from Radio Free Europe Research. It was reported during the lead-up to the June 1989 elections that the Socialist Party had decided not to formally participate in the elections, but would instead allow its candidates to be nominated by the Citizens' Committee, the body created by Solidarity to wage its opposition election campaign. [Anna Sabbat-Swidlicka, "Poland's Anticommunist Opposition After the Round Table", Radio Free Europe Research, 7 May 1989, p. 6.] The leader of the Polish Socialist Party, Jan Jozef Lipski, was nominated for Senator by the Solidarity-backed Citizens' Committee. [Ibid.] A splinter group of the Party, the PPS-RD (RD the Polish acronym for Democratic Revolution), boycotted the election campaign. [Ibid., p. 8.] While it appears from the Radio Free Europe Research bulletin authored by Sabbat-Swidlicka that the PPS has attained the same legal status as Solidarity, the current status of the PPS-RD is not clear to the IRBDC at the present time.

No further corroborating information is available in the published and publicly-available sources regularly consulted by the IRBDC, regarding the status and activities of the PPS and PPS-RD.