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Tadeusz Pyka

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Tadeusz Pyka (May 17, 1930 – May 23, 2009) was a former Polish communist politician, who served as a Deputy Prime Minister of Poland. In August 1980, he led a government commission which attempted to end a strike in the Polish city of Gdańsk, but he was replaced on August 21 without an explanation offered by state radio at the time for the change.

Political career

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Pyka was educated in the engineering of metallurgy. Pyka was a deputy to the Sejm, the Polish legislative body, for three consecutive terms from 1972 to 1980. In 1974, he became a deputy to the Chairman of the Planning Commission of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers Party.[1] He was also a Deputy Prime Minister of Poland from October 23, 1975 to August 24, 1980, and a member of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers Party until 1980. In 1980, he was also briefly a deputy to a member of the Politburo of the Polish United Workers' Party.[1] During the period of martial law in Poland in 1981 he was interned for a year and had charges pressed against him.[2][3]

Gdańsk negotiations

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In August 1980, due to economic difficulties, workers in the Polish city of Gdańsk went on strike. Around the middle of that month, the Polish government declared that it had created a commission that would converse with the strikers.[4] The commission was led by Pyka, who was a relative newcomer to the inner circle of the communist Polish United Workers' Party, and a "junior man"[5] when compared to Poland's other Deputy Prime Ministers.[5] He was described as a "minor Party functionary"[4] and a "close ally of Edward Gierek",[4] the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party. Pyka stated that he would have "nothing to do"[4] with the Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee, the main representative body of the Gdańsk strikers, especially with members Lech Wałęsa and Andrzej Gwiazda, as well as Anna Walentynowicz.[4] Pyka argued that the Strike Committee was illegal, and that it did not represent the workers it claimed to.[4] He was replaced as leader of the commission with Mieczysław Jagielski on August 21.[4] State Polish Radio at the time gave no explanation as to why Pyka was replaced.[5]

Post-political career

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He was a professor of economics at the Górnośląska Wyższa Szkoła Handlowa in Katowice.[1] He died on May 23, 2009.[6]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c Przegląd, Tygodnig. "Oni bali się nas, a my ich". Retrieved 2008-11-30.
  2. ^ Stefanowski, Roman (1983-07-01). "Poland under Martial Law". Archived from the original on 2007-04-20. Retrieved 2008-11-30.
  3. ^ "Internowania byłych prominentów PRL". Archived from the original on 2011-08-18. Retrieved 2008-11-30.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Hunter, Richard J.; Leo V. Ryan (1998). From Autarchy to Market: Polish Economics and Politics 1945-1995. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 48. ISBN 9780275962197.
  5. ^ a b c Schafer, Susanne (1980-08-21). "Efforts by Polish government to end worker unrest stalled". Kingman Daily Miner. Retrieved 2008-11-30. [dead link‍]
  6. ^ The date of death was announced at the main page of the http://www.gwsh.pl/ Katowice School of Economics] (retrieved on 25 May 2009). The obituary Archived 2009-06-26 at the Wayback Machine published there gave the date of the funeral for 27 May (it however did no contain the death of the date).
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