On September 15, 1910, 115 years ago, Kazimierz Mijal — a steadfast Polish Revolutionary Communist, an adamant opponent of revisionism and capitalist restoration in Poland, was born in Wilków. The 18th child of poor and illiterate parents, Mijal worked himself to the bone to secure an education under the backwards regime of the Republic of Poland. On the eve of world war 2, he met a young Communist painter, Jadwiga Gniewkowska, who introduced him to Marxism. They married.
When the fascists invaded Poland with ease and found fast friends among the officials of the old regime, Mijal joined the Communist guerilla fighters of the Polish Workers' Party and helped lead the struggle until the end of the war, where he became Mayor of Łódź. He was a founding member of the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP/PZPR), a longtime member of its Central Committee, and close colleague of its First Secretary Bolesław Bierut, who he had formed a close working relationship with during their time in the guerilla war. His commitment to Revolutionary Communism led him to become one of the leaders of the opposition to "de-stalinization" and capitalist restoration in Poland under Władysław Gomułka, who was allowed back into the Party and clawed his way back into power after Stalin's death.
Gomułka could not openly move against him at first, and so slowly chipped away at the people around Mijal until he himself was removed from his posts. In response, Mijal and others founded the Communist Party of Poland and propagandized widely across the country with support from Albanian intelligence and remaining contacts from the old underground operating in industrial sites. This would be met by fierce repression by the revisionist Party, and Mijal would not return to Poland until 1983, where at 74 years old he was immediately met again with repression and imprisonment until the final complete fall of the People's Republic in 1989.
In the waning years of the People's Republic, Mijal spared little venom in his denunciations of the reactionary "Solidarity" movement and the color "revolution" it represented, while also observing that it could never have existed in the first place had Poland stayed on the socialist road in the 1950s. After the fall of the People's Republic, he would continue denouncing the new bourgeois regime and vigorously opposed Poland joining the EU and NATO. He would continue to write and attempt to reconstitute the Revolutionary Communist Party until he died in 2010.
Committed to Revolutionary Communism and socialism till the end, in an interview in 2000 Mijal stated that:
>It is said that communism lost, did not pass the exam, that Marxism is on the shelves of history and other such nonsense, theoretical nonsense! In fact, there is a revolution under the skin, the explosion is inevitable. Capitalism is on its way to falling and that is beyond doubt for me. Communism will prevail.
Be like Mijal. Dare to struggle, dare to win.