MIKOLAJCZYK, STANISLAW

born July 18, 1901, Holsterhausen, near Gelsenkirchen, Ger. died Dec. 13, 1966, Washington, D.C. Polish statesman, who tried to establish a democratic, non-Soviet regime in Poland after World War II. Coorganizer and leader of the Peasant Party (193139) and a member of the Sejm (Diet), Mikolajczyk fled to London after the German invasion of Poland in 1939. He served as minister of the interior of the Polish government in exile and then became prime minister (194344). On June 27, 1945, Mikolajczyk returned to Poland and joined the Communist-dominated provisional government as second deputy premier and minister of agriculture and land reform. At the Potsdam Conference, he tried to press the interests of a free Poland, a condition that was agreed upon but ignored. Mikolajczyk's Peasant Party members, as the only organized non-Communist opposition, suffered from repeated intimidation and arrests. When the manipulated election of 1947 foreshadowed a Stalinist takeover, Mikolajczyk fled to England and then to the United States. He was the author of The Pattern of Soviet Domination (1948).