Władysław Gomułka was a Polish Communist politician. He was the de facto leader of post-war Poland from 1947 until 1948, and again from 1956 to 1970.
Gomułka in recaptured Warsaw, 1945
Gomułka's speech on 24 October 1956 in Warsaw
Gomułka (left) greeted by members of the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation in East Germany.
On 20–21 August 1968, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was jointly invaded by four Warsaw Pact countries: the Soviet Union, the Polish People's Republic, the People's Republic of Bulgaria and the Hungarian People's Republic. The invasion stopped Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring liberalisation reforms and strengthened the authoritarian wing of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ).
Photograph of a Soviet T-54 in Prague during the Warsaw Pact's occupation of Czechoslovakia
Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and Polish leader Władysław Gomułka in East Berlin, 1967
Brezhnev, Nikolai Podgorny, and East German leader Walter Ulbricht in Moscow
Nicolae Ceauşescu (right) visiting Czechoslovakia in 1968; here, with Alexander Dubček and Ludvik Svoboda