Hilary Minc

Hilary Minc
Hilary Minc
Born	August 24, 1905 Kazimierz Dolny, Lublin Governorate, Congress Poland, Russian Empire
Died	November 26, 1974 Warsaw, Poland
Ethnicity	Jewish
Citizenship	Polish
Occupation	Marxist economist
Known for	Joseph Stalin's appointee in PRL

Hilary Minc (24 August 1905, Kazimierz Dolny – 26 November 1974, Warsaw) was a communist politician in Stalinist Poland and a pro-Soviet Marxist economist.

Minc was born into the middle-class Jewish family of Oskar Minc and Stefania née Fajersztajn. Minc joined the Communist Party of Poland before World War II. Between 1944-1956, he was a member of the PWP/PUWP Politburo of the Polish Workers' Party.

Minc was the third in command in Bolesław Bierut's political apparatus following the Soviet takeover, after Jakub Berman and Bierut himself. He served as the Minister of Industry, Minister of Industry and Commerce, and deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs during the Stalinist period in the People's Republic of Poland all the way until the Polish October revolution of 1956. Minc was a close associate of the Polish Communist leader Władysław Gomułka in their joint meetings with Joseph Stalin at the Kremlin. Stalin personally assigned Minc first to the Industry and then to the Transportation ministry of Poland in 1949. He was one of the main architect's of Poland's Six-Year Plan, implemented in 1950. Minc's wife, Julia, was an Editor-in-Chief of the Polish Press Agency until 1954.

In 1956, after the Poznań 1956 protests, he was removed from the Politburo. He engaged in a "self-critique" and in 1956 was removed from the Central Committee, and eventually forced to leave the Communist Party.

External links

• Hilary Minc records in the Open Society archives, Munich, October 15, 1956
• Andrzej Walicki, Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame's May 17, 1987 New York Times review of Teresa Torańska's book, Them: Stalin's Polish Puppets