POLAND AND THE MARSHALL PLAN: THE UNITED STATES ATTEMPTS TO TURN THE POLITICAL COURSE OF THE POLISH LEADERSHIP TOWARDS THE WEST IN 1947

Abstract

The article examines the attempts of the United States in 1947 to involve Poland in the Marshall Plan. The motives of Washington's foreign policy in this direction, as well as the views of President Truman on the development of integration processes in post-war Europe, are investigated. After the failure of attempts in the first post-war years to bring to power a government oriented towards Washington and London, the American leadership, actualizing the traditional foreign trade relations of the Poles and taking advantage of the split in the Polish establishment, hoped to make a smooth turn of Warsaw's political course towards the West. The victory of the pro-Soviet party in the Polish leadership and, as a result, Poland's refusal to participate in the Marshall Plan led to a deterioration of Polish-American relations and Washington's attempts to reverse the situation by exerting economic pressure on the Polish leadership. However, it did not come to a complete rupture of economic relations between Washington and Warsaw, since Western Europe at that time was interested in Polish natural resources, and the State Department feared that this would only lead to an increase in Poland's dependence on the USSR. U.S. attempts to involve Poland in the Marshall Plan in 1947 resulted in the acceleration of the formation of two separate centers of European integration, which contributed to the formation of a bipolar confrontation between the USSR and the United States.