Editing Bolesław Bierut (section)

===Communist party activism until 1939===

[[File:Bolesław Bierut ok. 1927.jpg|thumb|left|160px|Bierut in around 1927]]

In 1922–25, Bierut was a member of the Cooperative Department of the KPRP [[Central Committee]]. He worked as an accountant and was active in Warsaw at the [[Polish Association of Freethinkers]]. In August 1923, he was sent for party work in the [[Dąbrowa Basin]], to manage the Workers' Food Cooperative. He lived in [[Sosnowiec]], where he brought his wife and daughter and where he experienced the first of his many arrests. Detained repeatedly in various parts of the country, in October 1924 he moved to Warsaw. He had become a full-time conspiratorial party activist and in 1925 was a member of the Temporary Secretariat of the Central Committee and then the head of the Cooperative Department there.<ref name="Eisler siedmiu 41–48">Jerzy Eisler, ''Siedmiu wspaniałych. Poczet pierwszych sekretarzy KC PZPR'' [The Magnificent Seven: first secretaries of the PZPR], pp. 41–48.</ref>

Already trusted by the [[Soviets]] and knowing the [[Russian language]] well, from October 1925 to June 1926 Bierut was in the [[Moscow]] area, sent there for training at the secret school of the [[Communist International]].<ref name="Eisler siedmiu 41–48"/>

Arrested in Warsaw in January 1927, he was released on 30 April, based on personal assurances issued on his behalf by Stanisław Szwalbe and [[Zygmunt Zaremba]]. During the Fourth Congress of the [[Communist Party of Poland]] (KPP, the new name of the KPRP), which took place from 22 May to 9 August 1927, Bierut became a member of the Temporary Secretariat of the Central Committee again. In November, the party sent him to the [[International Lenin School]] in Moscow. He received positive evaluations there, except for not being entirely free of ideological [[right-wing politics|right-wing]] errors, characteristic, in the school's opinion, of the Polish communist party.<ref name="Eisler siedmiu 41–48"/>

[[File:Bolesław Bierut policja 1933.jpg|260px|thumb|right|Bolesław Bierut in 1933, after his arrest by Polish Police]]

In 1930–31, Bierut was sent by the Comintern to [[Austria]], [[Czechoslovakia]] and [[Bulgaria]]. Many details of his activities are not reliably known, but from 1 October 1930 he was an instructor at the executive committee of the Comintern. He later claimed having lived in Moscow in 1927–32, except for a nine-month period in 1931, and having been enrolled at the Lenin School until 1930.<ref name="Eisler siedmiu 41–48"/> [[Jerzy Eisler]] wrote: "... in light of the Soviet archival materials, in 1927–32 Bierut was a member of the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] ([[Bolsheviks]]), with his party seniority counted from 1921, the moment he formally joined the Polish communist party."<ref name="Eisler siedmiu 48–56"/> In Moscow he met [[Małgorzata Fornalska]], a KPP activist. They became romantically involved and had a daughter, named Aleksandra, born in June 1932. Soon afterwards Bierut left for Poland, leaving in Moscow for the time being also his legal family, whom he had brought there.<ref name="Eisler siedmiu 41–48"/>

For several months Bierut was district secretary of the KPP organization in [[Łódź]]. After the regional organization was demolished by arrests, in 1933 he became secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish section of the [[International Red Aid]]. On 18 December 1933, Bierut was arrested and in 1935 sentenced to seven years in prison. In 1936, while imprisoned, he was excluded ''in absentia'' from the KPP for an "unworthy of a communist behavior during the investigation and the court trial". The decision was invalidated and reversed by the Comintern on 7 September 1940 (even though the KPP by that time no longer existed). Bierut was found to have been a member of the moderate "majority" faction of the KPP, and the factional infighting in which he participated was determined not to amount to acting against the party.<ref name="Eisler siedmiu 41–48"/>

He was released from prison on 20 December 1938, based on an earlier amnesty. He lived with his wife and children and worked in Warsaw cooperatives until the [[Invasion of Poland|outbreak of war]]. The "[[Sanation]]" prison may have saved his life: while he was incarcerated, the KPP was disbanded by the Comintern and most of its leaders murdered in [[Great Purge|Stalin's purges]].<ref name="Eisler siedmiu 41–48"/>