Polish People's Republic
The Polish People's Republic (, ) was a state in Central Europe that existed from 1947 to 1989, and the predecessor of the modern democratic Republic of Poland. With a population of approximately 37.9 million inhabitants near the end of its existence, it was the most populous state of the Eastern Bloc after the Soviet Union. Having a unitary Marxist–Leninist communist government, it was also one of the main signatories of the Warsaw Pact. The official capital since 1947 and largest city was Warsaw, followed by industrial Łódź and cultural Kraków.
Polish People's Party (1945–1949)
The parliamentary elections took place in January 1947 and were falsified in a number of ways, to defeat the People's Party and ensure the victory of the communists Polish Workers' Party and its allied partners in the so-called Democratic Bloc, which included a rival breakaway peasant party. The PSL for the time being remained legal, but was subjected to still increased suppression. Communist accusations of the PSL's cooperation with the armed underground intensified and culminated in the show "Kraków trial" of the late summer 1947. Two PSL leaders were tried together with several activists of the WiN underground formation, but unlike the WiN people, they were spared the death sentences. 
In early October 1947, the PSL's Executive Committee declared that state authorities were preventing PSL's further functioning as a party. Mikołajczyk himself fled to the West on 20 October with American help, to avoid imprisonment and possible execution. The PSL lingered on for another year and a half before its remains were cajoled into merging with the communist-controlled peasant party to form the United People's Party (only a few of Mikołajczyk's people remained within the new structure), a formal participant of the communist-led ruling coalition.