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| 1954, March 19 |
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| Josef Cyrankiewicz succeeded Bierut as prime minister. | 1 |
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| 1956, April 6 |
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| Wladyslaw Gomulka, who had been arrested in 1951, and other Polish Communists were reported to have been freed and rehabilitated. | 2 |
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| June 28 |
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| Rioting, leading to more than one hundred deaths, broke out in Poznan after workers demonstrated for better social and economic conditions. | 3 |
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| Oct. 10 |
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| Signs of an approaching storm occurred when the trials of Poznan rioters ended abruptly and (Oct. 16) several Communist leaders urged that Soviet officers be removed from the Polish army. | 4 |
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| Oct. 20 |
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| Gomulka reentered the Polish Communist Party. While Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders hastened to Poland to plead for the continuation of pro-Soviet policies, Defense Minister and Commander-in-Chief Rokossovsky, a former Soviet officer, ordered troops to take positions near Warsaw. Polish and Soviet frontier troops exchanged fire. | 5 |
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| Oct. 21 |
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| Gomulka became first secretary of the Polish Communist Party. By not electing Marshal Rokossovsky to the new Politburo, the Polish Communist Party gained some independence from interference by the Soviet Union. | 6 |
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| Oct. 24 |
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| Gomulka announced that Soviet troops stationed in Poland would return to their regular bases “within two days.” But the Soviet troop removal, which began on Oct. 25, did not include the three or four Soviet divisions from East Germany that had entered Poland a few days earlier. Polish militia used tear gas to quell Polish attacks on Soviet army installations at Legnica (Liegnitz). | 7 |
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| Oct. 28 |
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| Marshal Rokossovsky returned to the USSR when an investigation unearthed evidence of his plot to stage a military coup against Gomulka. | 8 |
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| Oct. 29 |
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| Cardinal Wyszynski was released from custody. | 9 |
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| Oct. 30 |
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| The Gomulka government decided to present the Soviet Union with a bill for Poland's fair share (15 percent) of the German reparations payments to the Soviet Union. | 10 |
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| Nov. 18 |
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| Gomulka and Premier Cyrankiewicz signed an agreement in Moscow with Khrushchev and Nikolay Bulganin for equality in Soviet-Polish relations. | 11 |
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| Dec. 17 |
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| A Polish-Soviet agreement limited the role of Soviet troops in Poland. | 12 |
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