Polish shake-up lets Kania bring more liberals abroad

The critical Communist Party plenum in Poland appears to have reinforced the leadership of Stanislaw Kania significantly and given added impetus to the country's reform program.

Men known to have been hostile to the independent union movement from the start have been removed. As a result of the latest shake-up, which occurred at the party

His appointment to the Politburo was among changes Nov. 2 that:

* Ousted the last of the leading "conservatives" identified with the disastrous economic policies and what is termed the "sham democracy" of former regimes.

* Brought in a number of known "liberals" in both political and economic fields, thus strengthening the "renewal" program initiated by party leader Stanislaw Kania three months ago.

The changes came at the conclusion of a two-day Central Committee plenum.

Four hard-line members of the existing Politburo, including Stanislaw Kowalczyk, interior minister under the previous minister under the previous party leader, Edward Gierek, were sacked. (Mr. Gierek discrediting was taken a step further with a call for him to relinquish his seat on the Council of State and as member of parliament.)

Two new members were elected: Mr. Moczar and Tadeusz Grabski, one of the younger "economic liberals" who vainly warned about the misdirection of the economy in the last Gierek years. In addition, five alternate members were elected to the Politburo.

Among these is Tadeus Fiszbach, one of the prominent regional reformers and party first secretary in hte voivodship of Gdansk, center of the August Baltic strikes. Mr. Fiszback is on record as having warned early on of dangerously rising discontent among Polish workers.

Mr. Fiszbach is not a pluralist. he accepts no departure from the leading role of the Communist Party, which, he says, using its current slogan, must return to "Leninist" [democratic] norms."

But he acknowledges its formidable failures and the need for the party to prove itself as a "frank, open, and authentic" representative of public needs and interests.

There had been speculation last week that the events bringing Poland to the verge of another strike wave and further economic dislocation were weakening Mr. Kania's position. If anything this last party plenum appears to have strengthened his hand.

Except for Mr. Moczar, the newcomers are known for politically "liberalizing" ideas and firm commitment to far-reaching decentralizing changes in economic method.

Many Poles will regard the return of Mr. Moczar, the last the prewar Communist Party with mixed feelings. He was a supporter of the "liberal" of the 1950s. Mr. Gomulka. But as interior minister in the late 1960s, he was identified both with the purge of many leading Jewish figures and with the harsh repression of student protest movements.

He is an intense patriot and nationalist. During the war he was a resistance fighter inside the country and is not, therefore, one of the unpopular postwar "Muscovite" leaders who came back to Poland with the Red Army.

The Gierek regime relegated him to obscurity. In September, however, he leaped back into the limelight as head of the Supreme Chamber of Control, a revitalized watchdog body now accountable to parliament (and not the government) as part of the Sejm's increased competence.

In a speech at the plenum he praised the Solidarity unions as a "health movement."