A b s t r a c t: This article is a contribution to the debate on the role and character of women's organizations in Eastern Europe after 1945, including the role they played in the process of women's emancipation. The purpose of the article is to offer insight into the relation between the communist party (that is the PPR and its successorthe PZPR) and the women's movement in Poland in the years 1945-89 and to provide a new interpretation of the movement's history under state socialism. I contend that women's organizations should be viewed as part of the communist system and the roles they played should be understood in the context of the policies pursued by the communist states. K e y w o r d s: the women's movement, state socialism, Poland, the League of Women, the communist party.Over the past few years feminist historiography has been engaged in a debate on the role and character of women's organizations in the state socialist countries after 1945. This article is a contribution to that debate. By analysing some aspects of the women's movement in Poland, especially its relationship to the communist party and programme, I seek to highlight issues that have so far been omitted from researchers' attempts to grasp the nature of these kinds of organizations. Debate on their relationship to the party, especially after 1956, has been absent from Polish historiography.Attempts to investigate women's organizations in Poland in the years 1945-89 have been undertaken only sporadically. Unlike other mass organizations (especially youth organizations) those intended for women have never been subject to a thorough analysis. The League of Women (the LK), the largest and most important structure operating http://dx.