To answer this question, one first has to note that Stalin was more than just an individual dictator. Stalin allegedly chided his son Vasily after the latter threw the Stalin name around too loosely, reportedly saying

You're not Stalin and I'm not Stalin. Stalin is Soviet power. Stalin is what he is in the newspapers and the portraits, not you, not even me!

This anecdote not only illustrates Stalin's own strained relationship with his children but also one of the major facets of the Soviet dictatorship. Stalin was not just a dictator, he was a system of government. To be a Stalinist was not just about a monopolization of political power by one man, but also entailed a command economy prioritizing heavy industrialization, a hierarchical Communist Party structure, rigid lines of obedience between centre and periphery, as well as large state security apparatus. When Stalin installed or propped up the "little Stalins" in Eastern Europe it was not just that he was setting up puppet rulers in countries like Poland. These men were not only agents of Soviet power but also executors of a political system that mirrored developments in the interwar USSR.

The loss of their patron in 1953 did create a significant crisis for the various little Stalins. For one thing, these dictators possessed a degree of political power that was highly dependent upon their connections with Moscow and Soviet aid. The Red Army and military occupation had installed most of these men between 1944 and ca. 1950 and they often lacked a deep domestic base of support. Stalin's death created a power vacuum, albeit one that the surviving members of Stalin's inner circle tried to hide, and it was unclear who would come on top. To give an example of the fluctuating power structures, Stalin's feared chief of the secret police Lavrentiy Beria was one of the more prominent voices post-53 calling for a negotiated reunification of Germany and was a prominent critic of the GDR dictator Walter Ulbricht. Additionally, it soon became apparent that the new Soviet collective leadership was going to tack a different course than a Stalinist one. This not only meant emphasizing light industry and consumer goods over heavy industry, but also taking a less doctrinaire line against the capitalist West.

This was an unsettling turn of events for the little Stalins, most of whom were men who were advocates of Stalinist systems. Poland was no different with President/Prime Minister Bolesław Bierut acting as the dictator of the country and chief of the Polish Communist Party (PZPR- technically a union of various left-wing parties). Bierut had presided over the reconstruction and industrialization of the country as well as the coordination of various left-wing parties into the PZPR and muzzling opposition such as the Polish church. This process of solidifying political power and transforming the economy was messy- as it was throughout the rest of Eastern Europe- and created a number of purged individuals and aggrieve groups. Among the former was Bierut's chief rival in the PZPR Władysław Gomułka. Bierut was able to outmaneuver Gomułka and remove him from his positions, but was not able to purge Gomułka. The disgraced PZPR politician soon emerged as something of a silent opposition within the PZPR while under house arrest. Gomułka's "sins" against the PZPR orthodoxy was that he hewed towards a more "national communist" course which was a go-slow approach to restructuring the country along Marxist-Leninist lines. This deviation was antithetical to Stalinism which pushed for an accelerated socioeconomic development achieved via large-scale industrial planning mediated by a strong communist party.

Bierut did realize that the Thaw in the wake of Stalin's death did mean he would have to change course as well. The state did ease off on mass repression and decreased the strength of the Ministry of Security. Gomułka was rehabilitated and released from house arrest and the post-53 period saw a looser regime of censorship and state control of the media. The post-Stalin change, however, was not wholesale. Bierut still presided over a command economy that prioritized heavy industry. The target quotas for the six-year plans were excessive and raised worker grievances. Additionally, the failure of the planned economy to meet the needs of basic necessities added further problems as the state asked Polish workers to work harder for less. The already unpopular Bierut government thus faced opposition from one quarter it purportedly was the champion of: the Polish proletariat. The decreased security forces contributed to a sense that the Bierut regime was weakened and Bierut's death along with Khrushchev's Secret Speech in March 1956 created expectations of broad political changes within Poland. This political tinderbox ignited in Poznań in June 1956 in which a broad strike of workers as well as intellectuals hearkened back to the 1953 East Berlin uprising. The Polish state suppressed the strike, but it caused massive ripples within the Eastern bloc and Moscow over how to deal with Poland.

The immediate beneficiary of this situation was Gomułka who became the head of the PZPR in October 1956. Gomułka promised the country a "Polish road to socialism" and proceeded to usher in a series of reforms that was a marked change from the Stalinism of Bierut. Censorship and other forms of the repressive state were lessened and Poland became one of the more liberal countries within Eastern bloc. The Polish Film School for example produced a series of innovative films in the Gomułka Thaw, some of whom transgressed various political norms that would have been unthinkable under Bierut. Intellectuals found a degree of space within the public sphere. On a less rarefied level, there was an increase in quality of life and greater access to once scarce consumer goods and services.

But this brings us back to the question of whether Stalin's death was beneficial to Poland. Gomułka's tenure at the helm of the nation in the 1960s did bring a more free society and one in which life was much more comfortable than in the 1940s and 50s. But Poland was still a dictatorship under Gomułka. However much Gomułka would speak of a Polish road, the hegemonic power of the PZPR was still sacrosanct. Police repression was less than under Bierut, but it did not disappear. Moreover, Poland's economic planners still found that the command economy still could not deliver all of the goods even as it reorientated itself away from heavy industry. Shortages of consumer goods was still common and the limited successes of the Thaw economy created higher expectations that could not be fulfilled. As good Marxists, the economic planners themselves could not wholly abandon the prioritization of heavy industry within the economy which created further problems down the line. Gomułka's fall came from the bubbling disenchantment with the shortcomings of his system within the PZPR and Moscow. His successor Edward Gierek promised a more successful management of the economy where Gomułka had failed.

Gierek followed Gomułka's precedent of initial promise sputtering into stagnation. The rise of Solidarity as an organized opposition was a reflection of these failures as was the threat of a 1968-like Soviet invasion of the country in light of social unrest. This post-Bierut pattern of promise, stagnation, domestic unrest, and replacement of the PZPR executive suggests that the end of Stalinism within Poland did not erase all of the contradictions and problems inherent to a single-party dictatorship. A more liberal Polish society did follow in the aftermath of Stalin's death, but this was a very low bar for the successor governments to pass.