In November 1979, as the PZPR's Eighth Congress was approaching, Ochab wrote a ten-page letter "To Comrades Communists", which Jerzy Eisler characterizes as highly ideological, detached from practical usefulness. Most of the current party leadership, wrote Ochab referring to the events of prewar Poland, "had not participated in the fight against the fascist organs of the Polish bourgeoisie power", too many "did not appreciate the historic importance of the communists' fight against the shameful rule of the reactionary Polish bourgeoisie". Later in the letter Ochab engaged in polemics with the recent works of Polish historians, which he interpreted as a creeping rehabilitation and legitimization of the Sanation regime. "Such works clearly lead to a whitewashing of the reactionary rule of our capitalists and big landowners, to the slighting of the historic role of the communists in the fight against fascism and the hostile to the masses terrorist policies of the Piłsudskiites, National Democrats, ONR. The venerable professors negate the fascist character of the post-May governments". The former first secretary, who had spent a considerable part of his younger years in Sanation prisons, wrote also of the responsibility for the "spilled blood of thousands of workers and peasants murdered during the strikes and occupations, in antisemitic and anti-Ukrainian pogroms, prison and Bereza Kartuzka persecutions" resting with the "dull military regime, blinded by the hatred for the Soviet Union, the subjugated nations and the Polish masses". Finally Ochab denounced the current "anti-socialist groups", which slandered the people's democracy and Marxism; "they dream of anti-socialist activation of the Polish ayatollahs" (Catholic Church hierarchy). Ochab felt uneasy about both the emerging great independent worker movement, the future Solidarity, and his own "communist" party that he had found so much fault with.