could have easily allied himself with Marshal Rokossovsky and other discarded Politburo members, but he placed Poland's interests over his own career. In his own mind, Ochab rightfully submitted to the will of the Politburo and the Central Committee. He was no fan of Gomułka and felt that promoting Gomułka as the savior of Poland, unavoidably in the making, would be demeaning to the entire Polish party. But Edward Ochab did all he could to save Poland from tragic events on a mass scale, like the ones that were soon experienced by Hungary. Work in agriculture and as head of state Ochab remained a member of the new, reduced in size Politburo. He was seen as close to the factions of Zambrowski and Gomułka in the party. In May 1957, already after the previous collectivization of Polish agriculture had been largely reversed, he became the minister of agriculture. At that time Ochab supported individual farmers and their small associations, not the large cooperatives previously favored by the state. The weaker of the state-owned State Agricultural Farms (PGR) Ochab turned into cooperative units. In October 1959 Ochab gave up his ministerial position, but continued his supervisory role in the same area as a secretary of the Central Committee responsible for agricultural affairs. In addition, in 1961 Ochab became deputy chairman of the Council of State, a collective head of state organ. After the Fourth Congress of the PZPR (June 1964), he retained his membership in the Politburo and the position of the Central Committee secretary. However, in August Chairman Aleksander Zawadzki died, and Ochab assumed the function of the chairman of the Council of State. He would now receive foreign leaders as the official representative of the Polish state. In March 1966, Ochab notified Primate Stefan Wyszyński that Pope Paul VI was being denied his request to visit Poland for the celebrations of the Millennium of Polish Christianity because of the Vatican's continuing diplomatic relations with the Polish government-in-exile. March 1968 The events in Poland usually described under the March 1968 heading actually began after the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab countries in June 1967. On 19 June First Secretary Gomułka spoke in Warsaw to a labor union congress and implicitly referred to the Polish Jewish population as the fifth column. Ochab insisted that the term should be deleted from the published transcript of the speech, and it was.