APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3
responsibility, and a role in shaping the country's future. What most student leaders sought to make clear was that the target of their movement was not so much—or not only—the Communist ideology, which they regarded as a dead letter irrelevant to the issues facing the country, but rather the stagnation, exclusiveness, corruption, and repressiveness of the regime irrespective of its ideological pretensions. The failure of the students and intellectuals to gain widespread support from the working class and from the older generation in general—segments of society which, in the absence of economic issues in 1968, were fearful of upsetting the status quo—was the single most important factor in the regime's successful suppression of the demonstrations. Lingering anti-intellectualism among the Polish workers, together with the fact that students of worker and peasant backgrounds apparently were the leas involved in the disturbances, also contributed to the failure to form a revolutionary student-worker coalition. The disappointment of the youth in 1968 to effect significant change by frontal attack led to a resurgence of apathy and division of opinion among them. At least some of these factors were still operative in 1970 when the working class, this time motivated by bread-and-butter issues, erupted into revolt and, while the students and intellectuals generally stood back, toppled the Gomulka regime.
Although the spark igniting the workers' revolt was economic, the underlying social strains that fueled their dissatisfaction were much the same as those protested by the students in 1968—inefficiency, stagnation, exclusiveness, corruption, and unresponsiveness to public opinion by the ruling clique. Few Poles would say with certainty that the succeeding regime of Edward Gierek was likely to find lasting remedies for all these ills inherited from the past, but most people credited the regime with a new commitment to tackle these fundamental problems as well as to remedy immediate grievances. This in itself was unprecedented in postwar Poland and, if the Gierek regime holds to its purpose, could result in a social climate less susceptible to periodic, violent release of pent-up strains.
b. Crime
Postwar regimes have generally depended more on disciplinary than preventive measures to curb crime, chronic economic corruption, and lax moral standards. Despite the Gierek regime's new emphasis on rehabilitation of criminal offenders, a public relations program designed to achieve what might be termed improved police-community relations, and a general emphasis on "socialist legality" equality dispensed to all citizens, there is a concurrent and strong emphasis on increased social discipline.
In its efforts to enlist the support of the people for law and order, and to imbue this concept with justice, the Gierek regime is burdened by the legacy of the past. During the Stalin era of the early 1950's, the majority of prosecuted criminal acts were actually political in nature. Most crimes of violence were also politically motivated and were especially common during the assumption of Communist power in the late 1940's, during the most intense period of forced agricultural collectivization between 1951-55, and during the spontaneous breakup of collectives in late 1956. After 1958, however, deepening political apathy and the resurgence of police power significantly reduced the incidence of political crimes of violence, except among the youth. Sporadic cases of such crimes continue to be reported from isolated rural ares when regime officials run afoul of peasant individualism.
Official statistical data on the incidence of crime published since the advent of the Gierek regime graphically reflect the government's more candid attitude towards acknowledgement and remedy of social problems. Since December 1970, changed criteria for the reporting of criminal offenses and transgressions of all kinds have resulted in a wholesale revision upwards, by some 20% to 25%, of the incidence of crime during the 1960's. For example, according to information published in 1968, there were 383,000 crimes of all kinds committed in that year, or an incidence of 118.6 crimes per 10,000 population. Revised data published in 1971, however, list the 1968 figure at 468,602 crimes, or an incidence of 145.1 per 10,000 population.
The new, and apparently more credible figures, show that crime fluctuated during the 1960 decade, reaching a high point in 1966 with 525,540 crimes, declining somewhat in 1968, rising again in 1969 to almost 500,000 crimes and falling significantly in 1970—the latest available figure—to 424,217 crimes, or a rate of 129.3 per 10,000 population. The largest category of crimes (49%) continued to be robbery and theft—mostly of public property—which showed a rate of 64.7 per 10,000 population in 1970. The 486 registered cases of murder and the 153 cases of attempted murder represented together a rate of just under 0.2 per 10,000 population.
Juvenile delinquency, as distinct from politically and intellectually motivated unrest among the youth, has been rising in postwar Poland as in most other countries, and is one of the most serious concerns of the government in the areas of public order. General
41
APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3
