APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070027-9
Poland's private peasants (whose 3 ½ million farms occupy 83% of the country's arable land) were not forgotten in the press of efforts to satisfy their urban cousins. Recognizing that he could not assure adequate supplies of food in the future unless he won the confidence of the peasantry and induced it to produce more, Gierek promptly increased the procurement prices for slaughter livestock and directed the nation's well-equipped state farms to provide a wide variety of assistance to their small private competitors. He also abolished state control over sales of coal to farmers. Furthermore, the hated compulsory deliveries of farm products to the state were abolished and replaced with a contract system that gives the peasants a fairer return for their labor and considerable leeway in determining just what to produce. Land taxes were altered in such a way as to facilitate the expansion of private holdings. Poland's health insurance program was extended to cover most of the previously ineligible private farmers and their families. Lest some fears and suspicions remain about the future direction of his farm policies, Gierek publicly pledged that private ownership of most land would continue. And he backed up his words with legislation that granted many peasants clear title to land that they had been tilling but which previously had been considered to be state property.
Although important in themselves, these specific (and carefully limited) concessions to workers and peasants have represented only one side of Gierek's overall program for revitalizing the Polish nation. Like all this other moves to improve the internal political and economic climate and to bridge the gap between the party and the public, they have been keyed to his basic pledge to introduce a new style of leadership - a conveniently ambiguous commitment which underscores his determination to eliminate the errors of the Gomulka era without raising undue hopes for radical change.
In keeping with this approach, Gierek has tried hard to convince his countrymen that Poland's new leadership is more open and communicative, more responsive to well-direct criticism, and sincerely desirous of staying in touch with the needs and aspirations of all the citizenry. Thus the precedent established by Gierek's early factory visits has been maintained. Party and government leaders have held innumerable meetings with workers and other groups throughout the country. High-ranking officials have submitted to critical interviews on radio and television, in some instances responding to questions submitted - both in advance and during the broadcast - by their listening audience. A new post of government spokesmen has been created to publicize and explain the activities of the cabinet. The results of the meetings of the party Politburo and Central Committee, now held more frequently than during the Gomulka era, are regularly publicized. The appearance of frank and mildly provocative articles is now tolerated, and in some cases encouraged, in the public press. A few previously banned journalists have been permitted to reappear in print. And far from silencing the more outspoken critics of Poland's social and economic ills, Gierek has coopted a number of them into the establishment.
Underlying this emphasis on a more open - but still disciplined - society is Gierek's acceptance of the basic concept, first articulated by Kadar in Hungary, that "all those who are not against us are with us." Not only has he ostentatiously appointed nonparty people to a number of responsible positions previously held by party stalwarts, but he has repeatedly pledged to eliminate discriminatory distinctions based on an individual's class background or religious beliefs. More important, Gierek has followed through on his early promise to try to normalize church-state relations - relations which had never progressed beyond the stage of an uneasy truce during the Gomulka era and which still bore the scars of a period of renewed confrontation in the mid-1960s. A meeting of Prime Minister Jaroczewicz and Cardinal Wyszynski, Primate of Poland, in March 1971 - the first such church-state "summit conference" in 8 years - marked the beginning of an ongoing high-level dialogue between church and government officials. The Jaroczewicz-Wyszynski encounter was followed by the opening of direct talks between the Gierek regime and the Vatican and by the enactment of legislation giving the Polish church legal title to ecclesiastical property in the former German territories. Another cause of friction was removed in early 1972 when Warsaw abolished regulations requiring the church to keep a full inventory of its property for tax purposes.
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070027-9
