APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070027-9
The Imperative of National Revival
When Edward Gierek took over leadership of the Polish United Workers Party (PUWP) from Wladyslaw Gomulka on 20 December 1970, the violent workers' demonstrations which had erupted in several of Poland's coastal cities during the preceding week were threatening to spread to Warsaw itself. Although the immediate cause of the disorders had been Gomulka's ill-timed action in raising food (mainly meat) and fuel prices on the eve of Poland's traditional Christmas feast, the crisis had been brewing for years. The dramatic circumstances surrounding Gomulka's return to power in 1956 had generated exaggerated expectations about his intentions with regard to liberal domestic reforms and the exercise of Polish sovereignty alike. By the early 1960s, his seeming retreat on both fronts had badly tarnished his popular image. Thereafter, a sort of sickness - characterized by cynicism and apathy on the part of the general population and by increased factionalism and opportunism within the ruling Communist elite - settled in on Polish society. (C)
There had been plenty of danger signals: troubles with intellectuals and students, discipline and morale problems in the military establishment, more and more pilfering and malingering in the factories, and mounting evidence of tension between the younger and older members of PUWP. Only a combination of Soviet political support, fortuitous circumstances (including the sobering lessons of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia), and a compromise with impatient "young Turk" elements in the party enabled Gomulka to survive a challenge to his leadership mounted by factional rivals in the spring and summer months of 1968. Yet even this close call did not result in any great change in Gomulka's internal policies or priorities. Preoccupied with foreign affairs and insulated from the realities of the Polish scene by a small clique of like-minded associates, he continued to neglect his country's domestic problems. (C)
By mid-1970, the period of respite that Gomulka had won less than 2 years earlier was simply running out. The economy, suffering from mismanagement and the zigzag course of halfhearted reforms, was in serious trouble. Worse yet, the regime was woefully out of touch with the mood of the population. Finally persuaded of the need for more forceful and consistent action on the economic front, Gomulka pressed forward with a belt-tightening program involving, among other things, a planned increased in unemployment, a complex and controversial revision of the existing wage/bonus system, and a marked alteration of established domestic consumption patterns through selective price adjustments. These measures hit Poland's factory workers and their facilities the hardest. And in December, the unexpected explosion of the accumulated economic and social grievances nourished by a relatively prosperous and skilled segment of the ideologically favored industrial proletariat finally and irreparably exposed the bankruptcy of Gomulka's domestic policies. (C)
Demoralized by incessant factional infighting and by 14 years of Gomulka's cramped and autocratic style of rule, the existing PUWP leadership was ill-prepared to deal with the new crisis. At Gomulka's direction, it attempted to put down the protest demonstrations by force. This only made matters worse, and it soon became evidence to the members of Warsaw's inner councils that Gomulka's harsh response had cost him Moscow's confidence and support. But by the time that those PUWP leaders who favored greater restraint had managed to oust him and his principal lieutenants, impromptu strike committees had gained control of a number of factories and shipyards, dozens of people had been killed in clashes between the workers and the security forces, and well over 1,000 more had been injured. In Gierek's own assessment, Poland stood at the brink of civil war. (S)
With Soviet intervention as the possible price of
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070027-9
