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recidivists as well as juvenile delinquents. Reliable and objective information on general prison conditions is sparse, but there is evidence that in the administration of the prison system there has been less retrogression from the liberal post-1956 reforms than in other sectors of the judicial apparatus.
C. Political dynamics
When in December 1970 the tumultuous workers' riots along Poland's Baltic coast ended the 14 years of continuous leadership of the Communist party by Wladyslaw Gomulka and catapulted Edward Gierek into power, there was more than a changing of the ruling Communist guard in Warsaw. This was a change from a generation dominated by aged, orthodox, Communist politicians to one of younger, pragmatic administrators committed to a new relationship between the rulers and the ruled, and committed to the proposition that popular welfare and the country's development toward a modern technological society comprise the ultimate test of social, economic, and political theory. (C)
Despite Gierek's innovations in style, the tough and thoroughly pragmatic new party leader has shown that he intends to modify and improve the existing system, not to set in train forces that would endanger its continuity. Indeed, Gierek's reforms of the system are predicated on loyalty to it, and on the premise that the basic features of the system - the Communist monopoly of power and a firm alliance with the USSR - are essentials not to be tampered with. These essentials, which Gierek inherited and to which he is committed, were by 1972 firmly rooted in history, and few Poles, whether Communist or not, sought to negate principles that had determined the political life of the nation for over a generation. (C)
Communist role imposed on Poland in the aftermath of World War II resulted in the elimination of prewar political, social, and economic patters, the liquidation of all genuinely free political organizations and institutions, and the superimposition of a Soviet-style political framework alien to Polish experience. Prewar political parties were for the most part not permitted to resume their activities or were brutally eliminated during the postwar consolidation of Communist power, a consolidation accompanied by prolonged sporadic armed struggle against anti-Communist elements. In December 1948 the absorption of the Polish Socialist Party, once independent but by then thoroughly purged, by the Polish Workers Party to form the Polish United Workers Party (PZPR) marked the end of the consolidation process, and the formal establishment of PZPR - i.e., Communist party - dominance over all aspects of national life. (C)
Throughout the postwar period, therefore, Poland has been a one-party dictatorship in a modern totalitarian state. The PZPR has an acknowledged monopoly of political power in the country, with the other two surviving parties, the United Peasant Party (ZSL) and the Democratic Party (SD), recognizing the leadership of the Communists and being retained as representative of the peasants and of the non-Marxist middle class and intelligentsia, respectively. There has been no postwar legislation dealing specifically with political parties. The constitution guarantees citizens the right to organize, and, in listing the types of organizations which can be formed, refers also to political organizations. Although this provision sanctions the continued tolerance of a nominally multi-party system by the PZPR, the reality of unquestioned Communist power negates the theoretical right of citizens to organized political expression. (C)
Despite the Gierek regime's willingness to give voice to public opinion and to provide an institutional basis for it through the government and the mass organizations, these organizations remain under ultimate control of the PZPR. Thus, the apparatus of the state is parallel to but under the control of the PZPR; the national parliament as well as local governments are primarily committed to carrying out PZPR policy and only secondarily to serving as sounding boards for popular reaction to such policy. Similarly, the function of the mass organizations, which together with the political parties form the so-called National Unity Front (FJN), is to be mobilize the support of various special interest groups within the population. Despite Gierek's measures to impart greater prestige to the FJN and to make it more broadly representative of its membership rather than of the PZPR alone, its chief task remains the presentation of a single list of Communist-approved candidates at election time and the conduct of pre-election propaganda. Thus, in spite of the apparently real concern of the Communist leadership that political protocol be observed in inter-institutional relationships, the locus of political power is unquestionably the PZPR's policymaking body, the Politburo, a body unmentioned in the Polish constitution. (C)
1. Communist party (PZPR) (S)
During much of its postwar existence, especially during the Stalinist era of the early 1950s, the PZPR
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