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of them had any political importance. The first was the principal Communist youth organization, the Union of Socialist Youth (ZMS), which was formed in 1957 from splinter groups that arose from the defunct mass youth organization of the pre-Gomulka period. From its founding the ZMS grew from some 50,000 members to almost 1.3 million in 1970. Its main strength lay in its importance to young workers as an indispensable stepping stone to party membership (as provided in the party statutes) and to a promising career. The second youth organization, with somewhat over 1 million members in 1970, was the Union of Rural Youth (ZMW), which accepted the guidance of both the Communist party and of the ZSL. The third organization, and the only one relatively free of indoctrinational activity and of pervasive Communist control, was the Polish Students Association (ZSP), which concentrated on satisfying the material and recreational needs of students in institutions of higher learning.
Communist stress on the function of ideological indoctrination by the ZMS and ZMW, as well as efforts over the years to extend this role also to the ZSP, resulted in slowly growing coordination between the first two organizations, but only in continual friction with the ZSP. These efforts also resulted in a sporadic public debate over the advisability of merging all the youth organizations into one, on the model of the Soviet Komsomol. This debate, which antedated the Gierek regime, was apparently resolved at a PZPR Central Committee plenum in November 1972 by a proposal to form a strong youth federation within which some of the existing youth organizations would retain at least part of their separate status. The reorganization went into effect in April 1972 with the approval of the new federation's constituting documents by its leadership. The ZMS and the ZMW, the latter renamed the Union of Socialist Rural Youth (ZSMW), form the core of the new federation. The major change, the one that appeared to be the main intent of the regime, is the incorporation of the ZSP into the Socialist Union of Polish Students (SZSP), into which also are merged the students (mainly vocational) who had formerly been members of the ZMS and ZMW, and which is now the only organization to which students may belong. By means of this device, the regime evidently hopes to streamline its control over and facilitate indoctrination of the generally non-Communist and ideologically impervious membership of the former ZSP. There are initial indications, however, that membership in the new SZSP - which is not mandatory - will continue to offer students many of the same material and recreational benefits that made the ZSP attractive to them.
Because of the way the Gierek regime came to power - essentially on the shoulders of the working class - labor has remained the single most important pressure group within the population. As a result, the manner in which the political power of this group should be institutionalized, and its relationship to the regime, has become a matter of major interest to both sides. Poland's 10 million-member trade union movement, which before December 1970 was merely a transmission belt for regime exhortation of labor, virtually disintegrated during the workers' riots as the workers formed strike committees which negotiated with the new regime over the heads of the discredited trade union functionaries. Since then, the Gierek regime has taken a pragmatic and tolerant approach to the trade unions, but has made firm effort to retain the existing structure and, through it, to maintain control. While Gierek has been successful in employing this approach in other areas of national life, however, the power relationship between labor and the regime still remains an uneasy one, albeit neither side is predisposed to seek a decisive test of strength.
The first national trade union congress held under the Gierek regime, in November 1972, dramatically illustrated labor's new attitudes. At the congress, regime spokesmen made clear that the December 1970 demands by the workers for independent trade unions would not be satisfied, but they also made clear that the regime now views the trade unions as representing both labor and the government in equal measure, and as a means of both upward and downward channeling of information, opinion, and grievances. For their part, the workers' delegates showed an unwillingness simply to rubber-stamp regime proposals. They rejected a new labor code on the grounds that it failed to adequately define workers' rights, and only narrowly approved a new trade union machinery. The congress as a whole proved that while Polish labor is pleased with the material gains it has made under the Gierek regime, it is equally intent on safeguarding its newly found political influence. Labor has also served notice that while it appreciates the regime's effort to boost trade union prestige and to make the unions genuine vehicles for articulating labor grievances, it will take the regime's stated intent in this regard seriously and will not allow the trade unions to become, once again, a simple regime tool for the exploitation of the working class.
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