Poland

on the World Today

To A reporter returning to Poland after an absence of almost four years, the contrasts are razor-sharp. Not only has the country ceased to be a Stalinist dictatorship, but it has moved remarkably toward social democracy.

The visual changes are minor ones. There is more motor traffic in the cities, though it is insignificant when compared with the West, and many of the cars seem to be held together with string and sealing wax. Then, too, there is an architectural improvement. The many new apartment buildings are no longer all the same, monotonous pattern; there is some variety nowadays. But the real transformation is in the social, political, and economic fields.

The belief abroad that the metamorphosis in Poland occurred suddenly in October, 1956, when Wladyslaw Gomulka supplanted the Stalinists, is erroneous. Gomulka himself was freed from prison in 1954‚ and most of the other political prisoners were released in that year and the ensuing one. Gradual abolition of the secret police started in 1955 with liquidation of the Tenth Department, responsible for the inquisition. Next came dissolution of the whole notorious Ministry of Internal Security. Administration of prisons was transferred to the Ministry of Justice.

Political persecution in its vilest forms had passed before the 52-year-old liberal Communist, Gomulka, became first secretary of the United Workers’ (Communist) Party and the most powerful figure in Poland. By then, if you heard a knock at your door at 5:30 in the morning, you knew it was the milkman and not the secret police.

With Gomulka’s rise, however, the right to say what you think became official. I here was and still is a distinction between freedom of the spoken word and continued shackling of the written word. Civil rights have been restored to a degree unknown anywhere else in the Communist camp, and that includes the other rebel land, Yugoslavia. In Yugoslavia the people may curse the Soviet Union to their hearts’ content, but Tito and his regime are sacrosanct. In Poland there is an unwritten law against offending the Russians, but everybody is free to damn the Polish government and all its works.

What is not generally realized outside Poland is that the evolution there has gone beyond the overthrow of Stalinism. It has developed into a retreat from socialism. That is evident in the three fields of politics, the economy, and ideology.

THE PARTY CHANGES

The character of the dominant United Workers’ Party is becoming less proletarian and more lowermiddle class. In the past few years there has been a great churning in the party’s membership. Its total stayed fairly consistent, fluctuating between 1.3 million and 1.5 million. However, since 1950 almost 600,000 have left the party, while about 350,000 recruits have joined.

In 1950‚ 47 per cent of the members were industrial workers; at the beginning of this year only 39.7 per cent were. The Communists from the outset failed to win a large peasant following, although nearly 60 per cent of Poland’s population is rural. In 1950 peasants accounted only for 13.6 per cent of the party’s composition and by this year the percentage had dropped to 12.8. Significantly, over the same years the proportion of white-collar workers and intellectuals in the party grew from 33.4 per cent to 39.5 per cent.

The trend since Gomulka’s rise has accentuated the deproletarianizing of the party. Tens of thousands of factory laborers quit the party, resentful of the regime’s failure to improve their living conditions. At the same time bureaucrats have continued to stream into the party, often because possession of a card promotes their careers.

PRIVATE BUSINESS

Socialism has receded in the economy, too. Collective farms have largely disintegrated in the past year. While the government was shipping the peasants into the collectives and state farms, the socialized sector of agriculture rose to 24 per cent of all arable land. Now it has dropped to 14 per cent and is still shrinking. Of the former 10,000 collective farms, more than four fifths have evaporated. The state farms still hold almost one seventh of Poland’s crop area, but in the next year or two the government will auction off about 15 per cent of this land if the farmers have the purchasing power to buy it.

The diminishing socialist sector of the economy is evident, though on a much smaller scale, in the growth of private capital investment. Retail trade in private hands now amounts to one tenth of all such business. Private enterprise has reappeared in small industry: in handicrafts, in manufacture of building materials with the private entrepreneurs manufacturing one sixth of all the bricks, and in the opening of mechanical repair shops. In the past couple of years, the number of artisan workshops in Poland has doubled.

THE STRENGTH OF THE CHURCH

In the long run the most telling retreat from socialism may prove to have been in the struggle for man’s soul. For many Poles on the rebound from Stalinism and from the Hungarian tragedy, socialism lost its idealistic appeal. There was a revival of Polish nationalism, culminating in Poland’s revolt against its humiliating role as a Soviet satellite. But it is the Roman Catholic Church which has been expanding its power. It remained strong even while Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski and other hierarchs were deprived of their liberty.

Last December came the biggest concession a socialist state ever made to the clergy: reintroduction of religious teaching in Polish schools. The priest is again becoming the spiritual leader in Poland. In small communities, those who fail to attend church are spurned. In many districts the church is already a stronger force than the Communist Party.

The diplomatic envoy of one European country had been looking around the Polish capital for an atheistic electrician. Even after twelve years of Red rule, he couldn’t find one. His legation had moved into a new building. Above the entrance was a small lantern with a crucifix perched on it. The diplomat decided that a cross was out of place. He is a good Catholic and represents a Catholic-led government. “I believe in separation of the church and state,” he said. “So I instructed the architect to have the cross removed.”

Three days later the architect reported failure. He had approached three electricians. Two refused. They believed removal of the crucifix would be sacrilege. The third agreed to do the job only on condition that the diplomat allow him to transfer the cross to another part of the building. The episode could hardly have illustrated more vividly Communism’s failure to shake the grip of Catholicism in Poland.

By contrast, the position of Jews in Poland has continued to deteriorate. One might have assumed that the Nazi massacre of 3 million Polish Jews would generate a more humane attitude, but antiSemitism is rampant. Of the 70,000 Jews in the country when Gomulka came to the helm, more than 20,000 have emigrated to Israel. Gomulka’s wife is Jewish; so is the wife of Edward Ochab, Gomulka’s predecessor as party chief and, as the present minister of agriculture and Politbureau member, also a powerful Communist. Hatred of the Jew in Poland has roots reaching back to the Middle Ages. The role of two top Jewish Reds, Jakub Berman and Hilary Minc, respectively blamed for the Red terror and for the nation’s wretched economic condition, kindled the ancient Spark of hatred.

INDUSTRIALIZING IS NOT ENOUGH

The people are paying dearly for their country’s mismanagement. In an important respect the Polish experience should teach a lesson to the forty-seven underdeveloped states belonging to the United Nations. Their ideal is industrialization. Their dream is to advance from a primitive agrarian society into the technological age. But industrializing is not enough; economic development must be balanced. The major imbalances which the Poles must remedy are:

1. A swift enlargement of Polish industry while an antiquated farming marks time.

2. Swollen heavy industry, contrasted with dismally inadequate manufacture of consumer goods.

3. Neglect of Polish export industries and of foreign markets, with the result that Poland lacks the foreign currency with which to buy essential raw materials, grain, and machinery —especially to modernize mines and agriculture.

4. Lack of skilled labor.

5. Population shift. Three million Poles streamed from farms and villages into the industrial towns, but there has been neither money nor time to build homes for them, to grow the food to feed them, or to supply the consumers’ goods they crave.

Disproportion between the growing industry and lack of means to feed it raw materials has been disastrous. Rising per capita consumption aggravates the dislocation. For instance, between the two world wars Poland’s maximum cotton imports were about 75,000 tons a year for a 34 million population. New Poland is importing 105,000 tons annually for 28 million inhabitants.

LOW PRODUCTIVITY

Besides the foregoing imbalances, the Polish economy is suffering from acute diseases like absenteeism and alcoholism. The Poles know that excessive drinking is just another symptom of poor labor morale which, in turn, is the product of economic misery. Absenteeism in the first six months of this year, compared with the corresponding period last year, doubled in the mines and power plants and tripled in the machine and light industries. Productivity is low, partly because the pay incentive is lacking, but Gomulka has ordered a wage freeze until output rises.

Coal, which in value accounts for almost half of all Polish exports, is a major source of trouble. In 1955 the Poles sold abroad 24.5 million metric tons of coal: in 1956. 19.5 million; this year it will be under 15 million. They have tried unsuccessfully to offset this loss of revenue by increasing their exports of ham‚ bacon, sugar, eggs, seeds, strawberries, and mushrooms. They are endeavoring to market abroad more rolling stock and locomotives.

The wage system has distorted production. Industrial workers are so underpaid that it usually takes an entire month’s wages to buy a man’s suit of poor quality and two and a half months’ pay for a woman’s good dress. Workers get more if their factory fulfills the state production plan. Then they win bonuses amounting to 40 per cent or 50 per cent of their wages, and even more if they surpass the target.

Workers and managers in a metal plant will concentrate output on heavy articles, because this enables them to exceed their tonnage goal and clinch their bonus. But the heavy products are little needed, and the market does without more essential metal goods. Similarly, because of the bulk, the manufacturers of children’s clothes in state factories turn out a surplus of overcoats. Again, they get their bonus, but children are short of other garments.

The Polish economy has almost no raw material stockpiles. Factories occasionally suspend production for this reason; personnel is deprived of bonuses and morale suffers. If the Soviets halt their supply of iron ore and cotton, Poland will be in a desperate mess. If the West refuses liberal credits for food and materials, it will keep Poland economically at Russia’s mercy.

Gomulka is racing against time. He must bring economic betterment before his prestige and popularity run out. The stakes are high. If the new men and policies prove that in a socialist state liberalism is more rewarding than totalitarianism, it could change the whole course of world Communism.