Basis and Superstructure in Poland

In: Nationalities papers: the journal of nationalism and ethnicity, Band 7, Heft 1, S. 79-94

Abstract

For a long time state socialism in Eastern Europe has had a tendency towards ossification, and this leads to several negative consequences more or less clearly acknowledged by the local leadership. It is in the sociopolitical nature of the rigid Soviet-style system that any far-reaching reforms are difficult to introduce. Therefore, the Polish experiment of the 1970s started by Gierek and his équipe, after taking power in December 1970 from the équipe of Gomulka, should be carefully scrutinized for successes and failures. From the beginning, this has been an attempt to modernize the economy without transforming the power relations within the society. Modern industry and technology have been widely introduced in Poland during the 1970s, and a considerable part of these innovations has been financed by loans from the West. Application of scientific knowledge to production of goods and services, as well as to management and administration, has been generously promoted by the Polish government in order to maximize efficiency. There has also been much more emphasis than before on the rational utilization of human resources. In the first half of the 1970s, this path to modernity was accompanied by the rise of wages and salaries at a much faster rate than in the other countries of eastern Europe, but, on the other hand, the accelerated pressure on the population toward political conformity or at least passivity also occurred. This pressure was treated by many Poles, as well as by several western observers, rightly or wrongly, as the condition imposed by the neighbors of Poland, primarily the USSR, to tolerate any more vigorous contacts of Poland with the West, as well as the relative "secularization" of the Polish people in comparison with the rigid Marxist orthodoxy in which East Germans and Czechs and all Soviet people are constantly kept by their authorities.