NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE SURVEY 14; POLAND; THE SOCIETY

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• Collection: NIS
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3
• Release Decision: RIP
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• Document Page Count: 88
• Document Creation Date: October 25, 2016
• Sequence Number: 23
• Content Type: REPORTS

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Poland
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I. Ca" t,r�ds
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3, luimgrotlon, emlgratio, and rn4Kvttks
10
4, WW tmids
10
Population policy and pm dtord
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Dk sacNal aspacb of labor
43
f. The tudustdathSng sanely
22
2. Labor ss atslyg to ehaM
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Page
a. The anatomy of mismanagement 27
b. Labor and the new managers
29
3. Trade unions and labor relations
30
E. Living conditions and social problems
33
1. Material welfare
33
2. Social security and welfare programs
37
3. Social problems
40
a. Social strains
40
b. Crime
41
c. Social ills
42
F Health
43
1. Health conditions and medical care
43
2. Sanitation and utilities
46
3. Nutrition
47
G. Religion
48
H. Education
55
1. The national context
55
2. The educational system
57
Page
a. Organization and reform
57
b. Programs and curriculums
59
3. Higher education
61
4. Extracurricular activities
63
5. Foreign students and exchanges
64
I. Artistic and cultural expression
64
1. Historical development
65
2. Development under communism
67
a. Literature and art
68
b. Theater, music, and folk art
69
c. Popular participation
71
J. Public information
73
I. The role of government
73
2. Radio and television
74
3. Press, publishing, and film
76
K. Selected bibliogrephy
78
Glossary
79
FIGURES
Page
Fig. 18
Female employment (chart)
Page
Fig. 1
Polish ethnic types (photos)
3
Fig. 2
The Polish Knight, a 19th century
painting photo)
11
Fig. 3
Royal Castle, Warsaw (photo)
12
Fig. 4
Monument to Nazi war victims
28
Fig. 22
(photo)
12
Fig. 5
The Warsaw Nike photo)
13
Fig. 6
Selected population indicators (chart)
14
Fig. 7
Comparative population densities
(chart)
15
Fig. 8
Population density map)
16
Fig. 9
Urban and rural population density
37
Fig. 26
(table)
17
Fig. 10
Internal migration (table)
17
Fig. 11
Comparison of vital rates (chart)
20
Fig. 12
Age -sex distribution (chart)
20
Fig. 13
Vital statistics table)
21
Fig. 14
Vital rates, Poland and selected
49
Fig. 31
countries (chart)
22
Fig. 15
Selected age -sex characteristics
50
Fig. 32
(table)
23
Fig. 16
Population by source of livelihood
(chart)
23
Fig. 17
Shifts in working -age population
(chart)
24
Page
Fig. 18
Female employment (chart)
24
Fig. 19
Registered unemployment (table)
25
Fig. 20
Employrn;ant by educational level
(chart)
26
Fig. 21
Index of money wages and real
wages (chart)
28
Fig. 22
Consumer goods availability table)
35
Fig. 23
New workers' housing, Katowice
(photo)
36
Fig. 24
Old and new housing, Warsaw
(photo)
36
Fig. 25
Typical rural dwelling, central Po-
land (photo)
37
Fig. 26
Health personnel per 10,000 popu-
lation (chart)
45
Fig. 27
Hospital beds by categories chart)
46
Fig. 28
Per capita food consumption (table)
48
Fig. 29
Supermarket, Warsaw (photos)
49
Fig. 30
Typical self service grocery photo)
49
Fig. 31
Open -air peasants' market, Warsaw
(photo)
50
Fig. 32
Religious procession photo)
50
Fig. 33
Members of Roman Catholic hier-
archy (photo)
51
ii
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iii
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Fuge
Fig. 34
Roman Catholic ecclesiastical ad-
Fig. 45
Wawel, the Royal Castle iri Krakow
ministration (chart)
51
(photo)
65
Fig. 35
Church buildings photo)
55
Fig. 46
Nicolaus Copernicus photo)
66
Fig. 36
School buildings photo)
56
Fig. 47
Frederic Chopin photo)
66
Fig. 37
Educational statistics (table)
57
Fig. 48
Neo- Byzantine religious art (photo)
70
Fig. 49
Exhibition of posters, Warsaw (photo)
70
Fig. 38
Educational system (chart)
Fig. 50
Palace of Culture, Warsaw photo)
71
Fig. 39
Elementary school curriculum table)
59
Fig. 51
Old Town square, Warsaw photo)
71
Fig. 40
Secondary school curriculum table)
60
Fig. 52
Mountaineers of southern Poland
Fig. 41
Percentage of graduates in major
(photo)
72
fields of study chart)
61
Fig. 53
Radio and TV statistics table)
74
Fig. 42
Students' camping trip photo)
83
Fig. 54
Radio and TV programing chart)
75
Fig. 55
Radiobroadcasts to and from Poland
Fig. 43
Foreign students selected years
(chart)
76
(table)
6-
Fig. 56
Selected newspapers and period
Fig. 44
14th century religious design photo)
65
icals table)
77
iii
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The Society
A. Introduction (U /OU)
Scarred by repeated foreign incursions from both
east and west, Polish society has depended on a strong
fusion of nationalism with Roman Catholic culture for
the survival of its national consciousness and
traditional social values. Despite domination since
1947 by a soviet- imposed Communist regime, the
Poles have retained their Western social, cultural, and
political roots. Although these traditional values
survive, the institutional fabric of Polish soci,� r has
been largely reshaped by wartime social upheavals
and by rapid postwar industrialization and
urbanization.
The transformation of Poland's prewar, largely rural
society� dominated by relatively small social elites
into an increasingly urban, mass society was
facilitated by the unprecedented political, economic,
and ethnic changes brought about directly by World
War II. The wartime extermination of the sizable
Jewish minority by the Nazi occupiers, the postwar
expulsion of Germans from the so- called Regained
Territories (former German lands in the west and
north), and exchanges with the U.S.S.R. of nationality
groups as a consequence of boundary shifts, produced
an ethnically and religiously homogeneous population
about 98% Polish and 95 %Roman Catholic.
Following the war, the surviving remnants of the
traditionally influential landed gentry were im-
poverished through land reform and removed from
social leadership. The prewar middle class was also
soon deprived of its economic strength through
nationalization of industry, commerce, and most
services, and its class consciousness and influence on
society was destroyed by discriminatory Communist
social policies. A massive postwar rise of a largely ex-
peasant working class unfamiliar with the demands of
urban society but ideologicaiiy courted by the
Communist regime has contributed to social tensions.
Because of postwar circumstances and subsequent
totalitarian controls, the Polish regime has been
successful in structurally transforming Polish society; it
has not been successful, however, in imbuing it with
its own value, and making it effectively serve
Communist political, economic, and social goals.
Strong attachment to individualism, resistance to
imposed authority, deeply felt nationalism, and
adherence to religious faith continue to be the main
determinants of the national character.
The political upheaval of 1956 marked a revolt
against a Stalinist past and wrested from Poland's
leaders a repudiation of terror and coercion as
instruments of rule. But the initial liberalism and
promise of a better life attributed to the Gomulka
regime, which then came to power, were largely the
illusions of an exuberant populace; the regime itself
made few commitments. Indeed, its backsliding from
initial reforms and the gradual atrophy of its
leadership at all levels of the bureaucracy during the
late 1960's intensified the strains between the rulers
and the ruled. These strains, fueled by major economic
blunders and sparked by ill -timed price rases, finally
exploded in December 1970. The ensuing rapid
political change represented the first instance of the
proletariat overthrowing a Communist regime whose
theory had failed in practice. More importantly, it
ushered in a change not oniy of leadership but also of
generations.
The current regime of Edward Gierek is not based
on concession and weakness; in fact, its stress on social
progress and material abundance is matched by its
insisteper.- on hard work and social responsibility. But,
for the first time in Poland's history under Communist
rule, the rulers have promised to consult their subjects
and, more importantly, are pledged to the proposition
that material and social development is the
determinant of the validity of the guiding political
and social theory.
Gierek's rule by no means spells the beginning of a
free society. As a tough but thoroughly pragmatic
administrator, Gierek knows that the dominant
position of the Soviet Union makes the basic elements
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of the Communist system and its ideological
imperatives virtually inviolable. At the same time he
seems committed to removing those features of the
past that for so long contributed to national weakness:
the gulf between the people and the Communist
rulers, lagging economic development, the willingness
of the government to risk social friction to further its
political and economic goals, and official unrespon-
siveness to popalar aspirations. If he succeeds even
partially, then the demonstrated capability of the
people to unite in the pursuit of popular and
attainable goals could substantially ease his task of
improving material conditions and of giving Polish
society a more dynamic image on the world stage. For
most Poles it is difficult to shed the skepticism that has
so often proved to be we!l- founded. Nevertheless, most
of them appear to believe that their rulers now share to
a greater degree than before the popular hope that
improved living standards, reduced East -West
tensions, and a deemphasis of doctrinal considerations
will enable Poland to assume a more prominent role in
European society.
B. Structure and characteristics of the
society
Poland's geographical location� astride the flat
plains of the north central European corridor �has
been the principal factor governing its almost
uninterrupted struggle for national identity and
territorial integrity in the face of real or threatened
domination by neighboring power. This overriding
element of national history, in turn, has been the main
determinant of the ethnic, linguistic, religious, and
social characteristics of the people. (U /OU)
A strong attachment to the land, so often thwarted
by claimed as well as actual domination by foreign
powers, has engendered a finely honed nationalism
and a highly developed sense of the need to protect
basic national interests. Active patriotism, born of the
willingness to struggle against overwhelming
authority, was thus historically raised to the level of
the chief national virtue and became the most
important force for social cohesion among the Polish
people of all classes. (U /OU)
The same historical conditioning which made for
national cohesion in the face of a foreign enemy,
however, held the seeds of internal discord, class
divisions, and lack of clear national purpose when
projected solely into a domestic context. Long periods
of partition and domination by as many as three
different foreign powers� Orthodox Russia, Catholic
Austria, and Protestant Prussia �all with widely
2
differing philosophies of rule and social order
generated among the Polish people inherently
different views concerning the correct targets and
methods of the struggle for the preservation of
national identity. The long absence of indigenous
domestic authority and the moral righteousness of
resistance to foreign viceroys strengthened the native
individuality of the people, but at the same time
weakened their social cohesion and their ability to
subordinate individual and group interests to social
and political discipline. (U /OU)
Despite the force of events which have engulfed
Poland in this century, the social character of the
Polish people has not been appreciably affected. The
interwar interlude of weak civilian and military rule
was followed first by the brutal rule of Nazi Germany
and then by indirect domination by Soviet
communism. Both forms of domination, although
widely different in character, were initially fiercely
resisted, and subsequently were punctuated by
outbursts of popular resistance to Nazi brutality and
Communist misrule �the Warsaw uprising in 1944,
the quasi revolt of 1956, and the workers' riots of
December 1970 resulting in the first instance in history
of the overthrow of a Communist regime by the
working class. Despite the strong efforis of the post
1970 Gierek regime to tvckle some of the root causes of
the national malaise and to instill in the people both
discipline and a new sense of viable national purpose,
many ingrained elements of the national character
continue to pose a danger to the stability and unity of
the society. (C)
1. Physical characteristics and language (U /OU)
Ethnically, the Poles are a highly complex people,
being an amalgam of the Nordic, Neo- Danubian, East
Baltic, Alpine, ai)d Dinaric physical types of the
Caucasian race. Among the Poles there is no distinct
national physical type, and most Poles could be takcii
fog natives of almost any country in central Europe.
Wartime dislocations and postwar shifts in population
have contributed to further ethnic homogeneity.
Based upon a sampling of military recruits in the mid
1960's, Poles have a mean Mature of about 5 feet 6
inches, the average for Europeans, a mean weight of
about 140 lbs., and a moderately heavy build. Except
in the south, the skin is almost uniformly light, the
hair colors are commonly medium to dark brown and
dark ash blond, and the eyes are predominantly light
mixed, frequently with shades of grey. The dominant
Nordic and Neo Danubian elements account for the
blond pigmentation in most of the population. The
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several more distinctive ethnic types are shown in
Figure 1.
Polish, the official language, serves as the mother
tongue of about 99% of the country's inhabitants,
ranking seventh among European languages in
number of native speakers. Outside of Poland, it is
used to some extent by several million Polish emigrants
scattered throughout the world, representing one of
their main ties with the motherland. In modern times
the Polish language has achieved importance as an
instrument of both literary and scholarly expression.
Along with Czech, Slovak, and Lusatian (Wendish),
Polish belongs to the Western division of the Slavic
(Slavonic) language group, which is in turn a member
of the Eastern division of the Indo- European family.
Despite the considerable uniformity in vocabulary and
grammatical pattern that characterizes the Slavic
tongues, Polish is not readily comprehensible to other
Slavic speakers. Its distinctive features include fixed
accent on the penultimate syllable, frequent
occurrence of palatal and sibilant sounds, and
preservation of archaic Slavic nasal vowels. In
common with other Slavic tongues whose speakers
chose the Roman Catholic rather than the Eastern
Orthodox form of Christianity, Polish in its written
form uses the Latin alphabet.
Regional dialects and subdialects, although
numerous, cause few practical difficulties in
intercommunication. The flat character of the country
has been -Astrumental in checking the emergence of
strong dialectal differences, while local language
peculiarities have practically disappeared since World
War I through such leveling influences as public
education, mass media, urbanization, and internal
migration. Authorities do not always agree on the
classification of Polish dialects and subdialects, but all
recognize three major groupings: 1) Great Polish
(Wielkopolski), with Poznan' as the center; 2) Little
Polish (Malopolski), with Krakow as the center; and 3)
Mazovian (Maxout ecki), with Warsaw as the center.
A transitional central area among these three groups is
located north, west, and south of Lodz.
The most distinctive dialect is Kashubian,
consiuered by some scholars to be a subdiaiect of
Pomeranian and by others to be a separate West Slavic
language; it is spoken by a relatively small group
(esr,mated between 100,000 and 250,000) inhabiting
au area along the Baltic Coast west of the Vistula. In
Silesia the older generation of indigenous people speak
a highly Germanized form of Polish.
'For diacridrs on place names see the list of names at the end of
the chapter.
East Baltic
Neo- Danubian
Nordic
vinaric
FIGURE 1. Polish ethnic types (U/OU)
3
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In modem times literary Polish has been the
standard speech of the educated upper classes in all
Polish cities. Members of the urban lower classes,
mainly of recent peasant origin, retain many of the
characteristics of their regional dialects. Among the
distinctive features of educated speech is the use of the
third person singular, as in Italian and Spanish, in the
polite form of address (i.e., for" you"); par is used
to a man and pani (madame) to a w
Before World War II, Yiddish,
Byelorussian, Lithuanian, an(i .,rman were the
principal non Polish languages ;y were spoken by
nearly all of the minorities, wl, made up about one
third of the total prewar population. Wartime
decimation of the Jewish minority, postwar
population and territorial shifts, and Communist
policies of assimilation have reduced the use of non
Polish minority languages to negligible proportions.
Their use among the remaining minority groups
totaling about 1.5% of the population is increasingly
confined to the elderly, while the younge members of
minorities are either bilingual or entirely Polish-
speaking.
German probably remains the principal Western
language spoken by the older as well -as some members
of the younger generation, although its use is resented
and shunned by older nonprc.ressionals. The second
language of most Communist party leaders, both -old
and young, probably is Russian, although some
among them shared in the general tendency of
professional people and intellectuals educated in the
interwar period to look to French as a vehicle for
social, cultural, and political intercourse with other
European peoples. Communist party leader Edward
Gierek, for example, reportedly speaks only poor
Russian but is fluent in French, havi spent much of
World Wa: II within the Commun:st resistance
movements in Frr.nce and Belgium.
In the postwar period, knowledge of Russian has
increased through compulsory teaching in the schools.
Sin ^e 1956, however, English has become the most
popular and widely studied Western language among
the younger generation, followed closely by French
ar!d German. Three fourths of all Polish students of
foreigr languages other than Russian studied English
in 1970. The result of this trend has become evident in
the lower and middle levels of the party and
government bureaucrLcy, where increasing numbers
of the younger professionals possess a knowledge of
English, German, or French. In line with the Gierek
regime's avowed desire to increase Poland's political
and economic role in Europe, it is likely further to give
practical encouragement to the study and knowledge
4
of Western languages� especially English and
French �by those engaged in diplomatic and
commercial relations.
2. Minorities (C)
Although insignificant numerically, the postwar
ethnic minorities have retained their own special
characteristics and have frequently had a social and
political impact far beyond their numbers. The tiny
Jewish minority has played a significant role in the
shaping of Communist rule in Poland. The German
group is at the center of the repatriation issue which
played an important part in the conclusion of the
Polish 1 7est German treaty of December 1970. Some
of the minority groups are known to be antagonistic
toward the Polish state, but because of their numerical
weakness and their lack of cohesiveness and leadership
none of them are regarded as a threat to national
security. For the same reason, they have not become a
serious problem in Poland's relation: with its
neighbors, although the concentration of certain
minorities along border areas has sometimes prompted
rumors of border adjustments.
The events of World War II and of the early
postwar years helped to create the most ethnically
homogeneous citizenry in the history of the Polish
nation. The proportion of minority groups has
continued to decline, constituting only 1.5% of the
total population in 1969. Nonetheless, lingering
animosities, including anti- Semitism, remain. Much
of this animosity has historical roots, since Polish
national consciousness has to a large extent been
molded by resistance to foreign incursions on Polish
culture and to the irredentist claims of Poland's
neighbors. The generally unviab!c borders of the
Polish state during the interwar period did little to
reduce this feeling of national insecurity, particularly
since they encompassed a significant and often restive
non- Polish population. The census of 1931 showed
that ethnic minorities accounted for 31.1 of the total
population, the largest being the Ukrainians and
Ruthenians (13.9 the Jews (8.6 the White
Russians (3.1 and the Germans (2.3
Wartime losses, postwar territorial shifts, and
population transfers might have been expected to
eliminate ethnic frictions. Nevertheless, much of the
former bitterness among ethnic groups was actually
compounded in the immediate postwar period.
Traditional Polish Ukrainian enmity boiled over in
the late 1940's, stimulated by the existence of
Ukrainian partisan groups in southeast Poland
agitating for a free Ukraine. This resulted in the forced
transfer of over 100,000 Ukrainians to northwest
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Poland, where faltering steps to relieve their cultural
suppression came only after 1956.
Anti German feelings were so much a part of Polish
nationalism after the war that until the late 1950's
harsh restrictions were levied on those Germans who
remained within the newly drawn Polish boundaries.
Even token emigration of individual Germans was not
permitted although mass expulsion was an official
policy. After 1956 a relatively lenient policy permitted
Germans who had previously declared Polish
nationality to profess their Germanism and allowed
emigration for the purpose of "reuniting families."
Thereafter, applications for emigration were dealt
with on an individual basis, with wide variation in the
ease with which such applications were granted.
Denial was most frequently experienced by those
possessing skills needed by the Polish economy. This
factor. has greatly complicated the repatriation of
ethnic Germans and has become something of a
hindrance to the" normalization" of bilateral relations
with West Germany.
Poland's policies toward its Jewish minority, the
subject of periodic international concern, is rooted in
the country's political and social history. The drastic
reduction of the Jewish population from about 3
million in the immediate prewar years to about 25,000
in the mid- 1960's was due to the wartime
extermination policies of Nazi Germany and to
extensive emigration in the postwar period. The
postwar exodus of Jews was to a large extent
attributable to the persistence of anti Semitism,
despite grudging Polish respect for Jewish heroism in
the famous Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943 and the
stirring of the national conscience over the question of
possible Polish guilt in failing to help most Jews escape
from wartime destruction.
In prewar Poland, Jews were typically small
merchants or industrial workers who spoke Yiddish as
a native tongue and lived in a state of isolation in the
cities and towns. About 10% deviated from this
pattern, becoming members of the intelligentsia. They
contributed greatly to Polish culture but were strongly
resented not only by the landed gentry but also by the
growing numbers of Polish intellectuals with whom
they competed in the professions. Because of the
wartime destruction of the Jews, anti- Semitism might
have disappeared in the postwar period had not a
disproportionately large number of the surviving Jews
become Communists and had not many of them
acquired responsible positions in those agencies of
state authority associated in the public mind with
Communist oppression, especially during the Stalinist
era of the early 1950's. Moreover, most of the Jewish
Con munists had spent the war years in the Soviet
Union and were thus regarded as foreign "viceroys"
not only by the non Communist population but also
by the large nationalistic element within the
Communist Party. Anti Semitism thus became a
major issue in the party's factional strife after the
assumption of power in October 1956 by the regime of
Wladvslaw Gomulka, who had spent the war years as
leader of the Communist underground in Poland. The
political impact of anti Semitism was further
complicated by the fact that many formerly Stalinist
Jews rallied to the support of Gomulka in 1956, thus
becoming identified with his rule, and by the fact that
this rule soon forsook those liberal and national
policies which characterized the immediate post -1956
period.
Popular attitudes as well as factional rivalries
brought about frequent, th )ugh limited, purges of
Jews from various party and government positions
during the years or Gomulka's rule, but it was not until
the political crisis of 1968 that anti- Semitism became a
major political tool openly used by Gomulka's
opponents within the party. Spurred by the generally
pro- Israeli attitudes of some leading Polish Jews
during the Middle East conflict of June 1967 in
contravention of Soviet and official Polish pro -Arab
policies, the party's nationalistic wing combined
lingering popular anti Semitism with anti-intellectual
ism to form an essentially populist challenge to
Gomulka's rule. Gomulka's survival of this challenge
was due not only to his political skill and Soviet
backing, especially after the Warsaw Pact invasion of
Czechoslovakia, but also to concessions which resulted
in wholesale purges of the Jewish element in the party
and government apparatus and in cultural and
economic life. These purges were accompanied by a
policy of actively encouraging the emigration of those
Jews "whose primary loyalty was not to Poland."
Because of the formerly disproportionate impor-
tance of the Jewish element in Poland's political and
cultural life, the impact of the 1968 events was
significant. More than one -half of the estimated
25,000 Jews in Poland before 1967 are believed to have
left the country since then, reducing the Jewish
minority to a core of some 8,000 to 10,000 mostly
elderly persons who do not intend to emigrate. To
many Poles, the purges and emigration of Jews have
had the desirable effect of transferring some power
and influence from an old and frequently discredited
group to a generally capable younger generation, even
before the demise of the compromised Gomulka
regime. For the same reason, the leadership of Edward
Gierek must have been privately relieved that the issue
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of Jewish influence in Poland's political life was not
one of the many ,problems which it faced upon
assuming power.
Because many of Poland's Jews were leaders in-the
professions and in cultural and academic life, their
departure has had ,a negative impact on society, at
least in the short run. This was illustrated by the
emigration to the West of leading members of the
world famous Warsaw Jewish Theater, including its
internationally known doyenne, Ida Kaminska, and
such personalities as film -makers Jerzy Toeplitz and
Alexander Ford, as well as by the less visible impact of
personnel losses in Poland's scientific research and in
general management.
Poland's constitution of 1952, grants ethnic
minorities the right to preserve and develop their own
culture. This right, generally ignored during the
Stalinist era, has been publicized and to a limited
degree honored since 1956, although its implementa-
tion has been confined to those segments of the
existing minorities devoid of political importance. In
general, however, minority members have some
opportunity to receive school instruction and to read
periodicals and books in their mother tongues. Serving
as the main vehicles for cultural development �and
enabling regime supervision �are the sociocultural
associations for each of the significant minority groups
except the Gypsies. Formed mostly in 1956 and 1957,
these associations maintain for the minorities various
regional recreational- cultural centers, libraries, and
amateur theater groups. They also assist in the
education of children in the schools for minorities,
now slowly decreasing in number, within the regular
Polish school system. In 1968, a total of 3,132 students
(mostly in elementary school) attended these schools,
which either provided all instruction in the mother
tongue or used Polish as the language of instruction
while giving lessons in the minority language. The
latter type appears to be gradually replacing the
former.
3. Social characteristics (C)
Polish national identity coalesced in the 10th
century as a result of growing external threats. Since
then, the search for national security and the proper
means to achieve it has been the chief factor in
shaping the Polish people's view of themselves and
others, as well as in shaping individual, group, class,
and inter -state relationships.
In A.D. 966 the Polish tribes of the Vistula and Oder
river basins between the Carpathian Mountains and
the Baltic were united into one state by Mieszko, the
first historic ruler of the native Piast dynasty (966-
1370): In the same year, Mieszko was baptized and
brought the Roman Catholic faith to Poland, which at
the time was the most powerful state among the Slays.
The fate of the church in Poland and that of the
nation have since been inextricably intertwined, a
relationship which has molded the cultural awareness
and social orientation of the Polish people. Thus, the
year 1966 marked the millennium of both the state as
an entity and the dominant Roman Catholic Church.
Both of Mieszko's achievements were urgently
needed, since the Polish tribes were being threatened
by the developing power of neighboring tribal unions
and feudal states. On the West, the Poles were faced
by the Germans; whose king had been Holy Roman
Emperor since 962. At the same time, Poland's eastern
neighbors had been united by the Norman Rus in the
Kievan state, which accepted the Christian faith from
Byzantium and soon began to invade the Polish border
areas. Lying between these two rising powers, the
Poles opted for cooperation N, ith the Latin West, but
with independence from Germany and under the
protection of the papacy. Subsequent centuries of
struggle against incursions from both the east and the
west religious conflict with the latter sharpened with
the rise of Protestant Prussia� resulted in periods of
national crisis and honed the national consciousness
and pride of the Polish people. Inherent Slavic
indiAdualism, the divisive tendencies of the nobility,
and d iferences over whether the east or west posed the
main danger, however, often eroded the strong
nationalism conditioned by the Roman Catholic faith
and contributed to the successive foreign partitions of
Poland, culminating in the disappearance of the
Polish -state in 1795.
The new Polish state which reappeared in 1918
benefited as well as suffered from most of these same
factors. Expansive nationalism, barred from outlets to
the west, led to a successful military campaign in the
early 1920's against a Russia weakened by internal
upheaval. As one result, Poland's eastern frontiers in
the interwar period encompassed sizable new
minorities. The existence of these minorities and the
struggle by different social groups for political
dominance lel to marked social stratification, even
though the dislocations of the initial post -World War I
period had increased social mobility in some cases.
Differences in levels of wealth, class, and cultural
attainment were emphasized by the broad urban -rural
division of society. Such social conflict as existed was
primarily among the many nationality groups and
within the ranks of the increasingly numerous and
underemployed intelligentsia. Although the domi-
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nance of the Roman Catholic Church assured general
religious concord, resentment against the large Jewish
component of the lower middle class had economic
and religious overtones. The dominant tradition of
learning was German- and French oriented, and in
general cultural relations with the West were avidly
cultivated. All except the peasant class were literate,
and urban cultural awareness was high.
The landowning gentry, who for centuries set the
tone of political and social life, had been undergoing a
rapid decline since the beginning of the 20th century
and had dropped to a mere one -third of I of the
population, but they still retained a sizable measure of
political and social influence. The peasants,
numerically the largest group in the population and
economically the most important, had little social and
cultural influence. Their sense of inferiority and
passive acceptance of a subordinate social role
changed only slowly. The peasant movement,
however. did become an important political force
during the interwar period. The great majority of
peasants, nevertheless, lived a primitive life of poverty
and continued to use medieval agricultural
techniques.
The small middle class, which had been hampered
in its development by the succession of partitions and
foreign occupations of the country and by internal
dissension and lack of economic opportunity, did not
assert itself as a strong social force. It did, however,
provide the ultimate base for the ruling military clique
in the immediate prewar years. Though socially the
most cohesive group in the population, the industrial
working class was also limited by its relatively small
size and by the regional character of heavy industry.
Although no single social class dominated Poland
during the interwar period, a loose social coalition of
the clergy, the professional people, the bureaucracy,
and the military officers corps exerted an authoritarian
influence on social and political life.
The broad social revolution following World War !I
was accelerated but not initiated by the Communist
regime. The factors which caused many of the postwar
social changes had already begun to appear during
World War II and affected the property- owning class
most drastically. Many members of this group fled
abroad; others were placed in Nazi concentration
camps or deported to the U.S.S.R., never to return.
Those who remained in Poland were deprived of
influence in public life by police measures as well as
by a basic reorientation of industry and trade.
Economic changes that started with the expropriations
and physical destruction during the war years were
subsequently completed through nationalization, land
reform, and reconstruction under state control.
The middle class fared better. Although materially
impoverished, the wartime destruction of its Jewish
element left it more socially cohesive, and it adapted
itself more easily to postwar conditions. During the
initial postwar era of economic stabilization, the
middle class actually increased in size and
strengthened its economic basis. The subsequent
elimination of nearly all private enterprise during the
Stalinist period, however, reduced the major part of
this class, composed mainly of small businessmen and
other self employed persons, to the status of wage
earners. Since 1956 the regime's varying degrees of
encouragement for the expansion. of private
handicrafts and services has again spurred the growth
of a small middle class. This official encouragement
has been particularly marked under the Gierek regime,
and could result in a faster growth of the urban middle
class. With the passage of time the character of this
class is changing, however, as newly integrated
elements from the lower levels of the inflated
bureaucracy as well as the peasantry are absorbed into
it. The material well -being and the social prestige of
the middle class is generally only slightly above that of
the lower classes. There are highly visible, and
frequently officially criticized, exceptions to this :ale,
however. In many urban centers, particularly in
Warsaw, there has developed a distinct sub -class of
highly successful individual entrepreneurs who, by
providing needed services, garden produce, and
specialty products, have often amassed personal
fortunes. Because their services are undeniably
needed, the government tolerates the existence of this
small "neo- capitalist" sub group.
The peasants enjoyed a relatively privileged
position during and shortly after World War II. With
foodstuffs at a premium, they were regarded as
benefactors by all Polish society, and they gained
significantly in self- respect and influence as a class.
Between 1949 and 1956, however, the social and
political pressures of collectivization, heavy taxes, and
other discriminatory policies undermined the newly
won social and economic position of the peasants.
Subsequently, as a result of the Gomuika regime's
more flexible agricultural policies, the peasantry as a
class again prospered relative to many categories of
industrial workers. ,Although the social position of the
peasantry remains well below its immediate postwar
level, the tenacious traditionalism of this class has
played a central role in the regime's continued
toleration of an essentially private agricultural system.
Even during the peak of the collectivization drive, in
the early 1950's, over 75% of Poland's farmland
remained in private hands, and in 1970 the figure
stood at 83.9 The bulk of the remainder (14.8
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was composed of state farms, generally in, the. former
German territories, and only 1.3% constituted
agricultural collectives. Tii1 Gierek regime, committed
to improvinv consumer welfare in which food supply
plays the key role, has courted the peasantry in many
ways guaranteeing continued private ownership of
land, abolishing compulsory deliveries and, especially
important to the highly religious peasantry, moving
toward normalization with the Roman Catholic
Church. If the peasantry responds by. overcoming its
past unwillingness to use modern agricultural methods
and thereby improves production, it could earn the
gratitude of other segments of society and thus
somewhat improve its social standing. Working
against this, however, are such trends as a continued
flight from the countryside by rural youth, thus
leaving the farms in the hands of the old and
conservative generation.
The industrial proletariat was especially hard hit
during World War lI. Trade unions and oilier workers'
organizations and their leadership were decimated,
and, along with other strata of the urban population,
the working class underwent a general pauperization.
In the postwar period, however, the relative status of
the skilled worker has been enhanced as a result of the
movement of unskilled peasants into the lowest levels
of urban society through the shift from agricultural to
industrial employment. Also, the increasingly
sophisticated requirements of a developing industrial
economy have resulted in some upward social mobility
for the technically skilled members of the industrial
working class. During the stifling, later years of the
Gomulka era, however, the industrial workers as a
whole became increasingly aware of being only
theoretically the backbone and the most favored
component of Communist society, while in practice
their material well -being was eroded by the regime's
inept economic policies and their social standing was
far beiow that of a domineering, inflated, and isolated
state bureaucracy. This in turn fueled the workers'
dissatisfaction which, sparked by the regime's folly of
raising food prices and reinstituting harsher work rules
just before Christmas 1970, resulted in the riots that
swept the Baltic coast and toppled the Gomulka
regime.
Gomulka's successor as party leader, Edward
Gierek, is by age (60 in January 1973), social class (a
former Silesian miner), and inclination (a pragmatist),
more in touch with the working class than any of his
Communist predecessors. Moreover, it is this class that
brought him. to power, a debt which in the public eye
will have to be repaid. What effect this situation will
have on the social status, as distinct from political and
economic influence, of the average Polish worker is not
yet clear. In addition to his other attributes, Gierek is a
prime example of a new generation of administrators
and efficient technocrats, less concerned with ideology
than with performance. Discipline and hard work by
the workers is the other side of the coin of Gierek's
concessions to the working class which, still largely
composed of former peasants, faces a difficult task in
upgrading its social acceptability.
The Gomulka regime, like its predecessors, strove to
build a Polish society based on three main classes:
workers, peasants, and the "working intelligentsia." It
expected that of. these the last, which initially was not
numerous, would evolve rapidly from the worker and
peasant classes and provide a reliable Marxist
leadership for the society as a whole. All measures of
postwar social development show, however, that
although these expectations were fulfilled in their
sociological sense, the resulting class of young,
educated workers and "intelligentsia" �even more
than society as a whole- disregarded the underlying
ideological premise. The outlook of the young
intellectual class was no closer to the spirit desired by
the regime than was that of their older colleagues; in
fact, they actively sought alternatives to what they
considered anachronistic Marxist concepts, favoring a
blend of socialism and individual incentive
characteristic of some advanced Western technologi-
cal societies. The success of the Gomulka government
in creating this class, while at the same time failing to
imbue it with uncritical acceptance of Communist
policies set by a ruling clique, was the main cause of
the regime's downfall.
That the dangerous sociopolitical situation which
developed during the 1960's did not reach a climax
before December 1970 is in part a measure of the
persistent class divisions. The political crisis that shook
but did not topple the Gomulka regime is 1968 was
sparked by the elite intellectual class, whose
traditional role as steward of the national culture was
illustrated by a writers' revolt in the spring of that year
against censorship and arbitrary restrictions. Their
cause soon spread to the student milieu, leading to
demonstrations initially against academic grievances
but soon widening into the political arena. None of
the issues, however, were of the economic "bread -and-
butter" kind that might have engaged the workers or
the peasantry, a fact skillfully exploited by the
Gomulka regime to pit the workers against the
students and intellectuals.
When in December 1970 the workers on the Baltic
coast, many if not most of them belonging to the
younger generation, took to the streets in protest
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against the regime's tangible economic blunders, they
were not joined by either the students or the
intellectuals in any significant numbers. This feature
of the revolt, however, was a disguised blessing since
the regime was prevented from once again exploiting
class differences for its own ends, and was left for all to
see as pitted solely against the class upon whose
mandate Communist rule theoretically depended.
This situation, untenable either in real or ideological
terms, caused the internally chaotic, weakened, and
isolated Gomulka regime�devoid of Soviet support
to fall of its.own weight.
The attributes of the Gomulka regime in its later
years also bore witness to a long developing social
split basically generational� within the Communist
hierarchy. The fluid upper class which had emerged
under postwar Communist rule consisted of the high
party and government. leaders themselves, heads of
mass organizations, managers of state enterprises, and
others who owed their social ascendancy to the
Communist regim The existence of this class,
however, had little impact on the traditional standing
of other social classes. Its control over national life and
material well -being was resented, and it generally
carried no real prestige within the society. Moreover,
the rising age structure oii this class, internecine
warfare within it, and its demonstrable policy failures
opened its ranks to increasing inroads by the younger
generation of tough but less ideologically hidebamd
managers And technocrats..
The rise of this managerial and technocratic
component of the ruling eiite� younger, more
forward- looking, and in touch with social, political,
and economic reality is symbolized by the Gierek
regime. Cutting across class lines to include members
of the middle echelon of the economic bureaucracy
and other young professionals, this group had given
evidence even before 1970 of developing into a new
class in its own right, one based on administrative and
technical competence rather than on political
considerations. The Gierek regime's public commit-
ment to precisely these attributes in all aspects of
national life promises not only to foster the growth but
also the self-identity of this incipient social class.
Because this growing class has tended to give
priority to national s-ff- interest and public welfare in
general, to the detriment of both Communist ideology
and institutional forms, it has earned the respect and
increasing allegiance of other classes. This is
particularly true of the educated youth of all class
origins, a fact heavily counted on by the government
in its efforts to engage the support of the new
generation. This youth already forms the main
component of the new technocratic class, having been
absorbed into it at its lower levels. With the passage of
time_ this class, in close alliance with the skilled
workers, will probably become the dominant class of
Polish society.
4. National attitudes (C)
Polish national attitudes, both individual and
collective have been formed through centuries of
struggle formational survival and are characterized by
strong nationalism, tenacity of purpose, and
adherence to tho-e social and cultural traditions which
have been instrumental in preserving the national
identity. Together with the Roman Catholic Church,
which has played a central, role in shaping and
maintaining national consciousness, these factors have
consistently militated against the achievement of
Communist objectives in Poland. As a people, the
Poles value originality in the individual but tend to be
conservative when acting collectively. This contradic-
tion, together with a chronic feeling of national
insecurity, has long thwarted effective political rule. If
the Poles were described in the interwar period as a
people "charmingly impossible to govern, then even
more so in the postwar period they must rank among
the world's most unnatural Communists.
These prevailing attitudes parallel the basic postwar
conflict between the traditional value system of
European humanism that emphasizes individual
worth and the atheistic and collectivist orientation of
Marxism. The confrontation in Poland between these
two value systems has also been characterized by
interplay and cooperation. In each system, apart from
the highly antagonistic ideological mainstream, there
is an articulate minority current which allows some
convergence with the other despite irreconcilable
differences. In the traditional system, for example,
"open Catholicism" advocates cooperation with the
regime on practical matters and seeks adjustment to
social change, in contrast to the dogmatic, formalistic
Polish Catholicism entrenched in the countryside and
at the top of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Within
the Communist system, various "revisionist" currents
have long been concerned with creating a "socialist
humanism" suffused with nonideological, technologi-
cal efficiency which would focus on the problems and
needs of the individual. Although untainted by
revisionism in ideological terms, the new Polish regime
of Edward Gierek typifies one such current.
Probably the most fundamental task of the new
leadership is to reassert the moral authority of the
rulers vis -a -vis the ruled, and to bridge the gulf long
separating the two with a new sense of participation
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and mutual trust. Despite Gierek's evident good will
and the willingness of the people to give his regime in
its early years the benefit of the doubt, the task is
formidable. The population is only slowly emtrging
from the great social changes attendant upon rapid
industrialization and urbanization. Against this
backdrop, the postwar struggle for moral authority has
produced general disorientation and a tendency to
indict the system of Communist rule as a whole. The
psychological state of uncertainty and confusion over
permissible and impermissible behavior has created
widespread moral disintegration.
Under such conditions, the chief cohesive force in
society has been Polish nationalism, combined with a
desire to rejoin a European family of nations devoid of
E.,.st -West ideological antagonisms. The impetus
toward nationalism is being cautiously exploited by
the Gierek regime with the awareness that these efforts
must remain ideologically acceptable and within the
limits of the Polish Soviet relationship. The national
desire for becoming once again a part of the European
family of nations simiiarly has been useful to the
government in obtaining wide popular support for
various proposals designed to spur European detente.
Throughout the postwar period, even more so than
in paFt historical eras, most Poles of all ages were
chiefly concerned with national survival and the
integrity of Poland's postwar frontiers. For this reason,
they welcomed the conclusion of the 1970 Polish -West
German treaty giving finality �in Polish eyes �to the
country's western border. To most poles, this step
marked the essential precondition for their own
security as well as for general progress toward
European detente. Though increasingly looking to
their own future in an all- European context, the
people realize there is no present realistic alternative to
continued alignment with the Soviet Union. While
most of them continue fundamentally to oppose the
Communist regime, they are inclined to support those
domestic and foreign policies and initiatives of the
Gierek regime that are demonstrably in the national
self interest. Moreover, the country's new leadership,
aware of this potential for support, has sought to
hamess it. Although the Gierek regime is as intent as
its predecessor to prevent adverse popular attitudes
from crystalizing into political opposition, it has
opened the way� within the present institutional
forms �for greater popular participation in the
decisionmaking process, and has increased the flow of
information between the people and those who lead
them.
Historically rooted anti German and anti- Russian
sentiments continue to exist among all strata of the
10
population, tl former reinforced by the experiences
of World War II and the latter by its identification
with an alien Communist social or( mposed from
the East. Although the postwr neration now
assuming positions of leadership has '.een instrumen-
tal in the gradual political reconciliation with West
Germany and the German nation as a whole, most
older adults still feel that the enormity of the wartime
Nazi crimes in Poland will prevent social reconcilation
between the two nations for at least another
generation. In this regard, most Poles, including
ranking Party members, make little distinction
between West and East Germany. Ant:- Russian
sentiments, mainly conditioned by a history of Russian
and Soviet domination and brutality, also contain
significant elements of cultural, political, and social
disdain and an almost automatic rejection of virtually
all material achievements and ideas of Russian origin.
Almost equally well- rooted in national history and
consciousness, however, is a persistence of good will for
the United States, whose constitutional ideas and
material well -being have traditionally inspired
admiration. Moreover, heavy Polish emigration to the
United States, especially at the beginning of this
century, has engendered both real or claimed family
ties with the United States on the part of most Poles.
Despite varying degrees of Communist imposed
isolation, these feelings among the Polish population
appear to be unshaken, and have counterbalanced the
regime's partial success, especially among the youth,
in exploiting U.S. involvement in the Vietnam
conflict.
Despite the longstanding conflict with their German
neighbors, the Polish people are traditionally Western
oriented and pride themselves on being the oftzn
unappreciated bulwark of Western European culture
against encroachment by Eastern despotism. Poland
won a reputation as the guardian of Christianity by
stopping the westward advance of the Tatars in the
13th century and was responsible, through King Jan
Sobieski, for the defeat of the Turks at Vienna in 1683,
both events being popular examples of national
heroism and of Poland's contribution to Western
civilization. The symbols, heroes, and events which
evoke national pride are for the most part connected
with periods of struggle for the independence of
Poland as well as of other nations. Poland's
contribution to the American Revolution in the
persons of Tadeusz Kosciuszko (1746 -1817) and Count
Kazimierz Pulaski (1748 -79) illustrated the historical
motto of Poland's expatriate military leaders: "For our
freedom and yours." The heroic figure of the Polish
knight, as depicted by 19th century Palish painter
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h a
Aleksiineier Orlowski, symbolizes this aspect of the
national spirit (Figure 2)." The decision by party leader
Gierel; soon after coming to power to reconstruct the
Royal.Castle in Warsaw (Figure 3), a move that had
been avoided by all postwar Communist governments
in Poland, shows, the willingness of the new regime to
appeal to popular pride in the national heritage. As a
seat of royal power, the castle dated to the late 16th
century, when King Zygmunt III moved the court to
Warsaw.
The sufferings and losses of World War II have
remained fresh in the national memory, not only
because of persistent verbal propaganda disseminated
>y the regime but also through the many national
monuments dedicated to both native and foreign
victims of Nazi policies who died on Polish soil (Figure
4). The most infamous of the many Nazi
concentration. and extermination camps, Auschwitz
(Oswiecim), has been maintained in its stark condition
as a mute monument to an era.. Since the war, a
reconstructed Warsaw has become the embodiment of
FIGURE 2. The eolish Knight, by
Aleksander Orlowski, 19th century
painter (U /OU)
Polish pride in national tradition and heritage and the
Polish will to survive. The Warsaw Nike, a monument
unveiled in 1964 (Figure 5), symbolizes the heroism of
the city.
In an effort to counteract foreign pressures during
the interwar period, the Poles usually sought support
from France, the United Kingdom, and the United
States. The 1939 Nazi Soviet pact, the French and
British declarations of war against German; in
response to its invasion of Poland in September 1939,
and the subsequent occupation of the eastern part of
the country by the U.S.S.R. further strengthened the
average pole's predisposition toward the Western
powers. Although the Communist regime places the
origins of postwar Poland's military forces in the Polish
contingents which fought alongside the Soviet army in
World War II, it has given increasing recognition to
the average Pole's stress on the contribution of Poles to
the military effort of the Western allies. (For example,
more than 10% of the German aircraft destroyed
during the Battle of Britain were shot down by Polish
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FIGURE. 3.. The ,Royal Castle In
Wa saw prior, to 1939. The struc-
ture was badly damaged during
the initial Nazi bombardment of
Warsaw in September 1939, and
was razed by the Nazis after the
Warsaw uprising of .1944. (U /OU)
airmen, and Polish contingents played a central role in
the crucial battles of Tobruk in North Africa, and of
Monte Cassino in Italy.) This willingness to be fair
and objective with regard to the total wartime polish
struggle is particularly true of the Gierek regime,
which has gradually given recognition to the wartime
non Communist underground by far more numerous
and effective than its Communist counterpart.
Moreover, Poland was the only country in Eastern
Europe where the advent of postwar Communist rule
was significantly resisted by force of arms.
Most Poles take pride in military resistance, but
the uneven struggle against Germany's "blitzkrieg" in
1939, the crushing of the Warsaw uprising m 1944, the
ill -fated postwar armed struggle against communism,
the failure of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, and the
Soviet willingness to use overwhelming force to
maintain hegemony in Eastern Europe illustrated by
the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, have all had a
cumulative impact on the national attitude toward
armed conflict. Nevertheless, strong nationalism and
patriotism remain powerful factors, especially when
the nation is faced with a clear external threat.
Although Polish youth remains largely apathetic to
domestic politics and is unwilling to risk life or make
other sacrifices for the sake of ideology, their
w0lingness to come to the defense of human life,
fai,;ily, and the "Fatherland" is undoubted. Given
FIGURE 4. Monument to Nazi war victims of Maldanek,
site of Nazi concentration extermination camp near
Lublin (U /OU)
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S
I
l
ry a
s
3
.N
S
a +Y
1Eb x
q
FIGURE 5. The Warsaw Nike (U /OU)
these factors the reliability of the enlisted ranks of the
armed forces must be considered as largely depende..t
on the issues and circumstances of any future conflict,
the nationality of opposing forces, and the magnitude
of a direct threat to Polish territory. There were, for
example, significant morale problems among Polish
military units which took part in the Warsaw Pact
invasion of Czechoslovakia. Moreover, during the
1970 worker's uprisings along the Baltic coast, Polish
regular army units (as distinct from the police and
militarized internal security units) reportedly were
neither ordered to, nor would have, fired on the
workers. Indeed, the behavior of the military
establishment of all yanks in 1970 appears to have
mitigated the general postwar low esteem in which the
military is held by the people, and opened the way
toward somewhat greater military influence in
national affairs.
Despite the success oP the workers in 1970 in
essentially overthrowing one Communist regime and
seating another, most other elements of society are
aware that the development resulted from the action
of but one class and with the aid of fortuitous
circumstances. While the people are newly aware that
pon� 'ar opinion can effect change in the system�
indeed, this. principle has been embraced by the
Gierek regime �the 1970 events have not substantially
increased the militancy of the society as a whole.
The Polish outlook in the early 1970's is, therefore,
hopeful but tempered by a down -to -earth realism
which has been as prevalent in the nation's history as
the more publicized bouts of romantic idealism. This
is most acutely reflected in the attitudes of the youth.
In terms of specific beliefs, educated Polish youth tend
to favor the Western European type of social
democracy as a political and social order, nonsec-
tarianism in religion, and experimental freedom in art.
They tend toward individual rather than collective
responsibility in social relations, and toward
supranationalism based on a combination of Polish
nationalism and allegiance to Europe as an entity.
Although the Gierek regime may be no more
successfui than is predecessor in meeting the
aspirations of the youth, it has acted 'on its
commitment to bridge the generation gap by
increasing the influence of ambitious and qualified
members of the younger generation in policymaking
and generally giving the youth a greater stake in the
system. In doing so, it also hopes to eliminate the
youth's remaining potential for revolutionary in
contrast to evolutionary change. if the government
succeeds in providing a tangible increase in living
standards and maintains its rapport with the workers,
the working class is unlikely to jeopardize its gains by
new militancy. Moreover, the powerful Roman
Catholic Church in Poland ceased in the late 1960's to
ian the spirit of militant opposition to the regime. In
1968, for example, the church did not take a strong
stand against the official anti- Semitic campaign, nor
against the invasion of Czechoslovakia. In 1970 it did
not inject itself in any significant measure into the
confrontation between the workers and the regime.
With church -state relations progressing toward a
pr- ,bable formal accommodation since the advent of
the Gierek regime, the church in Poland appears no
lo;:ger to be a force inducing anti Communist
militancy among the people.
C. Population (C)
1. General trends
The characteristics of Poland's postwar population
and its vital trends have been largely the result of
wartime population and territorial losses and shifts,
heavy postwar urbanization, and, since 1955, a
steadily declining birth rate, at least initially
encouraged by the government's policy of family
13
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planning. These general trends are illustrated by the
selected demographic indicators shown in Figure 6.
The impact of World War iI on -the Polish
population was of exceptional magnitude, the
population decreasing by some 22%. during the 1938-
50 period. War- related deaths accounted for an
estimated 12% of the prewar population,of nearly 32
million. This figure may be compared with the 16%
loss rate experienced by.the U.S.S.R. and the 6% loss
rate for Germany, the other countries which suffered
most heavily.
Voluntary and forced postwar population shifts
further reduced the population density. The Potsdam
Conference of 1945, which placed some 40,000 square
miles of former German territories under Polish
A �;t t. d 1 .t t. f
I
dary
F0
a mints ra ion an orma tze ovle annexa fon o I I I I I i I i
some 70,000 square miles of former Polish lands in the 1938 4546� 50' 55 60' 65 70R
east, also sanctioned the transfer to occupied Germany
of the German minority from within the redrawn
Polish boundaries. The arrival of the Soviet .army in
Poland in 1944, however, had already caused the
flight of millions of. Germans from areas east of the R
Oder and Neisse rivers. This movement continued
until February 1946 when organized transfers began. 700 602
The German population of the territories gained by
Poland dropped from an estimated 11.9 million at the
end of 1944 to 5.6 million in the summer of 1945, a net
loss of over 6 million persons. Large numbers of these
persons died in the last stages of the war, but probably
more than 5 million had fled by the time Polish
authorities assumed control in July 1945. An 1938 1945
additional 500,000 had moved out before official
transfers began. During the period of these transfers, Millions of persons
from February 1946 to the end of 1949, an additional 35
2.3 million Germans left the territory of present -day
Poland. 30
In contrast to these losses of population, agreements
made in 1944 and 1945 between the Polish and Soviet 25
governments resulted in an exchange of large numbers 20
of persons which on balance added to Poland's
population. Ethnic Poles and Jews in the U.S.S.R. who is
had been Polish citizens in September 1939 could opt
for Polish citizenship and be transferred to Poland, 10
while ethnic Russians. Ukrainians, White Russians,
and Lithuanians living within the new Polish 5
boundaries could opt for Soviet citizenship and be
transferred to the U.S.S.R. Some 518 ,000 of the latter 1938 45 46 50' 55 60" 6S 70�
group chose to be repatriated to the Soviet Union, and
Percent
Cr7 tom
63.1 1 1 56.2 1 1 51.7 1 1 50.3 1 1 47.0
50' 55 60' 6S 70'
the end of 19917. census years; other data are hosed on official
1,950,000 Poles returned to Poland by Polish demographic estimates. (Census of 1946
The number of returnees to Poland included about was oho "summary" nature and is not considered
170,000 Jews, most of whom subsequently emigrated derinnire.)
i to Israel. In addition, some 1.5 million persons were FIGURE 6. Selected population indicators, 1938 and
repatriated to Poland from other European countries, 1945 -70 (U /O!J)
1
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mostly ethnic Poles from Germany where they had
performed forced labor during the war. These small
additions to Poland's population were far outweighed
by the cumulative losses, and despite the postwar net
loss of about 20% of the country's territory compared
with the prewar period, it was only in 1967 that
Poland's population reached the approximate total of
persons residing in the same area in 1939.
Present trends indicate that despite the initial
postwar population boom, Poland's population will
not reach the prewar total before 1975. The relatively
rapid decline in the initial postwar growth rate was
further confirmed by the results of the official census
of 8 December 1970, which showed that since the first
postwar "count" in 1946, the country's population
had increased by 8,659,000 persons. Most of this
growth (4,768,000 or 19.1 however, occurred
during the 1950 -6G decade, with only a 2,813,000 or
9.4% increase during the decade that followed.
2. Density and distribution
In January 1973 the population of the country was
estimated at 33,146,000, and its territory comprised
about 120,600 square miles approximately the size of
New Mexico with a population somewhat larger than
that of California and Texas combined. Excluding the
U.S.S.R., Poland ranks sixth among European
countries in population (after West Germany, the
United Kingdom, Italy, France, and Spain), as well as
in area (after France, Spain, Sweden, Finland, and
Norway). It is second only to the U.S.S.R. in Eastern
E u rope.
Poland's overall population density, about 275
inhabitants per square mile at the beginning of 1973,
is near the European average; nevertheless, it is
considerably lower than such densely populated
regions of Western Europe as the Lowlands, and much
higher than the Scandinavian average. In Eastern
Europe, excluding the U.S.S.R., Poland's population
density is exceeded by that of East Germany (406),
Czechoslovakia (294), and Hungary (287). Poland's
relative standing in this respect compared to selected
countries in 1970 is shown in Figure 7.
Heavy postwar internal migration has been the
result of the government's vigorous policy of resettling
the former German territories, generally with
repatriates from the Soviet Union, and by
simultaneous policy of urbanization, which caused a
general movement of population from the countryside
into existing urban centers or newly created cities.
According to official Polish data, the former German
territories in the west (excluding former East Prussia)
had a prewar population of about 7.2 million Germans
and 1.5 million Poles. According to the official claims,
nearly 9 million Poles resided in these areas by 1970
including about 5 million persons who were born
there. The population density of these territories in
1970, therefore, somewhat exceeded immediate
prewar years. The sensitivity of the Polish Government
throughout the postwar period to charges of
underutilization of the former German lands indicates
that the policy of encouraging population growth in
these areas will continue.
Although the population density in rural areas
exceeds the European average by about one third, the
static nature of the rural population compared with
the consistently rising urban increments is widening
the gap between urban and rural density patterns. The
general population density patterns follow the pattern
of urbanization and industrialization and reflect the
lingering effects of postwar population shifts from
former German territories in the north and west. A belt
of low population density thus stretches across the
entire northern third of the country, generally
comprising less productive agricultural land (Figure
8). The province of Koszalin, for example, has a
population density as low as that of Turkey. By
contrast, concentrations of population are highest
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FIGURE 7. Population and population density, Poland
and selected countries, 1970 (U /OU)

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Persoot per square mile
0 155 207 259 389
0 60 BO 100 150
Perteet per tgaere kilsmeters
(1968 estimate)
FIGURE S. Population density (U /OU)
along the southern border, ar area which contains the
industrial complex of the Upper Silesian coalfields and
the country's most productive agricultural land, where
population density exceeds :Sat of the Netherlands,
Europe's most densely populated country. Population
density and urban and rural distribution by province is
shown in Figure 9.
Both the Polish Govenlment and the people ha +e
taken pride in the relatively rapid urbanization which
has taken place since World War II. Compared to the
slow increase in the proportion of the urban
population between 1900 (19.6 and 1946 (31.8
adjusted to the country's prewar boundaries), postwar
growth has been nearly double that rate; on 14
December 1966 it was officially announced that as of
that date the urban population had reached exactly
50% of the population tot2.1. By December 1970 this
figuie had reached 52.2% of the total population.
Although internsl migration from rural to urban areas
has decreased in terms of absolute numbers since 1962,
the net urban increase continued to rise rapidly
through 1970. Shifts in rural and urban population
since 1952, shown in Figure 10, continue to reflect this
strong trend toward urbanization. Notably, the
increase in the total population between the 1960 and
the 1970 censuses, or abwit 2.8 million persons, is
almost exactly equal to the net irban increase over the
same period.
Despite these achievements in urbanization, Poland
in 1970 still ranked behind such Eastern European
countries as East Germany (73.8%), Czechoslovakia
X62.4 and Bulgaria (53.0 and the U.S.S.R.
(56.3 Moreover, Polish criteria for urban as against
rural areas are imprecise or do not correspond to
Western standards. In 1970, official data indicated
889 localities considered as urban areas. Of these 834
were classified as cities and towns, but 359 were under
5,000 in population and only 24 exceeded 100,000 in
population. These 24 major urban centers accounted
for 22.6% of the total population, and 43.2% of the
totai urban population.
16
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FIGURE 9. Urban and rural population
and density by administrative area,
8 December
1970' (U /OU)
PERSONS
ARRIVING
INDEX OF
AREA
POPULATION
URBAN.
RURAL
DENSITY-
GROWTH
Square miles
Thousands
Percent
Per square mile
1960-100
Provinces (Wo s- wodztwo):
City
side
INCREASE
1952...........
1,386.2
620.6
Bia lystok
8,916
1,173
37.1
6$.9
131.6
107.6
Bydgoszcz
8,028
1,912
50.6
49.4
238.2
?.11.9
G dansk
4,246
1,465
69.5
30.5
345.0
119.8
Katowice
3,667
3,691
76.7
23.3
1,006.5
112.7
Kielce
7,527
1,889
38.5
67.5
251.0
104.0
Koszalin
6,948
793
49.5
50.5
114.1
115.3
Krakow
5,905
2,181
30.3
69.7
369.3
109.6
Lodz
6,600
1,670
35.7
64.3
253.0
104.7
Lublin
9,572
1,922
30.8
69.2
200.8
106.7
Olsztyn......
8,106
978
41.0
59.0
120.7
111.0
Opole
3,667
1,057
42.
57.4
288.2
113.8
Poznan.....
10,306
2,190
39.6
60.4
212.5
109.9
Rzeszow
7,218
1,757
27.5
72.5
243.4
110.8
Szczecin
4,902
897
66.6
33.4
183.0
118.3
Warszawa
11,348
2,514
35.5
64.5
221.5
108.8
Wroclaw
7,256
1,973
F5.6
44.4
271.9
109.3
Zielona Gora
5,597
882
54.3
45.8
157.6
112.8
Cities with provincial status:
Warsaw
173
1,008
100.0
7,560.7
114.8
Krakow
88
583
100.0
6,625.0
121.2
Lodz
81
762
100.0
9,407.4
107.2
Poznan
85
469
100.0
5,517.6
114.9
Wroclaw
85
523
100.0
6,152.9
121.2
Total or average................
120,300
32,589
53.3
47.8
270.9
109.4
Not pertinent.
*Date of 1970 census.
*Provinces bear the name of their respective capital
cities.
*Data for cities with separate provincial status is
not included
in data for provinces bearing the same name.
FIGURE 10. Internal migration (U /OU)
(Thousands)
*lnOudes movement between cities and within the countrysid
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PERSONS
LEAVING
PERSONS
ARRIVING
NET
Country-
Country-
URBAN
YEAR
TOTAL
City
side
City
side
INCREASE
1952...........
1,386.2
620.6
765.6
753.6
632.6
133.0
1954...........
1,458.7
684.1
774.6
786.1
672.6
102.0
1956...........
1,444.2
648.1
796.1
694.0
750.2
45.9
1958...........
1,323.4
513.2
810.2
622.2
701.2
109.0
1960...........
1,256.2
517.6
738.6
592.4
663.8
74.8
1962...........
1,034.1
403.8
630.3
499.1
535.0
95.3
1964...........
932.9
348.2
584.7
462.6
470.3
114.4
1966...........
840.3
298.5
541.8
419.9
420.4
121.4
1968...........
861.5
302.9
558.6
437.2
424.3
134.3
1969...........
898.5
310.6
587.9
455.8
442.7
145.2
'970...........
881.9
307.9
574.0
469.4
412.5
161.5
*lnOudes movement between cities and within the countrysid
17
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3. Immigration, emigration, and minorities
Available data on immigration and emigration of
individual persons indicate a rapid rise in both
categories in the immediate years after 1956, reflecting
the simultaneous easing of Polish policy on exit visas
and encouragement of repatriation from the West.
Immigration to Poland rose from 8,500 in 1955 to a
high. of 95,300 .in 1957, but had fallen to negligible
proportions, some 800 persons, by 1970. Emigration,
which increased from 2,300 in 1955 to a peak of
148,500 in 1957, fell to 10,300 in 1970. Official figures
fot this period, however, do not include almost
250,000 persons repatriated from the U. S.��. R. between
1957 and 1959 on the basis of the 1956 Polish- Soviet
repatriation ,agreement. The Gomulka regime had
pressed the Soviet Union for a new repatriation
agreement, mindful that the U.S.S.R. had never fully
honored the previous agreements of 1944 and 1945
under which the bulk of the persons under
consideration should have been repatriated. Various
political motives played a role in this Soviet failure,
including the fact that many of the potential
repatriates were Jews. Most of the Polish Jews
repatriated under the provisions of the 1956 agreement
subsequently emigrated to Israel. A majority of the
non- Jewish Poles repatriated at the same time were
resettled in the former German territories in the west
and north of Poland.
Similarly, offtbial emigration figures exclude the
10,000 to 15,1.00 Jews who have departed since 1967,
as well as the estimated 30,000 ethnic Germans
repatriated since the signature of the Polish -West
German treaty in December 1970.
Despite the Polish regime's efforts to stimulate the
return of expatriates, it continues to take pride in the
contribution to other societies of ethnic Poles who
emigrated in great numbers for economic and political
reasons over the past two centuries. Official 1970
Polish figures, for example, list over 10 million Poles
living abroad, including in this definition those of the
first and second generation, as well as others reputedly
claiming Polish as their mother tongue. The majority
of Polish expatriates so defined, or about 6.5 million,
reside in the United States. Other countries with
sizable numbers of such persons include the U.S.S.R.
with 1.2 million, France with 750,000, Brazil with
840,000, Canada with 324,000, West Germany and
the United Kingdom with about 140,000 each, and
Australia and Argentina with about 115,000 each.
A nationality agreement between Poland and the
Soviet Union concluded in March 1965 theoretically
opened the way for the repatriation of the majority of
18
the 1.4 million Polish nationals who, according to the
1968 Polish data, resided in the U. S. S. R. in 1962. As of
1972 there was no reliable information concerning the
number repatriated under this agreement. In the
absence of corroborating evidence, it is doubtful that
the difference between the Polish official figures
published in 1968 (1.4 million) and those claimed to
reflect 1970 data (1.2 million) is indicative of actual
repatriation. Natural attrition, reclassification of such
persons by loth Soviet and Polish authorities, and
statistical correction are the more probable reasons.
Wartime population losses and postwar territorial
shifts transformed Poland from a prewar mosaic of
ethnic minorities constituting nearly one -third of the
total population into an ethnically homogeneous
state. The size of the minority population of Poland is
not accurately known, since Polish authorities ceased
publishing this data in the early 1960's. According to
available estimates, Poles constituted nearly 98.5% of
the population in 1969, with the following distribution
of the minority groups:
Ukrainians 180,000 0.6
White Russians 160,000 0.5
Germans 75,000 0.2
Great Russians 20,000
Slovaks 20,000
Gypsies 18,000
Jews 12,000 0.2
Lithuanians 10,000
Greeks 9,000
Czechs 2,000
Total 506,000 1.5
The slow decline in the ratio of the minority
population to total population has been caused by
natural attrition and assimilation, as well as by
sporadic spurts of emigration. This pertains
particularly to Jews and ethnic Germans. Prior to the
Polish regime's politically motivated encouragement
of Jewish emigration after the Arab Israeli war of
1967, there were an estimated 25,000 Jews in Poland.
This figure, which had been relatively stable earlier in
the postwar period, had diminished to about 8,00 to
10,000 by 1972. Because most of those remaining are
elderly, the absolute number of Jews is not expected to
decline further except by attrition. Most Polish Jews
continue to reside in urban areas.
Prior to the 1969 bilateral moves that ultimately led
to the negotiation and conclusion of the Bonn Warsaw
accord of 1970, the Polish government consistently
held to the grossly understated figure of 3,000 for the
German minority in Poland. Conversely, West
German estimates of as many as 1.2 million were
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exagg: rrted. This discrepancy reflects fundamental
differences in the criteria used in the identification of
Germans and Poles, particularly as this relab: s to
persons of mixed nationality. At the time of the Polish
occupation of the former German territories, Polish
authorities reclassified some 1.3 million inhabitants as
Autochthonous (literally "sprung -from- the soil
Poles, who were thereby exempt from being
transferred to Germany. This group of persons,
considered German by German sources, consists
mainly of bilingual people of Polish- German ancestry.
About 80% of them live in Silesia, with the remainder
in Gdansk province and in Olsztyn province (the
major part of former East Prussia). Over 300,000
Germans and /or Autochthons are believed to have left
Puiand since about 1955 for both West and East
Germany. Polish officials privately estimated that as
many as 75,000 ethnic Germans were still residing in
Poland in mid -1970. Near).y all of the 30,000 Germans
repatriated by 1972 were probably from this category.
The number of such Germans, together with persons of
mixed ancestry in Poland in 1972 probably was under
one million.
The 180,000 Ukrainians in Polam! form the largest
minority in the country and reside in 11 of the 17
territorial provinces of the country. Before the war,
most [Tkrainians within present Polish boundaries
lived in R tes ?Ow province in the southeast, but
because of forcible resettlement after 1947 into the
former German territories, the Ukrainian minority still
residing in Rzeszow province accounted for only an
esti..Mated 1% or 2% of the population in 1969. In
Olsztyn and Koszalin provinces, however, they
accounted for 5% to 7% of the population, with some
isolated districts having a proportion as high as 25
In contrast to the widely distributed Ukrainians, most
of the 160,000 White Russian minority resides in
Bialystok province in eastern Poland.
The remaining smaller minority groups are located
chiefly along the periphery of the country: Slovaks in
southern Krakow province, Lithuanians in northeast-
ern Bialystok province, and Great Russians in
Bialystok and Olsztyn provinces. Poland's Gypsy
minority, residing mainly in the southern provinces,
increased from about 17,000 in 1964 to 18,000 in 1967.
During the same period, however, the percentage of
nomadic Gypsies decreased from 50% to 4
according to official Polish claims. Most of the Greek
minority, constituting in the main refugees from the
Greek civil conflict in the late 1940's, are settled in the
former German territories in western Poland, while the
small Czech minority is concentrated in the southern
portions of Katowice and Opole provinces.
4. Vital trends
Despite heavy wartime losses among both sexes of
all age groups, in the early postwar period Poland had
one of the most rapidly growing populations in all
Europe and was first among the countries of Eastern
Europe (Figure 11). The postwar "baby boom" as well
as the unusually heavy wartime losses of persons of
childbearing age are illustrated by the fact that in
1970 the number of 20- to 24 -year olds was more than
30% above those in the 25- to 29- year -old category
(Figure 12). Betweep. 1949 and 1955 the very high
birth rate was accompanied by a marriage rate
unsurpassed since the early 1920's, stimulated to some
extent by settlement of the former German territories.
An important factor in the overall population growth
has b ,-n an almost steady decline in Poland's death
rate from a high of 14.1 per 1,000 population in the
immediate prewar period to a low of 7.3 in 1966. The
slow increase since then, to 8.1 per 1,000 population in
1970, reflects the gradual, relative rise in the numbers
of persons age 65 and over. Especially large reductions
have been achieved in the infant mortality rate which,
standing at 139 per 1,000 live births in 1938, was
second only to Romania in Europe. Although this rate
was reduced to a figure of 33.4 per 1,000 live births in
1970, it nevertheless remained among the highest in
Europe. In Eastern Europe, Poland's infant mortality
rate is exceeded only by Albania, Yugoslavia,
Romania, and Hungary, in that order. Comparable
rates in Western countries range from 20.8 in the
United States, 18.8 in the United Kingdom, and 16.4
in France, to the world's lowest, 12.9 in Sweden.
The relatively rapid decline in Poland's birth rate
since 1955 has been the most significant aspect of the
country's vital trends (Figure 13). It reached its lowest
recorded level of 16.2 per 1,000 population in 1968.
Over the same period, 1955 -68, Poland's rate of
natural increase has shown an even more marked
decline. In 1969 a somewhat increased birth rate of
16.3 per 1,000 population was outweighed by a higher
death rate to produce the lowest rate of natural
increase in the postwar period -8.2 per 1,000
population, or the same as that of the United States in
that year.
Although Poland no longer ranks among the fastest
growing countries in Europe, its rate of natural
increase still exceeds that of most other countries in
Eastern Europe. Poland's relative standing in this
respect compared to selected countries in 1969 is
shown in Figure 14.
the primary causes of the decline in the birth rate
have been the slow but tangible improvements in the
19
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f
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1 90 Maul
It t+ i� u[ 110111, to$p1d udl rnlrwlinn w 111t a n alts 4opil
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20
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u s llnrA mink 0.1 k, j F1Rurr l 3k In 11}(00
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WS Whirs 3rer IM frurtln M ;K 0. 'Ilds lrinmut% un
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FIGUH 12. AV-son Mwft tr$ax, Pc&ond and it* United
Stnw-% oomffa a 19n (U }GVI

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FIGURE 13. Vital statistics (U /OU)
NATURAL
INFANT
TOTAL
BIRTHS
DEATHS
INCREASE
MARRIAGE
DIVORCE
MORTALITY
POPULATION
Per 1,000
population
Thousands
1936 -38 (prewar average)
25.3
14.1
11.2
8.2
na
139.0
*34,849
1955........
29.1
9.6
19.5
9.5
0.49
82.2
27,550
1956
28.1
9.0
19.1
9.4
0.50
70.9
28,080
1957...
27.6
9.5
18.1
9.1
0.55
77.2
28,540
1958.........
26.3
8.4
17.9
9.2
0.55
72.1
29,000
1959
24.7
8.6
16.1
9.5
0.53
71.4
29,480
1960
22.6
7.6
15.r,
8.2
0.50
54.8
29,893
1961.......
20.9
7.6
13.3
7.9
0.56
53.2
30,133
1962
19.6
7.9
11.7
7.5
0.59
55.0
30,484
1963
19.2
7.5
11.7
7.2
0.64
48.5
30,940
1964
18.1
7.6
10.5
7.4
0.67
47.2
31,339
1965
17.4
7.4
10.0
8.4
no
41.5
31,551
1966
16.7
7.3
9.4
7.1
0.77
38.6
31,811
1967
16.3
7.8
8.5
7.5
0.85
37.9
32,163
1968
16.2
7.6
8.6
8.0
0.'11
33.4
32,426
1969
16.3.
8.1
8.2
8.3
1.01
34.4
32,671
1970
16.6
8.1
8.5
8.5
1.05
33.4
32,605
no "ta not available.
*Per `.,000 live births.
*1938, within prewar boundaries.
improvement, however, from the postwar low of 88.4
males per 100 females in 1950, when male losses in the
two world wars were most perceptible. Older age
groups account for nearly all of the disproportion.
While in the marriageable age group of 20 to 29 years
the ratio is 103 males per 100 females, in the 40 to 44
age group the ratio declines to 94 men per 100 women
and sharply thereafter to 5:3 males to 100 females at
age 75 and over. The general sex ratio is expected to
improve, however, to about 97 males per 100 females
in 1990.
5. Population policy and projections
From the end of World War II until the mid- 1950's,
it was in the Polish regime's interest to accelerate the
rapid natural growth rate in order to recoup wartime
losses, populate newly gained territories, and provide
the manpower needed for the planned extensive
industrialization drive. During this period the
government offered incentives in the form of special
allowances for large families. This policy was
particularly successful as it coincided with the
sanctity -of -life concept of the dominant Roman
Catholic religion in Poland. By about 1955, however,
the government became aware of the economic need
to slow down the natural growth and rising
dependency ratio of the population because almost
one -fifth of the industrial labor force was un-
deremployed and constituted a major obstacle to
planned increases of labor productivity. In addition,
the concern of the regime over its ability to satisfy the
material needs of future generations p�ompted the
adoption of laws in late 1956 to legalize abortion on
medical and economic grounds and the promotion of
family planning. The 1956 laws, however, were
subject to varying interpretations, the Catholic
Church vigorously opposed them, and numerous
doctors refused to observe them fully. For these reasons
the number of abortions did not rise markedly until
after 1960, when a modification of the laws made
abortions more easily obtainable, church interference
with this practice was specifically proscribed, and
other measures to limit the size of families were
instituted. The reported number of abortions reached
a peak of almost 272,000 in 1962 but declined to
about 220,000 in 1970. Since the birth rate has
generally continued to decline throughout this period,
it can be surmised that contraception, which has been
promoted vigorously, has supplanted abortion as the
principal device for implementing family planning.
The marked and often unforeseen impact of
fluctuating economic, social, and other factors on vital
trends has produced a wide range of continually
revised projections for future population trends in
Poland. In 1965, for example, Western sources
projected a population of about 41.2 million by 1985,
providing fertility, mortality, and other trends then
pertaining were maintained. Four years later, changes
21
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vital "factors. By contrast, the least favorable set of
assumptions produced projections of 34 million by
1975, about 36 million in 1985, and no more than 38
million by the year 2000. These latter figures were
predicated largely on the assumption of a considerable
slowdown of the natural increase of the population,
not exceeding about 133,000 annually in the last 10 to
15 years. of this century. Assuming that the declining
fertility of women, especially in rural areas, observed
in the late 1960's will continue, Polish demographers
indicate the possibility that by the first or second
decade of the next centuiy,the rate of natural increase
in Poland will be zero. The latest available projec,'.,ns
by Polish demographers indicate a further adjustment,
in which two assumptions concerning vital factors
resulted in a projected population in the year 2000 of
only 39.4 million and 38.6 million respectively. These
projections reportedly will be subject to further change
as a result of detailed study of the 1970 census data.
There was no indication, however, that these
projections might impel the Polish Government to
revise its population policies, although a decline in
publicity for family planning has been noted. The
government apparently feels that, in the short run,
measures to. encourage larger families are unwarran-
ted. Some Polish authorities argue that the natural
trend toward smaller families in industrializing
societies is often reversed when a specific level of
material affluence has been reached.
D. Societal aspects of labor (C)
1. The industrializing society
FIGURE 14. Vital rates, Poland and selected countries,
1969 (U /OU)
in these and other factors, however, resulted in a
lowered projection from the same sources of 39.9
million by 1985, and a population of 42.1 million by
1990. By mid -1972, Western estimates were adjusted
still further downward, and posited a population of
only 37.3 million by 1985.
Polish demographic sources have long been even
more markedly pessimistic. An official projection of
October 1969 estimated that Poland's population
would not reach the figure of 40 million until the year
2000. This study reportedly was based on the most
favorable of three assumptions concerning operative
22
In post -World War II Poland, as in other rapidly
industrializing' "societies, the social �and by deriva-
tion, economic and political impact of changing
occupational trends has been marked, and has
presented the Communist rulers with a constant
challenge to the theoretical underpinning of their
system. The regime's drive during the postwar period
to mold a large class of skilled industrial workers
conscious of its role in society has, perhaps, been only
too successful. In December 1970, this class� favored
in theory but ignored in practice� ousted an inept and
top -heavy regime and, though within the context of
the Communist system, opted for efficiency, consumer
welfare, and a role for itself in national life.
The process of growth that transformed a
predominantly conservative peasant society ruled by a
thin crust of various elites �the military, clergy,
aristocracy �into a postwar society predominantly
nonagricultural �but still ruled by a similarly
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FIGURE 15. Selected age -sex characteristics of the population (U /OU)
DISTRIBUTION BY AGE GROUPS
MALES DEPEND
Ali 65 and MEDIAN PER 100 ENCY
ages 0-14 15-39 40-64 Over AGE FEMALES RATIO*
Percent Yeara
1950........... 100.0 89.7 89.8 85.6 5.4 26.2 88.4 542
1960........... 100.0 88.8 85.8 84.4 .5.9 26.9 93.7 660
1970........... 100.0 88.0 88.4 85.8 7.8 27.5 94.5 555
1990........... 100.0 85.8. 87.8 27.0 9.9 32.4 97.0 542
NOTE- Percentages may not add to 100 because of rounding.
*Number of persona under age 15 and those age 65 and over, per 1,000 persons of ages 15
through 64.
unrepresentative, ideological elite, has been gradual.
Although in 1970 agriculture was still the single largest
occupation in Poland, the chief characteristic of the
postwar period has been the continued decrease in the
proportion of the total population dependent on
agriculture as a means of livelihood (Figure 16).
Whereas at the beginning of this century about four
fifths of the population depended for its livelihood on
the land, this proportion fell to about two- thirds when
Poland reemerged as an independent state in 1918,
and to about one -half at the end of World War H. By
1970 this accelerating trend resulted in a population
about 70% of which was drawing its livelihood from
nonagricultural pursuits.
This major shift in occupational orientation has
gone hand -in -hand with urbanization, industrializa-
tion, rapid and forcible changes in social patterns, and
a politicization of virtually all aspects of national life.
These developments have not only molded the social
role and characteristics of Polish labor in the postwar
period, but have also been influenced in return.
Poland's actual labor force in the postwar period has
been characterized by a markedly high participation
rate -about half of the total population and about
four fifths of the population within the working age of
15 to 64 years. The postwar growth in the labor force,
however,' has been due primarily to demographic
changes rather than to changes in the pattern of labor
force participation. The growth was much more rapid
in the 1960 -70 decade than before and closely
paralleled the increase in the number of persons of
working age.
In contrast to Western usage, Polish criteria for
working age are 18 to 64 years for men and 18 to 59
years for women. Although these criteria have been in
use throughout the postwar period, they have become
particularly useful to '.Se Polish regime in statistically
minimizing the growing problem of providing new
jobs for large increments to the working -age
population in the Western sense (i.e., 15-64 years)
since the mid- 1960's. This working -age population
rose by almost 15% between 1960 and 1970 and will
continue to grow rapidly as the members of the
postwar "baby boom" enter the labor field. Providing
employment, vocational training, and additional
academic opportunities as ways of easing a labor
surplus have been high on the list of commitments by
the Gierek regime since 1970. Changes in the relative
proportions of working to non working age population
since 1950 is shown in Figure 17.
The relatively rapid growth of the labor force as a
whole- almost exclusively in the nonagricultural
sector and coupled to a decline in agricultural
employment -has resulted in little change in the
proportion of women in the labor force despite a
higher female participation rate. The activity rate for
males has been about average for a European country,
but the female rate has been substantially higher and
23
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FIGURE 16. Total population by source of livelihood,
selected years 1921-70 (U /OU)

Other Total
Political and socl
organizations 1 Indust. ,I,
Finance and I D C \Construalon
insurance J(Y
Public I W�) I I Agriculture*
administration
Public health Forestry
and social welfare
Edoation Transportation
and culture and
Communal services Trade communications
ia9RI 1950
1970
*Socialized agriculture emplo s only about 10 to 207
of the agricultural labor 7orce.
results chiefly from the classification of most rural
housewives as economically active. Labor force
participation rates for Polish women are much lower in
the cities than in the countryside, since fewer married
women with families find it possible to take jobs
outside the home. A significant increase in the number
of urban women in the labor force would require
government attention to their general lack of skills and
adequate training; to the relatively slow growth of the
branches where women most easily find employment
(handicrafts, services, trade); to the limited
availability of pail -time work; and to overburdened
child -care centers.
Most women continue to find employment in those
occupations that have traditionally had a high
proportion of females, despite the official government
policy of nondiscrimination by sex and marked
postwar changes in traditional, conservative social
attitudes toward female employment in the
professions and in industry. The slow but steady
increase in female employment among different
occupations is shown in Figure 18.
As in other Communist societies, unemployment in
Poland has been either denied or underestimated for
most of the postwar period. Indeed, during the initial
postwar period, it did not appear to be a major
problem. The relative importance of agriculture and
construction resulted in a substantial degree of
seasonal unemployment, and frictional unemploy-
ment was also fairly high because of the Polish
worker's tendency to change jobs frequently; the long-
term unemployed were much less numerous.
Employment problems are increasingly acknowledged
in the press, however, for Polish manpower planners
24
FIGURE 18. Female employment in socialized sector,
1950 and 1970 (U /CU)
have been plagued since about 1963 by the problem of
creating sufficient jobs for youths entering the labor
market.
Official data on unemployment include jobseekers
who have registered at government employment
offices. Polish estimates suggest, however, that actual
unemployment is about five times as great as
registered unemployment, for many jobseekers fail to
register. Most registrants, many of them women, have
limited industrial skills. The ratio of vouths under 18
to total registrants is low and has declined since '965
despite the influx of young persons into the labor
market. Even the official data reflect a situation that
worsened markedly in the late 1960's and contributed
to the labor unrest that culminated in the 1970
explosion of discontent. Official unemployment data
for 1950 and 1965 -70 are shown in Figure 19.
Some farming areas and virtually all industrial
sectors suffer from excess employment. The formerly
chronic problem of rural overpopulation is less acute
as the result of the postwar territorial settlement and
the steady rural -urban population trend. In the
eastern provinces, however, the population on the
land is considerably in excess of actual labor
requirements, and nonagricultural job opportunities
are relatively scarce.
Polish occupational patterns differ from those of
most other East European countries in that a
substantial portion of the employed work in the
private sector of the economy. Moreover, the bulk of
this employment is in agriculture, which still
constitutes the single largest branch of economic
activity. The relative size of the private sector is
declining, however, in favor of the nonagricultural,
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FIGURE 17. Shifts in working -age population, 1950,
1960, and 1970 (U /OU)

FIGURE 19. Registered unemployment, selected years (U /OU)
REGISTERED UNEMPLOYED
Blue collar
White Under
YEAR Total Skilled Unskilled collar 18 Women
AVAILABLE .JOBS
For
Total women
1960.........
67,309
4,396
26,070
4,294
2,606
29,943
46,452
6,751
1965.........
116,459
7,318
43,608
6,006
5,062
54,465
52,925
12,131
1966.........
109,517
6,932
41,283
5,936
3,505
52,161
64,229
13,626
1967.........
99,406
6,185
36,533
6,799
2,453
47,436
58,169
11,864
1968.........
102,355
6,311
35,260
8,841
2,687
49,256
76,664
15,852
1969.........
135,454
10,138
42,176
16,157
2,647
64,336
33,618
8,867
1970.........
150,698
12,770
49,798
14,588
2,207
71,335
39,492
8,539
predominantly socialized sector of the economy. This
downward trend is expected to continue, chiefly
because of the rapid expansion of the nonagricultural
branches, which offer relatively few opportunities for
private employment, and because of the gradual
decline in private agricultural employment resulting
from the death and retirement of older farmers and the
exodus of rural youth.
In the postwar period, Poland has made
considerable progress in transforming a predominantly
agricultural economy into one with a diversified
industrial base. A substantial and continuing decline
in the proportion of the labor force engaged in
agriculture has resulted, but the absolute decrease in
agricultural employment since 1950 has been
moderate. It results chiefly from labor recruitment for
industrial and construction projects during the early
1950's, and, more recently, from the attractions of
urban employment and urban life. There has been no
large -scale flight from the countryside such as
accompanied the intensive collectivization drives
launched in other Eastern European countries,
because collectivization never assumed major
proportions in Poland. Polish agriculture is
characterized by a predominance of small, privately
owned farms producing a wide variety of crops. Large,
mechanized farms in the socialist sector, i.e., state and
collective farms, occupy only about 15% of the land
under cultivation. Since the mid- 1960's the
government, by strengthening educational and
monetary incentives, has sought to stem the migration
of rural youth to cities and does not foresee before
1975 a decline much below the 1968 level of about 6.2
million engaged in agriculture.
Most of those who have left agriculture have been
in the younger age groups, and this is reflected in the
aging of the agricultural labor force. The increasing
proportion of females in agriculture reflects the
tendency of men on small farms to take up
nonagricultural jobs, leaving women to maintain the
family holding. These trends, together with the
emergence of the "worker- peasant" who combines
part -time agricultural activities with full -time
industrial employment, have had an adverse effect on
the quality of the agricultural labor force.
Employment in the nonagricultural branches of the
economy nearly doubled between 1950 and 1970,
standing at nearly 11 million in the latter year.
Indeed, throughout the postwar period the nonag-
ricultural branches have absorbed nearly all of the
annual increment to the labor force, in addition to
providing employment for those released from
agriculture. The socialist sector, which accounts for
approximately 97% of nonagricultural employment,
sets the main employment trends outside agriculture.
Within the socialist sector, the relative composition of
nonagricultural employment has changed little since
1950. Industry (manufacturing, mining, and power
production) employs the largest number. Services
follow, then construction, transportation, and
communications and trade.
The private sector accounts for about 3% of total
nonagricultural employment, and is relatively most
important in industrial handicrafts and in services.
Private shops are numerous in such service activities as
cleaning and dyeing, photography, and hairdressing.
The remainder of those in the private sector work
mostly in the building trades.
Private handicraft activity is much diminished
compared with prewar Poland. The destruction of the
Jewish population during the war and the suppression
of the private sector in the early 1950's reduced
handicraft employment drastically. Critical shortages
of services and supplies developed, especially in the
rural areas, and the government moved to encourage
craft activities. Employment rose significantly until
1958, but then stagnated until 1964, when the
government again moved to encourage private crafts.
25
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In an effort to absorb the anticipated high annual
increment to the labor force, the authorities reduced
taxes on private establishments and provided
favorable loans for craftsmen. Since 1970 the Gierek
regime's commitment to consumer welfare, as well as
the need to absorb large new increments into the labor
force, has resulted in an expansion of such sectors as
services, and the growth of private or semi private
(state franchise) enterprises �most noticeably in
catering and automobile service stations.
Because a large proportion of the Polish
nonagricultural labor force, particularly in industry,
was recruited in the countryside; types and degrees of
skills are generally below the standards of an
industrialized Western country. To meet its needs for
skilled labor, the government has appropriated sizable
funds for general and vocational education.
The educational qualifications of workers in the
socialist sector have improved considerably since 1958
(Figure 20). Tt;c proportion of the work force with
secondary school or university degrees in 1968 was
highest in education (18 public administration
(18 and health and welfare (13 Among workers
in agriculture and forestry, over 30% had not
completed primary school. Approximately 49% of the
workers in industry had finished at least 7 years of
primary education and 26% had received additional
vocational training, while less than 8% were graduates
of academic high schools or universities. This is
characteristic of Poland's urban labor force, for the 8-
26
year compulsory schooling law is strictly enforced in
the cities and vocational training accounts for much of
the worker's background.
The geographical distribution of the nonagricul-
tural labor force is uneven. The highly urbanized
Silesian basin, and especially the province of
Katowice, constitutes the industrial heartland of the
country. With barely 3% of the total land area,
Katowice accounts for approximately 16% of the
nonagricultural labor force and 21% of the industrial
labor force. Other high concentrations of nonagricul-
tural employment surround the cities of Warsaw,
Lodz, Wroclaw (forme Breslau), Krakow, Poznan,
and increasingly the shipping and shipbuilding centers
along the Baltic roast� Gdansk, Gdynia, and Szczecin
(formerly Stettin). Lowest concentrations are found in
the predominantly agricultural provinces bordering
the U.S.S.R� Bialystok, Lublin, and Rzeszow.
2. Labor as catalyst to change
When party leader. Edward Gierek took over the
leadership of the country from his predecessor,
Wladyslaw Gomulka, on 20 December 1970, it was
after a week of the gravest political crisis in the history
of postwar Poland. Although the workers' demonstra-
tions and riots which toppled Gomulka were ignited
by the folly of the former regime in raising the prices of
food and other staples by some 15% to 20% just before
the Christmas season, the workers were further
embittered by the prevailing view that once again
they were to bear the brunt of the economic and social
inequities inherited from the past. The new leadership
subsequently acknowledged in assessing the December
events that
the protests took such violent form as a result of social
discontent which had been accumulating for a long
time; it was caused by many factors, and particularly
by the worsening economic situation of the country,
serious neglect in social policy, the stagnation of real
wages, shortages of supplies, and the rising cost of
living.... The December events have shown that any
disruption of the bond between the party and the
working class can cause a serious political up-
heaval in our country.
Despite the Gierek regime's correct insight into and
understanding of the causes of the December 1970
explosion, the initial months of his rule were spent in
putting out the fires of discontent and taking stopgap
measures to alleviate the most evident worker
grievances. By early 1973 the leadership had taken
many new steps to catalogue the errors of the past and
to institute new policies earning the respect of the
working class as well as of society as a whole, but the
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FIGURE 20. Educational level of employees in the
socialist sector of the economy (U /OU)

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social, economic, and particularly labor situation is
still in a state of change.
Fundarnentally, however, the changes initiated by
Cierek'are a reaction to the situation that he inherited
from Comulka, and understanding of. the present
position of labor must be based on an examination of
the situation in which the average Polish worker found
himself on the eve of the becember 1970 events.
a.. The anatomy of mismanagement
In' the late.:1960's sor..e of Poland's endemic
economic problems became more acute. In agriculture
conservatism continued to be at cross purposes with
efficiency, even though the drift of the population to
the cities during the postwar period, combined with
rising agricultural investment, had raised agricultural
productivity above the prewar level. By 1970,
however, several bad harvests had combined to
produce a serious shortage of major food items�
including meat, which in Poland is considered a
staple.
The nonagricultural sector fared even worse.
Disorganized by sporadic reforms and 'conflicting
directives, industry was unable to adapt its output to
changing patterns of industrial and consumer
demand. Uneconomic utilization of manpower was
reflected in overstaffing and the assignment of workers
to jobs for which they were over- or underqualiiied. In
the economy as a whole this took the for, of
simultaneous shortages and surpluses. Labor
redundancy on the enterprise level was virtually built
into the system, for fulfillment of production goals was
encouraged even at the cost of exceeding the wage
fund or the employment plan. Moreover, favoritism in
hiring was rampant. Industry's problems were further
intensified by the generally inadequate skill levels of
the labor force, and the lack of labor discipline. The
movement of the population to urban areas required
farm workers to transfer to nonagricultural
occupations, where they were inexperienced and
unskilled, and many found it difficult to adapt to the
demaiids for reliability, punctuality, and diligence
necessary to an industrial production schedule.
Despite major improvements, working conditions
were poor in many branches of industry, and
industrial health and safety precautions compared
unfavorably with those in Western countries.
Excessive heat, noise and vibration, poor sanitation
and lighting, and inadequate ventilation ranked
among the most frequently criticized safety problems
in Polish. industry. Little advance was made in these
basic areas of worker comfort and protection, despite a
fourfold increase between 1955 and 1970 in
expenditures to promote labor safety. There had been
a gradual reduction of the workweek since 1968 to 46
hours (8 hours on weekdays and 6 hours on Saturdays)
for most workers. but many workers� especially those
in industries, such as shipbuilding, where delivery
deadlines have a profound effect on the pace of work,
habitually worked overtime at complex wage rates
more often geared to output than to hours worked.
Moreover, complex and often arbitrary wage rates
became a focus of labor dissatisfaction. In assessing
the economic background of the events of December
1970, the Cierek leadership in February 1971 admitted
that:
during the years 1966 -70, Poland had the lowest rate
of increase in real wages of all the countr'es of CEMA
Coup .il for Economic Mutual Assistance) There
were some groups of workers which actually suffered
a decline in their real wages.
Indeed, although marked improvement took place
after 1956, the low income level in Poland remained a
source of intense dissatisfaction. A small group of
public figures leading government and party
officials, prominent scholars, scientists, artists,
composers, and others received generous salaries and
valuable fringe benefits. For the average worker,
however, income was low relative to prices, and the
purchase of a suit or a radio set required careful
budgeting. Most families found it difficult to make
ends meet on a single salary, and urban wives
frequently worked out of economic neressi:y. Family
income was supplemented in other ways: by
moonlighting, renting rooms, or raising fruits and
vegetables at home, and sometimes illegally, by
operating a nonlicensed repair shop, engaging in
currency speculation, or selling blackmarket goods.
The minimum wage in 1970 stood fixed by law at
850 zlotys a month, although admittedly this legal
minimum had little effect on prevailing wage rates
and the average worker earned much -r- are. Wage
scales favored workers employed in mining,
construction, or heavy industry. Polish coal miners
have been traditionally well paid. Since 1960 their
earnings have been at least 50% higher than the
average industrial wage, and in 1970 average monthly
wages in coal mining were about 4,281 zlotys,
compared with 2,515 zlotys for industry as a whole.
Workers in metallurgy, too, by common practice are
paid more than most other industrial workers, earning
3,200 zlotys monthly in 1970. Average monthly wages
in construction were 2,986 zlotys and somewhat less in
machine building, metalworking, chemicals, and
other heavy industry branches. Wages in light industry
ranged from an average 2,000 zlotys monthly (textiles)
27
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to 2,300 zlotys (printing) in 1970. As is true in most
industrialized countries, textiles and apparel were near
the bottom of the industrial wage scale. Unskilled
workers, many of them women, predominate in these
branches, thus lowering the average wage level.
In other nonagricultural branches, average monthly
wages in 1970 were highest in transportation and
communications and lowest in health and in trade, as
shown below (in zlotys):
Transportation and communications
2,479
Public administration and justice
2,423
Finance and insurance
2,395
Municipal services and housing
2,342
Education, culture, and art
2,187
Trade
2,094
Public health and welfare
1,841
In the 1960's, data on industrial wages by
occupational grouping revealed the favored position
of engineering- technical personnel, and showed a
perceptible improvement in the earnings of
administrative clerical personnel. In 1970 the average
monthly wages of engineering technical personnel in
industry were 3,847 zlotys, compared with 2,552 zlotys
for administrative clerical personnel and 2,515 zlotys
for blue collar workers. The indexes of earnings of
each group, with these of blue collar workers as the
base, are shown below:
1955 1960 1970
Blue -collar workers 100.0 100.0 100.0
Engineering technical personnel 156.5 159.5 153.0
Administrative clerical personnel 98.9 103.8 101.4
The slight decline in this favored position during the
last 2 years of the decade reflected a policy of gradual
leveling of earnings, as well as more than
proportionate increases in blue- ::jllar wages. This is a
trend to which the new Gierek regime is even more
forcefully committed.
Money wages rose steadily after World War II, but
real wages rose much more s;:;wly. Money wages and
real wages moved in opposite directions in 1952 -53
and again in 1960 (Figure 21), as sharply rising prices
outstripped the average increase in pay. In 1965, a
modest pay increase was wiped out entirely by higher
prices, and real wages failed to rise. The annual rate of
increase in both money and real wages fluctuated
erratically during the 1950's, and until 1958 was
frequently very high. Since 1960 both rates have
tended to stabilize at a much lower level. Money
wages rose at an average annual rate of 3.7% in 1960-
70, and real wages at a rate of 1.8
The ill -timed price rises of 13 December 1970 were,
in fact, part of a series of economically defensible
28
attempts by the (Iomulka regime to initiate economic
reform and to tackle the country's deep- seated
malaise. Indeed, since taking power, the Gierek regime
has not totally repudiated the general basis of
Gomulka's reform program, but it is changing the
scope, thrust, and emphasis of the reform and, above
all, is seeking to avoid the errors of its predecessor: that
of extreme insensitivity to the social and political
context within which reforms must be implemented.
This insensitivity was illustrated by the events of
late 1970. Although in May 1970 the party had
approved a new system of material incentives based on
the principle that workers' earnings should reflect the
economic performance of individual euterprises,
Gomulka had postponed any wage increases until
mid -1972 because of the unexpected food shortages
ar,d the perennial shortage of other consumer goods.
To the workers, especially those in the shipyards, the
new system clearly seemed to be the same as a 2 -year
wage freeze. When this explosive mixture of popular
discontent was ignited by the December 1970 price
increases, Gomulka looked on the revolt as a
counterrevolution which should be suppressed by
force. However, a coalition of certain members of
Gomulka's own leadership, a portion of the party
apparatus, and the army hierarchy opposed this
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FIGURE 21. Index of money wages and real wages in
the socialist sector of the economy (U /OU)

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response and acted to remove Gomulka from office.
Gierek immediately repudiated Gomulka's thesis of a
"counterrevolution, called the events a justified
protest movement of the working class, and unde -took
to placate the rebellious workers with immediate
material concessions and the promise of changes in the
economic and social policies pursued by his
predecessor.
b. Labor and the new managers
The first step taken by the new government was to
freeze retail prices for 2 years, to "suspend" the
controversial wage freeze, and to lift all employment
restrictions. A week later the government announced a
combination of measures designed to compensate low
paid workers and low income families for the
December increase in the cost of living. The statutory
minimum wage was increased from 850 zlotys to 1,000
zlotys a month, and workers earning less than: 2,000
zlotys were to receive raises ranging from 30 to 80
zlotys a month, retroactive to 1 December 1970.
Family allowances were raised for families having two
or more children and a net per capita income wit
exceeding 1,000 zlotys a month. Minimum pensions
and disability payments were raised by 60 zlotys a
month. According to the official announcement, the
wage and pension increases affected 5.2 million
people, and the increased family allowances benefited
4.7 million children.
The essential defect of these initial measures was
that they offered nothing to skilled industrial workers
who already had a job and earned more than 2,000
zlotys a month. (By February 1971 the average
monthly wage of industrial workers was 2,537 zlotys.
Most important perhaps, the shipyard workers who
sparked the riots earned between 2,800 and 3,400
zlotys.) Although the promised 2 -year price freeze and
possible future wage increases would ultimately
benefit them, the workers sought immediate relief
from the December 1970 increase in their cost of
living. As a result, the industrial workers continued to
press for either across the -board wage increases or
rescission of the Decrmber price increases, and a new
wave of protest strikes swept across Poland. A 3 -day
general strike occurred in Szczecin on 22 -24. January
1971, and on 12 February a general strike was
launched in Lodz, a major textile center. The
government responded with pleas for restraint and
cooperation and with promises to improve the working
people's standard of living. These promises, however,
failed to budge the workers and the regime was forced
to yield. On 15 February it was announced that Soviet
credit obtained "during the last few days" permitted a
total nullification of the December 1970 price
increases.
The simultaneous announcement of the price
rollback and of the Soviet credit which had made it
possible occurred while the Lodz strike was still
underway, and there are reasons for believing that the
firm stand of the Lodz workers may have had a
decisive influence on the decisions reached in both
Warsaw and Moscow. Lodz has occupied a special
place in the fighting tradition of the working -class
movement not only in Poland but in Russia (to which
Lodz belonged untii 1918). A general strike in Lodz
(bloodily suppressed by Tsarist troops) was a highlight
of the 1905 Russian revolution.
The concessions that the Gierek regime made to
labor were not only expedient steps to quell popular
discontent, but were also symptomatic of the new
leadership's determination to develop a pattern of
social and economic development based on a new
relationship of trust between the working class and the
government. The new 'socioeconomic philosophy
rested on the precept that development of the national
economy and the material welfare of the people are
not mutually exclusive, and that one rests upon the
other. In the words of a ranking member of the new
party leadership in November 1971:
increased consumption is an important and nec-
essary factor in the process of economic growth, a
factor which stimulates production and technological
progress, improves organization, and results in greater
labor productivity.
This pragmatic, consumer oriented approach
reflected the long -held personal convictions of the new
party It, -der,' F,dward Gierek, whose concern for the
material well -being of workers as a stimulant to
economic performance was well- known. Following his
early years as a miner and a trade union organizer in
the Communist movement in France and Belgium,
Gic:ek's outlook was further developed during his
efficient stewardship from 1957 to 1970 as party chief
of Katowice, Poland's key industrial province, where
he demonstrated his belief that a just reward for-good
work and close touch with the needs of labor generates
a self sustaining cycle of economic development. In
December 1970, the fortuitous circumstances that
brought Gierek into power also made his deeply held
socioeconomic views acceptable both to the Polish and
parties.
29
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The long -range improvements that the Gierek
regime sought in its relations with labor began with a
revision of the 1971 -75 economic plan in the light of
new priorities. The revised plan, presented in m
1971, called for a 38% increase in personal
consumption over the plan period, and a rise of 18% in
real wages, i.e., an average annual growth of 3.4
twice the rate of the 1961 -70 decade. Housing
construction targets were increased by 25 Finally,
the regime pledged itself to find 1.8 million new jobs
in the 1971 -75 period. This figure represents the net
increase in the number of jobs necessary to absorb the
total contingent of some 3.5 million workers entering
the labor market during this period.
In addition, th, regime is committed to create more
jobs for womE and youth, and to take full advantage
of the qualifications of workers already on the job. It
has also undertaken a gradual but thorough revision of
the wage and salary system basically designed to make
take -home pay less dependent ov bonuses. Proposals
put forward also call for a induction of wage
disproportions among different classes of workers but
wiihout eliminating monetary incentives; indeed,
individual wage scales would be correlated with
productivity, quality of work, responsibility,
qualifications, and seniority.
The peasantry, who would have to provide the food
that the new regime had promised the workers, was
not neglected. The new deal for Poland's private
farmers was announced in mid -April 1971 in the form
of an eight -point agricultural program. The main
features of this new agrarian policy included:
abolition, as of January 1972, of all compulsory
deliveries; improved procedures and increased prices
for the purchase of agricultural products by the state;
the grant of property titles to "more than a million
private farmers"; changes in existing land taxes to
compensate the state for the end of compulsory
deliveries, but also to facilitate expansion of private
holdings by purchase of state land; and introduction
of a comprehensive free health service for private
farmers and their families. These measures gave the
individual peasants a sense of security, economic
respectability, and social usefulness that had not
existed under Gomulka. In addressing the concrete
issue of increasing the output of food, the new
leadership had in effect futher consolidated private
ownership in the countryside, as.d thus had exhibited
a willingness to subordinate ideological to pragmatic
considerations.
The favorable response of the peasantry to these
measures, in addition to heavy imports of food,
30
permitted the regime to improve living standards.
Them were no persistent shortages of food or consumer
good:t in 1971, although sporadic nonavailability of
certain items in selected p ^rts of the country� blamed
on distribution shortcomings continued to cause
local irritation.
More important in many ways than these tangible
changes, however, is the regime's measured success in
convincing labor, especially young workers, that
communication between the people at the working
level and the country's rulers has been restored and
that they will continue to have a voice and a stake in
national development. While most of the former
institutional forms have been retained, Gierek's moves
to streamline and energize the bureaucracy when
possible, and sidestep it when not, appear to have
convinced the majority of the initially skeptical and
militant workers to participate in the "process of
national renovation" that is the motto of the Gierek
regime.
3. Trade unions and labor relations
In a major sense, labor relations a d their
institutional basis have been the most important and
most sensitive aspects of the domestic policies of the
Gierek regime since its assumption of power after the
workers' revolt in December 1970. As a result of its
success in overthrowing the former Gomulka regime,
labor has remained acutely aware of its political clout.
Gierek's conciliatory moves in raising wages,
improving living standards, and promising a greater
role for labor in shaping economic and social policy
reflect the new government's awareness of its
d( :pendence on the good will of the working class.
Yet, the new regime has evidently no intention of
meeting the demands for independent trade unions
that were voiced by the striking workers in December
1970, and organizationally there has been virtually no
change in the trade union structure since then. In 1970
there were 23 trade unions organized according to
sector of economic activity, all under the central
direction of a parent organization, the Central
Council of Trade Unions (CRZZ). Regionally, the
CRZZ supervises the work of the individual trade
unions by administrative division down to the district
(coeinty) level, as well as the activities of trade councils
or cells in all major enterprises and places of
employment. Total trade union membership in
December 1970 was 10,101,700 members. Manual
workers represented about 43% and women about
40% of the total. The following tabulation lists Polish
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trade unions by size of membership, in thousands, in
1968:
Nt mmm or
TRADE UNION UnMERS
Trade and Cooperative Workers
983
Engineering Industry Workers
935
Construction and Construction Materials In-
dustry Workers
782
Miners
087
Agricultural workers (socialized sector only)
083
Textile, Clothing, and Leather Industry
Workers
640
Communal Economy and Local Industry
Workers
604
Cooperative Handicraft Workers
597
Teachers
573
Railway Workers
528
Health Service Workers
458
Chemical Industry Workers
430
State and Social Administration Workers
383
Food Processing and Sugar Industry Workers
350
Foundry Workers
320
Road and Transport Workers
274
Forestry and Wood Industry W- irkers
263
Communications Workers
208
Power Industry Workers
151
Mariners and Longshoremen
127
Culture and Art Workers
76
Typographical Industry Workers
54
Publishing, Press, and Radio Workers
33
The Communist regime has always regcriled the
determination of labor policy, including the allocation
of manpower resources, as falling legitimately within
the purview of state economic planning, although the
implementation of central planning in the field of
labor has been more inconsistent in P :tnd than in
some other Communist countries. After 1956, for
example, the Forced and centrally directed allocation
of labor along geographical and industrial lines of the
Stalinist period was replaced by a flexible system
permitting individual enterprises to do their own
hiring; this has, in fact, resulted in persistent
competition for skilled labor. Overall manpower
planning is supervised by the State Planning
Commission, with implementation devolving upon
the various levels of local government in cooperation
with specific enterprises and under the coordination of
the Ministry of Labor, Wages and Social Affairs. In
addition to being assigned the task of implementing
government policies in the areas of productivity,
wages, norms, and working conditions, the trade
unions have been given increasing responsibility for
the administration of social security programs and,
together with the public health service, wholly
administer and supervise a system of recuperational
institutions as well as workers' recreational activities.
In December 1970, much of the workers' ire was
directed at the trade union apparatus which, like other
facets of the former regime's bureaucracy, had become
authoritarian, inflexible, unresponsive to the popular
will, and unrepresentative of its membership. These
deficiencies were rotted in the basic concept of trade
unions under communism. Claiming an identity of
interests between the workers and the state, the
government acted as final arbiter in all those fields of
labor relations and legislation traditionally within the
purview of the trade unions and management: hiring
practices, wage scales, working conditions, and labor
disputes. Polish trade unions, which during the
interwar period had a record of effective internal
democracy and promotion of the workers' interests,
were thus transformed into instruments of state control
over the labor force, implementing but not forming
policy in the labor field.
With both management and the trade unions being,
in effect, component parts of the state machinery for
the utilization and exploitation of labor, workers in
postwar Poland have made little use of the formal
trade union apparatus for raising and remedying their
grievances. This appar_ nrnwlnt a Imlfrh�m
54
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H. Education (C)
1. The national context
I automatic support (if rime policies, and second, the
Jr expausiotl of mass t (ucation, combined with the
The major educational goals of the postwar
Communist regimes in Poland have been twofold:
first, to mold it new "socialist man" whose strong
ideological convictions would lead him to virtually
reorientation of students in higher schools from the
trati )nal academic disciplines �such as the lib
art i,.w, and the social sciences toward techn,
s udies and economic 01 or the wars, the
government has succeeded in achieving the second
goal, but its success, paradoxically, has been the main
reason why it has failed to achieve the first.
Historically, Poland's educational system has been
deeply steeped in humanist tradition along French
and German philosophical lines, decidedly influenced
by religion, and supported by the state. Despite
periods of internal turmoil and pre -World War I
domination by Germany, Austria, and Russia, the
interwar Polish Government succeeded in a
renia kable assimilation of diverse educational
principles, and on the eve of World War II Poland's
academic system was regarded as one of the best in
Europe. Despite the widened accessibility of
educational opportunity, however, schools of higher
learning during the interwar period were still
characterized by a high degree of ingrown
exclusiveness and overemphasis on legal and
humanistic studies far exceeding the needs of the
society. As it result, interwar Poland had problems
with it qualified, unemployed, and often alienated
intelligentsia long before the term became current
elsewhere. In keeping with the rapid postwar
industrialization and urbanization, the Communist
government mounted a massive campaign to expand
schooling facilities, to eliminate the exclusiveness of
higher schools, and to put major emphasis on
scientific, technical, and vocational education. The
resultant virtual explosion in the numbers of educated
youth within the framework of a social and political
system unwilling and unable to satisfy either their
material or spiritual demands has been central to the
regime's conflict with the younger generation, and
therefore, has been largely of its own making.
The government's postwar educational goals were
hindered by the unprecedented physical destruction of
the wartime period, by the rapid rise in the numbers of
school -age children due to the postwar baby-boom,"
and by the shortages of qualified teachers and
pedagogues who, as members of the educated elite,
were systematically eliminated by the Nazi occupiers.
In general, the government has succeeded in all these
sectors not only in overcoming the impact of the
wartime period, but in creating a greatly expanded
system of mass education.
Consistently rising outlays for education including
an extensive program of school construction and rapid
55
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FIGURE 35. Conlrasting Myles in church architecture.
A 17th century wooden church at Grywald, southern
Poland `app), an d a new church at Drogomysl, also in
southetti 0oland (bottom). (U /OU)

strides in pedagogic training have resulted in generally
good facilities in all but some rural areas. Adequacy of
trained personnel has been a more persistent problem.
In October 1969 the government announced that for
the first time in the postwar period there was no
shortage of teachers in Polish elementary schools; at
the same time, however it was admitted that
secondary education was short of some 20,000
teachers. Figure 36 shows postwar kindergarten and
secondary school buildings, as well as traditional
buildings flanking the main court of Warsaw
University.
The government's emphasis on mass education is
illustrated by the data in Figure 37 showing the
number of schools, students, and teachers in the
prewar and postwar periods. Since the mid- 1960's
about 10% of all children of preschool age have been
enrolled in either creches (day nurseries) or
kindergartens, although there is a wide discrepancy in
this figure between urban and rural areas; in the latter
case, there are indications that less than 1% attend
such preschool centers. Greatest strides have been
made in the compulsory stage of education �the 8-
year basic school �which is attended by over 99% of
children ages 7 through 14.
School construction has been rapid and has often
been inadequately reflected in statistical data. The
decline in the absolute number of elementary schools
in the postwar in contrast to the prewar period, for
example, reflects not only wartime destruction and
Poland's territorial losses, but also the elimination of
56
FIGURE 36. School buildings (U /OU)
small, one -room, substandard rural schools which
have been replaced by larger buildings with a larger
number of classrooms.
The rise in vocational and adult education has been
particularly significant. This rise has paralleled the
government's campaign to eliminate illiteracy
between 1949 and 1951, when the problem was
officially declared nonexistent. Latest official data
show that in 1968 illiteracy amounted to less than 2 1;-
of the total population. When measure 1
percentage of persons 15 years of age and c l(
illiteracy rate averaged 4.6% during the di, ice
1960's. This is below the European avii%P tit &s K
but somewhat above that of devifI1IIII) Westem
European countries. The effective t Yl /lutlllrl (F
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Warsaw University, inside main gate
Modem kindergartens, Warsaw
General secondary school, Grabowek, Gdansk province

FIGURE 37. Number of schools, students, and teachers by type of school, selected years (U /OU)
na Data not available.
*Excludes both regular and vocational schools for the handicapped. In 1970171 there were 559 such schools with an enrolment of
86,200, and staffed by 5,800 full -time teachers.
illiteracy, especially among working and peasant class
adults, resulted in the marked decline in the number
of elementary (basic) schools for adults in the 1960's
(Figure 37). Increasingly since then, adult education
has concentrated on the secondary school level, and on
higher education where it is being integrated into
regular evening, part -time, and correspondence
courses conducted by established institutions.
All public education, whether at the compulsory or
the optional level, is tuition -free. In addition, full -time
students of institutions of higher education who do not
live within commuting distance are provided with free
housing (dormitories) and with stipends for living
expenses. Such stipends and other assistance was
provided to 27% of the students of higher education in
1970/71. Elementary and secondary education is
financed entirely through the central government. In
1970 state outlays for education represented about 9%
of total budgetary expenditures. Virtually all teachers
in the state system belong to the Polish Teachers
Union, a component of the state controlled trade
union movement. A majority of teachers are
Communist Party members through necessity if not by
conviction.
2. The educational system
a. Organization and reform
Public education is virtually a state monopoly. The
sole exceptions are the Roman Catholic University of
Lublin and a negligible number of lower level schools
operated by religious and charitable institutions; all of
these have been brought under increasing government
control, and some have been eliminated entirely. Until
late 1966 control over general elementary and
secondary schools was vested in the Ministry of
Education, and institutes of higher learning were
administered by the Ministry of Higher Education. In
November 1966 the government merged the two
ministries into the Ministry of Education and Higher
Education. This organizational move probably was
designed primarily to achieve the stated purpose of
more efficient use of state educational funds and
better continuity of education through the coordina-
tion of curriculums, but it also permitted the regime to
put new life into its consistently flagging drive toward
a "socialist" educational system via tighter central
control of the entire structure.
Following the coming to power of the Gierek
regime, the educational system has come under serious
scrutiny, with a major overhaul scheduled for
completion by 1975. Az a first step, the governmental
reorganization of March 1972 included the creation,
once again, of two separate cabinet portfolios with
responsibility for education. General education
through the secondary level, including all vocational
schools, is under the purview of the Ministry of
Education and Training, while all higher education is
administered by the new Ministt\ y)f Science, Higher
Education and Technology. The nomenclature of the
latter ministry graphically underscores the new
regime's emphasis on 'the integration of higher
education with the scientific and technical
development of the country.
Organizationally, the educational system has been
in an almost continuous state of flux throughout the
post -World War II period, prim.-) Ihc(`-* #ise of
changing political, social, and e 6mk%v jde prey \fires.
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1937/38
1955/56
1970/71
Schools
Students
Teachers
Schools
Students
Teachers
Schools
Students
Teachers
Thousands
Thousands
Thousands
Preschrol
1,659
83.3
na
8,466
377.8
na
8,906
498.2
na
Elementary
28,778
4,865.3
76.6
23,223
3,386.4
102.5
26,126
5,257.0
211.5
General secondary.........
777
221.4
na
799
201.4
10.4
858
401.3
17.5
Vocational- basic..........
na
207.5
J na
966
154.4
l 31.1
j 6,176
905.3
34.9
Vocational- secondary......
na J
l na
1,348
348.6
J
l 3,550
805.4
28.7
Adult basic
226
14.6
na
2,028
71.8
1.4
389
46.8
0.6
Adult- secondary...........
na
na
no
189
53.8
0.6
317
135.5
1.6
Higher education..........
32
49.5
na
78
157.5
18.3
85
330.8
31.9
Total
31,472
5,441.6
76.6
37,097
4,751.7
164.3
46,407
8,380.3
326.7
na Data not available.
*Excludes both regular and vocational schools for the handicapped. In 1970171 there were 559 such schools with an enrolment of
86,200, and staffed by 5,800 full -time teachers.
illiteracy, especially among working and peasant class
adults, resulted in the marked decline in the number
of elementary (basic) schools for adults in the 1960's
(Figure 37). Increasingly since then, adult education
has concentrated on the secondary school level, and on
higher education where it is being integrated into
regular evening, part -time, and correspondence
courses conducted by established institutions.
All public education, whether at the compulsory or
the optional level, is tuition -free. In addition, full -time
students of institutions of higher education who do not
live within commuting distance are provided with free
housing (dormitories) and with stipends for living
expenses. Such stipends and other assistance was
provided to 27% of the students of higher education in
1970/71. Elementary and secondary education is
financed entirely through the central government. In
1970 state outlays for education represented about 9%
of total budgetary expenditures. Virtually all teachers
in the state system belong to the Polish Teachers
Union, a component of the state controlled trade
union movement. A majority of teachers are
Communist Party members through necessity if not by
conviction.
2. The educational system
a. Organization and reform
Public education is virtually a state monopoly. The
sole exceptions are the Roman Catholic University of
Lublin and a negligible number of lower level schools
operated by religious and charitable institutions; all of
these have been brought under increasing government
control, and some have been eliminated entirely. Until
late 1966 control over general elementary and
secondary schools was vested in the Ministry of
Education, and institutes of higher learning were
administered by the Ministry of Higher Education. In
November 1966 the government merged the two
ministries into the Ministry of Education and Higher
Education. This organizational move probably was
designed primarily to achieve the stated purpose of
more efficient use of state educational funds and
better continuity of education through the coordina-
tion of curriculums, but it also permitted the regime to
put new life into its consistently flagging drive toward
a "socialist" educational system via tighter central
control of the entire structure.
Following the coming to power of the Gierek
regime, the educational system has come under serious
scrutiny, with a major overhaul scheduled for
completion by 1975. Az a first step, the governmental
reorganization of March 1972 included the creation,
once again, of two separate cabinet portfolios with
responsibility for education. General education
through the secondary level, including all vocational
schools, is under the purview of the Ministry of
Education and Training, while all higher education is
administered by the new Ministt\ y)f Science, Higher
Education and Technology. The nomenclature of the
latter ministry graphically underscores the new
regime's emphasis on 'the integration of higher
education with the scientific and technical
development of the country.
Organizationally, the educational system has been
in an almost continuous state of flux throughout the
post -World War II period, prim.-) Ihc(`-* #ise of
changing political, social, and e 6mk%v jde prey \fires.
57
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Numerous efforts from 1930 to 19.36 to bring
organization and curriculum closer to Soviet models
seriously reduced the quality of education on all levels.
Thereafter the attempts of the Gomulka regime to
place emphasis on qualitative improvements
consistent with what it regarded as minimum
ideological criteria suffered from periodic setbacks
primarily as a result of the tendency of the system
towp /d A backsliding. The major educa-
tionj 04,F) N t. ,;14'Tnly 1961 affected primarily the
clenrofi 'lary school system and
atten #tqj I(( rater internal continuity.
Similar 'II ttltti., ituted in other Eastern
European 'aw (which was gradually
implement4 63 and 1968) extended the
length of compulSol' scuooling by 1 year. Elementary
schools were expanded from seven to eight grades, and
some courses in secondary schools were shortened from
i to 4 years. By 1968, over 961 of all elementary
school children attended schools with a full 8 -year
syllabus.
Higher education bore the brunt of the 1968
reforms, which were undertaken by Gomulka largely
as a reflex action to the universitv student disturbances
in March of that year. These changes represented
a� ether attempt at reinvigorating ideological
indoctrination in higher education, reducing the
autonomy of university "chairs," and putting new
stress on the preferential selection of students with
worker and peasant backgrounds. Except for the
organizational shifts, these changes have again been
largely nullified by simple noncompliance or
impracticability. (Discussed further h under
Higher Education). The organization of the overall
educational system is shown in Figure 38.
The study lertaken by the government leading
toward evetl%1� .4 i(l'orrn of the educational system was
begun by tl� t ,.�Ick regime in January 1971 with the
creation of a Committee of Experts, reporting directly
to the government. The committee works integrally
with the Polish Academy of Science's Committee for
Research and Prognoses, which is officially dubbed
Poland 2000 because it is tasked with drafting
multitudinous proposals for the economic, social,
scientific, educational, and sociopolitical development
of the country up to the year 2000 and beyond.
The work of the Committee of Experts on
educational reform has been laid out in several phases.
Its initial report, presented for professional review and
discussion in late 1972, concerns primarily, though not
exclusively, draft plans for the further standardization
of curriculums in elementary and secondary
tlucation. Subsequent phases of the study are slated
_58
to include some organizational changes, long -range
expansion plans, and detailed correlations between
demographical projections, economic development,
and educational needs. After a "public discussion,"
the initial proposals are to be submitted to parliament
to be put into law. Realistically, however, whatever
reforms are approved will probably not begin to be
implemented before 1974; in mid -1972 the Minister of
Education and Training stated that implementation
depended on the general progress of other
developmental plans subsumed in the work of the
Poland 2000 committee.
Published discussions of the scheduled educational
reforms have not been adequate to determine the basic
intent of the Givwk wginic t'nofficial comment,
however, focushig on an analysis of the general
shortcomings of the present system, reveals the
probable direction of the reformers. 'Teacher training,
for example, is still inadequate; there is built -in
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FIGURE 38. The educational system (U /OU)

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rigidity in the system's approach to teaching and
learning methods; professional snobbery is still
rampant; there is lack of cohesion between the basic
schools and some kinds of vocational training; and
insufficient organization and control parallels an
unresponsive bureaucracy and inflexible administra-
tion at all levels. Seeking remedies for all these ills
appears to be t1,e main goal of the studies underway
since 1971. Most importantly, however, new
approaches to teaching involving the selective but not
uncritical importation of Western ideas may be
included in the reform.
b. Programs and curriculums
Preschool education is divided into two stages.
Creches (nurseries) for children up to the age of 3 are
normally provided by factories and similar enterprises.
Children between the ages of 3 and 7 can enter
kindergartens. Most of these are directly run by the
state, but an increasing number are organized by local
communities under the auspices of local branches of
mass organizations. Despite steady expansion of
facilities, demand is still greater than available space.
Preference is given to children with both parents
working, and account is taken of the size of families,
housing, and income:
Schooling is compulsory from the age of 7 through
14, and is provided in the basic 8 -year school (szkola
podstawowa). It is divided into two phases; from
grades one to four the curriculum (Figure 39) consists
mainly of Polish and mathematics, with some music,
physical training, and combined art and practical
work, and is taught by general teachers. Some specific
subjects are introduced during this stage, such as
nature study and geography. ''_'he greatest change is in
grade five, when teaching turns to subject
specialization. Russian language study enters at this
point, as does history; other subjects, like biology,
physics and chemistry, come at'various points during
the second phase, grades five through eight. Time is
found for the additional subjects partly at the expense
of others (Polish dwindles from 8 hours a week in the
first year to 5 in the eighth), but mainly by the gradual
increase in the number of teaching hours per week,
from 18 in the first grade to 33 in the eigh."h grade. In
the second phase it is also possible for a pupil to add
extra subjects to his curriculum, such as sports,
instrumental music, school choir, or a second foreign
language �a choice of English, French or German.
Compulsory education ends with the basic school,
and it is possible to enter employment at this point
although there are legal restrictions on the type of
occupations for persons under the age of 16. The great
majority of basic school graduates go on to some kind
of further schooling. Of the 566,709 graduates in
1970/71, 87.2% went on to other schools; 53.6% to
FIGURE 39. bask (elementary) school curriculum, In hours per week (U /OU)
59
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GRADES
evnJEcr
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
Total
Polish language and literature
8
10
9
9
7
7
5
5
60
Russian language
3
3
3
2
11
History
2
2
2
2
8
Citizenship
1
2
3
Nature study
2
2
2
6
Biology
2
2
2
6
Geography
2
2
2
2
2
10
Mathematics
5
6
6
6
6
6
5
5
45
Physics
2
3
3
8
Chemistry..
2
2
4
Practicalitechnical instruction
i 2
2
J 2
2
2
2
3
3
16
Art
J
l 1
1
1
1
1
1
8
Music
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
8
Physical education
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
16
Class teacher's period
1
1
1
1
4
Tots' hours weekly
18
21
23
25
29
33
33
213
Additional subjects:
Western European language
3
2
2
7
Schoolchoir
2
2
Music ensembles
2
2
Sports
2
2
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basic vocational schools, 15.7% to secondary
vocational- technical schools, and 17.9% to general
secondary schools (lyceums).
The general secondary lyceum is the only academic
secondary school, with a 4 -year courso leading to a
final certificate (matura), which entitles the holder to
apply for higher education. In some cases, basic
schools and lyceums are organized together as 12 -year
schools, although this is rare and there is still a distinct
break after the eighth grade. The 1961 reforms that
extended the basic school to 8 years �in effect making
what had been the first year in the lyceum into the last
year of the basic school �also necessitated revised
curriculums in the secondary schools. These charges
emphasized updated teaching materials, the natural
sciences, the polytechnical centert of the courses, and
additional electives (Figure 40). The changes,
however, were not designed to differentiate the school
into separate arts and science sectors, as happens in
many other European countries, but rather to make
more time available to concentrate on chosen fields
while retaining the basic course for all students.
According to 1967/68 data, about two- thirds of all
students who began general secondary schools
successfully completed the final year with a certificate.
The remainder was made up of repeaters (9
dropouts (5.5 and those who stayed to the end but
failed to get the certificate. Of those who graduated
with the matura, 63% went on to some form of higher
education; 28% entered universities, and the rest
enrolled in technical or other specialized institutions of
higher leaming.
Vocational and technical schools are of many types,
but may be classified broadly under two categories
according to the level of instruction. Basic vocational
schools provide 3 -year courses of training for pupils
leaving the basic school at age 15. Some general
educational matter is included in the curriculum, but
the emphasis is overwhelmingly on mastery of the
theory and practice of a particular trade, augmented
by practical work in factory and workshop.
Agricultural schools, with 2 -year courses on average,
could also be included in this category. More
advanced vocational education is given in the
secondary vocational- technical school, which is the
equivalent of the lyceum and is also open to 15 -year
old graduates of the basic school. This provides a 5-
year course (though there are some variations) with a
combination of general education and vocational
training in over 100 special fields� engineering,
agriculture, economics, administration, health service,
communications and a host of others. The final
FIGURE 40. General secondary school curriculum, in hours per week (U /OU)
GRADES
suaJECr
I
II
III
IV
Total
Polish language
4
4
4
4
16
Russian language
3
3
3
2
11
English, French or German
4
4
3
3
14
History
3
3
3
9
Social study
3
3
Biology
3
2
5
Hygiene
1
1
2
Geography
3
3
6
Mathematics
4
4
4
3
15
Physics
S
3
3
2
11
Astronomy
1
1
Chemistry
2
u
6
Technical education
3
II
3
12
Art and music
1
4
Physical training
Z
2
8
Premilitary training
1
2
5
Options
4
4
Total hours weekly
34
34
33
30
131
Additional subjects:
Latin
2
2
2
2
Choir or ensembles
�2
Sports
'2
*Activities are organised in intergrade groups from Grades I to IV.
60
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examination covers both the vocational qualification
and the malura, and can lead to higher or further
education. There are also technical and vocational
schools for students who have completed the lyceum
or equivalent, with courses of from 1 to 3 years,
depending on the sprcial field. Unlike the vocational
technical schools, they are solely concerned with
vocational instruction.
3. Higher educ: lion
There were 85 institutions of higher education in
Poland in 1972, ranging from the 600 -year old
Jagiellonian University of Krakow to the postwar
universities at Lodz, Torun, and Lublin �the last of
these a state university existing alongside the Catholic
University which deals mainly with theology and
canon law. The newest university, at Gdansk, was
formed in 1970 from the merger of higher schools of
pedagogy and of economics in the area. The total
number of institutions has fluctuated over the years
from 32 in the prewar period to a pear of 83 in 1951,
then declining through a series of mergers to 75 in
1960, and rising again through new construction and
upgraded accreditation of existing schools to the 1972
figure.
Enrollment ui institutes of higher learning has
increased even more significantly: from 49,500 in
1937/38 (a ratio of 11.1 per 10,000 population) to
330,800 in 1970/71 (a ratio of 101.4 per 10,000
population). The 1972 ratio is about 30% of the U.S.
figure. The following tabulation gives the type and
enrollment of the institutions of higher learning in the
1970/71 school year:
By far the greatest number of Polish higher school
students are enrolled in technical and related fields of
study. The extent to which students have been
reoriented from the prevalent prewar academic
disciplines, as well as subsequent differences in
emphasis on various courses, is shown in Figure 41.
The annual number of graduates of universities and
other schools of higher learning has fluctuated: from
21,722 in 1950/51 to a low of 16,114 in 1958/59 to a
postwar high of 47,117 in 1970/71.
Nowhere have the Communist regime's problems
with "bourgeois morality" and the failure of its own
indoctrination programs been more persistent than in
the field of higher education, which has been the most
rapidly expanding area of Polish education as well as a
hotbed of periodic ideological dissent.
Persistent dissent among university students in
Warsaw and several other major university centers
boiled over in March 1968 into open demonstrations
and riots, which began as calls for the redress of
genuine academic grievances and related issues of
individual liberty but soon widened into broad
political and economic demands. Caught off guard,
the Gomulka regime took several long -range steps to
reinstitute control and prevent a recurrence. Among
the most important measures introduced were a newly
revitalized point system for university entrance
favoring children of worker, peasant and other
"socially desirable" backgrounds; a new .law for
higher schools designed to'strengthen party control at
the exoense of faculty power and independence; an
adminhIrative reorganization of some higher schools;
61
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FIGURE 41. Graduates of institutions of higher learning
by major fields of study, selected years (U /OU)
NumBEa
STnmENTs
Universities
10
97,543
Higher technical schools
18
124,855
Higher schools of art
16
5,237
Medical academies
10
22,851
Agricultural academies
7
33,515
Higher schools of economics
5
25,021
Pedagogic institutes
3
11,098
Physical education institutes
6
4,965
Theological academies
2
1,145
Teachers colleges
6
3,657
Maritime academies
2
902
Total
85
330,789
By far the greatest number of Polish higher school
students are enrolled in technical and related fields of
study. The extent to which students have been
reoriented from the prevalent prewar academic
disciplines, as well as subsequent differences in
emphasis on various courses, is shown in Figure 41.
The annual number of graduates of universities and
other schools of higher learning has fluctuated: from
21,722 in 1950/51 to a low of 16,114 in 1958/59 to a
postwar high of 47,117 in 1970/71.
Nowhere have the Communist regime's problems
with "bourgeois morality" and the failure of its own
indoctrination programs been more persistent than in
the field of higher education, which has been the most
rapidly expanding area of Polish education as well as a
hotbed of periodic ideological dissent.
Persistent dissent among university students in
Warsaw and several other major university centers
boiled over in March 1968 into open demonstrations
and riots, which began as calls for the redress of
genuine academic grievances and related issues of
individual liberty but soon widened into broad
political and economic demands. Caught off guard,
the Gomulka regime took several long -range steps to
reinstitute control and prevent a recurrence. Among
the most important measures introduced were a newly
revitalized point system for university entrance
favoring children of worker, peasant and other
"socially desirable" backgrounds; a new .law for
higher schools designed to'strengthen party control at
the exoense of faculty power and independence; an
adminhIrative reorganization of some higher schools;
61
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FIGURE 41. Graduates of institutions of higher learning
by major fields of study, selected years (U /OU)

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a strengthened system of mandatory classes in Marxist
philosophy at the higher schools; and a compulsory
manual labor program for students in higher
education. In addition, influential liberal professors,
many of them Jews, were purged immediately
following the -government's suppressior, of the student
demonstrations by the end of March 1968. Together
with the general antiliberal and anti intellectual
atmosphere which pervaded the 1963 political crisis,
these measures had a cumulative deleterious effect on
university students and faculty alike.
The point system, which weights university
entrance examinations in favor of students of peasant
and worker origin, was a direct outgrowth of party
concern over the persistently disproportionate number
of higher school students who were of a white collar
background. The point system as a concept in Poland
was not new; what was new in 1968 was the regime's
apparent determination to implement it in practice, as
well as the heavy weighting given to the worker and
peasant candidates. The system had never been as
widespread in Poland as in the U.S.S.R. and some
other Communist countries even during the Stalinist
period, and after 1956 it virtually disappeared. In
1965 it was reintroduced, largely unheralded, but it
ova!, soon generally circumvented by both the regime
and the students in cooperation with willing faculty.
One reason for the failure of the regime prior to 1968
to implement a system which was on the books
appeared to be its own realization that in many ways
it ran counter to government efforts to increase
markedly the number of technically and professionally
qualified personnel. The same overriding factors
appeared to vitiate the system soon after 1968, and the
stress now placed by the Gierek regime on skill
whatever its origins suggests that these provisions have
again become largely dormant. As early as 1969 there
were sivn, of evasion of the point system, particularly
since widespread opposition to it included party
intellectuals who felt that their own children were
unjustly deterred from pursuing higher education
while untalented individuals were favored. In fact,
data published for the first time in 1971 revealed that
little change in the social background of students in
higher education had occurred between 1965/66 and
1970/71, as shown by the percentages in the following
tabulation:
WMTE-
WORKER PEASANT COLLAR
1965/66 27.2 17.0 50.4
1970/71 29.9 15.5 50.3
Organizationally, the October 1968 legislation on
higher education was designed to implement the
62
party's resolve to establish control over the universities,
and particularly to curb the power of the semi
independent faculties to shape the character of a
school through their control of the curriculum, teacher
selection and development, and general supervision
and discipline of the student body. The operative
provision of the law was, therefore, the reversal of the
power positions of the rector on the one hand and that
of the faculty senate a,id those academicians holding
the traditional "chairs" or katedry on the other. The
rector and deans are now appointed by the
government rather than, as previously, elected from
the senate and faculty councils. In several academic
areas, such as history and philology at Warsaw
University, the traditional "chairs" have been
abolished along with their prerogatives �such as
ndependent hiring o assistants, direction of their
graduate study, and budget control �and incorpo-
rated as sections into newly created institutes under a
party approved director. Although the stated reason
for these structural changes was the fragmentation and
overlapping of research condo -:ted by self serving
professors (in some cases true), the main aim clearly
was political control. Between 1967 and 197E the
number of katedry in all institutions of higher
education declined from 2,064 to 232, while the
number of institutes rose from 62 to 598. This aspect of
the 1968 reforms, although initially resisted and still
unpopular among those who stood to lose their
authority, seems tv have the support of younger
assistants and instructors and is one part of the 1968
reforms that apparently has been successful on its own
terms.
The same cannot be said of ideological education
and of the program of student labor. The regime
decision in 1968 to revitalize ideological indoctrina-
tion in the schools included the reintroduction of
mandatory Marxist- Leninist philosophy studies in the
higher schools, consisting of a 4 -hour, once -a -week
lecture and seminar. This concept also is not entirely
new; in late 1964 the regime called for the resumption
at the university level of Marxist Leninist courses
which had been discontinued in 1956. The course then
introduced, entitled "Rudiments of Political Science,"
was soon virtually nullified by the massive apathy of
the students and the lack of qualified teachers. At its
fifth congress in November 1968, the party called for
the introduction of compulsory, paid "physical labor"
for higher school students during their first three
summer vacations. Such student labor, to be
accomplished at farms or in the factories, had not
existed in Poland since shortly before World War II
when certai., categories of students were obliged to
work in the summer preceding their entry into a
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university. The 1968 concept apparently has been
successful only in cases where the practical work has
involved the students' own fields of study, such as
K ork in medical clinics, laboratories, research centers,
and similar institutions. Elsewhere, however, the
concept has met circumvention and abuse in practice
on the part of the students, as well as by mixed feelings
on the part of farm and factory managers resentful of
paying wages to inexperienced and frequently
malingering students. Similarly, Marxist Leninist
studies, though remaining a compulsory subject, are
being vitiated by the poor quality of instruction (they
are frequently given by nonprofessional party hacks)
as well as by circumvention and the use of the idea of
"flexibility of course content" by professional,
nonparty instructors.
4. Extracurricular activities
Because of the normally heavy demands of the
formal curriculum at institutions of higher learning,
extracurricular activities in the general Western sense
are extremely limited. Moreover, except for the very
affluent, the students cannot financially afford those
activities requiring special clothing or equipment.
Organized sports and school teams that so actively
engage the imagination and energies of many
American college students normally do not exist in
Poland. Most students, therefore, tend to spend such
free time as they have in apolitical recreational
activity and in part -time jobs to supplement their
stipends,
Most extracurricular activity, whether purely
recreational or more directly related to academic or
practical experience, is conducted within the
framework of one or another of the government
sponsored mass vouth organizations. Often, such
activities tend to parallel or are combined with the
FIGURE 42. Weekend camping trips
in areas near Warsaw proved
popular with students when spon-
sored by the now defunct Polish
Students' Association (U /OU)
requirement since 1968 of practical, physical labor
during summer vacations. In general, the price paid
by the students for the organizations' sponsorship or
underwriting of simple recreational activities is a
certain amount of "socialist" activity or ideological
proselytization, which varies according to organiza-
tion. Most students find membership in mass
organizations �and later in the party� useful if not
indispensable for future career advancement, but they
have generally ignored the ideological content of the
activities offered by these organizations. Immediately
after the disorders of 1968, the party once again made
strong efforts to increase the impact of these
organizations on student activities and outlook,
primarily under the guise of expanding the activities of
student government bodies. The regime also purged
the leadership of these organizations and installed the
few Communist zealots available. This was
particularly true of the Polish Students Association
(ZSP), a university-level organization whose activities
were the most ideologically barren of all and generally
confined to catering to the student's material and
recreational needs. Most Polish students belonged to
this organization in preference to the wider -based
Union of Socialist Youth and the small Union of Rural
Youth.
In early 1973 the regime took steps, in the face of
some student opposition, to merge the student
membership of all the existing youth organizations
into the Socialist Union of Polish Students (SZSP), an
organization designed to improve party control and
pursue a more energetic and uniform ideological
indoctrination program. The ultimate structure and
effectiveness of the new organization remains to be
seen, but it is expected that some of the more popular
activities (Figure 42) will be continued in order to
attract student support.
63
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5. Fo- ;ign students and exchanges
Since 1957 student exchanges with other Com-
munist countries have been augmented by the
operation of several educational exchange programs
with non Communist countries, including the United
States. The latter have been negotiated both on a
bilateral government basis and on a direct basis by
individual colleges, universities, and research centers.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of
Science, Higher Education, and Technology exercise
joint supervision over these programs in Poland,
although other ministries and government agencies
cooperate in the selection of students for training
abroad and in the sponsorship of foreign students in
local institutions of higher learning. Figure 43 shows
the fluctuations, but general rise, in the number of
foreign students enrolled in Polish higher schools
during the decade of the 1950's by selected countries
of origin. Of the total of 2,576 foreign students
acknowledged by the regime in 1970/71, 45% were
said to be enrolled in higher technical schools, ;and
1.5% in medical academies.
On the basis of published data, Poland's effort to
train foreign students especially those of developing
countries �and to reap political or other benefits
thereby, has never been as extensive as that of some
other Eastern European countries; even Bulgaria: for
example, hosted over 3,000 foreign students in
1970 71. Nevertheless, the overall total as officially
made public probably understates the number of
foreign nationals undergoing some form of training
and schooling in Poland by as much as 150 The
total of 2,576 in 1970/71, for example is known to
FIGURE 43. Full -time foreign students enrolled in Polish
higher schools, selected years (U /OU)
COUNTRY of ORIGIN
1961/62
1965/66
1970/71
Albania
13
0
0
Bulgaria
71
184
154
People's Republic of China..
42
20
5
East Germany............
14
20
135
Czechoslovakia............
5
73
113
North Vietnam............
60
43
725
France
11
25
19
Cuba
0
69
26
Nigeria
0
50
96
Sudan
25
87
118
Syria
30
73
129
U.S.S.R.
8
21
103
Other countries
369
699
953
Total
648
1,364
2,576
*Generally developing countries of the third world.
M.
exclude all vocational trainees, and certainly such
categories as full -time students of Communist theory
and practice sponsored by party -to -party programs.
Moreover, a highly developed program for young
North Vietnamese has been in operation since the
mid- 1960's; this includes theoretical schooling as well
as practical training in factories, shipyards, research
institutions, and medical facilities. In 1970/71 the
contingent of North Vietnamese trainees of all kinds
was variously estimated at between 2,000 and 4,000.
The total number of Polish students abroad is not
available; the number of postgraduate students
studying abroad has fluctuated from a high of 1,640 in
1956 to a low of 321 in 160. In the 1970/71 academic
year there were 803 Polish students engaged in
university studies abroad, the largest single group
being in the U.S.S.R.
I. Artistic and cultural expression
Polish artistic and intellectual expression through-
out the country's history has been largely the
adaptation of Western European trends to national
needs and aspirations. Polish culture reached the peak
of its development in the first half of the 19th century,
during the period of Partition, when writers and artists
fused an intensely patriotic spirit with the principles of
Western European romanticism. But in every century
of the past millennium the major intellectual
movements and artistic styles stirring the West have
been the decisive forces in Polish art and learning.
Shortly after World War II, the traditional pattern
and structure of cultural development became
threatened by a Communist regime determined to
substitute Soviet for Western models in the arts and
sciences, Marxism Leninism for Roman Catholicism
and Western humanism, and regimentation for
intellectual freedom. With the initial liberalization of
Communist rule after October 1956, Polish artistic and
cultural life reentered the Western mainstream.
Seemingly, the creative intelligentsia were in a unique
position to synthesize East -West views and so serve as
a bridge between the two worlds. Although this
concept of Poland's cultural role soon collided with
Soviet reassertions of its own primacy in ideological
matters, it has continued to inspire the work of much
of the creative intelligentsia. The regime of Edward
Gierek, in power since December 1970, has made no
significant formal departures in cultural policy, but its
liberal interpretation of standing "rules," willingness
to harness cultural traditions in the national interest
even when they clash with Marxism- Leninism, and a
pragmatic attitude toward the creative intelligentsia
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all suggest that Polish artistic and cultural expression
may be newly revitalized, at least in comparison with
the deadening cultural impact of Gomulka's last years.
(C)
1. Historical development (U /OU)
The cultural history of Poland became part of the
European mainstream in the 10th century with the
nation's conversion to Roman Catholicism; the
consequent adoption of the Latin alphabet and of
Latin as the literary language provided the
foundations for an ever increasing Western orienta-
tion. Early growth was marked by the dominant
influence of the church in all branches of art and
learning. The Gothic style flourished in the
architecture, sculpture, painting, and ornamentation
of the 14th and 15th centuries (Figure 44), finding
perhaps its finest expression in the work of the sculptor
Wit Stwosz of Krakow; that city was the seat of the
royal court until 1596 (Figure 45). The University of
Krakow (later Jagiellonian University), founded in
1364, became a center of mathematical and
astronomical learning and gave to Western science one
of its greater astronomers, Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-
1543); major observances of the 500th anniversary of
Copernicus' birth are scheduled for 1973 (Figure 46).
In the 16th century, the growth of Poland's political
might and economic prosperity and such impulses as
Italian Renaissance humanism and Protestantism
stimulated an artistic and intellectual_ development
that marked the period as the "golden age" of Polish
culture. Particular achievement took place in
literature, with Mikolaj Rej (1505 -68) producing the
first truly original writing in Polish and thus earning
the title "father of Polish literature." The following
century saw the gradual decline of Polish culture.
Only architecture continued to flourish; the baroque
FIGURE 44. These 14th century
liturgical articles for the celebra-
tion of Holy Mass show the skill of
Polish artisans in the decorative
arts (U /OU)
style, introduced by the Jesuits, proved congenial to
the Polish spirit and was used extensively in the
construction of palaces and churches. Beginning in the
mid -18th century an "age of enlightenment," inspired
by close contact with France, brought a revival of
intellectual life. As part of an extensive educational
65
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FIGURE 45. Wowel, the Royal Castle in Krakow (U /OU)

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Copernicus
1473-1973
FIGURE 46. The United States also
r joined in the festivities honoring
Copernicus' 500th anniversary by
issuing a commemorative stamp and
by participating in a series of pres-
tigious gatherings among the scien-
84LS tific community (U /OU)
reform, Polish replaced Latin as the language of
instruction in schools. An interest in drama led to the
founding of the Polish National Theater in 1765. In
poetry, two important trends in the classical tradition
of the "golden age" appeared �one of a rationalistic
nature under Ignacy Krasicki (1735- 1801), the other of
a lyric sentimental nature under Franciszek Karpinski
(1741- 1825). An awakening of national and social
consciousness introduced Sweeping political reform,
which came too late, however, to forestall the final
partition of Poland in 1795.
In the period of Partition, the continued existence of
the national spirit manifested itself in a great creative
outpouring, especially in literature. The first of three
main literary movements of this period was inspired by
the romanticism of Western Europe, where most of the
Polish cultural elite lived in exile after the uprising of
1830 -31. Dominating the Polish romantic movement
were three outstanding exiled poets whose work
propagated a messianic role for Poland and a concept
of patriotism that became the "religion of the
fatherland" �Adam Mickiewicz (1798 1855), leader
of the movement and Poland's greatest writer; Juliusz
Slowacki (1809 -49), who was also a distinguished
dramatist; and Zygmunt Krasinski (1812 -59). In
Poland, the most representative figure was Jozef
Ignacy Kraszewski (1812 -87), a prolific author of
historical novels. Romanticism also produced Poland's
greatest musical genius, Frederic Chopin (1810 -49),
whose compositions are associated with such national
musical expressions as the mazurka and the polonaise
(Figure 47).
After the abortive 1863 uprising against Russia,
there developed a movement known as positivism,
which renounced armed resistance for constructive
work and generally gave voice to a rationalistic rather
than romantic outlook. Typical of this view was the
scholarly work of the Krakow historical school, which
expounded the thesis that Poland's downfall was
caused by its own shortcomings. In literature,
numerous distinguished novelists appeared, among
them Boleslaw P (1847 -1912) and Henryk
Sienkiewicz (1846 -19. j), author of the internationally
66
known Quo Vadis and winner of the 1905 Nobel Prize.
An historical trend in painting found its most
illustrious representative in Jan Matejko (1838 -93).
Toward the end of the 19th century, positivism gave
way to a neoromantic movement called Young
Poland, which developed in close association with
Western European art and literature. The foremost
literary personalities were Stefan Zeromski (1864-
1925), a novelist intensely concerned with social and
national problems; Wladyslaw Reymont (1868- 1925),
whose monumental epic, Chlopi (The Peasants),
earned him the Nobel Prize in 1924; and Stanislaw
Wyspianski (1869- 1907), almost equally gifted in
poetry, drama, and painting. In painting, impres-
sionistic and symbolistic trends modeled after the
French dominated, but they were tempered by the
rediscovery of native folk art and architecture of the
southern Tatry mountains.
Restoration of Poland's independence at the end of
World War I released intellectual life from its almost
exclusive preoccupation with political affairs. Freed
from the "sacred burden" of pursuing national goals,
writers in the decade of the 1920's focused their efforts
on a lyric poetry which dealt with present -day life in
the modern city and abounded in innovation and
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FIGURE 47. Frederic Chopin (U /OU)

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experimentation. Among several poetic groups the
foremost was Skamander (named after a literary
monthly), whose main figures were Juljan Tuwim
(1894 -1954) and Antoni Slonimski (1895- In the
1930's, the novel moved to the foreground, the human
personality becoming the predominant theme.
Representative of this period are the humanistic novels
of Maria Dabrowska (1892 1965), whose masterpiece
Noce i dni (Nights and Days) shows the influence of
Western writers, including the Polish -born English
novelist, Joseph Conrad (1857- 1924). Of all literary
genres in the interwar period, drama was weakest.
Many trends in painting appeared, almost all having
ties with the various "isms" fashionable in Western
Europe. Architecture, the most neglected of the arts
during the period of Partition, tended towards a
monumental style possessed of little inspiration or
originality. In music, Karol Szymanowski (1883 -1937)
won recognition as the greatest Polish composer since
Chopin; like Chopin, he made use of native folk
music, with which he blended modern idioms.
Polish scientists and scholars contributed substan-
tially to all branches of learning, perhaps most notably
to philosophy and mathematics. The work of
Kazimierz Twardowski (1866- 1938), Tadeusz Kotar-
binski (1886- and others made Poland one of the
most important international centers of research in
logic, semantics, and the philosophy of mathematics.
Leading scholars included Waclaw Sierpinski (1882-
1969), who headed a famous school of pure
mathematics in Warsaw; Leopold Infeld (1898- 1968),
a nuclear physicist who collaborated with Einstein;
and Florian Znaniecki (1882 1958), head of a school of
empirical sociology in Poznan and coauthor of a
monumental study on the Polish peasant in the United
States.
2. Development under communism (C)
Since World War I1, artistic and intellectual life in
Poland has passed through four stages related to the
evolving political situation. The immediate postwar
vears saw the revival of arts and sciences and the
reestablishment of international ties. The second
phase, the Stalinist era, established Communist Party
direction and control over all branches of art and
learning, and ideological doctrines of socialist realism
and dialectical materialism were imposed on artists
and scholars. Denied the possibility of open resistance,
the creative intelligentsia responded with silence,
compromise, and submission. The third phase began
with the "thaw" following Stalin's death, which
permitted increasingly outspoken intellectual
opposition to the concept of party direction of culture.
This opposition helped to prepare the political climate
for Gomulka's return to power in October 1956, and
prompted a subsequent but temporary upsurge in
intellectual activity which many Western literary
critics have termed as some of "the most graphic
European literary work of recent years, revealing a
bold and desperate imagination." The withdrawal
from this early Gomulka policy after 1957 and the
resulting relative cultural immobilism has constituted
the fourth phase of postwar cultural development.
Whether the Gierek regime's loosened reins on the
intellectual community and its public embrace of
cultural tradition symbolized in the decision to
rebuild Warsaw's Royal Castle, which was heavily
damaged by Nazi bombers in September 1939 and
razed completely in 1944� signifies the beginning of a
new phase in Communist cultural policy is not yet
certain.
In its evolution after 1957, Gomulka's cultural
policy steered a middle course between the repressive
regimentation of the Stalinist era and a complete
freedom of artistic and scientific pursuit, a course that,
with modification, is still pursued by Gierek. On
fundamental goals and principles, the views of Gierek
ani his predecessors are in general agreement. The
prin,lry task of both the arts and sciences is said to be
to ass:. t the construction of socialism: art, literature,
and the 5oeial sciences must help shape the socialist
consciousness of the nation, while the physical and
technological sciences must advance the socialist
economy. Inasmuch as the party regards itself as
responsible for bringing about the socialist transforma-
tion of the country, it cannot be "indifferent" to the
methods and contents of artistic and scientific work.
The party stresses its support of the methods of
socialist realism in the arts and the methods of
dialectical materialism in the sciences methods
which allegedly in no way restrict the freedom of
expression or research. Moreover it accepts "progres-
sive and useful" work arrived at through other
methods. In art and literature, the party calls for a
content that focuses on contemporary problems and
supports "the general trend of Poland's development
mapped out by the Party." While disavowing any
intention of dictating on matters of form and style,
party spokesmen appeal for works that are "realistic"
and intelligible to the general population. Althoiigh
the Gierek regime now encourages scientific and
cultural exchanges with the West, it still deplores
instances of uncritical acceptance of Western styles
and scientific findings. Unlike Gomulka, however,
who soon resorted to strict censorship, various
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economic pressures, and on occasion to arrest,
demotion, and withdrawal of foreign travel privileges
as means of taming errant intellectuals, the Gierek
regime (while retaining censorship) has not only
removed prominent writers from earlier blacklists,
been more solicitous of their material welfare, and
considerably eased restrictions on foreign travel, but
has actively attempted to engage the cultural milieu in
the process of "national renewal."
Many Polish intellectuals, particularly of the older
generation, seem to accept Gierek's terms for a new
relationship. Indeed, these terms benefit from the
contrast with those imposed by Gomulka during the
decade of the 1960's. During that period, disillusioned
and frustrated writers and creative artists manifested
their opposition both passively and actively.
Halfhearted compliance, evasion, and inactivity were
used to counter dictated production of socialist art,
while new artistic forms flourished, often suffused with
allegorical political overtones. Clandestinely procured
and circulated books, pamphlets, tape recordings, and
other articles of cultural expression, produced in the
West, enjoyed great popularity among intellectuals.
Active expression of antiregime dissent included the
March 1964 public protest by 34 leading writers
against censorship, the intellectual turmoil of late
1966, and the protests or )th party and nonparty
writers in early 1968 which led directly to the student
demonstrations in March of that year and contributed
to the general political crisis within the regime. The
degree to which a relatively isolated event could
unleash widespread cultural dissent which soon
gathered its own social and political momentum was
illustrated by the chain of events in the spring of 1968,
which were triggered by the regime's closing in
Warsaw of Mick' play Dxiady (The Fore-
fathers) becar acclaim for the play's
anti- Tsarist, Bless, anti- Russian senti-
ments. The intellectual atmosphere
accompany. itical crisis in Poland, to-
gether with ,purges of leading academi-
cians and artist. i the fields of film, theater, and
literature ushered in what many Polish intellectuals
regarded as another, although temporary, period of
cultural "dark ages." By contrast, therefore, the Gierek
regime's easing of restraints and, most importantly, its
commitment to alleviate the social and political
strains in society that fueled cultural dissent, does
seem to most intellectuals to be shaping de facto a
new, pragmatic cultural policy.
h8
a. Literature and art
Poland's postwar literature is largely the product of
an irreconcilable conflict between traditional
standards of artistic excellence and the Communist
regime's ideological requirements. Although there has
appeared no work of masterpiece caliber, either as
judged by Western artistic criteria or by the values of
socialist realism, much of the output has literary merit
and much commands interest from a sociopolitical
viewpoint. With some exceptions, the literature of the
Stalinist era shows a high degree of adaptation to the
required doctrine of socialist realism and is
characterized by uniformity and stereotype. Most
works of distinction belong either to the early postwar
period or to the years of the "thaw" after Stalin's
death, roughly 1954 to 1957. Many of them were
harshly attacked by the Gomulka regime for having
broken off "from the main current of the life of the
nation," leaving unheeded appeals from the regime
for a literature treating the contemporary man
undergoing socialist transformation. Instead, they
sought safety in historical themes, favoring in
particular World War II and the German occupation.
Postwar literature includes important contributions
to the novel, short story, poetry, and drama, made by
both an older and younger generation of writers. Of
several well established prewar novelists writing in the
postwar period, Jerzy Andrzejewski (1909- has
probably become the best known, largely, but not
exclusively, through his Popiol i diament (Ashes and
Diamonds). Published in 1949 and later made into a
successful motion picture, this much discussed novel
deals in a skeptical manner with the clash between
Communist and anti Communist forces at the end of
the war. Other productive prose writers of the older
generation include Adolf Rudnicki (1912- most of
whose works explore the Jewish tragedy of World War
II; Antoni Golubiew (1907- whose Boleslaw
Chrobry is considered one of the best postwar
historical novels; and Tadeusz Breza (1905 -70), whose
works have attacked the bureaucracy of both the
Polish state and the Vatican. Postwar poetry came to
the forefront during the "thaw" of the mid- 1950's.
The outstanding poets of those years were Mieczyslaw
Jastrun (1903- and Adam Wazyk (1905- whose
Poemat dla doroslych (Poem for Adults) played a
significant part in the intellectual ferment of 1955 -56.
The younger generation of writers achieved
prominence after October 1956. They are chiefly
associated with a "black" literature trend condemned
by regime critics for being "an awkward imitation of
existentialism" and featuring elements of brutality
allegedly copied from the U.S. novelist Ernest
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Hemingway and Erskine Caldwell. Some observers
view this type of literature as a reaction against the
rosy optimism that socialist realism calls for. The first
of the Polish "angry young men" was Marek Hlasko
(1934 1969), whose Osmy dzien tygodnia (The Eighth
Day of the Week), a short story published in
November 1956, won international fame. Hlasko's
successors include Irencusz Iredynski and M.
Nowakowski. Another member of the younger
generation though not a follower of "black" literature,
Slawomir Mrozek (1929- has distinguished himself
in sea rral genres, especially drama. "Whatever form
lie chooses," states a non Communist critic,
"Mrozek's consistent aim is to lay life bare with a
scalpel of virulent satire within a surrealist context."
His best known play, produced in English as The
Police, premiered in 1958 and later produced in
various Western countries, probes with irony into the
police system of an imaginary totalitarian state. As a
playwright, Mrozek appears to owe something to
Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, and others of the
"theater of the absurd."
As with other artistic forms, the painting produced
under the socialist realism dicta of the Stalinist era was
characterized by monotony, banality, and sentimen-
tality. Of the younger generation of painters using the
socialist realism approach, only one, Andrzej
Wroblewski (1927 -57), achieved works of artistic
distinction. With the lifting of cultural restrictions in
the mid- 1950's, artists renewed contact with the
prewar traditions of Polish avant -garde painting and
almost overnight found themselves in the mainstream
of contemporary Western art. Some artists have
continued prewar postimpressionist trends, but the
most dynamic groups appear to be those following
various abstractionist styles, including abstract
expressionism. Others, by contrast, are experimenting
with a blend of abstractionist and traditional styles,
such as the neo- Byzantine religious art shown in
Figure 48. Polish abstract art has been acclaimed at
international exhibitions and has been received with
particular enthusiasm in the United States and
Canada, where it has been purchased in some
quantity.
A particularly significant aspect of Poland's graphic
art in the past two decades is its highly developed
industrial graphics and poster design (Figure 49).
Many Polish graphic artists turned to these forms for
livelihood during periods when abstract painting was
actively suppressed by the regime, and they have since
developed a variety of innovative methods sought
after by many other European countries, both East
and West.
Postwar architecture was dominated until 1956 by
the Soviet neoclassical style, exemplified by the
towering �and popularly resented (Stalin) Palace of
Science and Culture in Warsaw (Figure 50), a "gift"
from the Soviet Union. Post -1956 Polish architecture,
however, has won international recognition for its
functionalism and originality. The physical devasta-
tion of World War II generally contributed to the
national awareness of the material aspects of the
country's cultural heritage, of which, it is estimated,
some 40% to 60% was destroyed during the war. In the
process of reconstruction, much attention was given to
duplicating in minute detail numerous monuments
and even entire sections of cities, such as the Old
Town of Warsaw (Figure 51), that were deemed to be
vital components of national culture.
b. Theater, nusie, and folk art
The theater, both professional and amateur, has
always been a popular form of entertainment as well
as a vehicle for the perpetuation of national traditions
and values. Despite a shortage of outstanding native
playwrights, contemporary Polish theater is flourish-
ing. Since 1956, when the 1949 ban on plays of
Western or "bourgeois" origin was lifted, the
repertoire of Polish theaters has been among the
richest in Europe, ranging from Greek tragedy to
French and English avant- garde. In some seasons the
percentage of plays translated from Western languages
has run as high as 90% of the total repertoire.
Postwar developments in music have also been
characterized by a rejection of socialist realism and an
intense interest since the mid- 1950's in extreme avant
garde styles. In the Stalinist era, composers were
encouraged to emulate Soviet achievements, rid
themselves of Western influences, and make greater
use of folk motifs. The esthetics of socialist realism,
however, found no active followers among the leading
composers and made no imprint upon the style and
character of .Polish music. Rather, composers of both
the older and younger generations continued to write
in the Bartok- Stravinsky "modernist" idiom adopted
in prewar Poland. Since about 1954, however, the
most dynamic musical language has been the 12 -tone
style of the Schoenberg Viennese school and its
pointilliste interpretation, fathered by Anton von
Webern. Younger musicians have also embraced
electronic music and progressive jazz. Although
critical of the extreme avant -garde Western trends in
Polish music, the regime's cultural officials have not
acted to suppress them. Such trends have become an
increasingly prominent feature of the International
Festival of Contemporary Music, informally called
69
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"Warsaw Autumn," which has been held annually in
the Polish capital since 1956.
Folk art is no longer a vital force in national
expression but is artificially kept alive to serve
propaganda and commercial ends. Traditionally
important in peasant life, folk art in all its forms (song,
dance, woodcarving, pottery, weaving, embroidery)
was characterized by marked regional and local
variation. Since World War I, such forces as
urbanization, the development of mass media, and
improved transportation have promoted a cultural
homogeneity in which Western styles and customs are
dominant. Although intent on eliminating regional
and local differences, the Communist regime has
fostered the development of folk art for commercial
purposes and as a means of identifying itself with
national values. Folk art and tradition is best
preserved among the Gorale, highlanders of the
central Carpathians, who lived in virtual isolation
until the end of the 19th century. The fashionable
holiday resort of Zakopane affords tourists an
opportunity to see the Gorale in their folk costumes,
enjoy their songs and dances, and purchase folk art
wares (Figure 52). Of more importance, the
rediscovery of the Zakopane style in the 19th century
init;ated a widespread movement for the employment
of folk motifs in the applied arts. This movement
continued throughout the interwar period and still
flourishes under the regime's encouragement. The
regime, moreover, sponsors two folk song and dance
ensembles, Slask and Mazowsze, both of which have
given numerous performances abroad, including tours
of the United States.
c. Popular participation
In carrying out its cultural goals, the regime is
concerned not only with having a say in the character
of contemporary artistic expression but also with
broadening the cultural opportunities of the general
population and shaping its esthetic tastes and values.
Traditionally, the cultural product in Poland was
made by the upper classes for their own consumption;
it began filtering down to the emerging middle class at
the end of the 19th century. Later, especially with the
development of mass media after World War II, it
became accessible to all social groups. In an effort to
popularize culture, the Communist regime has
provided an expanding network of theaters, music
establishments, museums, and libraries, and has
71
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FIGURE 50. Palace of Culture,
Warsaw (U /OU)
FIGURE 51. Old Town square, Warsaw, 1945 (top),
1965 (bottom) (U /OU)

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FIGURE 52. Mountaineers near
Zakopane preparing Christmas
puppet shows (U /OU)
sponsored an amateur artistic movement of a mass
character. In 1970, there were 93 professional theaters
throughout Poland, 20 of them in Warsaw. In
addition, there were 39 concert halls and other
facilities for musical performances, where the
country's 19 symphony orchestras, nine opera and
nine operetta companies perform, usually to full
houses. The re -ime's effort in bringing culture to the
people has been particularly marked in the postwar
proliferation of so- called houses of culture, which
range from well developed urban institutions
combining such facilities as a theater, meeting hall,
library, motion picture theater, and lecture hall, to
modest rural clubs generally engaging in similar
activities tailored to local interest. Moreover, the
number of museums and exhibit halls (335 in 1970)
continues to increase; over 18 million persons annually
visit such institutions. In addition to the 32,195 school
libraries in existence in 1970, there were 8,621 public
libraries� including branches and mobile book
centers �and 326 major state libraries and archives,
including such prestigious institutions as the
Jagiellonian Library in Krakow housing some of the
original manuscripts of Copernicus.
Rejecting the idea of two separate cultures �one for
the general public and one for the elite �the regime
has sought to provide a uniform product of "high
ideological and artistic value" that at the same time
would be comprehensible to consumers of widely
differing experience. In theory, a uniform culture is
72
needed to achieve the Communist goal of eliminating
social differences and class divisions.
Traditional popular tastes and values appear to
have undergone little or no change under commu-
nism; if they sometimes clash with the regime's
esthetic views, they also clash with some contemporary
styles of expression. Interest in the avant -garde in
painting and music is largely confined to creative
circles. The average citizen neither understands nor
cares to understand abstract art, preferring, like the
regime, "good old realism." In music, most people are
unaware of 12 -tone technique, but among the youth
there is great enthusiasm for jazz and rock and -roll,
which the regime tolerates lest it intensify interest. The
theater has traditionally been popular among the
Poles and now commands an annual audience of
about 18 million, including a relatively large number
of skilled workers. inasmuch as theater attendance,
unlike cinema attendance, has not declined with the
advent of television, audiences are presumably
satisfied with contemporary theatrical fare. While the
regime desires a reader interest in serious native
literature concerned with contemporary problems,
popular tastes run to the 19th- century novel,
particularly the work of Sienkiewicz and Kraszewski;
contemporary "escape" literature, such as adventure
stories, crime thrillers, and stories about the German
occupation; and the novels of leading contemporary
Western authors.
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J. Public information (C)
1. The role of government
The Communist regime controls all informational
media �the press, publishing houses, radio, television,
and films. Although the degree of control and its
administrative channels vary, all media whether or
not they are direct organs of the Communist party
are ultimately subject to the same criteria of content
and are, therefore, expressive of government policy.
The party has relied heavily on all news media,
especially the press, radio, and television, to further its
political, economic, and social goals. Rapid postwar
expansion of radio and TV broadcasting facilities,
together with the increasing availability of radio and
TV receivers, has made these the most important
channels of public information. Newspapers,
periodicals, and books are also major sources. As in
other Communist countries, there is also a heavy
reliance on word -of -mouth communication, with the
prevalence of rumor and gossip being in proportion to
the degree of censorship imposed by the party on
formal media.
Despite controls over the form, content, and
dissemination of public information, the regime has
had little success in curbing the anti- Communist
attitudes of the people, and their desire to seek out
unbiased information. As part of the de- Stalinization
campaign after 1954, censorship controls waned and
relative freedom of expression by the individual and
the press� nourished by the political ferment of 1956-
57� emerged for the first time since the Communist
takeover. Censorship control of all media was soon
reapplied and became increasingly stringent during
the 1960's. Party control of all media tended to
become more direct but, in response to intraparty
political fluctuations, more arbitrary and the content
more unreliable. Nevertheless, when judged against
the standards of control and objectivity existing
elsewhere, for example, in the U.S.S.R., the Gomulka
regime's policy toward the information media was
relatively permissive.
Most of the shifts in public information policy
undertaken by the Gierek regime stem from the lessons
learned during the workers' revolt of December 1970,
i.e., that public trust rests on more honest information
provided by the government to the people, coupled to
evidence of governmental responsiveness to public
opinion. Although Gierek has clearly retained firm
control of the media, he feels that more open
discussion of domestic problems serves as a safety
+aive for popular dissatisfaction, a means to overcome
public apathy, and a catalyst for constructive change.
Soon after he took over, Gierek established a
permanent cabinet -level post of Under Secretary of
State for Information who regularly reports to the press
on the proceedings of the government, and submits to
questions �often pointed �by journalists. Gierek has
also tolerated, and in some cases encc::raged,
publication of mildly provocative articles in the press.
Although the media do not question the role of the
party or the permanence of the socialist system in
Poland, they have prompted discussion of long -range
social and economic options facing the country. In this
way Gierek has brought public discussion to bear on
the tasks that are being thrashed out within the
regime. Moreover, the public dialog is open, and
employs methods that are unique in the Communist
world. For example, cabinet ministers, party leaders,
and leaders of mass organizations have submitted to
critical interviews on radio and television, including
questions submitted by the listening audience while
the program is on the air.
Formally, however, the apparatus of control over
the media has remained unaltered. Regime control
over public information is exercised by a number of
methods, the chief among them being the mandatory
prior clearance of the contents of a publication by the
Central Office for Control of Press, Publications, and
Public Performances, popularly known as cenzura
(censorship) in Warsaw, and by its provincial and
municipal branches throughout the country.
Cenzura's powers also extend to all verbal and graphic
media, i.e., radio, television, and films. The dominant
source of current news distributed to all media is the
official Polish Press Agency (PAP), constituting in itself
a form of censorship. Film censorship is facilitated by
the regime's control over all domestic film production
and over the export and import of films. While
cenzura is theoretically a government agency, in
practice it is subordinate to the Press Bureau of the
party's Central Committee, which sets the political
line for all informational media.
The basic themes and approach for the media in
their role of supporting the regime's domestic and
foreign policy goals are, therefore, decided at the
highest party level. They are then further elaborated
by the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the
Central Committee and transmitted to key party
individuals in the press, radio, television, government
agencies such as the main censorship office, and
various ministries and mass organizations. How well
this detailed guidance is implemented is dependent on
the competence of the individual responsible for such
implementation within each organization, as well as
73
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on the responsiveness of the organization's leadership
to his dictates. This has been particularly true of �he
editorial boards of the press and other informational
media as well as of the many social organizations used
by the Communist Party as transmission belts to
specific interest groups within the population.
Consistency, in terms of long -range objectives, and
frequent tactical swings are dual features of the
regime's propaganda effort. This is particularly true in
domestic policy, where popular resistence to such
long -term goals as socialized agriculture and the
victory of the materialistic world outlook over religion
has rendered direct propaganda on these long -term
themes ineffective. Moreover, the Gierek regime,
mindful of the increased sophistication and skepticism
of the populace, is committed to rational persuasion
on the basis of informed discussion, rather than the
simple but massive distribution of predigested official
views to an unquestioning audience. As a result, the
task now facing the party's control apparatus and the
public media is vastly more complex; it requires
imaginative ideas and methods from a propaganda
bureaucracy not accustomed to provide either, and
responsible presentation by media personnel. The
latter's well- developed capacity for self imposed
control is in large part to be credited with the fact that
the enlivenment of the public information system
under Gierek has remained within ideologically
acceptable limits.
2. Radio and television
Radio and TV transmission facilities are owned,
operated, and their output determined by the
government through the Committee for Radio and
Television Affairs, attached directly to the Council of
Ministers (cabinet). In technical matters the
committee cooperates closely with the Ministry of
Communications, but in terms of policy guidance on
programing it is merely the executive arm of the
Communist party's Central Committee.
The rapid growth in radiobroadeasting is reflected
in the steadily increasing numbers of radio subscribers
until the late 1960's, when the concurrent and even
more rapid growth of television began to make inroads
on the further expansion of broadcasting (Figure 53).
The majority of listeners live in urban areas, especially
in Warszawa province and in the urban centers of
Silesia and the western parts of the country. In early
1973 there were 28 AM stations and 25 FM stations.
The majority of these were regional stations
rebroadcasting one or more of the three main program
services originating in the studios of Warsaw radio,
although many originate independent programs of
local interest. Ownership of multiband radio receivers
is rapidly supplanting the once widespread system of
wired loudspeaker sets, which are limited to preset
domestic reception; these account for only 17% of all
subscriptions. Because all radio and television is
noncommercial, subscribers must pay an annual fee
determined by the type of set owned. Since the late
1960's transistor sets and automobile radios need not
be separately licensed if the owner is already a
registered subscriber.
Although television is still not as widespread in
Poland as in comparable Western countries, it has
becn the most rapidly growing medium of public
information in the country. In early 1973 there were
18 main TV stations and 26 relay transmitters in
operation, covering between 80% and 90% of the
country and approximately the same percentage of the
population. The central TV studios in Warsaw
originated over half of all programs, with studios in
Katowice, Wroclaw, Gdansk, Krakow, Poznan, Lodz,
and Szczecin �in that order accounting for most of
the remainder; other cities, however, originate short
FIGURE 53. Radio and TV broadcasting and numbers of subscribers (U /OU)
74
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SUBSCRIBERS
Per 10,000
YEAR
Hours
Thousands
In urban areas
population
Thousands
Percent
Radio:
1960
42.3
5,268
68.5
1,760
1965
42.3
5,646
64.8
1,790
1970
52.9
5,657
66.8
1,735
Television:
1960
3.8
426
86.4
140
1965
4.1
2,078
88.9
660
1970
5.3
4,215
74.4
1,290
74
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