Polish Economic Crisis Endangers Political, Social Reforms; Round-Table Talks Fall Short On Wages, Prices, Scarcities
Poland's worsening economic crisis is threatening to overwhelm the progress that communist authorities and opposition leaders here have been making toward the most significant political and social reforms in the Soviet Bloc.</br></br>Although close to a series of sweeping political agreements, the two sides remain divided in their six-week-old talks on how to manage an economic crisis that both sides see as the chief threat to the new pact.</br></br>Soaring inflation, mounting industrial unrest and the threat of a collapse of the domestic market were crucial factors in the decision of the communist leadership of Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski to open negotiations with the banned Solidarity labor union Feb. 6. Yet despite reaching accords on landmark reforms of Poland's political and social life, the two sides have made only meager progress during the talks on the question of how to halt the price spiral or restock nearly empty shop shelves.</br></br>As a result, even as they celebrate breakthoughs they say they never expected to reach, politicians on both sides have been left with the uneasy feeling that their pact may be scorned by a society impatient for economic improvement yet condemned to even greater austerity.</br></br>"What will be decisive" for the success of the round-table agreements, wrote senior opposition strategist Jacek Kuron this week, "will be not the electoral card but the meat rationing card." Kuron added that "the agreement could be broken because society completely rejects it on economic grounds."