late 1970s, bitter jokes started circling around in Warsaw that a new professorship should be established at the Main School of Planning and Statistics: the Chair of Codology (from the Latin word i.e. queue). This new phenomenon was a source of concern for party coda, leaders as well. For instance, Gierek was publicly challenged by the First Secretary of the Konin Province Party Committee in December 1978: Thirty five years after the war, one has to queue for bread, soaps, boot polish, toothpaste, paints, shoes… The chaos and the confusion in our economy obscure the party’s assessment of the situation. The people see this, they understand it… they condemn it and compare the realities of life with the rosy picture given by official prices, official information handouts and speeches. […] Responsibility… on macroeconomic issues assumes complete anonymity. No one seems to be responsible for putting together an unrealistic economic plan. The authorities were also afraid to tarnish Poland’s liberal image in the West and the levels of persecution and violence against the rising opposition were thus negligible until 1981. The University of Warsaw sociologist Jadwiga Staniszkis summarized this dependency in the following words: from the West can be repaid in part “credits symbolically, which means that the government in question installs a slightly more liberal leadership”. In a similar vein, Mieczysław Rakowski wrote in 1977: [Gierek and “They his team] are afraid of clamor that would spread in the West; after all we do not want to lose the reputation of Gierek’s Poland as a new beginning in communist history and we need this reputation to negotiate our debt rescheduling where we will have to count on a lot of patience and leniency.” From this point of view, it seems like the initially instrumental image-creation designed by Gierek evolved into a policy goal in its own right. As it was put by one of his advisers, Jacek Górski: the road of success “entering propaganda gave birth to a situation where one could not withdraw from this policy and one could not tell the truth to the society, as it would have probably entailed a change in
late 1970s, bitter jokes started circling around in Warsaw that a new professorship should be established at the Main School of Planning and Statistics: the Chair of Codology (from the Latin word coda, i.e. queue). This new phenomenon was a source of concern for party leaders as well. For instance, Gierek was publicly challenged by the First Secretary of the Konin Province Party Committee in December 1978: Thirty five years after the war, one has to queue for bread, soaps, boot polish, toothpaste, paints, shoes… The chaos and the confusion in our economy obscure the party’s assessment of the situation. The people see this, they understand it… they condemn it and compare the realities of life with the rosy picture given by official prices, official information handouts and speeches. […] Responsibility… on macroeconomic issues assumes complete anonymity. No one seems to be responsible for putting together an unrealistic economic plan. The authorities were also afraid to tarnish Poland’s liberal image in the West and the levels of persecution and violence against the rising opposition were thus negligible until 1981. The University of Warsaw sociologist Jadwiga Staniszkis summarized this dependency in the following words: “credits from the West can be repaid in part symbolically, which means that the government in question installs a slightly more liberal leadership”. In a similar vein, Mieczysław Rakowski wrote in 1977: “They [Gierek and his team] are afraid of clamor that would spread in the West; after all we do not want to lose the reputation of Gierek’s Poland as a new beginning in communist history and we need this reputation to negotiate our debt rescheduling where we will have to count on a lot of patience and leniency.” From this point of view, it seems like the initially instrumental image-creation designed by Gierek evolved into a policy goal in its own right. As it was put by one of his advisers, Jacek Górski: “entering the road of success propaganda gave birth to a situation where one could not withdraw from this policy and one could not tell the truth to the society, as it would have probably entailed a change in
undergraduate_thesis_tomasz_blusiewicz.docx