Legitimation & Instability: The Fatal Link (PCEE 2, 1990) Michael Bernhard

8/4/2019 Legitimation & Instability: The Fatal Link (PCEE 2, 1990) Michael Bernhard.

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Legitimation and Instability:The Fatal LinkBy Michael BernhardDepartment of Political SciencePennsylvania State University

Program on Central and Eastern Europe Working Paper Series #2

This paper explains the unparalleled record of political instability in Communist-ruled Poland byexploring the failure of successive regimes to legitimate their domination. It argues that the PolishStalinists, Gomulka and Gierek, as well as General Jaruzelski, were only successful in puttingobedience to their rule on a highly contingent, results-oriented (i.e., non-legitimate) basis and thuswere particularly prone to societal challenges from below. The paper concludes with the successfulnegotiation of the Roundtable Agreement in spring 1989, which radically changed the nature of thePolish political system.


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M IC HA EL B ER NH AR DASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCETHE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY

LEGITIMATION AND INSTABILITY: THE FATAL LINK

Prepared for the Conference "Instability in Poland: ItsSources and Ramifications," The Pennsylvania StateUniversity, April 6-8, 1989.

(Revised Version: March 1990)

This paper is a substantially revised version of ChaptersOne and Two of The Rebirth of Public Politics in Poland:Workers and Intellectuals in the Democratic Opposition,1976-1980, (Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1988),Copyright (C) 1988, Michael H. Bernhard.

C OM ME NT S W EL CO ME D


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LEGITIMATION AND INSTABILITY: THE FATAL LINKMICHAEL H. BERNHARDASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCETHE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY

Repeated honeymoon trips will not save a badmarriage by improving what is wrong with it, butmay lead to its continuing without purpose and ing row in g d isc om for t.-- Bruno Bettelheim/1/

I . I NT RO DU CT IO N.The political system that existed in Poland prior to

1989 was a modified version of the Soviet system ofeconomic, political, and social institutions forged by .Stalin's revolution from above. The institutional patternwas the product of certain currents in Russian politicalculture and the process of a particular consolidation of the1917 revolution. At least until the late 1980s it had astrong measure of acceptance in Russian society (Zaslavsky,1982; Bialer, 1980), and had a rather impressive record ofdomestic political stability in the Soviet Union.

A modified version of this system did not producesimilar results in Poland. Stalinist institutions wereforcibly imposed upon Poland during the period 1944-49 and

/l/Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart, (London:Peregrine Books, 1986), pp. 47-8.

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LEGITIMATION AND INSTABILITY: THE FATAL LINK.

was clearly alien to mainstream currents of politicalculture there. Had Poland been afforded an opportunity forself-determination after World War II, it would have, nodoubt, opted for a parliamentary political system in whichthe parties of the London Government-in-Exile would havecontended fqr power and for a mixed economy.

In retrospect it is no exaggeration to say that manyPoles viewed that system as alien long before the Soviets"discoveredl1 problems with their own system or other EastCentral Europeans mounted coherent challenges to own localregimes. Nowhere in Communist East Central Europe did anyregime have to contend with sustained and dogged popularunrest as in Poland. Four party general secretaries wereprematurely retired in response to popular unrest (Ochab,1956; Gomulka, 1970; Gierek, 1980; Kania, 1981). Eventsbefore the departures both Gierek (strikes in 1976) andGomulka (student and intellectual unrest in 1968) from thepolitical scene also presented profound challenges to theirauthority which weakened the ability of each to ruleeffectively. In 1988, two strike waves helped persuadeFirst Secretary Jaruzelski to negotiate directly with theoutlawed trade union Solidarity in 1989. In Poland therewere well developed opposition movements since 1976. Inshort, the entire period from the strikes of 1976 until thedisintegration of Communist power was one of profound

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instability. Poland thus, in this sense, was a unique casein Communist-ruled Europe.

In general when we talk about the question ofinstability, we directly address the ability of a country'sleaders to rule effectively. Thus stability is the abilityof a ruling elite to maintain its system of domination (MaxWeber's (1978) Herrschaft or some concept derivative of it)and to see to its unimpeded operation. Herrschaft has alsobeen rendered in English as "authority" or as even as"imperative coordination." For the purposes of this study Iwill use the notion of domination coined by Mueller (1973)-- " ...the control of a limited number of individuals overthe material resources of society and over the access topositions of political power." Those powerful individuals Ishall refer to as the "elite" and those over whom they rule"subordinates." Thus systems of domination imply concretepolitical and economic structural arrangements in whichelites command the obedience of subordinates and control theuses of socially produced resources. When such arrangementsare profoundly challenged, as they were in Poland, there isinstability.

A further distinction about instability is warranted inorder to fully understand the predicament of the Polishelite. One kind of instability is an impediment to themaintenance and operation of the system of domination of aparticular leader of the elite. Th1s'can be described as"regime instability." This has existed in Poland as

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challenges to the rule of individual party generalsecretaries. However, when such challenges are sustainedand persistent, as they have been in Poland, we can talk ofa problem on a different order -- "system instability."

In contrast to Poland, the stability in the SovietUnion was attributable to the fact that it had establishedbases for its legitimacy (Bialer, 1980). The Russian peopleaccepted it in some way as their own system. The record ofinstability in Poland suggests that successive regimes therewere not successful in legitimating their domination.Before turning to Poland per se, however, a d~scussion oflegitimacy is in order.

Legitimate domination is a subset of the forms ofdomination. There can be systems of domination in whichsubordinate members of society are obedient for reasons offeared or actual coercion or pure material gain (Weber,1978). Weber talks about such a situation in his essay on"The City" (subtitled "Non-legitimate Domination") in whichthe logic of the market rules. Such a logic of obediencecan also be illustrated by the ethos of the mercenary.Obedience in such military formations is based on monetarygain, not commitment to a cause or fealty to a commander forwhom the soldier fights.

Legitimate domination implies some greater commitmentto obedience than the two reasons discussed above. Itrequires that obedience to the dominants be internalized asa binding norm of routine action by the subordinates.

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Legitimate domination is based on voluntary obedience,obedience viewed in some sense by those dominated as the wayin which they ought to act. That is to say that thedominated conceive of their obedience as morally justified-- e.g. as "good," -"right," "natural," or some otherattribute. Perhaps Lipset (1981) summarized thisrelationship with respect to the polity most succinctly"Legitimacy involves the capacity of the system to engenderand maintain the belief that the existing politicalinstitutions are the most appropriate ones for society." /myemphasis/

In past eras in which legitimate domination closelycorresponded to the Weberian ideal-type of traditionallegitimate domination, it was common to conceive of"legitimacy" once conferred on a form of rule, as somethingimmutable. With the superseding of these forms oflegitimate domination, it has become necessary to rebuildlegitimate domination by a process of constantly ongoinglegitimation. Thus, in modern mass polities, legitimatedomination should not be conceptualized as a static,condition. Strictly speaking, it is more accurate to speakof domination undergoing a process of legitimation. Thus,legitimate domination has come to be something that must bereproduced.

It is impossible to say whether legitimate dominationis more moral than non-legitimate or illegitimate forms ofd o m i n a t i o n w i t h o u t r e f e r e n c e t o a p a r t i c u l a r s e t o f e t h i c s .

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Subordinates prefer legitimate domination to other forms ofdomination precisely because it coincides with their notionsof how social and political life is properly structured.This means that legitimate domination is a more effectiveform of domination, because the dominated have internalizedobedience as a norm, thus making it effectively automatic.Hence dominants who have legitimated their domination do nothave to commit as extensive resources to monitoring andenforcing obedience as they would under different forms ofdomination. In the long run we would expect legitimatedomination to be more stable and thus preferred by thedominant elite.

For purposes of this study such the arguments thatelites make to justify obedience to their rule will betermed as ideologies. When subordinates accept the validityof these arguments domination is legitimated. This use ofthe term ideology is distinct from its use in rankingparties, belief systems, elites or other political phenomenaalong a pragmatic-ideological continuum. Similarly, its usehere is distinct from Marx's (1977) use of the term. Marx'snotion of ideology class interest presented. as universalinterest -- is too narrow in that class domination is notthe only form of domination and th~ presentation of classinterest as general interest is only one conceivable formthat ideology could take.

Ideologies can originate as novel arguments orrationales posed by the dominants to justify their

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domination, can come from existing elements in politicalculture, or can combine both of these (Rigby, 1982). Incases where a revolutionary elite seizes power, as thePolish Communists did, ideology plays a special role, for itmust justify both the seizure of power and policies totransform society. In such cases, the new elite usuallytries to inculcate new beliefs in society in support ofrevolutionary change.

However, since revolutionary elites are more prone thanestablished ones to use violence to achieve their aims, massacceptance of their rule, and hence, internalization ofrevolutionary ideology by the subordinates on a mass scaleis not crucial in the short run. For a time, mass obediencecan be secured by coercion and terror, i.e. in anon-legitimate fashion. However, support from certainsectors of society is necessary in order to recruit newmembers into the echelons of the elite and sub-elites.Moreover, in the case of the sub-elites who are called uponto play crucial roles in the process of rapidly transformingthe existing order, an exceptionally high degree ofideological faith is required in motivating them to obeycommands that will undoubtedly involve a host of unpleasantcoercive acts.

As Kolakowski (1982) has pointed out, upon thesuccessful establishment and the consolidation of the newregime, the elite often seeks to incorporate sociallyresonant elements of prerevolutionary political culture into

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its ideological appeals for obedience. This has importantramifications with respect to the legitimation strategies ofsuch regimes. Markus (1982) speaks of the distinctionbetween "overt" and "covert modes of legitimation" in thisregard. In Poland, the ideology employed in the overt modeof legitimation has been Marxism-Leninism in its officialcanonical Soviet form. As we shall see in the followingsections, in the immediate postwar period when the presentsystem of domination was first established it served as theprimary ideology that the regime employed in itslegitimation attempts. However, with de-Stalinization thefashion in which the regime tried to secure legitimation,particularly with respect to society, changed. At thisjuncture official Marxism-Leninism's role in legitimationchanged to that of a ritualized form, primarily serving theelite's "self-legitimation."

With de-Stalinization a covert mode of legitimationbegan to supplement official Marxism-Leninism in the waythat the regime attempted to secure societal legitimation.After the defeat of revisionism in 1968, officialMarxism-Leninism, as such, ceased to have any strong resonance within Polish society. Since that t~me the covertmode of legitimation has assumed an even greater role forthe regime in Poland. Markus describes the general changein ideology that results from this switch to the covertmode:

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Its role is not merely an auxiliary one, for it isbelieved to be more effective, appealing as itusually does to more popular, sometimestraditional, sometimes "external," so-called"petty bourgeois" values. Thus internationalistreferences in overt legitimation are replaced bynationalist ones; the principle of collectivism isreplaced by a competitive individualism, by theideology and practice of "bettering one's own lot"and emphasis on familial values; the aim ofhumanisation of social relations is replaced by anorientation towards "modernisation," primarily inthe sense of economic growth. Generally speaking,the system of covert legitimation is far frombeing, or even attempting to be coherent. In thissense it "adapts" itself to "commonsense" which isnever a systematic worldview./2/

In the sections which follow this shift from the use of analmost pure overt mode of legitimation under Stalinism toincreasing reliance on covert modes starting with Gomulka,will be evident in the discussion of the ideologies thatpost-Stalinist regimes in Poland used in their legitimationstrategies.

Finally, as Markus indicates while Marxism-Leninism wasa codified system of thought, the shift to covert modes oflegitimation has meant that ideology in the particular sensediscussed here, ceased to be as unified or as coherent as itpreviously had been. With this change, the regime tried toinculcated different norms of obedience based on differentrationales in different social groups, strata or classes

/2/Maria Markus, "Overt and Covert Modes ofLegitimation in East European Societies," in PoliticalLegitimation in Communist States, T.R. Rigby and FerencFeher, eds. (London: Macmillian, 1982), pp. 88-9.

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within the consolidated system. The elite even tried tosecure the obedience of different groups (e.g. sub-elitesversus mass constituencies) on the basis of differentsub-ideologies./3/

The historical record of instability in postwar Polandindicates that the party-state elite there was far fromsuccessful in legitimating its domination. In order tounderstand why among all the Communist regimes in EastCentral Europe the Polish regime was the least successful inestablishing stable bases for its domination, it isessential to explain how the Polish elite tried to inculcatenorms of obedience in the society over which it has ruledfor over forty years and why it has failed. Jaruzelski'sfailure to normalize Poland in the 1980s did not arise in avacuum. Rather, the problems he faced had plagued thePolish party-state from its inception. In order tounderstand why Jaruzelski was compelled to accede to thedismantling of the Communist .system of power, one mustunderstand the failures of his predecessors to establish a

/3/For example, one could imagine that an elite which

presented itself to the population as technocrati~ mightstress different components of a technocratic approach toworkers and technical specialists. To workers it mightpresent the idea that greater efficiency and productivitywould bring more and better paying jobs, whereas totechnical specialists they might stress greater efficiencyand productivity as values in themselves, as well as theopportunity for a more important role in economic processes.

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legitimate basis on which the system of domination in Polandcould rest.

In the following sections I will examine how theparty-state elite in Poland sought to justify itsdomination, and to evaluate the reasons why Polish societyfailed to internalize this ideology. All three regimes thatruled Poland before the birth of Solidarity -- those of thePolish Stalinists, Gomulka, and Gierek -- were literallychased from power by the wrath of their subjects. This wasa legacy Jaruzelski was unable to overcome. It is a recordunparalleled in East Central Europe, whe;e leadershipturnover in response to mass discontent, prior to 1989, hadgenerally been rare.

II. POLISH STALINISM.After World War II, the Communist Polish Workers' Party

(PPR) managed to seize power in Poland with Soviet support.Those who would come to hold the highest leadershippositions within the party would be Stalin's most obedientPolish followers. Generally, the members of this group hadspent much of the interwar period and the war in the SovietUnion and thus have been dubbed the "Muscovites." They hadbegun to make plans for taking power as early as 1943./4/

/4/Krystyna Kersten, Narodziny Systemu Wladzy, Polska1943-1948, (Paris: Libella, 1986), p. 19.

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They were not without other competitors for power in theimmediate postwar period, however. In London, there was aPolish Government-in-Exile, composed of the parties that hadopposed the dictatorship established by Pilsudski in 1926.The London government organized Polish divisions whichfought on the Western front, and claimed the allegiance ofthe vast underground partisan Home Army and the structuresof the Polish underground state. There were also rightwingand phalangist political organizations, which maintainedpartisans in the field in Poland. Finally, there weredivisions among the Communists. In the immediate postwarperiod, the PPR was originally led by Wladyslaw Gomulka, whohad spent the latter stages of the war as the leader of theCommunist underground in Poland. Such "home Communists"were not fully trusted by Stalin.

By 1948, the Muscovite faction of the Polish Workers'Party had managed to consolidate its hold on power. Sovietpower and diplomacy had prevented the London government fromfully participating in the government of postwar Poland.The large partisan forces of the Home Army and the Polishunderground state had been dismantled by a combination ofwartime attrition,/51 demobilization, and Red Army force.

/5/In particular, the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, took avery heavy toll, not only in terms of casualties among theunderground's supporters.' The physical destruction ofWarsaw totally disrupted the work of the underground state's( Fo ot no te Co nt inu ed )

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The partisan bands that had continued to operate after theRed Army took control in Poland were effectively destroyedby 1948. The other political parties, most notably thePolish Peasant Party (PSL) and the Polish Socialist Party(PPS), were neutralized both by the suppression of theirindependent activity and by being brought under the controlof the Communists or their supporters. The PSL leader,Mikolajczyk, was forced to flee the country and his party'sorganizations were forced into submission by theirincorporation into the new Communist controlled UnitedPeasant Party (ZSL). In 1948, the PPS was likewisecompelled to merge with the Polish Workers' Party (PPR) toform the present ruling party, the Polish United Workers'Party (PZPR). Leaders and cadres who deviated from theCommunist line were removed from political life. The PZPRitself came under the control of the Muscovite faction. Thevictory was symbolized by the replacement of Gomulka, whohad shown a modicum of independence from Moscow in histenure as party leader, with Boleslaw Bierut and by thesubsequent imprisonment of Gomulka and his followers.

It was at this time that the PZPR embarked upon thepolicy of radical social transformation in accordance withthe Stalinist model. The reg~me sought to justify itself on

(Footnote Continued)administrative apparatus and communication network.Kersten, p. 95.

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the basis of Soviet Marxism-Leninism in its Stalinist form.Marxist-Leninist canon as an ideology contained elementsdrawn from both science and religion. However, it was bothmore and less than a religion and mor.e pseudoscience thanscience proper. Whereas religious belief is based on theexperience of faith in a divine authority that requires noempirical verification, Marxism-Leninism in its Stalinistform demanded belief in things empirically unverified asempirical truth. Believers had an "inability to distinguishtruth in the usual sense from political expediency."/6/

The Stalinist mode of legitimation and its ideologywere strongly tied to the institution of a leadership cult.In certain ways, this cult approached Weber's ideal-type ofcharismatic legitimacy, in that the followers of the partyleadership believed the leader to possess extraordinaryqualities that demanded obedience. This in itself goes along way to explain the intensity of the beliefs of Stalin'sPolish followers and the radical steps they were willing totake in pursuit of the movement's aims. Obedience was tiedto the leader as the ultimate source of Marxism-Leninism, arole which would allow him to lead his followers IIfrom the

/6/Leszek Kolakowski, "Ideology in Eastern Europe," inEastern Europe, Yesterday-Today-Tomorrow, Milorad M.Drachkovitch, ed. (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press,1982), p. 48. ..

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misery of exploitation into the socialist millennium."/7/In the case of Poland and the other People's Democracies theleadership cult was based on the local Communist leader'sclaim to be Stalin's leading disciple in the country.

The Stalinist mode of legitimation also combined modernand premodern elements. In premodern traditionallylegitimated systems of domination, the ruler is seen as therepository of authority, independent of the will of theruled. The compliance of subordinates to the ruler'scommands is based on a "teachable knowledge of an orderedworld" specific to the culture of that particular society.Modern societies, on the other hand, have corne toincorporate an element of the "reflective consent" of theruled in their legitimation strategies. InstitutionalizedMarxism-Leninism functioned as a comprehensive world viewthat justified obedience to the hierarchical commands of theparty leadership. Under Stalinism the use ofMarxism-Leninism in this fashion resembled traditionalpremodern modes of legitimation. However, at the same timethese premodern elements were justified "in the name of realpopular sovereignty," which was claimed to be a form of

/7/Graeme Gill, "Personal Dominance and the CollectivePrinciple: Individual Legitimacy in Marxist-LeninistSystems," in Political Legitimation in Communist States,T.H. Rigby and Ferenc Feher, eds. (London: MacmillianPress, 1982), pp. 100-101.

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democracy superior to mere "formal" systems for producingreflective consent, such as "bourgeois" democracy./8/

Large segments of Polish society obeyed the Polishparty-state and its directives during the Stalinist periodof social transformation. Many complied out of fear. Somedid so because of the tangible benefits that the regimesupplied in terms of upward mobility. A significant numberwere willing to follow the party obediently out of afanatical sense of commitrnent./9/

Many members of the intelligentsia enthusiasticallythrew their support behind the new regime. There were atleast several common rationalizations for this. Theinterwar Polish regime had been strongly discredited by itsfailure both to solve nagging social problems and to defendthe country at the beginning of World War II. The need forsocial reform was something upon which almost allsignificant Polish political actors agreed,/10/ and the

/8/Maria Markus, "Overt and Covert Modes ofLegitimation in East European Societies," in PoliticalLegitimation in Communist States, T.H. Rigby and FerencFeher, eds. (London: Macmillian Press, 1982), pp. 82-4./9/For a series Of interviews with some of the leading.Polish Stalinists see Teresa Toranska; Oni, London: Aneks,

1985. -/10/The declaration of Poland's underground parliament,the Council of National unity (RJN) on March 15, 1944,entitled "0 co walczy'narod polski," called forthoroughgoing industrial and agricultural reform, localself-government, and parliamentary democracy. It was( Fo ot not e C on ti nue d)

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Communists to recruit a number of intellectuals to theirbanner by playing on these sentiments.' Others were stronglyattracted by the role the Soviet Union played in defeatingNazi Germany and saw the Soviet Union and its system as aguarantee against the resurgence of fascism. Others wereimpressed with the practical emphasis of Marxism-Leninism,as opposed to abstract intellectualizing, and put theirknowledge at the service of the regime. Still others,dissatisfied with the limitations of intellectual life, felta need to establish contact with the real life of thepeasant and worker masses.

Polish peasants and workers also supported the regime.Many benefitted from the upward mobility created by theregime's policies of social transformation. Peasants wereencouraged to leave the countryside and settle in thecities, where they were given jobs in industry and firstexperienced modern urban life. Workers with skill andinitiative were co-opted into lower-level leadershippositions, the party, and positions of greater authority andstatus in the factories. Many truly believed that theregime was dedicated to bettering the lot of the masses or

(Footnote Continued)considerably more radical than the proposals which thePolish Communists were making at that time. See Kersten,pp. 49~50.

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to a notion of social justice,/ll/ and some threw theirsupport behind the regime in the hope of returning to anormal life and rebuilding the war-torn country.

While the Stalinist regime in Poland commandedsufficient obedience to maintain itself in power and tocarry out its policies of social transformation, it did notin subsequent years manage to convince the mass of Poles ofthe true efficacy of Marxism-Leninism. Obedience out ofbelief in the ideology did not take root. One reason, ofcourse, is that many merely complied out of fear ofcoercion. Others obeyed in order to improve their standardof living or social status. Others saw their originalenthusiasm for the stated aims of the regime betrayed by thefailure of the regime to live up to its promises and by themeans with which it sought to implement those aims.

When terror was relaxed in the period 1953-56, largecomponents of the elite and the population sought to changethe system in various ways. Working class disappointmentwith a low standard of living, disgust for the terror, anddisillusionment over the failure of the regime to live up tothe ethical aims of socialism manifested themselves most

/11/For instance, Anna Walentynowicz, an importantworker activist in the 1970s opposition and in Solidarity,wrote in the early 1950s she was taken by the regime'srhetoric of "justice" and "equality" for the working class.See Anna Walentynowicz, "Byciory~," Tygodnik Solidarno~c 9(May 29, 1981), p. 8.

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LEGITIMATION "AND INSTABILITY: THE FATAL LINK.

dramatically in the demonstrations and street battles inPoznan in June of 1956. In October of 1956 the peasantsdecisively rejected the regime's program in the countrysideby spontaneously disbanding the collective farms. Thenumber of collective farms fell from 10,150 on September 31,1956, to 1,534 on December 31./12/

Many Polish intellectuals also came to rejectStalinism. Having subserviently propounded and perpetuatedthe myths of the regime, they felt complicity in the wrongs

the regime had perpetrated. It was as if the intelligentsiahad awoken from a terrible dream and found itself "with ahand in a chamber pot."/13/ Many enthusiastically threwthemselves into the growing reform movement to correct thewrongs of the past. The party elite itself split into thethe Natolin and Pulawy factions. This allowed Gomulka andhis followers to stage a political comeback and for Gomulkato once again assume the mantle of Party leadership inOctober of 1956.

Polish Stalinism had established itself forciblyagainst the wishes of Polish society which had largelysupported the democratically oriented parties of the

/12/Jan Tomasz Gross, "Poland: Society and the State,"in East Central Europe, Yesterday-Today-Tomorrow, Milorad M.Drachkovitch, ed. (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press,1982), p. 305./13/Stanislaw Baranczak, "The Polish Intellectual,"Salmagundi 70-71 (Spring-Summer 1986), pp. 224-5.

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Government-in-Exile throughout the war. The events inPoland from Stalin's death until Gomulka's return to powerin 1956 showed just how much Polish Stalinism had relied onthe coercion of many, the self-delusion of some, and thesupport of those who gained materially from the new regime.Continued obedience was contingent on the perpetuation ofcoercion and the continued ability of the regime to providematerial gain. Only a very small proportion of the supportupon which the Polish Stalinist regime relied was based onthe-belief that the system was the most appropriate one forthe society.

The six year plan (1950-55) failed to live up to itsgoals in the areas of gross national product, real wages,and agricultural production. Even more significantly, inthe period 1950 to 1953 real wages fell at a rate of 3.7percent per annurn./14/ The protesting workers of Poznancarried signs emblazoned with slogans such as "We want breadfor our children," "We demand the lowering of prices; wewant to live," and "We want to eat" alongside calls for"Freedom."/15/ It is thus not surprising that in the period

/14/Jakub Karpinski, Countdown, (New York: Karz-Coh1,1982), p. 75, and Zbigniew Fa11enbuch1, "The Strategy ofDevelopment and Gierek's Economic Manoeuvre," in Gierek'sPoland, Adam Bromke and John W. Strong, eds. (New York:Praeger, 1973), p. 57.

/15/See the photographs in Jaroslaw Maciejewski andZofia Trojanowicz, eds. Poznanski Czerwiec 1956, (Poznan:Wydawnictwo Poznanskie, 1981).

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1955-56, when terror was sharply curtailed and revelationsabout the conduct of both the Polish and Soviet regimesemerged, Polish Stalinism collapsed.

Obedience had been based largely on coercion andeconomic improvements. When the regime stopped using terrorand failed to deliver economically, Poles stopped obeying.This was because Marxism-Leninism had not been internalizedas an ideology. Domination had not been legitimated.Support had been of a contingent nature on a non-legitimatebasis. The absence of any greater reason to obey the eliteexplains why the Polish Stalinist system, which had onceseemed so unassailably powerful, collapsed so rapidly.

Both society and significant groups within the partyelite rejected Stalinism and hoped for its replacement by amodel of socialism that would be more Polish in character.When Gomulka came to power, he had significant elite andwidespread popular support. He had triumphed over

,Khrushchev in a'face to face battle of wills and thusaverted a Soviet invasion in October. Because Gomulka waspopularly perceived as a victim of Stalinism, he came tosymbolize the hopes of the vast majority of Poles for a newPolish model of socialism./16/

/16!Gomulka had disagreed with Stalin overcollectivization of agriculture, the formation of theCominform, and the expulsion of Tito from it (See PaulLewis, "Legitimacy and the Polish Communist State," in( Fo ot no te C on ti nu ed )

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III. GOMUtKA'S REGIME.No First Secretary in the history of the Polish

Communist movement enjoyed as much genuine popularity asWladyslaw Gomulka did upon his return to power in 1956./17/He had a clear mandate from both the Party and society.However, the nature of these mandates was different. Theparty expected Gomulka to restore order and carry outreforms both to mitigate the excesses of Stalinism and torestore the smooth operation of the mechanisms of elitepower. From society, Gomulka had something of a morefar-reaching mandate -- the expectation that he wouldreplace Stalinism with a truly Polish form of socialism thatwould be more democratic, more independent from the SovietUnion in foreign policy, more attentive to consumer needs,

( Foo tn ote C on ti nu ed )States and Societies, David Held, et al. eds. (New York:New York University Press, 1983), p. 441). In one of thesweet ironies of history, the security official who arrestedGomulka in 1951, J6zef Swiatlo, made the greatestcontribution to his reputation as a victim of Stalinism.After defecting in 1953, Swiatlo broadcast radio reports toPoland about Security Office (UB) abuses (Zbigniew A.Pelczynski, "The Downfall of Gomulka," in Gierek's Poland,Adam Bromke and John W. Strong, eds. (New York: Praeger,1973), p. 22)./17/Gomulka's unauthorized biographer, Nicholas

Bethell, argues that the sort of popularity enjoyed byGomulka occurs but rarely, usually ~hen a nation unitesbehind a figure as a symbol in a time of acute crisis.Alongside with Gomulka he would list only Churchill (England1940), Nagy (Hungary 1956), and Dubcek (Czechoslovakia 1968)as having this level of popularity in the twentieth century.See Nicholas Bethell, Gomulka, (New York: Holt, Rinehartand Winston, 1969), p. 229.

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and willing to replace Soviet inspired institutions withPolish ones.

At no point in Polish postwar history were the chancesfor establishing legitimate domination as great as whenGomulka came to power in 1956. He managed to rule for overfourteen years,. the longest of any of the communist leadersof Poland. However, Gomulka did not live up to his greatpromise. When he was removed from power in 1970, virtuallynothing remained of his once broad support. The man who hadinspired so much hope in 1956 left office a wrathful,isolated old man, hated by many.

The reason for this radical change was that Gomulka'sactions in power had fallen quite short of the expectationsof society in 1956. Rather, his policies roughly followedthe course implied by his mandate from the party: herestored order and carried out a series of limited reformsof the Stalinist institutions he had inherited. Those whosupported him out of a commitment to nationalism ordemocracy were soundly disappointed, and those who expectedhim to increase the national standard of living found thatwhat he was prepared to provide did not live up to theirexpectations.

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There was a brief honeymoon period./18/ Gomulkaaccepted the decollectivization of agriculture and allowedthe workers' councils that had been formed in 1956 tocontinue to operate. He eliminated some of the moredegrading aspects of Soviet-Polish relations, such asoverwhelmingly unfair terms of trade/19/ and the staffing ofthe Polish Army with Red Army officers./20/ Other popular

/18/The elections of January 1957 demonstrate just howpopular Gomulka-'s early policies were. Poles votedoverwhelmingly in favor of the official slate for the Sejm.Gomulka's personal appeal just before the election iscredited with stopping a campaign to cross Communistcandidates off the ballots. There are supposedly even caseswhere Catholic priests led their congregations to thepolling stations (Bethell, pp. 232-3 and Pelczynski, p. 9).

/19/After World War II the Soviets treated the Germanterritory incorporated into Poland (including areas whichthe Nazi Reich annexed in 1939) as part of the zone fromwhich it was entitled to collect reparations. It isestimated that some 25 to 30 percent of the industry inthese areas was appropriated by the USSR. Particularly hardhit were the textile factories of t6d~ and Bialystok.Additionally, the exploitation of Polish coal resources bythe Soviets was extensive. Large amounts of coal weredelivered at prices roughly equal to transport costs. Afterthe Polish October of 1956, the amount of coal which Polanddelivered to the Soviet Union dropped by half and priceswere put on a more equitable basis. See Nicholas Spulber,The- Economics of Communist Eastern Europe, (New York:Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press and John Wileyand Sons, 1957, pp. 176-8, and Chris Harman, Bureaucracy andRevolution in Eastern Europe, (London: Pluto Press, 1974),pp. 50-2./20/The Soviet military officers were dismissed inNovember 1956 after being thanked and decorated. Theranking Soviet officer in the Polish Army, MarshalKonstantin Rokosovsky, had served as Deputy Chairman of theCouncil of Ministers, Minister of Defense, and was a memberof the Politburo of the PZPR (Bethell, p. 230, andKarpinski, p. 73).

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policy changes included the adoption of more tolerantattitude toward small craftsmen and retailers/21/ and a moreliberal passport and entry-visa policy./22/ A Polishdelegation led by Gomulka visited the Soviet Union onNovember 14, 1956, and returned with a Soviet pledge torespect Polish internal sovereignty and with financialcompensation for past economic exploitation (1400 metrictons of grain on credit and 700 million rubles in long termcredits). Upon his return Gomulka, stressed that only aPolish Communist government was capable of coming to suchagreements with the Soviets./23/

Gomulka also presided over the Polish version of thepost-Stalinist institutional readjustment that occurred inmost of the countries of the Soviet bloc. The first suchset of changes affected the mechanisms of rule within thepolitical system. The First Party Secretary ceased to be adictator in the classical Stalinist sense. While Gomulka'spower was comparable to Bierut's, it was not based asexclusively on the power of the secret police or Moscow'sanointment. Rather, it was a product of his originalpopularity as well as his ability to fill the ranks of theparty elite with those whose loyalty he commanded. Gomulka

/21/Bethell, p. 233./22/Ibid, p. 236./23/B"ethell, pp 230-1, and Karpinski, p. 73.

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also curtailed the autonomy and power of the secret policeand-subjected them to party control, thus eliminating terroras a central instrument of rule. This reestablished theleading role of the party and guaranteed the elite'ssecurity. Important bureaucracies and elite formationsreceived quasi-formal representation inside the highestdecision-making bodies, and the decision-making processitself became subject to bargaining and compromise betweensuch groups.. Experts also came to play an importantadvisory role in the policy-making process. Finally, therole of the regional elites expanded, and they were granteda greater degree of autonomy from the center./24/

Certain changes were also introduced in the economy.Collectivization of agriculture was postponed as a goal tobe realized at some indefinite point in the future.Increased operational and administrative independence wasgranted to factory management by reducing the number ofcentrally allocated goods./25/ More attention was paid to

/24/The decision to delegate more authority to theregional elite was taken at the Eighth Plenum of the CentralCommittee in October 1956 where Gomulka came to power. SeeRay Taras, Ideology in a Socialist State, Poland 1956-1983,(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 48./25/The reduction of the number of centrally allocatedgoods has continued until the present. In the early 1950s,the heyday of Stalinism, some 2000 goods were centrallyallocated. By the late 1970s the number had been reduced toabout 200. See John P. Farrell, "Growth, Reform andInflation," in Background to Crisis: Policy and Politics in(Footnote Continued)

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consumer satisfaction. Finally, in the cultural sphere, aless doctrinally rigid policy was instituted. Artists wereallowed to experiment with forms other than socialistrealism. Intellectual life became less subject toideological canon, although the degree of relaxation washigher in the natural sciences than in the social sciencesor humanities. It is important to note however, that thesereforms did not fundamentally change the institutionalstructure of the system in Poland. In fact, theyconsolidated it, routinized its operation to a greaterdegree than under Stalinism, and probably improved itsoverall operation.

Once Gomulka managed to reassert firm control over theparty, his policies began to diverge from the popular spiritof the Polish October. Rather than expanding democracy, hebegan cracking down on independent social initiatives, andas a result, his popularity began to wane. The first signsof a change came when Gomulka fired the entire editorialcommittee of the party daily Trybuna Ludu early in 1957 forbeing too outspoken. Then, at the Tenth Plenum of theCentral Committee of the PZPR in October 1957, he.declaredthe revisionists (those who wanted to expand upon thedemocratic gains of October 1956) to be a greater threat to

(Footnote Continued)Gierek's Poland, Maurice D. Simon and Roger E. Kanet, eds.(Boulder: Westview Press, 1981), p. 314.

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the party than dogmatists. That same month, thereform-oriented newspaper Po Prostu was closed, and acampaign to verify party membership, which ultimatelyresulted in the dismissal of 200,000 members and decimatedthe ranks of the revisionists, was begun./26/ In 1958,legislation passed which stripped the workers' councils ofany real power./27/

Gomulka's offensive against the revisionists continuedat the Third Congress of the PZPR in March 1959, where heagain stressed that revisionism was the "greatest threat" tothe party./28/ During 1959, hardliners who had "retired" in1956 were brought back into the government and the CentralCommittee. Simultaneously, more liberal members of thegovernment and Politburo were shuffled out of the centers ofpower./29/ The "Club of the Crooked Circle," a critical

/26/Bethell, p. 240-1. The speech at the Tenth Plenumwas the famous "influenza-tuberculosis" speech --"Influenza, even in its most serious form, cannot be curedby contracting tuberculosis. Dogmatism cannot be cured byrev~s~onism. Revisionist tuberculosis can only strengthenthe dogmatist influenza ..The revisionist wing must be cutout of the party ...We shall destroy with equal firmness allorganized or individual forms of anti-party activitylaunched from a position of dogmatism."/27/0n the fate of the councils, see January

Kostrewski, "Na smierc!::ad robotniczych," BiuletynInformacyjny 26 (1978), pp. 16-20./28/Taras, p. 53./29/Gomulka's Minister of Culture and early supporter,Wladyslaw Bienkowski, was transferred to the Parks and( Fo otn ot e C on tin ue d)

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discussion society of the Warsaw intelligentsia, managed tolast until 1962,/30/ but other independent discussionsocieties, with the exception of the Clubs of CatholicIntelligentsia (KIK) , were not so lucky.

In the economic sphere, Gomulka was only marginallysuccessful. Although he had been imprisoned by theStalinists, he proved very cautious about changing any ofthe institutions they had created, including those of theplanned economy. While there was an initial improvement inreal wage levels in the immediate post-crisis period, therate of growth in real wages slowed considerably after1958./31/ Gomulka's personal limitations no doubt played arole in the growth of economic dissatisfaction. Abstemiousby nature, he (unlike successor Gierek and his coterie) leda spartan life and seemed incapable of grasping the factthat many Poles wanted a higher standard of living than thesystem was providing. His frame of reference was simplyoutdated. While it is true that the Poland over which he

(Footnote Continued)Forests portfolio because he supported furtherdemocratization and Jerzy Morawski was removed from thePolitburo and made Ambassador to England (Bethell, p. 242)./30/Karpinski, p. 106./31/The average growth per annum in the period 1959-65was only 1.5 percent. Between 1966 and 1970, this figurerose to 1.9 percent, but most of the growth was concentratedin the early par t; of the period. (Jadwiga Staniszkis,Poland's Self-limiting Revolution, (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1984), p. 257, and Fallenbuchl, p. 57).

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presided was prosperous in comparison to the misery it hadknown in his youth, a whole generation of Poles, for whomthe prewar period and even the World War II were notformative experiences, had grown up./32/ The youngergeneration had been shaped by life in an industrializing,urban Poland, and thus their expectations about the standardof living were much higher than Gomulka's.

Late in Gomulka's tenure (1969-70) the economy entereda period of contraction marked by a decline in nationalincome, investment, and consumption./33/ His earliereconomic successes seemed undone as a prolonged period ofslow growth was succeeded by an economic crisis that leftmany Poles deeply dissatisfied.

After some initial steps to alleviate a few of the moredistasteful aspects of the Soviet-Polish relationship and .taking an independent stand on the question of Sovietintervention in Hungary,/34/ Gomulka settled into the roleof faithful ally to Khrushchev and then Brezhnev./35/ This

/32/In 1970 a majority of the Polish population wasunder 30 years old. See Mieczyslaw F. Rakowski, "December1970: The Turning Point," in Gierek's Poland, Adam Bromkeand John W. Strong, eds. (New York: Praeger, 1973), p. 28./33/Staniszkis, pp. 254, 256./34/0n November 21, 1956, the Polish delegation to theUnited Nations abstained on a motion to admit UN observersinto Hungary (Bethell, p. 231)'/35/Perhaps the best example of this is Gomulka's, (F oo tn ot e C on ti nu ed )

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disappointed many who had hoped for greater nationalindependence from the Soviet union. The factor "that hasmost strongly shaped Polish nationalism has been thecountry's unfortunate geographic location between Germanyand Russia. On more than one occasion German and Russianstates have wiped Poland from the map of Europe and haveeven attempted to liquidate Polish culture and identity.

Gomulka was constrained in just how far he could usethe anti-Russian side of Polish nationalism. BeforeGorbachev, leaders tn the Soviet sphere of influence werequite aware they ruled, in the final analysis, at the behestof the Soviet Union. The USSR served as the final guarantorof power. The extent to which local popular support wasachievable by independent national policies was limited bythe extent of Soviet tolerance of diversity within the blocat any given movement. Leaders of bloc countries had to be

( Fo otn ot e C ont in ued )wholehearted support of the Warsaw Pact's intervention inCzechoslovakia in 1968. For a man who had spared hiscountry a similar fate in 1956, this seems to be a peculiarturnaround. The potential for trouble in Soviet-Polishrelations appeared in 1964, when Khrushchev informed Gomulkain January that he was going to seek to establish relationswith Bonn. This led to a quarrel between the two men butthe danger of greater conflict passed when the SovietPolitburo removed Khrushchev later that year (Bethell, pp.244-6). The Soviets obviously recognized Gomulka's worth "tothem, for on his sixty-fifth birttiday in 1970 they awardedhim the Order of Lenin "for outstanding services to thedevelopment of fraternal friendship and cooperation betweenthe peoples of the Soviet Union and the Polish People'sRepublic, for the strengthening of peace and socialism, andfor many years of active participation in the worldCommunist movement." (Pelczynski, p. 23).

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very aware of this fact, or risk finding themselves verypopular ex-leaders as a result of Soviet intervention.Hence, using Polish resentment toward the Soviet Union wasnot a viable option for Gomulka.

Gomulka did try to make use of the side of Polishnationalism antipathetic to Germany, however, oftenjustifying his foreign policy positions on the basis of thethreat of German revanchism. It was argued that the sovietalliance afforded Poland security against a resurgentGermany some of whose historic lands had been incorporatedinto Poland after the war./36/ The dubious threat of adivided Germany however, compared to the very real fact ofparty-state dependence on the Soviet Union, led many todiscount such pronouncements. Gomulka himself went furtherto discredit such claims by his own diplomatic activity:his response to Brandt's Ostpolitik resulted in the signing

/36/An excellent example of this sort of reasoning wasprovided by Wojciech Jaruzelski, then Minister of Defense,when he was part of a government delegation that met withstriking workers in Szczecin in January 1971. Whileexplaining the role of the army in the massacre of strikingworkers, he added: "At this very moment, while we'retalking here, West German vessels are patrolling beyond thathorizon. Espionage and reconnaissance vessels -- we evenknow them by name. Over the Baltic, the aircraft of theBundeswehr are flying day and night .... it's only ourstrength that they fear ..thanks to Socialism." From"Polish Workers and Party Leaders -- A Confrontation," NewLeft Review, 72 (1972), p. 50.

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LEGITIMATION AND 'INSTABILITY: THE FATAL LINK.

of a treaty of mutual recognition with the Federal Republicin 1970./37/

Gomulka's inability to perpetuate his early popularitymade his last years embattled ones. He was a disappointmentto his countrymen on democratic, economic and nationalistgrounds. After a few early reforms, he had retrenchedsomewhat, and then settled into a very conservative defenseof what he had done. He steadily lost the support andrespect of the Polish intelligentsia. Those who had seentheir hopes for a more democratic form of socialism witherbegan to oppose him openly. They advocated a more humaneand efficient socialism, similar to the revisionism of thePrague Spring./38/ Very soon, these differences broke intoopen conflict. The arrest and punishment of some of themore outspoken revisionist intellectuals such as Kolakowski,Kuron, and Modzelewski, failed to bring an end to themovement. The banning of a production of Mickiewicz's

/37/Such arguments were further discredited underGierek when expanded economic cooperation between Poland andthe Federal Republic began in the early 1970s. From 1969 to1974 Polish imports from the Federal Republic rose from $157million to ll,402 million. The corresponding figures forexports were $137 million and $555 million. (Roger E. Kanet"East-West Trade and the Limits of Western Influence," inThe International Politics of Eastern Europe, Charles Gati,ed. (New York: Praeger, 1976), p. 196)./38/In.1968 demonstrating Polish students chanted ther hyme, "Pol and is waiting for her Dubcek" (Polska czeka\ naswego Dubczeka)," in Bethell, p. 262.

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Dziady (Forefather's Eve) in March of 1968 sparked studentdemonstrations at Warsaw University which then spread tomost university towns. The regime finally resorted toguttersnipe anti-Semitism/39/ and police brutality tosuppress the students and imprison their leaders. Therevisionists were effectively isolated withip the party, andmany of their leading intellectual spokespeople joined in anexodus of Polish Jewry.

As stated earlier, Gomulka's policies brought aneconomic slump during the last years of his rule. The slowgrowth of consumption led many to grumble, but thepossibility of real economic loss made them angry. By thelate 1960s, the price system had become untenable. Terms oftrade were such that they posed a constraint on growth. In1970, the regime made the mistake of introducing priceincreases just before the Christmas holiday, sparking thenow-famous strike movement on the Baltic coast. As theauthorities sought to restore order, workers fought streetbattles with the police and army. At this point, the

/39/It is not fair to blame Gomulka for initiating theoutburst of anti-Semitism in 1967-68. The 'Partisan'faction in the party, led by Mieczyslaw Moczar, actuallyused the anti-Semitism as part of a power play againstGomulka, who had a Jewish wife. However, Gomulka did standby while anti-Semitism was used against the revisionistsbecause it served his political goals as he fought for hispolitical life. Gomulka was certainly no anti-Semite, but,his lip service to it for the sake of political expediencymakes him responsible as well for the exodus of Polish Jewsthat followed.

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Politburo removed Gomulka, who was convinced that thecounterrevolution had arrived and was prepared to call forSoviet military assistance.

Gomulka had failed to live up to the hopes of thePolish October of 1956. When he came to power he wasclearly the most popular man in Poland; he left it despised.He had failed to transform the popular reform aspirations of1956 into any sort of "Polish model" of socialism for whichhe could have claimed the support of Polish society.Instead he had isolated himself from the concerns of thatsociety. The intelligentsia had grown openly rebellious andhad to be subdued by force. They were soon followed by theworkers and the party hierarchy reasoned that Gomulka wasnot the man to restore order. In his stead they chose theRegional Party Secretary from Silesia, Edward Gierek.

III. THE GIEREK REGIME.When the Politouro chose Edward Gierek to replace

Gomulka, he decided to confront the source of his immediateproblems, the workers of Gdansk and Szczecin. In face toface discussions with factory representatives in January1971, he exacted a pledge of their help for his efforts tocorrect the situation. Finally, strikes in textilefactories in t6d~ in February 1971 compelled him to relenton the price increases, and they were repealed.

Gierek had managed to put out the fire, but he had towork fast to prevent the smoking coals from igniting again.

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He quickly distinguished himself from Gomulka by presentinga much bolder vision of what he wanted to accomplish inPoland. In the interest of domestic peace, he chose toaddress society's craving for greater consumer satisfa~tion,which the ascetic Gomulka had denied. Thus Gierek and hisadvisors had to devise a means to rapidly accelerateeconomic growth if they were to raise the standard ofliving. In an effort to do so, they outlined an ambitiouseconomic plan to industrially modernize Poland.

The new strategy heralded a "technocratic" approach/40/to economic growth in order to satisfy the rising

/40/The notion of "technocracy" here refers topractical "goal oriented" economic management, rather thanstrict adherence to ideological principles. To a certainextent Gierek's reputation as technocrat was based on hisperformance as party leader in Silesia, the mostindustrialized part of Poland, which enjoyed a reputationfor efficient management and high wages. The Gierek regimeprojected this image through a series of slogans whichstressed greater autonomy for those who were economicallyqualified such as "the party directs and the governmentgoverns," "people of good work," and "the right person forthe right job." Perhaps the most famous slogan in thisregard was "We are building a second Poland." The "secondPoland" refer+,ed to the introduction of the latest advancedtechnologies into the Polish economy that had grown ratherantiquated as the result of an investment policy that hadneglected plant modernization under Gomulka. Gierek's teamalso put added stress on the role that science was to playin economic development and social policy. Under Gierek thenotions of "social policy" and "social planning" firstentered the lexicon of the Polish party-stat. Finally, anexamination of Gierek's personnel policy seems to' bear outthe notion that he took this commitment to "technocracy"seriously. Under his rule, the composition of the centralcommittee changed to include more economic officials. SeeJack Bielasiak, "Recruitment Policy, El,ite Integration, and( Fo ot not e C on ti nu ed )

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expectations of Polish consumers. Gierek's team decidedupon an "import-led" growth strategy based on an influx ofWestern capital stock financed by credit. This massiveinvestment was to be accompanied by institutional and pricereforms. However, these reforms were never trulyimplemented and extensive foreign credits were erroneouslyconsidered a panacea for an economy in severe need ofstructural reform./41/ Still, the new team was confident itcould create a Communist version of consumer society. It

( Foo tn ote C on ti nu ed )Political Stability in People's Poland," in Background toCrisis: Policy and Politics in Gierek's Poland, Maurice D.Simon and Roger E. Kanet, eds. (Boulder: Westview Press,1981), pp. 116-7; Taras, p. 109, 114, 130, & 140; Lewis, p.443; Michael D. Kennedy and Konrad Sadkowski, "Constraintson Professional Power in Soviet-type Society: Insights fromthe Solidarity Period in Poland," (University of Michigan,CSST Working Paper 113, November 1988), p. 9; and Vincent C.Chrypinski, "Political Change under Gierek," in Gierek'sPoland, Adam Bromke and John W. Strong, eds. (New York:Praeger, 1973), p. 38.

/41/It seemed at first that Gierek and his team werecommitted to reforming the economy. In 1971 measures weredrawn up providing for greater autonomy of economic unitsfrom the planners. Groups of firms were to be consolidatedinto a kind of larger enterprise dubbed "WOG" (WielkaOrganizacja Gospodarcza -- Large Economic Organization).The WOG was to be freed from the system of centralizedplanning, being controlled instead by indirect instrumentssuch as interest, depreciation, and taxation rates. Itwould also have increased autonomy in generating its ownsmall-scale investments and in price setting. Compensationto employees would no longer be based on plan quotas buttied to value added for workers and profit for managers.However, the WOG reform was never fully implemented and whenthe Polish economy began to ail in 1975 even the partialmeasures were cancelled. See Waldemar Kuczynski, "UpadekReformy Gospodarczej," Biuletyn Informacyjny 33(September-October 1979), pp. 30-36 and Farrell, pp. 308-9.

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was hoped that in this. way the support of society, inparticular the recently rebellious working class, could besecured./42/

There was a second component to Gierek's new approach.After the success of his discussions with the workers inGdansk and Szczecin, he promised that the leaders of Polandwould routinely hold consultations with representatives ofimportant social groups./43/ In this way, the mistakes madein the past because of the party's isolation from the peoplewould supposedly be avoided./44/ This uninstitutionalized

/42/Examples of this sort of thinking 'were common soonafter Gierek's rise to power. For a selection of such,translated into English, see Adam Bromke's "New PoliticalStyle," Problems of Communism XXI:5 (1972), p. 8./43/In the early part of his reign Gierek seemed tohave been committed to a formalized system of consultationwith the workers through renovation of trade unions. He

made promises to this effect at the Central Committee Plenumin February of 1971. However, shortly thereafter, theregime postponed a trade union congress scheduled for themiddle of 1971 until November 1972. Free elections wereheld for trade union representatives, but while some of thestrike leaders of 1970-1 were elected to positions, they didnot command a dominant position within the trade unions andwere effectively neutralized by the power of management inthe factory structure. The large rises in wages in theearly Gierek period seemed to have cut support out fromunder radical shop-floor activists. See Alex Pravda,"Poland in the 1970s: Dual Functioning Unionism underPressure," in Trade Unions in Communist States, Alex Pravdaand Blair A. Ruble, eds. (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1986),p. 127; Chrypinski, p. 44; and Martin Myant, Poland: ACrisis for Socialism, (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1982),p. 83.

/44/In his radio and television speech of December 20,1970, Gierek said: "The iron rule of our economic policy(Footnote Continued)

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practice became fairly common in Poland in the early 1970s.Major party figures travelled to factories to hold"consultations with the working class."/45/ It has beensaid that Gierek himself held some 187 grass roots levelmeetings in 1971./46/ This practice promised, in effect,that the party would now listen to the concerns and desiresof the people.

Taken together, Gierek's plan for economic growth andmodernization and his scheme for "consultations withsociety" comprised the legitimation strategy of the newregime. It was a hybrid of party populism toward societywedded to a technocratic approach to the economy. Inreality, the consultation plank of the strategy sooncollapsed. The most damaging blow to its credibility wasdelivered in June 1976, when the Gierek's regime attemptedto introduce a wage and price reform without preparing

( Fo otn ot e C on ti nue d)and our policy in general must always be respect forreality, broad consultation with the working class and theintelligentsia, and the observance of principles ofcollegiality and democracy in the life of the Party and thefunctioning of the supreme authorities.The most recent events reminded us painfully of thefundamental truth that the Party must always maintain aclose bond with the working class and the whole nation, andthat it must not lose a common language with the workingpeople." From Pelczyns~i, pp. 3-4.

/45/Bromke, "New Political Style," p. 9./46/M.K. Dziewanowski, The Communist Party of Poland,2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press; 1976), p.318.

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society for its introduction. The workers-promptly struckand demonstrated in several cities. The party-stateauthorities responded by brutally repressing the largerdemonstrations and by quickly repealing the wage and pricereform./47/

Gierek's pledge to hold consultations was thus exposedas hollow. Later, he would admit that there had been noreal consultations in 1976, and one of his Prime Ministers,Edward Babiuch, would also admit that in the late 1970s"consultation" had no longer been a serious policy./48/ Theconsultations held in the latter part of the 1970s wererather rit~alized in nature, little more than lavishself-congratulatory events that brought prominent Warsawpoliticians together with members of the localapparatus./49/

The retreat of the authorities from the policy ofconsultation in the late 1970s had the effect of underminingthe Gierek regime's legitimation strategy. Consultationsmight have provided a shock absorber for economic

/47/For more on these events see Michael H. Bernhard,"The Strikes of June 1976 in Poland," East EuropeanPolitics and Societies 1:3 (1987).

/48/Grazyna Pomian, ed., Protokoly tzw. KomisjiGrabskiego, (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1986), pp. 79 & 138./49/For an account of such a meeting (~ierek's visit tothe Gdansk Shipyard in August 1979) see "Szczera dyskusjanad antrykotem," Robotnik 38-9 (October 5, 1979), p. 4.

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di.slocation, enabling the authorities to argue that theywere still trying to take society's needs into accountdespite economic setbacks. However, without this, thenature of support the Gierek regime could hope to attractwas at best contingent. Only the economic component ofGierek's vision for Poland remained and support could thusbe maintained only by "delivering the goods." Politicalsupport was thus tied to the vagaries of economic policyoutcomes. By backing away from consultation the Gierekregime precluded the possibility of legitimating the systemof domination and was reduced to seeking support only on thebasis of economic performance. The regime had placed itselfin a position where the best it could hope for was some sortof non-legitimate domination accepted by the populace oninstrumental, economic grounds.

When in the late 1970s Poland's economy entered intothe worst downward spirals that any industrialized economyhas suffered in the postwar period, Gierek's rule began tocrumble. With the formation of the Workers' DefenseCommittee (KOR) in 1976, his regime came to face rapidlyexpanding and diversified opposition movements./SO/ When

ISO/For details on this see -- Jan Jozef Lipski, KOR:A History of the Workers' Defense Committee in Poland,1976-81, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985,and Michael H. Bernhard, The Rebirth of Public Politics inPoland: Workers and Intellectuals in the DemocraticOpposition, 1976-80, (Ph.D. Dissertation, ColumbiaUniversity, 1988).

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another set of price increases was announced in the summerof 1980, the most extensive strike movement in Polishhistory erupted and culminated in the formation of the tradeunion Solidarity. Gierek was replaced by Stanislaw Kania.

V. SOLIDARITY AND BEYOND.The full significance of the Solidarity period in

Polish history is certainly beyond the scope of this paper.The negotiation of Gdansk Accords as a "social compact"

(umowa spoleczna) and the recognition of organizationsoutside the framework of the party-state system were inthemselves an admission of the necessity to restructure thedominant-subordinate relationship in Poland. Clearly,Solidarity itself represented the desires of theoverwhelming majority of Polish society. Its scrupulousobservation of rules of procedural democracy and itsattempts to negotiate "good-faith" solutions with theparty-state authorities to the problems confronting Polandin the early 1980s demonstrate that, on balance, societysought to restructure the system of domination in Poland toinclude a measure of reflective consent.

The response to this radically new situation by thecentral party elite under Kania was to pursue a policy of"renewal" (odnowa). Renewal on one level implied an attemptto calm unrest and frame solutions to Poland's problems bynegotiating with the Solidarity leadership. --This continuedwillingness to negotiate with society's representatives on a

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formal basis represented Kania's attempt to shore up thecrumbling structure of domination. However, the inabilityof central party elite to control the local apparatus andcompel it to live up to the spirit and letter of the new"compact" helped to undermine society's belief in "renewal"and forced the negotiation procedure to focus on a series ofpressing local problems. The event most emblematic of thiswas the "Bydgoszcz crisis" of March 1981.

Bydgoszcz was emblematic as well of internaldecomposition of the party both in an organizational andideological sense. Clearly, the dominant-subordinaterelationship between the central elite on one hand, andlocal and sub-elites on the other, was crumbling. Thecentral party elite was beleaguered on two sides. A"horizontal structures" movement presented a democraticchallenge to the principles of party organization, while avarious "concrete" (beton) factions, backed by Politburomembers Olszowski and Grabski and certain interests in thepolice apparatus, stood against further concessions toPolish society and greater reliance on the party-state'scoercive apparatus. The response of the Kania leadershipwas to extend the policy of renewal inside the party, bymeans of an Extraordinary Congress of the PZPR (IX) whichselected delegates for its July meeting in a remarkablydemocratic fashion. At the Congress, the mainstream partywas able to effectively isolate the "horizontalists" and

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attempts by Olszowski and Grabski to use Soviet backing toreplace Kania failed in a pre-Congress skirmish.

Despite Kania's reelection at the Congress and hissuccessful defense of his authority in the face of thehorizontalists and the betoni, his leadership continued tofalter and he was replaced by Jaruzelski. Hardliners,organized around the shadowy "Katowice Forum" and "GrunwaldPatriotic Association," raised tensions considerably withlaw and order rhetoric, anti-Semitic innuendo, and continuedclamour for repressive action. Party renewal had clearlyfailed and by late 1981 the PZPR had collapsed into a stateof mo~ibund inaction.

Solidarity as well began to show signs of politicaldivision that impeded its ability to act. The SolidarityCongress in the Autumn of 1981 revealed strong factionaldivisions that hampered the union from speaking and actingunivocally. The majority was clearly held by the unionmainstream which supported Wal~sa, but unity was threatenedby both the extreme anti-Communist, xenophobic "True Poles"(prawdziwi Polacy) who supported Jan Rulewski, and anultra-democratic faction organized around Andrzej Gwiazda.

It was in this situation of extreme tension, chronicshortage, and organizational paralysis that Jaruzelski choseto declare martial law, abolish Solidarity and otherindependent mcvemerrt.s, and restore poli t.Lca),order. TheJaruzelski regime attempted to convince Polish society that.the crushing of Solidarity was in the interest of Poland.

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This appeal was framed in terms of traditional "law andorder" arguments and a sort of inverted nationalistrationale that if the Polish army had not stepped in torestore order, somebody else's army would have. ThusJaruzelski's initial justification of Martial Law was thatit saved Poland from anarchy and Soviet intervention.

With time such rationales were supplemented by attemptsto establish pseudopopular bodies to drape Jaruzelski's rulein the cloak of popular consent. Bodies such as thePatriotic Movement for the Salvation of the Nation (PRON),new government trade unions (OPZZ), and consultativecouncils to advise Jaruzelski never quite gained a measureof popular trust.

Despite the fact that with time a large part of Polishsociety came to accept the imposition of martial law and, byimplication, the fact that Solidarity had been crushed,/51/

/51/Large independent public op1n10n surveys conductedby sociologists at the Polish Academy of Sciences (Polacy'84) show the following results to the question "In youropinion was the decision to introduce the state of war in1981" --Response Percentage.Definitely correctRather correctRather in errorDefinitely in errorDifficult to sayNo answer

26.029.713.413.317.00.6[Source: Jan Powiorski, "Polacy '84 -- op1n1a publiczna wdwa i p61 roku po wprow~dzeniu stanu wojennego," Krytyka 27( Foo tn ote C ont in ued )

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the Jaruzelski regime was unable to completely dislodgeunderground Solidarity structures from large factories,discredit opposition leaders, or to curtail the circulationof an underground press./52/ Simultaneously, the regimeproved quite inadequate to the task of turning the decrepitPolish economy around. Numerous economic reform plans wereannounced but none seem to have been successfullyimplemented. Deteriorating standards of living made it hardto motivate workers./53/ Capital stock and infrastructure

(Footnote Continued)(1988}, p. 59.]Further research also presented the following breakdown ofpolitical attitudes in Poland in 1984 and 1985:

Attitude Percentage in:1984 1985.Opponents of the ruling political orderCenterSupporters of the ruling political orderSilent Minority[Source: Powiorski, p. 6~.]

/52/Additional research from Polacy '84 and othersociological studies conducted in Poland show opposition tothe political system concentrated among both skilled workersin large enterprises and the intelligentsia, particularly inlarge cities and under fifty years of age. Thus whileopponents of the system are clearly a minority in society,they occupy a key structural position. They are thosenecessary for the effective running of a modern, urban,industrial society. For a report on this line of researchsee, Krzystof Jasiewicz, "The Polish Crisis in the Eyes ofthe Public," Washington and Lee Political Review(Fall-Winter, 1989), pp. 8-9.

22.7 15.729.9 23.226.2 28.421.2 32.7

/53/In 1989 according to Economist Intelligence UnitPolish per capita income had fallen to $1900, approximatelyone-fifth of the per capita income in East Germany at that(Footnote Continued)

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LEGITIMATION AND INSTABILITY: 'THE FATAL LINK.

continued to deteriorate, and foreign debt continued tomount. Thus while Jaruzelski was able to defeat Solidarityby military force in the short run, the regime found itselfin a political stalemate because of its inability orunwillingness to finish off political opposition and itsinability to restore Poland's economic vitality. Had theJaruzelski regime stayed on that course, the prognosis forits future no doubt would have been further economichardship with the potential for violent social unrest.

The year 1988 constituted a date of departure forJaruzelski's regime. Two major political defeats have ledthe regime to call the wisdom and success of martial lawinto question. The first of these defeats was theplebiscite organized by the government of Zbigniew Meissner.The plebiscite was designed to provide popular justificationfor a wide-ranging program of economic and politicalsupport. It was composed of two very broad questions on thedesirability of pluralism and radical economic reform inPoland. Despite the fact that the questions were phrased insuch a way as to make voting against them nearly impossible,they went down to defeat due to the technicalities of theplebiscite law. Thls failure broug~t the resignation of theMeissner government in late 1988.

( Fo ot no te C on ti nu e~)time. Reported in Andrew Clark, "Poland Survives PovertyPutsch," The Australian Financial Review (January 25, 1989),p. 11.

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Secondly, in 1988, Polish workers staged small strikewaves in both May and August, serving notice to the regimethat their willingness to work was predicated upondelivering the goods. The striking workers made theirdesire for a reconstituted Solidarity to speak on theirbehalf by making the union's relegalization their number onedemand. Their acceptance of Wal~sa as both participant andspokesman created an opportunity for Solidarity to onceagain assert that it spoke for Polish workers.

The regime was able to negotiate indirectly with Wal~sato call an end to the August strikes in return for a vaguepromise to consider relegalizing Solidarity. Under a newgovernment led by Premier Mieczyslaw Rakowski, despitereservations even at the highest levels of the party,/54/the regime entered into multilateral talks in order to seeka way out of the impasse. These talks, known as theRoundtable Negotiations, convened in Warsaw on February 6,1989.

The negotiations ended on April 5, 1988 and producedthe Roundtable Agreements, a wide-ranging political, social,

/54/At the highest level, eight Politburo members werereplaced in the days before the decision to negotiate wastaken and General Jaruzelski reportedly threatened to resignin order to push the decision through the Central Committee.It is suspected that hardline factions with policeconnections also staged extreme provocations to try toderail the talks. During this period two Polish priestsperished under mysterious circumstances.

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and economic compromise between Solidarity and party-stateforces./551 During the course of the negotiations theparty-state was much more forthcoming than the Solidarityside had expected. They had hoped for a relegalization ofthe union. Not only did they secure its relegalization, butalso that of Rural Solidarity and the Independent Students'Union, both of which had also been banned with thedeclaration of Martial Law.

But even more significantly the party-state side agreed

to a series of reforms that represented a majorrestructuring of the political system. The Sejm(parliament) was to be reconfigured and opened to a morecompetitive election system. The existing unicameral Sejmwas to be transformed into the lower house of a bicameralNational Assembly (Zgromadzenie Narodowe). An upper houseof the National Assembly, the Senate (Senat) ,/56/ would alsobe created.

155/The full text of the Roundtable Agreements werepublished in Trybuna Ludu (April 7, 1989), pp. 3-5./56/The recreation of the traditional upper house ofthe National Assembly, the Senat, was an act of great

symbolic importance. In 1946 the Senat had been abolishedafter a referendum, the results of which are now broadlyacknowledged as having been falsified by the Communists.The question of whether or not to abolish the Senat was akey point of contention between the Communists and theirstrongest opposition, the Polish Peasant Party led byMikolajczyk, and thus its abolition was an importantjuncture in the destruction of the latter.

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A two-stage election process was established. Therewas to be a first round (later scheduled for early June),followed in two weeks time by runoff elections between thetwo leading candidates from the first round in districtswhere no candidate won a majority. The election of deputiesto the Sejm was not to be fully competitive. Thirty fivepercent of its 460 seats were to be openly contested. Theother sixty five percent of the seats were to go to theruling coalition (the PZPR and its electoral ~llies)./57/

The ruling coalition was entitled to put a number ofcandidates, up to ten percent of the Sejm's membership(forty six deputies), on a national list which would face noopposition. However, the election of the candidates on thislist would not be automatic; the electorate still had theright to reject them by crossing them off the ballot. Withregard to the remaining seats reserved for the rulingcoalition, individual members of its component parties andorganizations were allowed to contest seats reserved fortheir particular group. Thus these seats were open tolimited electoral cont7station. These special privilegesfor the ruling coalition were not to be a permanent part ofthe new system. All subsequent elections were to be fully

/57/For how the seats were apportioned between the PZPRand its electoral allies see my "In Lieu of a Conclusion:Whither Poland after the Formation of the MazowieckiGovernment?" in this volume. .

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and freely contested. Thus at the latest, Poland would havefree elections in 1993 when the term of the members of theNational Assembly would be up.

The election of the members of the new Senate were tobe freely contested. It was to be composed of one hundredmembers, two from each of Poland'.s forty nine provinces(wojew6dztwa) with the exceptions of the two large cities ofKatowice and Warsaw which were to each elect three members.

After the election of the National Assembly, its

membership was to elect a new chief executive, a President,for a term of six years. This office would have wide powersin the areas of foreign policy and national defense,/58/ aswell as right to veto legislation, dismiss the parliamentand. c all new elections. The sixty five percent of the seatsin the lower house that were reserved for the PZPR and itselectoral allies were sufficient to insure that their choiceof President would be the first to occupy this new position.

Within the reformed system all legislation initiated inthe lower house was subject to a veto of both the Senate andthe president. As the PZPR's future candidate forPresident, widely assumed even at this time to be GeneralJaruzelski, was expected to be the first to occupy theoffice, the reform almost assuredly guaranteed the PZPR a

/58/Under the agreement all major presidential actswere to be countersigned by the Prime Minister, except thoseconcerned with these two areas.

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veto over all legislation. It ~lso held out the prospect ofa veto for Solidarity, which was expected to win themajority of seats in the competitive elections to theSenate. The Sejm was given the power to overturn both thepresidential and the senate veto by a two-thirds vote. Thusthe reform of the political system was designed to revivePoland's state structure as the essential locus for rule andfurthermore to lead Solidarity into a ruling coalition withthe PZPR and its allies. This however, would be a realcoalition where both powers would have to compromise becauseboth were expected to be able to exercise veto powerindependent of the other.

VI. CONCLUSIONS.None of the PZPR regimes that ruled Poland managed to

legitimate party-state domination. It is important tou

Documents

Legitimation & Instability: The Fatal Link (PCEE 2, 1990) Michael Bernhard