Poland: A Nation in Ominous Flames

THE day dawned cold and cloudy in the Baltic seaport of Gdansk--a morning of gloom that matched the city's mood. Gdansk (pop. 370,000) had seethed for days with resentment at the Polish government's sudden announcement of a dramatic rise in food prices, the more infuriating since it came just before Christmas. Now, at the Lenin Shipyards, grumbling workers spontaneously protested the hike by refusing to work. Before long, they decided to emphasize their anger by marching from the yards to Communist Party headquarters two miles away. Thus began a week of rioting and death that surpassed anything Eastern Europe has experienced in years and shook to its foundations the Communist regime of Party Boss Wladyslaw Gomulka.

Along the way, the workmen of Gdansk sang the traditional Communist anthem, the Internationale. Soon the march was swelled by hundreds of housewives, students and other Gdansk citizens, equally incensed by the price increases. By the time the column reached party headquarters, it was 20,000 strong. It was also out of control. In vain, police pleaded with the demonstrators to halt. In reply, the crowd hurled homemade fire bombs at the headquarters building and the nearby Gdansk railroad station. When firemen arrived to douse the flames, they were beaten back. Police opened fire on the demonstrators--only to turn anger into a terrible frenzy. Crying "Gestapo! Gestapo!" the marchers wheeled to attack the police.

Like a Sizzling Fuse. Army tanks arrived to quell the riots, and a curfew was imposed on Gdansk--but it was too late. Within hours, similar popular explosions, equally violent, had broken out in the nearby towns of Gdynia and Sopot. Like a sizzling fuse, resentment over the higher prices and other government policies spread to cities and towns across Poland: Wroclaw, Poznan, Katowice, Slupsk, Lodz, Cracow and Warsaw itself.

Some of the most terrifying demonstrations were in Szczecin, Poland's biggest seaport. A Radio Sweden reporter named Anders Thunberg described the scene outside party headquarters. "Tanks have made repeated attacks on the crowd," he said in a brief telephone call to Stockholm. "The people had to give way in order not to be run over. But a mother and her young daughter did not manage to get away. A tank at high speed crushed both of them. A young soldier stood by, crying and watching." The demonstrators, mainly from the Warski shipyards, burned police cars and rampaged through the headquarters. They scrawled messages on tanks and on walls: "We are workers and not hooligans." "We want more wages." In Warsaw, after workers in the Zeran auto works staged a sympathetic sitdown, truckloads of ORMOs--Poland's blue-overalled, blue-bereted special workers police --rolled into factories to halt or prevent such demonstrations.

Serious Challenge. The sudden, dramatic riots were the first popular protests in the East bloc since the 1968 student demonstrations in both Poland and Czechoslovakia. The new Polish uprising showed that in a repressive state--despite the presence of 20,000 Soviet troops on Polish soil, a loyal army and police, and a tame propaganda press--the underlying forces of discontent cannot be indefinitely suppressed. Moreover, last week's eruptions were considerably more violent than the 1968 riots. They were closer in spirit to the celebrated "bread and freedom" demonstrations in the city of Poznan in 1956; both began with workers' marches, and both were directed against economic insufficiency. Poznan eventually brought Wladyslaw Gomulka--literally on the shoulders of workers singing his praises--to power as First Secretary of the Polish Communist Party Central Committee. In Gdansk and Gdynia, however, the protesters reviled Gomulka by name. The disorders presented Gomulka with the most serious challenge of his 44-year political career (see box). They could well cost him his job.

In one sense, the riots in Poland came as a complete surprise: in another, they were at least foreseeable. Following the repressions that ended the 1968 student demonstrations, the Gomulka regime had gradually begun to relax its repressive stance, and the country itself seemed to respond with an outward spirit of springtime effervescence (TIME, Nov. 16). The movement toward "normalization" received particular emphasis last month when West Germany's Chancellor Willy Brandt visited Warsaw to sign a treaty ceding to Poland the former German lands east of the Oder-Neisse line. Poles assumed that the gaiety surrounding treaty ceremonies indicated better times for Poland in general. The price increases, therefore, were a cold shower of reality.

Archaic and Expensive. Poland's diplomatic gains could not disguise the fact that its economic situation has steadily worsened. Choosing ideological rigidity over pragmatism, the party's Central Committee has steadfastly refused to relax central control over industrial production and quotas. Factories are slowed by declining efficiency, slipshod labor and stifling bureaucracy. Agriculture, which Gomulka has allowed to remain mainly in private hands to keep peasant support, is archaic and expensive. Human problems have been complicated by acts of God. For two years in a row the Polish harvest has been disastrous; as a result, the nation has lost the $500 million in foreign exchange that it would have earned through farm exports. Gomulka himself, in a recent speech to coal miners at Zabrze, admitted that because of fodder shortages, meat-loving Poland this year has fattened 205,000 fewer cows and 910,000 fewer hogs than last year.

With increasing envy and bitterness, Polish citizens have noted the different situations in neighboring lands. Hungary, for example, has been making steady progress with a "New Economic Mechanism" that introduced capitalistic profit-and-loss into socialist planning. Gdansk, the former German city of Danzig, is only a short ferryboat ride from Swedish Malmo across the Baltic, and is regularly invaded by fun-loving Swedes seeking beaches, booze and beaming blondes who are a soft touch for hard currency. West Germans are so obviously affluent that Poles ask one another sarcastically which of the two nations lost World War II. Never rapier-sharp at best, Polish humor has been improving on a diet of meatless Mondays, ersatz coffee and phantom slabs of butter. "I don't worry when my wife is missing for several hours," goes one story. "She has neither been in an accident nor meeting her boy friend nor spending money wildly. She is only standing in line for coffee and vegetables."

Ultimate Cross. Gomulka's government has been moving--but slowly and ineffectively--to improve the economy. After lengthy discussions, the Central Committee approved a new Five-Year Plan for 1971-76 and a progressive approach that economists refer to as "the New Economic Strategy." It made sense in theory but, as Alexis de Tocqueville noted, the most dangerous time for a government is hot when conditions are bad but when the regime is trying to make them better. Demonstrating both arrogance and a lack of touch with popular feelings, the government neglected to explain adequately what it was doing; as rumors spread about price increases and wage freezes, people pulled money from under mattresses and went on buying sprees. When the government finally did attempt to spell out the complicated new system, explanatory meetings frequently dissolved in confusion.

Last week came the ultimate cross. Warsaw announced a series of "price adjustments" designed to bring wages --which have been rising at 2% during 1970--and available goods into some kind of equilibrium. The cost of medicines and most industrial goods declined. The price tags on television sets went down 13%, on washing machines 17%, and on vacuum cleaners 15%. At the same time, however, food prices were drastically increased. Beef went up 19%, assuming that one could find it, flour 16% and salted herring 19%. The cost of ersatz coffee nearly doubled. The government also announced that wages would be frozen.

The increases were necessary if even a modest economic revision were to work. But Warsaw's timing could not have been worse. Posted eleven days before Christmas in a staunchly Roman Catholic nation where the birth of Jesus is celebrated with gluttonous enthusiasm, the price rises were a direct provocation. Even the poorest family, for instance, sits down to a nine-course "Vigil Dinner" on Christmas Eve. So great was irritation over the government's moves that only a spark was needed to transform it into rebellion. The Lenin Shipyards provided that spark.

The Gdansk demonstrations quickly became a drama doubly motivated. While some protesters were setting fire to party headquarters, others were looting stores in gestures of need or greed. Men dashed to safety with looted overcoats hastily donned over their own. and women lugged bulging packages. Fleet-footed teen-agers took everything from fur coats to oranges and champagne. Some entrepreneurs stopped long enough to sell surplus loot at curbside. One boy's inventory of shirts, for only 40 zlotys (or $1) apiece, was a steal in itself.

Warsaw's reaction to the Gdansk rioting was swift and ferocious. The government literally sealed off the city. Western ships were ordered to leave the harbor. Trains were halted and flights into the Gdansk airport suspended because of "bad weather." Telephone operators refused to put through calls, explaining that there was "switchboard trouble." Roadblocks turned back inquisitive motorists.

Meanwhile, army tanks rumbled into the city and police bombed demonstrators with tear gas from helicopters hovering overhead. Blaming "hooligans" and "rowdies" for the disorders, Radio Gdansk interrupted regular programming to announce a dusk-to-dawn curfew imposed by the Presidium of the Provincial Council; public gatherings were also banned. In addition, the Presidium appealed to "civic consciousness to guarantee peace in our town." It warned that it would utilize "all means" to restore order and told militiamen to shoot to kill. Despite the tough measures--and Warsaw's initial effort to keep silent about the protests--word of the riot spread quickly throughout Poland; Gdansk itself remained in turmoil for three days.

The rage of riot, arson and disorder eventually reached a point at which the central government was forced to acknowledge it openly. Warsaw television showed a 2 1/2-minute film segment of overturned autos and charred buildings in Gdansk--but no protesting workers. Premier Jozef Cyrankiewicz appeared on TV prime time to deplore the riots and to admit "a number of dead in the teens." The toll was undoubtedly higher; the first nongovernment estimate was at least 20 killed and 700 injured. Among the dead were "officials," meaning police. Indirectly, the Premier indicated that some of the demonstrators were armed; troops, he admitted, had fired on the crowds in self-defense.

"These are the tragic consequences of a lack of prudence," Cyrankiewicz told the nation. "Hostile forces are trying to create new centers of anarchy, disturb the rhythm of normal work in factories and disorganize the life of the country." They included anarchists, hooligans and criminal elements, he said. He threatened that "organs of militia, the security service and cooperating organs are under obligation to take up all legal means of enforcement--including the use of weapons against all persons committing acts of violence."

Understating the matter considerably, an editorial in the party's Warsaw newspaper, Trybuna Ludu, declared that the week's events were ''an important lesson for the whole party." As Gomulka's shattered government was assessing that lesson, so were other Communist regimes. Rumania's Nicolae Ceausescu pointedly assured his Central Committee that Bucharest had ample meat, butter, fish and grain for the entire winter. Bulgaria's party weekly Pogled stressed that the government had no intention of raising prices. East Germany, where official radio announced the existence of the disturbances before Warsaw did, moved troops into its Baltic towns to prevent any spread of the riots.

Scapegoat Needed. One fact that clearly disturbed all the East bloc leaders was that the rioters, for the most part, came from one of the richest and most advanced sectors of Poland, an area that indeed had been long and deliberately pampered by Warsaw. Though well paid by Polish standards, the workers were obviously unhappy. Just what to do about this situation was a major government problem. Students could be repressed, but that was not a viable tactic to use on the workers, on whom the government relies. Recognizing his dilemma, Gomulka offered a bit of a carrot to go with the stick. Warsaw ordered stores restocked in time for Christmas. Vice Premier Stanislaw Kociolek. 37, the quick-witted, energetic skyrocket of the Polish party, was dispatched to the Baltic to assess the situation. In Gdansk last week he went on radio to promise the workers an opportunity to air their grievances. To keep disorders from spreading, the program was jammed in other Polish cities.

Whether or not the government can prevent further protests, Poland's immediate future is bound to be grim. Gomulka's cherished reforms will almost certainly have to be postponed, which will lead to further consumer hardships and greater economic stagnation. The military budget, which was to have been lowered as a result of the Warsaw Treaty, will probably not be slashed, since the army demonstrated its value--and power--in stemming the riots. The "normalization" of foreign relations that had been expected following successful negotiations with Willy Brandt may have to be suspended.

Quite clearly, the week of disorder demands a scapegoat. The riots could lead to a struggle for power within the Central Committee between Gomulka and his Stalinist and ultranationalist opponents, who never did accept the new economic strategy. Gomulka's enemies have ample ammunition to use against him. The riots indicated how much the party apparatus was out of touch with the people--and, as the man responsible for party policy, Gomulka can hardly avoid his share of the blame for that situation. Within Poland, there has been a growing sentiment that the First Secretary may have been in office too long, and is not quite attuned to realities any more. Each day, the story goes in Warsaw, Gomulka sends his secretary out for cigarettes with too little money, not realizing that the price of tobacco has doubled. An aide quietly gives the secretary additional change.

The ultimate verdict on Gomulka, of course, rests not with Warsaw but with Moscow, which regards him as a good friend but would sacrifice him if hard-lining Polish Communists insisted. The Russians, however, gave little indication of their sentiments. Brief Polish communiques on the riots were broadcast in Moscow, but without comment. The three army divisions that Russia maintains in Poland were alerted, but they remained in their barracks. Obviously, the Russians were waiting to see how well the Poles handled the problem.

Desperately eager to check the disturbances with no further loss of life, the Polish government at week's end took a more conciliatory stance--even though the curfews remained in effect and tanks stood guard. "We do not want people to be injured," said Radio Warsaw. "We do not want people to die." In a rare admission of party failure, Trybuna conceded that the sharp and sudden price increases had been responsible for starting the trouble. (The newspaper also insisted, of course, that the rioters had been misled by rumors and misinformation.) Temporarily, at least, the presence of guns had quelled the demand for butter. But there was good reason for the party chieftains to fear that similar demonstrations might flare up again, particularly if nothing is done about the causes that sparked them. As a final irony, it may be that the atheist leaders of Poland have been given a respite by the mere fact that the riots broke out just before the most joyous of Christian feasts. By heritage, Poland as a nation would be more inclined to spend the season--even a season of discontent--merrymaking at home rather than troublemaking in the streets.

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