Needed: All Hands, All Brains

Poland's Sixth Party Congress was shrewdly timed for dramatic effect. Only a few days before the anniversary of the worker revolts that brought the country to the brink of civil war last year, Poland's crew-cut Communist Party Leader Edward Gierek, 58, summoned the party's regional leaders and local delegates to Warsaw for the meeting.

Thanks in part to a secret $100 million Soviet loan, Gierek, who succeeded longtime Party Leader Wladyslaw Gomulka at the height of the 1970 riots, has made impressive progress in overcoming the food and clothing shortages that have periodically plagued Poland. Shops are better stocked, people better dressed. The price increases that ignited last December's violence have been rescinded, and wages have increased an average 5%. In an effort to ease the country's tensions, Gierek is seeking an accommodation with the Catholic Church, to which 95% of Poland's 32.5 million people owe at least nominal allegiance. He has freed the farmers, who constitute half the labor force, from stultifying government controls.

Don't Forget Piotr. Even so, Gierek was anxious to gain the party's mandate for his reformist leadership before the first anniversary of the riots. As Soviet Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev and other East bloc party leaders looked on in the ornate Palace of Culture and Science, whose facade was decorated with a seven-story portrait of Lenin, Gierek made a strong plea to Poles for cooperation. "Our supreme aim," he declared, "is the systematic improvement of living standards"--including at least one free Saturday per month for all vvorkers. He called too for a greater sense of unity and purpose. "Poland today needs every brain, every pair of hands."

The 1,804 delegates, half of them industrial workers, frequently interrupted Gierek's 31-hour speech with applause. Later, when he and Premier Piotr Jaroszewicz mingled with delegates on the congress floor, the two men were so mobbed by admirers that Gierek nearly lost his footing. One woman delegate from Gdansk kissed Gierek on both cheeks and invited him to visit her factory. As other women swarmed toward him, Gierek pointed nervously at Jaroszewicz and said, "Piotr, Piotr," indicating that the Premier deserved a share of their attention.

Paying for Performance. The congress swiftly endorsed Gierek's proposals. It adopted his new five-year plan calling for greater emphasis on housing (more than 1,000,000 apartments to be built during 1971-75), greater freedom and incentives for industrial managers, and a higher rate of investment in consumer products.

Production has already begun on a new, inexpensive auto, which workers and peasants will be able to buy in 36 monthly installments. In a drastic break with past practice, the new plan calls for wages to be

" paid according to a worker's performance, thus amending AND the old Communist tenet that each should be paid according to his needs.

The congress also elected a new Politburo that further strengthened Gierek's position. Out went three members who had been appointed to the Politburo by Gomulka, notably Jozef Cyrankiewicz, the President of Poland, who is now expected to lose that post too, and Mieczyslaw Moczar, the hard-lining former secret police chief, who was Gierek's possible rival. Gierek, who has sacked some 10,000 middle and lower echelon bureaucrats, hinted that there might be further firings: "For bad work, and even more so for bad will, we must dismiss people from their positions."

As this week's anniversary of the revolts drew near, some delegates to the congress from Gdansk, scene of the worst rioting, reported variously that the mood of the city was "uncertain" or "volatile." Gierek hopes that his record to date will persuade Poles to be patient, but he and his colleagues are mindful that the workers, having overturned one government with surprising swiftness, may not be willing to wait very long.

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