The Winter of Discontent

Mass strikes, demonstrations and riots exploded throughout Poland last summer, paralyzing the nation and provoking panic in Warsaw, dismay in Moscow. The immediate cause of the uprising was a dramatic increase in food prices, but the roots of the rebellion lay deep in the dissatisfaction of the fiercely independent Polish people with Soviet-imposed Communist rule.

The summer protests marked the third time in two decades that insurgent workers had illegally struck against unpopular government measures and won their case. Workers' demonstrations in 1956 and 1970 had even brought down the reigning party chiefs in Warsaw. This time, the present Polish party boss, Edward Gierek, survived the riots by immediately rolling back prices. Still, lingering discontent in Poland, tied to a worsening economic crisis, has produced the classic formula for rebellion. TIME Correspondent Henry Muller recently visited Poland to gauge the public mood as the nation entered what threatens to be a long turbulent winter. His report:

As the cold autumn days grow shorter, Eastern Europe's largest nation (after the Soviet Union) is headed for its most difficult year since 1970. In the late afternoon, outside one of the new Western-style supermarkets in Warsaw, a line of people 20 yds. long extends out the door and into the chilly darkness. It is mostly women, bundled in heavy coats and woolen scarves, their cheeks turned crimson by the subfreezing temperature. It is the ubiquitous meat queue, the most common symbol of Poland's political and economic malaise.

Good meat is virtually unavailable. Sugar has been rationed. Street lights in certain areas are no longer turned on. Although many Poles have money in the bank, there is little to spend it on. The waiting time for a new Polish-built Fiat is from three to five years, and gasoline has risen 70%, to $2.07 per gal., since 1973. About 1.5 million people must share their dwellings with other families; the waiting period for an apartment is often as long as ten years. Sixty miles south of Warsaw, in the town of Radom, where last summer workers set fire to the local Communist Party headquarters, a Catholic priest observed, "The mood is bad. People complain, they curse, they show little interest in doing their jobs properly."

The shortage of food and consumer goods is only one reason for the prevailing grimness. More important, perhaps, is that the people feel betrayed by the government. Says Stefan Kisielewski, a former member of Parliament: "The problem is not just meat. It is a lack of confidence in our leaders." There is a widespread feeling that the Gierek government played a dirty trick on the people when last June it announced price hikes ranging from 30% on poultry to 69% on meat. Although many Poles concede that increases were necessary and long overdue, they expected them to be gradually imposed. Real wages had risen 7.1% annually since 1971, while prices of basic foodstuffs remained frozen, causing scarcities and a totally artificial price structure. But the brutal suddenness of the price hikes brought the workers into the streets once more. "It was as if the entire population had been thrown into the Baltic Sea in the middle of December," observed a Western diplomat.

Although the price increases were rescinded in the wake of mass strikes, the arrest of several thousand rioting workers proved to be yet another government blunder. The subsequent trials of about 100 rioters served to unite workers, intellectuals, students and the still powerful Roman Catholic Church against the regime. In a recent sermon, Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, 75, the revered Primate of Poland, lamented from the pulpit that "it is painful when workers must struggle for their rights from a workers' government."

Some of Poland's best-known intellectuals have become active on behalf of the jailed demonstrators, who are serving up to ten years in prison. A defense committee, including such dissidents as Novelist Jerzy Andrzejewski and Economist Edward Lipinski, has collected $20,000 for the families of the jailed workers. Former Education Minister Wladyslaw Bienkowski addressed an open letter to the government, protesting police brutality against the workers. "It proves," he declared, "that some people have ceased to pursue the goals of serving the people and have become a gangrene transmitting the rot to other parts of public life." In an interview broadcast on West German TV, Andrzejewski declared that Communism has been "imposed on subjugated nations that are completely dominated by the influence of the Russian empire."

Oil Crisis. As dissent flourishes, Poland's economic crisis deepens. Although Gierek's government brought about an unprecedented boom in the early 1970s, the economy has recently been feeling the stress of inflation in Western Europe. The Soviet Union, responding to the oil crisis of 1973, increased the price of vital crude oil for the Poles 150%, to $8 per bbl. To make matters worse, Poland was hit by severe droughts in 1974 and 1975, forcing it to buy $2 billion worth of grain from the U.S.

Though obviously alarmed by the spread of Polish dissidence, Moscow is not openly pressing the Gierek government to crack down. The Soviets unquestionably wish to avoid using their two tank divisions stationed in Poland to quell protests. Poles, in turn, are reluctant to provoke the Kremlin rulers. "We are always afraid of one thing. We don't want a Czechoslovakia on our soil," said one prominent dissident. "It would be a real war," added one witness to the Warsaw uprising in 1944. Then Nazi troops destroyed the capital, while the Red Army nearby made no move to help. "I've seen Warsaw leveled once in my lifetime," he recalled, "and that's enough."

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