448 POLSKA LUDOWA
1975 (projected figure), the Comecon countries accounted for two-thirds of
Poland's foreign commercial turnover. The USSR, which supplied 42 per cent of
Poland's raw materials - 80 per cent of her oil, 80 per cent of her iron ore, and
60 per cent of her cotton — and which received over half of Poland's industrial
exports, remained the largest single trading partner. Indeed, in trading terms,
Poland was now to be rated a liability to the USSR. The imbalance of exchange
had stood in Poland's favour ever since 1956. For this reason if for no other, the
Soviet government was able to insist on massive Polish investments in the Soviet
economy. This investment was effected by the introduction of (secret) preferen-
tial rates of exchange, by the transfer of ships constructed in Poland with the aid
of advanced western technology, and, by the construction of the colossal
Katowice Steelworks with its direct broad-gauge railway link direct to the
Soviet frontier. Hence, in contrast to the pre-war period, when Polish exports
were largely limited to food products and raw materials, the first place in
Poland's exports was now taken by industrial products, especially by machines
and semi-finished goods. Unfortunately, the technical quality of these products
was not sufficient to attract many customers in the world at large. As a result,
the over-all Trade Balance remained consistently negative:
Import Export Balance
(in millions of convertible zloties)
1950 1,673 M37 -137
1965 9,361 8,911 -450
1971 16,151 I5A%9 -662
1976 46,100 36,600 -9,500What is more, any proper analysis of commercial statistics was permanently
obstructed by the extraordinary demands of official secrecy. The financial prin-
ciples governing calculations of the foreign account; the terms of foreign loans;
and the details of foreign licence or barter contracts, were all carefully sup-
pressed. The very existence of apparently innocuous items such as the purchase
of foreign grain, the sale of meat to the USSR, the re-export of coffee, or the
arms trade within Comecon, was denied. In 1976, the Censorship ruled that
terms such as kurs (variable rates of exchange), obciqzenia (debit), subwencja
(subsidy), and dotacja (allocation) should not be employed in textbooks dealing
specifically with Polish Foreign Trade.^48
The so-called 'specific conditions', often darkly hinted at in official apologias
for the underperformance of the Polish economy, were mainly social and polit-
ical in character. They referred to the historic, and apparently incurable alien-
ation of most people from the state, and from the state-owned enterprises by
which almost all of them were employed. Throughout the wars and partitions
of modern times, Poles had been taught to pay authority as little respect as
necessary, to slack and to cheat in their dealings with public concerns, and to
reserve all their energies for the pursuit of their private welfare. They were
instinctively 'agin' the system. As a result, bureaucratic controls proliferated, as