THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC 465mercenary foundations of Party loyalty were evinced by the lavish salary sup-
plements of Party members, by the closed clubs and shops, and by the privileged
access to information, housing, health care, holidays, and education. Periodic
purges of the dead wood, which occurred after each change of leadership, could
not stop the rot. Recruitment from the working class had been falling ever since
- New members, and the upper ranks of the hierarchy, were drawn over-
whelmingly from the professional, technical, and managerial classes. In this self-
perpetuating bureaucracy, any pretence that the PZPR formed the 'vanguard of
the workers and peasants' had long since lost all meaning. Marxism-Leninism
was equally in decline. The dismissal of the country's leading Marxists in 1968
left a gap that could not be filled. The Party spokesmen continued to mouth the
empty phrases of the discarded ideology, without making any serious effort to
follow its precepts. For all these reasons, the ordinary people in whose name the
abuses are committed, were steadily losing patience. The gulf between Party and
people, between the ruling elite and the long-suffering citizen, was widening
every day. When the time of reckoning comes, it may be very painful indeed.
Crime in a police state can only flourish under the patronage of the state
police. In a country where state-owned property enjoyed little respect, petty
offences abounded and were dealt with in a summary fashion; but organized
crime could not operate on the same basis as in the West. The only serious rings
and rackets that existed - in the black market, in prostitution, and in drugs -
were controlled by the Militia and by the other security organs. In the commu-
nist system, the idea of an impartial law enforcement agency, or of an indepen-
dent judiciary, was not accepted, and the perpetrators of the worst scandals
could only be brought to book by their peers in the state-and-party elite to which
they themselves belonged. It may be true that the streets of Polish cities, like
their counterparts elsewhere in Eastern Europe, were free of many of the vio-
lences and nuisances which prevailed in western cities; but the orderliness was
deceptive. As a result both of their contempt for the common man, and their dis-
regard for the law which they were supposed to uphold, the Militia were widely
regarded as the true enemies of society, and official talk of'socialist morality'
rang hollow.
Indeed, the real fear amongst many thinking Poles resided in the threat of
'Sovietization'. By this, they understood the onset of a social climate where the
dull mass of a cowed populace was incapable of independent thought or co-
ordinated action, and where the authorities could conduct themselves with
impunity. Material prosperity of the sort achieved in neighbouring East
Germany or Czechoslovakia, and the mindless consumerism of the conformist
elite, acted as powerful motors towards this end. In consequence, in the eyes of
some observers, anything which militated against the reigning apathy had to be
welcomed. The only positive aspect of the continuing economic crisis in Poland
was that it acted as a brake on the less edifying social trends of recent years.
Post-war Warsaw had started again from scratch. The bricks that one saw in
the city's historic landmarks were not the ones that had stood there throughout