THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC 471Poland of Fiat (i2.6p) cars, Jones cranes, Ley land engines, Berliet buses, Grundig
electronics, and more importantly of medium-size Massey Ferguson tractors
suitable for the needs of peasant proprietors. Fertilizers, textiles, paper, coal,
ship-building, petro-chemicals, and machine tools were all encouraged by the
purchase of western technology. To finance these enterprises, debts totalling
more than 6,000,000,000* dollars were quickly raised in the West on the strength
of Poland's improved prospects. It was clear to all that Gierek had staked every-
thing on economic success. Within a short time, however, there were signs that
the gamble was not paying off. The oil crisis of 1974, together with the deepen-
ing recession in world trade, hit Poland at a moment of great vulnerability.
Extravagant gestures of submissiveness to the USSR, not seen in Warsaw since
the 1950s, could only be interpreted as the price for Soviet assistance in shoring
up the Polish economy, and as a sop against Soviet fears of Poland's growing
dependence on the West. On 22 July 1974, in the highspot of the military parade,
Leonid Brezhnev was handed the Virtuti Militari medal, usually awarded for
conspicuous gallantry on the field of battle. Yet at a time when the Soviet econ-
omy itself was floundering, Moscow's assistance was of necessity strictly lim-
ited. In 1975, administrative controls were tightened. As elsewhere in the Soviet
bloc in the era of 'Detente', the signing of the Helsinki Agreement was used as
the occasion for increased ideological vigilance, on the grounds that greater con-
tacts with the West would threaten the stability of the socialist camp. A major
reform of the local government system was clearly designed to enhance the
leverage of the central ministries over the regions. In 1976, changes in the con-
stitution were designed to offset fears that Poland's economic indebtedness to
the West might have political repercussions. Elections were held amidst strin-
gent security precautions, prompted by fears of popular unrest.
In this situation, in June 1976, Gierek proceeded to precisely the same con-
frontation with the people that had humbled Gomulka only six years before.
Having repeatedly postponed the long-promised rise in food prices, he suddenly
ordered that they were to be raised not by 20 per cent, but by an average of 60 per
cent. The accompanying wage rises were heavily weighted in favour of the higher
income groups. Strikes, protests, and demonstrations broke out in almost every
town and factory in the country. In Warsaw, the workers of the Ursus tractor plant
tore up the track of an international railway line and captured the Paris-Moscow
express. In Radom, the Party House was burned to the ground. In Nowa Huta, the
army was called in to man the deserted steelworks. Then, after only one day's
reflection, the government repealed its price rises. For the second time in six years,
a communist government had been forced to retreat before public opinion. By the
standards of the People's Democracy, this was an unacceptable defeat.
The bursting of Gierek's bubble left the policies of the PZPR in a hopeless
- This key figure was never disclosed in official Polish sources, but there is no doubt that
Poland's western debt continued to multiply alarmingly throughout the 1970s. By 1979, it
was certainly into eleven figures, and was accelerating beyond the 2.0-billion dollar mark—
the estimated level of the entire foreign debt of the USSR.