506 SOLIDARNOSCIn subsequent years, Professor Balcerowicz would often be asked about the
secret of his success. In the decade to come, when all the countries of the Soviet
Bloc would be engaged in the so-called 'process of transition', people wanted to
know why some countries coped much better than others and why, in particu-
lar, the Polish economy performed best of all. Balcerowicz harboured few
doubts. 'What matters is the initial direction [of the reforms].' He said. And fur-
ther: 'You cannot leave Communism by small steps.'... 'You have to be quick.'
To underline the point, he would recount an anecdote about meeting the pre-
mier of the former Soviet Republic of Kirgistan, a physicist, who explained to
him that the time available between one crystalline state and another was very,
very short. The ex-crystallographer, Balcerowicz felt, had the right instinct. 'A
pure economist would probably have got it hopelessly wrong.'^7
The Balcerowicz Plan administered the coup de grace to the PZPR. Every
Communist textbook that had ever existed preached the doctrine that politics
was driven by economics, that political organizations reflected the relationships
of their members to the means of production. Hence Communist parties only
made sense if they exercised monopoly control over all branches of economic
life. And that monopoly had now been lost. The seventh and last First Secretary
of the PZPR, Mieczysiaw Rakowski, was an intelligent but unscrupulous
opportunist of the worst ilk. A long-term editor of the high-grade propagandist
weekly Polity ka, he had often posed in the West as a flexible moderate and had
made friends in several foreign Social Democratic parties. But he was remem-
bered in Poland for his supercilious attitude to the working class and in particu-
lar for his vicious baiting of the defeated strikers in Gdansk in 1983. Not
surprisingly, he had clung to power in 1989-90, first as Premier and then as First
Secretary, while many of his similarly intelligent colleagues were leaving the
sinking ship. But even he could not keep the crew together. The day inevitably
came when the last meeting of the Central Committee was called. Speeches
about glorious traditions were recited. The comrades stood to sing 'The
Internationale' for the very last time. The Party's standards were paraded, then
carried out, as Marx would have said, to the dustbin of history. No one present
at that meeting cared to recall what terrible misery the Party had caused.
With the PZPR done for, the contract agreed between Solidarity and the
PZPR at the Round Table became redundant, but Mazowiecki, faithful to his
oath of office, felt obliged to hold to the chosen course. A law was passed on 28
February 1990 introducing political pluralism and the right to form political
parties. This would lead, after eighteen months' preparation, to the first fully
democratic parliamentary elections held in October 1992. In the meantime,
however, there remained the pressing problem of General Jaruzelski, whose
Party had disappeared from under his feet but who still occupied the presiden-
tial palace. Lech Walesa, who did not hide his own presidential ambitions, let it
be known that the current situation was intolerable and launched the pro-
gramme of przyspieszenie or political 'acceleration'. Popular opinion was grow-
ing impatient of a state of affairs where economic hardship was reaching a