THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC 469Hungarian flourish. One addressed an academic as Fanie Profesorze\ (Sir
Professor), a Party official as PanieSekre tarzul (Sir Secretary), and a foreman as
Panie Mistrzul (Sir Mastercraftsman). Even within the Party, the members
chose to call each other not 'Brother' or 'Citizen', but Towarzysz, 'Comrade'—
which happens to be the style of the knightly companion-in-arms of the feudal
gentry.
Everyone's lives are dependent on money, and in Poland they were further
complicated by the extraordinary contortions of the currency. The zloty was
not freely convertible. It was virtually worthless except for the purposes of inter-
nal exchange, and enjoyed nobody's confidence. The US dollar, in contrast, was
in universal demand. The dollar was used not only as the basis for foreign trans-
actions, but also as the standard currency of a broad network of 'internal
export' shops (PEWEX). Uniquely in Eastern Europe, Polish citizens were per-
mitted since 1972. to open interest-bearing dollar accounts with the State Bank.
Class A accounts, with proof of the legal import of their contents, could be used
for foreign travel: Class B accounts, where no such proof was available, had to
lie fallow for two years before being transferred to Class A. Rates of exchange
made the uninitiated blink with amazement. The old official tourist rate, at 1 $
= 19 zl., stood for years at one-third of that obtained by foreigners sending
money into Poland through the National Savings Bank (PKO), where 1 $ = 60
zl. On the black market, which was managed under cover by the Militia and the
State Bank to cut their losses, 1 $ sold at 90-130 zl. In a country where the Party's
official theory held that the American dollar lay at the root of most evil, the
reigning monetary situation was pure Alice.
This air of baffling unreality pervaded Polish life from top to bottom.
When foreign experts inquired how the Party could possibly escape from the
present political and economic crisis, the usual answer was somewhere between
a shrug and a grin. After all, as a historian could point out, the long-running
Polish crisis had lasted for roughly 360 years, and could well keep going for a
similar period of time. The solution was ably demonstrated by the average Pole
who continued to earn 4,500 zl. per month, who spent 9,000, and who, from his
savings, expected in the near future to buy a motor-car. It was all part, as the
posters proudly proclaimed, of 'THE MAGIC OF POLAND'.^64
Poland at the end of the 1970s faced an acute dilemma. Although it was the first
of the East European countries to shake off direct Soviet tutelage, its national
communist regime had not succeeded in creating a coherent social and political
system of the sort pioneered by the Kadar regime in nearby Hungary. Policy had
been characterized by the pursuit of contradictory half-measures - by support
both for the Roman Catholic Church and for atheistic Marxist-Leninist
ideology; by hostility both to compulsory collectivized agriculture and to the
prosperity of private farming; by commitment both to the Soviet alliance and to
socio-economic measures which the Soviet allies find abhorrent. Some