Word: gierek
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...addition to the strike leaders, Gierek was obviously referring to Poland's active dissident movement, spearheaded by the Committee for Social Self-Defense (known by the acronym KOR). Established after the 1976 riots to defend workers against official harassment, KOR has developed into the strongest dissident group in the Soviet bloc. Taking advantage of a relatively tolerant government attitude, it publishes several underground journals and is a sponsor of the underground "flying university" lecture series...
...dissidents' pronouncements and activities finally brought on a government crackdown. Two days after Gierek had publicly castigated them, 19 dissidents were arrested, including Kuron and some fellow KOR members who were staying in his Warsaw apartment. Next day, the authorities seized several other dissidents; among them was Leszek Moczulski, leader of the Confederation for an Independent Poland. Under Polish law the dissidents can be detained for 48 hours without formal charges. At week's end five were released, but others will probably be held longer. The regime seems bent on isolating the workers from the antigovernment intellectuals...
Neither the arrests nor Gierek's appeals to reason appeared to bring the strikes any closer to a settlement. In the grimy, red-brick conference hall of Lenin Shipyard, Gierek's speech was greeted with derision. "He said nothing new at all," said a dockworker from Gdynia. "He talked to us as if we were children." Many workers ignored the speech entirely, basking shirtless in the sun and playing cards during the live broadcast...
Unfortunately, Poland's economic problems seem to be well beyond the power of workers or government to repair in the near future. They are the result of 33 years of Communist bungling and a decade of misfortune and miscalculation by Gierek's government. He had inherited a chaotic agricultural system and an inefficient industrial base that produced chronic shortages of foodstuffs and consumer goods. His solution was a rapid modernization of industry that was intended to produce hard-currency-earning exports and enable the government to import more food and goods from the West...
Moscow has given only scant news coverage to what it euphemistically termed the Polish "work stoppages." A report by the TASS news agency stressed Gierek's warning that "action against political and public order cannot and will not be tolerated in Poland." In a revival of an old cold-war tactic, the Soviets last week resumed the jamming of Western radio broadcasts, apparently because of the wide play being given to Polish events...