Word: gierek
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...revered Primate, Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski. By combining intellectuals, workers and churchmen, the defense movement could become a classic counter-revolutionary force. Still, the Poles' fear of provoking a Soviet invasion is a strong restraining influence. This month the defense movement scored a triumph: Party Chief Edward Gierek yielded to public pressure and promised to recommend clemency for all workers convicted of rioting...
...past two months, East Germany has arrested dozens of intellectuals, harassed citizens seeking to emigrate to the West, and exiled its leading folk-pop hero, Balladeer Wolf Biermann (TIME, Dec. 20). Even in Poland, which along with Hungary is the most relaxed of Russia's client states, the Gierek regime has been attacked by Warsaw intellectuals for the "tortures and abuses" of people arrested after last summer's food riots. Perhaps the most flagrant violator of the Helsinki spirit is Czechoslovakia, where the grimly totalitarian government of Gustáv Husák has begun a new assault...
...only one reason for the prevailing grimness. More important, perhaps, is that the people feel betrayed by the government. Says Stefan Kisielewski, a former member of Parliament: "The problem is not just meat. It is a lack of confidence in our leaders." There is a widespread feeling that the Gierek government played a dirty trick on the people when last June it announced price hikes ranging from 30% on poultry to 69% on meat. Although many Poles concede that increases were necessary and long overdue, they expected them to be gradually imposed. Real wages had risen 7.1% annually since...
...Crisis. As dissent flourishes, Poland's economic crisis deepens. Although Gierek's government brought about an unprecedented boom in the early 1970s, the economy has recently been feeling the stress of inflation in Western Europe. The Soviet Union, responding to the oil crisis of 1973, increased the price of vital crude oil for the Poles 150%, to $8 per bbl. To make matters worse, Poland was hit by severe droughts in 1974 and 1975, forcing it to buy $2 billion worth of grain from...
Though obviously alarmed by the spread of Polish dissidence, Moscow is not openly pressing the Gierek government to crack down. The Soviets unquestionably wish to avoid using their two tank divisions stationed in Poland to quell protests. Poles, in turn, are reluctant to provoke the Kremlin rulers. "We are always afraid of one thing. We don't want a Czechoslovakia on our soil," said one prominent dissident. "It would be a real war," added one witness to the Warsaw uprising in 1944. Then Nazi troops destroyed the capital, while the Red Army nearby made no move to help...