Word: gierek
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...crackdown had been harsh, fiercely and unexpectedly harsh. Military authorities rounded up thousands of Solidarity members, dissidents, intellectuals, artists and some 30 former government officials, including ex-Party Boss Edward Gierek. Tanks ringed factories and mines, and soldiers and police used force to clear out resisting workers, leaving at least seven dead and hundreds injured when miners in Katowice fought back with axes and crowbars. The shock was doubly traumatic because in the preceding months Poles had won more freedom than any other nation in the Soviet bloc. The country had developed a thriving
Meanwhile, to keep people happy, Gierek was allowing wages to rise 40% from 1970 to 1975, compared with an increase of only 17% over the previous decade. To give Poles enough meat, Gierek quadrupled imports of grain and fodder; the per capita consumption of meat jumped from 132 lbs. per year in 1970 to 1541bs...
...whole absurd structure was bound to collapse, and it did. When the OPEC nations raised the price of oil in 1973-74 and caused a worldwide recession, Poland's exports, instead of continuing to rise as Gierek planned, began to falter. Unable to lay off any workers?a taboo under the full-employment doctrine of Communism?Gierek had to borrow more and more money from the West to keep going. Poland's foreign debt rose from $4.8 billion in 1974 to $25.5 billion in 1981. Servicing and repayment of the loans, which are owed to 15 Western governments...
...Solidarity had merely been suspended, not abolished, and he declared that there would be "no return to the pre-August 1980 system of rule." To underscore that assertion, he ordered the detention of 32 members of the incompetent and scandal-ridden former regime, including deposed Communist Party Chief Edward Gierek. State television was filled with patriotic World War II films and other uplifting programming, such as an interview with a bemedaled old general who said he had known Jaruzelski since the Battle of Monte Cassino in World War II. (The man was mistaken; Jaruzelski fought in the Soviet army...
...smashed as police pushed their way inside. Additional arrests were made in the Baltic port city of Gdansk, where the ruling committee of Solidarity, including its leader, Lech Walesa, had been in stormy session. Also taken into custody were several former government officials, including former Communist Party Chief Edward Gierek. Despite the apparent size of the operation, the news blackout had been planned so carefully that even in the capital, few Poles were aware of what was happening...