ABSTRACT
This chapter provides three types of strategies used by the Communist authorities in Poland to cope with what they probably consider to be unusually difficult and thorny political, social, and economic problems. Upon Edward Gierek's ascent to power, the early sixties were castigated for their zero growth and exceptionally bad management of the economy, as the late sixties acquired notoriety for the leadership's inability to remain in touch with the masses—a major crisis in itself. One strategy is to repress directly, sometimes annihilate physically, those groups or individuals perceived as threatening to the regime. Through Gierek's appeals Communist rulers are tapping the nationalistic feelings of the Poles and, only too often, their xenophobia. In spite of exclusive control over the economy, police, state bureaucracy, legislature, mass media, educational system, and everything else having any impact on the organization of collective life, the regime in Poland seems uniquely incapable of steering clear of trouble.
