ABSTRACT
A specific group involved in illegal goods and currency exchange were foreign undergraduate and PhD students, mostly from so-called developing countries. Particularly towards the end of the Gomulka era, they were travelling abroad on average 2.5 times more often than Polish students and scholars. This was due to agreements imposed on European socialist countries to aid the ‘developing countries’, including with education. Many foreigners, from Ghana, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Congo, for example, held passports that allowed them to cross the Iron Curtain. For post-war Poland, outside the Iron Curtain lay the source of the most important objects of desire – luxury items, from the aforementioned luxury goods in the quotation above to watches, cars, hard currency, and gold. Foreign tourists would buy shoes, car parts, electronic equipment, power tools, fabric and knitwear.
