ABSTRACT

This chapter shows how fundamental political shifts in the twentieth century did impact the strategies of catch-up development in Poland. First of all, Poland became in the wake of World War I an independent state, but consisted of different areas, different administrations, different law systems, different currencies, and last but not least different people with different mentalities. Despite these obstacles Poland did not fail as a state, even if several politicians in the East as well as in the West presented Poland as a "seasonal" state. The creation of a unified domestic market with unified currency was a great achievement of Polish governments between 1918 and 1926, particularly as Poland in this time fought a war against the Bolsheviki. The attempts occurring from the 1940s/1950s onward show other logic of catch-up development. In the 1970s Polish government headed by Edward Gierek started a next stage of catch-up development by partly integrating into the international division of labor.