ABSTRACT

In the early 1970s, the communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe experienced a period of relative economic growth, which, however, was short lived. Gradually, all these states began to face a series of problems related to the extremely slow pace of improvement in their populations’ standard of living. By the late 1970s these problems had become increasingly apparent. Newly available documents from the archives of the Romanian Communist Party provide some insight on the events of that period. Using these sources, this article explores some aspects of the Polish crisis in the late 1970s and early 1980s and their repercussions in Romania.