ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the effect of the Communist regime's halfhearted preservation of private farmland on the formation of farmers' attitudes, and the impact of the attitudes on current policies aimed at revitalizing Polish agriculture. Among the countries of so-called "true socialism," Poland was unique in maintaining a limited system of private ownership of certain means of production, including agricultural land. Comparing the mediocre production of the old regime's favored state farms with the success of disfavored private farms only fuels the myth of private ownership. Beneath the Communist government's apparent commitment to individual ownership of agricultural land, however, the reality of ownership was quite different. The fact that the opinions existed illustrates the legal awareness of Polish farmers and how extremely sensitive they were to changes in their legal status. Farmers proposed a broad law granting them the ability to freely exercise the rights of private ownership, including the right to profits derived from the land.
