ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to explain why the outcome of collectivization efforts was so radically different in Poland. An examination of the content of the New Course in Poland will be followed by a description of the analysis made by the Polish regime at this time of the problems plaguing the agricultural program. Despite the policy changes initiated during the New Course, agricultural output showed little sign of improving and the standard of living registered few gains during 1954. At first glance, the model defining collectivization as a means of achieving state control of economic resources seems a remarkably acute guide to the dissolution of the collectives and subsequent state policy. The state's relationship to the Soviet Union, the urban working class and the intelligentsia and the relative power of each of these groups to influence the decisions of the government affected the manner in which the collectivization program was pushed and then abandoned.
