entially in ruins. The capital city of Warsaw was literally levelled by the retreating Nazi Occupation; throughout the country, nearly single industrial plant was destroyed by Allied attacks on the German war effort. Per the 1944 Yalta Agreement, the Soviet Union occupied Poland and set the criteria for rebuilding the national economy. That criteria was developed in terms of Soviet needs.
Poland's Gdansk shipyards on the Baltic Sea were designated a national priority and rebuilt. Poland's Silesian coal mines in the south were revived in order to power the steel and electricity plants needed to make Gdansk top-working. Rail reconstruction was given priority for the Silesian-Baltic connection, with a major highway to follow in the 1960s-70s. Warsaw, in the center of the country, was designated the "hub", with all roads and telecommunications running through that city. Major focus for the Polish economy was given to the Soviet-designated "necessity" of providing the Warsaw Pact with ships. Secondary attention was given to creating an east-to-west rail/road byway through Poland to provide Soviet troops quick transport to East Germany and the face-off with NATO (Fleet & Szpak, 1995, p. 8).
The rest of Poland's economy was left to fend for itself. Energy and telecommunications resources, as a matter of course, were nationalized as part of the Marxist-oriented Soviet-client government. Agriculture, by and large, remained in private hands - but distribution was almost exclusively through government-owned wholesale and retail entities. The "market", such as it was, was designated by government fiat. The Polish government promised each citizen housing, food and a job. Hence, housing construction fell under government control, employment was under government control, and food prices were set by the government. All were made subservient to the priority of the Soviet-designated "marketplace" - a false construction that was es...