oil in that country in the summer of 1956, and the process has yet to run its course.
This current research examines the economic, political, and social reforms in both the Soviet Union and Poland, although greater emphasis is placed on events in the USSR. The relationship of the reforms to past experience, the nature of the reforms, the extent to which they have been implemented, and the probable future outcomes of their implementation are considered. Simultaneously with these examinations, Walker's assessments of and predictions for the Gorbachev reforms are critiqued. Walker (1986) dealt only peripherally with Poland in The Waking Giant; therefore, no critique of his assessments and predictions are made in a Polish context.
The Communist government in Poland during the first 12 years following the end of the Second World War may be fairly 3characterized as a harsh, Stalinist regime. The unreasonably hard working conditions imposed on the Polish people resulted in riots in Poznan in the summer of 1956 (Paxton, 1988). Follow ing the riots, nationalists and anti Stalinists gained control of the Polish Communist Party, and a new government was formed under the leadership of Wladyslaw Gomulka.The Gomulka government pursued the development of what it called an independent Polish communism. One of its first acts was to end the program of the forced collectivization of farms, following which many collective farms were actually abolished. Great economic success was not achieved under the Gomulka government, and, by 1970, the government had determined that it was necessary to introduce into the Polish economy both greater productivity, and greater price realism.
The productivity objective was pursued through the imple mentation of an incentive wage program, while the price realism objective was sought through price increases designed to bring the prices for food, housing, and energy closer to market rates. The people of Pola...