In March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Central Committee, and Chairman of the Union of Soviet Socialist Repub lics Council of Defense. In the somewhat more than five years that he has been the nation's leader, he has introduced far reaching social, political, and economic initiatives.
While economic, political, and social change in the Soviet Union was beginning to emerge under Gorbachev's leadership, however, such change had either been attempted or was already underway in some of the other socialist states. Perhaps the socialist country with the longest uninterrupted experience with change of this sort is Poland. Labor unrest precipitated political turmoil 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 Poland. The nature of the reforms, the type and degree of assistance being provided by western coun tries, and multinational investment in the wake of the reforms, and the probable future outcomes of the economic reforms (con sidering their relationship to past attempts at reform, the extent to which they have been implemented, and their effects on the Polish population) are considered.
The Polish parliament "rushed through the reform measures in December" 1989, and they went into effect on 1 January 1990 (Norton, 1990, p. 132). With the objective of balancing the national budget, the reforms eliminated most subsidies on con sumer goods and services (Norton, 1990). Subsidies to state owned business enterprises were also cut (Norton, 1990). Fur ther, the Polish zloty was "sharply devalued to bring the offi cial rate in line with . . . the black market" (Norton, 1990, p. 132).
A second phase of reform is planned, if the reforms indi cated above (1) inflation is reduced to single digit levels, and (2), if in the process, the Polish population...