This term was used to describe the period often referred to as Gierek’s decade (1970-1980) in Poland. Edward Gierek, the First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza PZPR) came to power in December 1970 following a wave of strikes that had been provoked by the announcement of a drastic food price increase. After many years of economic stagnation under Gomułka’s rule Gierek promised the nation economic reforms and industrial modernisation. His new political style raised hopes that the socialist system might be reformable and was well received by the majority of people.
 
Through foreign loans new companies sprang up and consumer goods were filling the shops. Products that had been absent from the shelves in previous decades such as bananas, oranges, chewing gum and the symbol of ‘the rotten West’, Coca-Cola, were easily available.

Gierek aimed at mass motorisation so that every worker could afford a car. He also relaxed travel restrictions, allowing people to travel to the previously forbidden West.  At the beginning of this ‘bonanza’ a lucky potential traveller could even purchase 150 dollars in a bank at a competitive tourist rate (this was usually half the rate on the black market), so the standard of living rose considerably.

Gomułka’s ideology was replaced by Gierek’s consumerism. His language of political propaganda included a broad range of populist slogans of which the most popular were ‘building a second Poland’,  ‘economic miracle’, and  ‘let Poland grow strong and people be prosperous’.  ‘Will you help?’ was the first phrase spontaneously formulated by Gierek at the very beginning of his rule and is now regarded as the basic catchword in the linguistic canon of that period.  

The period of prosperity was, however, short-lived. In the mid-70s the signs of the coming economic crisis were apparent. 1976 saw another wave of protests in response to a planned massive increase in food prices. The repressions which followed led to the formation of illegal opposition groups and this, in turn, laid the foundation for the growth of the Solidarity movement in 1980. 

Not without reason the Polish People’s Republic was seen as the jolliest barrack in the socialist camp. Poland enjoyed a comparatively high degree of freedom among the countries of the communist bloc. In such a climate humour and satire flourished, targeting the distortions of the system and its weaknesses. Satire was regarded as a form of social resistance, and also helped people to survive turbulent times. To pass the censor’s approval cartoonists had to employ subtle allusions and hidden metaphors.  Any cartoon which might have had the slightest anti-communist undertone was immediately censored. There were, however, cases of the withdrawal of the entire circulation of a paper because of a joke that escaped the censor’s attention.

The current British Library exhibition Propaganda: Power and Persuasion  includes some examples of the works by Andrzej Krauze, a great Polish illustrator and cartoonist noted for his allegorical drawings. He lives and works in London. His illustrations have been published in The Guardian since 1989 and in other prominent newspapers and journals around the world.

Magda Szkuta,  Curator of Polish Studies

 

Cartoon from Andrzej Krauze’s Poland. (London,  1981)  X.958/7224. (By kind permission of the author and publisher)