1. REACTIONS TO WESTERN PROPAGANDA, AND POLITICAL ATTITUDES 2. ECONOMIC PLANNING, WAGES AND WORKING MORALE

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Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP82-00046R000500100001-4
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RIPPUB
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C
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8
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December 27, 2016
Document Release Date: 
May 30, 2013
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1
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Publication Date: 
June 21, 1955
Content Type: 
REPORT
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Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/06/20 :CIA-RDP82-000468000500100001-4 ? ' ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ? ~ ~ . ~ . . ? r CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY This material contains information affecting the National Defense of the United States within the meaning of the Espionage Laws, Title 18, U.S.C. Secs. 793 end 794, the transmission or revelation of which in any manner to an unauthorized person is prohibited by law. m 50X1 COUNTRY P?land. SUBJECT 1, ;Rea~e.idi t,Ck TrT~e~~tErxa'~ ~'r.Q~ia.gand~l9 ~ara~~ ~'~~iti~~:].: Aitatilaudes 20 E~~~~rmic_~ ~?~.anxiir~g~; ~ Wag~~i:-~~d, DATE OF INFO. PLACE ACQUIRED DATE ACQUIRED REPORT DATE DISTR. 21 J"uxie 1955 NO. OF PAGES g REQUIREMENT NO. RD REFERENCES SOURCE EVALUATIONS ARE DEFINITIVE. APPRAISAL OF CONTENT IS TENTATIVE. ~_ FBI (Note: Washington distribution indicated by "X"; Field distribution by ".#" ) Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/06/20 :CIA-RDP82-000468000500100001-4 ~ _ Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/06/20 :CIA-RDP82-000468000500100001-4 .~ - ~ux~ -Q 4I~' IDENT IAL COUNTRY Poland DATE DISTR. 2Z May 1955"". SUB7ECT 1, Res.ctions t? Wes?Ioerr~ F~~pa,g~,xacla9 and NO.OF PAGES 7 Polit~.cal &tt~.t~.~~s ~~ Econ?a~.c Pls. ' gad W?rki.ng Morale IaAT~ OF INFORMATI REFERENCES: PLACE ACQUIRED THIS IS UNEVALUATED INFORMATION Radio T.i st?,~i ng~{s= 1, Source listened to the radio nearly every evening, usually to the BBC German-language news broadcast on the short-wave band at eight o~aloak Polish timed He had formerly listened to RIAS,but sinoe the summer of 1954 the damming had been so heavy that he could no longer hear it, VOA was also so heavily dammed that he rarely heard it. Although he spoke excellent Polish, he did not usually listen to Polish-language news broadcasts, The Comrq~niat broadcasts did not interest him, and the Palish-language transmissions from tl`ie West were generally too dammed tv be heard well, Nevertheless, whenever something of particular interest such ae a Great Pvwera? conference was tak- ing place, he often got up early in the morning to tune in R1rEas Polish broadcastao A~'E was very heavily dammed at night.? but could be heard well enough from five to seven each morningb He thought this was because trie Commu.niat monitors chose this time to record what was being broadcast from the bleat, It was also his experience that ~am- ming of AFE was often fairly light on Sunday morningae The bleat German middle-wave stations were 3ammed in Poland.; but could generally be heard well enough late in the evening, 2a Source occasionally heard Polish language short-wave broadcasts from Ankara and Paris;; but did not care for them as they gave too little news of Poland,- He also sometimes heard Pol.~ah-language broadcasts from Madrid on the short-wave band, The transmissions from Madrid were heavily dammed;, but were fairly popular in Poland (at least he liked them) because Madrid often criticized the wealo~esa of the western governmentso policies toward the USSRo i C C3NF'I!)ENT?AL Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/06/20 :CIA-RDP82-000468000500100001-4 Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/06/20 :CIA-RDP82-000468000500100001-4 CONFIDENTIAL ?2- 3o Source had no particular criticisms to make about the c?ntents of taeetern broadcasts, He aid say9 howevery that reports of strikes in the western countries generally had an anti-Communist effect. in Poland, despite the fact that thQ Communists often pre- tended that the strikers were led by western Communists, When workers in Poland heard of strikes in the West, they asked themsely?s, "Why tenet we strike too to better our lives?u R~e~tiOns t0 Defection ~ .S'rria+ln, 4~ Source never talked about Swiat3:o9s defection with Party members, but he was certain that the defection caused great satisfaction to nearly everyone in Polando F or a few days after the escape was announced, there were many more smiling faces to be seen in Poland than for a long tim?, though the smiles were mare ones of Schaden_f+~eide at the embarraaament of the Gommunists than of real happiness, Source supposed that the later removal of the Minister of State Security was probably a result of Swiatloea eacapeo Fie did not think, however, that such shake-upa~of government offices had much effect on peopleae political outlook, Since regular purges were seen as an in herent feature of Gommunist rule, an occasional reorganization of even a key office wAs not taken as any sign that life would be either better or worse in the future, 5a Source read Swiat~l?e s booklet,'eZa Kuli semi Rc7ni ralri i per+~ ~ n He was enthusiastic in his praise of it, Everything in it rain l t g comp e e y rue, It was in every respect a masterpiece of its kind, He could think of nothing in it which should hags been left out, The only suggestion he made was that people in the prov- inces would also have bean greatly interested in reading of cases of the abuse of power by local police officials, though he supposed that details of such cases might actually-not be known to officials in ~Iarsawo Political a tti tudea i n Tfinne 3ilesi A ~o Source said that there were probably. not more than five per cent convinced Communists among the present population of Upper, Silesia, The .overwhelming majority of both Poles and ethnic Germane there was strongly anti-0ommunist, . He did not believe that the Communists were gaining followers, except possibly among the very-young, -but this did not mean that pro-western attitudes were remaining unchanged, In his view, there had been a great growtki of political passivity in recent years, what source aslled an Abetu~~'~~ of political in+:rreete. People were so depressed by the hopelesaneea of their situation that they had lost interest and faith in the West and in America, Sourcetraced this deadening of,intereate particularly to the widespread diailluaion- ment in Poland after the election of President Eisenhower, Many people in Poland had thought .that the victory of the Republican administration would somehow bring their liberation~'near?r, When they saw that this was not the ease, their despair was even greater than it had bean beforee p Though the above re~aarkA a lied a of both Pales and ethnic Germane, 50X1 source, was beat able to talk about the pol- ~ itical a o e na ve. Peer Sileaianao It was his opinions that the question of ~erm~n Polish relations in Upper Silesia, after Communism he,d been ov?rthrown, would best be solved by a plebiscite of native Upper Sileaians, Fie thought poet-war Polish immigrants. should be excluded from the votingp The plebiscite could then determine ', whether the natives wished the territory to remain a part of Poland, to be given to Germany, or to become an independent political entity like Switzerland, In the present state of Upper Silesian political opinion, he thought the~t such a plebiscite would show about 60 per cent of the vote for independence, from 20 to 30 per cent for union with Germany, and not more than five or ten per cent for continuation of the Polish connectiono If the native Silesian voters had to choose only between Poland or Ger- ' many, however, he estimated that 9PJ-per cent would .favor union with Germany, Source said that relations between the German?speaking (he would call tl~e'i531eaian-speak- ing) inhabitants of Upper Silesia and the-Poles were not as bad now as they were in the first years after the war, This was because some of the discrimination against- ' C 4NF IDENT IAL Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/06/20 :CIA-RDP82-000468000500100001-4 Fnv~ Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/06/20 :CIA-RDP82-000468000500100001-4 C CNF'~7ENT IAL -3? the native Sileaians, which had. been a feature of the first post-war years, had been done away witho Nevertheless the cut s btill favored the Poles in the allocation of office fobs, In the for example, four-fifths of the approxi- mately 7,00 manual wor ve eaiana but fewer than a quarter of the 1,.300 ?r more office workers were native Sileaians, 9a Scarce did not know what proportion of the present population of Upper Silesia con- vsisted of post?-war Polish immigrantao He believ?d that in the villages and on the farms practically all of the inhabitants were natives, but the cities were largely Folish, Probably, therefore, there were now more Poles in Upper Silesia than native wilesiana, Source believed that if Communism were overthrown, moat of these Poles would voluntarily choose to return to central Poland or to the territory which might be regained from the Soviet Union, gs evidence of this, h? cited the appearance in Po~.iah newspapers, at times when international tension is particularly high, of adver- tisements offering to exchange, for example, a villa in Wroclaw for a flat in Krakow. A great many of the Poles who had come to Silesia bad done so because, in the first years after the wsr, Silesia was something of a Klondike for there, Now, when oppor- tunities in Silesia were no better than elsewhere in Poland, the private Poles there were leas interested in the area, The native Upper Sileaiane approved of United .States support For [eat German rearmamento The Poles of source's acquaintance ac- cepted it9 but not enthusiastically, For the Poles, C,ommuniam and German rearmament were both evils, but as Communism was so much greater an evil, German rearmament was accepted as something which might eventually contribute to the liberation of Poland from Sc.viet~, ruled The argument that German-rearmament might bring war nearer was -not of much importance, A great many people felt that, since no peaceful solution of their problem was in sight, even war would b? better then an indefinite continuation of. Communist tyranny, n scow ? people in Poland indifferent For the PvlP 'it ~~~d ~~~ v W~a ~+~..eoa e d o. a, ma a no ifference who-was running the gvverzament in Moeovw, Nobody expected internal changes in the Soviet Union to make liFe-any better for thei peopled Poland or even for the people of Russia, for that matter. The United States was thought to be ?tronger than the USSR, but the Soviet possession of the hydrogen bomb was iseen as .evening up the forces of the two powers. People supposed that the. issue would eventually have to be settled by a war, They did not think the war very likely within the next few years, as the Soviet .Union ,was probably not yet ready for it, but Dome it would, There was, there- fare, a general feeling that time was on the aide of the '~ Soviei;~;, a feeling which increased the diaaatiafaction felt in Poland toward dmeriaa's foreign polity. 'ghat is America-waiting for?" wen a commonly heard remark, Fool{ aani em and ToLth d 4.k~ ++.itia~= 1. Source did not have muoh direct and intimate contaot with young people. He tended to be pessimistic about the influence of Com~auniet propaganda on the young people, but admitted that to date the young people were still overwhelmingly anti-~Goma~nist. In some respects, indeed, the youth was more actively anti-Communist than the older gen- eration, Young people were not quite so resigned to the hopeleseneas of their sit- uation ga the older people were, In source's opinion, how?ver, thi? was only because .the young people caw t3~i.ngs more superficially than did their eldersa ?a $ooliganisra, used as a general term for drunkenness and disorderly behaviour in public, was a serious problem;. but not one which the public felt-very strongly about, People generally recognized that hooliganism was a result of the Communist social and economic situation, T~ife in Poland was dull and disagreeable, Drinking made it less so, The public also tolerated hooliganism because everyone knew that youth ]sad to sow its wild oatsg o ~.s for the so-called hooligans themselves, source did not think that their behaviour was politically motivated, Doubtless some were aware that the trearing of supposedly west?rn-style clothing was an indirect. form of political demonstration, but many more G ~ IDENT IA,L Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/06/20 :CIA-RDP82-000468000500100001-4 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/06/20: CIA-RDP82-000468000500100001-4 CONFIDENTIAL -4- he saw little difference in the be- 14, 15 e I I 50X1 reca p an fox the works had called or processing eome think that 3uvenile delinquency was increasing, but it was not being reduced either. were probe.bly mainly interested in impressing their girl friendso Source did not our o young war ers an o he rate of absenteeism was about the same far all age groupao The amount of thievery practiced by young workers was the same as that practiced by the older, He did not think that there was, as yeti any significant group of "gilded youth" in Poland responsible for a disproportionate share of ~uve- nile misbehaviouro ~ses~n Source was pessimistic about the outlook for religion in''Polanda-~-' The t~idmph of . t'he Communists had shattered the religious beliefs of many people, not so much as a result of Communist propaganda ae a consequence. of the evident victory for thefbrcea of evil represented by Communist rule, More people went to church now, but this was more as a political protest against Communism than because more people had become really religiousa The clergy tended each year to become more'paasive and submissive. the Communists were not winning ov?r the clergy anymore than they wer? winning over any substantial part of the population, They were aucceedirag, however, in changing the clergy into only another malleable instrument for the diffusion of Communist propaganda on such selected theaiea as the need for peace obedience to the civil 50X1 authorities, and the likes Souxc?, based his concluaion,s on discussions he had had with a brother-in--law who had worked in a provincial government office concerned with organizing district meetings of the priestsa T base meetings were bald every two or three weeks and were used by Forty officials to lay down the general lines which had to be followed in sermons qn the .following Sundays. Ec?n~mip Pte, ing P,r. j~ar_ ti_t the question had not been finally reeolvedf but it was certain that the protests of the factory director and his technical staff would be overruled. The final figure spoken of for increased output 1n 1955 was on the order of eight or ten per Dent above the 1954 plan, 160,000 tons of steel, As of the end of September, 119,000 tons had been worked,. Preliminary work on the plan for 1955 was ata,rted in September 1954, The factory~s version of the plan, providing for an increase in output with e~i.sting equipment and manpower of only three per cent over the 1954 plan figure, was sent to Warsaw at the end of October 1954? At the end of govember 1954, this document was dis- approved by-the Ministry and returned to the plant with instructions to revise it upwards to provide for an increase in output of up to 15 per cent with the same equipment and manpower, When the factory management replied that this was impossible, the Ministry insisted that, if proper aocount were taken of technical progress same sizeable increase in production should nevertheleaa be possibled the overnment9 effort divert labor to agriculture had 50X1 never een very serious, there 50X1 was a campaign to persuade workers with farming backgrounds to transfer to the State Forma, but of the approximately 6,400 employees at the works, fewer than 20 workmen made the shift, The campaign failed because, in sourceoa opinion, the organ 50X1 ization section of the plant did little or nothing to help it succeed, The whole action was left to the unassisted and amateurish efforts of the youth organization ~ti~ ) a a similar but more earnest effort was made to obtain labor far the mines, Party activists, working quietly by approaching individuals instead of making public speeches, managed to persuade some twenty or thirty employees of the to take ~oba in the coal mines., and to oblige another 174 or 160 Poland to obtain unskilled farm labor ea replacesenta for the men shifted to the mineeo accep sus ranafers, The factory planned to send a recruiting team to eastern Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/06/20: CIA-RDP82-000468000500100001-4 Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/06/20 :CIA-RDP82-000468000500100001-4 G()NFIDENTIAL _~ 5 Consumers Goods Production and the IQew Gouges 18, Source said that hardly anyone in Poland had any expectation that living conditions would improve in-the next years. gt the beginning of the present Six Year-Plan in 1949-5C, there had been some hope that the standard of living would eventually rise, but since 1952 most people have taken it for granted that Communist promises about a better standard of living were as worthless as Communist promises on other sub,~ects. The occasional price cuts were a fraud, and generally reco nized as such. Prigea 50X1 were cut in public, and later raised in silence, in the for exQmple, 50X1 several down cans of fruit preserves, T'he grocery had received word that the prices for these would be inoresaed the next day. Such rice raises for one item or another were an almost weekly bappe~ ing in the store, For this reason, source believed that the titan- 50X1 lard of living at the was actually lower than it had been a year earlier, Nloreovsr, the decline was continuing, 50X1 19. The talk about increaei the out ut of eonsumersQ nods bad not been very seriously 5oX1~ .meant, an order wsa received. Pram the Ministry of Metallurgy to set up a separate department to~."manufacture small metal items such as knives scissors and the like on a .aide-line basis, Thia was to 50X1 have begun thereupon-wrote to Warsaw to as if he wo d receive financial assistance in gett ng this production under way and if hs would be allocated additional labor. The Ministry replied that no ` approval would be given for hiring additional employees, and that no help would be advanced to finance the initial stages of such production, Labor should be obtained from the other departments of the works, and the new productions should be financed out of the existing works? budget until. it became self-supporting':, the ~Iinietry stated. Since the Min~.stryda original inetruatiota-bad said nothing about which items should ba manufactured, or how large the sQ,~arate c~spartment should be, the offiaiale in the factory aonaluded thet Warsaw was neat r~a~,ly;in earnest-in ideuing irastruationa far this aide-line consumera? goads production, Z`his was`the end of the discussion of plena For astong up a, special department. far the output of con~umers~ goods. 50X1 20. .There had of agates alwa s been- a small amount of side--line produvtioa of consumers goods but even bhie had inoreamed little in the last-two years. Engineers in the facto desi ned and made a very attraotive, emall~ many- 50X1 bladed, pocket knife in the for possible manufacture as a Bide-line 50X1 item, The factory director, had asked the provincial author- sties in Stalinogrvd (~Catowiae at what prise the knife ehou,ld be sold. The factory had proposed to sell the knife for about 15 zlotya~ and thought that it avuld be retailed for 20 zlot a The rov nasal offiaiale said the knife should retail for 50X1 at least 50 zlotys. he works director had refused to pro- duae the knife unless more of the profit wr~uld go to the factory instead of to the retail trading organization. Since the provincial offiaiale had not given in, no knives were being made. Source added, however, that Chia partivular difficulty may have been the result of bad blood which end sted for quite some time between the works. director and the Party authorities in Staling rod. The latter had written some Grit- 50X1 icism of Pernik in the local but as Farnik bad the strong support of the Minister for Metallurgy, Eng. Kie~atut Zema~tis, in Warsaw, he had held his own in the fight, ?].. Ideological considerations prevented the Communists from making any significant con- cessions to rivets enterprise, despite the economic need for such concessions. In 50X1 the for exampl?, the State Investment Bank at Stalinogrod sent a report to ~areaw stating that the state trading organizations in the province would not be able to supply all of the consumersQ goods needed in the province. The bank ,suggested that the situation might be alleviated if more small private shops were allowed to reopen and to deal in the scarce items, in particular in electrical goods (plugs, cords, and the like). The suggestion, carefully phrased to eliminate suspi- cions that its proponents were ideological backsliders, was-that some 75? retail shops should be allowed to reopen in the provinceo Source did not know how this number CGNFI~EI9TIAL Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/06/20 :CIA-RDP82-000468000500100001-4 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/06/20: CIA-RDP82-000468000500100001-4 CONF'IDENT'IAL ?6m compared to the total of private shops Mill in e~d.stenee9 but said that in the county of Stalinogrod the proposal had been that 200 shops be opened alongside an existing total of from 100 to 150 private shopso The bank officials who put forward the scheme did not ask themselves where such newly~~opened shops would obtain the supplies they would sell, but more or less took it for granted that private initi- 50X1 ative would find sources of au 1 the state could not reach War a eto d t proposal, Waee Levels: 50X1' In the. _50X1 50X1 Per mont~ZS~es and of r eo ulsory deductions took about lane hundred zlotys per 50X1 month, In the his gross earnings amAUnted to a little over th, and his net to about 1,8000 His base pay in the but there was a 100 per cent premium on top of this whenever the tonnage output of the plant was lO0 per cent of the plan, The premium was smaller if the output was lower,. If production was less than 90 per cent of plan' no premium at all was paid, In addition to the premium, th?re was an allowance -during the win- ter of 135 zlotys per month in lieu. of a special coal ration, Seventy per cent of 50X1 remia on the grounds that they were technicians, The clerical employees who did not receive the pre a were a wcarst-paid workers in the plant even though their base pay rates tended to be higher than those of the production workers All of the latter received a premium, though the size of the premium depended on their qualifieationse tTnskilled production workers were limited to a maximum premium of 75 per cent of? the base pay, 50X1 According to a new wage law of premia would be cut in the future by linking th?ir size to the financial ~eaults of the factoryas operations as well as, or perhaps instead of- to the physical output reaulte,. It was ea$id that this would also be applied tv the wages of tMe eler~.cal staff, i,e,, to the non- production ~rorkerae It was suggested t}aat if they felt discriminated against they had the reined,=,r of transferring to productive work,.- All of this amotanted to a cut in wages, since !:'.e raising of the output ~igurea in made it leas likely- 50X1 that the same ~,ercentage premix could be earned under the new plan ae had been pos- Bible ender tits previous one, p1a., .Source was not familiar with details on the wages or living standards of other groups in the country, He was sure that the high Party leaders in Warsaw lived very we11, but Party leaders elsewhere were not nearly ao well off, City people co~lained that the peasants w?re better off than townspeopl?, but source did not think that thin wap necesaerily true, The only firm generalization he cared to make wsa that white=collar workers were very poorly off indeed, 8sbe,tgcre and Thpft i n poi_i eh TndLe .*nr= - - 250- Source thought that there was hardly any sabotage now bein racticed in Poland, There were frequent accidents and break-downs which 50X1 50X1 the police almost always investigated to determine whether sabotage may have been present, but he never caw any proof that sabotage had actually been practiced, The security officials always tried to find someone to blame whenever anything went wrong, but the local plant officials generally tried to protect their employees, if necessary by shifting the blame for an accident to faulty equipment su lied by . another factory, Source had the impression. that since the the olice 50X1 themselves had made fewer arrests in such cases than ~ormerlyo -50X1 there were no oases in which techriQiaus were arras cas one l a y a workman would come to work. drunk,. would start a fight with a foreman, and would thereafter disappear9 presumably into the custody of the polio?, ~6, At all stages of productionfl however, there reigned what source called "unlimited carelessness" (grenzenloae ~Tschlaeseigkeit)o Nobody cared what Kappened to a machine or a product eo long as he could not be held personally responsible for its C O19FIDENTIAL Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/06/20: CIA-RDP82-000468000500100001-4 50X1 Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/06/20 :CIA-RDP82-000468000500100001-4 G ?nT~'IDE1~lT`IAL - 7 loss, Nor d~:d.anybody.care haw much state property was stolen9 so that losses from thefts were enormous. As an examnlA of +.1,i a e,,,,,,,,,, ?:.._a ~~_ ~_ _____ _____ 50X1 thieves were never found9 though it was evident~toveveryoneVthat probably all~oflthe 50X1 workers handling the metal bad shared in the filching of the copper. Such stolen metal was usually sold by the workmen (directly or through middlemen) to private craftsmen and others who made small metal objects at home in their spare time, This form of non-political "economic sabotages was so t~rell--or anized a small team of three or four. workmen on the night shift made a regua1r50X1 ~~ practice of producing and smuggling out of a actory for resale to middlemen large quantities of small metal magnets to b? used in electric guitars. In this instance, i~t was even possible that another state enterprise, the one making guitars, was the eventual purchaser of the Illegally produced magnets, The authorities made great efforts to suppress ouch thievery9 but the traffic was so profitable, and so many peogle took part in it, that there was p''erhaps more thievery now than ever before.- 50X1 3..,c~..,Qts p; 89.3 . a 89ce 890. ~m7,. X83>3~a ~ 7~9 Z8o a~3 ~'62.2.0~ a~~-,a3 ~2,~4.~~ 9~7 0.9 0~'IDENTIaL 6/55 QN~~ SSn-r 55~ 55M 5~ 55r~ 55~ 55M 55~ 55~~~9 NQpM~ 55M 5~ 55~ Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/06/20 :CIA-RDP82-000468000500100001-4