POLAND: A New Party Boss Takes Charge

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Despite Kania's talk of moderation and reform, doubt remained about his intentions. His freedom of action was limited in any case by the dilemma he had inherited from Gierek: repudiation of the agreements would spark renewed labor upheavals, yet the establishment of truly independent unions would irk Moscow. For the present, he seemed to be feeling his way, seeking a balance between the workers' expectations and the Kremlin's imperatives.

Describing the quandary facing the leadership, Central Commitee Member Mieczyslaw Rakowski told TIME: "For the party, this was a huge shock. These changes should be carried out by the party. But you can't do this under shock." Despite the confusion sown by the strike experience, Rakowski felt that the promised reforms could be "a very positive step toward a socialist system that will be accepted by the people."

Washington policymakers seemed willing to take Kama's assurances at face value for the time being; their optimism was shared by few analysts in Western Europe. Said a skeptical West German Foreign Ministry expert: "What we saw [in the accords] was a tactical retreat by the government. Warsaw needed to fend off the danger of Soviet invasion and get the workers back to their jobs. Now the clawing back of what was given on paper begins." West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, moreover, had special reason for gloom: both men got on well with Gierek and saw his relative openness to the West as an important factor in maintaining European détente.

On one point there could be little disagreement: the appalling state of the Polish economy. Planning Chief Henryk Kisiel estimated that the strikes had caused a $667 million drop in national income, while the promised pay raises would cost $3 billion a year. This would place a severe strain on an economy already groaning under a $20 billion hard-currency foreign debt.

Kisiel outlined a number of possible reforms to remedy the situation: some industrial decentralization, a better balance of goods and money in the marketplace, increased production of consumer goods, and the transfer of about $200 million to the agricultural sector to boost sagging food production. One key reform he proposed will be hard for the people to accept: an overall price rise, which sparked the strikes in the first place.