Visit to Poland
GALBRAITH, JOHN KENNETH
Traveler's Notebook - 2 Visit to Poland By John Kenneth Galbraith THERE IS a good deal of confusion in Polish agricultural thinking, as the discussion this morning brought out. The importance of...
...However, three had been scheduled and I agreed to the change...
...It has suddenly become very warm and a large crowd was out...
...The position here is an interesting one and not well understood...
...He told me his wife and child have just got a visa to visit the United States...
...The result is deep dissatisfaction and articulate and uninhibited criticism...
...Everyone was pleased when I said that I was being exploited by the workers' state...
...The attendance was good and the discussion, which was alert and friendly, lasted until about noon...
...But after some reflection I declined...
...Finally, I asked him how he found his own life in Poland...
...Do you know the difference between capitalism and Communism...
...These inconsistencies occasionally come into a single conversation...
...Now arms investment has been much reduced, but there is still a deep conviction that this generation must sacrifice for the next—"We face twenty years of austerity...
...This would get the same output with fewer people...
...My wife was never a Communist...
...But there is also worry about the number of young people who are leaving the farms, and you hear it argued that peasant incomes must be good to keep people on the land...
...A well-informed individual has given me an account of the economic policy of the early '50s...
...Any number of people can be occupied in making speeches or, more particularly, in serving as an audience...
...commented on the brillia,nce and variety of the academic dress in contrast with the University of Chicago...
...I HAD planned to give but one lecture in Cracow...
...They don't know what that is...
...He says the workers are in a difficult mood...
...While good relations with the USSR are essential, even the most ardent Communists with whom I talked consider themselves Poles first...
...This turned out to he mine...
...our tour, and I returned to the hotel for dinner...
...My food habits are becoming a trifle monotonous...
...A narrow and restrained economic life is no doubt possible in a culturally backward community, and many such communities would think Polish standards highly satisfactory...
...I was to be interviewed by the overseas English service of the Polish radio...
...But presently he directed me to another hotel where I would at least be understood...
...Investment goods naturally had a high priority in the Six-Year Plan, and in 1951 and 1952 the tensions accompanying the Korean War brought a great increase in armament investment...
...I would think it is a troublesome point for the average local reader that the grindees are ten-thousand-acre wheat-ranchers...
...The final section will deal with Yugoslavia...
...After some search I made my problem known—or tried to—in another hotel...
...It is hard to overestimate the desire of the Polish intellectuals, again including a good many members of the high bureaucracy and press—and in particular the university people— to be considered part of the West...
...Everyone is aware that life is better in Western Europe, and this is the standard for comparison...
...But they are equally against the present order...
...Nothing that he said seemed very dangerous by Polish standards, and it is my over-all impression that the police, if they do listen, must be astonished when they hear anything that isn't critical of the Government...
...MY LAST lecture was at 10 A.M...
...I would gather he thinks Socialism still might work, but not in Poland...
...Certainly the notion that all Communists take their orders willingly and automatically from Moscow—Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito, of course, excepted—can be a prime source of error...
...My having failed to notice either the name of the hotel or that of the street seemed to him wholly implausible...
...Under capitalism man exploits man...
...Then I called on Oskar Lange at the Polish Parliament building...
...At 5 P.M...
...This afternoon I strolled through the shopping area...
...He said, " I don't really know —just a better life...
...I came home early...
...The Chamber was in session, and we listened to a speech or two while Lange—who sits on the ministerial bench—was being told of our arrival...
...Kulaks...
...About half the seats were filled...
...I went into the largest department store which was far from prepossessing...
...Literally everyone you encounter is dreaming of a visit to Western Europe or the United States...
...Under Communism it is just the reverse...
...With one or two of the professors, I strolled through the streets and parks—the latter are rich and green and bursting with lilacs—and eventually I turned off close to my hotel...
...Many apologies have been made for the inability to transmit royalties, but they are to accumulate to my account in zloty...
...We are housed in a fine, large, 19th-century Lublin hotel—a pleasant and spacious change after the compact modern rooms of the Grand Hotel in Warsaw...
...The police patrol in pairs here with slung rifles...
...He has seen a lot of Polish workers and is an old and experienced Party worker and organizer...
...In a food store there were two other long queues—one I think for freshly ground coffee, although I couldn't see without being obvious...
...Yet everyone also agrees that Polish agriculture is over-populated...
...A few practice privately...
...She is completely honest...
...My lectures are to be published as a book in Poland and both translation and publication have been arranged...
...You see the advantage of socialism when it has feudal traditions...
...This reminds me of the most popular Polish story...
...1 have had these whenever I have eaten here and, although excellent, the possible combinations are somewhat limited...
...logically enough, made up two beds in the bedroom—one for myself and one for my charming guide—and none in the large living-room which I occupy, lings were straightened out...
...Now he has to struggle to get a Polish exit permit for them while the United States visa is still valid...
...The vodka is extremely helpful...
...I was glad to see that this great democratic invention is also useful in a Communist state...
...There was a long queue at a stand where lemons were for sale...
...The conversation was in German and I was conscious that I was making no sense...
...I asked him what the workers wanted...
...The jacket also explains, helpfully, that Norris' anarchistic tendencies are an "error...
...If asked, they would say, with all sincerity, that they are against a return to capitalism...
...While it is often supposed that speeches are for the purpose of communicating ideas, in fact they are primarily for the purpose of disguising the unemployment that is inevitable in the democratic process...
...The jacket says it is a valuable and vivid account of the grinding tendencies of American capitalism...
...I asked him why this generation should give up so much for the next—why, since it isn't a question of starvation or physical privation, people now living might not be given a better break at the price of a slower rate of growth...
...Pending completion of the kitchen, the hotel serves only ham or eggs or both...
...They want a system that works...
...The clerk took me to be a candidate for the local insane asylum...
...Geography makes a socialist economic order more or less an imperative...
...Without this prospect one imagines that life for quite a few, especially of the younger people, would seem hopelessly dull and uninviting...
...In the democratic state the representative requirements of government take far more people than can, in fact, be employed in the business of governing...
...There was a slight contretemps when we discovered they had...
...The importance of raising agricultural productivity is stressed...
...I was impressed by the energy with which people dashed up the escalators until I saw that this was necessary for they were not running...
...But any overseas radio operation is for propaganda purposes...
...During the afternoon I had a long talk with a former American Communist party member who was either deported to Poland some years ago or who left in anticipation of immediate deportation...
...The questions, which they had given me in advance, were quite innocent...
...I suspect that scholarly goals are best served by avoiding even the appearance of such involvement...
...Last night in Lublin, I investigated the position of lawyers in the socialist state...
...In reassuring parallel with Western democracy, no one was paying the slightest attention...
...Journey to Poland and Yugoslavia, by Harvard Univ...
...Then I discovered that I was not on the right street and also that on my arrival this morning I had not noticed the name of my hotel...
...He said there was an increasing tendency to make this argument...
...at the university...
...He made an interesting conversational slip...
...There is a soft drink in Poland called Agricola...
...A foreign diplomat with whom I talked said his house was not safe and he kept the radio going while we conversed...
...A fuller account of his impressions has been published as a book...
...After the lecture I had an odd accident...
...A terrific thunderstorm cut short With this second article in a three-part series on his recent trip to Europe, John Kenneth Galbraith concludes his observations on Poland...
...Only once was there a suggestion of secret police activity...
...But such contentment cannot so easily coexist with a brilliantly critical intellectual life...
...A "Ford Fellowship" is the new Jerusalem...
...But if you want the truth, I'm homesick as hell...
...So I shall have a certain capital position come the revolution...
...At the university celebrations, the Polish economist, Oskar Lange...
...More generally, the problem of Poland seems to be one of reconciling a very high state of intellectual achievement with a very low level of economic life...
...This brought a reduction in living standards and, along with the collectivization, cultivated the discontent which culminated in the 1956 disorders...
...He said, "The work is interesting enough...
...I did give a press interview which was briefly reported...
...The rest are joined in collectives, and fees are charged for the group as a whole and divided with due regard to rank...
...Even the least reconciled do not talk of much change here...
...To avoid the disaster of their participation, but while also avoiding the appearance of idleness, we have speeches...
...Press...
...I wouldn't advise a Polish professor who is in the United States to go on the Voice of America...
...I needed something to read today and found a cheap edition of Frank Norris' The Octopus, product of a Leipzig publisher...
...Adjusting for the relatively low level of capital goods prices, he thinks that with defense Poland was investing about 40 per cent of national income in 1952...
...The merchandise looks wretchedly poor...
Vol. 42 • March 1959 • No. 9
