Correspondents' Correspondence Poland's Economics

...Wladyslaw Ratynski of the Polish Communists' Academy of Social Science accused Rakowski of lacking faith in the Socialist system...

...His brand of decentralization, Ratynski asserted, would be a perversion of "democratic centralism" in economics, leading down the path of "revisionism...

...And all medical personnel have been instructed to refrain from smoking in the presence of patients and students...

...Reformist economists across Eastern Europe have argued for shifting the focus away from the State ministries and toward the enterprises actually involved in production and distribution...

...The article provoked a strong rebuke from the daily Zycie Warsawy...

...Smoking is also prohibited in many restaurants, theaters and cinemas, as well as in most means of public transportation—including domestic flights of less than four hours...

...That his government has made no dramatic moves since the June 1976 worker unrest is an indication to some observers of fundamental differences on future direction at the top Party level, and the Rakowski-Ratynski polemics are thought to be a surface manifestation of this disagreement...

...But the specifics of the economic debate are important, too, with possible implications for all of Eastern Europe...

...The sharp attack on Rakowski by Zycie Warsawy could reflect the feelings of a segment of the national leadership that fears economic difficulties and domestic unrest will force Party chief Edward Gierek lo liberalize his policies...

...Thus, the star of Premier Aleksei N. Kosygin, who has been relatively flexible on economic matters and has endorsed the partial revisions contained in the Shchekino and Zlobin Methods for measuring productivity, shines less brightly today in the Soviet firmament...

...The reformist mood peaked last year when the pages of the economic publications Sotsialisticheskaya In-dustriya and Planovoye Khozaistvo percolated with "critical appraisals" that urged improvements in planning and management, plus a rededication to efforts aimed at enhancing the drab lifestyle of average consumers...

...Among the Warsaw Pact nations, it was Poland, in 1956, that was the site of the first theoretical discussions about decentralization...

...Moscow has confronted this situation by issuing a broad array of new regulations...

...Mieczyslaw Rakowski, editor-in-chief of the weekly Polytika, triggered the dispute in early November with an article calling for far-reaching decentralization of the economy...

...That is the only way to stimulate individual initiative and responsibility, he argued, and thereby increase productivity, particularly in consumer goods...

...Albert L. Weeks A Footnote Geneva—Proposals for compulsory health warnings on all cigarette packages sold in the Soviet Union have been backed by one Moscow agency and promptly blocked by two others, according to the weekly Liter-alurnaya Gazeta...

...A recent survey conducted by the Central Institute of Health Education, cited by Litera-turnaya Gazeta, estimated that over 60 per cent of women now smoke regularly, with both overall tobacco consumption and the proportion of women smokers on the rise...

...Individual reports to the December session of the Supreme Soviet, and citations from Party chief Leonid I. Brezhnev's unpublished address to the Central Committee on the eve of the legislative meeting, also confirm that the Kremlin gerontocracy has once again chosen caution and conservatism over the major alterations many others inside and outside the USSR believe are necessary...

...the accusations, Rakowski declared, revived "ghosts and phantoms buried in a political cemetery"—in other words, Poland's Stalinist past...

...Besides banning the sale of cigarettes at sports grounds, the State Sports Committee no longer allows smoking at swimming pools and covered stadiums...

...Yugoslavia provided the model in the early '50s, following its break from the Soviet bloc, and now has a "market Socialism" system—a highly decentralized, competetive economy of enterprises run by Workers' Councils...

...What makes the conflict between the Ministry of Health and the Ministries of Agriculture and Light Industry particularly embarrassing for the Soviets is its close similarity to the confrontation between public and commercial interests in the West...

...A forum for the hard line since Bogdan Rolinski became editor in July 1973, the Warsaw daily has been especially harsh in its criticism of Polish and other East European dissidents during the past 18 months...

...and the USSR's New York—The modest goals of the 1978 Soviet economic plan announced last month—amounting to a mere 4.5 per cent increase in industrial output—make the outcome of 1977's extensive economic discussions clear...

...With its conveniently modest goals, however, no central ministries need feel too embarrassed by "underful-fillment...

...trade officials in Moscow oppose any action that would prevent them from reaching that goal...

...Ratynski's language came very close to labeling Rakowski a deviant from acceptable standards of political thought...

...Reforms of the type recommended near the end of Nikita Khrushchev's reign and during the opening year of the Brezhnev-Kosygin regime, as well as the suggestions made in the 1977 critiques of the economists (mostly professors) whose objectivity remains uncorrupted by government involvement, are still being rejected...

...The Ministry of Education has just forbidden smoking in schools, and introduced in all universities and institutes of adult education compulsory courses on the dangers of tobacco...

...Reforms leaving most of the country's agriculture to private farmers, and allowing limited, small-scale private enterprise were implemented under Wladyslaw Gomulka shortly afterward, and they are generally credited with precipitating the economic ferment that subsequently developed elsewhere in Eastern Europe...

...At issue is the role of the central State authorities in the details of economic life under Socialism, and the question of where the bulk of responsibility for efficiency is to be placed...

...Not so the economy, though...

...But the Supreme Soviet speeches and the published plan stuck to the old methods...

...The leader is reputedly open to a relaxed, pragmatic approach in governing Poland, and there is little doubt that he takes the threat, if not the substance, of the workers', intellectuals' and Catholic Church's opposition seriously...

...And such academic economic specialists as Abel G. Agan-begyan and Professor Fedorenko proposed replacing the "volume measure" for determining plan performance with indicators pegged realistically to actual consumer orders and their fulfillment...

...Thus the concern that Warsaw may once again stimulate the desire for change in economically conservative countries like Bulgaria, Rumania and Czechoslovakia—not to mention the Soviet Union—also appears to be a factor in the background of the present Polish debate.—Juris Kaza...

...The Five-Year Plan that runs to 1980 calls for a 16 per cent increase in the production and sale of tobacco products—a figure accurately set to reflect rising consumer demand...

...But that of Brezhnev, who ever since coming to power in October 1964 has backed the heavy-industry, central-administration advocates and given short shrift to the "consumerist" or reform-minded elements, has taken on new luster...

...The third year of the 10th Five-Year Plan, 1978, promises to be a lackluster one...

...Even private initiative was condoned by the more outspoken economists, who pointed approvingly to the household subsidiary plots that Soviet families cultivate in their spare time with results far out of proportion to the gardens' tiny percentage of the country's total arable land...

...Indeed, in a response the editor charged his critic with ideological extremism...

...But according to Literaturnaya Gazeta, which has been conducting its own journalistic campaign for more drastic measures to combat the increase in smoking in the USSR, the Ministry of Health is felt to have gone too far in trying to tamper with commerce...

...Rakowski, a member of the Polish United Workers' Party Central Committee, stands high enough in the Communist ranks for those reading between the lines to hypothesize that the indirect target is Gierek...

...Soviet health authorities are alarmed by the growing number of smokers in the country, particularly among youngsters aged 13-15...

...And the Soviet tobacco industry, like its Western counterpart, has shown itself far more concerned with meeting production targets than with the health of its customers.—Thomas Land...

...Munich—A debate on economic policy currently being waged in the Polish press may be merely the tip of an iceberg of controversy within the country's Communist leadership...

...The weekly has pointed to consumer goods shortages, hit out at day-to-day bureaucratic injustices, and called for more press criticism and greater "Socialist democracy...

...The bitterness of the exchange has prompted Western specialists to suggest that more than a question of economic policy is at stake, for Rakowski and his journal are seen as representing the forces of acceptable political liberalism...

...Over the past year, Polytika has published many articles about Poland's failings, often proposing unorthodox solutions...

...Greater labor discipline, propaganda appeals to "patriotic" duty and less waste of raw materials continue to be the official panaceas for Soviet economic sterility and shortfall...

...All of this, of course, has its political reflection...

...Brezhnev used one of his favorite words, berezhnoye, which is related to the root of his own family name and means "conserving," or making fuller use of what is already available...