Resistance to price increases
Socialist Organiser1982 1982-02-04Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 5 →
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— Suslov: bloodstained creature of Stalinism — THE FIRST major fightback against the Polish junta since the initial resistance to martial law two months ago erupted in Gdansk last weekend.
Over -200 people have been arrested, and 14 injured (eight of these cops) in clashes between students and secondary school pupils and the police.
The youths distributed anti-government leaflets and demonstrated outside the Lenin shipyard as one of the shifts was clocking off. The ensuing battles with the police seem to have lasted for over six hours.
As a result, martial law in Gdansk has been extended for an extra two hours, from 8pm to Sam. The use of private cars has been banned. Telephone services have been cut again, and various events have been cancelled.
These clashes were reported in the Polish media, although with a 24 hour delay.
Further unrest is possible as higher prices for basic goods are introduced. IN THE closed and venerable circle which makes up the Russian Politbureau, Mikhail Suslov, who died last week, held a special place.
He was the sole remaining figure within the Russian gerontocracy who had achieved eminence already under Stalin-and whose political career began during the early civil war years. He joined the Communist Party in 1921.
From a 19 year old recruit to the Revolution in 1921 to the position of "King-maker" in the Politbureau, the man who declined the General Secretaryship of the Communist Party; elevating instead the Brezhnev/Kosygin/Podgorny trio, is a very long way. Much water must have flowed under the bridge, and in Suslov's case it was stained red with the blood of his victims.
Unflinching
Susiov excelled himself "organisational work"
1930s: the euphemis Price increases have been the most explosive issue in Poland over the past decade. They provoked the 1970-71 riots and strikes in the Baltic which left hundreds of workers dead, and the 1976 riots in Radom from which the KSS-KOR developed as a defence committee for persecuted worker militants.
The July 1980 price rises, and the immediate strike wave in response, were the direct prelude to the August occupations and the founding of Solidarnosc.
Although the bureaucracy, and western economists, aruge that price rises are necessary so as to introduce greater economic balance, the main reason for the increases is to place foodstuffs out of the reach of the consumer and divert them overseas as exports.
Increased exports, particularly in traditional. areas such as meat products, are necessary if Poland is to repay its huge debts to the west.
Repayments will amount to $ 1,500 billion every quarter for the coming year. for the purges and trials which decimated millions.
He was an inspector in the Communist Party's Internal Control Commission and already at this stage his particular inclination for Pesolution of ideological issues was coming to the fore.
The extermination of the Trotskyist left and the Bukharinite right in which he personally participated added another feather to the cap of this committed and glacial young man. Soon he was transferred to more demanding tasks-but even in this challenge Mikhail Suslov excelled himself by ensuring the "pacification" of Lithuania in the mid 40s, after three years of Nazi occupation. Thousands perished and one in ten of the Lithuanian population was deported to Siberia. So hated has Suslov remained in Lithuania that the one time he dared to reset foot in the Republic in 1960, bloody riots ensued.
Unflinching service was repaid by entrance to the Central Committee and subSocialist Organiser, Thursday 4 February, 1982 Page