What Black Death was to Western Europe, Communism was to Central and Eastern Europe (original) (raw)

Oxford Scholarship Online

Abstract

I argue in this chapter that despite its ultimate social, economic, and moral bankruptcy, communism imposed on Poland after 1945 sowed the seeds of the country’s economic success after 1989. The old, feudal social structures were bulldozed to snap Poland out of growth-inhibiting extractive society equilibrium, creating a classless society, boosting social mobility, and securing good quality of education for all. Forced industrialization and unprecedented labour movements supported solid GDP growth rates in Poland until the 1960s, but low returns on investment, lack of technological progress, and external shocks caused declining growth rates in the 1970s, and economic stagnation in the 1980s. I conclude that the assumption that if Poland had returned to capitalism after 1945, it would have developed as quickly as the West, is simplistic. I show that a capitalist Poland would have faced significant challenges to growth, and convergence with the West would not have been guaranteed.

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