HI109 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Southern Ukraine, Hubris, Communist Party Of The Soviet Union
Document Summary
Week 17 peace revoluion and goodbye ussr. Why did the communist system seem invincible in the early 1970s: a convincing ideology, armed to the teeth; and the west had its own troubles. Yet: mouning environmental crises, decline in male life expectancy, rising alcoholism and skyrockeing divorce rates, ineiciencies of producion from centrally planned (chaoic) economies, reluctant liberalizaion, no third world to lean on as west had. Labour wages stagnated in the 1970s in poland, especially heavy industry in gdansk. 1976: state plans to increase buter prices by 33%, meat by 70% and sugar by 1005. Polish workers respond with massive strike 24-30th june 1976 that are brutally suppressed, but then the state declined to raise food costs. By 1979 polish economy sill in decline, shrank by 2% and state is now heavily in debt. Again the pressure on to lower wages and raise cost of goods. Polish workers create illegal trade union (because all unions were deemed illegal, because unnecessary)
