From Solidarity to shock therapy. Rethinking and transforming economy in Poland 1975-1995

• Applicant: Dr. Florian Peters
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 317799707

This research project addresses the economical transformation from state-run planned economy to market economy in Poland by adopting a social and cultural history perspective. It focuses specifically on the subtle discursive shifts taking place throughout the decade preceding the fall of state socialism, and relates them to the profound social and economic changes of the turbulent years of transition up to 1995. Firstly, it provides an in-depth analysis of the discourses on economic reform originating from the Polish communist party, from the government's economic advisory bodies and from underground publications issued by the democratic opposition, which ultimately converged in the elite compromise negotiated at the Round Table, paving the way for the "shock therapy" employed by the Balcerowicz plan. Secondly, it seeks to link this discourse-centered approach with an inquiry of both legal and illegal market practices developing in Poland since the 1980s, which amounted to the notion of "bottom-up proto-capitalism" coining the Polish transformation of 1989. Locating itself at the crossroads of economic, social and cultural history, the project strives to assess the relevance of endogenous factors of transformation compared to the influence of transnational transfers from the West, which had been triggered by the leverage of Poland's foreign debt as well as by the participation of western advisors in reforming Polish economy from 1989. It chooses Poland as a case study for an empirically based and transnationally embedded inquiry into the history of transformation, because open conflict and negotiation processes between rulers and the ruled had been most frequent here since the late 1970s. Moreover, an analysis of the Polish way out of state socialism promises to generate insights reaching far beyond that particular case, as Poland's radical "shock therapy" led the way for change in other countries of communist Eastern Europe. While the "annus mirabilis" of 1989 is commonly regarded as the starting point of Eastern European transformations, this projects aims at embedding the caesura of 1989 into longer lines of development. It this effort, it unveils the discursive and social preconditions of that radical change and evaluates them as historical factors in their own right. Complementing the vast body of social sciences research on system transformation in the most important of Eastern Europe's "transition countries" with a historical-genealogical approach, it simultaneously reverses the perspective on late socialism predominantly adopted by historians: Instead of focusing on the downfall and collapse of the "Eastern Bloc", it shifts attention to precursors and origins of the new order that came to its breakthrough all over Europe after the fall of state socialism. Thus, it provides an innovative contribution to historicizing change in East Central Europe before and after 1989.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants