The rest of the East bloc watched last week's turbulence in Poland with understandable unease. News accounts of the strikes were guarded at first, tending to emphasize the Warsaw government's calls for order and the seriousness of the economic situation. Poland's basic problems have their counterparts, to some degree, nearly everywhere that Moscow's writ runs. Low productivity, heavy indebtedness and cumbersome bureaucracies plague all the Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe. Thirty-five years after the end of World War II, shortages of food and consumer goods are endemic. The gap continues to widen between...
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