Eastern Europe- Crisis in Poland

began in protest against increases in prices of meat and other foodstuffs, which have all along been kept low through heavy government subsidies. Similar strikes had been launched by workers in 1970 and 1976 when the government had raised food prices. In 1970 the workers compelled the resignation of Wladislaw Gomulka as chief of the ruling party and acceptance of their demands for higher wages to offset the increase in food prices. Even so, the workers returned to work only after about 45 of them had been killed and nearly 1,500 injured when the army opened fire on them. In 1970 when the regime once again contemplated railing prices of foodstuffs the workers at Radom and Ursus near Warsaw went on strike. The regime retracted within 24 hours and accepted the workers' demands. But soon thereafter a spate of arrests and dismissals of workers started. It was to defend these workers that a small group of intellectuals formed a workers' self-defence group known as KOR.