Polish Transition Leaves No Safety Net for Needy

When baker Krzysztof Lubaszka offered bread to pensioners at a price below his cost, so many people crowded into his shop in northern Warsaw that the plate-glass front window was smashed.

What was meant as a simple act of charity in troubled times turned into pandemonium as speculators and the well-off vied with the truly poor to get the bargain bread. After a few days, Lubaszka called the whole thing off, then looked around for some other way to help.

At a time when foreign governments are preparing large aid packages to help Poland through the painful transition from communism, Lubaszka stands as a frustrated symbol of the difficulties Poles are encountering.

“People through these last 40 years have got accustomed to the idea that the state is giving them everything,” Helena Guralska, deputy minister of Social Security, said Wednesday in an interview.

Guralska, a former economic adviser to Solidarity, the independent trade union movement that now dominates the government, said the Communist authorities made promises they could not keep and at the same time suppressed efforts at independent social organization.

Now that the old system has collapsed, she said, “there must be a change in the whole mentality” of the people.

Meanwhile, the rapid deterioration of the economy means that the number of people facing poverty is rising sharply. Soaring inflation has made it particularly difficult for retired people and invalids.

Zofia Hetman, 68, said her $10 monthly pension barely pays her rent and electricity bill and buys a small loaf of bread a day.

Jacek Kuron, the minister of labor and social security, conceded that “Poland has practically no sensible social welfare system.”

“Such a system can be introduced,” he said, “but that will take one, two, even three years. People need to be helped right now.”

The government planned to issue food stamps to the poorest 4.5 million of Poland’s 38 million people, but the state bank refused to issue the coupons because it would cost too much. Kuron is expected to come up with an alternative idea by the end of this month.

Kuron, an often-jailed former dissident, said the other day on his weekly television program that his underground experience could serve as a model for the country in this time of economic need.

“Let’s launch a nationwide campaign to locate the needy and help them,” he said. “In 1976, we set up the Workers Defense Committee to help unfairly dismissed workers. . . . We helped between 10,000 and 20,000 people at a time when you could lose your job for providing this kind of assistance, be beaten up and imprisoned.

“At the same time, we achieved something bigger: the self-organization of society and the beginning of its subjectivity. This was the beginning of the road to Solidarity, to democracy and independence. We must realize this because we are in a similar situation now.”

There are some bright spots in the picture. The Polish Red Cross has organized soup kitchens in about half the country’s counties. The Roman Catholic Church and an occasional private benefactor run similar charities. There are now about a dozen such outlets in Warsaw offering one hot meal a day to the old and the poor.

Red Cross worker Ewa Jablonska said the organization’s five Warsaw soup kitchens serve about 1,500 people, and the number is increasing every day. She said there has also been an increase in the number of working people asking for financial help. Their paychecks cannot keep pace with inflation, she said.

Kuron established an “SOS” fund to help the Red Cross and other charitable organizations, and it raised the equivalent of about $10,000 in the first two weeks.

“This, of course, is only a drop in the ocean of need,” he said, “but the stream of generosity is also flowing in other places.”

But Kuron’s deputy, Guralska, sees weakness even in the initiatives that have been taken.

“People haven’t had a tradition of this sort of thing,” she said. “One person opens a soup kitchen, and all of a sudden everybody wants to open one. Nobody has other ideas about what could be done.”

The coalition government is trying to encourage local initiatives to help those most in need, but its record is spotty. The one notable exception--in a country where organized giving has all but disappeared in the last two generations--is the Catholic Church.

But the church, too, has problems, according to Father Stefan Gralak, director of the charity commission for the Warsaw diocese. Ironically, the problems are rooted in Western aid.

“Up to about 1980, to the time of Western aid, people were pretty sensitive on this issue,” Gralak told an interviewer. “Any appeal from the parish was answered quickly and efficiently.”

But then, the churches became the preferred distribution channel for outside help, and that, rather than organizing aid, became their prime concern.

“The aid from outside the country sort of damaged the structure of the help,” Gralak said. “It spoiled the connections between us, and people became used to receiving rather than giving.”

The church will have little to do with distributing any new Western aid, Gralak said, adding: “The priests do not want this help. They fear it will spoil the people again. Now we’re returning to our old methods and with our own means.”

Lubaszka, the baker, said that he, too, will try again. With the help of an apartment cooperative, he is getting up a list of 200 families that need low-cost bread.

“The situation is tragic,” he said, “and we have to help each other. This was our goal, and it will be, despite the unfortunate beginning. Let them at least have bread!”