Democracy Sinks Poland Importer : Consumers: Foreigners who relied on Swede to bring in hard-to-find products and food no longer need his services. Supplies are more plentiful now.

Martial law, Chernobyl, the Iron Curtain ‘70s and empty-shelf ‘80s--those were great days for Thorsten Limnell.

Then came the post-communist reforms that opened borders, filled the stores and spelled the end of the line for the Swedish importer who took care of expatriates in Warsaw.

Limnell made his last run last month, ending two decades of braving Baltic ferries, Polish roads and customs-house bribery to bring truckloads of safe milk, pure water, computer parts and Diet Coke.

Diplomatic missions have decided that they now can get what they need on the Polish market or with a quick trip to united Germany next door.

“The new ones who come here, they don’t remember what I had done before,” the 43-year-old entrepreneur said wistfully of the grim old days. “They don’t know how bad it was.”

As recently as January, 1990, when Poland’s shock economic reform program began, it was virtually impossible to find sugar and flour in Warsaw, let alone oranges, typing paper or laundry detergent.

Limnell’s twice-monthly deliveries included office furniture that was made in Poland by Swedish companies for export only, fixings for diplomatic functions, Volvos whole or in parts, and diapers. Once he delivered an evening dress for a very large British lady.

Using special passes pressed on him by the Swedish Embassy six months earlier, Limnell arrived on schedule Dec. 16, 1981, three days after the Communists declared martial law and closed the borders.

“Everyone was very, very glad to see me,” he recalled. “It was, of course, very good for me.”

Hearing on his radio at home in April, 1986, that a reactor explosion and fire at the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant was sending radiation over neighboring Poland, Limnell telexed his customers: emergency water orders accepted.

Ranks of diplomats, executives and journalists assigned to Poland introduced their successors to “Mr. Limnell” as a lifeline to consumption. Limnell could provide anything--for a price.

There were grimaces at more than $1 a liter for Swedish milk and $2 for bottles of mineral water, but foreigners who could afford not to risk their health dealt with Limnell.

Polish milk is unpasteurized and often tainted. As for tap water, the Environment Ministry says the rust and smell is just the beginning of contamination.

A bit more self-consciously, expatriates ordered a few familiar tastes to augment the potatoes, parsnips and other root crops available in Polish shops.

Westerners spent mornings learning Swedish from the back of cornflakes boxes and treated frozen broccoli as a luxury. Americans even forked over $50, reduced from $100 after protest, for Thanksgiving turkeys.

“At the time I got here in 1986, there was no other way for us to get toilet paper, plastic garbage bags, pasteurized milk or orange juice,” said Jean Heilprin, an American writer who also became addicted to Limnell’s kiwi yogurt during three years in Poland.

Limnell said 1984 to 1986 were his best years, with three times the orders of 1990.

In 1968, Limnell was a theology student and visited the Swedish Seamen’s Church in Szczecin, the Polish Baltic port. The idea for his import business came from a chance introduction to a tour guide who had been asked to bring milk to diplomatic families after a tuberculosis outbreak in Warsaw.

A coincidental meeting on a bus brought him a partner, an Algerian truck driver, and Limnell & Co. was launched in 1969 with a $500 student loan.

He would stock the company’s refrigerated truck in Lund, Sweden, sleep on the Baltic ferry, then make the drive over rutted roads to Warsaw. Limnell ended each grueling, 20-hour trip with a quick change to suit and tie for meeting customers.

Through the years, he supplemented his catalogue offerings with concerts by Swedish orchestras, fashion shows and exhibits of Balinese art; befriended Ambassador Zine Abidine ben Ali of Tunisia, who now is president, and kept construction workers from Sweden in beer.

“I felt more or less like a friend,” Limnell said. “I was invited to parties. This never occurs now.”

He plied the infamous Polish bureaucracy, which had crushed lesser men--”With the right gifts, it can be even smoother than in the West”--and got the best of his fitful competition.

Although Limnell said he was far from being the millionaire many people suspect, he did buy his first Jaguar in Poland. He sold his latest one last fall when the business was going downhill.

Limnell once spent 26 hours on an ice-bound ferry and he was detained as a spy suspect for carrying suspicious drawings, of what actually were industrial vacuums.

Not until last May, Limnell said, did he miss his first delivery. While he was en route to Warsaw, a drunk driver hit his truck, leaving a passenger in the car dead, the truck out of commission and a shipment of milk and ice cream curdling in a ditch.

“We never really recovered,” he said. “The break in deliveries made people start to look elsewhere.”

With the Polish economy now open to the West, mineral water, irradiated “long-life” milk and other imports are available in regular stores, although supplies remain somewhat uncertain.

After a last trip back to Warsaw, by plane, to collect final bills, Limnell will try a new business: environmentally sound air-cleaning systems.