Służba Bezpieczeństwa wobec przekształceń ekonomicznych w Polsce 1980–1989. Przyczynek do badań nad ingerencją polskich służb specjalnych w gospodarkę
The Security Service of the Ministry of Interior in the face of economic changes in Poland in the years 1980−1989. Article aimed at discussing research on the interference of Polish security services in PRL economy

Summary/Abstract: This article summarises the findings concerning the connections between the civil security apparatus and the PRL economy, and presents a more precise definition of the field of research. Until now, research findings allowed historians to, at most, formulate general theses and put forward initial research postulates. Many researchers representing various fields of humanistic and socioeconomic sciences took up the issue of the relations between Polish security services and the economic situation in the PRL. This issue also attracted the attention of journalists. In the case of historians, methodological difficulties are posed mainly by analysis, interpretation and evaluation of the materials created and accumulatedby the SB in connection with the facility protection of PRL financial institutions and industrial enterprises. This documentation is brimming with specialist terminology (e.g. in the scope of macroeconomics or trade law), and some terms are still rooted in the previous political system. The first part of the article presents the organisational development of the economyinvigilation division of the SB, starting from the 1940s until the Industry Protection Department established at the end of the PRL. The second part focuses on selected areas of activity of SB division III-A/V/OG SB in the 1980s. On the basis of the results of a poll carried out in the Katowice Province and by means of quantitative methods, the hypothetical scale of interference into the state’s economy was estimated. In the third part, on the basis of SB operational materials and ASW (Internal Affairs Academy) training publications, the author attempted to define the actual scope of interest of the operational division in the invigilation of the economy. Four basic areas of SB activities have been discerned: 1. counteractingeconomic crimes, 2. protection of classified information, 3. analysis, evaluation and forecasting of the state’s economic development, 4. counteracting anti-system activity. The author put forward the hypothesis that in the 1980s, division V of the SB underwent the process of professionalization towards a specific “central anti-corruption office”, and at the same time shed its political dependencies. The second part deals with the reaction of the SB to the dynamic and radical changes in the economic system of the country in the second half of the 1980s (commercialisation and privatisation of enterprises owned by the Treasury) andthe pathologies that accompanied them (emancipation of nomeclature, i.e. the granting of ownership rights to state, communal or cooperative property to officials who held key administrative positions in the country, embezzlement). The materials showing the attitude of the heads of the ministries to the deregulation of the socialist economy are completed with SB reports on the Polish society’s approaches during economic changes, not only those initiated by the cabinet of Mieczysław Rakowski, but also those launched by the government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz.

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