Piotr Jaroszewicz
Piotr Jaroszewicz
The premier of technocratic growth
After workers rose against the 1976 price plan, it was withdrawn within a day.
Piotr Jaroszewicz was a communist politician and former military officer who connected Poland’s postwar state administration with economic management. He implemented Edward Gierek’s growth strategy, financed partly by Western credit, while rising consumption and debt deepened pressures on food supply and prices. His announcement of sharp food-price increases in 1976 helped provoke worker protests in Radom and Ursus; the government withdrew the plan, while the repression helped bring workers and intellectual opponents together in KOR. Removed as premier in 1980, he was murdered at home with his wife in 1992.
Career timeline
- 1929–1939Primary-school teacher and headmaster
- 1943–1945Political-education officer in the Polish forces in the USSR
- 1945–1952Senior command and political-education posts in the Polish Army
- 1952–1970Deputy Prime Minister of Poland
- 1954–1956Minister of Mining and Coal Mining
- 1956–1970Polish representative to Comecon and deputy chair of the Economic Committee
- 1970–1980Prime Minister of the Polish People’s Republic
- 1981–1992Retired from politics; interned after martial law in 1981