Social Deviance In Eastern Europe by Ivan Volgyes

Author:Ivan Volgyes [Volgyes, Ivan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781000311747
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2019-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

The three branches discussed above accounted for the lion's share of employment, production and sales in the private legal sector. The remaining branches such as construction, transportation and retail trade also played an important role, especially in recent wars, but lack of space prevents even a cursory discussion of their performance.

The Illegal Sector

As suggested at the outset, among the East European Communist states Poland enjoyed the unique distinction of having both large legal and illegal private sectors, the latter known in the literature as the "second economy" or "parallel market." Because of the presence of a relatively large legal sector, the importance of the illegal one may not have been as great as in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia where the legal private sector has been practically eliminated over the years. Nevertheless, the extent of illegal activities conducted by private individuals in Poland appears quite staggering and, if anything has been growing in recent years.

Thus, one can make a generalization that everybody in Poland who has the chance engages in a good deal of stealing, cheating and supplementing his or her income by illegal means. Factory workers, especially those producing marketable commodities steal as do construction crews which have access to building materials the demand for which far outstrips the supply, particularly as a result of the recent boom in private home construction. (21) Wholesale and retail trade employees, particularly those in the foodstuffs branch, belong to the worst offenders: the former who are in charge of daily deliveries of scarce foodstuffs such as meat and sugar, simply tend to withhold part of their deliveries and sell it to individual customers at black market prices; the latter simply withhold a part of their daily allocations from the open shelves and sell it "from under the counter" to their preferred clients, often but not always at higher prices, it is no exaggeration to say that there is no commodity or service in Poland today that cannot be bought na lewo at prices determined by supply and demand.

Those individuals who have no goods to sell, sell their services. Officials in licensing, tax and other control offices sell licenses and permits, falsify tax records and perform various other services for money. Construction workers, mechanics and repairmen of all sorts sell their labor, as a rule during their regular working hours but also in the evenings. The list can be multiplied indefinitely. Those persons who have no opportunity to accept bribes or to steal goods or services, steal time. Anyone who has visited Polish post offices, banks, travel agencies and government offices can testify that on the average only a small fraction of the employees pretends to be working while the majority is either off doing their daily shopping or engaged in other private pursuits unrelated to their regular work.

A distinct activity bordering on illegality concerns trading in Western currencies, especially the U.S. dollars. A separate group of professional and semi-professional traders has been operating almost since the days of the Communist takeover, buying and selling dollars at black market prices.

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