Referendum on Austerity: Poland's Rapprochement With the IMF and the Run-Up to Neoliberal Shock Therapy

Poland was not the first country in communist Eastern Europe to reach for support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to overcome its sovereign debt crisis. Poland was first, however, to experience the deep tensions between Western calls for democratization and the pressure for austerity that took centre stage in Washington’s recipes for ‘structural adjustment’. Focusing on the Polish communists’ efforts to strike a deal with the IMF during the 1980s, this article sheds new light on the run-up to the sweeping shock therapy implemented by the Solidarność-backed government from 1990. Based on Polish government and party archives, IMF files and the Polish underground press, it offers a thorough reappraisal of the startling failure to reach support for austerity in the nationwide referendum organized by the Jaruzelski regime in November 1987. By analysing this vote as a key element of the domestic and international struggle over the political and financial conditionality of mitigating Poland’s economic malaise, it refines our understanding of Polish agency in the process. Scrutinising Poland’s reorientation towards the capitalist West, the article contributes to a more nuanced understanding of debt, sovereignty, and democracy in the global neoliberal order that emerged in the course of the 1980s.