Prawo i wymiar sprawiedliwości PRL wobec przestępczości gospodarczej (1956–1970)
Law and jurisdiction of communist Poland and economic delinquency in 1956–1970

Summary/Abstract: In the last period a several important works about economic delinquency have been published. One of the most interesting is a book by Dariusz Jarosz and Maria Pasztor „Meat swindle. Facts and conditions”. Issues discussed in the book cover not only the meat swindle in Warsaw. This is one of the reasons why the article „Law and jurisdiction of communist Poland and economic delinquency in 1956–1970” does not describe the economic delinquency, but presents struggle of structures fighting it, shows their relations and functioning at the regional level. The functional attitude means that not only normative institutions, such as public prosecutor or jurisdiction were investigated, but PZPR activities were also considered. When influence of PZPR on jurisdiction institutions is discussed, apart from the quasilaw system (e.g. resolutions of Central Committee of PZPR, directives of Politic Bureau of CC PZPR) the attention was drawn to the influence of high factor of PZPR membership of jurisdiction employees on their institutions. A look on the prevention and repressions against economic delinquency from the institutional point of view allows to answer the question of how much each of the activities was reaction to social moods, how much a derivative of communistic ideology, and how much the effect of institutions’ conditions. The author opts for the last interpretation (which is often underestimated) although he naturally does not omit the first two ones. The source analysis allows to see three turning points in the described period. The distinguishing feature of 1956–1959 was the decisional chaos in the institutions responsible for fighting economic delinquency, which was caused by weakened control of party and state authorities. In 1961–1965 the authorities regained control over jurisdiction and made it an obedient, although not always efficient, tool, seeing the panaceum in tightening restrictions for economic delinquency. In the last five years the stress was put on operational and prevention methods, and on the institutional level the role of jurisdiction and public persecutor was decreased in favour of e.g. citizen’s militia.

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