The Development of the Private Sector in Poland

The two following accounts of the development of the private sector in Poland and the GDR, respectively, focus on policy aims, policy implementation, and the effects and interaction among these three elements. Practical policy has been the prime factor in the fate of the private sector, and is therefore the basis for periodisation. From an early stage, economic forces played only a marginal role in determining the scale of the private sector, so the volume of private employment indicates actual policy. Official periodisations differ from our own.