Romania and Poland During the ’80s Crisis

Abstract

In the first half of the 1980s, the Western sanctions against Poland led both to an increase in Romanian-Polish trade, and to closer political relations. With Gorbaciov’s reforms and Poland opening up to the West in the second half of the 1980s, the relations which had improved between 1982 and 1984 suffered a setback. The present paper starts from the premise that the development of Romanian-Polish economic relations during the 1980s was influenced by the crisis which both countries were facing, as well as by changing international conditions. One aim of the paper is to present the domestic situation in the two countries in 1985, in order to understand the context which fostered bilateral economic cooperation. The second aim is to analyse the development of relations between Romania and Poland after Gorbachev’s coming to power and the implementation of his reforms. Here we shall mainly focus our attention on the regular summit meetings between the two leaders.
 Finally, we shall assess the impact of these reforms and the way in which they affected the Romanian-Polish cooperation. In undertaking this investigation, we shall, first of all, use the transcripts of the meeting between Ceaușescu and Jaruzelski, found in the National Archives, Foreign Relations Section, as well as the diplomatic correspondence of the Romanian embassy in Warsaw. The press of the time, in particular Scanteia – the official newspaper of the Romanian Communist Party [RCP], provides a general framework for understanding how the relations with Poland were represented by the communist regime.