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Poland's Economic contrasts with Czechoslovakia
- high amount of agriculture, but inefficient: more fertile land but gov't neglected farms because they were privately owned
- inefficient undustrialization: no gov't encouragement, not enough natural resources, lack of economies of scale
- financial problems: high inflation and large international debt
- poor standard of living: bad consumer shortanges, lots of rationing
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Poland's political contrasts with Czechoslovakia
- poles are very nationalistic: long history of oppression
- strong civil society: more likely to be active and long term members of non governmental organizations
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What was the Solidarity union coalition?
- first independent labor union in the Soviet bloc
- not automatically allied with the Communist Party
- outlawed by Communist officials but never totally went away
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Who is Lech Walesa?
- leader of Solidarity
- later became President of Poland
- inspired other countries to get rid of Communist monopolies and encouraged Western support and aid
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Poland transition successes
- high growth
- lots of entrepreneurship
- quite a bit of DFI (direct foreign investment)
- strong civil society
- admitted into Western international organizations: OECD, NATO, EU
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Poland transition sproblems
- bad infrastructure
- inefficient businesses and farms
- not enough job opportunites (15-20% unemployment)
- weak gov't
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Poland is the US's best foreign policy friend in Europe next to Britain because of shared common goals such as...
- peace and democracy in Eastern Europe
- a stable middle east
- poland sent help to America during Revolutionary War
- high polish immigration to the US
- US helped Solidarity in the 1980s
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