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MOSCOW The Last Enemy The last hangman of the Stalin era, Semyon Denisovich Ignatiev, former minister of state security, has died at the age of 79. His death is a reminder of the brutality with which the Stalin regime governed until the last moments of the dictator’s life. It was Ignatiev who contrived, at Stalin’s behest, the famous “Doctors’ Plot” of early 1953, just before Stalin’s final illness. At least 15 high-ranking Soviet doctors were arrested, tortured, and forced to confess to having poisoned leading Soviet figures. The doctors were accused of having been Zionist agents or, alternatively, of having been members of the British secret service. According to a contemporary report, Stalin planned to make the doctors submit to a show trial and then hang them publicly in Red Square, a ceremony that was to launch a vast pogrom against Soviet Jews. Other accounts say that the Doctors’ Plot was no more than the overture to one of the periodic purges of party cadres. In any case the tyrant died before his motives were fully evident. Ignatiev was also responsible for other campaigns of terrorism, notably the “Crimean Affair,” which resulted in the torture and execution of all of Russia’s remaining Yiddish writers. After Stalin’s demise, Ignatiev was dismissed first from his post and then from the Central Committee Secretariat, following an accusation by Izvestia of “political blindness and lack of vigilance.” Nevertheless, unlike many of his former colleagues, he survived to enjoy an honorable retirement under Stalin’s successors. On his seventieth birthday he was awarded the Order of the October Revolution for “services to the Communist Party and the Soviet state.”

WARSAW The Roots of Bankruptcy Polish economic planners—and their colleagues in other Eastern European Communist countries—are thoughtfully licking the wounds inflicted by their too rapid and too broad embrace of Western technology and production methods. According to a report issued by the Organization for European Economic Development, Poland in the Seventies, under the government of Edward Gierek, made far too heavy an investment in the West and has paid for it, principally and most visibly, in the Polish enterprises that were started with Western licenses and know-how and became dependent on their suppliers beyond the capacity of the Polish economy. The Gierek regime, in the euphoria of 1970s détente, jacked up its imports year after year by huge percentages through the power of its central-planning mechanism. Western technology thus implanted could not satisfy its demands within Poland, and so raw materials, components, and spare parts had to be imported at an equivalent rate. Today the Polish economy is almost bankrupt, and there can be no question any more of supplying these plants from the outside. Another reason for the failure of this Western orientation was that the Polish government was unable to create a potential for high-technology exports. Traditional exports, such as coal and foodstuffs, which could have been easily developed, were neglected in favor of chemical and engineering products. The result was that a major percentage of hard-currency loans obtained in the West went for materials and servicing of existing structures and not for the development of new investment.

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MOSCOW The Last Enemy The last hangman of the Stalin era, Semyon Denisovich Ignatiev, former minister of state security, has died at the age of 79. His death is a reminder of the brutality with which the Stalin regime governed until the last moments of the dictator’s life. It was Ignatiev who contrived, at Stalin’s behest, the famous “Doctors’ Plot” of early 1953, just before Stalin’s final illness. At least 15 high-ranking Soviet doctors were arrested, tortured, and forced to confess to having poisoned leading Soviet figures. The doctors were accused of having been Zionist agents or, alternatively, of having been members of the British secret service. According to a contemporary report, Stalin planned to make the doctors submit to a show trial and then hang them publicly in Red Square, a ceremony that was to launch a vast pogrom against Soviet Jews. Other accounts say that the Doctors’ Plot was no more than the overture to one of the periodic purges of party cadres. In any case the tyrant died before his motives were fully evident. Ignatiev was also responsible for other campaigns of terrorism, notably the “Crimean Affair,” which resulted in the torture and execution of all of Russia’s remaining Yiddish writers. After Stalin’s demise, Ignatiev was dismissed first from his post and then from the Central Committee Secretariat, following an accusation by Izvestia of “political blindness and lack of vigilance.” Nevertheless, unlike many of his former colleagues, he survived to enjoy an honorable retirement under Stalin’s successors. On his seventieth birthday he was awarded the Order of the October Revolution for “services to the Communist Party and the Soviet state.”

WARSAW The Roots of Bankruptcy Polish economic planners—and their colleagues in other Eastern European Communist countries—are thoughtfully licking the wounds inflicted by their too rapid and too broad embrace of Western technology and production methods. According to a report issued by the Organization for European Economic Development, Poland in the Seventies, under the government of Edward Gierek, made far too heavy an investment in the West and has paid for it, principally and most visibly, in the Polish enterprises that were started with Western licenses and know-how and became dependent on their suppliers beyond the capacity of the Polish economy. The Gierek regime, in the euphoria of 1970s détente, jacked up its imports year after year by huge percentages through the power of its central-planning mechanism. Western technology thus implanted could not satisfy its demands within Poland, and so raw materials, components, and spare parts had to be imported at an equivalent rate. Today the Polish economy is almost bankrupt, and there can be no question any more of supplying these plants from the outside. Another reason for the failure of this Western orientation was that the Polish government was unable to create a potential for high-technology exports. Traditional exports, such as coal and foodstuffs, which could have been easily developed, were neglected in favor of chemical and engineering products. The result was that a major percentage of hard-currency loans obtained in the West went for materials and servicing of existing structures and not for the development of new investment.