Poland was not the first country in communist Eastern Europe to reach for support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to overcome its sovereign debt crisis, which had been exacerbated by the 1979 “Volcker shock” and the 1980 democratic upheaval of Solidarność. Poland was first, however, to experience the deep contradiction between Western calls for democratization and the pressure for austerity that took centre stage in Washington’s recipes for “structural adjustment”. Focusing on the Polish communists’ efforts to strike a deal with the IMF during the 1980s and on the run-up to the sweeping macroeconomic reforms implemented by the Solidarność-backed government from 1990, this paper sheds new light on the conflictual relationship between IMF-style austerity and democracy. Based on Polish government and party archives, as well as IMF files and the Polish underground press, the paper substantiates arguments for significant Polish agency in the process. In this light, the startling failure to reach convincing support for austerity in the nationwide referendum organised by the Jaruzelski regime in November 1987 appears as a tactical move intended to counter IMF demands for rigid cuts in Polish living standards. Scrutinising late socialist Poland’s reorientation towards the capitalist West, the paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of debt, sovereignty, and democracy in the global neoliberal order that emerged in the course of the 1980s.
