“In Order to Adapt the Consumption...”. The Creation of a Rationing System for Petrol in the Polish People’s Republic in the 1980s

Zawistowski Andrzej
Additional contact information
Zawistowski Andrzej: PhD, works at the Warsaw School of Economics Economic and Social History Department, Warsaw, Poland

Studia Historiae Oeconomicae, 2017, vol. 35, issue 1, 81-96

Abstract: In post-war Poland, rationing was introduced on three occasions: right after the war in 1945, then in 1951, and at the turn of the 1980s. In 1976, rationing cards for sugar were introduced, in 1981 - for meat, fats, cereal products, cleaning products and many other goods. Fuels were the last product added to this list. This article describes the process of introducing a rationing system for petrol in the Polish People’s Republic. Though the supply system crashed as early as 1981, it took several years to organize a rationing system for petrol. Its evolution did not end until 1984. This delay was caused by the long discussions on how the system should be built. This forced the authorities to introduce a whole range of temporary solutions which limited the demand in the short run, but had no soothing effect whatsoever on the society. To the contrary - the chaos they created intensified negative tendencies (such as speculation), led to market insecurity, and increased mistrust of state regulations.

Keywords: Polish People’s Republic; rationing system; controlled distribution; petrol (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/sho-2017-0006 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vrs:sthioe:v:35:y:2017:i:1:p:81-96:n:6

DOI: 10.1515/sho-2017-0006

Access Statistics for this article

Studia Historiae Oeconomicae is currently edited by Roman Macyra

More articles in Studia Historiae Oeconomicae from Sciendo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().