LETTER FROM POLAND: From Worst to First Poland's economic rise.

• Author: Wood, Barry D.

Since big-bang marketbased reforms were implemented in 1990, Poland's GDP has tripled. Growth there has typically been the highest in Europe, ranging from 3 to 5 percent annually. A relentless drive to catch up after four lost decades has made Poland Europe's sixth-biggest economy. Per capita incomes ($16,000) have grown even faster, now exceeding those of Greece and Portugal.

The reforms, the first and boldest in eastern Europe, targeted a quick end of state control--prices were freed, the exchange rate floated, subsidies slashed, the economy opened to trade and foreign investment. The ensuing transformation recession was severe with thousands of job losses as zombie factories closed. But Solidarity led government and the public stuck with the program. With hyperinflation banished, goods returned to store shelves and by 1992 the economy began to grow.

Poland's thirty-year-long journey from worst to first is unprecedented in modern European history.

Leszek Balcerowicz, who as finance minister in 1990 devised and launched the reforms, is compared to Ludwig Erhard, who presided over Germany's post-war economic miracle. Now seventy-four, Balcerowicz is again a professor at Warsaw's economics university and runs a pro-democracy think tank. His emphasis--extensively using social media--is on educating the public on economic freedom and democracy.

Gratified with what has been achieved, Balcerowicz nonetheless tells me he is alarmed at the interventionist, restrictive policies of the country's conservative government. "They are damaging the sources of our success ... not only the rule of law but democracy itself." He believes the Law and Justice party, in power since 2015, is taking Poland backwards. "They are," he says, "attacking independent judges and prosecutors, restricting the media, and taking over the central bank." He accuses the ruling coalition of an unprecedented renationalization of the economy by taking over banks and energy companies.

Law and Justice--socially conservative and nationalist--blames the big-bang reforms for crippling Polish industry. Its populist message resonates outside major cities. A centerpiece of its economic program in effect since 2016 is a PLN500 ($128) monthly per child subsidy intended to boost a declining birth rate and improve living conditions of large families. Law and Justice triumphed a second time in the 2019 parliamentary election but has lost support since.

Poland's largest opposition party, the...