business backgrounder | employment & workplace
Poland Business Week is a Winner
Don C. Brunell
Washington’s home-grown program about free enterprise has found a home in the
former Soviet-controlled Poland. With more and more Polish students enrolling
each year, Poland Business Week has become an international success story.
In 1975, when Washington Business Week hatched at the
Association of Washington Business, no one imagined it
would end up in Poland in 2009.
Washington Business Week started five years before
Lech Walesa climbed atop the gate at Gdansk’s Shipyard to
issue 21 demands for better wages and working conditions.
Remember, at the time, Poland was under the iron thumb
of the Soviet Union and people’s very freedoms were suppressed. Capitalism was a naughty 10-letter word and free
enterprise was demonized by the Communist party bosses.
People starved under Communist dictatorship and
agriculture and industrial output was dismal. Meanwhile,
the United States continued to grow and thrive. People
in America created the greatest economy and standard of
living in the world.
poland’s transformation
When the Berlin Wall came toppling down in 1990, Communism in most of Eastern Europe evaporated like the
early morning fog on a sunny autumn day.
As Poland transformed
into a market-based econat a glance
omy, cities started forging
relationships in America.
Seattle and Gdynia formed
The fi