Organised Crime in Poland – A Missing Link

Abstract

This paper questions a lack of consideration for an underground activity in Poland before 1989. As such, this essay will challenge a popular assumption that organised crime did not exist before 1989 in the Polish People’s Republic (PPR), and that, any forms of organised criminal enterprise were insignificant in states employing socialism as a dominant social and political system. That is done by linking the political situation of the Polish People’s Republic with the economic conditions of its people during the 1980s. The author’s PhD research relating to that subject will be used in support including pragmatic and political explanations of the emergence of organised crime in PPR in the 1980s and supplemented by a discussion on a state as an organiser and facilitator of (organised) crime. Thus, this paper discusses a missing link in the development and growth of organised crime in Poland; and it aims at contributing towards the historical criminology by discussing the roots of organised crime in Poland before 1989.