by Minister of Defense Konstantin Rokossovsky. Rokossovsky obtained permission from First Secretary Edward Ochab, who shared his assessment of the situation: a widespread counterrevolutionary activity that the militia and the security forces might be unable to contain. b.As characterized by Jane Hardy, (1956 events were) "...the first cycle of a pattern that would re-emerge with increasing severity over the following decades. A slowdown in the ability of the economy to deliver rising standards of living, followed by revolts triggered by price increases, led to reforms based on decentralisation and worker self-management. Recentralisation, repression and reform followed in its wake." To "...a decline in the rate of economic growth and...a fall in real average wages...the ruling class would react by introducing more control in enterprises, a higher turnover of managerial and political cadres, intensified propaganda against ideological revisionism, the suspension of certain investment projects and the reallocation of investment favouring the consumption goods sector and services." But from the late 1960s, "a policy of extensive growth could no longer deliver positive rates of growth and increasing standards of living." c.Mazowiecki and Balcerowicz had vastly greater freedom of economic action than their predecessors because neither Gierek nor Jaruzelski could consider triggering high unemployment (it would violate the symbolic legitimation of workers as the ruling class). The Western economies responded to crisis situations from the 1970s onward by utilizing the existing free-market flexibilities (deregulation, downsizing, anti-trade union legislation, moving cheap manufacturing to the Third World countries etc.) ever more easily under the newly dominant neoliberal policies. Such remedies were not available before 1989 for the ruling establishments in Central and Eastern Europe. d.Karol Modzelewski wrote the following on the controversial issue of popular support for communist reforms in Stalinist Poland: "...the extent of social support for the communist power and its undertakings was considerable. Especially as it regards the rebuilding and industrialization of the country, which before the war belonged to the European underdeveloped zone, widespread dissemination of education and the availability of higher education for the youth from peasant and worker families. The mass social advancement related to such transformations naturally affected the attitudes of millions of people, especially the young, for whom People's Poland opened the previously unavailable opportunities." Modzelewski qualified this view by stressing the greatly limited access to impartial information. Society was intensely indoctrinated at the official level, while families at home, to protect their youth, refrained from criticizing