"This Is Our Revolution"

It was a prolonged, early-morning blast of locomotive whistles in the Polish industrial city of Poznan that set off a revolt heard round the world. At 7 a.m. one day last week some 30,000 machinists, founders, fitters and laborers of all callings assembled at the locomotive, railroad-car and metallurgical factories on Poznan's outskirts. They were orderly but they were determined, and they had a grievance.

The workers at the Stalin Locomotive Works had been paid higher wages than most of their neighbors, because they were making military equipment. Three weeks ago, when the military orders were cut back for lack of raw materials, the Communist management slashed the workers' wages 30% to the starvation level normal for Polish workers (a month's work for a pair of leather shoes). The locomotive workers sent a delegation to Warsaw's Communist bureaucrats to plead their case, but, having little hope of relief, they organized a strike.

Into Riot. In orderly ranks in the early morning, they marched on the city (pop-359,000). All wore work clothes, some carried hammers on their shoulders. On the way to town they persuaded office workers and tram employees to join them. At 11 a.m., now a vast crowd, they gathered in front of City Hall. A Communist official tried to speak to them from the top of a public-address truck. A group of youths scrambled up onto the truck and began manhandling the Communist; most of the workers did not mix in; neither did the onlooking cops. Then a whisper went through the crowd: the workers' delegation was back in town and had been arrested.

What had been a peaceful mass meeting quickly became a riot. Three truckloads of police, who had been standing by, were mobbed and disarmed. The workers then roared off to Poznan jail to look for their delegates. In the jail they found no delegates, but plenty of political prisoners. They released the politicals and burned the prison records. Still looking for the missing delegation, they marched on the security police headquarters. Here they were driven back by fire hoses.

Then the inevitable happened. Said Eyewitness Kenneth Treherne, a British businessman: "There was shooting, and for a second everyone froze in his tracks. Then everyone tried to run in the same direction -away from the firing. I'm afraid many of them got trampled. I heard screams of women and men . . . " Other observers say the workers rallied, locked arms and began advancing on the security guards. The guards fired wildly.

Their first victim was a 16-year-old boy. The crowd lifted his dead body and carried it before them. A Polish red-and-white flag, dipped in his blood, was escorted by a proud and pretty Polish girl. Patriotic songs (Poland Is Not Yet Lost) were sung, but above the sound of marching and singing could be heard the chant: "Chleba, chleba, chleba!" (bread, bread, bread).

By this time, armed workers had taken up tactical positions on neighboring rooftops and were pinning down the guards with their fire. The guards replied with submachine guns. Other strikers went to Poznan's two railroad stations, closed them down, barricaded highways leading into Poznan with overturned automobiles and furniture. Another group smashed Poznan's powerful radio transmitter, and tossed out the electronic equipment used to jam broadcasts from the West.

Come to the Fair. The strikers counted on one thing in their favor: an international trade fair was being held in Poznan, and the city was crowded with foreign visitors. Groups of young strikers converged on the fair, tore down the Soviet flag and raised banners bearing such slogans as "Down With This Phony Communism!" and "Russians Get Out!" -as well as appeals for higher wages, for freedom, and for the release of Cardinal Wyszynski (Primate of Poland, under arrest since September 1953). Any Westerner they saw (easily distinguishable by being better dressed) they greeted hopefully. "This is our Revolution," they cried. "Tell the world what we are doing!" As the day advanced, the foreign visitors had much to tell the world.

About 5 p.m., above the firing and the rioting, the low rumble of tanks was heard. Army reinforcements (one observer counted 36 tanks and armored cars) had come to the rescue of the embattled security guards. The tanks opened fire on the armed workers with machine guns and cannon, killing many. Cannon were set up in Freedom Square, and tanks soon commanded every tactical point in the city. Truck-borne soldiers began mopping up the side streets. Some Polish soldiers had no heart for the job. "You have nothing to fear from us," a soldier was heard shouting to the workers. A Polish soldier was shot by an officer because he refused to fire on the workers.

Echoing Gunfire. The Communists were clearly troubled by the problem of how to keep so large an outburst from getting further out of hand. An official statement attributed the revolt to "imperialist agents and a reactionary underground," charged that the rioting bore "the imprint of a large-scale and carefully prepared provocative and diversionary action." Communist Premier Jozef Cyrankiewicz, rushing down to Poznan, promised severe punishment for those captured with weapons. Cried Cyrankiewicz: "Everyone who raises his hand against the people may be sure that it will be hacked off . . ."

In both World Wars Poznan was a center of resistance against the German occupiers, and its people have a reputation for stubborn militancy. All night long the sound of rifles and guns echoed through the city, while ambulances threaded their way between overturned automobiles and other obstructions. In their hotel rooms the foreign visitors heard men cry for help.

Name to Remember. The odds against the workers were overwhelming, and by morning the fight was all but over. The government announced that 48 had been killed and 270 wounded in the revolt -but TIME Correspondent Ed Clark reported 50 bodies in just one of Poznan's ten hospitals.

The workers had made their point: the Poznan revolt now had a celebrity to rank with the Berlin rising of June 1953 (where only a few lost their lives) and the 1953 rioting in the Arctic Circle labor camp at Vorkuta. The revolt was one more signal of the repressed feelings of millions of hungry people in the satellite states. Visitors who left next day by car were conducted for an hour and a half through a heavy cordon of troops and tanks drawn up around Poznan. Russian units several hundred miles away had been alerted for action in case the revolt spread. Rumblings of discontent were being heard from Stettin and the neighboring Baltic states.

Polish Communists, already shaken by ideological and leadership changes in the party, had a hard time coping with the obvious message of the Poznan workers. Premier Cyrankiewicz acknowledged the justice of their grievances ("To a large extent caused by errors and the improper application of regulations in force"). The decision had "already" been taken before the strike, he said, to give the locomotive workers a 15% pay raise. He was at work on "a plan of action" for the gradual "raising of the standard of living of the working masses."

This kind of talk was necessary to disperse the crowds; but plainly the regime was determined to isolate those whom they regarded as ringleaders and deal unmercifully with them. Once the fair closed and the foreign visitors departed, a dark night would settle down on Poznan.

Alexis de Tocqueville, writing of the anxious days before the French Revolution, said: "The evils which are endured with patience so long as they are inevitable seem intolerable as soon as a hope can be entertained of escaping from them." It was an observation that exactly fitted the circumstances of Poznan, Vorkuta and East Berlin.

The same situation, tragic for its victims, would undoubtedly rise again to plague the Kremlin's leaders, who, feeling the need to relax the oppression, hope to escape the vengeance.

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