"We Want a Decent Life"
By Stephen Smith
The dangerous struggle between workers and their party masters
For three hours the crowd swelled with new arrivals: miners from Silesia wearing their traditional long black coats and plumed czaka, railway workers from Lublin, bus drivers from Pulawy. Hundreds of thousands strong, they spilled out into side streets, waiting patiently in the early twilight while the tender strains of a Chopin piano concerto wafted from a loudspeaker. They had come to Gdansk to honor the memory of 45 workers killed by police and army bullets ten years before in riots along the Baltic coast. At long last a monument had been built: three slender trunks of steel crowned by crosses that bore dark anchors, like stylized Christ figures. To some, the 138-ft.-high sculpture outside the main gate of the Lenin Shipyard symbolized the futile workers' uprisings against Poland's governments in 1956, 1970 and 1976. To others, it recalled specifically the three workers gunned down there early one December morning in 1970. But most of all, last week's ceremonies represented the revolution of the moment: a danger-laden struggle between Poland's workers and their Communist masters.
Shortly before 5 o'clock, the dignitaries were introduced. Poland's President Henryk Jablonski, a silver-haired figure in a black overcoat: a smattering of applause. Franciszek Cardinal Macharski of Cracow wearing crimson biretta and robes: hearty applause. Then Union Leader Lech Walesa, the improbable hero of last summer's strikes, bundled in his customary duffel coat: tumultuous applause. After a minute of silence, the city's church bells began to peal, and ship sirens wailed from the port, a keening cry that sent shivers through the crowd. The names of those who died at Gdansk and Gdynia in 1970 were read aloud, with the-workers shouting back after each one: "Yes, he is still among us!" Walesa lit a memorial flame, which at once burned brightly despite a light drizzle. Said he: "This monument was erected for those who were killed, as an admonition to those in power. It embodies the right of human beings to their dignity, to order and to justice."
It was an extraordinary sight, this huge throng bathed in floodlights with the trifurcated sculpture reaching for the inky sky. But the occasion was even more extraordinary for its message. With the world anxiously looking on, representatives of union and church and state sat together on the podium, unified as Poles despite their differences, all hoping to change the face of Communism without bringing on Soviet intervention. "Our country needs internal peace," said Walesa. "I call on you to be prudent and reasonable."
Similar calls for restraint were heard at commemorative ceremonies last week in Gdynia and Szczecin, the other flash points of the 1970 revolts. The observances themselves could have been construed as a challenge to Moscow, but the Kremlin was apparently prepared to swallow them, for the sake of helping the Polish Communist Party reassert its authority. After weeks of roller-coaster crisis, leaders of the party and Solidarity, the foundation of Poland's independent unions, appear to have reached at least a temporary meeting of minds. One White House aide, delighted that the threat of an immediate Soviet invasion appears to have passed, declared last week in Washington: "Walesa has surpassed Wallenda in pulling off the biggest tightrope act in history." Nonetheless, Soviet divisions on the Polish frontier and in East Germany remained on top alert, ready to pounce if unrest flared--or if the Warsaw government of Party Boss Stanislaw Kania simply could not control the popular demand for more freedom and a better life.
Poland poses the gravest threat to the Soviet Union since it forcibly formed the East bloc after World War II. Indeed, events there have, in a sense, stripped the clothes right off the empire. Walesa and his colleagues in the Solidarity leadership know that they are, as it were, condemned to Communism; their basic goal is not to reject the system but to make it work better.
Nonetheless, the workers' revolt shouts out Communism's economic and ideological failures and reminds the world that the glue of Soviet hegemony is force and intimidation, not shared purpose. Says Seweryn Bialer, head of Columbia University's Research Institute on International Change: "Previous challenges to Soviet control have come from above, from the leaders of satellite nations. The Polish challenge comes from below, from the workers, the only class of which the Soviet Union is afraid."
The formation of Poland's independent trade unions attacked the heart of Communist theology. As Adam Bromke, an expert on Eastern Europe at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont, writes in the current issue of Foreign Policy: "It undermines the legitimacy on which Communist power rests by refuting the claim of the Communist Party to be the sole authentic representative of the working class." Communist orthodoxy predicates authoritarian rule: a bedrock belief of Marxism-Leninism is the absolute dictatorship of the proletariat, as represented by its vanguard, the Party. In practical terms, Moscow-style Communism also insists on rigid central planning; that kind of "command" economy is in trouble if it cannot command its own workers. For these reasons, the Soviets are nervous that the Polish disease will catch elsewhere in the East bloc and touch off worker demands for free unions and other liberalizations.
But first the Soviets want to get Poland back into a steady orbit. With 35 million people, Poland is by far the largest satellite, "the 'India' of the Soviet empire," in Bialer's words. It is also strategically vital, the buffer and transportation link between the Soviet Union and East Germany, where 19 Soviet divisions guard the bloc's western flank. The Gdansk agreement, which created the independent unions last Aug. 31, has kept the Soviets in a state of intense anxiety --and for good reason. Solidarity overnight became a third major power center in Poland, along with the party and the Roman Catholic Church. More than that, the union's audacious bargaining and uninhibited criticism of authorities have given Poles a whiff of pluralistic freedom. Even the long-somnolent Sejm (Parliament) has shown signs of life. Once content to endorse party directives meekly, deputies these days frequently abstain or cast negative votes--though not often enough to overturn the official line.
One conspicuous change has occurred in the press. While still censored, newspapers and magazines now print real news along with government propaganda. Says Zygmunt Szeliga, deputy editor of the weekly Polityka (circ. 285,000): "During the past few months, we have published all the articles that were confiscated by the censors over the past two years--well, maybe not all, maybe we've got two or three left." Polityka, which is edited by a member of the Central Committee, recently ran an unexpurgated interview with Walesa and other prominent members of Solidarity. Poles are a bit overwhelmed by this new freedom. Says a woman in Warsaw: "There's so much to read these days, I can't keep up with it."
It is not surprising that Poles, alone among East bloc peoples, are trying to shake up Communism. Rebellion is a dominant strain in Polish history, often against Russia and usually with catastrophic results. Russia helped partition Poland out of existence in the 18th century, and Polish uprisings were crushed by Catherine the Great in 1794, Nicholas I in 1831 and Alexander II in 1864. Poles accuse the Soviets of murdering 10,000 Polish officers in the Katyn Forest during World War II and of standing idly by while the Nazis brutally put down a heroic uprising in Warsaw by Poland's underground Home Army. These bitter memories make the present subservience to Moscow even more humiliating.
Rebellion is a natural outgrowth of the Polish character--ebullient, romantic, ready to defend national pride at the drop of a kapelusz, and ironic enough to look forward to a potent drink right afterward. Sums up a Polish woman: "We can only be compared with the Irish." A Western diplomat who has served in Poland puts it differently: "The Poles are a bunch of anarchists." That may be overstating matters, but it is true that the Poles bend less willingly to Soviet domination than any other satellite. The Catholic Church, which has nurtured the Polish spirit when outside powers have tried to extinguish it, commands their allegiance in a way that Moscow and the Polish Communist Party never could.
A combination of factors, coalescing at an opportune moment, led to the Gdansk revolution. Among them: wide spread discontent with unsatisfactory living conditions, relative freedom (in a Communist state, that is) for dissenting political activists, the presence of able political organizers waiting in the wings to assume leadership, and a population quite accustomed to rebelling against authority.
By comparison with other East bloc nations, Polish life was seemingly not all that bad. The average wage ($200 a month) and per capita meat consumption (152 lbs. a year) were surpassed only in East Germany and Czechoslovakia. Private hard-currency bank accounts were legal, passports were relatively easy to obtain and the state provided the usual panoply of Communist benefits: guaranteed jobs, free medical care, factory-sponsored vacations. But this was not enough. Poles were tired of standing in endless lines: for meat, flour, sugar and other staples. They were tired of shoddy, overpriced goods, when they could buy the goods at all. They were tired of waiting eight to ten years for an apartment, and almost half that long for a car that cost 20 months' wages. As a striking worker put it last August, "We don't want to run the government. We just want a decent life."
Warsaw University Historian Zygmunt Hemmerling traces last summer's strikes back to the Stalinist model of forced industrialization that was imposed on Poland after World War II. Compounding the error, the government in 1971 moved to modernize Polish industry with heavy infusions of Western technology and capital. Former Party Boss Edward Gierek dreamed of a throbbing new industrial sector that would spew out exports for Western markets and earn hard currency to repay Poland's debt and raise its standard of living. The plan backfired in the mid-1970s when Poland, hampered by mismanagement, rising energy prices and a Western recession, could not sell its inferior products abroad.
The legacy of this misadventure is a debt to the West of $23 billion; servicing that debt alone requires at least 80-c- out of every export dollar Poland earns. Earlier this month, the Soviets helped out with $1.1 billion in hard-currency credits and $200 million in commodities. Poland is still shopping for $8 billion worth of new loans and credits in the U.S., Western Europe and Japan. Chances are that Poland will have to reschedule some of its debt--a humiliating prospect for a country that bills itself as the world's eleventh largest industrial power.
The Polish economy, in the words of a Western diplomat, is a "result-oriented system which unfortunately does not produce results."
Rigid central planning destroys local initiative and leads to costly waste. One concrete example: at least 30% of Poland's total cement production is "lost" through careless handling and theft. Trainloads of raw materials disappear for months at a time, often bringing factories to a standstill. Says a scornful party member: "The workers sit at their machines three days a week and play cards, because there is nothing for them to do."
Finance Minister Marian Krzak disclosed last week that Poland will run a budget deficit next year for the first time in the Communist era. National revenue will grow only about 1%, he predicted, while state spending will rise by 22%. The Polish economy is still reeling from the labor unrest that caused an estimated loss of $2.3 billion between July and September. The construction industry fulfilled only 37% of its goal during the first three quarters of 1980, meaning that it will have a shortfall of more than 80,000 units for the year. The production of coal, which generates 90% of Poland's electricity and a sizable portion of its export revenues, is about 7% behind projections. Almost one-quarter of the coal earmarked for export has been diverted to domestic use to make sure there is enough for heating and electricity this winter.
Agriculture has been a true disaster.
The potato crop was the worst in 20 years, sugar beet output was 30% below this year's target and the grain harvest left Poland 8 million tons short of domestic needs. Faced with a serious fodder shortage, livestock breeders began distress slaughtering; hog and cattle stocks are not expected to rebound for several years. Meat production declined from 1979, perhaps by as much as 25%, forcing the government to cut back on exports of pork products and other foodstuffs, which in 1979 brought Poland $1.4 billion.
Poor weather, which has troubled Poland's farmers for six consecutive years, was partly to blame for the disappointing performance. But Poland's economic quirks again played a prominent role. Ludicrously low official price ceilings persuaded some farmers to reduce plantings and livestock, and others to keep their products off the state market. With Poland's northerly clime (Warsaw, in the center of the country, is at about the same latitude as Edmonton, Alta.) and short growing season, a farmer must work in almost exact concert with seasonal changes. Unfortunately, supplies of fertilizer and spare parts are more unpredictable than nature. Says a Western agriculture expert in Warsaw: "The farmer is told, 'We'll have it for you in a month.' Too late." At one point in August, the party newspaper, Trybuna Ludu, reported that 15,000 tractors and 700 farm trucks were idled by a lack of parts and fuel.
Whether Poland can right its listing economy and pacify the Soviets depends on the outcome of a complicated power struggle involving the party, the unions and the church. There is one constant in this political calculus: the unions and the church tacitly agree that in some way the "leading role"of the Communist Party in Poland must be preserved. Repeated warnings from other East bloc ideologues and editorialists have made it clear that any undermining of the party would force Moscow to invoke the "Brezhnev Doctrine," first used as a rationale for the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. Under this specious precept, the Soviet bloc is obliged to intervene whenever a member regime is threatened by "counterrevolutionary" forces. "Kania still has not been able to show clear proof that the party is reunited and able to exert authority," says a senior Bonn analyst. "Until that time comes, the risk of invasion will remain high."
Kania, who ran the state security forces for nine years before replacing Gierek as First Secretary of the Communist Party on Sept. 6, has surprised Western analysts with his moderation and political acumen. In public, he is soft-spoken and low-keyed, despite his burly, bulldog looks. Kania has made the unions work hard for every concession, but for the most part he has avoided slashing rhetoric and underhanded tactics. His regime blundered during a dispute over Solidarity's charter, trying to sneak in a clause affirming the party's "leading role." But it beat a hasty retreat when the workers threatened retaliatory strikes. Says Andrzej Gwiazda, 45, a member of the Solidarity presidium: "There is a good impression of Kania right now."
Kania has moved aggressively to rid the party of officials who were corrupt, incompetent or tainted by past associations with the Gierek regime. Only four of the 14 voting members of the Politburo last August are still on the ruling council: Kania; Defense Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski, 57; Deputy Premier Mieczyslaw Jagielski, 56; and President Jablonski, 70. All but Jablonski have at least a passing association with odnowa (renewal) and Jablonski has something better --a farewell embrace from Pope John Paul II at the Cracow airport last year.
Most of the new members of the Politburo are considered economic reformers. Stefan Olszowski, 49, who was thought to be in line to succeed Gierek last summer, privately criticized food price increases that touched off the 1976 riots and later drew up a blueprint for economic change. Tadeusz Grabski, 51, a trained economist, was bounced from the Central Committee in 1979 for assailing Gierek's "misguided" economic policies. In domestic political matters, the refashioned Politburo is believed to be pragmatic, though its newest member, Mieczyslaw Moczar, 66, is a ruthless hardliner. As Interior Minister in the late 1960s, a position that gave him control of the security forces, Moczar brutally suppressed student demonstrations and led an odious anti-Semitic campaign that drove thousands of Jews from Poland.
The purge of both Politburo and lower-level cadres testifies to the clout of Solidarity. From a ragtag bunch of shipyard workers and dissidents, it has grown into a labor leviathan, with an estimated 10 million members (out of 17.3 million employed) in 54 chapters around the country. When a strike loomed in Warsaw, no less than Deputy Prime Minister Jagielski offered to dispatch a government helicopter to Gdansk to pick up Lech Walesa. Solidarity has even acquired a modicum of official respectability. To raise funds, it has sponsored a benefit performance at the National Opera House and auctions at the National Gallery.
Solidarity is not a monolith, nor is it a creature of Walesa, though he is certainly its symbol and central force. Solidarity's 18-member leadership sprang directly from last summer's 21-day strike, and thus has a distinct Baltic coast flavor. Many are experienced labor activists who have been in trouble with the authorities before. One presidium member, Anna Walentynowicz, 51, was fired from her job as a crane operator a week before the Lenin Shipyard flare-up last August. "The immediate cause of the strike was to have me rehired," she says with a trace of wonder. "Nobody thought it would have the effect it had." Wojciech Gruszecki, 44, who has been advising Poland's private farmers, has a doctorate in chemical engineering. Says he: "At a certain age, every citizen should give something to his society and his nation." That age came early for Andrzej Kolodziej, who helped organize the walkout at the Gdynia shipyard. "They couldn't believe I was only 21 years old," he said last week. "I had to show them my identity card."
On the fourth and fifth floors of the seedy Morski Hotel in Gdansk, where Solidarity has its headquarters, there is unanimity on goals but little agreement on tactics. Indeed, listening to the leaders talk strategy, it seems remarkable that Walesa has managed to check Solidarity's innate militancy. Says Bogdan Lis, 28, the only union leader who belongs to the Communist Party: "None of us has trust or belief in those people [the authorities]. We consider them opponents." Alina Pienkowska, 28, a meek-looking nurse who is actually a firebrand, says the authorities have to prove that "the renewal of our life doesn't end with the personnel changes in the party." Most Solidarity leaders believe that the party needs to be shoved. Says Bogdan Borusewicz, 31, a professional activist:
"There is no other way than to make threats."
In the afterglow of its August victory, the union negotiated by ultimatum: either give us what we want or we will strike. But the rank and file became more cautious late last month after the Warsaw local threatened a general strike over a series of political demands, some of which were aimed at the state security apparatus, the bedrock of Communist authority. Said Walesa then: "Let us not forget that tanks and rockets could also be the reply." On Dec. 5, Solidarity declared a six-week moratorium on strikes. It also toned down its rhetoric. When the government suspended screenings of Workers 80, a film about the strikes, the union raised only a mild protest. A month earlier, such censorship would have provoked a strike threat at the very least.
Solidarity may not be the determined band of radicals that Moscow imagines, but it is easy to see why the Soviets are wary of it. Terms like "democracy" and "pluralism" crop up frequently in Solidarity conversations. At an outdoor rally late last month, one woman demanded full public disclosure of the Katyn Forest massacre, and another asked about rumors that a new mass grave had been found. Walesa tried to deflect these inflammatory questions, but his answer must have troubled the Kremlin even so: "We do have to have a settling of accounts. Right now we have to work on odnowa." Some Solidarity theoreticians, while conceding the party its "leading role," tend to define that role narrowly. Says Jacek Kuron, a dissident intellectual and senior adviser to the union: "It means the monopoly of power over the police forces, the army and foreign policy. All other matters must be open to negotiation with society."
Somewhat unexpectedly, Kuron and his group, the Committee for Social Self-Defense (KOR), have lately been a moderating influence on the unions. Admits Pienkowska: "Some of us are radicals, but it often happens that after talking with Mr. Kuron we change our minds." Under other circumstances, the dissidents would be targeted for harassment or arrest by Kama's government, which needs to prove its toughness to Moscow. But the alliance between workers and dissidents, even if temporary, gives the dissidents a kind of protective coloration. "We won't allow for any crackdown, particularly on KOR," Walesa told TIME. "They are our friends and they can always count on us."
Solidarity's strike moratorium could get a severe test next week, when the Polish Supreme Court is expected to decide whether private farmers can form an independent union. So far the authorities have resisted, arguing that the farmers are self-employed and thus cannot bargain as employees. The farmers contend that they are in effect state employees, since the government sets their prices. At a meeting last week, they warned of a possible strike if their union is not recognized. It was not a threat the authorities could take lightly, since private farmers own 75% of Poland's agricultural land and produce 80% of domestically grown food.
The fledgling union, known as Rural Solidarity, claims to represent 500,000 of the 3.2 million private farmers. Long bitter about government policies that favored less efficient collectives, the farmers are demanding equitable distribution of machinery and supplies to private owners, as well as increased government aid. They also want religious instruction in schools, preservation of traditional rural culture, and social benefits such as paid vacations, health insurance and pensions equal to those of industrial workers.
As Solidarity and the party jockey for position and power, Poland's Roman Catholic Church acts as mediator and cannily looks after its own interests. From the baptism of the Polish state's first ruler, Prince Mieszko I, in A.D. 966, the history of the nation has been tightly intertwined with that of the church. When Poland was partitioned off the map, the church became the repository for the national culture and language. The church resisted the fascist occupiers during World War II and the Soviet repressers afterward. Small wonder, then, that 70% to 80% of the people in this officially atheistic country are practicing Catholics.
The church has acted as a stabilizing force throughout the postwar period, but never more than today. Poland's Primate, Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, 79, who helped defuse discontent after the 1976 food riots, also tried to calm the workers last August. Since then he has discussed the continuing crisis with both Kania and Walesa. Two weeks ago, the church issued its strongest call yet for "internal peace," citing a "threat to the freedom and statehood of the fatherland." A church spokesman, the Rev. Alojzy Orszulik, later criticized the "noisy and irresponsible statements which have been made against our eastern neighbor," and singled out Jacek Kuron for censure.
TIME has learned that the church is driving a hard bargain behind the scenes in return for its cooperation. It has gained permission to build new seminaries in Koszalin and Szczecin and to enlarge the existing seminary in Gniezno. Refusing to grant building permits has been a favorite form of official harassment. The church now plans to ask the regime to relinquish its veto power over episcopal appointments. This has been a particularly embarrassing procedure for the church. On one occasion, the Communists vetoed 20 candidates before allowing the appointment of a "safe" archbishop of Wroclaw.
The Soviets have been watching every step in this pas de trois. Despite their elaborate military preparations--there are 55 Soviet divisions in easy striking distance of Poland--the Soviets would probably intervene only after exhausting all other options. Apart from reinforcing the primacy of the Communist Party, Moscow would have everything to lose by sending in troops. With their 210,000-man army and fierce patriotism, the Poles might prove to be a much more stubborn foe than the Czechoslovaks were in 1968. One Western military expert in Warsaw has been told by Polish veterans that supplies are being stockpiled for the resistance and that underground units have been formed within the Polish forces. A military move would shatter the remnants of detente, intensify the arms race and bring economic reprisals from the West. Moscow would have to endure embarrassing condemnations by the Communist parties of Italy and Spain, as well as by a large number of nonaligned nations.
Many Western officials now believe that the Soviets, if forced to step in militarily, could resort to "creeping intervention"--that is, sending in troops under the guise of joint maneuvers or a similar subterfuge. The rationale: the less military visibility, the less political fallout. An occupation by osmosis would present difficult questions for the West. A senior State Department official asks rhetorically, "When do you proclaim a Warsaw Pact maneuver to be an unacceptable military intervention?"
Most Poles do not believe an invasion is imminent. Says Gdansk Construction Worker Janusz Romanski, 56: "It's unthinkable, because they are engaged in Afghanistan. Besides, the Hungarians, Rumanians and Czechoslovaks are uncertain. They won't take the risks." Typically, Poles have transformed whatever anxieties they have about their situation into grim little jokes. Sample: They say that the Soviets, to show their fraternal feelings, are going to send 500,000 bottles of Georgian champagne to Poland for Christmas--each carried by a waiter.
The denouement hinges on whether Solidarity's leadership can keep the union on a moderate track. Despite the initial success of the strike moratorium, Walesa and Co. will have their hands full trying to control the rank and file this winter. At the Gdansk ceremony last week, Schoolteacher Grazyna Oleszek, 29, summed up the impatience: "Wide-reaching reforms are needed, and so far, they have not taken place, and the people are waiting for them." Rubbed raw by food and power shortages, the workers may become even more restive. Many unionists are convinced that the government is artificially creating food scarcities to intimidate the workers--and thus keep them on the job. Says a diplomat in Warsaw: "Solidarity is like a football team that has never lost a match. It still has not faced the economic realities, and if Poland gets through the next few weeks, those economic problems are going to be dominant."
But delicate political issues loom as well. Despite the easing of official censorship, the government has yet to give Solidarity its own newspaper, which was promised last summer. If the private farmers are denied legal status, Solidarity may be asked to call a sympathy strike or some other job action. To preserve its credibility, the union might have to agree. Distrust of the authorities, pandemic already, is bound to rise still higher as the pace of reform slows. Says Andrzej Gwiazda of the Solidarity presidium: "We have observed for some time that every sigh of weakness and makes the authorities withdraw from the promises they have made."
Kania has pledged that the reforms made so far, including the creation of independent unions are "irreversible." But how much more ground he can give is questionable, considering the ideological limits imposed by Moscow. Solidarity does not want to embarrass Kania, but it will keep the pressure on neverthless. The workers view their mission as sacred, above the contingencies of party leadership or even Soviet troops. As Walesa eloquently put it at an outdoor rally in Jastrzebie in October: "Do not give in, for once you do give in, you will not rise back for a long time. Indeed, we cannot surrender, for those who will follow us will say, 'The were so close, and they failed.' History would not absolve us then." -- By Stephen Smith. Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof and Barry Kalb/Warsaw
With reporting by Erik Amfitheatrof, Barry Kalb
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