"A Fire in the Country"

By Spencer Davidson.

Walesa suddenly finds himself following his movement instead of leading it

Not since the tumultuous days of last August had so many protests erupted across Poland. From one end of the country to the other last week, hundreds of thousands of workers walked off the job. Farmers laid down their tools. Students staged sit-ins at scores of university campuses.

This time the walkouts were a challenge not only to Poland's Communist government, but to Solidarity, the independent labor union forged during last summer's unrest. The wildcat protests threatened to destroy Solidarity's hard-won unity and shatter the delicate detente between the union and the state. "We must stop all the strikes so that the government can say that Solidarity has the situation under control," warned Union Leader Lech Walesa. "We must concentrate on basic issues. There is a fire in the country."

The crisis made reluctant --and doubtless temporary --allies of Walesa and Communist Party Boss Stanislaw Kania. Since returning from a visit to the Vatican last month, Walesa has been preaching moderation in Solidarity's dealings with the government, to the annoyance of radicals among the union's 10,000 members. Solidarity, he urged, must remain united, and must concentrate on such basic economic grievances as the five-day work week and the recognition of an independent farmers' union, Rural Solidarity.

But firebrands at the local level pressed ahead with the wildcat strikes, many of them based on volatile political grievances, thus for the moment relegating Walesa to chasing his movement rather than leading it. Walesa traveled to the southern city of Rzeszow last week, where dissident farmers and workers had occupied a government building to dramatize their demands for Rural Solidarity. Hoping to reassert his authority, Walesa joined the strikers, vowing to remain on the site until the issues were settled.

Warsaw prevented an embarrassing standoff by reversing a previous refusal to negotiate and dispatching the Minister of Union Affairs, Stanislaw Ciosek, to Rzeszow. Ciosek informed the strikers the government was ready to talk. With that, Walesa and a handful of dissidents left for bargaining sessions in Warsaw. At week's end, after a 13-hour negotiating marathon, both sides announced agreement on the work week and access to the media. The government accepted the 40-hour week in principle but would only allow three free Saturdays a month this year; in addition, Solidarity would be granted a one-hour weekly television program.

The government's conciliatory gesture was born of necessity: politically and economically, it cannot afford a full-scale confrontation with Poland's workers. At the same time, it must assert its authority, if only to mollify the Soviet Union. Accordingly, it issued a warning that unmistakably implied the use offeree. "Anarchy and chaos are creeping into the life of the country," the statement declared. "If the situation continues, the Council of Ministers will have to take the necessary steps aimed at ensuring the normal functioning of enterprises."

The wildcat strikes continued unabated. In Bialsko Biala, near the Czech border, 60,000 workers in 120 factories, including the assembly line for Polish Fiats, stopped work to demand the firing of the provincial governor and three other officials for corruption and mismanagement. Workers in 70 coal mines and industrial plants in the Bytom region in Upper Silesia struck to protest government failure to honor many of the agreements it made with Solidarity last autumn. In the Lower Silesian city of Jelenia Gora, 250,000 workers staged a general strike on Friday to dramatize then-- disaffection with inept local Communist officials.

Perhaps the most significant action of all was a sit-in staged by 5,000 of the 9,000 students at the University of Lodz, 40 miles southwest of Warsaw. Students were in the hazardous forefront of Poland's violent anti-Soviet demonstrations in 1968, but they had taken little part in the latest upheavals. Last week they mobilized, occupying academic buildings at Lodz and settling in for a siege with sleeping bags. Among their demands: fewer courses on Marxism, less emphasis on Russian-language instruction, and an end to restrictions on foreign travel.

Stung by the erosion of its authority, Solidarity's National Commission condemned the local walkouts and called instead for a one-hour general strike this week as a warning to the government to take action on the Saturday holiday issue.

The prospect of even a brief national work stoppage undoubtedly prompted Kania's decision to resume negotiations. But if at first blush the decision looked like a concession, some observers were not so sure. It could have been an attempt to play on the growing disunity within Solidarity, at a time when the Communist Party leadership seems to be closing ranks. Some Solidarity leaders feared the government might also try to depict the union as unpatriotic for calling for paid Saturday holidays at a time when the country was $23 billion in debt and would require loans and aid from abroad totaling $11 billion more merely to get through 1981.

Kania may also sense a shift in public opinion, a growing feeling that the turmoil has gone on long enough. Increasingly, newspapers and television news programs report comments signed by "average citizen" or similar pseudonyms, calling for calm. In controlled media, such messages are obviously suspect. Even so, they appear to mirror genuine feelings. Says one West German expert assigned to follow the Polish crisis: "When you have to stand in line for hours for food, then walk kilometers to work because of transport strikes, it gradually grinds you down. As the euphoria wears off, you begin to realize that the system is here to stay and that perhaps a more moderate approach is the answer, because then there is less chance of hard repression."

The government was trying to project at least a fac,ade of moderation. Last week it permitted an unprecedented television debate among three representatives from Solidarity, three from the official unions and three from the Ministry of Labor and Wages. For 45 minutes, the panel discussed Solidarity's demands, from the five-day week to access to the national media to the farmers' union. The government presumably hoped to portray Solidarity as leading the country toward economic and social ruin, a point that official television commentators have begun to make regularly. If so, the ploy failed. At one point, to show that other countries worked on Saturdays, a government representative ineptly pointed out that French consumers could even buy cars on Saturday. Responded the Solidarity side: because of the perennial shortages of automobiles, Poles cannot buy them in midweek.

The government does seem to be addressing some labor grievances, especially inefficiency and corruption within the bureaucracy. But Kania's every move must take into account the Soviet army divisions inside Poland and massed on its borders.

A Soviet invasion remains a definite possibility, though the chances of it seem to have diminished a little. Until recently the Soviet forces were on a 48-hour alert. That has been changed to 72 hours. The Soviets would much prefer that Kania solve his own problem. They do not want to become involved in a protracted guerrilla war in Poland; nor do they want to risk the global crisis such a step would almost certainly touch off.

Still, Moscow will tolerate no fundamental challenge to Communist power in Warsaw. Last week TASS, the official Soviet news agency, said that "anti-Soviet opposition forces" in Poland increased in the past week and that "the unions are trying to destroy Socialism." The Soviet army newspaper Red Star pointedly reprinted a commentary from Warsaw's Trybuna Ludu warning against the "dangerous game" the Solidarity strikers were playing. Prague's Rude Pravo charged that Walesa had received orders from Pope John Paul II to initiate the latest round of labor unrest.

Both Rude Pravo and Red Star laid principal blame for what was happening in Poland on NATO and the West.

Faced with massive debts, the Warsaw government has turned increasingly to the West for loans and credits. Britain, France and West Germany already have made short-term loans to Warsaw. Next month, as many as twelve nations will meet in Paris to work out a common program for future aid to Poland. Polish Ambassador to Washington Romuald Spa-sowski last week canvassed the Reagan Administration to find out how much the U .S. might be willing to provide.

In its final days the Carter Administration considered a $3 billion loan to Warsaw, but never took action on it. Spa-sowski's message to Reagan officials was that such a loan would be an effective political lever. There is disagreement, he admitted frankly, between hard-liners and moderates in both the Polish government and its Politburo about seeking financial assistance in the West. By granting aid, the U.S. presumably could strengthen the hand of the moderates in Warsaw.

The U.S. position appears to have hardened with the change in Administrations. Secretary of State Alexander Haig signaled the new view at a press conference last week when asked about Poland. Said Haig: "The provision of either credits or cash or economic assistance to Poland today is not the answer to the problem. The problem involves internal reform within the Polish state and it is up to the Polish government and the Polish authorities to work this out." In other words, future aid to Poland will depend on economic reforms. --By Spencer Davidson. Reported by Richard Homik/Berlin and B. William Mader/Bonn

With reporting by Richard Homik/Berlin andB. William Mader/Bonn

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