Bad Day at Bydgoszcz

Police brutality almost touches off a national crisis

One small spark in Poland's eight-month confrontation between the government and the reform-minded unionists of Solidarity could touch off a conflagration. Last week in Bydgoszcz (pop. 300,000), 140 miles northwest of Warsaw, the flash was almost struck. For three days, farmers demanding their own union, Rural Solidarity, had occupied a government building. Somehow, the tensions of the peasant sit-in swirled across town to another meeting at the Bydgoszcz provincial council building, where local Solidarity members and Rural Solidarity activists sought to discuss the situation with the Provisional People's Council.

Suddenly, two local officials entered the room and ordered the unionists to leave. They refused--and were immediately attacked by 200 riot police. At least 26 of the 40 or so people who were in the group were beaten, some severely enough to need hospitalization. One of the most seriously injured was local Solidarity Leader Jan Rulewski.

The assault marked the first use of force by police since Poland's labor troubles began last July--and the first serious breakdown in the tenuous recent truce between the government and Solidarity. The nation's workers reacted angrily. Lech Walesa and other Solidarity leaders, who had been trying to stave off strikes and work stoppages elsewhere, rushed to Bydgoszcz to comfort the injured and demand retribution against the police. Addressing an overflow meeting of outraged unionists, Walesa alternately stirred his listeners with attacks on the Communist apparatus and urged them not to react too rashly. "Those bandits and sadists from the security apparatus must be dismissed," he insisted. Walesa warned that, if necessary, the union could bring the entire country to a standstill in half an hour. To prove his point, union members in Bydgoszcz and the neighboring province of Torun called a two-hour strike. As sirens wailed and church bells pealed, 500,000 workers laid down their tools. Solidarity also mounted a national strike alert, meaning that unless the government takes satisfactory action against the Bydgoszcz police the country could be hit by a general strike.

Walesa did his best to cool tempers during his visit to Bydgoszcz. "Not all the authorities are swine," the Solidarity leader said. Then he warned them that "you must realize that a general strike would be the end of our struggle. One side has an army and we have none."

Not only did the other side have an army, but that army had some awesome guests on hand last week. The Bydgoszcz protests coincided with the beginning of "Soyuz 81" maneuvers to test Warsaw Pact military communications. The maneuvers were centered at Legnica, headquarters for the 40,000 Soviet troops stationed in Poland. They made it even easier for Moscow to move against Solidarity if it wanted to. Thus Walesa was cautiously trying to avoid any confrontation.

Even so, the spark could still be struck this week if Solidarity and the government cannot reach some workable agreements. At week's end, Polish Premier Wojciech Jaruzelski sent a top-level commission to Bydgoszcz to try to defuse the crisis. But after a tour of the country, Adam Bromke, a political scientist and Poland specialist at McMaster University in Ontario, was pessimistic about the long-range outcome. The Communist Party and the union, he told TIME Correspondent Richard Hornik, are "two trains heading for a collision. They are entering a situation that nobody controls." qed

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