A Message from Moscow

By Sara Medina

Renewal survives a Soviet challenge and a factional fight

When Polish Communist Party Secretary Stanislaw Kania took the floor last week to open an emergency Central Committee plenum in Warsaw, he faced one of the gravest challenges to confront the leader of a Soviet client state. Three days earlier, the Polish party had received its latest warning from a Soviet Central Committee increasingly disturbed over the course of Poland's "socialist renewal." The near ultimatum to the Poles came in the form of a toughly worded letter that, for the first time, criticized by name both Kania and Premier Wojciech Jaruzelski. The Soviet threat, similar to one sent to the Czechoslovaks three days before Soviet tanks moved into Prague in 1968, exacerbated an open rift within the Polish Central Committee and elicited a stern warning to the Soviets from U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig. The U.S., said Haig, holds "the firm view that the Polish people should be left alone to determine their future course." Only a compromise decision not to bring matters to a head allowed Kania to defuse the immediate crisis and buy some time.

The hastily called Polish Central Committee meeting was the fifth such session since last summer's strikes led to the formation of the Solidarity trade union movement and to the party upheavals that brought Kania to power. From that time on, the Polish party leadership has given way before a reformist tide that has resulted in official recognition both for Solidarity and for an independent farmers' union. It has also led to the democratic election of delegates to a Communist Party congress next month that is expected to ratify the reforms.

While renewal has the backing of most party members--and of the population as a whole--it also has formidable opponents. At every Central Committee session, Kania and moderate supporters have had to slug it out with influential, pro-Soviet hard-liners who fear that their power and prerogatives, and possibly their very jobs, will be swept away by the reforms.

This made last week's 1,700-word letter from Moscow all the more troubling for Kania, whose regime had enjoyed two months of relative calm. The letter chastised Kania and Jaruzelski for not taking "practical measures" to combat the rising "counterrevolutionary threat" to party and country. "The enemies of socialist Poland," the letter asserted, "are waging a struggle for power and are already winning it. They are gaining control of one position after another." The Soviets were particularly upset that "enemies of socialism and counterrevolutionaries" had "seized control of the mass information media," were engaging in "attempts to slander and disorganize the security forces and the army" and had instigated "a wave of anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism." Even more galling was the situation within the Polish party. "Casual people," said the letter, were being elected delegates to the party congress, while "experienced activists" were being "shunted aside." Moscow's conclusion: "The serious danger hanging over socialism in Poland constitutes a threat to the very existence of an independent Polish state"--the closest Moscow has yet come to an open threat of armed intervention.

In a carefully balanced speech, Kania acknowledged that the Soviets' alarm was "fully justified" and admitted that many of the letter's criticisms were warranted. He also lashed out at what he called a "dirty wave of anti-Sovietism and anti-Communism" in Poland, citing in particular a recent spate of "barbarous acts" of vandalism against Soviet war memorials. Finally, he agreed that "editorial discipline" in the press had slipped, a reference to greatly eased censorship. Despite the bow to Moscow, Kania left no doubt about his commitment to the renewal process, and he stressed that Poland had been enjoying relative labor peace of late. Indeed, a two-hour warning strike called by Solidarity was postponed last week, thanks to last-minute union-government negotiations.

As other speakers succeeded the secretary on the podium during two days of stormy debate, it became clear that the Soviet letter had provoked a full-scale factional fight between Kania's moderates and the pro-Soviet hard-line factions. Several Central Committee members openly called for personnel changes in the Politburo, and Tadeusz Grabski, chief spokesman for the hardliners, challenged Kania personally. Said he: "The Politburo under the leadership of Kania cannot lead the country out of the crisis." Others came to Kania's defense. Deputy Premier Mieczyslaw Rakowski, in charge of government-union relations, said the current policies were the only way to social peace.

In an unprecedented move, Kania and some of his Politburo colleagues dramatically called for individual votes of confidence from the 141 Central Committee members on the issue of their leadership. The vote never came. Unwilling to push a leadership fight to the finish at this point, the committee instead voted to reject the proposal. "If we did change the party leadership today," said Alternate Politburo Member Roman Ney, "the party and society would take it as a change enforced by our allies, as a departure from socialist renewal."

Jaruzelski moved to bolster his government at week's end by reshuffling five Cabinet portfolios. The major casualty was Justice Minister Jerzy Bafia, whose slow-moving investigation of a police attack on Solidarity workers at Bydgoszcz last March had angered the union's activists.

The Central Committee meeting closed with a pledge to address the Soviets' key concerns. While affirming the commitment to the "process of renewal," the committee's final resolution promised a "re-evaluation of journalistic cadres" --signaling a probable purge of journalists --and called for the forces of public order to crack down on open dissent. The resolution also labeled political strikes "inadmissible." On this last point, even Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa was moved to agree, telling workers at a Warsaw auto plant that "we [Solidarity] do not exist to change the government or to engage in political activities." It remains to be seen how aggressively the party's pledges will be carried out. The Poles have found ways to circumvent the wishes of their Soviet mentors before. --By Sara Medina. Reported by Richard Hornik/Vienna

With reporting by Richard Hornik

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