Now the Real Challenge

By Thomas A. Sancton

Despite reforms, Warsaw's congress ducks some tough problems

When all the debates had ended and the last votes were counted Stanislaw Kania had a sobering thought for the delegates to the Ninth Extraordinary Congress of the Polish Communis Party. Unless they could now move from words to actions, warned the newly re-elected party leader in a tough closing speech, "history might brand us as those who talked Poland to death."

At first, this might seem like a strange thing to tell an assembly that had just completed the most remarkable--and democratic--party congress in the history of the Communist bloc. Not only did the 1,955 delegates carry out a sweeping purge of a discredited bureaucracy, but they also adopted the unprecedented method of secret-ballot party elections with multiple candidacies and rewrote their statutes to increase the leadership's responsibility to the rank and file. As one of its last acts, the congress limited its top officials to two terms, or a maximum of ten years, a restriction unique in the Soviet bloc.

Yet for all its astonishing innovations, the seven-day congress that ended in Warsaw last week may ultimately be remembered less for what it did than for what it did not do: draft a concrete program for solving the country's awesome problems, including by far the most important, an economy that is tottering on the verge of total collapse. As Kania warned his comrades, "Outside the doors of this hall, we will face hard reality."

Premier Wojciech Jaruzelski, a Soviet-trained army general, had somberly described that reality the day before the congress adjourned. Clad as usual in full military uniform, standing ramrod-straight at the lectern, he read out a grim check list of Poland's woes: increasing consumer shortages, falling production, a crushing foreign debt, renewed strike threats. Alluding to possible unrest, and citing the party's "trust in the army," the general turned politician implied a willingness to suppress future disorders with military force.

Jaruzelski's tough talk may have been intended to mollify a jittery Kremlin as much as to admonish his own countrymen. Indeed, one of the main goals of the congress was to persuade the Soviet Union not to intervene in Poland to seize control of the faltering government. Moscow, for its part, seemed to be taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the Polish liberalizations that it had tried, and failed, to discourage. After sending Kania a terse congratulatory telegram upon his reelection, omitting the customary expression of confidence, Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev cabled somewhat warmer greetings to Warsaw's leaders as the Poles celebrated their national day last week. The message declared the Polish party "undoubtedly capable of rallying all the working people and stirring them to a resolute rebuff to anarchy and counterrevolution."

Moscow's ambiguity and confusion are understandable: the Polish party leadership has passed into the hands of a new and largely unknown group that lacks experience. Fewer than 10% of the members of the outgoing Central Committee, the party's main administrative unit, were re-elected to the expanded 200-seat body. Though the moderate Kania kept his post as party leader, only four incumbent Politburo members remained in the new 15-member Politburo.

Most of the incoming Politburo members appear to share Kania's centrist position. Two important exceptions: Interior Minister Miroslaw Milewski and Construction Worker Albin Siwak, both conservatives. They are expected to ally with the old Politburo's one surviving hardliner, Stefan Olszowski, to resist further political reforms.

As the country's restructured leadership emerged from the congress, it narrowly averted a dangerous test of strength with the unions. Expressing concern over the country's "difficult economic situation," Solidarity leaders last week called off a threatened strike by 40,000 dockers after reaching a compromise agreement with the government that gave the workers some improved benefits but no wage increases. Another threatened walkout by employees of the LOT national airline, who demand the right to name their own director, was suspended following a personal appeal from Premier Jaruzelski.

If labor troubles simmer down, the Jaruzelski government will have a chance to complete its long-awaited economic reform blueprint. A foreshadowing of the plan came three days after the end of the congress, when the head of the government's price commission announced a series of proposed price hikes that would triple most food bills. Bread, for example, would jump from 21-c- to 64-c- a loaf. Simultaneously, the government will not be raising wages. The squeeze could turn out to be intolerable--and create even more unrest than before--although low- and middle-income Poles would be partially shielded from these increases by state subsidies. At the same time, the government announced a 20% cut in meat rations.

In Zurich, meanwhile, representatives of Western and Japanese banks agreed on a proposed plan to postpone payment of some $3 billion in Polish debts falling due this year, part of the staggering total of $27 billion that Warsaw owes to non-Communist banks and governments. A Polish government delegation concurred in "the spirit" of the proposal, whose exact terms were not disclosed, but will not give its reply until next month.

Whatever form it takes, Warsaw's economic program will ultimately depend on the cooperation of Solidarity's 10 million members. Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa admitted last week that price increases were necessary but said they should be accompanied by broad economic reforms. Charges one Solidarity official: "Incredible incompetence in management is the problem." Despite the party congress, Poland's problems are clearly far from solved.

--By Thomas A. Sancton.

Reported by Richard Hornik/Warsaw

With reporting by Richard Hornik/Warsaw

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