Solidarity One Year Later

By William E. Smith

Striking a balance between attack and accommodation

Spirits quickened in Poland once again last week as the country was swept anew by the euphoria and the unease that have characterized so much of the past year. The independent labor federation Solidarity celebrated the first anniversary of its recognition by the Polish government and proceeded to hold its first national congress. The Central Committee of the Polish Communist Party met to denounce Solidarity and some of its latest efforts for reform. And lest the aggressive unionists forget the facts of Polish geography, the Soviet Union staged military maneuvers off Poland's northeastern borders--a reminder to Solidarity's leaders that there are limits to their ambitions.

These are strange days in Poland: more political freedom than most citizens can remember in their lifetimes, coupled with hard times, food shortages, long queues for essential commodities, and nagging uncertainty about the future. On the very day of Solidarity's anniversary, the government announced sharp increases in the price of bread and cereal. Since it was a meat-price hike that had led to prolonged unrest last year, and the subsequent birth of Solidarity, it was conceivable that the new increases would trigger protests. In fact there were none--perhaps because the public realized that bread prices had been unrealistically low. At 120 a loaf, bread had actually been cheaper than the grain used to make it. As a result, whenever they could do so, farmers bought bread by the truckload and fed it to their pigs and chickens. So most people accepted the new prices (28-c- for an ordinary loaf) with barely a shrug.

What was most notable about the increases was that the government did not clear them beforehand with Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa and his colleagues. Solidarity had maintained that there should be no changes in food prices until an economic reform program had been agreed upon. The government went ahead anyway, and Solidarity acquiesced, to avoid yet another showdown.

Each side blames the other for the parlous state of the Polish economy. The party leadership criticizes the union, claiming that strikes and obstruction have cut productivity during the past year. The union blames the government and the party for a decade of mismanagement under Edward Gierek, who was ousted last year after the rise of Solidarity. Poland has a skilled labor force, ample farm land and considerable mineral wealth, but Gierek's grandiose heavy-industry schemes have left the country virtually bankrupt and $27 billion in debt to the West. And Solidarity now goes further: it has zeroed in on mismanagement at the local level and is pressing for a program of "self-management" under which factories and other enterprises would be run not by state-appointed managers but by directors chosen by workers' councils. In July, employees of LOT, the state airline, struck for four hours over the right to choose a new director. They did not succeed. But a few weeks later, worker representatives from 1,000 enterprises met in the port city of Gdansk to discuss self-management. Then they went home and, in many cases, proceeded with plans to put it into practice. The result is confusion in the economy and consternation in the government.

The Communist Party's Central Committee, mindful of Moscow's warning that Poland should not resort to "non-Leninist" means in trying to solve its economic problems, is taking a fairly hard line on the subject. Insisting that the state would not give up its right to choose managers, Party Boss Stanislaw Kania warned Solidarity that the government would use "any means necessary to defend socialism." The Central Committee seemed ready, however, to offer two concessions: 1) the state would be prepared to select directors from lists of candidates submitted by workers' councils; and 2) the workers' councils of "smaller enterprises" might be permitted to appoint their directors without interference. If the government were willing to extend the latter principle to all but perhaps 200 of the larger or more politically sensitive enterprises, a compromise with Solidarity might be possible.

At their national congress last weekend in Gdansk, where the movement was born, Solidarity leaders discussed current problems and made plans for another meeting on the issue later this month. But they were also preoccupied with the momentous changes that their country has undergone since the signing of the Gdansk agreement by the government and the unionists a year ago. The party has been challenged and to a considerable extent reformed; the Catholic Church, though now deprived of its venerable primate Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, who died last May, has become an arbiter between party and union; and Solidarity has grown into an organization of 10 million members, the only independent trade union in the Communist bloc. The climate of fear that lay over the land for more than three decades has gradually eased: people are able to speak freely, to buy books that were long suppressed, to secure passports for travel abroad.

Now Solidarity's leaders are faced with uncertainty over what to do next. Moderates like Walesa try to strike a balance between attack and accommodation; some of his lieutenants think only in terms of striking out at the Communist establishment. Like all Poles, they are obsessed with their history: of rising up against oppressive neighbors, only to be defeated and subjugated; like all Poles, they know that the Soviets could still intervene. A fortnight ago, the new primate of Poland, Archbishop Jozef Glemp, reminded his countrymen of the nearly 150 years of bondage they had endured after the partitions of the late 18th century. "This is a painful warning to us," he said. "We should think about it deeply." Solidarity's dilemma remains as formidable today as it was a year ago--to press its case forcefully; but never hard enough to bring destruction. --By William E. Smith. Reported by Richard Hornik/ Warsaw

With reporting by Richard Hornik

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