Wrestling for Position

By Thomas A. Sancton

Maneuvering against Solidarity, Jaruzelski calls out the army

The scenes flickered by with the familiarity of an old newsreel. Across Poland last week, the strike sirens were wailing once again as millions of workers dropped their tools for an hour to protest a worsening food shortage and the harassment of Solidarity union members. Workers wearing red-and-white armbands clustered at factory gates, shop fronts and mine entrances under a cold fall drizzle. In the Baltic port city of Gdansk, where Solidarity was born 14 months ago, hundreds of men and women gathered at the Lenin Shipyard and draped its gate with flowers. In heavily industrialized Silesia, brawny metalworkers stood idle in the shadow of towering steel-mill chimneys. In Warsaw, flag-draped buses and tramways came to a halt, snarling traffic for blocks around.

Though it was the first nationwide walkout since March 27, last week's action seemed much like the countless other strikes that have punctuated more than a year of Polish labor unrest and political turmoil. But there was one key difference: General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the nation's Premier, who had just taken over the party leadership, had sent soldiers throughout the country to guard against economic disruptions and "provocations."

The announced troop deployment, coming in the wake of a Central Committee threat to declare martial law, had ominous implications. So did the crescendo of official warnings against carrying out the planned national strike. Early in the week, authorities declared that Solidarity's walkout "would be met with actions commensurate with the threat." A group of party hard-liners raised the chilling possibility of "shedding fraternal blood." Moreover, the Soviet news agency TASS reported that "counterrevolutionary" forces were using the strike to "blackmail" the Warsaw regime.

But once again, the government blinked. Instead of using force against the union, Jaruzelski denounced the strike in a tough speech to an emergency session of the Central Committee. "Poland has not yet perished," he said, echoing the words of the national anthem, "but it is perishing. Time is running out. This blockade must be lifted." Addressing parliament at week's end, the general asked the deputies to pass a resolution "firmly demanding the immediate halt of all strikes." If that call went unheeded, Jaruzelski warned, the government would resort to "extraordinary means of action for the protection of citizens and the state." He seemed to refer to imposing martial law. The legislators responded with a cautiously worded resolution calling for "an end to all protest actions" and warning of possible "legal measures" against disorder. In addition, the Premier announced a government reshuffle that brought five new ministers and a Deputy Premier into his Cabinet. Two of the new appointees were nonCommunists, a move to broaden participation in the administrative hierarchy.

In calling for an end to protest strikes, the party leaders had an undeclared ally in Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa. "I want to think that the strike will be the last one of its kind," he told workers at Warsaw's Rosa Luxemburg electronics plant on the day of the national walkout. Instead of symbolic protests, he suggested, the workers should resort to "active strikes," remaining on the job but distributing "what we make ourselves."

Echoing Walesa's calls for restraint, Solidarity's national presidium telexed union locals at week's end to demand a halt to wildcat strikes. But the protests continued to spread. In the city of Zyrardow, near Warsaw, 12,000 textile workers entered the third week of a sit-in to demand more food. In Zielona Gora province, 150,000 workers continued their week-old strike to protest the firing of a local Solidarity farm manager. In Tarnobrzeg province, 180,000 stayed off the job because of inadequate food supplies. And in southern Sosnowiec, near Katowice, angry miners launched an open-ended strike to protest a bizarre incident in which some 70 people were injured when four bottles of poison gas were hurled at a mine entrance from a speeding car.

In the face of the persistent unrest, some observers feared that the troops deployed last week might ultimately be used to restore order by force. Said a West German specialist in Eastern European affairs: "Part of the army remains in the barracks, but another part is being converted into an instrument for countering civil disobedience and maintaining law and order." Noting Jaruzelski's past refusals to turn the military against the Polish people, other analysts doubted that he would do so now. Observed a U.S. State Department official: "Jaruzelski wanted to give a hint to the people--and the party--that he is in command, but it's no more than that." Jaruzelski is also thought to have another motive for using the army: the hope that some of the good will the Polish people feel toward their military (see box) will rub off on his government.

The operation was purposely kept small and low-key. It involved only about 3,500 officers and enlisted men, sent in groups of three or four to 2,000 small towns and villages. Instead of moving against strikers, the soldiers began to attack the supply and distribution bottlenecks that are strangling the economy. Some army teams, for example, uncovered caches of hoarded coal and consumer goods. One patrol forced a state farm to harvest 600 tons of potatoes that would otherwise have rotted in the field. Another fixed a village heating system. Walesa gave the operation a limited endorsement when he told the Zyrardow strikers, "We should make order at the bottom through the army."

If any group had reason to be apprehensive about the army's broadening role, it was the local party bureaucrats, who have been widely accused of corruption and inefficiency. Many of these officials have deliberately obstructed the reform process in order to protect their own jobs and privileges. The army's arrival now threatens to expose such abuses. Reporting from the Poznan region last week, one officer accused local authorities of "culpable indolence in organizing supplies."

Indeed, some observers saw the troop deployment as part of a continuing power struggle between Jaruzelski and Politburo Hard-Liner Stefan Olszowski, who draws his support largely from these middle-level party veterans. Said a Polish journalist: "It is no accident that Jaruzelski sent his officers across the country armed with notebooks as well as guns. They are collecting damaging information on the supporters of his chief rival, Olszowski."

Meanwhile, Premier Jaruzelski reinforced his own position in the Communist Party last week by securing the appointment of a fellow general and supporter, Army Chief of Staff Florian Siwicki, as an alternate member of the Politburo. With three other Jaruzelski-appointed generals already serving as Cabinet ministers, the military presence in the Polish government had reached an altogether unprecedented level.

But Jaruzelski's hopes of restoring order to his troubled country depend above all on his ability to win the cooperation of the Polish people. His plan for doing that reportedly calls for the creation of a national unity coalition, in which Solidarity and the Roman Catholic Church would join forces with the Communists to try to save the economy. Explains former U.S. Ambassador to Poland William E. Schaufele Jr.: "[Jaruzelski's] best option is to make Solidarity a partner in economic policy, and then Solidarity will have to negotiate not just for itself but for the nation." Though no details of the plan have been made public, Archbishop Jozef Glemp, the new Polish Primate, is said to have held preliminary talks both with Walesa and with government officials. Alluding to his proposal before the Central Committee last week, Jaruzelski said it offered non-Communist groups "a more direct role within the system of the socialist state."

It remained to be seen whether the new party boss could satisfy Solidarity without prompting Moscow to intervene. And even if a unity deal could be struck, it was questionable whether such an alliance could turn around an economy saddled with a $27 billion foreign debt and what one Western businessman visiting Poland recently described as a "total breakdown of its supply and distribution system." The general's toughest battle still lies ahead.

With reporting by Richard Homik

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