Recantation

A fugitive union leader gives up

Midway through the evening news, a bearded, balding man dressed in a T shirt and denim jacket appeared on TV screens. Hunched over a prepared text, his eyes averted from the camera, Solidarity Activist Wladyslaw Hardek, 36, explained that he had decided to come out of hiding and lake advantage of the amnesty that General Wojciech Jaruzelski had offered when he lifted martial law last July. "Observing the situation in Poland, I came to the conclusion that the road that we followed and that we thought at the beginning was the right one brings only harm," Hardek said in a flat, low-pitched voice. "Society and the country need a normalization process and peace."

Since Hardek had been one of the five leaders of Solidarity's underground organization and the runner-up to Lech Walesa in union elections in 1981, his televised recantation last week came as a stunning blow to supporters of the banned movement. Former Solidarity officials expressed shock and disbelief that the union organizer at Cracow's Nowa Huta steel mill had turned himself in of his own free will. Said former Solidarity Leader Walesa: "I think he was caught and made to read the statement." But Hardek was not alone in giving up the fight; at least 116 other Solidarity workers have accepted the government's offer of amnesty.

There were signs last week that some union supporters were prepared to hold out a while longer. In an effort to force the state to negotiate with Walesa, a new breakaway group urged union supporters at the Gdansk shipyard to stage a slowdown. According to workers filing out of the massive complex where the Solidarity movement began, it was hard to judge the success of the protest since many sections of the plant were already idle because of a shortage of materials. But the authorities were sufficiently concerned to dispatch Deputy Premier Mieczyslaw Rakowski to Gdansk for a shirtsleeves meeting with about 700 workers, including Walesa. When Rakowski indirectly criticized the former Solidarity leader, the crowd jeered and shouted, "Speak, Lech!" Walesa used the opportunity to call for talks with the government and was carried out of the room on the shoulders of cheering supporters.

A crucial test of union strength will come this week on the third anniversary of the signing of the Gdansk agreements that gave birth to Solidarity. Underground organizers have called for a two-hour boycott of public transportation, a form of protest that will not necessarily expose followers to official reprisals unless there are demonstrations. Still, as time passes and support for the banned union erodes, no work stoppages, public boycotts or strident speeches are likely to bring Solidarity back. sb This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.