The New Central Europe

Western doubts about the legitimacy of the status quo persisted, yet the world at large became used to Europe's division as a fact of life. Divided Europe's postwar order was often even hailed as the longest period of peace in Europe's warlike history. West Germany's new Ostpolitik, shelving the issue of reunification, was praised for its pragmatic wisdom. The loftily worded resolutions of the Helsinki Accords were supposed to advance the cause of freedom. Inevitably, though, they also stabilized the status quo in the interest of detente. Not without reason, the Epilogue on detente, written in the spring of 1980, arrived at a melancholy conclusion: "The end of tyranny was not in sight in Central Europe, or Eastern Europe, as Central Europe has come to be known in the West since the Second World War." If written just a few months later, at the moment of triumph of "Polish August," a more optimistic conclusion might have been reached. Pessimism would have returned, however, a year later following General Jaruzelski's "December coup" against Solidarity democracy. But, a few years later an entirely new view of both the uplifting "Polish August" and the depressing "December coup" was called for. They were no more epilogues to the history of Soviet conquest. They had become prologues to the history of Soviet collapse.

Lines between epilogues and prologues in history are usually blurred enough to lend themselves to mixed interpretations. Thus, it might have been quite correct to say that the Solidarity revolution started as an epilogue to Soviet conquest and ended as a prologue to Soviet collapse. In retrospect though it may seem historically correct to regard all Polish events of the 1980's as a prologue to Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe.

In comparison with the Soviet intervention in Hungaryin 1956, and in Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Soviet hesitation regarding events in Poland in the early 1980's looks like Soviet loss of faith in the Brezhnev doctrine. Knowing what we do now about the state of the Soviet Union, it appears questionable whether the threat of Soviet invasion was ever as real as it seemed at that time. The interpretation that the Jaruzelski coup saved Poland from Soviet military intervention found ready acceptance both in the West and the East. To believe in such a patriotic interpretation served obvious Communist interests. However, it was not Communists alone who were critical of Solidarity radicalism. Hungarian public opinion at large believed that Solidarity recklessness was endangering liberalization in the Soviet bloc. In the detente-

oriented West, too, the Solidarity challenge to the status quo was not as enthusiastically approved as anti- Communism itself in general.

As seen in retrospect: At the time of the Jaruzelski coup in December, 1981, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, was less than four years away from becoming the top man in the Kremlin. A new Russian generation was waiting in the wings to take over the Kremlin from the aging old- guard Bolsheviks. Uncertainty surrounded the Kremlin policy- makers for other reasons too. The dismal domestic and international consequences of the ill- conceived invasion of Afghanistan two years earlier were being felt with growing concern. East- West detente was deteriorating.

The Soviets wished for no further deterioration. This was no time for the dying Brezhnev to order a Polish invasion. Nor was the Brezhnev doctrine a realistic option anymore for the two aging dictators who succeeded Brezhnev; the short Andropov- Chernenko interregnum tried to mend fences with the West. The ground was being prepared for Gorbachev's coming to power.

In other words: Whether, as in some people's eyes, General Jaruzelski saved Poland from Soviet invasion, or just prolonged by a few more years the life of Polish communism, Gorbachev's revolution was around the corner, and Poland was ready to play a commanding role in Eastern Europe's liberation.

Historically, Poland always held a unique place among the countries of the Soviet bloc. In world War II, she fought first against Hitler and suffered more than any other country of Central Europe the cruelties under both Nazi Germans and Soviet Russias. Right or not, Churchill kept repeating that the Western democracies entered the war against Hitler to save Poland. More rightly than not, according to Churchill's other frequent reminder: Allied wartime diplomacy spent more time on securing Poland's independence than on any other single issue. More importantly, postwar Poland was the least Sovietized among the Soviet bloc countries. Her peasantry was barely collectivized. She was uniquely successful in sustaining an organized underground national existence both under the Nazis and the Communists. Also, she was the largest among the Soviet satellite states. No wonder, Poland was the Soviet bloc's leader in defying Communist rule.

In 1956, Poland was the first to overthrow the postwar Stalinist Muscovite puppet regime, thus precipitating the first major regional crisis of the post- Stalin era in Eastern Europe. More upheavals followed, forcing Poland's Communists to change regimes a record number of times. But until 1980, there was no fundamental difference between Polish troubles and troubles elsewhere in the Soviet bloc. A great difference started with the summer upheaval of 1980. It was different from anything that ever happened anywhere before: the Polish offensive against the Gierek regime ushered in the ultimate Communist defeat in Eastern Europe.

Edward Gierek, actually started well. His background as a Polish worker in the West seemed to make him susceptible to demands for democratic reforms in his homeland. Unlike Gomulka's brief honeymoon with the Polish people following the 1956 crisis, Gierek's start after the 1970 crisis seemed more propitious. His populist style and initial reforms seemed to generate more popular support any Polish Communist regime ever succeeded to enjoy. But Poland remained restless, impatient for democratic reforms. By the middle of the 1970's Gierek was running into troubles familiar to his predecessors. His harsh handling of the worker strikes reminded the Poles of the martyrs of 1970 when Gomulka's police opened fire against the striking workers of Gdynia. There were new forces, too, radicalizing Polish opposition against Communist misrule and Party corruption.

One of the new forces of democratic opposition was KOR (Polish acronym for Committee for the Defense of Workers), founded in 1976. It was a small group of intellectuals engaged in the legal defense of workers who got into trouble with the regime. Left- of- center, KOR was intellectually more powerful than its rightist counterpart, the Catholic KIK (Clubs of Catholic Intellectuals) which counted among its members Tadeusz Masowiecki the future Premier of the first freely elected government of the coming revolution. Among the KOR intellectuals, Jacek The New Central Europe 254

Kuronand Adam Michnik, in particular, achieved fame as reformists and later revolutionary strategists. KOR rapidly grew into a fourth component of the unofficial Polish opposition, alongside of the peasants, the workers and the Church. However, no influence on the Polish opposition in the late 1970's was comparable to that of the "Polish pope." John Paul II's election in 1978, and his first visit to his homeland the following year, raised Polish national pride and political self-confidence to an all- time high.

The summer crisis of 1980 started with strikes in Warsaw. As usual the workers were protesting the increase in meat prices and demanding higher pay. It looked like a routine strike. But, surprisingly, wildcat sympathy strikes in large factories spread all over the country. On July 17, the army was called in to maintain essential services when in the southern city of Lublin 80,000 workers joined a general strike. It was not in the South, however, where history was to be made. The legendary Solidarity trade union was born in the Northern cities of Gdansk and Szczecin, famous before but not in Polish history. Called Danzig and Stettin in German, they belonged to the medieval Baltic trading network, the famous league of Hansa cities. Poland annexed them after World War II as part of the territorial compensation of lands in the west for lands annexed by the Soviets in the east. As centers of the Solidarity trade union network, they became famous in the Polish August revolution.

By mid- August, 1980, it became obvious that something very unusual was happening in Poland. The country stopped working, it was thrown into turmoil by a general strike. Millions of workers were demanding independent trade unions, independent, that is, from the official CRZZ (Central Council of Trade Unions). The uniformity of demands was mostly the work of KOR intellectuals. They were helping the workers articulate their demands.

A turning point in the summer crisis was August 14, when striking workers occupied the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk and the Warski Shipyard in Szczecin, triggering work stoppages under MKS (Interfactory Strike Committee) leadership in the entire Baltic industrial region. It was then and there that an electrician by the name of Lech Walesa started his rise to prominence as MKS president. On August 16, Gdansk took the initiative, followed by Szczecin, in drafting a reform program consisting finally of 21 points. It was to be presented to the government as a platform for negotiations for ending the nationwide strikes. The spectacular history of Solidarity and Walesa had begun.

Negotiations between the Warsaw government and the striking workers opened in Gdansk on August 24. The ailing Gierek was vacationing as a guest of the fraternal Soviet party in the Crimea at the Black Sea while these great events of Polish history were happening in the Baltic ports of Gdansk and Szczecin. He returned hurriedly to Warsaw but seemed unaware of the seriousness of the situation. His emissaries sent to Gdansk were confronted by the workers, demands which came down to this: In exchange for recognizing the workers' right to organize their own free independent trade unions, the strikers were willing to acknowledge the existing constitutional order, including the leading role of the Communist party. People from KOR and KIK showed up in Gdansk but the negotiations were entirely in the workers' hands.

In the light of 1989 events, the Gdansk compromise proposed by the workers was moderate. In August, 1980, however, it looked radical both to the Communist and non- Communist world, and the reaction was less than enthusiastic. The West responded to the Polish crisis in much the same way it had to the crisis only recently whipped up by President Carter's human rights initiative, preferring not to take sides pro or con. The Communist reaction was cautious too. Many people in both East and West seemed to believe that the Polish crisis should have been avoided because it was harmful to detente and raised the threat of Soviet intervention. The greater was the surprise when after a tense week of negotiations the Polish workers won the war of nerves. The Communist government accepted the compromise proposed by the workers. The signing of the document of agreement called "21 points" (a misnomer because there were many more than 21) took place in Gdansk on August 31, 1980. It was a turning point, a birthday of freedom under Communist rule, an event without precedent, unbelievable even to the optimists. But it also aroused doubts about the future of the Polish compromise in practice.

The list of signers of the Gdansk agreement was headed by Lech Walesa for the striking workers in his capacity as MKS president, and by Miecyslaw Jagielskifor the government. Jagielskis name was forgotten, while Walesa's entered Polish history. And so did "Solidarity," originally the battle cry of the striking workers which became the name The New Central Europe 256

of the free trade unions the workers had won the right to form. It was a right the Gdansk agreement cleverly connected with international law. The "conclusion" of the first point of the "21 points" demanded the government "To accept trade unions as free and independent of the [Communist] party, as laid down in Convention No. 87 of the ILO [International Labor Organization] and ratified by Poland. . . " The Gdansk agreement made no mention of Solidarity. But the free trade unions that mushroomed all over Poland followed the example of the Gdansk and Szczecin unions, which were the first to call themselves by that name. A national meeting of free trade unions took place at Gdansk on September 17, setting up a "national coordinating committee," and thus laying down the foundations of "Solidarity" as a nation-wide organization 2. Walesa, as president of the Gdansk MKS was recognized as the national leader of Solidarity. He never missed mentioning that the dispute between workers and the regime was settled without force, by talking "as Poles to Poles.,"3 And Poles as well as the world at large never ceased wondering how far the might of the Soviet Union would go on tolerating freedom in Poland, a Soviet bloc country.

Among the seven "decisions," of the "21 points," Gdansk agreement two were of particular significance. One was a general agreement saying that "it will be beneficial to create new union organizations, which will run themselves, and which will be authentic expressions of the working class." The other one specified the limits of working class power: "The MKS [Interfactory Strike Committee] declares that it will respect the principles laid down in the Polish Constitution while creating the new independent and self- governing unions. These new unions are not to play the role of a political party. ... They will recognize the leading role of the PZPR [Polish United Workers Party, a.k.a. Communist Party] in the state, and will not oppose the existing system of international alliances."[4]

Curiously, the Szczecin agreement subsequently signed between workers and the regime, essentially identical with that of the Gdansk agreement, omitted the reference to the "leading role" of the Communist Party.[5] But, whether spelled out specifically or not, the future of the Polish compromise depended on peaceful coexistence between the Party and Solidarity.

The new Communist leadership entrusted with carrying out the com-

promise with Solidarity was headed by the Party's new first secretary Stanislaw Kania. Of peasant origin, a Eurocommunist type of Polish patriot, Kania was a sympathetic partner for this "as Poles to Poles," relationship between Party and Solidarity. He believed in the necessity of a new workers, organization Solidarity was advocating. The Party itself, however, was sharply split between a pro- Solidarity left led by Miecyslaw Rakowskiand a pro- Soviet right led by Stefan Olszowski.

The signing of the Baltic compromise agreement with the striking workers did not put an end to the tensions triggered by the August crisis. Tyranny and freedom did not mix well. Temporarily, both the Polish Party and the Soviets seemed to agree on a policy of retreat. But the retreat was a strategic one. It was meant to last only until a way could be found to stop Solidarity's democratic offensive without Soviet intervention.

From August 1980 to December 1981, Poland lived in a state of uninterrupted crisis. The Party tried to get control over Solidarity by integrating it into the existing official trade union system. Solidarity found it easy to defeat these attempts. Independent free trade unions sprang up spontaneously all over the country. The workers abandoned the official trade unions and embraced Solidarity. The Communist Party, instead of getting control over Solidarity lost control over its own trade unions. The workers went to Solidarity en masse. The government tried to stem the Solidarity tide by making the registration of new trade unions difficult. The policy failed. So did other anti- Solidarity tactics.

Despite delays in fulfilling all the government concessions pledged in the Baltic agreements, democratization of the country continued by leaps and bounds. Following the industrial workers' example, the Polish agrarian workers soon started organizing themselves into free trade unions. Furthermore, Solidarity began to act as a political party, the very thing it had pledged not to do in the Gdansk agreements with the Government. The democratic world watched Poland's self- liberation with amazement, but also wondered whether the Poles were not straining to a breaking point the tension with the Communists and the Soviets.

The Soviet position was publicly stated by Brezhnev at the congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, May 7, 1981: "The Polish Communists will, one must assume, be able to preserve the cause of socialism."[6] Kania was trying desperately to do just that. To counter the Solidarity revolution he announced an "obnowa," a renewal of Polish society. If successful, it might have been a forerunner of Gorbachev's "perestroika." But Kania was no Gorbachev. And the real Gorbachev was not yet master of the Kremlin. An ominous crisis within the crisis erupted when in the late fall of 1981 Solidarity suddenly advanced its new demand for free elections.

To manage the crisis running out of control, Kania was succeeded as First Secretary of the Polish Communist Party by General Wojciech Jaruzelski, Minister of Defense under the Kania regime. The stage was set for a showdown. No one knew how it would end, but both Poland and the world at large knew it was coming. The Soviets in cooperation with Jaruzelski found a way out of the Polish predicament without invasion: it was Jaruzelski's military coup of December 13, 1981. Although Jaruzelski made it seem that he was acting "as Poles to Poles," (Walesa's phrase) to save Poland from catastrophe, his coup succeeded because he found enough Poles to act against Poles.

In 1981, there were enough Poles who as patriots felt that to forestall Soviet invasion it was worth supporting Jaruzelski. As it turned out, the Jaruzelski coup only interrupted the Polish democratic revolution. Solidarity's triumph of 1980, despite its defeat by Jaruzelski's coup of 1981, was a prologue to the liberation of 1989, not only of Poles but of all peoples of Central and Eastern Europe.

The New Central Europe