Central and Eastern European States -
1981 Poland and Solidarity
‘To write about opposition to communism in the
1980s, one must begin with Poland. The Poles were the only ones ever to
stage repeated challenges to communist rule, with major uprisings in
1956, 1968, 1970, 1976 and 1980. Solidarity, the last of these, was a
more credible alternative to communism than anything else produced in
Central Europe. Its influence throughout the region was incalculable…’ (Padraic
Kenney – A Carnival of Revolution: 15)
Warsaw also had its spring. The ‘March Days’ of 1968 saw student
strikes and theatre protests, but unlike in Prague, Gomułka ordered a
swift and uncompromising clampdown. University social science
departments were closed and leading dissident intellectuals dismissed.
In contrast to events a decade later, the working classes offered little
support for the protestors. The origins of Solidarity are to be traced
to events in December 1970. Just before Christmas, the party decided to
increase food prices by 36%. The people responded with strikes and
demonstrations, most notably in the Baltic ship building port of Gdańsk.
In December, Gomułka ordered a crack-down against the
‘counter-revolutionaries’ and Polish soldiers shot at and killed Polish
workers.
Why was December 1970 so important? Firstly, the strike,
demonstration and the shootings took place at the giant Lenin Shipyard
in Gdańsk, which would later become the birthplace and organisational
core of Solidarity. One important member of the strike committee in 1970
made it his career to settle the account of injustices committed. His
name was Lech Wałęsa. Secondly, unlike in Poznan 1956 or in Prague in
1968, the protest was organized outside the context of the party. The
protesters appealed to international law to legitimate their independent
trade union activity as a workers’ organisation against the Workers’
state. The response of the party in 1970 was, however, similar to 1956.
Changes were promised and reforms introduced; most notable was the
replacement of Gomułka by Edward Gierek. In addition, as in 1968, the
workers and middle classes remained divided.
December 1970 is the single
most important date in the pre-history of Solidarity. In December 1970,
the giant which the socialist regime itself had created, the new working
class, first flexed its muscles, seized the men who claimed to rule in
its interest by the scruff of their necks, and shook them.
(Timothy Garton Ash - Solidarity 14)
In January 1971, Gierek
successfully appealed to workers to return to work claiming ‘I am only a
worker like you’ and launched an ambitious but ill conceived plan of
‘consumer socialist’, economic regeneration. On the basis of Western
loans and imported technology, Gierek successfully raised consumer
expectations: wages increased by 36% but prices remained fixed at 1967
levels. Of the 20 billion dollars Poland borrowed in the 1970s, 6
billion went on food stuffs. (Stokes 18) The consequence was massive
national debt, at a time when the world economy was slipping into the
1973 oil crisis. The Poles now expected more and the crisis ridden state
was increasingly unable to deliver. By 1976 something had to give.
Without warning, food prices were increased by 60% and again the country
went on strike. There were riots and violent state retribution, but
again the party gave way and the increase in food prices was withdrawn.
However, Solidarity did not emerge merely as a result of economic
factors. It is the social and cultural context that explains the unique
character of what would become Solidarity and what sort of people became
Solidarity supporters. With the highest post-war population growth, a
new generation was reaching adulthood in the 1970s. One third of the
industrial working class was under 25 years of age. (TGA: 29) Unlike the
party nomenklatura that constituted a significant portion of the older
generation, they had no prospect of significant social mobility.
They were better educated than those above them, had higher
expectations than the previous generation, but were destined to a life
of manual labour. In addition, having been inculcated with the ideas of
Marxist egalitarianism, they were confronted with daily injustices that
rewarded party careerists with ‘front of the queue’ access to social
provision and hard currency access to exclusive shops that stocked
western consumer goods. This new working class was therefore susceptible
to the new ideas and organisations that began to emerge in the 1970s.
The most significant of these was the Workers’ Defence Committee
(KOR),
a group of intellectuals who initially organised the legal defence of
the workers who had participated in the 1976 riots.
What the KOR managed
to do was unite the intellectuals who had revolted in Warsaw in 1968
with the workers who had led the protests in 1970. The KOR produced
uncensored journals and newspapers like Robotnik, through an underground
press that would be read in secrecy and passed on and devoured by eager
workers. It was through an initiative of the KOR that the first
independent trade unions were formed. On Mayday 1978, the first free
trade union was launched in Gdańsk. Amongst the leaders of Free Trade
Unions of the Coast, was Lech Wałęsa, sacked for trade union agitation
two years previously, now he was to be found selling Robotnik outside
the Lenin Shipyard gates.
Of course, the Communist leadership had the means to crush this
dangerous counter-culture; that it didn’t can be explained by the
international climate of Détente and the Helsinki Accords. A financially
desperate Gierek was rewarded for Poland’s positive human rights record
by a visit by US President Jimmy Carter with $200 million of US credit.
Put simply, Gierek could literally not afford to crush the KOR.
The Antipoliticians or ‘What is to be done when nothing can be
done?’- Jacek Kuroń
After 1968, East European intellectuals faced the
dilemma of how to live in a society which had proved itself immune to
reform and dependent for its survival on Soviet tanks. Some
intellectuals like former communist Milan Kundera left and migrated to
the west. Others like Havel stayed. For those that stayed, the challenge
was to live a private, ethical life. Or as Polish writer Konstanty
Gebert put it, to erect ‘a small, portable barricade between me and
silence, submission, humiliation, shame. As long as I man it, there is,
around me, a small area of freedom’. (Stokes: 23)
But perhaps the most significant moment in the pre-history of
Solidarity occurred in June 1979, with the official visit of Poland by
Pope John Paul II. Karol Wojtyła, Archbishop of Kraków, had been elected
Pope the previous year.
The future Pope John Paul II established a reputation for presenting
sermons with the themes of human rights. As many as 12 million Poles
attended at least one of the open air sermons of his eight day tour
during which the organisational reality of the communist state seemed to
disappear.
The Pope’s message was a simple one of human rights and
peace, but the implications for the communist state were clear: ‘The
future of Poland will depend upon how many people are mature enough to
be non-conformists‘, said John Paul II.
When an unofficial
lecture organized by Krakow students on 'Orwell's 1984
and Poland today' was broken up by police, the organiser
went in some distress to his parish priest. A few days
later there was a meeting in church, with an address,
subject... 'Orwell's 1984 and Poland today'. This
meeting was not disrupted. ‘Among his many firsts,
Pope John Paul II, then Archbishop of Krakow, must be
the first divine to have ordered 1984 to be read in
churches’. (TGA Solidarity 23)
By the end of the 1970s the
Polish opposition was more united and better articulated than at any
time in its history. The workers’ unions, the intellectuals of KOR and
the Church stood ready to lead a nation against Soviet control. All that
was needed was a spark.
The initial causes of the 1980 unrest were again
economic. Poland’s international debt had risen from $1.2 billion in
1971 to $20.5 billion in 1979. (Kemp-Welch: 230) Faced with pressures
from international creditors, the Gierek regime agreed to increase food
prices. The sporadic strikes that resulted were contained through
judicious, localised pay rises. The turning point, however, came in
mid-August and significantly the cause was not economic. The sacking of
popular crane worker and union activist
Anna Walentynowicz just a few
months before her retirement resulted in a demonstration for not only
her reinstatement but also that of Lech Wałęsa. The director of the
factory followed the previously successful tactic of promised better
conditions if the workers returned to their jobs. But as the crowd
seemed on the verge of accepting the offer, Wałęsa climbed up behind the
director, tapped him on the shoulder and said ‘Remember me? I worked
here for ten years… I have the confidence of the workers here’ (TGA 39)
By August 18th some 200 factories from the Gdańsk region had joined
Wałęsa’s Interfactory Strike Committee, soon to be christened
Solidarność (Solidarity).
The Interfactory Strike Committee produced a list of 21 demands.
Importantly, the list went beyond issues of pay and conditions and
included the radical demand for the right to form independent trade
unions. At the same moment both the KOR - ‘which artfully advised but
never dominated’ – (R. J. Crampton Eastern Europe in the Twentieth
Century: 367) and the Catholic Church issued statements in support of
this fundamental ‘right of workers to free associations in unions which
genuinely represent them’. (quoted in Kemp-Welch 247) Although the
government drew up plans to crush Solidarity by force, the Polish
Politburo decided for a negotiated settlement. When on August 31, 1980
the Gdańsk agreement, or ‘Social Accords’, was agreed, Poland became
unique in the communist bloc for allowing the paradoxical situation
whereby an independent trade union could represent the workers against
the workers’ state. In September, Solidarity appealed for registration
and after six tense weeks of strikes and negotiation, Solidarity became
a full legal entity. As Jacek Kuroń later put it, ‘I thought it was
impossible, it was impossible, and I still think it was impossible’.
(Stokes: 39) Solidarity was allowed to exist for 469 days during which
the tensions of being in an ‘impossible’ situation were never far from
the surface. That Solidarity was allowed to exist as long as it did was
due much to the leadership and diplomacy of Lech Wałęsa. On the one
hand, Solidarity was legally antipolitical and recognised the de jure
leading role of the communist party. On the other hand, Solidarity
exercised enormous influence as the only legitimate, de facto
representative of the Polish working class. By some accounts Solidarity
had 10 million members by the middle of 1981. (Barend: 258) Solidarity
articulated the workers’ grievances but other than the threat of a
general strike, it lacked the mechanisms to do anything about it.
Solidarity –
which came first, the name or the logo?
'Where did the name
Solidarity come from? Since Deputy Premier
Jagielski could not let the phrase “Free Trade
Unions” pass his lips, we consulted the experts.
This was a “solidarity” strike and our Bulletin
was called Solidarity. So the name chose
itself.’ Anna Walentynowicz (quoted in
Kemp-Welch: 268)
‘…a young design student gave
the movement a name by producing a striking logo
based on the word Solidarność, the Rubicon was
crossed.’ (Stokes: 36)
‘… the name was suggested by
one of the first dissidents, Karol Modzelewski’
(Barend : 258)
Krzysztof Wyszkowski… the man
who may have suggested for the shipyard strike
bulletin – and hence perhaps the whole movement
- the name ‘Solidarity’. (Garton-Ash
2002: 365)
So what did Solidarity achieve in the 469 days?
Solidarity created a
social and political pluralism in Poland that had never before been
achieved in the Eastern Bloc. It was an intellectual pluralism that
would not seriously be challenged even after the temporary imposition of
martial law in 1981. One of the most important successes of Solidarity
therefore was to create new precedents. Solidarity gave local groups a
nationally organised focus; capable of providing a challenge to the
state but self-consciously limiting the extent of that challenge.
Solidarity eschewed not only violent methods but also antagonistic,
overtly political methods. Wałęsa even issued six ‘commandments’,
including the injunction ‘to keep peace and order’. (Crampton: 370) In
other words, Solidarity did not challenge the state, rather it wanted a
partnership with it and the Church; this was in the words of Andrzej
Gwiazda ‘a moral revolution’ not a political one. (Stokes: 40) It
negotiated and compromised, won concessions from the government but gave
concessions also: it won the right of ‘Rural Solidarity’ to exist but
not as a union, it successfully opposed the introduction of two working
Saturdays but had to accept one. But all the time the leadership
struggled to contain the militant rank and file who wanted more. And all
the while, ‘the party’s control over the forces of law and order was
unimpaired’. (Crampton: 372) The turning point came in Bydgoszcz in
March 1981. A Solidarity demonstration in favour of Rural Solidarity was
ended by the violent actions of the security forces. On the 27th March,
Solidarity called a four hour general strike in protest and the call was
almost universally heeded. But with an indefinite, general stoppage
imminent, Wałęsa and the leadership reached a compromise agreement with
the government which satisfied no-one. To have gone ahead with the
general strike would have overstepped the antipolitical boundary, for
Wałęsa ‘the risk was too great’. (Stokes: 41)
Time Magazine Dec. 29, 1980
In the previous months, Soviet troops in the
Ukraine and Baltic states had been on manoeuvres
and in addition, the church was preaching restraint. The consequence was
division on both sides of the industrial dispute. Wałęsa’s authority was
damaged by resignations and internal criticisms and Solidarity
increasingly moved in a political direction. This culminated in
Solidarity’s 1981 ‘October Program’ which directly challenged the right
of the Communist Party to govern Poland unopposed. For the authorities
in the Party, divisions were also rife. On the one hand, reformists
succeeded in introducing greater internal democracy in the party on the
other hand, hardliners called for strong, military leadership to deal
with the economic crisis which had seen the reintroduction of rationing
and an inability to pay the foreign debt. Into the breach stepped Prime
Minister General Wojciech Jaruzelski. In the early hours of December 13,
1981 almost all of Solidarity’s leaders were arrested along with
thousands of activists. Martial law was imposed, along with full
censorship and the reintroduction of the six day week.Jaruzelski declared that Poland was on the ‘edge of an abyss’.
Protest strikes were called but in the absence of leadership and
coordination, they were easily put down. But defeat of Solidarity was
also a defeat for the communist government. Its reliance on the military
made it little better than the regimes of Franco or Pinochet. (Crampton:
376)
Jaruzelski
Polish National Opinion Poll November 1981
Percentage of respondents who expressed confidence in the following
national institutions:
Solidarity 95%
Church 93%
Army 68%
Party 7%
Would the USSR have invaded in 1981? : The uses and limits of
counterfactual history.
Counterfactual or ‘what if?’ history is what
historians do when they hypothesise about possible historical outcomes
to key alternative moments in the past that did not actually happen.
This sort of history became very popular in the 1990s with books like
Niall Ferguson’s set of essays which considered such questions as what
if Germany had won WWII? Considered by some historians as an essential
part of the evaluative process – to understand how important you have to
consider alternatives – other historians have dismissed the
counterfactualism as elaborate parlour games or more strongly in the
words of EP Thompson ‘unhistorical shit’. In this case, what would have
happened if Jaruzelski had not declared martial law in 1981? Would the
USSR have invaded as they had done previously in Hungary in 1956 and
Czechoslovakia in 1968? The position of the Soviet Union during the
crisis remains unclear. They monitored the situation very closely, drew
up plans for military assistance but ultimately ‘could not afford
another Afghanistan – least of all in the middle of Europe’.
(Kemp-Welch: 265) On the other hand ‘…evidence shows that Jaruzelski did
call on Soviet forces to provide an ultimate back-up for martial law, as
a last resort to save Polish communism and his own place in power’
(Kemp-Welch 325) Historians now have access to the previously secret
Moscow archives to help. But even a seminar of historians, intellectuals
and historical participants including the Russian military leader
Marshal Kulikov and Polish leader General Jaruzelski held in Poland in
1997 could not reach a conclusive judgment. Evidence points to the
conclusion that there was no intention of invasion by December 1981
(Andropov is quoted as saying at the time that ‘if Poland falls under
the control of Solidarity, so be it’ TGA 363) and that therefore
Jaruzelski was partly culpable for taking the initiative and imposing
martial law. It is possible to claim, albeit very tentatively that if
Jaruzelski had reached a compromise with Solidarity in 1981 that this
‘might just possibly have meant that some of what happened all over
Central Europe in 1989 could have happened in Poland already in 1981’.
TGA 363) Davies has a more positive view of Jaruzelski’s role. (24) ‘For
part of the historical truth is that the Soviet leaders... did not know
what they were going to do until they did it.’ (TGA 357) The archives
show a similar story in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. We
cannot know for certain because it never happened.
