Poland :the whiff of gunpowder
Tim Garton Ash
Berlin Poland's truce did not last long, it could not last. On the government side, General Jaruzelski received new orders from his high command in Moscow. In Lodz, Solidarity's militant rank-and-file defied their national leadership. Three hundred thousand workers struck against the advice of Lech Walesa, less than a month after the general's appeal for three months' industrial peace.
It was by all accounts a strained encounter between the two leaders that evening. The general had summoned Walesa's former commanding officer. `Ah good evening, lieutenant,' ex-corporal Walesa blithely greeted him. The brigadier, as the lieutenant had now become, swallowed his pride and exchanged reminiscences of old times. Then he left the corporal and the general to the serious talking, with the whiff of gunpowder in the air. Their tete-a-tete lasted two and a half hours.
Jaruzelski is under pressure from all sides. In Moscow he and the party leader, Mr Kania, were confronted by a formidable Soviet team including the KGB boss, Andropov. On television it looked like nothing so much as a court martial. Soviet leaders are reported to have brandished the texts of agreements guaranteeing private property for farmers and optional Russian for students as if they were evidence of high treason. They told Jaruzelski to `reverse' developments in Poland.
This in turn strengthens the hand of the hard-liners in the party and security apparatus. In Czechoslovakia in 1968 the security chief worked directly for Moscow against his own party leadership. Mr Kania has closer tabs on his security apparatus. But it is not impossible that something similar is happening at a lower level in Poland.
At the same time he faces strong pressure from reformists within the party. They are pressing for an extraordinary party congress as soon as possible. Such a congress would be a vehicle for the democratisation of the party. Reversing the traditional Leninist priority, they say that democracy really should come before centralism in `democratic centralism'. They have a powerful argument in the state of the economy — decentralisation is the sine qua non of economic recovery — and powerful support from ordinary party members. Last Thursday, the congress was effectively postponed until, at the earliest, August. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 was caused in part by the Kremlin's fear that just such an extraordinary party congress would elect a reformist central committee.
The party struggle may be compared to that within Solidarity. In both the leadership is more anxious and cautionary than their,radical rank-and-file: those behind cry 'forward' and those before cry 'back!'. The party reformers are strongest where Solidarity is, particularly in major industrial centres like Lodz, Torun, Radom and Wroclawek. Here as much as half the local party organisation is also in Solidarity. Yet `radicalism' in the party implies willingness to compromise, and to carry through that radical restructuring without which a longterm co-operation between a centralised, authoritarian 12eninist party and a decen tralised, democratic trades union movement is simply impossible. 'Radicalism' in Solidarity, on the other hand, implies above all unwillingness to compromise on any score with the regime — a spirit of `va banque!' So the radicals in the party and Solidarity are not the same people. There is, rather, a middle ground where the union's national leadership and party reformers meet. It is possible that they will be strong enough to avert confrontation. The Lodz conflict was resolved next day. Three officials held directly responsible for the brutal repression of the workers' protest in Radom in June 1976 have at last been forced to resign. These are clearly blows to the hawks within the security apparatus. With luck this may simultaneously assuage the appetite of the hawks within Solidarity, or at least deprive them of mass support. The charges laid against four leaders of the right-wing nationalist 'Confederation of Independent Poland', in prison since the autumn, have provoked further protests from Solidarity on the principle 'we do not agree with what you say, but we will defend to the death your right to say it'. In practice, the far milder measures taken against Jacek Kuron and Adam Michnik are a more immediate threat. The Soviet leadership seems seriously to believe that dissidents like Kuron and Michnik are urging Solidarity on to the final destruction of socialism. This is so much nonsense, like the Tass allegations that Solidarity is financed and manipulated by the CIA. But so long as they continue to believe it, they will continue' to press the Polish leadership to prosecute these founder-members of the Committee for Social Self-Defence — KOR. Nothing could be more certain to provoke confrontation. The day after Kuron was detained for police questioning, the Radom branch of Solidarity sent a letter of protest to the prune minister. Miners in the south-western town of Walbrzych say that they will strike on Michnik's behalf. The dissident committee was founded to help persecuted workers in 1976. KOR is the acronym of Committee for the Defence of the Workers'. The wheel has come full circle. It is .workers for the defence of the committee now. If the confrontation does not come over KOR it could come over the new censorshIP law, or the registration of the private farmers' movement as a trade union. At, present 'Rural Solidarity' is going ahead with its organisation, although the 'ah0y! law draft before parliament ignores n completely. `Lenin,' said a farmer at their recent national congress in Poznan, `Lenin also the re Soviet Union.' — and the result w Opposition intellectuals in Warsaw are fond of comparing Poland with Spain:. two countries making the difficult transition from an authoritarian regime (or in land's case, totalitarianism with a human face) to a more pluralistic, democratic one. But the men who might come swagger!,_r1 into the Polish Cortes are not madcaps li Colonel Tejero. The generals are no! Milans del Bosches, but hard-faced profes. sional soldiers from Moscow, Prague and East Berlin. (According to authontatitvv reports in the Soviet press they w. 111 tthakisinwgepekarot rinneaxstt.a)fAf enxdertchiesrecoi king save save the day: only the traditional ,interrex the cardinal primate. on nPoolkisihn
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