Two Poles, too far apart

Timothy Garton Ash

Last month The Times treated us to an exclusive interview with Mieczyslaw Rakowski, deputy prime minister of Poland. Mr Rakowski is the best-known advocate and apologist of communist Poland in the West. Here he has enjoyed

the reputation of an outstanding 'liberal'

among Polish communists. In a fine leader The Times suggested that it is still possible among Polish communists. In a fine leader The Times suggested that it is still possible to see Rakowski as a disappointed reformer. I wonder what credibility, let alone what practical significance, this claim now has.

For a start, one should always take those distinctions between 'hawks' and 'doves'

among Soviet bloc leaders — the or- ology of sovietology — with a grain of salt. Such differences are deliberately Played up for Western consumption, and Y none more skilfully than by Mr Rakowski. Often this takes the form of `Spenlow and Jorkins'. Mr Spenlow, readers of David Copperfield will recall, habitually attributed his own hard dealings to the pressure of his intractable .partner, Mfr Jorkins, a figure all the more fearsome for being invisible. Similarly, repression is justified by dark allusion to the pressure of `hardliners' or Moscow. It is all very regrettable, so we are told, but if the West does not support General Jaruzelski now then there are really horrid People waiting in the wings to do really eastly things like attacking the Church or collectivising agriculture. This whispering carnPaign has scored some notable suc- cesses, reflected in British headlines like Polish reforms survive' (Observer) or ;9eneral Jaruzelski defends reform' (The "es). I suspect that we are particularly susceptible to this kind of suggestion, just b Mr our own politics are pluralist. And Mr Rakowski is so used to playing on this Susceptibility that (under pressure from the incomparable Italian lady journalist

Signora Fallaci) he produces this gem:

YOU see, there is a double tendency in the Soviet Union, one pro-Polish and one anti-polish, and Brezhnev belongs to the first one. He loves Poland. He understands Poland, believe me.' S0 we must support Poland-loving Leonid horridMoscowMoscow dying to do really beastly things to Poland. You see, believe me . • In practice ,`!le relationship between hard- and soft- ;liners is more like the relationship between

"e hard and soft cops working together in

Sclassic police interrogation. Mr Rakowski Is the soft cop.

The disagreements within a ruling corn- 1.121.1nist leadership concern means not ends.

they can nonetheless be very deep. The Paralysis of the Polish regime in the Solidarity period was partly caused by the crippling disunitj, of the Polish United Workers' Party (as the Communist Party styles itself). Moreover, there are probably still a few people in its Central Committee stupid enough to believe that a neo-Stalinist offensive against the Church and private farmers can succeed without massive blood- shed, or dogmatic enough to regard that bloodshed as Historically Necessary. The Rakowskis of this world are intelligent and pragmatic enough to reject this strategy as unworkable — though not in principle undesirable. Naturally it is less unpleasant to live under the Rakowskis than under neo-Stalinists. But it is worth considering for a moment what a 'liberal' like Rakowski has in com- mon with his most 'hardline' comrades, rather than what distinguishes him from them. After all, his record is ,primarily one of survival in that predatory company. Beginning as a 19-year-old political educa- tion officer in the army in 1945, the bright, ambitious peasant's son rose steadily through the central party apparatus in the Stalinist period — getting his hands dirty, but not too dirty. He joined in the reformist surge of October 1956, but not too wholeheartedly. Rather contrary to the im- pression given by The Times's leader, he was not so much a disappointed reformer as a bright young man who profited from the curtailing of reform. The weekly Polilyka, of which he became editor-in-chief in May 1958, was set up to replace a genuinely radical and outspoken reformist journal, and heralded the gradual reimposition of conformity. In the Sixties it became critical of existing practices, but not too critical.

Rakowski changed horses skilfully at the end of the Sixties, and launched into the Seventies with a burst of enthusiasm for the Gierek experiment. Becoming critical (but not too critical) in the middle of the decade, he distanced himself in good time from the doomed party leader. The advancement of Kania and then Jaruzel,ski brought him ministerial office and the explosive job of negotiating with Solidarity. At this point The Times becomes uncharacteristically, uncomfortably elliptical: 'When he was made government negotiator with Solidarity he seized the opportunity and seemed initially to be negotiating in good faith, but then ac- cused Solidarity of unrealistic demands. Yet another disappointment.' (My italics.)

Well, if he 'seized the opportunity' and was disappointed, why that uncomfortable cau- tion about his good faith? The fact is that Rakowski once again backed the right horse, playing out his enthusiasm (but not too enthusiastically) and disappointment in good time to join General Jaruzelski in the preparation (apparently), execution and legitimation of the military' takeover. His position today might best be described as Apologist Extraordinary.

Rakowski survives through his trimmer's skill, but also because he has always re- mained unquestionably loyal to Leninist tenets, Leninist political practice, and Moscow. What this fundamental attitude implies is at least hinted at in his 'exclusive' interview for Western consumption in the sentence apropos of deaths under martial law, 'In politics the individual does not count'; in the curt observation on what he himself only months before described as a 'profound revolution' . 'We call it counter-revolution' (white has become black); in the brazen big lie, 'I repeat that blood would have flowed like rivers if we hadn't imposed martial law on 13 December'; and not least in his utter con- tempt for the workers' leader Lech Walesa — 'his pleasant nature intrigued me. As a peasant he cheated his interlocutor and one could never find a common language with him.' Now can you imagine any minister in a Western democracy speaking, publicly, about union leaders like this?

The attitude was revealed more explicitly in a secret speech to Warsaw party func- tionaries. Here he says-plainly that martial law will last a long time, in order to restore 'a disciplined society'. 'The horse which is galloping wildly must be brought back to a trot, and it must be made clear to it that it has to obey.' Polish society is the horse, the communist apparat the rider. That metaphor, I submit, tells the whole story. Communist leaders may disagree furiously about how the horse should be ridden and who should hold the reins. But on one point all riders are agreed: their place is on top and the horse's underneath. Socialists who objected that Polish society is not a horse are no longer riders (some have been expell- ed from the party, many more handed in their cards voluntarily).

Speaking thus, Rakowski speaks as a true

Leninist — for Lenin was deeply convinced that ordinary people do not know what is good for them. But his contempt is also a product, I suggest, of his social position. Rakowski is, in this, a wholly typical member of Poland's communist governing class. Thirty-seven years ago he was a pea- sant's son, blond, well-built, energetic, free of family and religious ties, the perfect human material for the new elite. Recruited, like half a million other peasant sons, he prospered through the system. He studied journalism, history and political science; he acquired knowledge and some sophistication; he added position and in- fluence; he began to travel, was feted as the coming man in America and West Ger- many; his clothes became smarter, the hair- cut more stylish, the car a Peugeot now; and then, to comfort, authority, position, influence, was added . . power. It is not strange that in his recent pronouncements, both public and private, Rakowski returns again and again to the way in which Solidarity was 'manipulated' by opposition intellectuals, and driven by them into political extremism. Of course he could not admit publicly that this was an authentic, representative mass movement. But it seems he genuinely cannot imagine, even in private, that workers could organise themselves and formulate their own democratic demand for political power. His contempt for the worker leaders is so bot- tomless that he declares (in his secret speech):

`I have no resentment against the blockheads in Solidarity, against those who were serious about it, little shits like this Zbigniew Bujak . .

his Zbigniew Bujak is a 28-year-old I worker from the huge Ursus tractor works near Warsaw. In 1980, at the age of 26, he became chairman of the whole War- saw region of Solidarity. Like the young Rakowski he is a peasant's son, bright, well-built, energetic, in appearance the model of the young socialist worker. Like Rakowski he is both an exceptional in- dividual and representative of his genera- tion: and how different the two generations are. In Rakowski's youth it was still possi- ble for a man with ideals as well as ambition to believe in the party. Communism, for all that it was a Soviet imposition, did have some revolutionary élan. For a young man of Bujak's generation idealistic party membership is a contradiction in terms. They have a sound elementary schooling, this generation, and they are well equipped to contrast the high ideals of socialism (taught them at school) with the corrupt practice of the socialist governing class. Like millions of peasant families, Bujak's parents moved with their 13 children to a town where the father could get a factory job. There the sons were educated. With less chance now of moving up the social ladder (whose upper rungs were firmly oc- cupied by Rakowski and his like) they in their turn entered the factories, to form the backbone of Poland's young working class (nearly a third of Poland's industrial workers are under 25). There they saw the corruption and inefficiency of party, management and trade unions. There, in Ursus, they saw a workers' protest against food price rises brutally, crushed. Bujak and his friends began to discuss and organise their own authentic workers' representa- tion. Through the local padre they made contact with the democratic opposition in Warsaw, and in particular with the Workers' Defence Committee, KOR. They may not have believed in God exactly, but they certainly believed in the Pope. Amidst the ruins of the countrys economy, in the fading glow of the Pope's visit, their great chance came with the strikes of summer 1980. With immense elan and with bitterness, with boundless energy and inexperience, they set out to build something from the ruins: to create new cadres (Bujak's word), new trade unions, new habits of work, a new society. It was their 1945 — but quite different this time, a genuine workers' revolution against a `workers' state', inspired by Christian ethics, the antithesis of Leninism. It was this generation's bid for political participa- tion against the monopoly of Rakowski's generation and kind (although for Marl! months Solidarity refrained from making It explicity political). Rakowski continued to talk with Solidarity like the soft cop, but he was never prepared even to talk about shar- ing power. On 13' December 1981 Zbigniew Bujak was apparently arrested, along with the rest of Solidarity's national leadership, in Gdansk. He escaped on the way to WarsaW and is now in hiding, sought by the securitY forces but still able to issue appeals from underground. Mr Rakowski is in his office. The gulf between these two extraordinarY but representative Poles is now, I fear, arl- bridgeable. The Church's desperate spiritual pontoon-building will be in vain. -Bujak and his generation may react in different ways to the destruction of all their hopes. At present, Solidarity underground is still insisting on non-violent opposition. Bujak's workmates — those that have not been interned or arrested — are mostly tur- ning up for their shifts, but hardly working at all. At night they scrawl on the walls, 'The winter is yours, the spring will be ours'. As the economy deteriorates further more of them may turn to violent resistance. 'We have nothing to lose', they say: But . even if violent resistance does not erupt, or is effectively suppressed, the gulf remains. What do Rakowski and his generation have to offer the 60 per cent (yes, 60) of their nation under 30? Neither freedom, nor participation, nor satisfying employment, nor adequate housing, 1.113( even adequate food are currently on offer. And the aspirations of the young have been raised immeasurably by the relative all' fluence of the early Seventies and the relative freedom of 'the Solidarity era. 1° this deeper sense, the position of Poland's communist leaders is far worse than it was at the very beginning, 37 years ago, when, the first generation of peasant sons trooped hopefully into power.