THE PERILS OF POLAND
Anne Applebaum detects
among Poles unhappiness with the new coalition
Warsaw THE newsagent on Piwna Street in War- saw's old town started selling Solidarity badges along with the morning post way back in April. His list of distinguished clientele includes Bronislaw Geremek. the leader of Solidarity's parliamentary fac- tion, whose daily comments he reports to anyone listening. He doesn't bother to read 'Their' press, and discourages custom- ers from buying Trybuna Ludu, the Com- munist Party daily. ('What do you want it for? Got a fire that needs to be lie?) He leaves 'Our' press, the Solidarity papers, stacked on top of the other titles, and scoffs at those who look underneath with- out buying first.
He thinks the very idea of a coalition government led by a Solidarity prime minister is disastrous. 'In a few months you won't be able to tell the difference between them,' he says, throwing down a stack of journals plastered with photographs of Lech Walesa standing with his newly self- important partners from the Peasants' and Democratic parties, both recently defected from their 40-year-old Communist coali- tion. The troika are posing for the photo with hands raised high in a victorious salute, grinning awkwardly.
The Piwna Street newsagent is not alone in finding this unholy alliance somewhat unpalatable. In 1981, the imposition of martial law forcibly crystallised the distinc- tion between `Us' — Solidarity, society, the good guys — and 'Them' — the Communists and their kind. Until very recently, this distinction was the most important political division in Poland. Artists, writers, engineers, politicians, everyone could be categorised. There was no doubt as to where the Peasants and Democrats, the ersatz 'front' parties, be- longed: they stayed in the public arena after martial law was declared, they co- operated with the Communists, therefore no one bothered to distinguish them from the Communists. If there was any doubt, one simply recalled how their compliance helped to consolidate Stalinism in the Forties and Fifties.
A common scene in Warsaw: Western journalists, just arrived from New York, London, Paris, even Brasilia, scouring the streets in search of the 'carnival atmos- phere' they have read so eloquently de- scribed in accounts of 1980. Where are the brave workers, the red and white banners, the crucifixes and the songs?
This inertia is frustrating to describe and difficult to explain. It is not that Poles question the need for the compromise, or even the intentions of those doing the compromising. Nor is it true that this August has completely lacked the colour and glamour of August 1980. There was the day Walesa drove up to the President's palatial residence in a dented Polish sedan, ready to inform him that the Communist Party had lost its leading role; or the novelty of the Solidarity leader Tadeusz Mazowiecki's first television interview as Prime Minister designate, conducted out- side a convent near Warsaw, church bells ringing in the background.
The problem is not the pictures, but the rhetoric. Poles have simply heard speeches calling for 'new national agreement' too many times. Just as price rises, now called 'marketisation', have been variously termed 'rationalisations', 'revaluations', and 'restructuring', so has the idea of political co-operation had a multitude of different names in the past. The average Pole no longer bothers to make the distinc- tion between authentic co-operation and propaganda.
Forced to operate within a devalued language. Solidarity's leaders have had to create their own neologisms of late. In his convent-side interview, Mazowiecki first coined the phrase 'wide coalition', used to describe a Solidarity government contain- ing some Communist ministers. Earlier, President Jaruzelski invented the idea of a 'great coalition', meaning a Communist- led government with a few Solidarity ministers. While it is true that Walesa's unbelievably prescient political manoeuvr-
' ing put Solidarity on top of a 'wide
pyramid rather than underneath a 'great' one, many Poles so far fail to see the meaningful difference. The government bureaucracies are still staffed by Commun- ists, the television news is still run by Communists, Solidarity will still have to co-operate with Communists daily. Were Poland in Western Europe, the popular sense that the new regime equals the old regime would be neither surprising nor important. But in a country just emerging from 40 years of totalitarianism, the lack of enthusiasm for an authentically radical transformation is dangerous. In unquantifiable but practical ways, how Poles 'feel' about the new government will determine how successful it will be.
The problem of striking workers is only the most obvious example. In 1980-81, strikes were a form of political protest, as well as a logical way to get more money out of 'Their' factories and 'Their' shipyards. Now, with the political wind taken out of their sails, the strikers are simply caught in a tragically vicious circle. Prices rise, bus drivers and miners go on strike, the state prints more money and gives it to them. Nothing changes, the Polish budget deficit quadruples, inflation spirals upward, and the infrastructure deteriorates a little bit more. Convincing people not to strike is no longer a matter of sending Lech Walesa down mines. The Solidarity government has to stop the vicious circle altogether, make workers believe that the factories are now 'Ours', and should be reformed from the inside out. This recognition requires the optimism that is not in evidence.
Private enterprise is another good idea that will fail without a change in attitude. In the West, entrepreneurs invest with an eye towards making long-term profit. In Poland, the idea is to bleed as much cash as possible out of the economic leftovers and then get out. Thanks to questionable and unclear new laws enabling individuals to take control of state property, well-placed Party apparatchiks are slowly dismantling them with the object of gaining short-term profits. The shrewdest operators now lease Or buy undervalued departments they used to manage, turn them into mini-companies for their own profit and let the rest of the state business rot. No investment is re- quired, and the new firms rarely produce anything, they just trade products back and forth. Production takes money and effort, neither of which is worth wasting on the ruined economy.
But moods can shift. If there were an optimist in Poland, he would say that only time will tell, or use some equally patent cliché. Because rhetoric has been devalued the Mazowiecki government will have to prove itself by deeds. If it can use its parliamentary majority to design real re- forms, and use its moral authority to institute them, perhaps even the newsagent in Piwna Street might show enthusiasm.
Previous page
