WHEN OLD FRIENDS FALL OUT
Anne Applebaum explains the
political void at the heart of Solidarity's feuding
Warsaw ONLY 18 short months ago, the Polish Communist Party treated the Polish nation to the unforgettable pleasure of watching the dictatorship of the proletariat crack and break into small pieces, in an (edited) television transmission from the Commun- ist Party headquarters in Warsaw. There were the Central Committee members sitting impassive in the orange-upholstered auditorium. There were the flunkies, serv- ing Russian soda water. There were the stenographers, taking notes on the pre-war manual typewriters. There was Comrade Prime Minister Mieczyslaw Rakowski on the podium sneering at his old friend Comrade Trade Union Leader Alfred Miodowicz. `Alfredzie', he kept repeating, modulating his voice upwards on the second syllable of `Alfredzie' so that his audience could not perceive his use of Alfred's first name in the vocative case as anything but sarcastic. It looked serious. The two apparently disagreed about some- thing very important, although it was hard to tell what because every few days they recanted and issued a joint declaration of unity. The Communist press refrained from comment, printing (edited) trans- cripts of the discussion.
Not very long afterwards, the Commun- ist Party, still for the most part unified, disappeared altogether. No one ever disco- vered what it had been quarrelling about, and by that time no one cared whether Miodowicz was the hardliner, but with a soft spot for the workers, or whether Rakowski was the hardliner, but pretend- ing not to be. The party's terminal inability to solve the country's economic crisis was the real problem, not the personal spats of its members.
And, once again (only 18 short months later) there are the members of the Soli- darity Citizens' Committee and there is the auditorium. The orange upholstery, the flunkies and the manual typewriters are gone but there, in the corner, is the soda water. There is Aleksander Hall, Minister without Portfolio in Charge of Political Parties, and there is Lech Walesa. 'We should still go forward together,' Minister Hall is saying on the one hand, on the other hand; 'I respect Lech Walesa, but I don't think he would be a good presidential candidate.'
`And I', Lech replies, 'don't see Olek Hall as much of a minister.'
Lech accuses two old colleagues of 'high treason', brings in a mob of newcomers to applaud his every statement and throws out meaningless comments at random: 'If the right gains the upper hand in Poland I will declare myself in favour of the left.'
This, at least, is how it was reported in Gazeta Wyborcza, the Solidarity daily, the `first independent daily ever to be printed in the Eastern bloc', and the only national daily in Poland. Did it happen that way? Has Walesa become a shouting, flailing dictator? Probably yes, but it is hard to say. To put it politely, Gazeta Wyborcza doesn't check its facts. In less polite terms, it is . . . edited. The article's author is of the anti-Walesa camp. Only at the end does she mention that a few unpleasant comments were made on the other side. In a speech addressed to `Lechu', Adam Michnik, the great intellectual behind Soli- darity, author of brave essays on freedom and totalitarianism and editor of Gazeta Wyborcza, had this to say: 'If I am a crypto-communist, then you, my respected antagonists, are pigs.' Just like the battles in the bad old days, this one is difficult to understand and even harder to explain. It is not about issues. No one talks seriously about economic and institutional reform. No one proposes practical solutions to real problems.
I've given up eating local children since they started to irradiate them.' Style, not substance, is at the heart of the battle currently tearing apart the Soli- darity leadership. Here is where it stands. Lech Walesa has an intuitive sense that something is not right: press and television are effectively manipulated, the reform programme is bogged down by a parlia- ment which is still two-thirds communist, the President is still a communist. Being Lech Walesa, he calls for 'speeding up' the reform, meaning 'make me the President of Poland'. The other side, the vague group of intellectuals which is manipulat- ing the press and television and helping to bog down reform, knows a dictator when it sees one. Being a vague group of intellec- tuals, they tighten their hold on what they have and loudly declare their support for the government, whose policies they criti- cise privately.
All of those involved are members of the Solidarity Citizens' Committee, chaired by Lech Walesa. All of them are 'old friends'. All of them also have this in common: the tendency to behave, now that they have power, just as their communist predeces- sors behaved when they had power. Each interest group complains that the style of other is potentially dangerous, but fails to notice its own `crypto-communise style. More precisely Walesa's belief in 'speed- ing up' means dispensing with democratic procedure. This is an old communist method. The belief of the vague group of intellectuals in hiding their own and the government's faults from the public is also an old communist method. The govern- ment itself, or rather the group of officials in the finance ministry who really matter, are completely aloof from the discussion. They have the job of running the country. No one really knows what they are doing because it is not reported in the press.
The notion that behavioural models and institutional manners linger on after their creators have passed away would also explain why, for example, the ex- opposition leaders who fought so effective- ly for freedom now find it normal to hold frequent, long and boring meetings at which nothing is decided. Or why young men, friends of friends, approach Solidar- ity Citizens' Committee leaders at drinks parties asking for jobs, money for special projects, etc. Or why an acquaintance is now so convinced that television news is pure anti-Walesa propaganda that she dis- misses everything reported about him: `They say he doesn't have an economic programme. I don't believe it.' When one of his comments is mentioned, she re- sponds, 'Television lies'.
Of course the difference between Soli- darity's tangle of leaders and the Commun- ist Party in its final moments is vast. Whereas the Communist Party's quarrels were death rattles, Solidarity's quarrels presumably represent the birth of new political parties. But why has it taken the `old friends' so long to admit this? Why not just say so and get on with it? At the core of the recent political dis- putes in Poland lies a problem even deeper than the problem of former opposition politicians going native. In most European countries, democracy is born of the fun- damental debate between Left and Right. This is true even in the United States, where Left and Right have admittedly come to mean high or low taxes. In Poland, the language and ideas of the Left have been so thoroughly discredited, and the language and ideas of the Right rendered so meaning- less by the competing groups (economic liberal, nationalist, conservative) trying to claim it, that political debate in the strictest Western sense, with each side adopting clear positions based on complete ideolo- gies, is no longer possible. Some people are called 'Left' or 'Right' mostly based on nothing more than their style of speech. While no one is mourning the death of the Left and the Right, the absence of ideologies and the political parties which would naturally form around them has left a vacuum in Poland. The absence was felt acutely in the recent local elections, the first free local elections since 1948, when only 44 per cent of the population turned out to vote. The absence is felt even more acutely in the Solidarity Citizens' Commit- tee political debates. The movement seems to be trying to split, and perhaps it will soon. But based on the current discussions, it is not clear whether the party or parties which come next will be viable, indeed whether anyone will want to join them. Poles are not so politically uncouth as to be incapable of identifying sarcasm, demago- guery, and the lack of ideas when they see it. After all, they have seen it before.
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