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Labour Focus on Eastern Europe, Vol. 1 No. 2, May–June 1977, pp. 3–5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Oliver MacDonald, recently returned from Poland, reports on developments there.
Polish politics is reaching the end of the period inaugurated by the June strikes last year. The extremely delicate balance of forces established in the weeks and months after the June crisis is becoming increasingly unstable with the main active political forces being pushed towards new and possibly momentous initiatives.
As a result of the activity of the Committee for the Defence of the Workers (otherwise known as KOR), set up in Warsaw last autumn, a broad campaign by the Polish intelligentsia began to press the Party leadership for an official enquiry into police brutality against workers involved in the June strikes. Growing demands were made for the release of workers jailed in Radom and Ursus – two centres of the June movement – and for the re-instatement of workers sacked in various parts of the country for participating in strikes. In February, Gierek, the General Secretary of the Party, attempted to regain the initiative by calling for the release of all those workers in jail who were genuinely sorry for what they had done. This resulted in a number of successful appeals from jailed workers to the Supreme Court, and it also laid the basis for the Party leadership to put considerable pressure on KOR to disband. However, KOR has continued to campaign for its basic demands, circulating fresh information about the workers still in jail and attempting to expand its network of activists throughout the country.
During March and April the actions of the various branches of the Party leadership have presented a picture which is, at first sight, highly contradictory. There are pointers both to increased repression and to a further relaxing of controls. In March the Supreme Court confirmed the sentences on workers still in jail, and the police followed this up with a campaign of harassment against workers in Radom who had publicly protested against police action last year. On Easter Saturday, Zycie Warszawy, the daily of the Warsaw Party Committee, carried a major article claiming that two prominent Polish exiles abroad, Adam Michnik and Leszek Kolakowski, had made links on KOR’s behalf with Nazional Zeitung, the paper of the West German neo-fascists. The story was, of course, a fabrication but its implications for the Party’s attitude towards the KOR were menacing. At the Central Committee plenum during the week after Easter, Gierek personally declared that he would work to expose elements like the members of KOR, and the rector of Warsaw University hinted at the need to start repression against oppositional students. Two days later it emerged that reprisals were going to be taken against over 700 students who had signed an appeal for a public enquiry into police brutality during the June events. And simultaneously, Jacek Kuron and other members of KOR were arrested, though they were subsequently released.
Nevertheless, decisive repression of the intellectual opposition has not yet started. Indeed, the general view within opposition circles is that the Party leadership is at present divided as to how to tackle the situation. Many of Gierek’s collaborators of long-standing within the leadership like Babiuch, Szydlak and Jaroszewicz – the last named being probably the most unpopular political leader in Poland at the moment – have apparently been urging a tougher line towards opposition currents, and they have undoubtedly been strongly supported by the East German Party leadership, and probably the Soviet one as well, which are seriously concerned by developments in Poland. It is probable that these currents would also like to reduce Poland’s very heavy dependence on trade with the West and that they would be prepared to face the uncomfortable economic consequences of cutting back these trade relations. On the other hand, Gierek himself is reputed to have urged an extremely cautious approach towards both the working class protests and the intellectual opposition, and at the same time to have insisted on continuing the basic economic strategy of using trade links with the West to retool the Polish economy in the hope of an export boom to pay back debts during the next 18 months or two years. So far this approach has held sway in the Party leadership, but the evolving political situation in the country and the Party apparatus increasingly requires either new concessions to the opposition or a swing back to repression.
It is, of course, extremely difficult to gain a picture of the different currents of opinion within the Polish working class, but some trends can be indicated. In the first place, the most disturbing aspect of the events in June 1976 from the Party leadership’s point of view was not the violent clashes in Radom and Ursus but the very extensive strike movement, most of which did not develop into mass street demonstrations at all. It evidently took the Party leadership entirely by surprise: out of 49 regions (voivodships) only one regional Party committee had warned of likely protests before the measures were announced. Yet, if the price increases had not been withdrawn within twenty-four hours, the initial strikes would almost certainly have broadened out into a vigorous workingclass struggle right across the country. Secondly, the movement was particularly marked in the largest factories and amongst the more highly paid sections of workers. And this was so in spite of the fact that the government’s proposals gave much greater compensation to the higher paid workers than to the lower paid. Even the international lorry-drivers in Poznan struck. The only exception to this general pattern seems to have been the miners of lower Silesia who have long been given special economic and social privileges, but even there a number of work stoppages took place.
There is no doubt that the June events are seen by wide sections of the working class as a great victory for , and proof of the efficacy of, collective workers’ action. One confirmation of this is an unpublished sociological survey of workers’ political attitudes – commissioned after the June events by the Party Central Committee – and based on interviews of 2,800 workers in the largest factories in Poland. It showed that only a tiny minority believed that conflicts with the authorities at work could be resolved through formal channels like the trade unions. Instead, 40% said such conflicts should be resolved through strikes, 20% said through absenteeism, 11% said through a go-slow, and 9-10% said through industrial sabotage (damaging machines etc.). Just under 50% considered that they were exploited by an exploiting group; and the main function of the trade unions and the Party was seen as mobilising people for work. When asked in whose interests the Party ruled Poland, just over 20% replied: the Peoples’ Militia (i.e. the police); while less than 20% said that it ruled in the interests of the workers. The workers listed the following as the main changes they would like to see: first, freedom of speech, and second, free and equal access for their children to high schools. Very significantly, the most critical of the workers interviewed were also Party members: the survey found that there was a correlation between high levels of skill, high income, Party membership and critical attitudes towards the authorities – a particularly disturbing conclusion for the Party leadership. There also seems to be no strong antagonism between members and non-members of the Party within the working class today: Party membership no longer offers any strong career prospect to workers, as it used to in the 1940s or 1950s. The real political division is between those workers who belong to the para-militia organisation and those, whether inside or outside the Party, who do not.
The growing confidence of the working class in its own collective strength is a feature of Polish politics not found to anything tike the same extent in other East European societies. The June events also indicated how those sections of the working class that had been most directly involved in the revolt of 1970–71 remembered that earlier experience: for example, workers at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk used the same meeting places and some of the same techniques in their protests last June. And there are indications that the Silesian miners, who have so far not played a prominent part in opposition to the regime, are growing increasingly dissatisfied by the deteriorating conditions in the mines as the government tries to rapidly expand coal export to pay foreign currency debts to the West.
At the same time, there still seems to be a wide gap between the organised opposition groups within the intelligentsia and the working class. The Polish authorities have not made the same mistake as their Czechoslovak counterparts, whose massive press campaign against Charter 77 made it famous throughout the country. The Czech authorities even went so far as to try to force large sectors of the population to publicly denounce the Charter, thereby actively stimulating a political polarisation around the initiative of the Czech opposition. The Polish authorities have been much more circumspect and press attacks on the KOR have been both more muted and more vague, while the official censorship has, of course, prevented the mass of the population from hearing about the KOR’s activities or its views. The only readily available source of information is therefore radio Free Europe, and it is likely that a very large majority of the population has no definite information at all about KOR. The present writer spoke to one experienced working class oppositionist in the provinces who thought that KOR was a committee of bishops in Warsaw; others had simply not heard of the defence committee at all. Strenuous efforts are being made by various currents within the intellectual opposition to strengthen contact with the working class: KOR has developed links with workers in Radom and Ursus. About 30 workers’ commissions, modelled on the Spanish example and initiated largely by workers expelled from the factories after June, have been reputedly established in Warsaw. In addition, nuclei of KOR activists are now operating in a number of provincial cities. But the overwhelming weight of the organised opposition is concentrated socially in the cultural intelligentsia and the students, and geographically in Warsaw and Krakow.
The numerical strength of the active opposition must run into many hundreds, and its base of sympathetic support amounts to many thousands of people. In addition, a number of the more prominent people are nationally known figures with high reputations as public personalities in Poland. A serious round-up and a public trial of the leaders of KOR would undoubtedly create a major political crisis in the country. For this reason no such move by the regime has been attempted. On the other hand, the activities of the repressive apparatus have been concentrated on limiting the scope of KOR’s activity to Warsaw and breaking any potentially strong links between the intellectuals and the working class.
The intellectual opposition has, since last autumn, been united in action around the initiatives of KOR. At the same time, of course, there are a number of different currents of opinion within it. Ideologically, the opposition is differentiated most markedly in its attitudes towards nationalism on one side and Marxism on the other. Politically, there are currents within it who hold a perspective of persuading the leadership of the Party to introduce gradual reforms, while others envisage a growing, independent mass movement forcing reforms from the existing leadership on an increasingly wide front. The former current is, of course, less concerned with the problem of broadening links with the working class than the latter. But both currents are united around the need for common action for democratic demands and the differences over perspectives are by no means clearly defined.
Some members of KOR have linked up with other oppositionists to form a Human Rights Committee in Warsaw. The idea of such a body was already a topic of discussion within KOR but the committee itself did not take the initiative: the people who formed the new group appear to lay greater stress on the national question than other sectors of the opposition and they are looked upon with scepticism by some members of the opposition.
The Party itself and the official youth organisation have been considerably shaken by political developments since June of last year. Many different currents of opinion can be found, even in such unsuspected places as the political police. In Warsaw, at least in the intellectual branches of the Party, it is now possible to put forward resolutions criticising various empires into rivalries between different factions with distinct political positions. There is no sign of any current as radical as the Dubcekites within the Party hierarchy: the “liberalizers” are in reality concerned only to create a series of small safety-valves and shock-absorbers throughout the system while trying to avoid any open head-on confrontation with either the working class or the intellectual opposition. But there is no doubt that the infighting within the leadership will take on more acute forms during the months ahead. A document signed by 600 people is already circulating within the Party denouncing the Central Committee for being “weak” and also criticising corruption – a rampant disease as officials begin to feel that their days in office are numbered. The latest Central Committee meeting seems to indicate that these “hard-line” elements are gaining strength.
These tensions within the Party apparatus are tending to transform the normal infighting between various bureaucratic aspects of Party policy, and within the higher reaches of the Party apparatus some currents are talking about the need for: more radical measures of liberalisation: an article was prepared for Nowe Drogi suggesting the right to form factional platforms within the Party; although the article never appeared it was supposed to have had powerful support from some sections of the Party hierarchy. Another sign of the impact of the June events and of the KOR initiatives on the Party hierarchy is an extraordinarily film now showing in 3 Warsaw cinemas. The film, by Wajda, is called The Man in Marble and it recounts the struggle by a young female film director to piece together the life of a young Stakhanovite of the 1940s and make a film about it. We see how the young man, Birkut, was chosen as a Stakhanovite: because of his good physique and photogenic features. We see his politically more advanced friend, Vittorio, a Spanish Civil War veteran, explaining to him that his role is to force work norms up to fantastic heights. We watch the way that his career as a bricklaying sprinter is ended by some workers passing him a red hot brick which destroys his hands. His friend Vittorio is arrested and made the victim of a show trial in the early 50s. Birkut disrupts the trial and both men are sent to prison. In 1956 they are released and Vittorio eventually becomes a technocratic Party boss in Katowice – Gierek’s home base – while Birkut disappears mysteriously. Eventually the young film director tracks down Birkut’s son who is working in the Lenin shipyards in Gdansk. The film ends with repeated shots of workers coming down the steps of the railway bridge in Gdansk where about 300 workers were shot down by the police in 1970 during the workers’ revolt: the audience is expected to infer that Birkut was one of the workers shot on those steps. During the film we see the young film director interviewing the highly successful Polish film maker who first made his name through a Stalinist film about the ‘heroic’ Stakhanovite Birkut in the 1940s. The interview takes place in the palatial residence where the middle-aged film director is surrounded by servants. The young woman also questions the former policeman who had to tail Birkut while he was a Stakhanovite. We see him today as a sleek, sun-tanned official busy auditioning budding strip-tease girls in the Palace of Culture. The young female director is in the end unable to show her film of the real biography of Birkut. The Man in Marble is playing to packed houses in spite of the fact that it has not been reviewed by the national press at all. When three literary pundits mentioned the film in a literary journal during the course of a discussion on new trends in the arts, Zycie Warszawy violently denounced the three critics, while avoiding any mention of the film itself.
The opposition also is increasingly faced with choices, in particular the question of what more permanent forms of action and organisation should be established out of the experience of KOR whose demands are strictly limited.
The labour movement in the West is an important factor in the political situation in Poland. The Party leadership has been continually trying to brand the opposition as agents of Western imperialism and present them as linked to rightist and even neo-fascist circles in the capitalist world -an utterly false charge, which has required the most crude attempts at forgery of opposition documents in order to give the semblance of credibility. The Party leadership’s sensitivity to labour movement criticism can be illustrated by the fact that the secret weekly new bulletin of the Central Committee considered a small picket by about 15 members of the revolutionary left when Prime Minister Jaroszewicz visited Britain important to discuss. It claimed, rather grandly, that such protests were kept to a minimum thanks to the close co-operation between the British and the Polish political police luring the visit. In reality the reason for the smallness of such protests lies in the fact that the Left within the British labour movement has not yet taken up its responsibilities and raised its voice in defence of the workers still jailed or still out of work for protesting last June.
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