Gerry Foley Archive | ETOL Main Page
From International Viewpoint, No. 0, 28 January 1982, pp. 6–7.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
In the sixteen months between the August 1980 strikes and the unleashing of massive repression on December 13, 1981, the working people of Poland recovered their sense of human and national dignity, their confidence in themselves, their class, and their country.
“Poland is herself again,” Solidarnosc activists told me in August. “We are the only country that kept its honor throughout the second world war. It was possible to impose totalitarian tyranny only because the country was totally destroyed.”
One-fourth of the Polish population was killed in the second world war. After the heroic uprising of 1944, Warsaw was leveled, and its surviving population deported to Nazi concentration camps.
The war was followed by purges, terror, and continued penury. In August, a forester in the Carpathian mountains complained to me that he had not had a single easy day since the Nazi invasion.
After the workers forced the government, temporarily, to accept their right to organize and express themselves even in a limited way, a profound sense of dignity and consideration for other people, a determination not to be dehumanized and humiliated again, pervaded Poland. Not even increasingly desperate shortages could break down this intense feeling of human worth and solidarity. The Polish people were acutely conscious of the need at all cost to maintain relationships of dignity and mutual respect among themselves.
Now, the regime that declared war on its own people in order to stop the rise of the democratic workers movement has launched a ruthless campaign to destroy the sense of dignity and honor in the Polish workers and the Polish people.
That is why the regime is forcing the workers to do their jobs under the guns of the military. It cannot run an economy at gunpoint. But the Polish Stalinist bureaucracy can only hope to survive if it can humiliate the masses of working people, destroy their belief in their own worth, and that of their fellow workers and their fellow Poles. Only then could the small minority of totally corrupt bureaucrats and their servants feel safe in Poland.
One of the bureaucracy’s main devices is a familiar one in the history of the trade unions in most countries: the “Yellow Dog” contract.
Workers returning to their jobs after the military crackdown were required to sign a declaration saying:
“I hereby state that I have taken cognizance of the note of the administrative chief of the cabinet of the Council of Ministers dated December 17, 1981, and I affirm that I am fully aware of the duty incumbent upon me to behave in accordance with the principles of people’s legality.
“Taking as my guide the interests of society and the principles of building socialism, I pledge always to uphold the authority of the people’s power and to execute scrupulously the orders of my superiors, and to keep uppermost in my mind always the socialist development of the People’s Republic of Poland and loyalty to the people’s state.
“Considering that many leading organs of the trade-union Solidarnosc have openly acted against the constitutional bodies of the state and administration, seeking, on the basis of counter-revolutionary positions, to overthrow the socialist system, I declare that I have resigned from this union.”
A government document smuggled out of Poland by Solidarnosc sets down the procedure for “interviewing” state employees. Among other things it says:
“... during the conversation, the special responsibilities of every employee of the central administration must be stressed and the interviewee should make a formal pledge to carry them out ...
“The following promise should be obtained, that the interviewee will not have anything to do with Solidarnosc, neither while it is suspended nor afterwards if this union is not permitted to organize among state administrative employees.
“Workers who do not give the required response cannot be maintained in the central state administration.
Like the late shah in Iran, General Jaruzelski has carried his repression so far that he has made possession of camping equipment a political crime, according to a January 5 UPI dispatch. The general is especially interested in knacksacks. Solidarity activists use them to carry leaflets. In fact, the practice is so widespread that the underground union has called on Poles to carry knacksacks whenever they can so as to provide cover for its couriers.
The regime also has to try to intimidate the young people of Poland. One of the baying hounds of the degenerate regime, Anna Powloska, a writer for the party paper, Trybuna Ludu has taken up the problem of the youth who “developed a taste for expressing themselves in strikes and protests.”
In this context, the report cited in a January 8 Prensa Latina dispatch that “soldiers are taking part in meetings with students to explain to them why the state of siege was declared,” assumes sinister implications.
After the military crackdown, callers to certain numbers found themselves being informed “this conversation is under scrutiny.” The only purpose such a practice can serve is to create an atmosphere of fear.
All journalists are being subjected to special interrogation. According to a Los Angeles Times Service dispatch of January 12, about half the staff of Kurier Polski survived it. The questions included: How do you assess Solidarity? How do you assess the events of December 13? And: Should a journalist simply inform his readers or should he try to shape their opinions?
Such questions are obviously designed to make journalists crawl on their bellies. What they test is the flexibility of the “interviewee’s” spine.
Even in the first days of shock and disarray after the mass arrests and military attacks on factories, the scattered leaders and activists of Solidarity began to fight this attempt to break the moral integrity of the Polish people.
In Katowice a Solidarity bulletin issued December 21 included the following point: “Don’t distrust your neighbor – your enemy are the cops, the careerists, and informers.” It also advised: “Shun the company of careerists, informers, and the commissars.” It called on its readers to “help in every way the families of those arrested, wounded, and murdered.”
In an open letter circulated by the clandestine Solidarity, Zbigniew Janas, one of the leaders of the URSUS plant, wrote on December 17, to the new plant manager, a certain Stawoszykiewicz:
“I was surprised to learn that you have taken over Director Wilk’s job since he was fired. I wrote him letters which he was unfortunately not there long enough to get. In the name of our past work together, I am writing you on the same subject. For some days, I have been pursued like a thief or a bandit simply because I wanted to rebuild our country after it was so efficiently wrecked by the Communist Party. But I am not afraid. I have been educated by the opposition and forged in the struggle against this inhuman and anti-national regime ...
“Today they have put you in Director Wilk’s place in the hope that you will be able to oppress people with sufficient force. I would not like to think that you were deceiving us these past months. I would like to believe that you remember all we talked about. Solidarity is not dead and will not die. The time will come when all of us will have to make an accounting and say what they did to help people, how many people they saved from losing their jobs. And no one will be able to justify themselves by saying that they were afraid and could not do anything.
“Remember that your duty and that of those working with you is not to prevent people from organizing to aid the families of those that have been arrested. It is your duty to make sure that these families get ration cards, even if you and your fellow directors have to give up your own.”
Janas went on to say:
“You should do what I have said, as a man and as a Pole. Do not forget that this country cannot long be governed at gunpoint. The tears that are shed in my house and those of my friends, known and unknown, will turn into stones that will batter down the ambitions of the enemies of the people who know no tolerance but understand only force.”
The January 15 issue of the Paris daily Liberation reported that the first time Western journalists were able to visit Poznan, a Solidarity leader, Zdzislaw Rozwalak, told them in front of party officials that he was renouncing the oath of allegiance that he made to the military regime on December 13: “I made it under duress before I knew what was really happening in the country.” The dispatch said that in the Cegielski factory many workers openly wore Solidarity badges and some even the initials “AE,” �which stands for “anti-socialist element” and is worn to show contempt for Stalinist propaganda.
Thus far the government has been resoundingly unsuccessful in getting Solidarity leaders or activists to “confess” and “repent.” In fact, it has been unable even to erase the symbols of courage and defiance.
“In front of the gates of the Wujek mine in Katowice where seven members of Solidarity were killed,” Le Matin’s special correspondent reported January 20, “a tall cross has been erected, and seven miners�helmets put with it. Many people come to place flowers there. The inscription on the cross remains untouched. It says ‘they died for freedom’.”
Once the government succeeded in taking Solidarity by surprise, once it was able to cut off communications throughout the country and disorganize the union, the sit-in strikes in the strongholds of the workers movement had no chance of success. But the desperate resistance of these groups of workers has left an example of courage. Some of the hardest and most prolonged fighting took place at the giant Nowa Huta factory in Cracow. The statement issued by the workers there is still circulating in Poland. Among other things, it says:
“The battle is one of fear. It is not surprising that we are afraid. We have families, wives, children, jobs. And we know what they are capable of, because we know the history of our country. But remember, they are more afraid than we are. Hiding behind their masks, their clubs, their tanks, their riot shields (literally, the glass panes used on reptile cages), they are afraid of us! ... There are not many of them. Pistols, tanks, clubs are no good against a united people. They are counting on fear ... If we want to remain free, we must remain calm, dignified, we must conquer fear. Even if they go to the last extreme, our quiet courage will bring victory, today and forever. We are not fighting for big words, we are fighting to remain human beings.”
The same theme was repeated in a call for organizing a mass resistance movement issued by the underground leaders of Solidarity which reached the West late in January.
“Clandestinity must not become a mask for fear ... From the beginning, underground activists must learn that arrest and interrogation are not the end of the struggle but the beginning of a new struggle, still harder and more lonely ...
“The regime thinks we are slaves. We will never accept that role.”
The fact that after more than a month of a massive military crackdown and the reinstitution of totalitarian repression a national leader of Solidarity, Zbigniew Bujak, is still free and issuing political statements, testifies that the “quiet courage” the Nowa Huta workers talked about has not been broken. Such a thing would be impossible without countless acts of quiet heroism and sacrifice by thousands of ordinary people.
Even in their present state of disorganization and uncertainty, the Polish masses have been able to force the mad-dog Stalinist dictatorship of General Jaruzelski to back off to a certain extent in its repression and attack on their standard of living.
That is the achievement and strength of Solidarity. It is the sort of power that makes revolutions in large and modern countries. Trotsky, the organizer of the first workers army, stressed this in opposition to the elitist and romanticists, to the high priests of Stalinist mythology.
However, this power has to be directed, focused, concentrated. This requires a leadership forged in struggles and having a clear perspective. It also requires a conviction driven deep into the masses that there is no hope but to fight for victory regardless of the cost. Before the struggle for workers democracy can be won, those basic moral and political victories have to be achieved.
The Polish working class and the Polish people have been well prepared by their history and the development of their country to emerge strengthened from this test and to lead all humanity forward to the achievement of their ideals of justice, dignity, and freedom.
Gerry Foley Archive | ETOL Main Page
Last updated: 22 January 2020