Jaruzelski's referendum d raises new challenges for opposition
"NORMALIZATION" suffered a major setback in Poland at the end of November with the unexpected defeat of the plebiscite that the generals engineered to gain a façade of popular approval for their projected market-type economic reform.
The government's defeat in the referendum was also a shock for the leadership of Solidarnosc, which itself proposes market-type reforms. (See IV 132, December 21, 1987) It posed a new and major challenge to the different currents that have been forming in Solidarnosc.
open letter to Lech Walesa, 22 historic leaders of Solidarnosc demanded a meeting of the union's statutory leadership. They criticized the multiplicity of ad-hoc structures set up over the preceding year. At the same time, they pointed out that the manifest lack of attention paid to social questions was leading to a loss of the union's identity. Other activists considered that it was becoming urgent to offer working people their own political representation, representation, and undertook to form the
Polish
Socialist
Party
(PPS).
In the meantime, in
October the mut tiplicity of leading centers in Solidarnosc was reduced.
In place of the
Temporary Coordinating Com mittee (the clandestine TKK) and the Temporary
Council of
Solidarnosc
(the public
TRS, formed in October
1986), a united structure was established. It was the National Exec utive Committee (KKW), presided over by
Lech Walesa.
This was
A FTER THE release of almost all the political prisoners in September 1986 and the decision of a section of the leaders of Solidarnosc to set up a public leadership of the union, divisions came out into the open in the various leading teams of the movement. First of all, in autumn 1986 the differences crystallized around the tactical question of whether or not it was opportune to set up a leadership body functioning openly.
However, since the spring of 1987, it appeared that the main political line of cleavage was political. Should Solidarnosc concentrate on trade-union work in the plants? Or should it rather give priority to developing the structures of the "independent society" (press, book publishing, cultural activities), with trade-union activity becoming one of its main concerns, among others?
It was in such terms that the debate was posed, notably by the Warsaw Solidarnosc leaders. For their part, they came out in favor of the second orientation, which they had been following for some years in their region. In contraposition to them, a current giving priority to trade-union activity in the plants and opting for a greater centralization of the work of Solidarnosc appeared in particular within the Wroclaw and Szczecin regional leaderships. (See /V 125, September 14, 1987.)
In the context of this debate, another major political difference has appeared. Could the reforms that General Jaruzelski's regime undertook assist the independent social movement? 14 Could it base itself on certain aspects of them and radicalize their content? International Viewpoint • January 25, 1988
Or should it reject them as a new attempt to increase the exploitation of the workers? And, in the latter case, should it build the working-class mobilizations that the introduction of these reforms would necessarily generate?
Convinced that only the establishment of a free market could make it possible to combat the economic crisis effectively, the majority of Solidarnosc leaders —and in particular the better known Warsaw leaders — opted for the first solution. Jacek Kuron wrote the following, for example, about the reforms announced by the regime:
"The struggle does not end in publications, in parliament or in the apparatus. They all want to save their power, but some are coming out for repression, and others for rationalization. The latter are the strongest, because Gorbachev's conception is to save communism through rationalization. The development of enclaves of efficiency impels into confrontation the managers of the productive enterprises, the secretaries of departmental committees and those apparatchniks who have the souls of organizers. If it becomes possible to wrest the economy from the control of the nomenklatura, then whatever the regime's intentions, we will be living in another system." (Tygodnik Mazowsze 219, September 2, 1987.)
Such an approach, which led to neglecting the immediate struggles in the plants, as well as to abandoning the values of equality and self-management that were the cornerstones of Solidarnosc's identity during the Polish revolutionary upsurge of 1980-81, was challenged by many union activists. On September 22, in an
feat done without calling a session of the statutory National
Commission, and none of the 22 leaders who called for it was included in the KKW.
The debates that continue to run through the Polish independent social movement are far from closed today, and the differences that are sketched above are the main lines of the currents that are crystallizing within it.
In the aftermath of the referendum vote, Cyril Smuga conducted telephone interviews with three Solidarnosc leaders, who had distinctive points of view on the meaning of the referendum results for the political and social situation in Poland, as well as for Solidarnosc's strategy and perspectives. Jan Litynski's opinions reflect those of the present leading circles of the union. Andrzej Gwiazda is one of the signatories of the letter of the 22. Jozef
Pinior is vice-chair of the new Polish Socialist Party
(PPS).
It should be noted that the Polish opposition has, to a certain extent, a language of Its own. For example, it habitually counterposes "the society," meaning the masses, to the state, or regime, the ruling meaning bureaucratic caste. *
CS
Reup