I think, precisely, that there is room in Solidarosc for differences over practical and not ideological questions. Solidarosc has contained different points of view, and will continue to do so. But I think it would be a good thing if it could free itself from the weight of political differences in a strict sense. o longer :hing to lose"
Interview with Josef
Pinior Regional Strike Committee (RKS) and came into the underground national leadership (TKK) of Solidarosc. He participated in the development of the "line of the factories" - a militant orientation that was put into practice in his region. Arrested in April 1983, he was released in the summer of 1984.
Subsequently, Pinior was ordered
by the courts to pay back the 80 million zlotys used to finance the union. From September 1986 to October 1987, he belonged to the Provisional National Council (TRS) of Solidamosc, which operates openly. In November 1987, he took part in the founding of the Polish Socialist Party, and he is the vice-president of its General Council. Since then, he has not participated in the leading bodies of Solidarnosc.
HAT DO you think of the referendum results? In my opinion, they reflect above all a lack of confidence in the regime, in the whole policy that General Jaruzelski has been carrying out since 1981, and not just a lack of confidence in the proposed changes in the economy. Poles said "no" to this regime. The society is in favor of political and economic reforms, but real ones and not a facade that was to be legitimized by the referendum. • But the introduction of enormous price rises is one of the aspects of General Jaruzelski's economic reform. Wasn't the referendum result also a rejection of these rises?
People find it hard to accept a growing pauperization, especially without any of the guarantees offered by the possession of civic and political freedoms, even at as elementary a level as trade-union pluralism and the right to defend your own interests through independent trade-union representation. When you have such rights and guarantees, then you can discuss price increases and material sacrifices. But such a discussion is impossible in the absence of elementary political and trade-union freedoms. It is evident that the referendum result was also a response to the government's schemes for raising prices. • Do you think that the workers would be ready to accept price rises in exchange for trade-union pluralism, and that they would not immediately take advantage of a legalization of their independent union to win wage rises to compensate for the price increases?
No. That is something unimaginable. And the government does not think in such terms. It has no intention of compensating for the price rises and growing pauperization of the society by granting trade-union freedoms. There is no doubt that in Poland we will see a struggle by the majority of the society for a decent material life, a struggle on the most basic questions. This is the result of the "Albanization" that is advancing year by year, of an enormous impoverishment. People no longer have anything to
"') lose; they have no future. Their standard of living is extremely low, and it may fall lower still.
We will witness natural reactions, explosions of struggles for better living conditions. But these struggles are going to crystallize at the political level as struggles for trade-union freedoms, for self-management rights and for political liberties. In fact, in Poland, given the sort of social consciousness that exists, it is unlikely that the expression of these struggles will be different. It is unimaginable that the resistance to the price rises and the defence of the standard of living will not be linked to the fight for trade-union freedoms, or that people might fight for trade-union freedoms without at the same time fighting to defend living standards. • One of the new forms of social resistance is the emergence of initiatives aimed at winning legality for independent factory unions. I know that you support these initiatives.
In the Wroclaw area today, at the rank-and-file level, Solidarnosc organizing committees are being established, which are trying to get independent trade-union organizations recognized at the factory level. This is clearly a manifestation of the social situation we talked about. This is above all a movement of young people, young workers of 18 to 20 who were not in Solidarosc in 1980-81, and who started to work after the the establishment of the state of war. Today, they are beginning to discover what classical work for immediate demands is.
For these young workers, these plant-level Solidarosc union organizing committees are an attractive form of organization, because they are at the same time a means of fighting for the right to legal trade-union activity and a means of operat-
POLAND ing out in the open. Such committees have appeared in Lower Silesia in several enterprises — in Polar; in the Hydral arms factory; in the Polkowice arms factorv. in the Polkowice mine in Walbrzych; and in the Domel factory, a traditional Solidarnosc bastion in Wroclaw. We will see how this lir develops.
I think that these committees will have to go through two stages. The first involves an elementary organizational question. You have to find ten people with the courage to form such a committee. I repeat, with the courage, because although forming such a committee is technically legal, it will immediately face repression by the administration and the SB [the political police]. For seven years already, Solidarosc has been trying to get over this first hurdle. But what will be decisive for such a committee's success is completing the second stage, developing a plant-level trade-union program, that is a program through which the workers in the plant in question can identify with the ten brave souls.
What is needed is a very concrete program of demands that can be met within the framework of the relations between the organizing committee and the factory manager. The workers have to regain the audacity to struggle, if only on basic questions — improving working conditions, satety, anything that can be won without having to confront the higher authorities. If these committees are able to do that, if they develop such programs, that will be a success. They do not even have to win a victory at the outset; what is important is for them to formulate demands and undertake a campaign to win them. Then they will get massive support from the workers in their factories. • That way of presenting the tasks of the union appears only rarely in the in dependent press, leaving aside the statements of Solidarnosc's leading bodies. On the other hand, a lot of space is allotted to the question of the need for establishing a free market.
In the Polish opposition, there is a general problem. In my opinion, it can be summed up as the need for a pluralist opposition. Seven years ago, Solidarosc represented both a platform of national identity, a union in the classical sense of the term, and a fight for a free market. Various movements existed within Solidarnosc. It was a social movement that proved to be an excellent means of struggle against totalitarianism. Over these seven years, the lay of the land, however, has changed. We are witnessing an evolution of this system - I don't know whether you can call this a reform, but the system is changing nonetheless. This is 19 why the form of unity characteristic of Soli-
January 25, 1988 • International Viewpoint
POLAND darnose seven years ago is finished, why it no longer serves much purpose.
We are witnessing a very clear emergence of systematic contraposition between two opposing poles. On the one hand, we have Marcin Krol and his magazine, Res Publica' and the economic societies? , which are trying to organize and agitate for a classical free-market economy. On the other hand, on the left, we have the formation of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS). We are in a period of diversification of the opposition.
For the good health of the opposition and more generally of the independent society, this diversification and crystallization of political philosophies and ideologies are important and useful. One might get the impression that all this is happening to the detriment of Solidarosc, but that is wrong, because it is a natural development of Solidamosc. The old formula of Solidarnosc does not hold up any more. Everything that joined together in Solidarnose is developing today outside of it in the form of clearer ideological platforms.
If you take Solidarnosc as a union, what is most valuable in my opinion is what is happening in the plants, that is the work of the organizing committees that I spoke of, that of Solidarnosc's underground commissions, and also the growth of the union press. In speaking of the union press, I am thinking of the independent journals published in the plants by the underground commissions. That is the level of trade-union struggle to which I am the closest. • What do you think of the letter of the 22 union leaders addressed in September to Lech Walesa, in which the signatories pointed to the danger of Solidarnosc losing its trade-union identity and stressed the urgency of developing a program of immediate demands of the type you spoke about, only at the national level?
I think that we are in a situation today in which demands link up at various levels in Solidarnosc, but especially at the rank-and-file level - in the underground factory commissions, organizing committees working openly, and the union press (and I stress again, the press published in the plants). Demands also link up at the level of the regions and in various forms at the national level, both through the platform of the 22 or that of the National Executive Commission (KKW) or by other means. Today all this should be bolstered by a certain political platform, and from that flowed the idea of founding the PPS.
It seems to me that the time has come to struggle to make the socially and economically oppressed groups political subjects [as opposed to objects]. That is, the time has come to reinforce the trade-union struggle at the basic plant level by developing a political platform. We think that that should be the task of a political party, con20 to give a political strength to the socially cretely the PPS. We want, through the PPS, International Viewpoint • January 25, 1988 oppressed groups.
• Could you explain the objectives of the PPS?
What is new in the political experience involved in the creation of the PPS is that we are clearly defining the social interests that we want to represent. This is new in relation to Solidarnosc as an anti-totalitarian social movement that expressed various interests, primarily those of the socially oppressed groups, but not only theirs. Moreover, Solidarnosc is still at that point. But we think that the time has come to express the interests of the socially oppressed more clearly, that it is time to take a clear stand. This is what the PPS is doing.
We do not intend to represent the society as a whole but only the interests of some of its sectors, that is, of the workers and more generally of all the socially and economically oppressed. This is a qualitative alteration in the political landscape of our country created by the economic changes introduced by the regime, by the pauperization of the society, by the evolution of the system. And we want to offer these social groups a political force. In one way or another, these groups are becoming a social subject at the trade-union level, although this is illegal, and also at the self-management level [in the official self-management bodies]. But it is necessary to constitute a social subject that can make them into a political force.
The PPS is a sort of self-convoked gathering on the left. Today in Poland, you can fight for a free market, or do what the church is doing — I am thinking of its defence of the national identity — but you can also fight in defence of the oppressed. That is our choice. Of course, the left grouped in the PPS is not uniform. Several currents, groups and opinions exist within it. In Wroclaw, for example, we have anarchist-inclined groups, others typical of what is called the "new left," and finally social democrats in the traditional meaning of the term. The PPS aspires to become a pole of regroupment on the left. Its name points to a tradition with which we are all in agreement. The PPS was a party that is not in any way compromised in Polish history. We will see how this reference to the 1. Res Publica, an independent journal that identifies with the "neo-conservative" right, the only opposition publication legalized (in 1986) by the Jaruzelski govemment. This neo-conservative current criticizes Solidarnose for its "bitter-endism," in the name of a purported realistic and constructive opposition to the established regime. 2. Economic companies, independent organizations for promoting private enterprise, which are beginning to emerge in the wake of the economic reform. One of them in Cracow has gained legal recognition. 3. The Polish socialist movement was divided from the outset between a revolutionary internationalist wing, the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL), led by Rosa Luxemburg; and a pro-independence wing, the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) founded in 1892. The latter split in two in 1906. The PPS-Left fused in 1918 with the SDKPiL to form the Communist Party. On the other hand, the PPSRevolutionary Faction took up armed struggle (of a
PPS tradition will be concretized at the programmatic level, and what programmatic variant will prevail.
• The PPS's program has not yet been worked out?
For the time being, there is only a basic political statement in which we explain what we want to do — represent the socially oppressed groups and offer them a political force — and the things we are fighting for, such as trade-union freedoms, self- management rights, political freedoms for the workers, the right to refuse military service, protection of the environment and the abolition of the death penalty. In other words, the classical objectives of the left throughout the world.
We say clearly that we do not accept the constitutional system in force in People's Poland, for example the dominance of the Communist Party written into the constitution. Now, on the basis of this statement, we have begun to draw up a program. The provisional statutes that we adopted guarantee the right to put forward various political platforms and to organize around them within the party. • The Paris daily Libération, in its November 28-29 issue, suggested that the PPS identified with the social doctrine of the church. That seems to be in contradiction to the tradition of the PPS, a party that throughout all the phases of its history was strictly secular.
This is a confusion. In our statement of principles, we noted that the historic PPS — the party that existed before the first and second world wars — was an anti-clerical party. In the totalitarian system in which we are living, the situation is very different. The present PPS will not be an anti-clerical party, because times have changed, and we think that within our party there is a place for socialists inspired by the social doctrine of the church and of Pope John Paul II. • Does this mean that the PPS hopes to include socialists of Christian inspiration as well as, for example, Marxists?
Yes, certainly, and that is what Libération misunderstood. I think that our position on this matter is quite clear. terrorist sort) for national independence. In 1918, its members, along with other groups, reconstituted the PPS on a reformist and anti-Communist social-democratic basis.
This party was the biggest working-class party between the two wars. Under the Nazi occupation, the PPS apparatus went underground under the name of Freedom-Equality-Independence (WRN) and played the leading role in the political (but not the military) structures of the clandestine Polish state. At the end of the war, some Socialists agreed to reconstitute a legal PPS in the framework determined by the Stalinists. This party fused with the Polish Stalinist party in 1948 to form the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR). For its part, the PPS-WRN remained underground, refusing to recognize the Stalinist regime, which smashed it. The secretary general of the PPS-WRN, Kazimierz Puzak, died in prison in 1951. After 1948, the organized socialist current that identified with the traditions of the PPS ceased to exist, until the appearance this November of a party taking this name.
• To conclude, I would like you to explain the character of the demonstration organized in Wroclaw by the Orange Alternative on the anniversary of the October Revolution. You took part in that demonstration. Contradicto ry reports were published. On the one hand, it was reported to be a political demonstration, whose participants demanded notably the rehabilitation of Leon Trotsky; and, at the same time, it was presented a student joke. What actually happened?
The Orange Alternative is part of the alternative culture movement. For some time, it has been organizing street actions in Wroclaw in the form of "happenings." The content of these actions has been on the borderline between culture and politics, the borderline between culture and politics, and had a surrealist form. This form has caught on in Wroclaw. The Orange Alternative started with elitist actions, in which only a few people took part, but it was transformed into mass actions, during which the police held as many as 150 people for a few hours, which was already an important political fact.
The founder of the Orange Alternative is a young independent writer in Wroclaw, Waldemar Hydrych. It is not a formally constituted group but rather a center of initiatives that proposes concrete actions and invites the various independent organizations — Solidarnosc, the Freedom and Peace Movement (WIP) and now also the PPS — to take part.
I personally am a great champion of the Orange Alternative, and I always take part in its street actions. As regards the event organized on the anniversary of the October Revolution, it was a surrealist version of the classical ceremonies organized by the regime.
About 150 people - university students, high-school students, independent culture groups and Solidarnose activists — participated in this event. Every group came with its own slogans. For example, one of the groups came with a banner saying "We support Boris Yeltsin." [This refers to the Moscow Communist Party leader who was removed supposedly because he tried to carry out the perestroika too quickly.] Imagine the surrealism of such a situation! Another group carried a banner with the slogan "We demand the full rehabilitation of comrade Leon Trotsky." It is obviously hard to say where the surrealism ended and political philosophy began. I think that both aspects were present, that undoubtedly the people who carried the banner with the slogan about Trotsky must have had something in common with him, although in Poland there is a large dose of surrealism in such a reference.
The Orange Alternative's last action was held two days before the referendum vote. The participants engaged in a parody of political self-criticism, declaring that they would "vote 'yes' twice." Once again the police held about 150 people in custody for a few hours. a few hours.