Pinior gave the following interview by telephone to Cyril Smuga the night of the first court session.
POLAND
That is why we were surprised today, although the police action was restrained. On June 27, Alternative Orange — a surrealist counter-culture movement — organized a "happening" in solidarity with us. As usual, the action had a large ingredient of surrealism. For example, they carried portraits of Marx, Engels, Borowczyk and myself!
What was impressive is that the initiative group immediately gathered more than 3,000 people, passers-by who joined in. They felt free, and expressed this feeling of freedom by shouting "PPS, PPS! Solidarity, Solidarity!" The pressure to transform this event into a political demonstration in the strict sense was very strong. But neither Waldemar Fydrych, who directs Alternative Orange, nor we were ready to lead such a demonstration. The police were not prepared to intervene either. • Do you think that what happened on June 27 in Wroclaw reflects a change in the political climate and attitudes after the April-May 1988 strike wave?
For some time, I have had the impression that there is a change, owing to the appearance on the scene of a new opposition, a young opposition. Today, my presentiments seem to have been confirmed. The PPS, for example — I hope you won't think this is megalomania — today seems to be getting impetus from this new dynamic. We gained a lot during the strike wave by our presence and our role. The fact that Alternative Orange is able to mobilize several thousand people is part of the same phenomenon.
We are seeing a new landscape of the Polish opposition take shape under our eyes. Today, the various opposition groups, such as the PPS, the counterculture movements and many others are acutely aware that what is at stake is getting out of the totalitarian system. This is a fundamentally different option from the vicious circle that the idea of "Finlandization" leads to....
I think, based on my experience, that today we are at a turning point in the situation. This does not mean that in two or three months we are going to see things turned upside down. This system has to change its nature, it has to open up, or it will have to go backward and pay the price of retrogression toward the "Albanian model." But it does not have the means for either course.
A radical self-reform is not possible. In order for this to be envisaged, there would have to be a force on the government side that could lead it or at least accept it, relying on a social dynamic to carry it through. But in the regime, in the nomenklatura or in the apparatus in the broad sense that is, where the foundations of this regime lie — I see no interests that could push in favor of a real reform. You can't reform something if it is against your interests. 22 That is why, in my opinion, any opposition • thinking that stays in the framework of the International Viewpoint #146 • July 25, 1988
"Finlandization" schema will not only not lead to anything, but even be conservative. • In some new independent publications, such as A Capella in Gdansk, which is linked to the Freedom and Peace Movement (WiP), there are new themes for the Polish opposition: a rejection of the authority of the state, both in the East and West; a critical and unintimidated tone toward the sacred cows of the Polish opposition; and an identification with counter-culture movements, as well as with libertarian and egalitarian aspirations.
In many respects, these themes recall the values advocated by the PPS. In your opinion, is this sort of position representative of the new landscape of the opposition that you mentioned?
There is no doubt about that. A Capella could be a symbol of it, because very young people are involved in this project, students and young workers. In Latin America, for example, we have seen such phenomena, a whole social layer excluded from the society, which has nothing to lose, whose future is blocked.
In Poland, this young generation is in a comparable situation, with all due regard for the limits of such comparisons. Groups of young people adopting the same politico-social outlook, who have the same reference points as A Capella are more and more numerous. In the same way, Alternative Orange in Wroclaw (which because of its success has already been able to win acceptance in the opposition) is part of the same movement.
What is important is not just that these movements are young and dynamic but that they are increasingly conscious of their specificity, including on the political level, and of their own aspirations. In my opinion, in the future a part of this generation will turn toward strictly cultural activity. But I have no doubt that another part will join political movements, such as the PPS or the Wip. • Has this new rebel generation coming on the scene led to a revival of activity on the part of the Solidarnosc generation?
I would put it differently. This must have an influence on the trade-union structures in the enterprises. During the recent strike wave, I had an opportunity to observe the symptoms of this. Before being arrested by the police in the Dolmel factory, we had time to go through the factory.
Those who stopped the machines immediately, without any argument, were the very young workers. All you had to do was walk toward their machine, and it was shut off. I hope that after this wave of strikes, the Solidarose structures that remain will be led by this new generation. For our part, we are working toward that. • In Nowa Huta and Gdansk, the active presence of these young people in the strike was noted by everyone. In Nowa Huta, the strike committee transformed Itself into a Solidarnosc organizing committee, and there is already talk about several thousand people joining in the steelworks. At the University of Warsaw, when the Independent Student Association (NZS) started recruiting, in a very short time more than 2,000 students publicly joined it. Do you think that this is a foretaste of what will happen tomorrow on a larger scale?
In any case, that is what we are orienting our activities toward. The precondition for this is that the committee that serves as the center for rebuilding the union on a mass scale prove itself in one way or another.
The experience of the Solidarnosc organizing committees that we have helped set up in various places indicates that it is not enough to have a few brave activists who take the initiative. What is necessary is for such a committee to arise naturally, as a result of real activity in the workplace. I would like to prevent such committees from being formed "from above," by a regional structure.
In other words, in order to have authority and thus help to reorganize a mass trade-union structure, such committees have to be made up of the natural leaders who emerge from the heat of a struggle. This is easiest when it is the result of a strike, but a different sort of action may also have this effect. An example is what happened at Dolmel with the publication of a pamphlet on working conditions for women in the enterprise. Otherwise, when the push comes from above, I am afraid that it will get nowhere. • It seems that among the founding committees of Solidarnosc, those whose main activity was gaining legalization did not manage to play a major role in the recent strike wave.
From the start of setting up such committees, I pointed to two barriers that they would have to clear. The first was organizational. The second - and that is the key to their success — is that they would have to serve as a center for real trade-union activity. The second barrier is quite obviously the hardest to overcome. And, in my opinion, as a general rule, it was not surmounted before the April-May strike wave. This is what has to be done today.
If at least these committees managed to publish texts around the concrete problems in each enterprise - working conditions and so on — and organize actions around these problems — even limited to a shop, a department, a workplace — then we would be close to our goal. I think that we partially achieved that in Dolmel, and to a lesser extent in the Polar factory in Wroclaw and in the Lubin copper mines.
However, we have to be aware of the very limited character of such successes for the moment. In all, in my opinion, this is the direction we should go in. *
68-88
A spring that will not end:
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Twenty years after the Warsaw
Pact invasion
THE INVASION of Czechoslovakia in August
1968 was a landmark in the breakdown of