Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-Politics: Opposition and Reform in Poland since 1968

EPILOG: The New Solidarity

EPtWq The New Solidarity On January 18, 1989, the day this manuscript was sent to the publisher , General Jaruzelski told a plenary session of the PZPR Central Committee that the Party leadership was now willing to accept the relegalization of Solidarity. Less than three weeks later, on February 6, leaders of the Party and Solidarity sat down for the long-awaited Round Table negotiations to discuss the country's future. The two sides, formally referred to as "government-coalition" and "Solidarity-opposition ," appointed representatives to a variety of committees and subcommittees charged with working out agreements on such issues as economic policy, trade union pluralism, political reform, health and education, mining, housing, youth problems, and the environment. The talks lasted eight weeks, weathering a perhaps expectable number of crises and near breakdowns. On April 5, the Round Table Accord was signed. On April 17, Solidarity was re-Iegalized as a trade union. On June 4, 1989, candidates of the Solidarity Citizens Committee won a spectacular victory in the first free elections since World War ll. The age of anti-politics had turned decisively to politics-and this book suddenly had a natural ending.I The changes happened with astonishing speed, too fast for anyone to make sense of. When I visited Poland in March 1989, I found Adam Michnik, Jacek Kuron, and other old KOR nemeses now appearing as regular television commentators, interpreting the political situation for a disbelieving public. Representatives of the "underground" press, wearing badges identifying the illegal papers they worked for, asked questions of government ministers at formal press conferences. Helena Luczywo went public as the long-time editor of Solidarity's official underground paper, Tygodnik Mazowsze, and would soon convert it into the first legal oppositionist daily in Eastern Europe, with an initial circu205 206 I Epilog lation of 500,000. Even Po Prostu, the classic revisionist weekly closed down by Gomulka in 1957, was now allowed to resume publication. Dawid Warszawski announced that he was really Konstanty Gebert,2 though he said that his paper, KOS, would probably stay underground for technical reasons: it was easier to get paper on the black market than on the legal one. Still, Warszawski was now a public figure. Relishing his new status, he liked to show off a picture of himself shoving a long microphone into the bewildered face of government spokesman Jerzy Urban. Urban, for once, was not alone-everyone was bewildered by the pace of events. The "anti-socialist enemies" of yesterday were the "constructive opposition" of today, and no one quite knew how to play the new roles. In the space of a few short months in early 1989, Solidarityessentially won what it had been fighting for over the past eight years. With the signing of the Round Table Accord, we have the consummation of the neocorporatist deal for which Solidarity had been pushing since 1981. The Round Table itself was part of a classic corporatist scenario, as negotiators from the government, Solidarity, and the official trade unions, none of whom had been elected for the purpose, met in a series of closed-door sessions to work out a social contract binding upon all. This was no "consultative council" such as the government had offered in the past. These were real negotiations, producing substantive final documents that the government was obliged not merely to consider but to enact legislatively. In return for legalization, Solidarity agreed to the government's request for early parliamentary elections to cement the Party's hold on the state. The election agreement also followed a corporatist scenario, as the balance of power was decided on in advance. The two sides agreed that the PZPR and its allies (the Democratic Party, the United Peasant Party, and PAX) would be guaranteed 65 percent of the seats in the Sejm, with non-Party candidates allowed to contest the remaining 35 percent. Only the newly-created Senate would be decided by completely free ballot. The Party and its allies would have a guaranteed majority in the joint congress, and the two sides agreed that a mere majority would suffice to elect the President, also a newly created post. Responsible for international and military affairs, the President would be the formal guarantee for the stability ofPoland's foreign policy while Polish civil society becomes fully democratized. Able to reassure the Epilog / 207 military and nomenklatura that they will not lose everything, the President is...