Poland: A Chance and a Danger

POLAND: A CHANCE AND A DANGER Zygmunt Nagorski L he Polish tragedy continues. Another act, or chapter, opened on December 13, 1981, when the military seized control and unleashed a reign of terror. There will doubtless be many other chapters before the tragedy runs its course. And in history books, the December date will be added to so many others: 1831 and 1863, when the two major uprisings against tsarist Russia were put down in blood; 1918, when, thanks to an act initiated by the president of the United States, an independent Poland rose from the shadow of a century and a half of political nonexistence; 1939, when World War II, which was to change its destiny, erupted on the Polish-German frontier; 1944, when the Warsaw uprising against the Germans left 200,000 Poles dead and the capital reduced to rubble. And more recently, from 1956 onwards, the series of desperate efforts to shake off Soviet hegemony, to liberalize the inept and corrupt Communist regime. The birth of Solidarity initiated sixteen months of hope, sixteen months where Poland enjoyed the illusion of regained freedom. Then came General Wojciech Jaruzelski and the dream abruptly ended. Strict control over people's lives was restored with a heavy-handedness reminiscent of the dark days of postwar Stalinism. Poland began sinking back into the abyss; fear regained the upper hand. Thousands of people languish injails, others await their turn. While the Communist leaders from the Soviet Union, East GerZygmunt Nagorski is Director of the Executive Seminars Program at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies in New York. He is the author of Psychology of East-West Trade and a contributor on foreign affairs to such publications as The New York Times, The Wall StreetJournal, and others. He was previously Program Director at the Council on Foreign Relations. 105 106 SAIS REVIEW many, Czechoslovakia, and other members of the empire applaud the elimination of Solidarity, the rest of the world watches in disbelief and almost total paralysis. And the Poles, a brave and long-suffering people who proved to the world that it is possible to carve freedom out ofthe rock ofa Communist regime, seem incapable of understanding why the world just stands there watching. The importance of the Polish tragedy extends far beyond the borders of Poland itself. Once again, this rebellious and subjugated small nation stands between two great powers like a reproach, simultaneously rejecting the Soviet-imposed political system and defying the West to live up to its proclaimed principles. For the Soviet Union, Poland symbolizes the failure of its system, for the West, the hollowness of its rhetoric. In any event, the Polish situation is such that neither of the superpowers can comfortably remain aloof or uninvolved. That Solidarity created difficult problems for Moscow hardly bears mentioning . The movement had begun as unions traditionally do, with the workers demanding better working conditions. The issue, initially, was bread. But then, to the dismay of the party apparatus, the movement grew bolder. It demanded more elbowroom within the society; it called for freedom of association, freedom of expression, and other equally revolutionary intangibles . It was soon apparent that a genuine proletarian revolution was in the offing. The Soviet Union, perplexed and alarmed, watched helplessly at first while the Polish Communist party's appeals to reason and calm fell on deaf ears. Worse, the party's rank-and-file began to line up behind Solidarity's goals. Many of them joined the newly created union even while not renouncing their allegiance to the party. The upsurge in Solidarity's membership astounded the world. Ten million people joined in a nation of 36 million. Ten million people paid their dues, established regional offices, elected their leaders in a democratic fashion, and began to lay the bases for a "socialism with a human face," to use the 1968 Czechoslovak slogan once again. What eventually developed far surpassed the Czechoslovak spring. The brief period during which Solidarity flourished gave the Poles access to uncensored news, open political debate, and freedom ofassociation. Students demanded an end to the tedious, boring, and intellectually sterile lectures on Marxist-Leninism, farmers called for the establishment of free markets, and society...