Polish trial highlights crisis of regime

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Solidarity heads arrested again Those arrested include Lech Walesa, who was immediately released; Bogdan Lis of Gdansk; Wladyslaw Frasyniuk of Wroclaw; and Adam Michnik of Warsaw. Lis and Michnik were released under an amnesty last year and The strike was called to protest the rise in food prices decreed by the government as part of an austerity package agreed to in consultation with the International Monetary Fund. Poland owes $28 billion to the imperialist banks and is currently negotiating its readmission into the IMF.

In a recent article published by Poland's major underground newspaper, Zbigniew Bujak, president of Solidarity's Provisional Coordinating Commission (TKK), stated that "Solidarity will oppose any IMF program that would result in attacks on the living standards of the population. " Fourth International holds 12th World Congress International Viewpoint is a biweekly political review analyzing recent worla events irom a revolutonary Marxist perspecure• necent issues have reported on the crisis of the Marcos regime in the Philippines and the British Future issues will contain coverage of the discussions and resolutions of the Twelfth World Congress of the Fourth International as well as regular reportTo subscribe at the special introductory rate of $35.50 per year ($26.50/yr. by surface mail), send a check or money order payable to PEC to: International Viewpoint, 2 Rue Richard Lenoir, 93108 Montreuil, France. The offer SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 1985 11 The trial of the four security men accused of having murdered pro-Solidarity priest, the Rev. Jerzy Popielusko, ended on Feb. 6. The two highest-ranking officers were sentenced to 25 years each and the others to 14 and 15 years. But the conclusion has provided far more questions than answers.

How far up the How far up the regime's hierarchy does The overriding question remains:

responsibility for the priest's assassination extend, and where does the coverup end?

In pre-trial interrogations, both of the lower-ranking defendants, Leszek Pekala and Waldemar Chmielewski, implicated an unnamed vice-minister of Internal Affairs in the crime. Rapidly seeing the error of his ways, Pekala, during the trial a few days later, announced: "To involve a vice-minister in this affair is absurd."

For his part, Chmielewski then claimed to have made the whole thing up.

Lt. Pekala testified that he was ordered to kill the priest by his superior, Capt. Gregorz Piotrowski, who assured him that "the order had come from very high up....The plan has been approved by the superiors."

Limiting the circle of blame Piotrowski, in his turn, admitted to anger at the "illegal" activities of such activist priests as Popieluszko in support of Solidarity-particularly his advocacy of underground schools to build, in Popieluszko's words, "cadres for future uprising."

He nonetheless shifted the responsibility still higher.

He recalled a meeting with Col. Adam Pietruszka, the fourth and highest-ranking defendant, who told him: "We have to take decisive action. We have to shake them [Popieluszko and the Rev. Stanislaw Malkowski, another activist priest] so hard that it leads right up to a heart attack."

Piotrowski reported, however, that he was convinced that Pietruszka was carrying out decisions from still higher up.

Pietruszka, in due course, hauled in his own superior, Gen. Zenon Platek, an official of the Ministry of Interior, claiming that Platek had obstructed an inquiry into the murder-a charge that Platek's testimony did nothing to reverse.

Finally, Jan Olszewski, one of the lawyers representing Popieluszko's family, raised the question in his summation as to who could have had the most interest in lighting this "fuse" to rekindle social unrest in Poland. By denying any Polish interest in making Poland a "land of misery, despair, and terror,' he seemed to imply that such an interest could be found in the Soviet Union.

In rebuttal, the prosecutor Leszek Pietrasinsk, vigorously denied that the crime was instigated from any quarter higher up than Col. Pietruszka and miners' strike-the longest strike in British history.

ing and analysis of events from Nicaragua to Poland.

will expire this month, so don't delay. PrEN placed all responsibility on the heads of the four defendants, especially Piotrowski.

In a flagrant example of blaming the victim for the crime, however, Pietrasinsk, in his three-hour summation, also accused the murdered priest of having "taken extreme positions that gave rise to no less an extremism culminating in the crime."

He listed among Popieluszko's felonies: casting doubt on the "legitimacy of the government;" spreading anti-government propaganda; and hiding in his apartment thousands of envelopes stuffed with dissident newsletters, dozens of 9-millimeter bullets, three tear-gas grenades, and printing ink (The New York Times, Jan. 30, 1985).

Crisis of regime continues What is made clear from the trial in Torun is the continuing crisis of the Polish regime. It was the anger of the Polish workers which compelled the Central Committee of the Polish Communist Party to adopt a resolution on Oct. 27, condemning the assassination in the harshest terms. It was the 500,000 angry partisans of Solidarity demonstrating at Popieluszko's funeral on Nov. 3 that forced Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski to fire the minister of the The 12th World Congress of the Fourth International was held last month. Delegates and fraternal observers from nearly 60 countries arrived to take part in the deliberations of the highest body of the world Trotskyist Resolutions were adopted covering the major world events since the last 1.-A: Denant iconno haro RING Interior and assume control department himself.

The regime, increasingly menaced, continues to attack Solidarity activists. In Gdansk, Andrzej Gwiazda has been sentenced to three years in prison; in Szczecin, Zadzislaw Podolski has been protesting his imprisonment with a hunger strike; Edmund Baluka and Jan Kostecki have been indicted again; in Silesia, an unemployed militant has been sentenced for "social parasitism."

On Feb. 13 seven Solidarity leaders were they were meeting in a Warsaw apartment to called by Solidarity for Feb. 28.

are being investigated for endorsing the strike appeal. World Congress in 1979. In particular, resolutions entitled "The Central American Revolution" and "Revolution and Counterrevolution in Poland" were passed by large majorities.

The World Congress also voted to approve a programmatic statement of the importance and necessity of socialist democracy in post-capitalist societies. This document, "Socialist Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat" had originally been submitted to an indicative vote at the 1979 World Congress. Given the events in Poland and Nicaragua, several additions were made taking into account the experiences in those countries.

The congress analyzed the current political situation and approved the "Theses on the International Situation."

The report by Ernest Mandel stressed the idea that the working class's capacity for struggle remains intact despite the effects of the austerity policies of the ruling classes in the imperialist and underdeveloped countries.

Finally, a world-movement-building resolution was approved which projected the involvement of a broader layer of members of national organizations in the work of building the International. The report approved by the World Congress called for more frequent meetings of the International's leading bodies to further enhance the functioning of the world movement. foreseen in a statement made by the leadership of Solidarity on Oct. 19:

"The kidnapping and assassination of Father Popieluszko were directed essentially against all those who found faith and strength in his words. They wished to get at Solidarity.... The crime was decided upon in the Ministry of Interior and executed by security functionaries. The government of Poland is directly responsible for the activity of its ministers. No declaration of innocence will change that....

"The people who today are supervising the inquest and informing us of its conclusions are the very same as those who bear the responsibility for the assassination.... In reality, the inquest will aim to limit the circle of blame to those who simply executed the assassination, to cover footsteps, and to disinform society. When the occasion presents itself, a new campaign will be launched against the militants of Solidarity and the unsubdued priests."

Confirming Solidarity's predictions, Jaruzelski, in a Feb. 12 news conference in New Delhi, assured the world that there were no "traces" of a conspiracy beyond the four accused men. He then added, "I should like to inform those of you who perhaps do not know it yet that Solidarity as such does not exist in Poland."

arrested by the Polish police as plan a 15-minute national strike The major controversy that took place at the World Congress centered around the evolution of the U.S. Socialist Workers Party. Since the 1979 meeting of the world movement, the SWP has abandoned the theory of permanent revolution, which has long been considered the essential theoretical framework of the Trotskyist movement.

The World Congress voted by a large majority to reaffirm the validity of the theory of permanent revolution in the light of recent world events. The revolution in Nicaragua was seen by a majority of the delegates as evidence that only a working-class regime in power can accomplish the basic task of distributing land to the peasants-breaking up the power of the old landowning classesand proceed to the accomplishment of more directly socialist tasks, such as the placing under state control of foreign trade, natural resources, investment, etc. In this sense, Nicaragua was seen as a country in transition from capitalism to socialism.

Furthermore, in view of the political expulsions from the SWP, the World Congress noted that its U.S. sympathizing organization had been split into three component parts: the SWP, Socialist Action, and the Fourth Internationalist Tendency. Each of the three organizations would enjoy full rights within the Fourth International within the limitations of reactionary U.S. legislation.

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