Poland joins IMF, plans austerity, and rounds up Solidarity activists POLAND

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When Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law in Poland on Dec. 13, 1981, the top brass of the U.S. capitalist class strongly supported the Polish government's brutal action-despite appearances to the contrary.

Business Week reported, "Western banks privately applaud martial law because they believe the army's action will end the political impasse that has paralyzed the economy."

A New York Times article stated that the U.S. banks had pressed for martial law, hoping that a military takeover would enable the Polish government to repay its $27-billion debt. "The only thing we care about is can they pay their bills," Thomas Theobald, chairman of the board of Citibank, was quoted as saying.

Four-and-a-half years later, Polish government spokesman Jerzy Urban has revealed that the Reagan administration actually knew in advance about plans to institute martial law but decided not to make this information public.

In an interview with The Washington Post (June 16, 1986), Urban stated, . "The U.S. administration could have publicly revealed these plans to the world and warned Solidarity. Had it done so, the implemen -tation of martial law would have been impossible."

Urban stated that a senior Polish staff officer, Col. Wladyslaw Kuklinski, had been on the CIA payroll at the time and had leaked information on the military crackdown to the U.S. government.

Reagan administration officials ques -tioned by the Post did not deny having been informed about the preparations for martial law. "We had everything in the plan but the date," one U.S. government official told the Post.

Urban's revelation, which exposes the hypocrisy of the Reagan administration's Poland will now receive new credits from U.S. and European banks to help reschedule $800 million of foreign debt falling due this year.

In turn, the Polish government has agreed to impose even harsher austerity measures on its population. Earlier this year, the government announced price increases of 40 percent in flour, cheese, and rice. In late May it announced a 30-percent increase in the price of fuel and other energy sources.

Under the new IMF package, the Polish government will now have to raise the prices of all basic foods—particularly butter and meat— and eliminate state subsidies to all consumer goods. Wages, moreover, will have to be kept at their 1985 levels. In addition, a new fund based on a special tax on all nationalized industry, will be created to pay back the debt to the imperialist banks.

Solidarity, the trade-union and social movement that organized up to 10 million could ignite the Polish powder keg once again, the ruling bureaucracy has stepped up its repression against Solidarity leaders and activists. More than 300 activists are currently imprisoned in Poland, according to The Washington Post. The number of detainees has grown at the rate of more than one a day since January.

On May 31, two days before Poland joined the IMF, the Polish political police arrested the main underground Solidarity leader, Zbigniew Bujak, along with well-known activists Konrad Bielinski, Henryk Wujec, and Ewa Kulik. [See accompanying story.] The right-wing Paris Daily Le Figaro explained that with these arrests, "the Polish government hopes to be able to get the population to accept unpopular but necessary reforms." Le Figaro understands that the ruling bureaucracy is the driving force for capitalist penetration into the Polish workers' state.

Still, the Polish bureaucracy has been unable to crush the resistance of the Polish workers. Solidarity is still alive, even though its main leaders are in prison and its structures have been forced underground.

The International Herald Tribune in its Dec. 20, 1985, issue described Polish reality well when it stated: "The Polish crisis is far from being resolved. Gen. Jaruzelski is discovering that his victory is far more apparent than real. Poland today is a nation of 35 million dissidents."

and was having a hard time.

However, they didn't use physical torture on me; they just threatened to. The room where this high official was talking to me was sound-proof. This was scary. They oppress people psychologically.

S.A.: How were you released?

Jacobbson: I got out after six weeks because I was Swedish. Support groups had formed in Sweden and they went to the Swedish government and to my trade union to try to get me released. But if a Pole faced the same charges I did, he or she would be in prison somewhere between three and 15 years.

S.A.: How has this repression affected Solidarity's activities?

Jacobsson: At first, martial law was able to break down a lot of the structures of Solidarity. People were afraid and didn't dare organize. But after a year, the organization had a new national leadership and kept organizing. Despite the repression, Solidarity was alive and strong.

The new protest actions took many different forms. For instance, in a suburb of Warsaw, people would go for a walk every evening when the TV news came on because they didn't want to see the news—which they thought was propaganda for the regime. Then the government put a curfew on the people so they couldn't go out. So the people put their TV sets in the streets.

Of course, people are a bit afraid and more careful than before martial law. But they are still organizing, and nearly every family in Poland has somebody who has been to prison. It's part of life in Poland to go to prison. iNPREKOR M: IX CARNOSir ve va MERA~ FOLMOSCI they any 1 an activist ROBOTNICY POLUDNIOWEJ AFRYKI W WALCE Z APARTHEIDEM the struggle

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