Martial Law fails to silence Solidarnosc
1986Ralph Schoenman 1986-12Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 14 →
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Polish workers and students fraternize with soldiers during martial law The most mature revolutionary struggle today is that of the Polish working class. Despite the serious setbacks and the loss of political initiative by Solidarnosc after five years of martial-law rule, Solidarnose is still very much alive and fighting.
Solidarnosc actively organized 10 million workers at the factory level. Rural Soli -darnosc mobilized millions more. Together with their families, these 14 million workers and farmers accounted for some 90 percent of Poland's 37 million people.
Martial law was imposed on Dec. 13, 1981, at a moment when Solidarnosc's regional leaders were calling for the "active strike." This was a strategy for the workers to run the plants in their own interests—to the exclusion of the dictates of Communist Party functionaries and the state bu -reaucracy. The fight for workers' selfmanagement represented the beginnings of dual power.
Key sections of Solidarnosc were readý to revolution as that of Solidarnosc, the absence of a revolutionary party and the development of a program capable of formulating strategy and preparing the insurrection led to the calamity of martial law.
Solidarnose today
Despite this setback, Solidarnosc today is deeply rooted in the oppressed population with a vast proliferation of underground leaflets, small magazines, and publishing houses printing everything under the nose of the authorities. This massive defiance of the regime has clearly demonstrated the inability of Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski's military junta to crush the workers' move -ment.
On Sept. 11, 1986, Gen. Czeslaw Kissak, Poland's minister of the interior, announced the release of all so-called "noncriminal prisoners." Zbigniew Bujak and other jailed leaders of Solidarnose were freed. On Sept. 21, over 50,000 people gathered in Czestochowa, shouting the names of the released Solidarnosc leaders clampdown. and waving banners that read, afraid of those in power."
The aim of the regime was to undercut support for the mass underground move -ment and to "stabilize the situation," as Kiscsak put it. But at the very same moment the military junta was talking about normalization, the Polish political police mounted a nationwide operation aimed at "achieving the dissolution of the illegal groups and structures that are still pursuing activities against the state and public order." (Polityka, Sept. 20, 1986)
The answer of the freed Solidarnosc leaders to the maneuvers of the Polish bureacuracy was bold. On Sept. 30, Lech Walesa announced the formation of a sevenmember Provisional Council of Solidarnosc. The council includes almost all the former members of the trade union's underground Provisional Coordinating Committee (TKK).
Walesa and the new council leaders declared that their goal was the restoration of independent trade unions in Poland—particularly of Solidarosc, which
Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski
is officially banned. "Our union exists and will exist with the will of its members," the group declared. The demand that Solidarnosc regain its legal status has been at the center of the struggle of the Polish underground movement for the past five years.
The Polish government reacted harshly to the formation of the Provisional Council, warning of the "destructive activities of a handful of extremists" who could thwart "the steps taken toward national understanding."
On Oct. 10, the Polish authorities declared the Provisional Council and its regional councils illegal. They stated that the Solidarnosc activists "risked imprisonment for their activities."
Counterrevolutionary cooperation At the time martial law was imposed five years ago, the major Western bankers expressed understanding for its necessity as well as alarm at Solidarnose's challenge to the Polish bureaucratic state.
Britain's Margaret Thatcher and Canada's Pierre Trudeau spoke of the need to discipline the Polish workers' movement. Reagan extended massive credits to the regime at the very moment he shed crocodile tears for the Polish workers.
Speaking on the television spectacular, "Let Poland Be Poland," Reagan condemned martial law in the presence of Bulent Ulusu, the Turkish prime minister who had, in collusion with the CIA, imposed