'Walesa and his colleagues condemned the strikes as a provocation.'

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workers in a dramatic declaration: "Thanks to the support of the American State Department, a policy of reconciliation and reform has been imposed in Poland. Today, this policy enters the phase of its most successful fulfillment.

"Its base will be a pact that will permit the conciliating group—labeled the 'constructive opposition'-to obtain certain political concessions in return for guaranteeing the economic interests of the regime. This means that a portion of the opposition groups will assume responsibility for holding back society's rebellion against the low standard of living."

On Jan. 17, Prime Minister Mieczyslaw Rakowski asked the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers Party (PUWP) for the green light to open negotiations with the "constructive wing" of Solidarity and of the opposition. The majority of bureaucrats were scandalized by this perspective.

Then Jaruzelski put his resignation on the table. He walked out of the meeting, followed by the prime minister and the ministers of police and defense. Jaruzelski declared: "If you think we can maintain ourselves in power in this country without the help of Walesathen govern. But don't count on me."

Faced with this extreme gesture by Jaruzelski, the Central Committee reluctantly accepted the plan of "national reconciliation."

"Springtime will be ours"

After the setback to the Polish revolution in December 1981, rank-and-file activists spontaneously raised the slogan: "The wintertime is yours, the springtime will be ours."

Solidarity's spring arrived not when they expected it, but many years later in May 1988. In the Lenin Steel Works at Nowa Huta, a worker, Andrzej Szewczuwaniec, unleashed the strike in his department. Twenty-four hours later, 20,000 steelworkers from Nowa Huta were on strike. The central demand was the sliding scale of wages for all workers—manual and intellectual, including pensioners.

General Kiszczak (the same one who later, with Walesa, sponsored the roundtable discussions) launched his elite troops, called the "antiterrorist brigade," to break the strike by breaking the bones of the strikers. Students in almost every university went on strike in order to solidarize with the workers and protest the savage repression.

A second, larger strike wave began in August 1988. This time it was launched by the miners of Upper Silesia, a sector that had formerly been considered rather quiescent. It expressed the entry into the struggle of a young generation of workers-which surprised and roused the entire country.

This generation hadn't known the glorious days of Solidarity in 1980-81. But this time it was they who took the banner into their hands, unifying the strike movement under the slogan, "There cannot be liberty without Solidarity."

The spectacular awakening of the youth led several of the regime's sociologists to believe