Polish workers begin to reject both pro-Stalinist and pro-capitalist policies

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Frustrated and angered by ravages of 'market reforms' and no voice in gov't The East European country that has carried out the most radical procapitalist reforms is Poland. (The former East Germany, having been incorporated into a capitalist state, is in another category.) It is seen generally as a model of rapid transition to a market economy. So, it is constantly under the eye of those most interested in the process of capitalist restoration in the countries that have had a collectivized economy run by Stalinist bureaucracies.

The capitalist media in the West have not had much to say about Poland in the past few months. But in its May 31 issue the kussian-language weekly Russkaya Mysl', published in Paris, described a snowballing crisis. Prominent ex-dissidents write for this paper, and it has generally been one of the best informed and objective of East Europe watchers. Its headline was "Poland wracked with fever."

The "fever" was a wave of strikes against deteriorating living standards, a wave so extensive that it was threatening both the government and its program of market reforms.

Twenty thousand miners struck in the Lublin copper mines, demanding 200 percent pay increases. The municipal transport workers in Bialystock and Warsaw went out. The Warsaw sanitation workers waged a prolonged fight that led to near catastrophic conditions in the Polish capital. "In the course of the strikes and protest actions," Russkaya Mysl' reported, "the demand for a general strike was often raised."

Most of the strikes were conducted without the leadership or even support of Solidarosc. Nonetheless, Solidarosc leaders were forced to conduct a national day of protest on May 22 to try to maintain links with the discontented workers. About 80 percent of the rank-and-file units of Solidarnosc took part, that is about 2 million people.

The month of May saw the third round of price increases this year. Rates for gas and electricity were increased by 140 percent and 110 percent respectively. Before that, at the end of March, unemployment had reached 1.3 million persons, or 7.1 percent of the economically active population. It is expected to go over 2 million by the end of the year, and some economists predict an even higher rate.

A strike against its own policies According to the chair of Solidarnosc, Marian Kszaklewski, the protest was "against mistakes in social and economic policy, against leading posts remaining in the hands of the old nomenklatura [bureaucracyl, against mistakes in the process of privatization leading to the transfer of property into the hands of the nomenklatura. ,,9 The Solidarnosc leader said that the national protest had been intended to head 10 SOCIALIST ACTIO off the growth of wildcat strikes, which he suggested were being manipulated by elements of the old Stalinist bureaucracy: "Solidarnosc has proof that some such strikes, for example in the copper mining area, were exploited by post-Communist forces."

Here the threads of responsibility seem to get tangled indeed. In fact, the Stalinists continue to hold 65 percent of the seats in the national parliament on the basis of a deal with the Solidarnosc leadership, and phenomena I call nostalgia for a state that must give everything and solve everything.

The Liberal Democratic Congress declared: "Such protests, demands for a general strike, are not going to speed up the reforms. To the contrary, they seriously obstruct them."

In parliament, Balcerowicz warned that the protests were presenting the government with a "tragic" alternative- "Will we go forward to a better economy ... or will resent the will of the people, in particular that of the workers. He reviewed the experience of the 1989 parliamentary elections, in which, despite the fact that the division of seats had been largely predetermined by the Magdalenka Pact, the voters took the occasion to deliver a crushing rebuff to the Stalinists.

Plebescite against the regime He referred also to the 1990 presidential elections, in which the voters humiliated Mazowiecki, the head of the first "non-Communist" governent. Mazowiecki was outdistanced in the first round by the populist adventurer Stan Tyminiski. Walesa won in the second round. But a large proportion of the workers, especially the younger ones, voted even against him.

"A considerable part of the society turned the Nov. 25, 1990, presidential elections into a plebiscite against the Mazowiecki government, just as in June 1989 it turned the parliamentary elections into a plebiscite against the former regime. In the earlier