POLAND: A REVOLT FOR THE POSSIBLE
Bratkowski, Stefan
Stefan Bratkowski, an eminent Polish journalist, is one of the principal leaders of the study and discussion group called Experience and the Future, whose reports criticizing the country's...
...After all, the average Pole is convinced that even for a world power it is preferable to have a stable, reliable ally, an ally that freely defines itself as such rather than a colony that regularly must be pacified and have its debts paid off...
...Nor will it stop being a world power, either...
...The government was functioning, and as party leader Kadar was forever saying, his party must govern as if every other minute there were to be free elections...
...and "The International," but when the primate of Poland, who is considered even by party leaders to be the country's biggest political authority, called on the workers to end the strike, the response was a series of solidarity strikes...
...However, apart from a few very small and insignificant groups, no one—not even the most influential opposition group operating on the fringes of constitutionality, the Committee for Social Self-Defense (KOR), which at one time used to display its anti-Sovietismencourages anti-Soviet feeling today...
...Publicopinion polls in earlier years had shown consistently that Poles would go so far as to endure hunger, even, but not propaganda that they felt was demeaning...
...Reprinted, with permission, from Survey 33 its own propaganda...
...A. We know from history, comrade, that the ruling classes never work hard...
...They have been able to control the life of an agglomeration numbering almost a million inhabitants, and they acquitted themselves wonderfully well...
...The whole problem lies in the fact that nothing works here as it should...
...The Gdansk charter, as the workers call the agreement reached with the government, not only gives the unions the possibility of self-management...
...It took place in a bizarre country that is ruled by a Communist party more than two-thirds of whose members believe in God, a country in which the party's Politburo holds absolute power but in which for a period of ten years almost all major investment decisions, involving billions of dollars, have been manipulated by local lobbies or by those of the lower-level branches of various industries...
...They take us for idiots...
...A senseless propaganda campaign boomeranged...
...Let us hope that the government will be able to adapt to the necessity of leading a political action rather than scowling at itself in the mirror of Polish Jokes Political jokes in the Communist countries have a cathartic function...
...The strike committee forbade the sale and consumption of alcohol, and even privately owned restaurants voluntarily observed the prohibition...
...It would be hard for that not to be so...
...On workers Q. Why does the Polish working class refuse to work hard...
...My son, of course I can...
...For the duration of the strike, lawbreaking and alcoholism dropped sharply in the striker-controlled city...
...This autumn Poland will still be experiencing numerous tensions and difficulties, which will not be economic in nature...
...nor, what with trade being established on sound footing, is it going to stop being an important economic partner...
...At the same time, the works of Soviet economic and management thinkers, which were published and available in Poland, contained the same suggestions for reforms and changes in the economy...
...In the 32 minds of millions of Polish tourists, both workers and intellectuals, this anchored the conviction that "it is possible," that "there is a way...
...As a result, not only was it perceived to be "possible" but also necessary here in this part of Europe existing under the Soviet umbrella...
...The city's public-health services and businesses were officially on strike but they carried on with their duties "for the public good...
...One could multiply these paradoxes, but the last is the most important...
...The question now is, will the government take the people more seriously, and will the people be able to take the government at all seriously...
...First of all, Polish workers, and especially those in the new industrial centers and in the western areas, are for the most part young people...
...The young workers in the naval shipyards of Gdansk are filled with pride, and no wonder...
...The government machine has got out of order because in the present system the Politburo is all-powerful, and over the last five years it has assumed responsibility for everything down to the distribution of tacks, while at the same time all avenues of contact with public opinion were closed...
...Despite all the flaws in our school system, they are, in general, quite widely educated...
...And third, extremisms of whatever kind are, traditionally, alien to Poland...
...They testify to the psychological authenticity of the motives that move the opposition...
...Impeccable order was maintained: contrary to what happens in normal times, nothing disappeared from the property of the striking enterprises...
...But I am afraid you will have to pay alimony...
...For that matter, sometimes it has been the government itself that has aroused them by brandishing the Soviet scarecrow before the noses of its critics and using the Soviet alibi to justify its incoherent economic decisions...
...It was a down-to-earth revolt...
...Under such conditions, the example of Hungary was bound imperceptibly to push people toward revolt...
...A socialist realist is a painter who paints as he hears...
...Even Stalinism has not been fully achieved here...
...All this notwithstanding, Poland will not stop being a bizarre country...
...On Polish- Soviet relations: Party Secretary Gierek makes one final request before the Pope leaves for Rome: "Your Holiness, could you please arrange a divorce between Poland and the Soviet Union...
...Last November Bratkowski was elected by his colleagues (the first to hold this position and not closely associated with the establishment) chair of the Association of Journalists...
...n none of the strike actions have anti-Soviet slogans been in evidence, nor have there been attacks against the basis of the Polish government, which the Soviet umbrella protects...
...EDS...
...A country in which - the government seemingly, because officially, exercises monopoly control over information, whereas the true monopoly lies with foreign shortwave radio services whose broadcasts are listened to by members of the highest organs of government...
...The first step has just been taken...
...On socialist realist art: An impressionist is a painter who paints as he feels...
...Anti-Soviet resentments are not absent in Poland...
...On socialist medicine: An overworked doctor in an overcrowded Warsaw hospital tells the nurse in charge that he is in a hurry, so would she please give him the average temperature of all the patients in her ward...
...Finally, a country in which independence is the obsession of every citizen and romanticism is the basic ideology...
...This article is reprinted, with permissioin, from i.e Figaro, Sept...
...The workers are singing in chorus the national religious anthem, "God, you who watched over Poland...
...They successfully developed a new form of strike that tends not to disturb unduly the public's daily life...
...The September revolt in Poland was no starry-eyed event...
...but where the painful and bloody lessons of geopolitics have taught the entire nation to main31 tain self-control and to display political discipline...
...Even common sense has been democratized in Poland, and for that matter the Polish people have taken socialism more seriously than has the government ruling in its name...
...Everything that has been happening recently in Poland has not only been carried out in the name of common sense but has been carried out with common sense...
...Second, the last 25 years have taught them that because the government is accustomed to being allpowerful, it reacts nervously and can be overquick on the draw...
...Neither is impossible...
...with the kind of system of economic management that exists in Poland, the Lord Himself would have to hand in His resignation at the end of three months...
...The DIP itself is guided by the principle of taking into strict account how much of what is necessary can be obtained...
...They are also the manifestation of the proverbial "wisdom of the people," reflecting their experience, their irony, and their sorrows...
...Accordingly, the first thing to be done was to accustom the government to a dialogue...
...On Party secretaries: The problem is that in the field of economics they are capable of nothing, while in politics they are capable of anything...
...similarly, that the Polish people will be able to practice the art of settling problems without giving way to passions...
...It also creates a kind of model for the management of public affairs...
...The Soviet Union is not going to stop being the Poles' neighbor...
...Their immense power sparked a certain euphoria in these young people but, at the same time, in their demands this power was intentionally curbed, and they presented only two of the demands from the list of indispensable reforms formulated by the 140 or so intellectuals in the Experience and Future (DIP) group...
...Not out of a spirit of opposition but out of ordinary common sense...
...On the contrary, KOR has recently stated that it fully recognizes the political status quo in Poland...
...Stefan Bratkowski, an eminent Polish journalist, is one of the principal leaders of the study and discussion group called Experience and the Future, whose reports criticizing the country's situation and proposing reforms have created a sensation in Poland over the last two years...
...Before, under the reign of the patriarch Gomulka, it was still possible to control economic stagnation...
...They are both an expression of inner freedom and a substitute for freedom of expression...
...In Hungary, a country lacking in the enormous natural resources that Poland possesses, the economy was in good shape...
...They know nothing of the past experiences of the labor movement, but they have an inkling of their significance and are able, as it were, to relive them...
...What has happened with the economy after ten years of a government that is feudal in style is there for all to see...
...How is one to explain this further paradox...
...An expressionist is a painter who paints as he sees...
...4, 1980...
...This is why the revolt in Poland is led by a romanticism that is geopolitically controlled...
...This attitude has not been determined by fear or by the conviction that, this time, no one in the West was disposed to "die for Danzig" (today Gdansk), but quite simply by an understanding of the nation's self-interest...
...The youthful dockers and other workers are proud to feel that they represent all the workers in the country who helped them as best they could by going on strike out of solidarity, sending money, and offering statements of support...
...Translated by ADRIENNE FOULKE...
...They're not even capable of lying intelligently...
Vol. 28 • January 1981 • No. 1
