The Road from Gdansk

...The liberals recognized Solidarity as "a genuine and real force," and maintained that it would be "impossible to rule Poland without reaching an understanding with this and other important social forces...

...Many of its moderates come from the Catholic Intelligentsia Clubs (KIK) that have been active since 1956...

...their active support did much to forge the links between labor and the intellectuals that currently give the federation its broad scope...

...Similar sentiments are frequently expressed by worker activists, and to a lesser extent by the rank and file...

...and tolerance among partners to the covenant" that resulted from the 21-point 1980 agreement...

...It is hoped that the resulting statute will provide an acceptable framework for the management of large enterprises...

...Lest it be accused of "collaborating with the enemy," the KKP cannot readily formulate or enter into agreements that accommodate Poland's membership in the Soviet bloc...

...Above all, it has infused this country with a spirit of renovation and renewal that has touched almost every individual and institution...

...Given the conflicting philosophies motivating the regime and the bulk of the populace, though, a common approach to the country's most pressing issue has so far been impossible to achieve...

...And attitudes of the younger members of Solidarity are important, for they have played a disproportionately active role in the movement...

...No longer does it seem quite as witty as it was some months ago to quip that in the Soviet bloc, Poland stands for liberty, East Germany for productivity and Bulgaria for stability...

...Solidarity, too-albeit less surprisingly-comprises several voices...

...Unrelenting pressure on "the jugular" of the authorities, one activist told me, is the only way to exact concessions...

...Otherwise, the reactionaries warned, pretty soon "prostitutes and pederasts will be organizing in defense of their rights...

...what matters, they insisted, is that the majority of Poles want to remake their country...

...In some factories, the Solidarity unions are at loggerheads with the Party cells and the pro-regime (now called "the branch") unions...

...Such opinions reflect the depth of the revulsion against three decades of corrupt, inefficient Communist rule...

...For its part, Solidarity has until recently taken its mandate from the people to be the improvement of Poland's institutions...

...In addition, Solidarity announced that it would present an economic reform program at the second session of its National Convention scheduled to begin September 26...

...For it is actually a loose federation of some 50 territorial organizations that represent all industries and professions, each pretty much determining its own course of action...

...the Siec proposal terms them "social" property...

...But with the Kremlin pressing Kania to rein in Solidarity, to a visitor the fate of Poland's peaceful revolution would appear to be largely in the hands of the moderates on both sides...

...The regime has accused Solidarity of trying to turn Poland into an "anarcho-syndicalist" state...

...It includes the Katowice Forum and similar small groups in several other cities, is backed by the weekly paper Rzeczyw is-tosc, and has urged the use of traditional strong-arm methods...

...Going beyond his religious duties, he added, has gotten him into trouble with the police and brought a reprimand from his bishop...

...At the official Communist level there is the chairman of the Party cell at Ursus, Warsaw's huge tractor factory...

...This well-nigh universal lack of confidence in the government and the dislike of alien dominance have defined the limits of Solidarity's ability to compromise...

...As part of the same trend, ad hoc expert groups composed of Communists and non-Party members have formed spontaneously to suggest various improvements...

...This avoided a showdown on the contentious question of self-management in a critical area, for the authorities regard lot as integral to the nation's defense system...

...Drawn up after broad and lengthy consultations, it did depart from the diri-giste policies of the past, and in the government's view granted Workers' Councils and enterprises substantial autonomy...

...At one extreme the spirit is exemplified by the young country priest who received me in his church's basement...

...Beyond these feelings, there are concrete differences on specific matters separating the regime and its opponents...

...The government would merely allow the Workers' Councils to "participate" in management...

...Indeed, I was shocked to hear some Poles assert that the postwar years have been as detrimental as the Nazi occupation...

...The maximalists among Solidarity's intellectual advisers, such as Jacek Kur-on and other founders of the Workers' Defense Committee (KOR), chafe at any hint of gradualism...

...The regime itself, however, does not have enough support to call for the necessary sacrifices...

...They see it as testimony to their fellow citizens' deep-seated desire for greater control over their own fate, and a sign that the liberties won are irreversible...

...He had called for a "Socialist renewal" based on a "broad front of responsibility," with room for the independent unions, the Catholics and other organizations...

...Equally telling are the numerous grass-roots initiatives to grapple with local problems without waiting for word from higher authority...

...The proposal of the Nine has become the model for a new law now being formulated by a parliamentary commission in consultation with representatives of lot's independent trade union...

...Zbigniew Bujak, the 25-year-old chairman of the Warsaw region's Solidarity branch, says an agreement with the regime that is not won through unyielding firmness smacksof "becoming partners in the politics of the lesser evil...

...The federation' s popularity has often forced the government to invite it to negotiations and seek its support for major reforms...

...A group of unions from the largest enterprises (known as Siec, or the "Network") then drew up a counterproposal meant to give labor a determining voice in management, and ultimately in changing the nature of the system...

...elsewhere everyone cooperates, concentrating on securing sources of supply and keeping up production...

...Without them, the smoldering crisis might well have flared into an open confrontation by now...

...To Party liberals-writing eloquently in the theoretical weekly, Polityka, as well as in the major dailies, Zycie War-szawy and Gazeta Krakowska-these were spurious, outdated arguments advanced by apparatchiks afraid of losing their privileged position-the "red bourgeoisie...

...An extremist wing of the Party, echoing Soviet objections to legitimizing the free trade union movement, opposed any conciliation from the outset...

...VISIT TO A TENSE POLAND The Road from Gdansk BY ELIZABETH K. VALKENIER Warsaw A visitor to Poland, in talking with people from every walk of life, soon becomes aware that Solidarity has done much more than introduce full-fledged trade unionism to the Communist world...

...If it does, then one more highly explosive issue will have been defused...

...A group of Warsaw historians (university professors and high school teachers) reached an agreement with the Ministry of Education whereby their mimeographed supplement will be used in the coming school year to present a fuller, more objective version of Poland's recent past...

...Only Poland's place on the map, they noted, insures the Party's continuing "leading role...

...I barged in unannounced and we talked frankly for an hour...

...On the eve of the Party's Ninth Congress last June, he pleaded for a path of "political wisdom" based on "mutual respect...

...Yet the situation is not without its positive aspects...

...Soviet pressures aside, this will not be easy...

...Bratkowski and a group of economists and legal experts, known as "the Nine," also were instrumental in averting a crisis over naming the director of the Polish Airlines (lot...

...Under the terms of the 21-point agreement signed with the Gdansk strikers on August 31, 1980, for instance, the government was obliged to devise an economic reform program...

...Solidarity rejected the draft, charging that it offered a sham decentralization aimed at greater productivity, not genuine worker self-management...

...It has avoided addressing divisive economic problems, preferring to let the government shoulder the blame for the deteriorating situation in the hope that this would make the Party more amenable to democratization...

...Many Poles privately admit that prices must be gradually raised to bring them in line with real costs and drain of f the inflationary extra purchasing power created by wage increases...

...Other indications of a changing mood that favors Walesa's approach came in numerous conversations...

...Siec insists that they be elected by Workers' Councils...

...But in mid-August Solidarity's National Coordinating Committee (KKP) rather significantly issued an "Appeal to the Membership and the Nation" that urged an end to strikes and marches, and instead called for eight working Saturdays before the end of the year to tackle the economic crisis...

...An airline strike would have caused a head-on collision between Solidarity and the regime...

...The government would give the State administration the authority to appoint managers...

...Others merely shrugged and retorted, "Isn't the country under occupation anyway...

...Siec would empower them to actually run the factories...

...Enterprises as well as consumers are increasingly turning to barter: Editors in publishing houses swap volumes of Czeslaw Milosz' poetry for eggs or sugar, and factories buy scarce equipment for private farmers in order to guarantee a steady meat supply for their workers...

...Lech Walesa's arguments for accepting step-by-step advancements and avoiding unnecessarily dangerous confrontations place him squarely among Solidarity's moderates...

...Exasperated by the Party's recalcitrance and Parliament's laborious deliberations over new legislation, they worry that Kania's odnowa-the Polish word for renewal-may become odmowa-refusal...

...Walesa is 37, and many regional chiefs are a good 10 years younger...

...An economic collapse would crush the Polish experiment in democracy as effectively as a Soviet invasion...

...To him, piecemeal revolution was sensible and logical...

...His assured election as head of the federation at the second session of its National Convention will officially confirm his leadership...

...Tadeusz Mazowiecki, one of Solidarity leader Lech Walesa's closest advisers in the shipyards and now editor of the union's weekly, Tygodnik Solidarnosc, is a representative figure...

...Productivity is way down, mainly because of shortages resulting from the lack of foreign currency to buy spare parts and essential raw materials...

...As for the moderates in the Communist Party, to be sure they are not represented on the Politburo...

...They suggested that the Party appoint its candidate as Chairman of the Board, and allow the employees to elect the director to manage daily operations...

...But it is clear from what transpired before Moscow's latest campaign of extreme pressure on the Warsaw Party leadership that there has been disagreement in Polish Communist ranks on how to deal with the non-Communist majority...

...Although one of many issuing from independent sources, the Siec proposal is by far the most substantive and will be the basis for the fuller economic program Solidarity is expected to put forward at the end of this month...

...The first anniversary of this unprecedented piecemeal, peaceful revolution was marked September 5-10 with the opening half of Solidarity's initial National Convention in Gdansk, where the whole thing started...

...But Poland not being a " normal" country, this hardly means they are powerless...

...In effect, they want a "new Socialism," not simply a " Socialist renewal...

...Moreover, there are signs of increased support for gradualism within his constituency...

...Communists and non-Communists alike told me that if Poland were a "normal" country, the government would have had to resign long ago...

...In the industrial Now a Huta section of Cracow, a hospital successfully petitioned the City Council to convert an underutilized Party club into additional bed space...

...at the end of our long interview he refused a pack of American cigarettes "as a Communist," an apparent instance of the new morality that is supposed to cleanse the Party...

...A working draft-not a unilateral promulgation -was presented in July of this year...

...A very good harvest notwithstanding, there are severe food shortages due to panic buying, a malfunctioning rationing system and poor distribution...

...The zloty has little value these days...

...My questions about the ranking of the various factions in the federation seemed beside the point to them...

...Many of the young people I spoke to seemed to agree...

...Amid the tensions dominating the Polish scene today, it is of course difficult for moderation to flourish...

...Or take a chain smoking government economist...

...Evenings it serves as a lecture hall or a disco for young people, he informed me, and during the day it is a health clinic...

...The government draft designates enterprises as"state" property...

...Raised prices, lowered living standards, higher productivity norms and cutbacks in overemployment were what convulsed the country a year ago and brought about Edward Gierek's ouster...

...Party chief Stanislaw Kania, aware of the government's weakness, had pledged himself to reform and negotiation, rather than force...

...To bring this about, some would give all power to the Workers' Councils, while some advocate the formation of a new political entity independent of the National Unity Front that now binds the existing Communist, Peasant and Democratic parties...

...That may seem a bleak hope...

...In contrast to Bujak, for instance, a young activist at the Warsaw Solidarity headquarters contended that since the liberation movement has already become so effective, there was no need to push immediately for final, full victories: "Eventually, well, things will work themselves out," he said...

...Solidarity members take pride in the diversity...

...Newly elected by a secret ballot, he keeps the door to his office open and unguarded by his secretary, hoping to bridge the distance that separated his Party-appointed predecessor from the workers...

...But beneath the daily events one senses its strength, its potential for enabling Solidarity to carry on the revolution without compromising the goal of bringing free institutions to Poland...

...When I mentioned the ever-present threat of a Warsaw Pact invasion, several Poles said to me," If the fear of invasion had entered our heads, it would have paralyzed all action...

...Where it differs importantly from the regime's approach is therefore worth noting...

...The foundering economy has necessarily diverted attention from the sparring over how Poland is to be ruled...

...The chairman of the Polish Journalists' Association (SDP), Stefan Bratkowski, has consistently urged his countrymen to stop condemning agreements between the regime and Solidarity as "unprincipled compromises," and instead see them as steps forward along the road of workable solutions...

...the head of Rural Solidarity is only 23...

...And as preparations for the event proceeded, an observer could not help being struck by how the independent labor movement has come to embody the decentralization and autonomy Poles are seeking...

...But the Communists have such a tarnished image that anything they propose is ipso facto suspected as a tactical effort to perpetuate the detested system...

...The KIK's tradition of independent thought and publishing made its members welcome allies to the dock-workers striking in Gdansk a year ago...

...On balance, I got the impression that their self-assertiveness in the past year was giving way to self-assurance...

...Most of the proponents of a general strike last March, when the regime balked at registering Rural Solidarity, were not elected as delegates to the National Convention...