Creative Politics in Poland

...Particularly in societies where authoritarian rule has suppressed the opinions and interests of a number of groups, it is wrong to identify stability with existing institutions and actors...

...Is it normal for journalists to practice mendacity or to report truthfully...

...Perspectives CREATIVE POLITICS IN POLAND BY JAN T GROSS Everybody has been wrong about the Polish summer of 1980 and its aftermath Solidarity leader Lech Walesa himself made the mistake of calling off the strike in the Gdansk shipyards on August 16, only to have to resume it a few hours later Journalists and academics have issued logical analyses of why the strikers' demands could not be met by a Communist government, only to see them all accepted In short, the conventional wisdom about events in Communist countries does not seem to apply to the developments in Poland over the last eight months...

...Their helplessness in the face of creative politics in Poland derives, I believe, from their inability to conceive of a world order in which "stability" and "normalization" in Europe have been threatened...

...Any concept of political stability has to take account of social change in the societies under review...

...Is normal for a parliament to debate government proposals or merely to ratify them in unanimous acclamations9 Clearly, after decades of absurdity, injustice and empty rituals, we are observing a process of normalization m Poland...

...What is more, today every strike in East-Central Europe, every independently minded article written there, every affirmation of religious beliefs is perceived as proof of the weakness of Soviet power And since power in international relations is largely a matter of perceptions, this damages the USSR (practical comparisons of relative strength between states are carried out rarely, for war is the only known test in this matter) So if the status of East-Central European countries were modified and we were no longer expected, even as a measure of last resort, to pay their debts, to feed them, or to shoot their populations, our burden would be lighter and our interests better served-not least because the threat of a spillover of freedom from East-Central Europe to the Soviet Union proper would radically diminish After all, we are not seriously worried about freedom spilling over from Holland, or from Sweden...

...Indeed, freedom is dangerous to the Soviet leaders when it manifests itself within the boundaries of their imperial domination, and its threat could be thwarted by redefining those boundaries What a relief it would be for them if they were able to ignore the Polish turmoil And they just might decide to afford themselves this luxury vis-a-vis future troubles in Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany and Hungary...

...Jan T. Gross, a past contributor to these pages, teaches sociology at Yale University and is the author of Polish Society Under German Occupation...

...As such it is jeopardized not only by restless mobs but also by petrified, nonresponsive, immobile official establishments For these reasons the democratic opposition and the free trade union movement in Poland are not destabilizing but, on the contrary, stabilizing factors...

...Nevertheless, with very few exceptions, Western observers continue to feel that the Soviet Union cannot tolerate the introduction of social pluralism in a satellite, especially not as the result of workers' strikes...

...It can be shown, however, that the present transformations of Polish society are not in the slightest symptomatic of instability or abnormality...

...Is it a sign of normality when labor unions defend the interests of the workers or when they serve as the transmission belt for government orders...

...Stability implies social peace...

...Thanks to the free trade union movement and unfettered public opinion, a measure of consensus has been restored to Polish politics by permitting the nation to discover the balance between the unavoidable (the Party's rule as a guarantor of Moscow's imperial interests) and the necessary (an acceptable minimum satisfaction of the needs and desires of various groups in the country) For, as the leader of the Polish democratic movement, Adam Miclinik, put it in the September 1980 issue of Biuletyn Informacyjny, "without a contract between the government and the society this country cannot be governed any longer ". As for normalization, compare the present state of the Polish society with what it was during the preceding 35 years Which is a sign of normality, to have four prime ministers in one year or one prime minister for 10 or 20 years at a time when the people are unhappy with their government...

...It is inconceivable for Poland to become an island of freedom in a sea of authoritarian "people's democracies " Liberty is contagious, the populations of other East-Central European countries could not long tolerate their deprivation Thus it is undemable that the Soviet imperium is endangered by the Polish events, and that the Soviet leaders will act to avert the danger But to point to the inevitability of Soviet military intervention in Poland is to underestimate the capacity of the men in the Kremlin to engage in "creative" imperial politics Their primary concern and responsibility, it needs to be remembered, is to make sure that the Soviet Union "will survive 1984 " I would therefore suggest that the thinking of some of the Soviet leaders may already be running as follows...

...Creative politics" is being practiced in Poland today, wrote Paul Thibaudin his Pans journal Esprit, and we need creative thinking to comprehend it Our imagination has been opened up since Gdansk, he continued, because the myth of historical or geographical inevitability that surrounded the Soviet regime and its replicas has evaporated There is a way out, it seems, from the incapacitating constriction of Communist authoritarianism, and the Poles have already taken a few steps to restore life to their numbed institutions...

...Moreover, incumbents in positions of power occupied without the consent of the governed-whether monarchs, presidents, generals, or party bosses-may be denied their prerogatives by the communities they rule...

...But there are no precedents, no one has traveled this road before, so it is full of surprises The New Yorker, in its "Notes and Comment" section, has perceptively observed that the Poles began by practicing liberty before liberating themselves from their overlords, it is as if the French Revolution had occurred and the Bourbon monarchy were intact Bertolt Brecht once quipped that when government and society are at odds in East Germain the solution to the conflict is simple-the government proceeds to change society In Poland, the government has been ignored and the society has proceeded to change itself...

...In other words, it is not true that every challenge to an existing political order is inherently destabilizing, or that the continuation of an extant regime is a guarantee of stability...

...What truly puzzles is why virtually all the commentators confidently expect an outcome that they agree none of the parties involved-the USSR, the Polish Communist leadership, the Polish Church, Solidarity, the Polish people, the West-wants...

...They perceive the Polish situation as a problem the Kremlin must finally confront...

...The Polish developments have demonstrated that it has become impractical for the USSR to be held accountable for the performance of Communist regimes in the East-Central European countries These highly modern, anti Communist and strongly nationalist societies have grown too intractable for us to accept the blame for the failure of their proxy regimes to keep them quietly acquiescent We have enough difficulties with the Soviet economy and the national minorities in the USSR We need all the resources we can muster for policing the imperial domain within our own borders...

...Poland is unique among the East-Central European countries m that it now has an institutional framework to handle labor disputes Imagine the political consequences of a wave of strikes in, say, Bulgaria or East Germany, where every strike implicitly threatens the legitimacy of the regime We saw what happened when the same circumstances obtained in Poland barely rune months ago, before the free trade union movement was established Subsequently, there have been orderly, well-managed general strikes in the country and neither the government nor the first secretary of the Party has fallen each time Aside from Poland, there can be no apolitical strike today anywhere in East-Central Europe, in all "people's democracies" workers are numerous, disenfranchised, exploited, and dissatisfied, but Poland is much less vulnerable to labor unrest than any other country in the region...

...Consequently, in their view it would be the "norm" now for the USSR to intervene militarily...

...The Moscow rulers at present face the vital task of consolidating their imperial domination over the peoples of the Soviet Union That is why I do not think there will be a Soviet military intervention in Poland Instead, we may well see the East-Central European countries evolve into sovereign client-states of the USSR, linked to their powerful neighbor by economic ties (they could not compete m Western markets) and, probably, a military alliance as well The emancipation of East-Central Europe could eventually lead to the unification of Germany-one could hardly expect the Berlin Wall to be manned by citizens of an unleashed East Germany-and the emergence of a fourth world power But it is doubtful that this prospect troubles the Kremlin In all likelihood, a unified Germany would be detached from nato, and geared for industrial servicing of the enormous Russian market Their fear of it also would make East-Central Europeans into better allies of the USSR than their fear of the Red Army...