Jaruzelski's Four-Hands Concerto
GARNYSZ, CASIMIR
THE PROGNOSIS IN POLAND Jaruzelski's Four-Hands Cooncerto by casmir garnysz With martinet-like punctuality, on December 13, exactly 12 months after proclaiming martial law in Poland, General...
...The brutal pair will be for those who persist in open defiance, the soft pair will be extended to the tired, alienated majority in an attempt to offer some avenue for their aspirations without undermining the Communist power monopoly...
...And to judge by the Council of Bishops' severely critical reaction to the emergency legislation, made public over Glemp's signature on December 18, a mostly deaf ear has been turned on the Prelate, too...
...Force, however, could not work where the General hoped to achieve his greatest success-in resuscitating the economy...
...The emergency statutes allow any citizen accused of "sowing disorder" to be summarily dismissed from work, charged with "social parasitism" and condemned to manual labor...
...THE PROGNOSIS IN POLAND Jaruzelski's Four-Hands Cooncerto by casmir garnysz With martinet-like punctuality, on December 13, exactly 12 months after proclaiming martial law in Poland, General Wojciech Jaruzelski ordered its suspension by New Year's...
...These carrots were accompanied by appeals for "renewal" and "national reconciliation...
...his opponents, though often powerless, are many...
...Jaruzelski apparently feels confident that he has accomplished his main goal-maintaining firm Communist Party control...
...But the Poles were too angry and too determined in their protests, and Jaruzelski's scenario began to dissolve...
...This has angered the General, but he continues to hope that pushing ahead with "normalization" will gradually bring the West around...
...To fully fathom the General's new gambit, and what it portends for the future, one must first try to look at the past year's repression from his perspective...
...Between these two wings lie the not-so-silent millions-sullen workers...
...By and large, the Catholic Church also did not disappoint the General...
...Jaruzelski, of course, has been overjoyed at thereby having the episcopate's moral authority to placate the people...
...Will the Poles go along...
...A revolt in the Army ranks, predicted by Westerners and by many Poles as well, failed to occur, and rebellious individuals were quickly removed and punished...
...Two figures, Glemp and Walesa, are obviously prospective intermediaries between the Communists and the masses...
...any resistance on Walesa's part can have, in the General's view, only limited influence...
...If such a bargain is then struck, the crisis will subside...
...If not, as seems more likely, it will begin da capo in a more virulent form...
...The conditional release of interned members of the independent trade union Solidarity was declared, too...
...Chilly relations with the United States and Western Europe have added to Jaruzelski's problems...
...More recently, Walesa addressed a letter to Jaruzelski offering to work with him "for the good of the nation," provided the government declare an amnesty for all martial law internees, reinstate workers fired for their activities in Solidarity, and recognize the right of independent trade unions to exist...
...Solidarity disbanded, and the church withholding explicit support...
...Still, in several significant respects things have not gone quite as Jaruzelski anticipated...
...So far, free world banks are refusing to extend further loans...
...In addition, Parliament has prepared bills establishing "worker self-management of enterprises" and "self-governing people's councils...
...Jaruzelski's adversaries may be divided into at least three distinct groups: The first, influential if comparatively small, is made up of the middle and lower-level apparatchiks who oppose any social and economic change whatsoever as perilous to their interests...
...Yet by now there can be no doubt that this has not happened...
...Should Jaruzelski decide to respond to these men in a substantive manner, his regime might gain some popular acceptance...
...And the December 23 announcement that seven top Solidarity activists were to be formally arrested makes clearthat the government has no intention of reopening the national dialogue of 1980-81...
...Jaruzelski does not much fear Walesa either, as the union leader's one-day detainment on December 16 demonstrated...
...Primate Archbishop Jozef Glemp alternated all year between reaffirming the rights of the citizenry and joining the government in calls for "social peace, discipline and hard work...
...intelligentsia who have refused to collaborate with the regime, preferring a path of "internal emigration...
...And should he threaten to become dangerous, the new legislation guarantees that he can always be imprisoned again...
...With almost 40 per cent of Polish industrial enterprises dependent on Western replacement parts, and prospects for a meaningful capital injection from the Soviet bloc at present nil, the Polish economy cannot be revived without fresh Western credits...
...The screws would then be loosened incrementally, as popular intransigence slackened...
...In December 1981, he was evidently convinced that he could fairly rapidly reverse what he perceived to be the prevailing rampant anarchy and restore an adequate measure of health to the collapsing economy...
...The already demoralized labor force has no material incentive to buckle down to the "diligent and systematic work" that both Jaruzelski and Glemp advocate, and even economists close to the Politburo are admitting that the reform, "while not yet dead, has already nearly been killed...
...Reports of talks involving the Archbishop and the government have been circulating since early November...
...Jaruzelski intends to solve his dilemma by playing a four-hands concerto-two hands brutal, two soft...
...Basically, he was depending on the strict labor discipline imposed by the state of war to reverse the downward slide...
...Jaruzelski preceded his instructions to Parliament with certain conciliatory gestures toward Polish society, such as freeing Solidarity leader Lech Walesa from his 11-month solitary confinement and granting Pope John Paul II permission to visit his homeland next June...
...Therefore, in spite of last January's 120 per cent price increase and a subsequent 20 per cent hike spread out over the latter part of the year, the market remains so unbalanced that virtually all goods are stripped from store shelves the minute they appear...
...With the exception of coal (for which the international market has been weak), all sectors continue to decline...
...He had to rely on brutality to suppress street demonstrations, and on a mixture of force and blackmail to quell strikes...
...Staffed by Party-approved "activists," PRON is allegedly to function as a conduit for public opinion...
...Its cooperation was perhaps less open and systematic than he would have liked, yet as so many times before in Polish history the church saw itself as arbiter between the state and the nation and maneuvered to maintain the support of both...
...Once the country was cowed and equilibrium was regained, an emasculated, Party-controlled Solidarity could be resurrected and restaffed...
...The elite zomo troopers, the riot police and the military's officer corps carried out their orders faithfully...
...Nonetheless, the Party chief is firmly resolved to perpetuate the state of war under a different name...
...Accomplishing these currently conflicting aims requires a minimal acquiescence from the people...
...It was to be replaced with a set of "emergency measures" giving the government special powers to act in "protection of state security...
...Although these have ostensibly dealt with the Pope's tour, some negotiations as to the scope of the "reforms" are also said to have taken place...
...peasants who hold back their produce from the government purchasing agencies...
...The Party journal Polityka was forced to confess not long ago, "The silent majority deeply distrusts the initiatives of the authorities simply because they come from the authorities...
...After falling 14 per cent in 1981, production is expected to drop another 5 per cent by the end of 1982, a mild upturn in the second half notwithstanding...
...Workers, intelligentsia and peasants alike will be encouraged to enlist in the new trade unions and the so-called Patriotic Movement for National Renewal (PRON...
...Poles might put their shoulders to the wheel in the hope of being granted their own Magna Carta-An honest, binding agreement on the sharing of power between the Communists and the people...
...With freedom of assembly denied...
...Looking east, Jaruzelski knows that to stay in power he must show the Kremlin he can put down public unrest while lifting output to the level of comecon's needs...
...The second, the other extreme, is a confederation of Solidarity activists, underground organizers and dissidents of various political hues who are prepared to keep up an implacable fight against the regime...
...Casimr Garnysz, a new contributor, is the pseudonym of a Polish social scientist now living in this country...
...Although Poles did not "shut up and take it," (an expectation thus graciously expressed by Deputy Prime Minister Mieczyslaw Rakowski), it is true that neitheragener-al strike nor a widespread campaign of antigovernment terrorism ever materialized...
...Jaruzelski was correct in trusting the forces of "law and order" to subjugate the population...
...Thus far, the authorities have not acknowledged Walesa's communication...
...The period of harsh military rule was to be brief, a "short-term, lesser evil," as Jaruzelski avowed in his first speech following the coup...
...Jaruzelski's supporters-thezomo, the Armed Forces command and the top apparatchiks-are powerful but relatively few...
Vol. 65 • December 1982 • No. 24
