Solidarity's Failed 'Ostpolitik'

...Initially, the Ukrainians watched the unfolding events in Poland with disbelief the arrival of Pope John Paul II in June 1979, the strikes and demonstrations in the summer of 1980, and the Gdansk agreement Those who had special TV antennas were able to actually follow what was taking place, since Polish television programs can be picked up in the Western Ukraine And the disbelief ("It can't happen here'") soon turned to admiration mixed with envy ("If they can do it, why can't we...

...The whole experience reawakened deep-seated hostilities in the Ukrainians against all Poles Bitter memories of Polish rule before 1939 surfaced not only the official discrimination against all non-Poles in the civil service, educational, military, and religious spheres, but the bloody pacification of the Ukrainian population that took place in the 1930s as well...

...The Ukrainians found these tourists ill-mannered and arrogant They acted as if they were still a ruling class, crying out "Jestem polak" or "Jestem polka" (I am Polish) and demanding preferential treatment Some of them even screamed at the young Ukrainian saleswomen who did not understand Polish and so held up their shopping sprees "Why don't you speak Polish instead of that damned language...

...That feeling reached its peak with the December 1980 unveiling of the Gdansk monument to the Polish workera slaina decade earlier by the police The ceremony was an exhilarating experience for Ukrainian viewers, because the Poles had successfully extended the limits that circumscribed their political life More than 25 years after Nikita Khrushchev's "secret" speech denouncing Stalin's crimes, the Soviet government had yet to acknowledge its murder of millions during the purges and the artificial famine in the Ukraine in 1932-33, much less erect a monument in memory of the dead Shortly after the unveiling, Solidarity pins and copies of the Solidarity Weekly were smuggled into the Ukraine from Poland They sold for a hundred rubles ($140) apiece on the black market...

...The behavior of the visitors confirmed the Ukrainians' worst suspicions about the "new relationship" that spokesmen for Solidarity, KOR and the church proclaimed to the inhabitants of the former Polish territories Those proclamations were now seen as merely empty words, camouflaging darker desires This antipathy, together with an unremitting stream of Soviet anti-Polish propaganda, including Ukrainians to ignore both Solidarity's search for a democratic consensus in Eastern Europe and the political and socio-economic parallels it put forward Many of the conditions that gave rise to the workers' revolt in Poland-food shortages, lack of consumer goods, widespread corruption, and the irrelevance of official trade unions-also exist in the USSR...

...Yet at the same time that the Ukrainians silently cheered on Solidarity's victories, they became increasingly uneasy about its goals concerning the former Polish-controlled territories For in the year between the Gdansk agreement and the closing of the Soviet borders with Poland in the summer of 1981, they had an opportunity to observe the conduct of thousands of Poles who streamed into the Ukraine, sold Western and Polish-made jeans on the black market, and strained the fragile local economy by buying up food, gold and jewelry in bulk...

...George Liber is a PhD candidate in Eastern European history at Columbia...

...Even many older Ukrainians, who suffered under the pre-1939 administration and passionately hated the Poles, could not help but respect and admire the society's tremendous victory over its Party and government apparatus...

...Leaders of KOR, Solidarity, and the church asserted that an independent Ukrainian nation-state was necessary for the survival of Poland's democratic "renewal " In a December 1980 speech at Warsaw University, for example, Jacek Kuron, a founding member of KOR and an important adviser to Solidarity, declared "There cannot be independent Poland without an independent Ukraine ". During the 14-month period between the signing of the Gdansk agreement and the imposition of martial law, Polish intellectuals and their compatriots also produced clandestine journals that sympathetically described the struggle of the Byelorussians, Ukrainians and Lithuanians against Russification and denationalization Just prior to martial law, a group of Catholic intellectuals announced plans to publish a new journal, Sasiady (Neighbors), that was to have initiated an exchange of views with the intelligentsia of the annexed territories as well as bordering Germany and Czechoslovakia...

...POLISH RENEWAL-II Solidarity's Failed 'Ostpolitik' BY GEORGE LIBER One of the "hidden agendas" of the 1980-81 Solidarity revolution was the strengthening of relationships with Byelorussia, the Ukraine and Lithuania-parts of which were controlled by Poland before September 17, 1939 and then annexed to the Soviet Union after the German-Soviet invasion Hoping to export the revolution to their country's former colonies, spokesmen for KOR (Committee for the Defense of Workers), Solidarity and the church all recognized and promoted the national aspirations of Byelorussians, Ukrainians and Lithuanians in the USSR The most important goal of this ideological thrust was to win the hearts and minds of the Ukrainians, whose territory has been in dispute between Poland and Russia for the past 400 years...

...All of this had serious implications for the Soviet status quo The Kremlin authorities feared that the Polish revolutionary " disease" might spread to the western non-Russian republics-in much the same way that the Prague Spring and the 1968 Czechoslovak experiment with federalization stimulated Ukrainian nationalist sentiments Nevertheless, at considerable risk some of the main architects of the Polish revolution broadened their calls for renewal and took a more militant stance toward the USSR The September 1981 Solidarity message urging a free trade union movement throughout Eastern Europe and the USSR was a manifestation of this position The stance did not imply revanchist desires for Poland's pre-World War II possessions On the contrary, the Polish opposition's views regarding these territories and their inhabitants reflected a sincere desire for a democratic consensus among non-Russians against Russian hegemony in Eastern Europe Why then did the Poles fail to attract the Ukrainians to their cause...

...The Soviet authorities were of course quick to exploit the renewed antagonism They succeeded in convincing the Ukrainians-especially those from the western Ukraine, who are normally very critical of the Party and the Moscow government-that the Poles were indeed revanchists Thus, Poles who might have been missionaries for the revolution instead helped to alienate potential supporters in the USSR and dealt Solidarity a significant setback...