Solidarity in Context

...Finally, in a carefully reasoned and noteworthy contribution, "Poland and Eastern Europe," George Schopflin amply demonstrates how insulated the rest of the Soviet satellites are from the Polish "disease"-either by internal conditions (Hungary, Romania), geographical remoteness (Bulgaria), or traditional animosity toward the Poles (East Germany, Czechoslovakia) When all is said and done, Solidarity has distinctly Polish features that negate the likelihood of its being exported...

...One of the striking achievements of Solidarity, particularly when viewed against the background of earlier disturbances, was the joining in common cause of the workers and the intelligentsia Alex Pravda's well-documented piece, "The Workers," and the brilliant philosopher Leszek Kolakowski's companion essay, "The Intelligentsia," shed much light on the unique properties of these classes in Poland-and why in the eyes of the authorities their coming together was one of the movement's most disturbing features...

...Jack Bielasiak's "The Party Permanent Crisis" traces the political situation in Poland from the imposition of Communist rule in 1945 through the "crises" of 1956, '68, '70, '76, and'80 Fundamental to any analysis of the genesis and character of Solidarity is a recognition that the Communist Party has no deep roots in Poland It lacks identification with an independent wartime liberation movement (as in Yugoslavia, for example), and the overwhelming majority of Poles tend to view it as a foreign body incapable of being assimilated Lacking credibility, it remains linked in Polish minds with Russian oppression Hence the recurrent efforts to end its hegemony or in one way or another to destabilize it The Gross and Bielasiak pieces handily overcome the limitations of space to delineate clearly the popular disaffection that has harried the Communist Party in Poland from its inception...

...During Communist Poland's period of unprecedented freedom of expression, however, the cooperation between Solidarity and the intelligentsia belonging mostly to the Committee for the Defense of Workers (KOR) generated a staggering quantity of literature Continuing that momentum, publishers in the United States and elsewhere have been rushing to take advantage of the interest in the events since August 1980 The result is an already impressive number of publications on Solidarity, Lech Walesa, Polish dissent, and so on-all the more remarkable considering how much the country and its culture remain terra incognita in the West...

...The task of explaining to the nonspe-ciahst the awesome industrial and agricultural mismanagement that triggered the series of upheavals culminating in Solidarity tails to a man splendidly equipped to translate economic-political complexities into intelligible and engaging reading-Wlodzimierz Brus, a distinguished economist who left Poland in 1972 and is now a professor at Oxford University The calamitous policies Brus discusses were not undertaken in a vacuum Also at work was an aggrieved sense of injustice in a society where the elite and politically trustworthy are rewarded with privileges that contrast glaringly with the privations of everyday life Aleksander Smolar's "The Rich and the Powerful" and Krzysztof Czabanski's "Privileges" in the second part of the book paint a grotesque picture of elitism, favoritism and corruption profoundly resented by a Polish working class more sophisticated in its social and political awareness than is commonly believed...

...The emergence in Poland of an independent trade union with an estimated following of 10 million people (out of a total population of some 35 million) had seemed unlikely in the extreme Still harder to imagine was that this organization would vigorously demand a broad range of social, political and economic reforms as if it were simply embarking on a round of tough bargaining in a labor/management dispute Outright backing-both financial and moral-by the most powerful labor federation in the United States, the AFL-CIO, and the opening of a Solidarity office in New York served to add elements of the bizarre to the unthinkable on the verge of becoming reality...

...The book consists of two parts essays by specialists, and a collection of translated selections from the vast opposition material published unofficially in Poland or abroad, largely in emigre journals This editorial strategy is, in a word, flawless The well-chosen selections give us an "inside" perspective on what happened, effectively complementing the first-rate scholarly contributions...

...Solidarity in Context Poland: Genesis of a Revolution Edited by Abraham Brumberg Random House 322 pp $19 95 Reviewed by Harold B. Segel Director, Institute on East Central Europe, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University Solidarity, as a free trade union and as a social force, has undoubtedly had a greater impact on Western consciousness than any other phenomenon of post-World War II Eastern Europe, including the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the "Prague Spring" of 1968 In the 16 months of its above-ground existence-certainly a long life span for a movement aimed at the radical transformation of a Communist society on the borders of the Soviet Union-it succeeded in capturing the imagination and arousing the support of much of the non-Communist world...

...The opening essay, Jan Tomasz Gross' "In Search of History,' offers an overview of modern Polish history and draws attention to Poland's fascination with the past Of particular relevance to a grasp of the broad support for Solidarity is the vitality of an almost evangelical romantic revolutionary tradition of great moral stature that equates the struggle for Polish liberty with the struggle to achieve universal freedom...

...Poland Genesis of a Revolution, edited by the very knowledgeable and sure-footed Abraham Brumberg, may well be the best book in English on the subject to have appeared so far Its primary concern is with the conditions that gave rise to Solidarity and at the same time were responsible for the trade union's demise For the outside observer, understanding these factors matters as much as having a reliable account of Solidarity itself...

...The reaction to Karol Wojtyla's election as Pope John Paul II, and his tumultuous visitstoPolandinl979 and especially June 1983, underscored not only the Poles' abiding attachment to Roman Catholicism but the need for any Warsaw regime to take this into account For most Poles, having their own Pope represents a safeguard of their aspirations, a reality not easily dismissed or overlooked Christopher Cviic's "The Church" offers a clear, albeit slightly skewed, account of that institution in Polish society and the reasons for its present status...

...Sadly, no discussion of Poland is possible without allusion to the fate of its once huge Jewish population, and the pattern of Polish-Jewish interaction through the centuries Tadeusz Szafar's fine essay, " Anti-Semitism A Trusty Weapon," makes it apparent that although the Jews constitute a negligible quantity in Poland after the Holocaust and the expulsions of 1968, anti-Semitism remains a scab that needs little scratching to bleed But unlike the past, anti-Semitism in Communist Poland has been political in nature, a mechanism to be activated whenever the authorities find it useful to have a scapegoat Jews have been blamed for the evils of Stalinist rule, anti-state subversion, economic snarls, and the "excesses" of Solidarity (that is, its manipulation by Jewish oppositionists mostly associated with KOR), which necessitated military intervention for "the good of the country " Jews have even been accused of pressuring the Americans to "punish" the Polish people with economic sanctions following the imposition of martial law...

...All these facets of the Polish past still have resonance today Coupled with a long history of justifiable animosity toward Russia they help explain the specifically Polish character of Solidarity They also make a convincing argument for the Poles' ability to transform the political into the mythic and draw sustenance from it for a long wait...

...Nowhere else in Eastern Europe, indeed, have there been so many serious grass-roots efforts to transform Communist rule, or at the minimum to bring it into greater accountability to the people, as in Poland Much of the explanation for this, as the Brumberg book shows, has to be attributed to the nature of the Communist government in Warsaw and the accumulation of economic fiascos Other reasons briefly mentioned include a vibrant political tradition going back to the Renaissance, and a concept of "golden freedom" or "golden liberty" originally limited to the historically numerous Polish gentry but later embodied in the parliamentary structure of the once great Polish Commonwealth of the 16th-18 centuries In addition, Poles have a keen sense of their country's rightful place in Western civilization...

...Although more objective than other commentators on the topic, Cviic focuses too much on the Church's identification with Polish patriotism and its serving as a bulwark of nationalism Despite its 1,000-year history m Poland, the Roman Catholic Church assumed these roles in relatively recent times, and notably since the Papacy has come into Polish hands There is a by no means inconsequential Polish tradition of hostility toward the Roman Papacy based on pro-Prussian and pro-Habsburg Vatican policies that were often in conflict with Polish interests and, after the Partitions, on the coolness of the Holy See toward Polish attempts to restore independence by armed revolt...

...As so often happens, the pundits and political scientists were wrong The best scenario, a modus Vivendi between the Communist regime and the independent trade union, proved as erroneous as the worst, a Soviet invasion Few if any scriptwriters foretold a military coup as skillfully executed as General Wojciech Jaruzelski's, followed by the imposition of martial law and the delegit-imization of the independent union...

...The special place of the Church in post-World War II Poland has to be understood in large measure as a fervent embrace by a frustrated people of the one institution in Polish life with any legitimate claim to continuity Brutally truncated from their past by a devastating war and a forced march since 1945 along an alien path, Poles understandably cling to the Church, particularly with a Pole at its helm, in the absence of any other viable moral influence in the country Still, any too obvious nurturing by the Church of its own interests, or some other miscalculation, could easily dissipate the special relationship now existing and reactivate longstanding suspicions...

...Like Poland itself for the 125 years of its nonexistence as a state after the Third Partition of 1795, Solidarity today exists as an idea embodying an ideal Its aims are now clearly perceived to be unattainable anywhere m Eastern Europe until far-reaching change occurs within the Soviet Union When, if ever, that will happen is anyone's guess...

...Everyone with any regard for human dignity took heart at the growing possibility that at last a Communist regime would have to listen to its own people, above all to its own workers ,and address years of alienation, insensitivity, mismanagement, and corruption Even the skeptics seemed willing to accept the plausibility of some eventual accommodation between the movement and the regime that would leave the Party nominally in control yet allow Solidarity input into decision making, especially in the economic sphere...