Poland?s lost dream of Solidarity

It is 25 years since the Polish trade union won concessions from the government that marked the beginning of the end of Communist rule. Poles today are nostalgic for a movement rooted in Catholic social teaching

IN SOLIDARITY SQUARE, curious sightseers pause beneath the famous Three Crosses monument, which towers in granite and iron above cobbled streets still decorated with verses from the psalms. In the adjoining stocznia, or shipyard, a multi-media exhibition, ?Roads to Freedom?, displays photos, recordings and artefacts recalling the melancholy resoluteness of the 1980 strikers. On a nearby building, a giant poster proclaims ?It started in Gdansk?, and shows images, arranged like dominoes, of Lech Walesa carried aloft by admiring followers, of East Germans perched atop the Berlin Wall, and of Vaclav Havel waving his symbolic keys during Czechoslovakia?s ?Velvet Revolution?.

When Solidarity?s 25th anniversary is marked next week, it will be a moment for recalling the events that placed Polish industrial workers in the world spotlight. Yet while praising the movement which helped end Communist rule, it will also be an occasion for pondering Solidarity?s deeper meaning; and for reflecting on how much still remains of its unique legacy today.

It all began with nothing more dramatic than a series of strikes over meat prices. Sparked by material grievances, the protests quickly widened until, on 14 August, workers downed tools at Gdansk?s giant Lenin Shipyards. Two days later, an Inter-Factory Strike Committee was formed to coordinate occupation strikes across Poland?s Baltic ports.

The ?Polish August? posed a political challenge to Communist rule. Ostensibly economic demands ? free trade unions, the right to strike ? accounted for most of the 21-point Gdansk Accords, signed reluctantly on 31 August by Edward Gierek?s regime. But the document contained more general aims too: freedom of speech, release of political prisoners, media access for religious organisations. When Solidarity was formally founded on 17 September, a quarter of the Polish population, 9.48 million people, joined up in an unprecedented surge of unity by previously divided social groups.

The mass action produced new idioms, for what Solidarity?s Catholic philosopher, Fr Jozef Tischner, called ?bearing one another?s burdens?. When Polish nurses demanded a pay rise, coalminers walked out in support. When one group of Solidarity members was beaten by the police, others called for a general strike.

It also gave the world new images of workers in grimy overalls kneeling before priests at open-air confessions, of pictures of the Pope and Virgin Mary on the flower- festooned gates of strike-bound factories.

Solidarity gained tactical advice from Poland?s unofficial Workers Defence Committee, KOR, which had talked in the Seventies of creating ?democratic spaces? and ?living freely? under Communism. It drew lessons from Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and smaller dissident groups in Eastern Europe. But the Catholic Church?s role was crucial too. Vatican II?s Pastoral Constitution had listed ?degrading working conditions? as offences against human dignity, alongside slavery and prostitution. It had also recognised the right of workers to form unions and strike. With the Polish Communist Party?s economic monopoly causing wastage, inefficiency and poverty, these criteria plainly applied.

Initially at least, however, the Church?s leader, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, was alarmed by the turn of events. The Polish upheaval came in a year which had seen East-West d?tente collapse with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and a growing nuclear confrontation. It was an embarrassment for Western diplomats whose East-West policy was premised on the assumption that Communist rule was immutable. Unlike their American counterpart, West European governments had not made human rights central to their foreign policy. When the Polish strikes erupted, Europe?s geopolitical stability began to look shakier.

That required some steely nerves. During his June 1979 visit, the Pope had breathed new vitality and hope into the depressed, lifeless atmosphere of his homeland, preaching 32 sermons before 13 million people. Many saw the 1979 visit as a dress rehearsal for Solidarity. For one thing, it had enabled Poles to gather in large numbers for the first time. For another, it had provided a new language of rights and freedoms, based on Catholic social teaching, which was now being repeated by Solidarity leaders.

John Paul II had hinted at how Communist structures could be challenged ? not with violent protests like those in the Baltic ports a decade earlier, but through a kind of liberation within, based on conscience, truthfulness and personal integrity. It was no coincidence that, instead of rampaging through the streets of Gdansk, the first act of the shipyard strikers had been to lock themselves in and attend Mass. In such a context, faith and ritual were empowering. They evoked the sense of freedom and dignity that the Pope?s visit had instilled.

Poland?s Communist rulers were confused. They knew how to isolate and suppress popular discontent. But they had no answer to an ?independent self-governing trade union? which invoked the country?s international commitments, as well as the teachings of a Church. The Pope had used the term ?solidarity? in Redemptor hominis, his first encyclical. In 1981, he followed this up with Laborem exercens. The encyclical was published during Solidarity?s first national congress, against the backdrop of Soviet naval manoeuvres in the nearby Baltic.

The world was living through a new phase of development comparable with the Industrial Revolution, the Pope wrote, in which the ?great conflict? between labour and capital still dragged on. What was needed now were ?movements of solidarity? which could unite those facing poverty and exploitation. The Church was no longer afraid of social movements like this. It saw them as allies in the godly cause of human rights and social justice.

The Solidarity movement highlighted the Church?s potential as an alternative centre of authority in Poland, filling the gap left by the absence of mediating institutions between state and society, and offering stronger integrating bonds than Communist culture and ideology. Workers in strategic industries such as ship-building had been given privileges to ensure their loyalty. To gain their trust and confidence, at a time of hardship and suspicion, the Church had to speak with power and conviction, offering its own networks of mutual support, as well as a voice that could unite citizens of every background and conviction, believers or non-believers. That it succeeded in doing so was a monumental, historic achievement.

?In so far as we can speak of a workers? revolution, Solidarity was the first workers? revolution in history,? the former Marxist Leszek Kolakowski wrote from exile in Oxford. ?It follows that the first workers? revolution in history was directed against a socialist state, and has proceeded under the sign of the Cross with the blessing of the Pope. So much for the irresistible laws of history discovered scientifically by Marxists.?

Subsequent developments were to prove more complex. Fears of a Soviet invasion, made credible by past interventions ? Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 ? surfaced regularly, as the Polish regime, now headed by General Wojciech Jaruzelski, attempted to push Solidarity into violence. When it failed, Jaruzelski imposed martial law anyway, on 13 December 1981, citing as justification the spectre of incipient ?catastrophe, chaos, poverty and famine?. Although dubbed a ?self-limiting revolution?, Solidarity?s campaign of strikes and occupations had demoralised the ruling Communists. It had plainly been incompatible with what was still a one-party state.

Even with Solidarity outlawed, the momentum of opposition continued. By the late Eighties, having forfeited all credibility, Jaruzelski?s regime had fallen back on realpolitik in a desperate bid to cling to power. Although Moscow would not allow Communist rule to be overthrown, the opposition was too entrenched to be neutralised. Poland had evolved into a relatively free civil society, existing within the shell of official institutions, as it slumped into debt-burdened insolvency. Once Moscow appeared to relax its grip under Mikhail Gorbachev, the possibilities of real change finally opened up.

The result, in 1989, was government-opposition round table talks, followed by elections to a ?contract parliament? with a prearranged allocation of seats, and formation of a post-Communist government led by a Catholic premier. Other countries staged revolutions of their own ? Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria. Two years later, the Soviet Union itself broke up, giving the world 16 new sovereign states.

How much of this was Solidarity?s achievement?

Critics have questioned the movement?s long-term impact. Even in 1981, they point out, Solidarity was riddled with intrigue and fears of infiltration. By the decade?s end, the millions who supported it had shrunk to a few thousand underground activists, leaving only 40 per cent of Poles to vote for it in the 1989 elections, while a further 40 per cent abstained. Like Icarus, the movement had flown too high too fast, returning with a crash to the world of reality.

Sure enough, tensions between Solidarity?s ?liberal-secular? and ?Catholic-national? wings quickly flared once the movement held the reins of power in the Nineties. However effective Solidarity had been as a vehicle for opposition, no one had come up with the blueprint for a ?Solidarity society?. The values and preoccupations of the Nineties were not those of the Eighties, in a post-Communist region dominated by conflicts from Bosnia to Chechnya.

Having self-confidently proclaimed a new Third Republic after his 1990 election victory, Lech Walesa made an indifferent president, famously admitting he had ?no idea how to govern?. Solidarity itself fragmented, as a new infrastructure of political and economic institutions emerged from the ruins of Communism, and ambitious young politicians who had played little if any part in the events of 1980-1981 competed for Solidarity?s mantle and claimed credit for its successes.

Vigorous market-led reforms drove up unemployment and exclusion, and were widely viewed as negating the Solidarity ethos. There was bitter feuding over the future shape of state and society, and it took eight years for Polish voters to approve a constitution. Though pro-life legislation was passed and religious education brought back to schools, these remained under constant pressure. It was easy to conclude that the fruits of the Solidarity revolution had been won by an emerging middle-class, on the backs of heroic workers who were now rewarded with factory and pit closures, the loss of jobs and destruction of livelihoods.

Today, too, there are serious tensions.

Although Poles were the first to bring down Communism, the very peacefulness of its overthrow here prevented a clear break with the past. There was no Communist capitulation, no Solidarity victory parade ? no moral reckoning, no laying of spectres, no clearing of skeletons from cupboards. Instead, Poland was left with a negotiated settlement, backed with a controversial pledge by its first post-Communist head of government, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, to draw a ?thick line against the past?, which enabled General Jaruzelski and his Communist henchmen to share prestige for the changes and salvage their reputations.

Poland is still suffering the consequences, as a moral weightlessness and lack of leadership take their toll in incessant corruption scandals, attempts to expose political rivals as former agents, and a widening rift between public opinion and the elite-dominated political order. In recent surveys by Poland?s Rzeczpospolita daily, 80 per cent of Poles demanded constitutional changes, while two-thirds still wanted ?de-communisation? and large proportions were convinced Solidarity?s social and economic demands remained unfulfilled. There have been calls for a new Fourth Republic, for another Solidarity to clear away the wreckage of the past 16 years and complete the transition from Communism.

For all the failures and shortcomings, however, Poles can still be proud of their achievements. The country has a democratic system, free market and rule of law, as well as being a member of Nato and the EU ? gains that would have been unthinkable 25 years ago.

Solidarity for its part has stepped back from politics and become a trade union again ? its last big political success was a 1997 election victory over Poland?s governing ex-Communist Democratic Left Alliance.

Solidarity remains, in short, the founding myth of the new Poland ? an often uncomfortable, inconvenient reminder of how Poles saw themselves 25 years ago and how they see themselves today, and of what the generation of 1980 set out to create, a generation that can truly say it did something not just for itself. It is, as the Polityka weekly commented last week, the ultimate mirror for the present day. ?Every nation needs attractive tales about itself, and this is ours,? Polityka noted in its special issue. ?This was a time when, in the eyes of the world, we were courageous, united and proud, when we built our own social ideals, regardless of geopolitics, the intrigues of power, clashes of interest; the fact that, by chipping at an authoritarian system, we contributed to its ultimate collapse, is an important element of the Polish identity.?

In later years, the Pope rephrased Solidarity?s slogan ?No freedom without solidarity? to read ?No solidarity without love?. He would have concurred that what matters today is that Solidarity provides evidence from the recent past that peaceful political movements are possible, whose members make sacrifices for each other, fight for values beyond the material domain, whether religious or not, and embody the genuine search for a common good.

Jonathan Luxmoore is The Tablet?s Poland correspondent and is based in Warsaw.