| |
|
Wall Street History
https://www.gofundme.com/s3h2w8
|
08/12/2005
Walesa and Solidarity, Part I
A few weeks ago, America’s largest labor union, the AFL-CIO,
broke up when four groups within the organization, the Change
to Win Coalition, split off from the parent that had been formed
in 1955 with the merger of the two largest unions at that time, the
American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial
Organizations.
So that got me thinking. 25 years ago, August 14, 1980, there
was another significant labor event, though this one occurred in
Gdansk, Poland. It was then that electrician Lech Walesa led a
strike on the giant shipyards that eventually spread to 400,000
workers. Shortly thereafter, August 30, the Communist
government in Poland relented and allowed free trade unions.
The movement called Solidarity quickly grew to ten million
members. The rest, of course, is history.
Walesa was the son of a carpenter, born in 1943 in the village of
Popowo. After learning his trade, he participated in a 1970
revolt at the shipyards that was suppressed with deadly force.
But by 1980, as a leading dissident, the time seemed right to
make another move. Poland’s government would eventually
give into reality. The Kremlin was furious.
Following is the story of this time, courtesy of the Mitrokhin
archives of secret KGB files, as published in 1999 in the form of
the book “The Sword and the Shield” by Christopher Andrew
and Vasili Mitrokhin.
Mitrokhin worked for almost 30 years in the foreign intelligence
service of the KGB and in 1972 had been made responsible for
moving the entire archives to new headquarters just outside
Moscow. But then, unknown to his superiors, he spent over a
decade making notes and transcripts of highly classified files,
and at enormous personal risk he smuggled daily much of the
information into his dacha where he hid it under the floor. In
1996, he defected to Britain. Initially dismissed by then
President Boris Yeltsin, the world soon learned of the
extraordinary history that he brought along with him.
For our purposes, the story begins on June 2, 1979, when more
than a million Poles converged on the airport road, Warsaw’s
Victory Square and the Old City, where they welcomed the
return of one of their own, Pope John Paul II. Over the next nine
days at least ten million people came to see and hear him, while
the other 25 million watched on television. “At the end of his
visit, as the Pope bade farewell to his home city of Krakow,
where, he said, ‘every stone and brick is dear to me,’ men and
women wept uncontrollably in the streets. The contrast between
the political bankruptcy of the Communist regime and the moral
authority of the Catholic Church was plain for all to see.”
[Andrew & Mitrokhin]
Moscow was concerned that the Polish Politburo lacked the
nerve to confront those that soon challenged its authority. In the
summer of 1980, food shortages led to price rises and a wave of
strikes gave birth to the Solidarity movement. Poland’s interior
ministry informed the KGB mission in Warsaw that it was on top
of the matter and that the SB (Poland’s security and intelligence
service) would produce daily reports after infiltrating the strikers.
Moscow seemed pleased as the Center (KGB headquarters)
reported it had helped limit the scale of the movement by
“eliminating” their printing presses. In addition, “Attempts by
anti-Socialist forces to establish contacts with the artistic,
scientific and cultural intelligentsia, in order to enlist their
support for the demands of the strikers, were cut short.”
But the reality was the strikers were successful in creating inter-
factory committees and coordinating protests and, as Poland’s
SB admitted, intel “did not recognize the extent of the danger in
time or the hidden discontent of the working class.”
On August 24, Moscow received news that Poland’s deputy
prime minister, Jagielski, was negotiating with Walesa and the
strike leaders. The next day, the Soviet Politburo set up a
commission to monitor the crisis and propose solutions. On
August 27, at the request of the Pope, Polish bishops approved a
document that explicitly claimed “the right to independence both
of organizations representing the workers and of organizations of
self-government.” Confident he had the backing of the Pope,
Walesa now believed the government had to give in. That same
day, members of the Polish Politburo met with the Soviet
ambassador in Warsaw.
“We must take a step back in order not to fall into the abyss, and
agree on the creation of self-governing trade unions. We have no
other political means of normalizing the situation, and it is
impossible to use force.”
The Politburo sought to stage a tactical retreat, regroup, and
prepare for a longer-term offensive so on August 30, 1980, it
authorized the Gdansk Agreement which accepted “the formation
of free trade unions as a genuine representation of the working
class” and included the right to strike as well as agreeing to
broadcast Mass every Sunday over the state radio. Lech Walesa,
in signing the accord, was front and center on television as he
spoke to the workers.
“We have fought, not for ourselves nor for our own interests, but
for the entire country. We have fought for all of you. And now,
with the same determination and solidarity that we showed on
strike, we shall go back to work. As of tomorrow, the new life of
our trade union begins. Let us take care that it remains
independent and self-governing, working for us all and for the
good of Poland. I proclaim that the strike is over.”
With that he was carried out on the shoulders of the workers.
But the crisis was far from over. The Gdansk Agreement
represented the greatest potential threat to the Soviet Bloc since
the Prague Spring of 1968. Brezhnev announced to the Politburo
on October 29, 1980:
“Walesa is traveling from one end of the country to another, to
town after town, and they honor him with tributes everywhere.
Polish leaders keep their mouths shut and so does the press. Not
even television is standing up to these anti-Socialist elements
Perhaps it really is necessary to introduce martial law.”
Early in November, the long-time KGB director, Yuri Andropov,
who would later succeed Brezhnev, summoned the new, hardline
Polish interior minister, General Miroslaw Milewski, for talks in
Moscow. Milewski told Andropov that a list of some 1,200 of
the “most counter-revolutionary individuals” had been compiled;
all of whom would be arrested if martial law were declared.
Andropov urged Milewski to just go ahead and do it.
“Even if you left Wyzszynski [the Polish primate] and Walesa in
peace, Wyzszynski and Walesa would not leave you in peace
until either they had achieved their aim, or they had been actively
crushed by the Party and the responsible part of the workers. If
you wait passively the situation slips out of your control. I saw
how this happened in Hungary [in 1956]. There, the old
leadership waited for everything to normalize itself, and when, at
last, it was decided to act, it turned out that no one could be
relied upon. There is every reason to fear that the same may
happen in Poland also, if the most active and decisive measures
are not now taken.
“This is a struggle for power. If Walesa and his fascist
confederates came to power, they would start to put Communists
in prison, to shoot them and subject them to every kind of
persecution. In such an event, Party activists, Chekists [the SB]
and military leaders would be most under threat.
“You say that some of your comrades cannot take on the
responsibility of taking any aggressive measures against the
counter-revolutionaries. But why are they not afraid of doing
nothing, since this could lead to the victory of reaction? One
must show the Communists and the military comrades that it is
not just a question of defending socialist achievements in Poland,
but a question of protecting their own lives, that of their families,
who would be subjected to terror by the reaction, if, God forbid,
this came to pass.
“Sometimes our Polish comrades say that they cannot rely on the
Party. I cannot believe this. Out of three million Party members,
one can find 100,000 who would be ready to sacrifice
themselves. Wyzszynski and Walesa have roped in the free trade
union and are securing more and more new positions in various
spheres in Poland. There are already the first signs that the
counter-revolutionary infection is affecting the army.
“Comrade Brezhnev says that we must be ready for struggle both
by peaceful means and by non-peaceful means.”
We continue with the story next week.
Additional Source:
“Lech Walesa: The Road to Democracy,” Rebecca Stefoff
Brian Trumbore
|
|
|
