THE WAVE of workers' strikes and student protests that of this was supposed to be accomplished by began on April 25, 1988, was the largest for years. Only the 1985.
street demonstrations called by the underground leadership Living standards continue of Solidarnos on August 31, 1982, surpassed it in scope.
to nose-dive ARTHUR WILKINS & CYRIL SMUGA
From 1980 to 1985, the national income dropped twice (in 1980 and 1983) in comparison with the previous year. And this was in a period in which all the Comecon countries — except Poland in 1980/81 -still showed a positive growth rate.
In 1986, another law was passed that provided for closing plants and introduced state unemployment benefits. In the meantime, the debt burden has been growing heavier and heavier. In September 1987, it was over $16 billion. And the last estimate (in May 1988) indicates that it may already
Living standards are continuing to nosedive. According to official estimates, at least 200,000 people are temporarily unemployed. A million Hungarians are living below the subsistence level. And according to the data of the Communist youth organization, the majority of people in Hungary are now living only at the 1971-
There is hardly a Hungarian family that can still make ends meet on the [normal] wages of both parents. Of the roughly 5 million wage earners, about 4 million have a second job. The workday has stretched to between 12 and 14 hours. Health and family life have been severely affected. The breakdown of human relations and social/ psychological problems are driving up the
After Karoly Grosz took office as premier in June 1987, he immediately became one of the main supporters of this course. His "opener" was a new tax law, in particular a completely new sort of value-added [sales] tax introduced on January 1, 1988. It increased prices by at least 15%. Many say (for example at the party congress) that the increase was as much as 20%....
The three pillars of the historic gains of the East European countries are collective ownership of the means of production, central planning and the state monopoly of foreign trade. Such economies can only work if those concerned hold these instruments in their own hands.
If the immediate policy of the Hungarian leadership is counterposed to these principles, that leads to the following conclusion: The bureaucracy's answer to the economic catastrophe for which it is responsible is to increasingly dismantle the International Viewpoint #146 • July 25, 1988 strangling of the Polish revolution in December 1981, such actions persisted. They were also marked by a rapid escalation of demands. On the basis of the initial immediate demands in defence of workers' living standards, demands for trade-union freedom quickly raised. The fight for the legalization of Solidarosc was soon accompanied by demands for university autonomy and political pluralism.
The April 25 strike in the Bydgoszcz and Inowroclaw public transport system, which gave the signal for the strike wave, was spontaneous. There was no public or underground Solidarnosc organization. Nonetheless, the action immediately spread to all of the personnel. It ended the same day with a spectacular success — a 67% in-
On the following day, April 26, the strike that started up in the Lenin steel complex in Cracow was not the result of activity by a Solidarnosc steelworkers' commission. It was launched on the initiative of a single worker, Andrzej Szewczuwaniec. He immediately got the support of all the workers
Within 24 hours, the strike spread to the entire enterprise, involving the majority of some 30,000 workers. A few days later, students in Cracow mobilized in solidarity with the striking steelworkers. The steelworkers, however, did not manage to draw any other enterprise in the city or the region into the strike. Attempts to broaden the strike, notably among transport workers in Cracow, proved ineffective.
With the beginning of a sit-in strike on May 2 in the cradle of Solidarnosc, the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, the regime realized that the danger of the strike wave broadening was increasing, and decided to break it in its main center. For the first time since December 1981, the police intervened against the strikers inside a factory.
The attack by the ZOMO [riot police] in the early hours of May 5 against the strikers at the Lenin steelworks in Nowa Huta [outside Cracow] was extremely brutal, as witnessed by the injuries inflicted on the workers. Nonetheless, the repression did not succeed in breaking the steelworkers'
A large section of the workers continued the strike by staying away from work or failing to do any real work. This demonstrated an extraordinary militancy and determination. Work resumed only on May 18, when the strike committee called for ending the action. It lasted 22 days.
Militant young workers isolated
The determination of the strikers at the Gdansk shipyard was equally strong, because, unlike the steelworkers, at the start they included only a minority of the workers. This was not a mass strike but rather a vanguard one. The militant young workers, who in the end represented no more than 10% of the personnel employed in the shipyard, were not followed by the others. The attempts to get a strike going on the docks in the naval repair yard in Gdansk and in the Paris Commune shipyard in Gdynia
In some of the country's other industrial centers there were attempts to broaden the strike. The first came on April 29 in the Stalowa Wola steelworks, but it did not succeed. For a week after May 2, the tension seemed to increase. In Wroclaw, there was a brief strike at Dolmel (an electrical machinery plant) and a long one at Pafawag, which makes rolling stock.
In Szczecin, the regional coordinating committee of Solidarnosc issued a call on May 3 for strikes in all enterprises around two demands - an increase in wages and social benefits proportional to the rise in the cost of living, along with the legalization of Solidarnosc. In response to this appeal, two days later, workers in the bus depots in Szczecin-Dabie and the city of Police went on strike, but their walkout ended the same day. In Dabie, the police stopped it.
In the Szczecin shipyard, attempts to start a struggle were effectively torpedoed by the repressive apparatus and the foremen. In those enterprises in Szczecin where pub-
lic Solidarnosc committees existed, the factory managements got budget supplements to enable them to raise wages. In other places, these committees — which are oriented toward a struggle to obtain legal registration and not, like the Stalowa Wola, Ursus and Wroclaw committees, toward trade-union activity here and now — proved incapable of mobilizing the workers.
Many Solidarnosc structures issued a call for a strike on May 9. In the lignite mine and public transport in Belchatow, the strikes projected for that day were called off. In the Rybnik mining region (ROW, in Upper Silesia), strikes were planned in many mines and factories. But finally the only strike attempted was in the ManifestLipcowy mine.
The situation in the Ursus tractor factory in Warsaw could have had a profound impact on the country. For several days, the public Solidarnos committee in the enterprise had been preparing for a strike. But, at the crucial moment, the police managed to paralyze the committee's activity.
A strike broke out, but it involved only a minority of the workers, about 2,000 at its peak, and then the number of strikers dropped to 150. In the evening, the organizers decided to suspend the strike. On the same day, the Cracow students' interfaculty protest movement decided to end their occupation of the campus and boycott
It became clear by May 9 that the strike wave was broken. On the following day, the strikers in the Gdansk shipyard realized this. Lech Walesa convinced them of the need to end the strike and leave the yard without informing the authorthey marched out in is that during this period the situation was uneven from enterprise to enterprise and from region to region even within each individual enterprise, where ofpolarizated between ponents of the strike. As one of the Warsaw Solidarnosc leaders, Henryk Wujec, wrote, "you can see that this was the lightning before the storm." (Tygodnik Mazowsze 251,
The wave of struggles in April and May also revealed the growth of resistance in the working class to the economic reform being imposed by the regime.
The "second stage" of the economic reform has only one fundamental objective: to find the means to pay the incredible tribute imposed on the Polish economy in the name of foreign debt by reducing workers' share of the national income even further. The new fall in real wages caused by higher prices for necessities that marked the start of the "second stage" is not the only way of exacting this tribute. The mechanisms enabling the central authorities to manipulate the determination of wages in the enterprises is another. These involve various forms of taxes on wages, notably those imposed on enterprises by way of penalties for "raising wages above the
Longer hours only way to boost wages
Thus, workers trying to maintain their real income often have no other means except agreeing to work longer hours. The official statistics show that the wages in the Nowa Huta Lenin steelworks are rather good, on average around 40,000 zlotys in 1987. What the statistics do not indicate is that these are by no means wages for an eight-hour day. It is not surprising therefore that we find references to people dying of exhaustion (for example, in Tygodnik Powszechny 21, 1988.)
New forms of organizing work, so-called group forms, are making working conditions still worse. The Kielce regional labor inspector has said: "Group work has become a legal form of speed-up...The workers are given a stake in it, because their wages increase, but only for 12- and 16hour days. In investigations of the cause of accidents on the job, we often find that fatigue is one of the main causes of the tragedy." (Tygodnik Robotniczy 13, 1988.)
Declaring that their "confidence in the reforms promised by the party is exhausted" (see TV 141, May 16), the Nowa Huta
POLAND strikers dotted the "i's.
The economic reform is aimed at breaking the unity and solidarity of the working class, at scattering its resistance to the draconian changes in the distribution of the national income and in bottling up the pressure of immediate demands within the walls of the various isolated factories. Some of the most sincere — or most cynical - spokespeople of the regime say so openly. For example in Polityka 13, 1988, Daniel Passent wrote:
"There is no doubt that in the Poland of 1988, trade-union pluralism... would lead to an eruption of demands equal to, if not greater than, what existed before the state of war [Jaruzelski's crackdown in December 1981]. The economic situation and the material fate of the people are more difficult today than at the end of the 1970s; the accumulated resentment is graver, and the economy has remained statist.
"The division is still between a society of workers and a state of employers. So long as this situation is not overcome by a reform, a radical one and not a partial one as today, demands will immediately assume a political character, because they will be directed at the government. But if the leaders and experts of these unions are not only full of good will but wiser from the experience of the last ten years, I cannot imagine that alternative unions would take a different attitude. They would begin to mobilize public opinion around their demands, just ones from the standpoint of the workers, and this would lead to an aggravation and not an improvement of the political situation. Free unions [that is, not tied to the government] possible when the government is not the employer but In April and May, the regime sometimes managed in many endemobilize the workers who had gone on strike or were threatening to do so by granting large wage increastion. The Nowa the outset to counter this tendency. In its first communique, it advanced demands in defence of the standard of living of all Polish labor. (See IV
In this way, the strike committee at the Lenin steelworks laid the foundations for unifying the protests and social pressures into a single economic movement. This was one of the main gains of the May-April 17 1988 wave of struggles. It has to be pointed July 25, 1988 • #146 International Viewpoint
POLAND out that on May 17, the strike committee at the steelworks included this in the platform on which it wanted to base itself after becoming an open Solidarnosc organizing committee in the plant.
"We are not asking a lot. We need nothing more than Solidarosc," said Jan Gorczak, the 26-year-old vice-chair of the strike committee at the Gdansk shipyard. (Tygodnik Mazowsze 251, 1988.) The most signification workers. "We protest against the use of force on striking workers and students... We demand the immediate release of those who have been arrested and suffered repression for their opinions. We consider the following as the bases for getting out of the present crisis: a real extension of democracy through the establishment of trade-union and political pluralism, the implementation of real structural reforms in the economy, and the cant thing in this strike was the Wojciech Jaruzelski steadfastness of the participants in by GRAFF in Arbeiderbladet (Oslo). the fight for trade-union rights, C&W Syndicate. which were understood by everyone as meaning the legalization of Solidarnosc.
In leaving the shipyard on May 20, the strikers reaffirmed this conviction: "The Nowa Huta workers and we at the Gdansk shipyard have won a priceless victory. After several years of passivity and a feeling of powerlessness, Polish society is reviving, and in particular its young people. The youth realize now more than they did a few months ago the need for taking up the fight for their rights. We are not giving up the fight for Solidarnosc. In these last days, the young generation of workers and students have opened up a new spring for Solidarnosc. We remain faithful to the slogan of our strike, "There is no freedom without Solidarnosc'."
The strike at the shipyard showed that a new generation is beginning to take the leadership of this struggle. Lech Walesa participated in it, and Alojzy Szablewski, a 62-year-old engineer, headed the strike committee. But those who were active in Solidarosc in the shipyard in 1980-81 could be counted on the fingers of your hands. This strike was an action of young workers who were teenagers at the time, and for whom Solidarnosc is mainly a symbol. "For them, this is not a fight to win back free unions; they never had one," wrote Tygodnik Mazowsze's correspondent (No. 250, 1988.)
Jacek Merkel, a veteran of Solidarnosc in Gdansk, explained the reasons for their attitude in the following way: "These young people are more struck by injustice. When you have worked for years, you have buddies on the job, relationships. But these young people who have just come in run up against injustice, see their dignity mocked, find themselves robbed of wages. These thousands of petty day-to-day conflicts and expressions of a lack of respect for the workers' rights did not exist at the time of Solidarnosc. The very existence of the union put an end to them.
"For these youth the existence of an independent union in the classical sense is indispensable, and this is what explains their determination in the struggle. For them, this is not a new stage in the fight against totalitarianism but a struggle for elemen18 tary rights. The strike's central slogan, "There is no freedom without Solidarosc,' International Viewpoint #146 • July 25, 1988 means for them that as long as there is no Solidarosc, there will be injustice." (Tygodnik Mazowsze 251, 1988.)
After the strike ended, Szablewski said: "We now have 800 young people who have gone through the workers' university, a strike. They will be the future leaders of Solidarnosc. Before we did not know who was who, we did not know the young people. Now in the enterprise the atmosphere will be completely different."
Worker/student alliance revived
In the wave of workers' strikes, the worker/student alliance forged in 1980-81 not only revived but was consolidated. In Cracow, students already began demonstrating in the streets together with the strikers and under the banner of Solidarnosc on the third day of the strike. Students also made up the great majority of the 10,000 people who demonstrated on May 3 in response to a call from the Regional Alliance of Independent Groups in order to support the fight of the steelworkers and to press for its extension.
In response to the brutal police attack on the strikers, the students at the Jagellon University launched a boycott of classes and a sit-in in the dormitories. The strike and protest movement also affected other institutions of higher learning in Cracow. The statement adopted by the general assembly of students and teachers at Jagellon University on May 5 became the platform of this movement:
"In the spirit of solidarity of the intelligentsia with the workers, we express our unreserved support for the strikers at the Lenin steelworks and other enterprises and universities in the country. In particular, we want to express our appreciation of the fact that they have demanded an improvement in the material situation of health and eduguarantee of autonomy for the universities." Student strikes, rallies and demonstrations in solidarity with the workers also took place in various other cities. The breadth of this mobilization is an indication of the extent of the recomposition of the independent social movement and its most active forces, which is linked to a new generation of activists who are coming to the fore. A first sign of this recomposition was undoubtedly the appearance of the Freedom and Peace Movement (WiP).
On this subject, Wolicki has written: "The Freedom and Peace Movement was at first viewed with a lot of suspicion, both by the moderate wing of Solidarnosc — because it nonchalantly defied the taboo of the military institutions and the Holy Alliance with the Eastern power - and by the radicals, who criticized its contacts with Western peace activists. Today, the WiP has a 'good press' everywhere. It has usefully broadened Western peace activists' view of the world, and little by little made Warsaw's officers realize that by punishing those who refused to pledge allegiance [to the armed forces] and demanded alternative service, they were getting themselves into a political impasse." (Kultura 5, 1988.)
With the elimination on June 27 of the references to allegiance to the Soviet army from the oath taken by draftees, this movement gained its first big victory.
The student mobilizations were preceded by another sign of mobilization of the youth, the revival and growth of the activity of the Independent Association of Students (NZS). "Solidarnosc," Wolicki reports, was at first surprised by this success. This is hardly surprising, because the organizers themselves did not expect it. At the beginning of 1988 it became clear, even for the most cautious student proponents of an understanding with the regime, the government's pretence its famous democratization is an empty slogan (unlike the liberalization, which, while decreed from above, is real)....Therefore, when the NZS confidently launched the demand for full autonomy for higher education - with the total support of young intellectuals and students — and for a new higher education law, Solidarose circles in the universities. in their immense majority, offered their support to the young people."
Among the symptoms of this recomposi-
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tion, we should mention the formation of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) in November 1987. This first attempt to form an independent workers' party - or as its members call it, a "political party of independent trade unionists" — was marked by a radical programmatic and strategic orientation. This radicalism is indicated in the "Principles for Action until the Statutory Congress" adopted in February 1988. (See IV 137, March 21, 1988.)
Struggles dealt a blow to social pact
The struggles of the workers and students dealt a serious blow to the strategies that in the preceding months were beginning to be accepted in the leading circles of the democratic opposition and Solidarosc. This applies in particular to the "anti-crisis pact" strategy worked out by former moderate advisers of the trade-union leadership — Bronislaw Geremek, Andrzej Wielowieyski, Ryszard Bugaj and others. Such a "pact" was supposed to offer social credibility and support to the market economy reform by convincing the society to subject its activities "to the rigors of reason and political imagination" and keep its demands "in the limits of wisdom" in return for democratic concessions from the regime. Such concessions supposedly involved acceptners of already legal associations and unions, against which the government would be impotent." (Polityka 13, 1988.)
Thus, the "radical reformers" in the ruling team, with whom the advocates of this "anti-crisis pact" would like to reach a "neo-compromise," are well aware that they cannot let themselves yield to any such temptation. "Who knows," Passent wrote, "whether the effective recipe for curing the economy is not one combining a free market and a strong police force."
Despite this, a month later, confronted by the Nowa Huta strike and the danger that it could spread, the regime made a sudden turn. It judged that the illusions of the advocates of an "anti-crisis pact" should be exploited to get their support for the economic reform in order to make it easier to get the workers to tighten their belts. In this way it counted on being able to play off the democratic opposition and a section of the Solidarosc leaders against the striking workers, and isolating those in opposition circles - like the PPS — who say that the second stage of the economic reform is anti-labor and call on the masses to wage a determined economic struggle.
Commenting on the leaflets distributed by the PPS after the outbreak of the Nowa Huta strike, Polityka wrote that "this current carries a...deadly threat to the reform, to say nothing of a threat of political destabilization."
POLAND Sadowski, the father of the reform, suddenly advised Wielowieyski that the "anticrisis pact" scheme was constructive and could provide a basis for discussion. At the same time, he issued an invitation to "all those who want to discuss moving toward positions in favor of the reform, including Walesa as one of those citizens who have a different point of view but want to discuss and seek an understanding." (According to Jerzy Urban, the government's spokesperson, at a press conference on April 31.)
The outbreak of the strike at the Gdansk shipyard and the fact that Walesa joined the strikers upset the plans of the ruling team. "In response to the offer of the deputy premier, Walesa gave an aggressive speech in front of Saint Brigitta's church in Gdansk....Actions mean more than words, and Walesa's whole conduct has created a new situation....Today negotiations are scarcely imaginable." (Jerzy Urban, May 17 press conference.)
This does not mean, however, that the regime has given up the idea of luring some circles of the opposition into the trap of an "anti-crisis pact." For example, in Polityka's comment on the strikes (No. 21, 1988), we find the following statement: "In Poland, it is impossible not to make historical comparisons, and so many commentators make analogies between the present situation and that of 1976. At that time, the alarm signal, represented by local strikes, ing "social pluralism." tention of seeking a body of changes that can fit in with the principle of the leading INTERNATIENAL role of the party, the latter being interpreted in a limited way, of course. In general it is considered that social pluralism has to of- MARXIST REVIEW fer a guarantee for the unions, associations, local authorities (if only at the municipal level) and public opinion functioning outside the control of the party and state authorities. It is accepted, on the other hand, that social pluralism (unlike political pluralism par excellence) does not include the key element in any democratic system — multi-partyism. The demand for social pluralism, as Jerzy Holzer has correctly noted, is not a demand for democracy but only for 'more democracy'" (Tygodnik Powszechny 22, 1988.)
Daniel Passent, the Polityka journalist who presents the official point of view of the Jaruzelski team, explained clearly back in March what this group thought of such a proposal. "You have to have little respect for your adversary to offer such a pact... What really counts in politics is power and the fight for power. The present regime, it is true, does not enjoy general or
On April 30, Deputy Premier Zdzislaw
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19 July 25, 1988 • #146 International Viewpoint
POLAND meetings and the abandonment of the fruitless attempt at reform. We paid a high price for this show-business victory." (This refers to the rallies in support of Gierek that were organized throughout the country in 1976 to demonstrate the isolation of "a few hooligans," as the Radom and Ursus strikers were called.)
Today, the regime's tactic has to be different, and it wants to find some hope in the fact that, as its press has noted, "a number of the opposition leaders did not support the strikes, but opposed them." (Zycie Warszawy, May 18, 1988.)
This, however, is only one side of the coin. In fact, the strikes led to a retreat from the "anti-crisis pact" strategy among a section of leaders of the democratic opposition. In December 1987, the Warsaw Regional Executive Commission (RK W) came out in favor of such a pact "in the name of higher reasons." At the same time, it considered it essential that Solidarnosc activists involve themselves in the work of the official institutions, especially so-called self-management local institutions.
"We are not going to reject participation in local self-management when the elections come." (These were the elections that took place on June 19, 1988, which were marked by the highest rate of abstention registered in Poland since the war.) Shortly after the end of the recent strikes, Jan Li-
— along with Jacek Kuron, one of the main authors of the Warsaw leadership's new orientation, called "new evolu-
- admitted that this path was a
The word "reform" evokes only price rises
"The reform has become the main word in 'newspeak'. It evokes only price rises. In this situation demanding reforms sounds almost abstract; it becomes a magic formula, a pious wish, a plea to the regime to change. The government's reaction to the strikes is a sufficient experience, proof, that this team cannot and will not change....A few months ago, it seemed reasonable to think that the government wanted some changes. The sense of December 1987 RKW statement, which provoked such discussions, was that in order for these changes to have a genuine and deepgoing character, it was necessary not only to take part in various initiatives but also to promote them yourself and organize a social movement around them.
"The announcement of the reforms was a maneuver designed precisely to avoid changes. Instead of economic reform, price rises; instead of a democratic election law, the appointing of candidates; instead of local self-management, all power to the administration; instead of freedom association, the halting of any independent
20 bishops into county councils and parish "For Rakowski, pluralism is bringing
International Viewpoint #146 • July 25, 1988 priests into local ones. But the fate of the RKW statement testifies to a much more important phenomenon than simply opposition to the regime, which would be quite banal in the last analysis. It is the rejection of social activity in institutions tied in any way to the state apparatus....Even those activists most committed to this perspective think that their efforts to achieve a limited improvement have only a very slim chance of success. In any case, the state apparatus, administration and the groups linked to them will be able to destroy everything, to strangle it and distort it. Refusal to take part thus appears the only solution." (Tygodnik Mazowsze 251, 1988.)
There is no doubt that the April and May strikes set in motion a deepgoing process of recomposition in Solidarnosc. This has been clearly indicated by a well-known leader of the Warsaw union, Henryk Wujec: "In my opinion, we have entered a very interesting period for Solidarnosc. After the stagnation in recent years, a breach has been opened up.
"This, I would say, is the end of the period of the first Solidarnosc, the one that began in August 1980. The movement will continue to exist and develop, but in a different way. Over these last two years, at least since the amnesty of 1986, there seemed to be something wrong with Solidarnosc's image. Officially the structures existed, from the national leadership down to the regional structures and the underground enterprise committees. But this tidy picture did not correspond very well to the
"A section of the activists, moreover, said that it was a fiction. The strikes have shown what Solidarnosc really is, what is living in it and what does not exist. In the events of these last weeks, the underground enterprise committees and the higher structures played practically no role. New activists have come to the fore, not individually but en masse, as a phenomenon. Although formally they are often not members of Solidarnosc, they feel linked to the idea of Solidarnosc. They are young, radical; they are demanding their social and political rights, and do not want to wait any longer. The activists in the structures, including this writer, were not surprised by this situation. They were working at a stabilized tempo. They had their tasks. And the strikes disrupted them, disturbed their habits, upset their routine.
"For example, the Nowa Huta strike was initially looked on suspiciously by the official structures in the region, and their attitude to its organizers was distrustful, because it did not happen as they had planned...After the last wave of strikes, the role of the Solidarnose leadership and its known members will be reduced. The important things will not happen because of what they decide or say. They will remain respected people, people with authority, but they will recede into the movement's history rather than be the real actors in its
"The process of the formation of new elites in the enterprises has begun. The role of the known activists should be more of an educative one than a leading one, in order to help these young people come into the movement, to build bridges between the present ossified structures and the new ones that will be created from top to bottom."
In Nowa Huta, three historical leaders of the local Solidarnosc steelworkers' committee — Stanislaw Handzlik, Mieczyslaw Gil and Jan Ciesielski - joined the strike and were elected to the strike committee. But it was headed by a new activist, Andrzej Szewczuwaniec, who had never been a member of Solidarnosc. He joined after the
"A new generation is coming onto the scene
"It would not be a good thing," Wujec wrote, "if the old leaders tried to hold onto the leadership no matter what. A new generation is coming onto the scene. It proclaims its allegiance to the same ideals but it is founding a new movement. Little by little, the reins have to be passed to them." (Tygodnik Mazowsze 251, 1988.)
In the local and regional elections, according to the official figures, 44 per cent of citizens did not go to the polls. In this way they refused to give legitimacy to the usurper government, its anti-labor economic reform and its pseudo-democratization. The government admitted that in the main urban and industrial centers, abstention exceeded 50 per cent, and in Gdansk it reached 72 percent. It is clear that the workers' strikes and the students' mobilizations had a big influence on this result.
This increasingly massive rejection front is still in its great majority passive. It does not see struggle as offering a credible possibility for improving the fate of the workers and citizens. However, the relationship of forces between those who are ready here and now for struggle, and those who are still hesitating, has clearly begun to shift in favor of the former. On the other side of the barricades, the opposite is happening. More and more cracks are beginning to show up in the ruling apparatus.
Barely a few months after the launching of the "second stage" of the economic reform, which the regime sees as its last chance, Polityka (No. 21, 1988) admitted that in these circles "the conviction prevails that the whole thing is proceeding too slowly, with too much difficulty, and that it is losing its content."
The parliament's voting of special powers for the government in order to enable it to take "shortcuts" in establishing the economic reform testifies that the regime's room for maneuver is narrowing. "Without these [the special powers] the economy will get completely out of control and provoke a new series of disturbances and explosions." (Polityka 12, 1988). This admission that the lifeline is so fragile speaks for itself. *
In reply to my detractors
ONE OF the most influential advisors of the Solidarnosc leadership, Jacek Kuron wrote the following article for
Tygodnik Mazowsze (No.