Poland since August 1980. At a time when nothing is going well in Yugoslavia it is just as well to emphasise that it is worse next door, and to highlight certain rights which have been won here and regained by Solidarnose with such difficulty: the right to strike for example. Certainly it has not been legalised by the Titoist opinion among the Yugoslav authorities is that strikes must be accepted as a security valve, expressing the freeze on self-management and non-implementation of the self-management rights of the workers. In a very decentralised system local strikes are tolerated because they do not have the same dynamic as in a society with bureaucratic centralised planning. The Yugoslav trade unions have been encouraged to study and to take account of them, and even to support them -rarely.
However we should not think that that Yugoslav trade unions are real instruments for the defence of workers. At the end of the 1960s, with the extensions of the market laws, they had a tendency to free themselves from the tutelage of the Party and state. But the 1970s have been a period for taking back in hand - where the trade unions have seen their role confirmed as the transmission belt for the orientations of the Yugoslav Communist
Solidarnosc was going to be marked by the international diplomatic policies of the Yugoslav leadership and their fear that the Polish example should not give ideas to Yugoslav workers and citizens.
The Appeal to the Workers of the East to form trade unions independent of the state could only be rejected, for this dual reason: international diplomacy and risk of internal contagion. The delegation responded to this appeal in the interview already quoted as follows: It is well-known that the Yugoslav Trade Union Federation has consistently and strongly defended the right of the working class of every people to decide themselves, without external interference, on the form, the role, and the tasks of the trade-union movement of the said country ... We are against all interference and therefore equally against this.' 1. Journal des Syndicats yougoslaves September/October 1982, French edition.
25
THE IMPACT OF THE POLISH STRUGGLE BEFORE DECEMBER 13
The sympathy for Solidarnosc was reflected in the media. The reports of the Solidarnosc congress were at peak viewing time on the television, and were clearly factors: distrust of the Church and its influence within Solidarnosc; fear that the struggles in Poland would lead to a challenge of the international equilibrium and endanger the position of Yugoslavia itself. Thus, one can see that the Appeal to the Workers of the East has often been seen as good but irresponsible.
The state of war, the arrests, and the demned by the Yugoslave authorities. The media published the statements of leaders of the Yugoslav Communist Party which very explicitly rejected the justifi'counter-revolutionary' against the activities of Solidarnosc. For example, Franc Seting, secretary of the Presidium of the Slovene Central Committee, characterised the Polish events in an interview in the main newspaper in Belgrade, NIN, December 20, 1981, thus:
Polish working class has revolted violently three times: in 1956, in 1970, and today ... In the first two cases the Polish working class accepted the programme of its party as the way of getting out of the crisis. For its part the Party made a self-criticism of its own past, and promised fundamental changes in society. But the Party betrayed its promises. The bureaucratic deformation and perversion of socialism and socialist norms was re-established. This is the point of departure for the present events. In the third case the working class itself has taken the initiative.'
The editorial of NIN on December 27, 1981 added "What sort of model of socialism is it when there is so much to be defended against the workers by force and coercion? The Party organ in Belgrade, Komunist, stated on December 18, 1981 'Militant action always signifies the failure of a given policy?
Certainly the 'extremists' of Solidarnosc have been criticised, but without challenging the global characterisation of the movement, nor justifying the state of war.
But while this was the official position the Yugoslav authorities have not tolerated it being actively taken up by the spontaneous movements of solidarity with Solidarnosc of the Yugoslav: people. Thus Poland has become a question of internal politics, which is far from being resolved. Certainly, those who until now have made the strongest protests against the state of war are intellectuals. But the repercussions are not over.
-In December there were petitions denouncing the state of war and calling on Jaruzelski to free the political prisoners. Some student demonstrations 26 were banned and repressed. Searches took place at the homes of certain of the petitioners who were questioned. Lots of them received warnings: 'the Yugoslav government has given its point of view on the Polish events. No other action by the citizens will be tolerated,' (2).
- A group of 25 intellectuals sent a letter of protest against the harassment to the National Assembly of Serbia, well supported by 112 intellectuals Ljubliana (Slovenia), and 199 other signatories from Zagreb in Croatia.
'Is the expression of opinion forbidden in the Socialist Republic of Serbia? If that is the case, on the base of what legislation, by whom and when? Who has the right, and what is this right, to make a choice in this town between the hundreds addressed to Jaruzelski and the Solidarnosc trade union, and to submit them to repression? ... We demand therefore that the persons responsible for the repression mentioned above are found and individunamed as well as being charged with violating human rights, and right of selfand the political rights of the citizens. We demand that the National Assembly prevents any future action of a similar type.' (3).
REACTIONS TO JARUZELSKI'S
CRACKDOWN
Other protests of the same type have been sent at different times to the state,
- The question came to life again. in July. During a meeting of solidarity with the Palestinian people a banner was displayed supporting Solidarnosc. The police brutally arrested eight students who were condemned to forty or fifty days im-
- The journal Student published a dossier of the internal debates of Solidarnosc (letters of Kuron, Bujak, Kulerski), and a memorandum on the arrest of the students during the support meeting for the PLO. It emphasised that the congress of the Yugoslav Communist Party (held in June) was opposed to the state of siege
- At the beginning of August in the same place a demonstration was held supporting Solidarnosc, but also demanding the release of the imprisoned Yugoslav students. New arrests and imprisonments (for shorter periods) took place, including the son of Tadic (a Marxist philosopher of the banned review Praxis and Nebojsa Popov (another collaborator on
- The incidents and protests are going to grow. The fact that the last arrests took place at a meeting of solidarity with people strengthens the arguments of the protestors. How can it they say, that in an officially non-aligned country it is possible to protest against a military dictatorship in one bloc, and to be condemned for doing the same thing with regard to the other bloc ... Open letters have been sent to the press on this theme.
In a period of big economic crisis, after a congress of the Communist Party which resolved nothing, more and more voices are questioning the lack of political democracy in the Yugoslav Communist Party and Yugoslav society as the major cause of malfunctioning of self-management. It is public knowledge that this is the subject of very tense debates within the Party itself. The Polish events are a test for the first battles on democratic freedoms since the death of Tito. What is scaring one part of the state apparatus is that these struggles will combine with and reinforce social discontent fed by unemployment and austerity which, for the first time for decades has seen the standard of living in Yugoslavia fall.
Nasa Rec March 1982. 3. Ibid. Subscribe now!
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