The ability to mobilise
* Poland Now that the Solidarnosc trade union movement is a pillar of the Polish right-wing, the ex-Communist OPZZ trade unions are increasingly able to mobilise the working population in the struggle for social justice. The following analysis first appeared in Dalejl, the newspaper of the far-left group NLR. The Warsaw demonstration organised by the National Trade Union Alliance (OPZZ) on 3rd April marked the opening of a general dispute with the Government. It showed that. dormant within this trade union grouping is a substantial potential to mobilise large numbers in defence of the
The day after the demonstration Trybuna newspaper wrote that the OPZZ: "was often perceived as a bureaucratic, inanimate... [post-Communist] union which would find no place in the new order."
The OPZZ was particularly inactive when the ex-Communist Social Democrats (SdRP) were in power. Both "social partners" took the side of Poland's new capitalists on every issue that was important.
Things seem to be changing a little. At the April 3 demonstration, according to
"The workers showed that -contrary to the opinions of the neo-liberals - they are an important partner for discussions and not merely an obstruction on the road to reform. The words of the Internationale could be heard here and there in the OPZZ ranks. They are today once more a reality. "The wretched of the earth' were marching in the street - people made wretched by the government of Solidarity and the Freedom Union. Parties who today care only for the new vanguard of change, the so-called middle class.
The same so-called middle class, we might add, which the SdRP looked after when it was in power.
The decision to organise the demonstration was taken by the OPZZ Presidium on Ilth March. According to the weekly newspaper Nowy Tygodnik Popularny:
"The debates at the Presidium were historic in character. For the first time in six years the OZZ decided upon such decisive action in relation to government policy. They adopted numerous demands of a national, regional and work-place character, reflecting the growing conflicts, closures and job losses, inappropriate restructuring of some [??] branches of 14 International Viewpoint #304
### SHITTE industry, sharp increase in the cost of living and growing poverty and simultaneous excessive enrichment of the elite in the work-place and in the state at national and regional levels."
The newspaper sumarised the prevailing mood at the meeting in these words:
...we will not allow further oppressive behaviour by the Government towards working people, towards the unemployed and pensioners, or put up with the continual disregard shown by the governing coalition towards the largest trade union organisation. It is time to say Stop!" We should keep pushing
If only this were true! But experience teaches us that we must take a sceptical attitude to this declaration by the leadership of the OPZZ. We should demand and exert pressure on them to really do what they say. Saying 'stop' to the Government can only be done in one way, by a massive mobilisation of the workers, not once, but as part of a campaign of protest action adopted democratically, after the widest possible consultation amongst workers and in the trade unions.
The demands which the OPZZ has put forward are very limited. The Council of the OPZZ Metal Workers' Federation stated that "the basic conflict from the point of view of the trade unions lies bet-
Anyone who thought however that the Council was beginning to speak the language of class struggle would be mistaken. Instead, the Council asks the OPZZ Congress to "define in the form of a resolution the interests of working people, taking into account the interests of capital."
In the columns of Nowy Tygodnik Popularny, one writer close to the OPZZ leadership writes that, although this year's neo-liberal budget cannot be defeated, "trade union pressure can cause a diminution of the pain for the worst off." And that, in general, "it is the trade unions who have the capacity to oppose neo-libera tendencies effectively."
So far so good. But as the writer continues, he exposes the split personality of the OPZZ leadership:
"We are not talking here about the welfare state, but about a minimum social justice, about exerting some restraint on the excessive enrichment of the few at the expense of the majority. The past four years have shown that it is possible to reconcile economic growth with improvement of the social situation, that the left is - what a paradox! - building capitalism, without interfering for an instant in the transformation of the system. This is logical, since in order to meet social needs more adequately it is necessary to streng then the market economy, to the extent that it favours economic growth."
If union activists are so eager to show that they do not dissent from the dominant ideological trend, that they abandon advocacy of the welfare state and restrict their goals to "minimum social justice," if they do not demand that the few stop enriching themselves at the expense of the majority, but only that limits are put upon excessive enrichment and shamelessly assert that the strengthening of the market economy makes it easier to meet social needs, then there can be only one outcome: time and again the defence of the workers' needs will be abandoned. Looking forward
The OPZZ is today the only mass workers' organisation which can defend the workforce and what remains of publicly owned property from exploitation and waste by neo-liberal capitalism.
Despite these shortcomings, the April 3 demonstration showed that, contrary to all those who had written off trade unionism as a lost cause, the OPZZ was capable of mobilising the working masses.
Whether and to what extent this capacity is used and translated into deeds cannot be left to the narrow circles of the OPZZ leadership. It is a matter for all those who are under threat of finding themselves on the street, reduced to beggary, if no organisation comes forward to defend their rights, dignity and interests. If the OPZZ adopts such a course, then sooner or later it will win over workers who belong to Solidarity, who are losing out, like all other workers and have nothing to gain from the policies of the Solidarity-led government. *Reprinted from Dalej! the Warsaw based journal of the Revolutionary Left Tendency, which supports the Fourtl International. Contact: PO Box 76, 03-912 Warsaw 33. Poland, e-mail: dalej_nlr@hotmail.com.pl>. Translated by David Holland for Labour Focus on Eastern Europe.
1968 in Poland
The Exodus of the Jews and the Death of Jewish Culture
+22.50/$4. Cheque payable to P. Rousset, IRE, Postbus 53290, 1007 Amsterdam, Netherlands
Poland's anti-Semitic purge of March 1968 is one of that year's less edifying anniversaries. Marek Torunski The purge was led by General Mozar and his associates. Many of these were veterans of the Communist partisan forces in Poland - as opposed to those, like a number of leading Jewish communists, who fled the Nazi occupation and returned with the Red Army.
Atter the war, Jewish communists became prominent in the Stalinist security apparatus of many central European countries, and in the Soviet Union itself. This was apparently Stalin's deliberate policy. People in such positions were naturally extremely unpopular and provided a focus for long-standing antiSemitic feeling. This perhaps made them even more dependent on their master and prevented them from developing any independent power base.
Their children were visible participants of the left-wing radical youth movement characteristic of 1968. These privileged, disaffected youth became the targets of anti-Semitic slurs themselves, but this time orchestrated by the regime itself. Moczar exploited this situation for factional ends and the campaign was tolerated by Poland's leader Gomulka.
The anti-Semitic campaign in March 1968 was not confined to racial purges in the central organs of the state and the PUWP (Polish United Workers" Party). The Moczarites also achieved the destruction of the reminder of Jewish culture in Poland - the land of the Holocaust.
The Jewish community in Poland in the 1960s was certainly not limited to a few hundred high-ranking apparatchiks. The majority of these were fully culturally assimilated, did not feel themselves to be Jews and maintained no contact with Jewish organisations. At the beginning of the 60's there were about 31,000 Jews in Poland. The community however was still a vibrant one. The Jewish Social and Cultural Association (JSCA) had about 7,500 members.
The Association campaigned to preserve the Jewish language (Yiddish), which had been rejected by the Zionists. There were about 1,500 young people in the JSCA. The leaders of the JSCA, such nised in 24 youth clubs and five student clubs. There was a network of Jewish schools - six primary schools and three secondary ones (in Lodz, Wroclaw and
There was developed movement of amateur art
There were still a dozen or two creative writers working in Yiddish. A monthly literary journal Jidysze Szriftn and a newspaper Folks Sztyme also circulated outside Poland. Every year the publisher Jidysz Buch issued a dozen or two book titles, which reached 24 countries. The Jewish Historical institute continued to produce the academic journal Bleter far Geschichte. The State Jewish Theatre was headed by one of the most important Jewish actresses, Ida Kaminska.
This development of Jewish culture in post-war Poland, despite taking place in a tiny community, still had a very considerable moral and political significance.
At the end of the day, what better counter could there be in the struggle against Zionism than cultural development in a Jewish community outside Israel, especially when the leaders of this community condemn Israeli terror against
The years 1967-68 shattered the hopes of the leaders of the JSCA that an enclave of Jewish culture could be maintained in Poland. It counted for nothing that Israel's aggression against the Arab states was condemned by the JSCA. The Moczarites were not interested in campaigning against Zionısm, but in an anti-Semitic purge
The authorities closed the Jewish schools. The publisher Yidysz Buch and the journal Jidysze Szriftn collapsed Folks Sztyme was transformed from a paper appearing four times a week to a brutally censored weekly. Ida Kaminska and the majority of the actors at the Jewish
After years of struggling against Zionism, Trepper, Smolar and Sfard capitulated and left for Israel. Only the poet Eliasz Rajzman remained of the
After the departure of the majority of their members, the JSCA and the Jewish religious congregations were only shadows of their former selves. Only pensioners unable to emigrate were lett.
In the following twenty years the few young people of Jewish origin did not frequent the Jewish clubs and houses of prayer. The prevailing view was that Polish Jewry had come to an end with the departure of the pre-war generation, while few young people were being There are around 5,000 Jews in Poland today. Yiddish language culture may be regarded as dead. A bilingual journal Slowo Zydowskie - Dos Jidysze Wort comes out in Warsaw. Over 80% of the Yiddish-language content is reprinted from foreign periodicals. The publication is only kept alive by subsidies from the Ministry of Culture.
The Jewish Theatre no longer has a public which understands Yiddish. The spectators listen to a Polish translation of the performance through ear-phones!
In recent years the Ronald Lauder Foundation has been active in Poland Lauder is an American millionaire and former American ambassador in Vienna. The Foundation spends millions of dollars in Poland and is the chief author of the so-
"rebirth of Jewish culture in
The Foundation concentrates its work on a milieu of a tew hundred young Poles of Jewish descent. Young people of Jewish descent can amuse themselves at various free camps, excursions and shows. During these free events, Jewish religious studies. Hebrew and an uncritical devotion to the achievements of the state of Israel are propounded to the young people.
The older generation of activists from the Jewish community have PUWP biographies and the leaders of the middle generation (eg K. Gebert, St. Krajewski, R. Zachariasz) were active in the pre-war Communist Party of Poland. But their Stalinist education has only strengthened the anti-communism of this milieu. An anti-communism impregnated with the spirit of Miczslaw Moczar.
And Poland is left with a a cultural void where its Jewish life once was. Source: Dalej!. Translation by David Holland for Labour Focus on Eastern Europe (see p.36 for order details). For more information on the themes of this article see Di gezichte fun jidysz iszuw in nochmilchomedikin Pojln, by Szlomo Strauss Marko, Tel Aviv, 1987, and Polin - kultura Zydow polskich w XX w., by R. Zebrowski and Z. Borzymioska, Warsaw 1993
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATION as Leopold Trepper, David Sfard and
Do the workers have a country?
Hersz Smolar made great efforts to preserve the Jewish language amongst young people and to educate them in a spirit of anti-Zionism, secular culture and internationalism. The youth were orgaby José Iriarte "Bikila"
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All quiet in Euroland?