The Polish bureaucracy against the KOR activists Cyril SMUGA Nothing demonstrates more clearly the continuity between government of General Jaruzelski that of Gierek in the preceding ten years, than the proceedings started against the militants of the former Workers Defence Committees/Social Self-Defence Committees best known as the KOR. of four of them - Jacek Kuron, Adam Michnik, Henryk Wujec — are to start in a few days time, if the government spokesperson is to be believed
The four accused are among those who challenged arbitrary bureaucratic when, after the strikes of June 1976, heavy repression fell on the workers of Radom, Ursus, Plock and other cities in Poland. At that time they participated in the creation of an aid network for the families of the repressed workers, which gave birth to the KOR. It was thanks to their action that the strikers, some of whom had sentences of up to ten years in prison, were eventually released under an amnesty in summer 1977. For the first time, the Polish bureaucracy had to retreat under the social pressure that the KOR had stimulated.
Following this first victory the KOR diversified its activity. The bulletin Robotnik (The Worker) appeared in September 1977, and the KOR Intervention Bureau was founded. Robotnik, which was produced by Henryk Wujec among others, allowed a broad exchange of experiences between workers, breaking down their isolation, and leading to the appearance of groups of organised workers in the factories, some of which appeared openly as organising committes for free trade unions. The Intervention Bureau, organised by Zbigniew and Zofia Romaszewska, devoted itself to obtaining material and legal aid for all those who suffered from the arbitrariness of the bureaucracy. Thus, it played a role in Poland similar to that of the Committee for the Defence of Persons Unjustly Persecuted (VONS) in Czechoslovakia.
At the same time as these two initiatives were taken, different reviews and independent publishers were created Among these Adam Michnik played a key role. He was also the organiser of the Flying University, which gave courses to activists, completely independent from the state education system.
After the first outbreak of strikes in July 1980, the KOR activists set up an information bank, whose activity allowed the isolation of the workplaces on strike to be overcome, while at the same time making workers throughout the whole world aware of the movement day by day. The telephone switchboard installed
Jacek Kuron's apartment functioned until the arrest of eighteen KOR activists on August 20. They were all released after the Gdansk agreement was signed on August 31, 1980, at the express demand of the strikers from the Lenin shipyards.
Whatever its weaknesses, the KOR played a role in the emergence of an independent workers movement in Poland. It is for that role that the bureaucracy intends to make the KOR activists
After the foundation of Solidarnosc the KOR members actively involved themselves in building the independent union, either as experts - like Kuron or Michnik - or as members of the union leaderships in their regions. Wujec and power. They considered this a guarantee against the danger of a Soviet intervention. Supporters of the 'self-limitation' policy, they contributed to propagating the illusion of a longterm stabilisation of the relationship of forces coming out of the Gdansk agreements. An illusion for which they paid immediately at the time of the military crackdown on December 13, 1981.
Romaszewski was the only one of them to escape arrest at that time. He took part in setting up of Radio Solidarnose in Warsaw. In spring 1982 he declared himself in favour of preparing a general strike. Jacek Kuron, interned in the camp at Bialoleka, also succeeded in circulating writings that went in the same direction. Romaszewski, arrested at the end of August 1982, has been sentenced to four and a half years in prison for his activity within the resistance.
The four accused, charged with having tried to overthrow the regime by force -which in light of the positions they took during the fourteen months of Solidarnose's legal existence is patently absurd -risk being sentenced to anything from five years in prison to the death sentence.
It is Solidarnose as a whole that is being tried through them. They personify the 'prehistory' as well as the 'history" of the union per se, since they were among its top leaders. Given what these trials represent, solidarity action of the whole of the international workers movement is called for, with the broadest possible unity. We will play our part.