Walentynowicz leads new
Viewpoint 30 September 1985 sheets in a home for youth, the of prosecutor asked for sentences ten years in prison. It that seems sheets cannot be found in the
"decent people" are and so stores, particularly outraged by such a crime.
protest against the regime
Such talk reveals about more the social reality of the Soviet Union and East Europe (1) than a hundred
"Marxism-Leninism"
volumes on a made unrecognizable by adaptation to the needs and interests of the bureaucracy.
'WHEN THE workers in the Gdansk shipyards began their strike in my
Mikhail
Gorbachov, who defence and against my sacking five years ago, I never imagined that
While clearly lacks neither intelligence nor this would be the trigger of a vast historical process. It was not my knowledge, understands this reality doing. It is God who made use of me and made me the detonator of the to some extent, he has to keep quiet, strike. But today, five years later, after the period of Solidarnose's not for "reasons of state" but because of the interests of the bureaucracy. (2)
legal existence, after the state of emergency, and in the middle of a
On June 11, 1985, speaking to period of repression and political trials, I view the future of Poland with a Central Committee plenum attended alarm. We live in a difficult period, full of bitterness. Life is especially by all the high Soviet dignitaries - except his main rival Romanov - hard for us women. The standard of living is declining dramatically;
Gorbachov delivered a virtual indictshortages are a constant source of worry; the interminable queues are of the of the Soviet ment state turning our lives into a hell on earth ...' economy. His audience was called understand the need for
This was Solidarnose's Anna Walentynowicz speaking. Here she to upon
"radical changes" and to carry them was attempting to explain why for her, the struggle which she sparked out. Such reform has to be put into off in August 1980 should not be allowed to die.
- "We don't practice in all urgency have any more time left."
that this appeal
Those who claim had "new features," at least in its
13, form (cf.
Le Monde of June
1985), should be reminded that the formulas are exactly the same as those in Malenkov's reports 32 years ago! That was immediately after the death of Stalin. You can find as well in the speeches of them
Kosygin in the second half of the
1960s.
(The second part of this article will analyze reforms proposed the by Gorbachou and the state of the
Soviet economy.]
This did not prevent General Jaruzel-
French telling
'Humanite'
Communist Party paper
(see
1985, issue): "Our state assures the June 3, its citizens more social benefits of a higher quality than the biggest and richest capita-
" That's not just bureaucratic list countries.
pretences, it's a total lack of shame.
The following story is going around in
Moscow.
Gorbachou was invited to of the high dignitaries banquet given by
He asked what the cost of the regime.
The officials were distinctly festivities was.
about that and took their time unhappy adding but, nonetheless, they
Gorbachou finally up with a figure.
came of divided it by the number guests and proposed that they ask fifty roubles from each person present.
Now, quarter of a fifty roubles is a
The quarter of a worker's monthly wages.
worker's wages for a month for one meal a bureaucrat! Moreover, fifty roubles a entire monthly pension for the of the 51 million retired persons in the
That is a good index of the privileges in the country.
It is to add that at such lot of the food consumed would mobtainable for workers, if they
CUCTE to them.
As
Ou y when there scarcity the lines a cop to watch and the stores, cops
ARTHUR WILKINS
She continued: I am convinced that this is a period of transition, but it is also a period of great tests of human character. The Polish people as a whole must go through this test of
As women we know value of life and how to safeguard it.
want peaceful reforms which guarantee a better future. It is up to us women to tell the truth about our daily lives and to testify to the way in which the joy and the beauty of life is snatched away from us. We are all worn out by hard work, crushed consistently harassed. We are ruled by standards that we don't agree with ... For this reason I call on all people of take up more vigorous activity and to protest against the life which those who rule are imposing on us.
demonstrates how Walentynowicz is still a rebel, still devoted to the interests of the working class and at the same time still a devout, even Messianic, Christian. For eight months she has been leading a rotating hunger strike in the church of Biezanow, near Cracow. Formerly a solderer at the Lenin Shipyards and the heroine of August 1980, Walentynowiez always seizes the initiative whenever the movement in Poland is not living up to its responsibilities or is in retreat.
Outside the control of the Solidarnose structures and prefering to address herself directly to the masses in order to make them move, Walentynowicz was forced out of the regional leadership of the union Walesa in the spring of 1981, for her opposition to a policy of compromise with the ruling bureaucracy.
Walentynowicz's clearly upsetting Solidarnose leaders in some circles. The almost complete surrounding the protest in the press run by the underground Solidarnose leadership appears to testify to this.
their May 3 bulletin, Biezanow hunger strikers explained that through their action they were demanding an end to the persecution and imprisonment of people for their beliefs, to physical violence and psychological torture meted out to detainees and an end to the sacking of workers for political reasons. They are protesting against the constant threat of repression coming from the regime and against the drastic lowering of the standard of living, which is destroying the physical health of the people. They are opposed to attacks by the official propaganda machine on the Church and on Christian values. They are demanding that the basic principles of the constitution of the Polish state be respected, especially those which cater for freedom of speech and independence of the judiciary.
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POLAND
The hunger strikers adhere to document entitled "Testament of a fighting Poland', of July 1, 1945, which they claim as their political heritage and which they consider as their guide.
This document was the final declaration of the Council of National Unity, a kind of parliament of underground Poland which existed under Nazi occupation and which -was dominated by the socialist and populist left. It was also the political leadership of the Resistance. Adopted at the beginning of the Stalinist era the Testament demanded an end to the USSR's domination over Poland; and free elections open Anna Walentynowicz rallies dock workers in historic 1980 strike in Gdansk. (DR) to all democratic parties, and establishing a system along the following
For full territorial and socioeconomic self-management, as well as for self management in education and culture.
-The socialisation of large capitalist property and equal distribution of the wealth of society.
- Co-management and control of the whole of the national economy by the working masses along with the guarantee of minimum subsistence for every family and the cultural development of each individual.
Freedom of struggle for the working class with rights to form free trade unions.
On July 22, 1985, the official commemoration date for the establiin 1944, there was a public demonstration in Biezanow, led by Walentynowicz and including Solidarnosc supportdisplaying trade union banners. The
Age to the memory of the workers killed in Poznan in 1956 and on the Baltic coast in 1970. They paid homage to the thousands of Polish soldiers killed in Katyn by the Soviet political police at the beginning of the Second World War and to those soldiers of the antithe war 'Gulag Archipelago'.
According to a communique from
Cracow issued on August 12, 351 women and men including workers, peasants and intelof the country and 39 towns and villages had participated in the hunger strike up to that date. A total of 74 underground factory committees of Solidarnose from several regions, includin Nowa Huta and the University of Jaguellons in Cracow have expressed support. Trade union leaders like Andrze]
Gregorz Palka, and Jerzy Marian Jurczyk from Szczecin; Andrzej
ОДНІ
Gwiazda from Gdansk and Seweryn from Warsaw have all visithe hunger strikers. They have received a message of support from Kornel Morawiecki, leader of the
Solidarnose Organisation. The Biezanow protest is also supported by the Provisional Coordinating Committee of Solidarnose in the mines (TKKG) in Upper Silesia which is lucting an intense propaganda campaign in support of this protest in its own region and which has sent delegations of miners to Biezanow.
June 16, the strikers sent a letter to Lech Walesa asking him to take the correct position in relation to the situation in the country and actively support the actions of rent bodies inside Solidarnose tending to reunite the movement in struggle. In a statement on August they called on all those who, "after tive years of tactical and stratepic errors' 'persevering in their support for the ideals of Solidarnosc by preserving the unity of aims and keeping an open mind about the
1S the struggle for freedom can take.' In this statement of hunger strikers, ind Anna Walentynowicz', affirm that 'the ideas of Solidarnose are not only those of a trade union, but also map out the road in starting with unity will lead to the liberation of the mind and the independence of society? against the crisis that the movement and its leadership are going through, even though it is at times more moral than political, is evidenced in the Biezanow protest. Church are also increasing at time. Some priests, beginning with those in the parish of Biezanow, support the action and are even helping it to be extended to other churches. Frowned upon by primate Glemp and his entourage, it is boycotted by the other priests who refuse from Biezanow in their churches. During the last traditional pilgrimage to the Black Madonna of Czestochowa - the largest annual demonstration organised each year by the ecclesiastical hierarchy - the 52-strong delegation of hunger strikers from Biezanow were treated like outcasts by the priests responsible for organising it. Some functionaries of the Church apparatus accused the delegation of giving out political leaflets and of 'behaving like provocateurs. They even accused some of being 'suspect' and in the pay of some sinister powers.
Under pressure from the organisers the delegation had to fold up their banners and finally entered Czestochowa with the poles held up in the form of a "V' for victory. This provoked a great deal of ferment among the crowd around about who not conceal their sympathy for the stikers.
La Christian worker, Walentynowicz has a particular conof the Church which not correspond to that of its hierarchy. She will not give in in the face of more energetic attempts Glemp to roll back the social movement expressed within the Biuletyn Dolnolaski, an underground
Silesia, she declared, a few weeks after the beginning of the strike that, gather in the churches, because they offer an asylum for free expression. The struggle must not take place in churches ... But the pulpit must serve the people, since we have no other means of communication, 8ot
This approach seems to be very popular among the workers. At the end of another workers' pilgrimage to Czestochowa on September 15, a mass involving between forty and a hundred thousand people, according to press estimates, openly their loyalty to the illegal trade union and did not attempt to hide the banners which they had brought in large numbers or to refrain from shout-
*No freedom without SolidarInternational Viewpoint 30 September 1985
SOUTH AFRICA viously has fostered ideological differwould indeed be
It entiation.
complex a social astonishing if so movement produced a monolithic