To many observers it now seems that over the last year or so Poland has been on the move again, if not so dramatically as in 1980. The famous “roundtable” around which, for years, it was hoped that the leaders of the Communist regime and the representatives of Solidarity might one day sit and negotiate has actually been convened, and a number of meetings have indeed been held. Yet notwithstanding this initial movement, and the possibility that opposition forces may be brought into the parliament, the atmosphere in Poland today is not one of expectancy and vigor but rather of lassitude, indecision, and defeat—strangely so, since the objective situation would seem in many ways more favorable than in 1980-81. At that time, nothing impeded a Soviet invasion of Poland and, as we now know, Brezhnev was prepared to undertake one if it came to that. Today, for Gorbachev, an invasion of Poland would mean forfeiting the entire geopolitical hand on which he has staked the survival of his regime; nor is it certain that in the Soviet Union’s tattered condition he would even be able to muster the material means for an invasion.
In any case, the Poles have a considerable margin of safety to play with, and they could go a great deal farther than they did in 1980 without incurring the slightest risk. But no one in a position of responsibility has taken it upon himself to advance the sorts of clear, radical demands that other peoples trapped in the Soviet embrace, like the less numerous and more fragmented Armenians and Estonians, have not hesitated to put forward. Mobilized, the forty million Poles with their “critical mass” could totter the Soviet empire; but Poland is not mobilized. Rather, it gives the impression today of a prisoner whose cell has been unbolted but who nevertheless remains transfixed and all but immovable within.
To appreciate the evident failure of the Poles to capitalize fully on their opportunity it is necessary to review the principal actors in this aborted drama.
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First among them is the present Pope. The émigré Soviet historian Alexander Zinoviev has recently remarked that one word from this Pope is all it would have taken to spark a revolution in Poland. An audacious statement; but the fact is that the word was not, and probably could not be, forthcoming.
Several elements in John Paul II’s world view account for his silence. One is the general notion, stated frequently by the Pontiff, of an essential symmetry between capitalism and socialism, two systems perceived by him as equally if somewhat differently bad, and with regard to which he believes the Church must preserve an equivalent distance.
Another factor, characteristic not just of the Pope but of a large segment of the Roman Catholic Church, is a certain disdain for the political; this flows in part out of the perfectly correct belief that the Church itself does not and cannot constitute a political party, but in even greater part out of the feeling—very appropriate to our time—that political conflict is in itself evil, contrary to the ideals of charity and universal good will toward all, whether friend or foe. (In fact, to have enemies at all is regarded as a moral flaw in this vision.)
Finally, accepting the notion of a world divided between socialism and capitalism (itself, by the way, a socialist idea); declining to bless wholeheartedly either the one or the other; and rejecting political conflict, the Church has espoused instead an apolitical vision of a world governed by the “social doctrine” of Christianity, which it sees as complementing the secular doctrine of human rights. Practically speaking, the Church’s role is thus confined to exhorting humanity to observe certain prepolitical (or, as it likes to think, suprapolitical) relations. Fidelity to this role would certainly prevent the Polish Pope from speaking that word to his fellow Poles which, according to Zinoviev, would have led on to liberation.
The second major actor in the Polish drama is the Polish Church. This Church assuredly shares the quietistic view of the Pontiff, but in any case would have been persuaded of the merits of such a stance by the evidence of its own material and social condition. As an ecclesiastical body the Church in Poland enjoys, by any standard, an extraordinary prosperity: ordained clergy are extremely numerous, there is an abundance of vocations, the seminaries are full of students, Catholicism basks in an atmosphere of universal respect and massive popular observance. A Polish bishop is shown a degree of reverence and popular affection, and enjoys a degree of relative comfort, unknown to his counterparts in Western Europe. The Church is also a principal font of “influence” in society. It would take exceptional qualities of mind and spirit were its leaders not to conclude that, when all is said and done, the political regime in place is really not so bad. And thus the religious leaders of Poland have yielded to the quite understandable impulse of identifying what is good for the Church with what is good for the country, and what is good for the ecclesiastical corps with what is good for the Church.
The third actor is the leadership of Solidarity. This is a group of diverse origins. Some come out of the intellectual world; their education is Catholic, or else Communist and leftist, in which case they have traversed a well-worn route of intellectual dissidence. Others are from a worker background, but have been decisively formed by their contact with the intellectuals. Lech Walesa, the nominal head of Solidarity, is a worker of strong personal temperament who has never made even a pretense of freeing himself from his mentors, whether lay or clerical. These men, themselves, have rapidly become well known, and not just in Poland but around the world; indeed, their celebrity in foreign parts has helped to cement their status at home, perhaps not least in their own eyes. Yet they have been prevented, on the one hand by the totalitarian system, on the other hand by their own political line, from organizing and effectively directing the mass movement which supports them. All that remains to them is to pose as trustworthy intermediaries, interlocutors between the Polish people and the Polish regime.
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The fourth actor is the Communist party. One of the strangest aspects of the entire Polish drama is that the significance of this party has been denied or downplayed by its opposition. In 1980, when Solidarity was at its strongest, its leaders used to say that the Communist party had ceased to exist, that no one believed in Communism any longer; the second proposition was considered, wrongly, proof of the first. In fact, the Polish Communist party, though feebler by a million members, remained even then a party of two million, and was clever enough to prepare meticulously and, by means of the home army, execute a counteroffensive that succeeded to perfection on December 13, 1981. To be sure, Solidarity’s leaders could declare that it was no longer the party but the militia that held power—a militia whose patriotism, incidentally, they continued to vouch for—but to anyone with eyes to see it was obvious that the militia was doing the work of the party.
Since then this same party has run the country the more easily because it is the only body in Poland with a policy. And the policy in question has been classically Leninist: to divide, to discredit the enemy, to destroy his resources—that is to say, the material, economic, intellectual, and social bases that permit him to resist. A pity that the enemy is all of Poland, and that all Poland must be destroyed; but there will always be time, once the obstacles have been removed, to “construct socialism” again.
The party was most adroit in implementing this policy. It largely shucked the outmoded and counterproductive paraphernalia of Stalinism, the banners and bombast, the mass arrests and the mass obfuscations. But the abandonment of Leninist rhetoric, while leading many to conclude that the party no longer believed in the thing itself, simply enabled it all the better to conduct a Leninist policy, which it now justified in terms of a kind of pseudo-realpolitik.
There were two principal arguments. First: “If we don’t do the dirty work ourselves, the Soviets will come and do it for us.” In this way the Polish party could represent itself as the people’s protector, ready to sacrifice its own self-respect and even to repress its spontaneous feelings in order to shield the homeland from greater misfortune. Second: “There can be no question of political reform as long as the Polish economy is in crisis. No matter what kind of government Poland has or will have, the first priority will be to build a decent prosperity. Why, then, thrust aside the Communist party, just when we need the cooperation of every political and social element in the country? Ideology aside, anyone who refuses to cooperate in this task, by fomenting strikes or otherwise contributing to lowered productivity, is no patriot.”
The Communist party thus became the voice of economic reason, of the common welfare, even of moral virtue. And in this way, it created the circumstances that allowed it to remain in power (which is, after all, the alpha and omega of Communist activity). On the ideological level the strategy entailed dissembling the party’s purposes by cloaking them in natural and universal, or rather pseudo-natural and pseudo-universal, language: pseudo, because the words were dictated not by nature and normal human desires but by political calculus. In accordance with its political objectives, and with an eye to the sectors of society it was seeking to influence, the party decided what themes to press and the terms—humanistic, Christian, patriotic, technocratic—in which to press them. Meanwhile, on the practical level, the strategy entailed an effort to remove the party’s policy, not to mention the struggle for power itself, from the realm of permissible debate, and to confine discussion to a single, narrowly marked-off area—namely, the economy.
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So much for the strategy followed by the party since 1980. What about the strategy followed by the opposition? It appears, sadly, to have glided along on tracks laid down for it by the party.
The idea behind the opposition’s strategy was to make a revolution in Poland without saying so, and unbeknownst to the Communist party. That is, opposition forces aimed at carving out from the larger totalitarian sphere a space within which civil society might reconstitute itself and gain a certain autonomy. By taking an active role in the economy and, especially, the culture, the opposition hoped little by little to push the Communist party into a corner where it could remain formally in control but with its power progressively devoid of substance.
Among the other elements in the Polish drama, the Roman Catholic Church in particular found that this strategy suited it very well. The opposition’s almost fetishistic invocation of the word “dialogue” was another way of expressing the Church’s own conscious disavowal of political conflict, or of the thought that there might be an enemy and that he might have to be vanquished.
At an earlier historical moment, the late Cardinal Wyszinski solemnly declared (at the Second Vatican Council in 1962) that for Christians there could be no question of placing trust in the “Dialectical-Materialist State”; it was vain, he said, to conclude agreements with such a state because in principle it did not hold itself bound to respect them. In so saying, the Polish prelate showed a profound and essential understanding of Communist politics; however numerous and however grave were the compromises he himself judged it wise to strike with the Dialectical-Materialist State, this understanding inspired confidence and reflected credit on his policy.
His successor, Cardinal Glemp, has not shown a similar understanding. In the Moscow News (November 6, 1988), he expressed himself as follows:
Our Church is an integral part of Polish society, and thus ardently desires to help the homeland during this difficult period. Ecclesiastic officials, to the best of their abilities, wish to contribute to the solution of our domestic problems. For the Church this means in the first place prayer, which allows us to see with serenity the perspectives, the correct paths, to follow. The Church has accumulated a rich heritage of experience in the context of different social systems. . . . The new prime minister has courageously taken on the hardest challenges. We know how difficult the present situation is, and we must not complicate the labor of government. To the contrary, we wish to participate in creating conditions that will allow the country to make progress. The Church will not assume an active role in state policy, but lay Catholics of proven competence and expertise can lend their support to the common task.
From this text it emerges that the Church declines to hold the Communist party responsible for the material and moral ruination of the country; that, to the contrary, by giving credit to the party for its efforts “to resolve domestic problems,” the Church not only confers legitimacy upon it but also endows it with a positive patriotic mission; and that in authorizing lay Catholics to play a role only of junior collaborators, the Church acknowledges the right of the Communist party to lead Poland and to act as the guardian of the common good.
Of course, these propositions do not express the unanimous view of the Church, and perhaps not even the complete view of the Cardinal. Yet for all that, the most visible function of the Church does consist today in eschewing the concrete political struggle in favor of piety and symbolism. Memorial services, floral crosses, novenas, pilgrimages, masses without number give the community of the faithful a feeling of activity—ersatz activity.
Far be it from anyone to deny the importance and efficacy of prayer and ritual in their proper place. But when they substitute for action where action is called for, religion can too easily become (in the notorious words of Marx) “the moan of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
The Dialectical-Materialist State, for its part, has not failed to exploit this situation by indulging the Polish Church in the Church’s own inclination. Local parish houses sprout up like mushrooms, more and more hours are devoted to religious instruction, and the clergy (despite the murder of Father Jerzy Popieluszko in 1984 and a few unfortunate incidents since then) enjoys a kind of immunity and all sorts of material benefits in a country where these are rare. But the extraordinary expansion of the Church’s clerical structures is not a sign of good health. “Let us not forget,” writes Cardinal Glemp, “that the Church has been at man’s side for two thousand years.” It is likely, however, that many Poles do not feel, or feel less and less, that the Church is on their side, and avowals like this one may even lead some to conclude that it is on the “other” side. The ecclesiastical bubble in Poland could abruptly burst; in the history of the Church it is not unheard of for moments of apparent triumph to be followed by spiritual debacles.
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And Solidarity? In 1980 the Polish opposition took the form of giant strikes more or less orchestrated by Solidarity. In essence these strikes were a movement of national liberation. But Solidarity strove mightily to disguise the fact, to present a political movement as a social movement. Above all, it did not contest the socialist nature of the regime, but claimed only to be opposing the “real existing socialism” of Gierek (or, later, Kania) in the name of true socialism, authentic socialism. Significantly, when Solidarity first requested support in France, it approached the branch of French labor that was the most deeply imbued with the classic ideals of revolutionary utopianism. And in every Western country to which it appealed, Solidarity was careful to position itself on the Left.
In the view of Solidarity, nothing would more deeply embarrass a regime that pretended to derive its legitimacy from the working class than to have the working class turn against it. Through the prestige of the socialist idea—the sanctity of the struggle for union rights, the glorious ideal of “worker management”—Solidarity would wrest from a stymied Communist government that longed-for space in which all of society might in the end draw a breath of fresh air.
But there were two problems here. First, a huge popular movement was now, voluntarily, speaking the language and invoking the rhetoric which for forty years an alien regime had been trying, in vain, to inculcate by force. To challenge a socialist workers’ state in the name of socialism and of the working class was inevitably (though of course unintentionally) to reinforce rather than to undermine the ideological foundations of the regime.
Second, Solidarity’s platform introduced a fatal confusion, both abroad and at home. Abroad, public opinion came to regard the Polish strikes in the familiar categories of labor unrest in the West. To exaggerate slightly, the strikes of shipyard workers in Gdansk seemed to many people no different in kind from job actions by air-traffic controllers in the United States. Such a construal of what was happening in Poland as a “normal” economic phenomenon pleased Western diplomats, who were thereby relieved of the distressing onus of having to take a position on a movement of national liberation.
But the confusion was most pernicious within Poland itself. For Poles were caught in a dilemma. They wanted freedom and independence, but their leaders refused to speak of these things other than by allusion. Instead, they persisted in demanding a “dialogue” with the authorities that was aimed at achieving not political pluralism but only union recognition. The limits imposed on itself by Solidarity were thus precisely those the government sought to impose on it. Having crippled one of its own hands at a moment when both were already tied behind its back, Solidarity was doomed to a struggle that could only strengthen the very government it was trying to force into surrender.
A final consequence was that the leaders of Solidarity, having deprived themselves of the sorts of clear statements of direction that could be understood by all, impeded their own recruitment efforts and paralyzed their attempts at organization for the future. How were young people, who knew at bottom what they wanted, supposed to embark upon a true political apprenticeship, upon true political combat, when they were being directed instead to take instruction in union activity and forms of cultural protest and styles of religious processions? Quickly enough the original Solidarity team, decimated by repression, was made aware of its isolation and of the tragic lack of a successor generation.
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Eight years have passed. Despite everything that has happened in the Communist world, despite the faint signs of movement in Poland itself, the political situation has not really evolved. Abroad, people have gotten accustomed to the idea that the Polish question should be and is being handled jointly by the U.S. State Department, the Vatican, and the Soviet ambassador in Warsaw. At home, Poland is immersed in a condition of putrefaction which, because it beggars the imagination, is protected by the incapacity of the Western mind to imagine it. And in the ranks of the opposition, again notwithstanding the efforts at “dialogue” with the authorities, disquieting signs of defeat have become manifest. I will mention only two or three.
There is, to begin with, a tendency to take refuge in “culture.” This, indeed, is a syndrome observable throughout the Soviet bloc, but it is particularly acute in Poland. Long suffocated by censorship, by lack of information, by a ban on travel, by state control of the written and spoken word, the Polish intelligentsia today speaks, reads, writes, and publishes at will, or almost at will, and travels freely within the limits of its financial means. This is an immense change, and it has had the effect of relieving an immense pressure. But the government perceived, correctly, that in granting these concessions it would make Polish intellectuals happy enough to be diverted from their drive to forge organic connections with a restive populace. Literary life in Poland (as in other “peoples’ democracies”) counts for more, and is conducted with greater intensity, than in the West; this much is lost for politics.
Another disturbing sign is the extent of the hopes invested by Poles in Gorbachev and perestroika. It must surely betoken serious internal disarray, not to mention a willful loss of political memory, for leaders of the opposition, and not the least important among them, to have begun to dream of salvation coming to Poland from that quarter.
Western aid, both public and private, also contributes to the general debility. The Polish external debt stands today at $40 billion, and there is no question of its being repaid. But precisely for that reason, lending by Western banks, industries, and governments has fallen off. One of the forms of blackmail practiced by the Polish government on the Polish population now goes like this: “Work hard, accept and implement the economic reforms, and then the manna of Western credits may return.” The appeal cannot but further subvert a people’s already weakened will to resist.
Since 1980, in addition to large-scale public aid to the regime, an endless convoy chartered by various private Western organizations has descended on Poland, stopping in local parishes to disgorge provisions, medicines, and other necessities that are so cruelly absent there. The exercise has had a most beneficial impact on the moral horizons of the suppliers, many of whom, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, have discovered socialist reality for the first time. But on Polish morale the effect has been less healthy.
Certainly it is comforting for people to know that they have not been forgotten. But this aid brings with it, in classic fashion, all the complications of charity, depressing the spirit of self-reliance and deflecting attention from the need for political struggle. It also inflates the importance of local intermediaries and of those who distribute these precious goods, which is to say most frequently churchmen. The latter, grandly dispensing spiritual welfare with one hand, material welfare with the other, may have developed in turn a rather softened view of the extent of the Polish tragedy.
But it is to Lech Walesa that we can turn for the best description of the political impasse in which his movement is now essentially locked. On a visit to Paris this past December, he paid lavish tribute to Gorbachev’s perestroika. In an interview with Le Monde, he ventured that Solidarity was approaching victory, then added:
But let’s be clear, victory does not mean the overthrow of this Communist party or of this government, but a different sharing of existing structures. The greatest error would have been to contemplate the seizure of power. That, that was forbidden us. We need state power to proceed toward reform.
Even, he was asked, this particular state power?
We don’t like them, we are angry with them, but they are indispensable. There is not yet a Poland in which people art organized who could seriously think of governing. There are individuals, but on a countrywide scale that is insufficient. There’s a long way to go before the person with the best program is able to run the country.
Finally, Walesa stated that he was afraid of anarchy and of a thirst for vengeance among the disorganized and desperate young.
So the head of Solidarity appears to have ruled out not only victory but even the fight for victory. Content with asking for more “dialogue,” he now puts himself forward as a counselor, as a man of influence. He fully acknowledges that the present government is necessary, as much to promote “reform” as to forestall any inclination the Polish people might entertain to avenge forty years of ruin and oppression. He notes the frailty of the political environment in Poland, though not the fact that his strategy has inescapably helped to enfeeble it. He discreetly proposes to be of service.
In all, it would seem that from the viewpoint of the government of Poland, if Walesa did not exist it would have been necessary to invent him. In the candid and telling words of one maverick delegate to the recent talks, “The government is looking for a partner willing to share responsibility for unpleasant measures that are necessary to improve the economy. They want in Solidarity a kind of fireman specializing in preserving social peace.” In any event, that government today appears prepared to support Walesa in good Leninist fashion, as the rope supports the hanged man.
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What is to be done? What can be done? It is not for someone sitting in Western comfort, far from the theater of events, to propose a specific line of conduct. And nothing, certainly, could be less helpful—not to say downright stupid or even criminal—than to advise the Poles simply to revolt. The Poles know all too well what the price of open insurrection is likely to be; that both the Church and Solidarity wish to avoid paying that price is something we cannot but approve wholly. The question, though, is what might be done without running an unacceptable risk, or by running the least risk compatible with the hoped-for gain. Here, the following very general observations may be of use.
- The Communist system has entered upon a general crisis. Its center, the USSR, is in need of a respite—to import Western technology and credit, to modernize the military, to shore up the position of the party, and so forth. During this period the Soviet Union needs the European “peoples’ democracies” to remain quiet, and particularly Poland, the weak link in the chain. That being so, however, it seems to me that the function of Solidarity and the Church should not be one of helping the Soviet Union to navigate safely through the difficult passage before it. They do not have to stand surety for Gorbachev’s worldwide campaign of blandishment and extortion.
- It would be desirable if the Polish opposition would state clearly its objectives: freedom and independence. It should denounce Communism as such, the illegitimacy of a government that does not derive from the consent of the governed; and it should demand free elections. Other national groupings in the Communist orbit have done as much, and at greater peril. One frequently hears Poles saying, “Of course we want freedom and independence. Everyone hates the regime. But what is the point of proclaiming it? Words don’t matter, what matters is concrete action, daily struggle, victory by small steps.” Unfortunately, the small steps are leading not to victory but to cooptation, and what goes without saying would go still better with the saying. In the present situation, true actions are true words, words which might at last break down the tower of lies that is the Communist regime. As experience has shown, speaking words of truth carries a finite risk. That is why the Communist party fears them so, and does everything to prevent them being said, or twists them at the last moment even as they hang on the lips of the person audacious enough to think but not to voice them.
- Only words such as these have a hope of reaching and galvanizing the Polish people. For contrary to the Marxist vision, so curiously resurrected by Solidarity, national emancipation is brought about not by the leading actions of the proletariat but by an entire society, guided by its natural leaders and elites (who of course may derive from working-class origins) and mobilized around a limited, clear platform: freedom and independence.
- Political fights are never won by those who decline to enter them. In the face of an adversary as formidable as the Polish Communist party, allied with and backed by Soviet power; in the face of an adversary for whom political struggle is both raison d’être and the only mode of existence, to refuse to engage in politics, to hide behind symbols and artful dodges, is to concede defeat in advance.
During his stay in Paris, Walesa expressed disillusionment with European society; it seemed to him debilitated, drowsy with comfort. To be sure: but poverty and oppression and the all-pervasive lie debilitate and deaden, too; and besides, Poland is a European country. What is needed to rouse it is political combat, by which (to repeat) I hardly mean an insurrection undertaken romantically, without any hope of success, but quite the opposite: the prudent, astute, bold exploitation of already existing opportunity.
How best to take advantage of Soviet disarray; how to win the active support of Western Europe and the United States; what links to forge with the Baltic countries and with the Ukraine; how to educate the future leaders of the nation—these, it seems to me, are the questions that a Marshal Pilsudski would be asking today. They are questions his would-be heirs should be asking as well, before the legacy of Polish independence sinks forever into emptiness, inaction, and impotence.
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