Walesa and Solidarity, Part I
Brian Trumbore
President/Editor, StocksandNews.com

A few weeks ago, America's largest labor union, the AFL-CIO, broke up when four groups within the organization, the Change to Win Coalition, split off from the parent that had been formed in 1955 with the merger of the two largest unions at that time, the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

So that got me thinking. 25 years ago, August 14, 1980, there was another significant labor event, though this one occurred in Gdansk, Poland. It was then that electrician Lech Walesa led a strike on the giant shipyards that eventually spread to 400,000 workers. Shortly thereafter, August 30, the Communist government in Poland relented and allowed free trade unions. The movement called Solidarity quickly grew to ten million members. The rest, of course, is history.

Walesa was the son of a carpenter, born in 1943 in the village of Popowo. After learning his trade, he participated in a 1970 revolt at the shipyards that was suppressed with deadly force. But by 1980, as a leading dissident, the time seemed right to make another move. Poland's government would eventually give into reality. The Kremlin was furious.

Following is the story of this time, courtesy of the Mitrokhin archives of secret KGB files, as published in 1999 in the form of the book "The Sword and the Shield" by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin.

Mitrokhin worked for almost 30 years in the foreign intelligence service of the KGB and in 1972 had been made responsible for moving the entire archives to new headquarters just outside Moscow. But then, unknown to his superiors, he spent over a decade making notes and transcripts of highly classified files, and at enormous personal risk he smuggled daily much of the information into his dacha where he hid it under the floor. In 1996, he defected to Britain. Initially dismissed by then President Boris Yeltsin, the world soon learned of the extraordinary history that he brought along with him.

For our purposes, the story begins on June 2, 1979, when more than a million Poles converged on the airport road, Warsaw's Victory Square and the Old City, where they welcomed the return of one of their own, Pope John Paul II. Over the next nine days at least ten million people came to see and hear him, while the other 25 million watched on television. "At the end of his visit, as the Pope bade farewell to his home city of Krakow, where, he said, 'every stone and brick is dear to me,' men and women wept uncontrollably in the streets. The contrast between the political bankruptcy of the Communist regime and the moral authority of the Catholic Church was plain for all to see." [Andrew & Mitrokhin]

Moscow was concerned that the Polish Politburo lacked the nerve to confront those that soon challenged its authority. In the summer of 1980, food shortages led to price rises and a wave of strikes gave birth to the Solidarity movement. Poland's interior ministry informed the KGB mission in Warsaw that it was on top of the matter and that the SB (Poland's security and intelligence service) would produce daily reports after infiltrating the strikers. Moscow seemed pleased as the Center (KGB headquarters) reported it had helped limit the scale of the movement by "eliminating" their printing presses. In addition, "Attempts by anti-Socialist forces to establish contacts with the artistic, scientific and cultural intelligentsia, in order to enlist their support for the demands of the strikers, were cut short."

But the reality was the strikers were successful in creating inter- factory committees and coordinating protests and, as Poland's SB admitted, intel "did not recognize the extent of the danger in time or the hidden discontent of the working class."

On August 24, Moscow received news that Poland's deputy prime minister, Jagielski, was negotiating with Walesa and the strike leaders. The next day, the Soviet Politburo set up a commission to monitor the crisis and propose solutions. On August 27, at the request of the Pope, Polish bishops approved a document that explicitly claimed "the right to independence both of organizations representing the workers and of organizations of self-government." Confident he had the backing of the Pope, Walesa now believed the government had to give in. That same day, members of the Polish Politburo met with the Soviet ambassador in Warsaw.

"We must take a step back in order not to fall into the abyss, and agree on the creation of self-governing trade unions. We have no other political means of normalizing the situation, and it is impossible to use force."

The Politburo sought to stage a tactical retreat, regroup, and prepare for a longer-term offensive so on August 30, 1980, it authorized the Gdansk Agreement which accepted "the formation of free trade unions as a genuine representation of the working class" and included the right to strike as well as agreeing to broadcast Mass every Sunday over the state radio. Lech Walesa, in signing the accord, was front and center on television as he spoke to the workers.

"We have fought, not for ourselves nor for our own interests, but for the entire country. We have fought for all of you. And now, with the same determination and solidarity that we showed on strike, we shall go back to work. As of tomorrow, the new life of our trade union begins. Let us take care that it remains independent and self-governing, working for us all and for the good of Poland. I proclaim that the strike is over."

With that he was carried out on the shoulders of the workers. But the crisis was far from over. The Gdansk Agreement represented the greatest potential threat to the Soviet Bloc since the Prague Spring of 1968. Brezhnev announced to the Politburo on October 29, 1980:

"Walesa is traveling from one end of the country to another, to town after town, and they honor him with tributes everywhere. Polish leaders keep their mouths shut and so does the press. Not even television is standing up to these anti-Socialist elements? Perhaps it really is necessary to introduce martial law."

Early in November, the long-time KGB director, Yuri Andropov, who would later succeed Brezhnev, summoned the new, hardline Polish interior minister, General Miroslaw Milewski, for talks in Moscow. Milewski told Andropov that a list of some 1,200 of the "most counter-revolutionary individuals" had been compiled; all of whom would be arrested if martial law were declared. Andropov urged Milewski to just go ahead and do it.

"Even if you left Wyzszynski [the Polish primate] and Walesa in peace, Wyzszynski and Walesa would not leave you in peace until either they had achieved their aim, or they had been actively crushed by the Party and the responsible part of the workers. If you wait passively?the situation slips out of your control. I saw how this happened in Hungary [in 1956]. There, the old leadership waited for everything to normalize itself, and when, at last, it was decided to act, it turned out that no one could be relied upon. There is every reason to fear that the same may happen in Poland also, if the most active and decisive measures are not now taken.

"This is a struggle for power. If Walesa and his fascist confederates came to power, they would start to put Communists in prison, to shoot them and subject them to every kind of persecution. In such an event, Party activists, Chekists [the SB] and military leaders would be most under threat.

"You say that some of your comrades cannot take on the responsibility of taking any aggressive measures against the counter-revolutionaries. But why are they not afraid of doing nothing, since this could lead to the victory of reaction? One must show the Communists?and the military comrades that it is not just a question of defending socialist achievements in Poland, but a question of protecting their own lives, that of their families, who would be subjected to terror by the reaction, if, God forbid, this came to pass.

"Sometimes our Polish comrades say that they cannot rely on the Party. I cannot believe this. Out of three million Party members, one can find 100,000 who would be ready to sacrifice themselves. Wyzszynski and Walesa have roped in the free trade union and are securing more and more new positions in various spheres in Poland. There are already the first signs that the counter-revolutionary infection is affecting the army.

"Comrade Brezhnev says that we must be ready for struggle both by peaceful means and by non-peaceful means."

We continue with the story next week.

Additional Source:

"Lech Walesa: The Road to Democracy," Rebecca Stefoff

Brian Trumbore

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