Poland полностью

The early 1970s had seen an exponential increase in the numbers of predominantly young Poles travelling to western Europe and the United States in order to learn a language and earn enough money to buy a car or a flat on their return. Members of the post-war emigration and their children began visiting Poland in similarly growing numbers. This great movement of people broke down the barriers built up by decades of isolation, and opened permanent channels of communication. Polish thought and culture evolved in a semaphoric concert of individuals scattered throughout the world, transmitted through émigré journals and publishing houses of which the Paris monthly Kultura and the imprint Instytut Literacki were the most distinguished. These contacts were to prove of vital importance over the next years.

In the summer of 1975 the conference on Security and Co operation in Europe meeting at Helsinki reached a number of agreements which were ostensibly a triumph for Soviet diplomacy. The division of Europe into a Soviet and a Western sphere of interest was tacitly recognised and accepted by both sides, which amounted to a betrayal by the West of all the nations under Soviet domination. But the third basket of agreements extended human rights to the citizens of all thirty-five signatory states, and obligated those states to respect them. This would play a part in the Soviet Union’s undoing.

There had been plenty of dissident activity since 1968, and radical discussion involved large numbers of people, both at personal level and in samizdat or émigré publications smuggled into Poland. By the middle of the 1970s political programmes were beginning to take shape. But it was not until after Helsinki that a new sense of strategy emerged.

The first sign of this was the formation of the Workers’ Defence Committee (KOR) in September 1976 by a group which included former AK officers, lawyers, writers and young dissidents. This provided workers with legal advice, sent observers to their trials, and informed the public on their treatment through its Information Bulletin. It also collected money to help pay fines and to assist their families. The committee gradually extended its activities to cover all cases of human rights violations, and mercilessly heckled the authorities on points of law. As it was entirely open, invoking the relevant clauses of the Helsinki agreements, the authorities could not simply silence it by arresting its members and banning it. This did not stop them from harassing active supporters—with searches of their homes, confiscations of property, dismissal from work or expulsion from university, short detention on technical grounds and severe beatings by supposed hooligans, and, occasionally, murder. But all of this was meticulously documented and reported to the Helsinki monitoring organs and to the world. KOR was joined in March 1977 by the Movement for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights (ROPCiO), and in May by a Students’ Solidarity Committee in Kraków, both of which helped to collate the evidence against the Polish authorities and their doings.

Periodicals of every kind and underground presses began pouring forth a torrent of literature. In the same year a Flying University began operating in Warsaw, and discussion clubs burgeoned. The police arrested individuals, raided premises and confiscated materials, but the dissidents were well organised and protected by the sympathy and cooperation of the public. They were also given tacit support and facilities by the Church, which played an active part in defending human rights and helping sacked workers.

Gierek could ill-afford to crack down. He had official talks with the Primate, Cardinal Wyszyński, in 1976; in 1977 he visited France, Italy and India, and he hosted Jimmy Carter, Willy Brandt, King Baudouin of Belgium, Helmut Schmidt and the Shah of Iran in Warsaw. He needed to appear statesmanlike in order to stave off economic nemesis. The world recession was hurting the overstretched and incompetently managed Polish economy. The terminal condition of Polish industry spelt chaos, the desperate condition of Polish agriculture threatened crisis. The election, on 16 October 1978, of the Cardinal Archbishop of Kraków Karol Wojtyla to the Holy See meant that the crisis could, when it came, no longer be confined.

TWENTY-THREE

Papal Power

To the Poles the election of Pope John Paul II was not only a solace in their misery, as well as a great national honour, it was also the final breach in the wall behind which they had been kept since 1945. The pontiff’s visit to his homeland in June 1979 not only reaffirmed their belief in their spiritual and cultural values, it was a catalyst that set in motion a process that would not cease until 1989.