An Unwinnable Game

By James Kelly

Solidarity's protest fizzles, and Walesa is to be freed

To: General Wojciech Jaruzelski, Warsaw

It seems to me that the time has come to clear up certain issues and act toward a national agreement. Time was needed for many on both sides to understand what was possible and to what extent. I propose we meet and have a serious discussion of subjects of mutual interest. With good will we are bound to find a solution.

Corporal Lech Walesa Arlamowo, Nov. 8

The announcement came suddenly and without warning. At a hastily called press conference in Warsaw last Thursday, Government Spokesman Jerzy Urban read a routine message of condolence to the Soviet Union on the occasion of the death of President Leonid Brezhnev. Then, droning on in his habitual monotone, Urban proceeded to recite an astounding letter of conciliation to General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the leader of Poland's martial-law regime, from Lech Walesa, the jailed leader of the outlawed Solidarity union. The message had been written from Arlamowo, a government-owned hunting lodge about 200 miles southeast of Warsaw, where Walesa has been detained since May. When Urban came to the end of the note, he smiled slightly at the ironic signature of "Corporal," the rank held by the rebellious leader in the army reserves after serving in the military in the early '60s, but most of the correspondents in the room were too startled to laugh. Then came the real shocker: Urban announced that the burly, pipe-smoking electrician, the man who had come to symbolize the first independent trade union in the Communist world, only to see his hopes crushed by Jaruzelski's repressive regime, would be set free.

The stunning news came at the end of a week of big headlines. On Monday, Jaruzelski and Archbishop Jozef Glemp, the Primate of Poland, jointly announced that Pope John Paul II would visit his native land next June. Then, on Wednesday, a nationwide strike called by the underground leaders of Solidarity to mark the second anniversary of the union's legal registration fizzled, thanks to the extraordinary security measures taken by Warsaw. Even the announcement of Walesa's release was more of a testament to the success of martial law than to any lessening of repression. As Urban put it last week: "The person of Lech Walesa no longer poses a threat, and there is no need to keep him in internment."

Why Walesa wrote the letter, or exactly what he wants to discuss with Jaruzelski, remains a mystery. Throughout his detention he steadfastly refused to negotiate with the government, and last October Warsaw finally outlawed Solidarity completely. Once the letter was received last week, Lieut. General Czeslaw Kiszczak, the Minister of Internal Affairs, met with Walesa at Arlamowo. Urban said the meeting showed that the union leader's attitude had changed, but refused to give any details of the talks.

Urban, however, did insist that the government had set no conditions for Walesa's release. He denied that the Catholic Church had played any role in brokering the decision and asserted that Walesa would be free to travel as he pleased. Urban cryptically dismissed Walesa's request to confer with Jaruzelski. Said he: "There are many Polish citizens who wish to meet with General Jaruzelski." In an interview taped for broadcast on Polish television Sunday, however, Walesa reiterated his desire for talks, but not for an agreement "with me on my knees."

The news of Walesa's impending release quickly spread through the streets of Polish cities. The imprisoned leader's wife Danuta, who had last visited her husband Oct. 4, was not officially informed. She reportedly received the news from friends. "I'm full of joy and fear!" she exclaimed, explaining that she was afraid of "all the crowds of people who are going to want to see him."

Friends and neighbors began gathering outside Walesa's apartment house in Gdansk on Friday evening, and by late Saturday afternoon the crowd of well-wishers had swollen to 500. Many of them clutched flowers, while the drab, gray building was festooned with makeshift Solidarity banners and flags. Upstairs in the family's second-floor flat waited Danuta and her seven children; every so often, she parted the curtains and glanced at the street below. But there was no sign of Walesa. Instead, there were only government reports that he was on his way from Arlamowo.

It is highly unlikely that Warsaw had freed Walesa in order to dampen potential protests by workers seeking to take advantage of the uncertainty surrounding the Kremlin transition. Instead, Walesa's release appeared to be a conciliatory move on the part of the government in the aftermath of the Glemp-Jaruzelski meeting. After Solidarity's failure to spur strikes on Wednesday, Jaruzelski and Kiszczak paid a surprise visit to the parents of Bogdan Wlosik, "a young steelworker killed in last month's demonstrations in Nowa Huta, an industrial suburb of Cracow. Then, on Saturday, it was announced on Polish television that the Sejm (parliament) would convene a special session on Dec. 13, the first anniversary of the imposition of military rule. It is widely assumed that the body will vote to repeal martial law and put in its place a law granting the government broad powers. Jaruzelski obviously feels strong enough to make such gestures, which he hopes will persuade the West to lift sanctions that are choking off the country's economic life.

Warsaw used the announcement of the Pope's visit next year to good effect as well. John Paul II, who last went to Poland in June 1979, had been scheduled to go to his homeland last August, but the government postponed the trip for fear that the Pontiffs presence would turn the large crowds into rallies for Solidarity. The timing of last week's notice, released immediately after a two-hour meeting between Archbishop Glemp and Jaruzelski, was meant to help hold demonstrations to a minimum. Indeed, Warsaw tried to suggest that the church was working hand in hand with the government by issuing a declaration after the meeting that the two men "had reviewed the current situation and voiced their joint concern for the preservation and strengthening of peace, social order and honest work."

Behind that campaign was Jaruzelski's determination not to let Wednesday spin out of control. Solidarity's underground leadership had called for an eight-hour strike in which workers would report to their jobs but do no labor. Afterward, the strikers and others would take to the streets and demonstrate.

The Solidarity leaders, however, badly misread the membership's mood. Though many workers sympathized with the strike call, most of them ignored it. "It was too much to ask of the workers," said a former union leader who was recently released from internment. "Without a specific strategy that can succeed, it is unfair to tell workers to risk their jobs."

The committee also underestimated the government's ability to display its fist. On the day before the strike, the authorities warned that they would use "all necessary means to uphold law, order and uninterrupted work." Television and newspapers ridiculed Solidarity's leaders, and played up the closing down of underground printing plants and arrests of leaflet distributors. The police summoned scores of onetime Solidarity activists for interrogations, while thousands of military reservists and potential troublemakers were suddenly called to active duty.

On the day of the strike, there were only scattered protests. Some of the sharpest clashes took place in Nowa Huta. Thousands of helmeted militiamen from ZOMO, the paramilitary police force, sat in trucks, manned huge water cannons or peered out of armored personnel carriers as the first shift of 7,000 workers arrived at the Lenin steel mill at 6 a.m. Inside the sprawling plant, workers were warned that strikers would be fired and the rest denied bonuses amounting to as much as four months' wages. When the end of the shift came at 2 p.m., most of the workers did not even gather to demonstrate but simply straggled home. Downtown, meanwhile, soldiers drove up and down boulevards dispersing onlookers with tear gas, concussion grenades and flares. A band of about 100 men built barricades in the central square and threw rocks at the police. As a misty darkness fell over the city, traffic was halted and street lights were turned off. By midnight, ZOMO patrols had regained control of the streets.

Similar scenes were played out in the streets of Cracow, Wroclaw and Warsaw. In the capital, knots of people gathered in the Old Town section of the city and Dzierzynski Square, hurling rocks from a tramline. Another group assembled at the courthouse, but was quickly broken up by brigades of ZOMO police firing tear gas. By 9 p.m. the streets were quiet again. Throughout the country, more than 800 people were arrested, and 17 militiamen and ten workers were injured.

The failure of last week's strike hardly means that the spirit of the Polish people is broken. Rather, it indicates that most Poles, in the face of the overwhelming strength of the regime, have rejected such protests as worthless and are now searching for other means to express their discontent. "There is an increasing awareness that the government has all the cards," said a Catholic intellectual in Cracow. "We cannot beat them without rethinking our tactics." Said a former Warsaw journalist: "We should close this chapter and prepare something else. This is a game we cannot win." As the people consider a new way to oppose the regime, the onetime captain in the old game, Lech Walesa, must consider what role he will play.

--By James Kelly

Reported by Gregory H. Wierzynski/Warsaw

With reporting by Gregory H. Wierzynski

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