An Epochal Shift

By Marguerite Johnson

For months, Poland's Communist Party had been losing its grip on power. Beset by strikes, debt ridden, repudiated by an overwhelming majority of voters in elections in June, the regime was drained of the ability to govern. After more than 40 years in power, the old order staggered toward its demise. And yet the alternative seemed inconceivable. Never in Europe's postwar history had a Communist government handed authority over to a non-Communist opposition.

Suddenly last week, the inconceivable happened. After a spate of parliamentary maneuvering by the Solidarity trade-union movement, President Wojciech Jaruzelski, who smashed Solidarity in 1981 and interned its leader, Lech Walesa, along with more than 6,000 other members, was forced to turn to his foes to form a government. Jaruzelski asked Tadeusz Mazowiecki, 62, a Solidarity lawyer and journalist, to become the first non-Communist Prime Minister in the Soviet bloc since 1948 and to head up a ruling coalition.

At week's end Walesa and Mazomet in Gdansk to plan their next steps. At the same time, the Central Committee of the Communist Party, officially known as the Polish United Workers' Party, convened in Warsaw to discuss Jaruzelski's move. Poland's official news agency, P.A.P., reported that the President will send the Prime Minister's name to the Sejm, or lower house of parliament, early this week for ratification.

Although Mazowiecki's appointment opened a new chapter in Polish history, the Communists still retained formidable power. Even before Mazowiecki was tapped by the President, Solidarity told the Communists they would continue to hold the key Defense and Interior Ministry -- and perhaps the Foreign Ministry -- portfolios in any new government, and Walesa assured Moscow that Poland would remain a member of the Warsaw Pact. The Communists also retained their monopoly on positions within the bloated bureaucracy.

Nonetheless, last week's seismic developments in Poland reverberated from Moscow to Washington and beyond. The Kremlin said Jaruzelski's decision was Poland's business, but the success -- or failure -- of a government led by a & non-Communist in Warsaw is bound to have an impact on Mikhail Gorbachev's political reforms in the Soviet Union. The West applauded carefully, wary that too hearty a response might be considered meddling that could unbalance the delicate experiment. "We would encourage a non-Communist government in the process of pluralism, of course," said presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater. But George Bush "would not want to do anything or say anything to upset the applecart."

In the past, said Adrian Hyde-Price of London's Royal Institute of International Affairs, "the Soviets would have invaded by now." This time, most Western analysts are convinced, Moscow will allow Poland to try a pluralistic approach -- as long as the new, Solidarity-led government honors its pledge not to leave the Warsaw Pact. "As long as Gorbachev is in power, there will be no direct interference," predicted Hartmut Jaeckel, a Polish specialist at the Free University of Berlin.

Above all, the events were a remarkable victory for Walesa and for Solidarity, only four months ago a banned organization. The daring and imagination that led to the dramatic developments came largely from Walesa, who shrewdly seized an opportunity to precipitate the change in government by wooing away the Communists' junior parliamentary partners. Walesa then wisely refrained from seeking the Prime Minister's job himself, preferring to work behind the scenes and perhaps eventually make a bid for the presidency.

The turning point came in June, when Solidarity won an overwhelming victory in Poland's most open elections in four decades. The trade-union movement took all 161 seats it was allowed to contest in the Sejm, and 99 of the 100 seats in the Senate. Even so, the Communist Party and its allies, principally the United Peasants' Party and the Democratic Party, retained 299 seats in the 460-member Sejm through a reserved list.

But just as the Communists misjudged their standing with the electorate, they misjudged their allies. The United Peasants and the Democrats, both of which aligned with the Communists after World War II, began pondering their own future in light of Solidarity's sweep. Some of their Deputies began arguing for a break with the regime, to build a political base independent of the Communists in time for the next elections. On July 19 the National Assembly elected Jaruzelski as President, but only with the help of seven senior Solidarity parliamentarians. Eleven Deputies from the Communist alliance voted against him.

Six days later, Walesa met with Jaruzelski and proposed that Solidarity form a government. The new President said no. Instead he invited Solidarity to join a grand coalition government headed by the Communists. Walesa refused. Soon thereafter Jaruzelski stepped down as Communist Party leader in favor of Mieczyslaw Rakowski. The President asked Czeslaw Kiszczak, who has been Interior Minister since 1981, to form a new government. By Aug. 7, Kiszczak had still been unable to do so, and Walesa once again called for a Solidarity- led government. This time he pitched his appeal directly to the United Peasants and the Democrats.

By then the public's tolerance for political infighting was wearing thin. At the same time, a government economic-reform plan had taken effect, causing food prices to shoot up dramatically. Solidarity leaders recognized that their movement would suffer if it stood by while the economy spiraled out of control.

The first real crack in the Communist facade appeared early last week when Kiszczak announced that he was handing over the task of forming a government to Roman Malinowski, president of the Peasants' Party. Jaruzelski never asked Malinowski to form a government; perhaps he calculated that Malinowski would have been unacceptable to Solidarity because of his association with the 1981 martial-law crackdown.

With Kiszczak preparing to bow out, the Solidarity leadership circulated a statement to Peasants' and Democratic Deputies calling on them to join in "a government of national responsibility under the leadership of Lech Walesa." That same night Solidarity legislators and members of the two junior partners in the Communist alliance met. Said Walesa: "I want to help the reform wings of the Peasants' Party and the Democratic Party to get into government and answer the call of the times."

Walesa's appeal won the day. The Deputies approved a resolution calling for a Solidarity-led government under Walesa's leadership. The new alliance, with a total of 264 seats in the Sejm, would thus have a majority over the Communists' 173. The next day Walesa, Malinowski and Democratic Party leader Jerzy Jozwiak called at Warsaw's Belvedere Palace, now the presidential residence. After Kiszczak presented his resignation to Jaruzelski, the three party leaders talked with the President for two hours.

Solidarity leaders said afterward that Jaruzelski had accepted "in principle" their offer to form a government. The coalition proposed three Solidarity candidates: Mazowiecki, Bronislaw Geremek, the movement's parliamentary leader, and Jacek Kuron, a senior adviser. It soon became clear that Mazowiecki was Jaruzelski's choice. Said the Prime Minister-designate as he rushed from one meeting to another: "The most difficult task will be to make people think that ((life)) can be better -- even though it cannot be better immediately."

That will be a tall order. Warsaw owes more than $39 billion to the West and 6 billion rubles to Soviet bloc countries. Interest payments alone amount to $3.5 billion annually. Inflation is running at more than 150% and will probably top 200% by year's end. Food supplies are sporadic at best. This month more strikes, some backed by Solidarity, have further damaged the economy.

Although virtually everyone in Poland recognizes the need for economic reforms, the country lacks the money, and has failed so far to demonstrate the political will, to make them. Old factories and unproductive coal mines must be closed, meaning the loss of thousands of jobs. The Communist-dominated bureaucracy and army need to be cut back. Most problematical of all, as Mazowiecki said, living conditions will have to get even worse if they are ever to get better.

In Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Rumania, Solidarity's accession is likely to convince the Old Guard Communist regimes that any concessions to reform could lead to similar disaster for the ruling party. In Prague authorities were girding for the 21st anniversary this week of the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion that ended the country's brief liberalization -- an intervention that Poland's Sejm last week condemned. Said a Western diplomat in Budapest last week: "The hard-liners will point to Poland and say, 'That's where you finish up if you let the opposition get a foot in the door.' " In Hungary, where multiparty elections are due to be held soon, Geza Jeszenszky, a spokesman for the opposition Hungarian Democratic Forum, said the success of a Solidarity-led Polish government would probably "increase the confidence of the Hungarian voting public."

Solidarity's failure, however, could easily have the opposite effect. "Walesa is going to be criticized for certain," predicted Czech-born Zuzana Princova of London's Wharton Econometrics Forecasting Associates, "yet a lot of people have trust in him and really support him." But if Walesa and Mazowiecki are to keep Poland on its historic new course, they will also need outside help -- from Washington as well as from Moscow.

With reporting by John Borrell/Warsaw