A Country on a Tightrope

By Thomas A. Sancton

But a weekend settlement favorable to the strikers could end the crisis

Clambering to the top of the shipyard's high iron gate, the little man with the walrus mustache struck a pose of accustomed authority. With outstretched arms, he waved down the combined cheers of the striking workers behind him and the massed crowd of sympathizers outside the gate, and lifted a microphone to his mouth. This time, however, instead of a rousing exhortation to militancy, his message was a somber admonition: to curtail the spread of further strikes across his nation and give the government the necessary breath a while. "It is not good to have Poland terrorized," the strike leader, Lech Walesa, told the crowd. "The people must have food. Poland can only last for a few more days under these conditions." Then, with a more characteristic tone of defiance, he added, "If we don't get results in a few days, then let the strikes spread."

That dramatic juncture in the unfolding epic of Poland's labor crisis last week took place at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk. It showed that the strike leaders had come to recognize the momentous perils and potentially tragic consequences of what they had begun. Their emotional yet disciplined strike for rights, a grass-roots upheaval that was in many ways unprecedented in Moscow's postwar fiefdoms of Eastern Europe, had left Poland teetering on a tightrope.

Beneath on one side was the tantalizing prospect of far-reaching reforms that would change Poland's political landscape, with incalculable repercussions elsewhere in the Soviet dominions. The beleaguered government had made a series of concessions that were remarkable for a Communist regime. Now the negotiations had reached a climax over the most crucial demand: a free-trade-union movement outside Communist Party control, a virtual contradiction in terms for a Marxist worker state. On the other side was the yawning void of disorder and a crackdown that, should violence erupt, might bring armed Soviet intervention.

At week's end strike leaders and government negotiators announced agreement on "a formula designed to bring Poland back from the brink, hundreds of shipyard workers cheered, one of their leaders read a communique stating that they would be permitted to form an "independent, self-governing trade union." After speedy approval from the Communist Party Central Committee in Warsaw, the strike leaders indicated that they would order their followers back to work this week.

Before that dramatic announcement, more than 300,000 workers had gone on strike at 600 industrial enterprises in the northern port city of Gdansk and across the Baltic coast region. Sympathy walkouts had spread to at least a dozen other cities. Strikes also broke out among copper miners and ironworkers in lower Silesia.

With northern ports, factories and transportation at a standstill, sugar and flour shortages were mounting; gasoline was no longer available to the public in Gdansk. Communist Party Leader Edward Gierek, shaken by a purge precipitated by the workers' actions, seemed increasingly in jeopardy. Poland and the watching world were rife with rumors that Gierek's days in power were numbered.

Reverberations from the crisis were felt beyond Poland's borders. In Czechoslovakia, the ruling Communist Party warned its officials to heed workers' grievances, an obvious attempt to head off comparable unrest. In East Germany, there were unconfirmed reports of contagious stirrings among Polish ethnic workers in the Baltic port of Rostock, 260 miles from Gdansk. Hundreds reportedly called in sick in a show of solidarity with the Polish strikers.

Western capitals were no less wary, fearful of unpredictable international repercussions if the Polish crisis were to get out of hand, and mindful that if it should, they would have no realistic choice except to watch helplessly. In Washington, Secretary of State Edmund Muskie and the visiting West German Foreign Minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, issued a joint statement that the strikes were an internal Polish affair and that "all outside parties should exercise the greatest possible restraint." In every quarter, there was an unspoken but omnipresent fear: the menace of possible direct Soviet action. Though there were no signs that it might be imminent, a Soviet move was thought to be a realistic prospect should the Polish crisis take either of two possible turns: if the Polish regime were to give too much away in a possible settlement, or if the strikes were to erupt in violence that the Polish authorities could not quell.

Depending on the tenor of the negotiations at any given moment, Polish officials issued warnings of possible "administrative or punitive measures"--a not-so-subtle reference to the possible use of force if the workers did not moderate their demands and call a halt to the strike. Government officials alluded to the prospect of Soviet action if Warsaw were to fail to bring the crisis under control. "The situation has reached the point where it cannot go any further," said one official in Warsaw. "New strikes, or a continuation of the present situation, cannot go on. Soviet troops are in the German Democratic Republic. If Soviet [military] communications via Poland break down [as a result of the strikes], it is a threat to the Soviet Union. They cannot overlook it."

The most beleaguered immediate victim of the crisis seemed to be Communist Party Boss Gierek. More and more, his predicament came to resemble that of his predecessor, Wladyslaw Gomulka, who was ousted following a bloody repression of food-price riots in 1970. Gierek had been on the defensive ever since a series of scattered protests--originally against an abrupt increase in the price of meat--escalated into a major crisis three weeks ago. The 16,000 employees of the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk occupied the plant and transformed it into the emotional and organizational center for a broad regional labor agitation. The campaign soon lodged demands that went far beyond economic grievances, into the untouchable realm of political freedom.

Reeling from the force of the strike and its growing popular support, Gierek suffered a major political blow when a sweeping purge that soon became known as the Sunday Massacre removed six of his 19-man ruling Politburo. The party leaders had gathered at a Central Committee meeting simply to discuss the strike. Instead, Gierek found himself thrown into a bitter confrontation with his party rivals. He clearly emerged the loser. Ousted were some of his closest colleagues, including Premier Edward Babiuch and Jan Szydlak, head of the government's official Central Council of Trade Unions.

The shake-up also marked the return of two rivals whom Gierek had removed from ruling circles in the past two years. One is former Foreign Minister Stefan Olszowski, 49, a man who has often been mentioned as a possible successor to Gierek. A pragmatic but dedicated Communist who has the Kremlin's confidence, he is also a longtime advocate of economic reform. Olszowski is said to have been highly critical of Gierek's economic performance. According to Western intelligence sources, the heavy-set Olszowski also tried in the past to jockey himself into position to take over the party leadership. For that reason, Gierek shuffled his troublesome rival out of the Politburo last February and packed him off as Ambassador to East Germany. Olszowski's return to the Politburo deprives Gierek of what seemed his best guarantee of survival: the lack of an obvious replacement.

Also recalled from banishment was Tadeusz Grabski, 51, former Central Committee member and first secretary of the local party in Konin. Grabski had complained bitterly in 1978 of the "chaos and confusion in our economy." That candor, widely circulated in the underground press, provoked his ouster from the Central Committee last year. The reinstatement of Grabski and Olszowski was an implicit condemnation of Gierek's disastrous economic record, marked by a $20 billion foreign debt and severely declining growth in 1979. To compound his humiliation, the Party Leader was forced in a nationally televised speech to praise "those comrades who perceived earlier the growing irregularities and tried to counteract them, and whose voice we did not heed in time." Though there was no hard evidence, Warsaw officials indicated that on two occasions prior to the Central Committee meeting, Gierek had met with some Soviet leaders.

Gierek's speech also contained a tempting concession to the strikers: the offer of new secret-ballot elections to the party-controlled Central Council of Trade Unions. Instead of the current system, under which the outgoing representatives propose 85% of the candidates, the new vote would be open to an unlimited number of candidates--including the current strike leaders. The workers in Gdansk remained unimpressed. Said Lech Walesa: "We are not politicians. We are not interested in politics. We want our own trade union."

Serious negotiations got under way on Tuesday in a reception room in the shipyard's red brick conference hall. With scores of Western newsmen looking on through a glass wall, the two teams faced each other over a long, narrow wooden table. A battery of microphones sent their voices echoing out over the shipyard's public address system; portions of the extraordinary negotiations were even broadcast over Gdansk radio.

The two negotiating teams were as different as they could be. On one side sat Walesa, dressed in baggy coat and sweater, flanked by a coterie of advisers. Among them were a number of thoroughly nonproletarian, politically minded intellectuals who have been advising the strikers. Other leaders of the Interfactory Strike Committee sat on rows of benches behind their negotiators, including the prim and bespectacled Anna Walentynowicz, a militant crane operator whose recent dismissal had helped spark the shipyard strike.

On the other side of the bargaining table sat First Deputy Premier Mieczyslaw Jagielski, 56, whose graying hair and well-cut suit gave him the air of a distinguished Western banker. A tough and experienced negotiator, Jagielski was flanked by a task force that had flown with him from Warsaw three days earlier. Jagielski entered the shipyard through a side gate in order to avoid the antagonistic crowd at the main entrance. Workers stared at Jagielski's team in icy silence, then broke into hearty applause when their own negotiators passed by.

Despite their inexperience at collective bargaining, Walesa and his comrades proved to be formidable adversaries. "The amazing thing about the strikers is not only their incredible discipline and excellent organization, but also their leaders' shrewdness and sophisticated negotiating tactics," marveled a West German Chancellery expert. Before broaching any real substance in the talks, in fact, the strikers forced the government to accept a precondition: restoration of the city's telephone links to the outside, which had been severed in an effort to isolate Gdansk. The strikers promptly used their newly restored communications to coordinate their actions with other strike centers and even dispatched delegations to proselytize in the interior of the country. Soon new strikes were reported in such cities as Wroclaw, Lodz and Rzeszow, raising the ante and putting added pressure on the Jagielski team.

Walesa laid out the free-union issue at the Tuesday session. Said he: "We don't want to change the socialist ownership of the means of production, but we do want to be the real masters of the factories. We were promised that many times before. We have now decided to demand it by strikes." Jagielski responded with a different concession: a new trade-union law recognizing the right to strike--"as one form of realizing workers' demands when all other possibilities fail." With that, Polish workers had won a legal right unprecedented in any Communist country.

At the same time, the government intensified a propaganda campaign against the strikes. On Wednesday the party daily Trybuna Ludu warned of "national catastrophe" if the walkouts continued and pointedly noted that "our country lies in the direct security zone of the world socialist power--the Soviet Union." Mieczyslaw Rakowski, influential editor of the party periodical Polityka, declared on national television: "I am very frightened. Our country is in a precarious position. Our national survival is at stake."

Nothing underlined official concern at midweek more vividly than an extraordinary telecast of a recorded sermon by Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski. As head of Poland's Catholic hierarchy, a bastion of antiCommunism, the 79-year-old prelate had traditionally been denied access to the state broadcasting network.

Now, the government apparently saw a chance to get its own message across to the devoutly Catholic majority of the workers by broadcasting those excerpts of the sermon that called for order, patience and moderation. In one key passage the politically sophisticated Wyszynski had reminded the nation of "the difficulty with which we regained our freedom after 125 years"--a reference to Poland's long domination by foreign powers, and an implicit warning against provoking a Soviet invasion. The broadcast, and a subsequent transcript in the party daily, made it appear that the church was supporting the government against the strikes. But the Polish Episcopate later complained that the edited version of the sermon had been used without its authorization.

Neither sermons, warnings nor concessions, however, appeared to sway the workers. On Wednesday, 30 new factories were struck in Wroclaw alone, including the massive PAFAWAG State Rail Transport factory. Walkouts also shut down the H. Cegielski heavy-machinery plant in Poznan. The next day, new strikes also spread to factories in Slupsk, Bydgoszcz and Grudziadz. By then the unrest had reached virtually every part of the country. Apart from the willful stoppages, the interruption of transportation links and the consequent lack of parts and raw materials forced many nonstriking factories to close down.

A turning point was reached on Thursday, when Walesa suddenly made his dramatic appeal for a temporary halt to new strikes so that the negotiations could continue without an atmosphere of deepening crisis. After descending from atop the shipyard gate and conferring with the Jagielski team, he gave the government negotiators a signed statement declaring, "We are not for the widening of the strikes, which might push the country to the verge of collapse." The government, however, never published that message, presumably because it would have further enhanced Walesa's image and influence.

By now both sides were digging in stubbornly. Top-level negotiations were suspended after the workers said they would not go back to the conference table until the government produced firm proposals for free trade unions. To wrangle over other issues before then, they insisted, would be useless. Nevertheless, behind the two fac,ades of public bluster, closed-door talks continued between teams of technical and legal experts.

Was it real menace or public posturing when the official Interpress news agency summoned foreign journalists to its offices late Thursday night to issue what sounded like an ominous warning? Interpress Director Miroslaw Wojciechowski read the government's harshest attack on the strikers to date. He grimly noted that the strikes were daily mounting "like an avalanche" and warned that "this situation cannot go on much longer." Though the government had already accepted the "greater part of the demands," said Wojciechowski, "all is locked into the question of free trade unions." He suggested that the union issue was really a pretext for the disruptive activities of "certain antisocialist elements and extremists." The clear implication: the government's conciliatory policy might soon give way to armed force.

Still, that tough new official attitude did not altogether dispel signs that some kind of compromise might yet be reached. Suddenly, on Friday evening, a hopeful Walesa unexpectedly announced that the crucial trade-union issue was "90% settled." The details still had to be worked out, he cautioned, but added, "We are making progress." Strike committee members explained that the closed-door technical discussions had devised a possible compromise formula that would give the workers an independent union in exchange for a formal three-point pledge: 1) to recognize the Communist Party's supremacy, 2) to support the country's membership in the Warsaw Pact and Comecon, the Soviet-dominated trade association, and 3) to forswear any "political" role for their own organization.

Then, on Saturday morning, came the breakthrough. After a 70-minute meeting, Jagielski declared, "I accept the formula for a new trade union," adding vaguely that the agreement "stands on the principle of Poland's constitution." Though the exact terms remained unclear, there was speculation that the settlement provided for parallel union organizations--one controlled by the Communist Party and the other a worker-elected, worker-controlled union to exist alongside the official one. Jagielski left Gdansk around noon to submit the proposal to Party leaders. He was expected to return to Gdansk the next day with word that the Central Committee had given its okay.

Before the breakthrough, some observers had wondered why the strikers, after winning substantial concessions, had continued to run tremendous risks for the sake of free trade unions. One answer seemed to lie in a deep skepticism bred by repeated broken promises during the postwar years. Having come to power as a reformer nearly ten years ago, only to be hamstrung by a deteriorating economy, Gierek was now saddled with an enormous credibility problem. Explained Vojtech Mastny, Eastern Europe scholar at Johns Hopkins University: "In 1970 the workers were led to believe that a change in personalities would make a difference. Now they are sufficiently cynical that they are bargaining for institutional reforms, not just shifts in the hierarchy or cosmetic changes."

The workers saw free trade unions as the institutional reform that would touch their lives most directly. And though their ideal contradicted the Leninist concept of trade unions as the party-controlled "school of Communism," the strikers scrupulously avoided advocating the overthrow of Communist rule. Said Professor Edward Borowski, an intellectual advising the Gdansk strikers: "We are not fighting against socialism. We are not fighting against the Soviet Union. We are fighting against nonsense"--meaning the government's chaotic economic policies.

Despite such assurances, the Soviets could hardly look kindly on genuinely independent trade unions anywhere in the East bloc precisely because they represent such a challenge to the party's monolithic rule. Completely free unions would represent alternative power bases that potentially could rival the party's authority.

Most Western experts believed that Moscow would intervene only if the Communist regime in Warsaw had totally lost control of the country. Indeed, Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev implied as much in a speech late Friday in the Central Asian Republic of Kazakhstan. Without mentioning Poland by name the Soviet leader declared: "We do not encroach on anyone's land or interfere in their internal affairs. But we shall always man age to defend our rights and legitimate interests." Analysts in Moscow interpreted the statement as a warning that the Soviets would tolerate some disruption in Poland, but would never, of course, allow it to slip out of the Communist bloc. Toward the end of the speech Brezhnev said, "We have a strong brotherhood in arms with the national armies of the socialist community. Glory be to the reliable guards of peace." Translation, according to Kremlin-watchers: if it should come to that, the Polish authorities can probably handle any strikebreaking chores on their own.

With reporting by Barry Kalb, Roberto Suro

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.