Straining for Harmony

A determined spirit of conciliation in the face of peril

"We hate strikes," Union Leader Lech Walesa told a group of journalists last week. That remarkable statement by the organizer of last summer's mass shipyard strike was symptomatic of the conspicuous spirit of conciliation that both labor and government strained to maintain as Poland's year of peril came to a close. Communist Party Boss Stanislaw Kania demonstratively placed wreaths on monuments that had been erected in the northern port cities of Gdansk and Gdynia to honor workers killed by police and troops in 1970. Kania's gesture was of high symbolic importance, since it signified the party's opposition to any resumption of violence against the country's embattled workers.

There was little doubt about the motivation behind the determined harmony inside Poland: the continuing menace of 55 Soviet divisions that remained poised within striking distance of Poland's borders. On New Year's Day, in fact, TASS issued a communique that accused "antisocialist forces" in Solidarity of seeking "to push matters to the point of chaos in the economy, hoping to further their subversive aims."

Clearly, many Poles felt that it was high time to cool the country's labor unrest. There was an almost palpable sense of relief when the Polish supreme court postponed a ruling on the right of Poland's 3.2 million private farmers to form their own union, thus defusing a new crisis. The farm leaders were jubilant over the court's apparent readiness to study ways of legalizing a Rural Solidarity movement patterned on Walesa's Solidarity. Only last September the Warsaw district court had ruled that Poland's private farmers were not entitled to a union, on the ground that they are self-employed. Angered by that earlier decision, farmers had threatened to withhold their produce from government markets, a move that would have sharply aggravated the country's already critical food shortages. The farmers had even talked of a strike unless their right to organize was recognized. Plans for both the embargo and the strike were shelved after the supreme court decision. Said Farm Leader Zdzislaw Ostatek: "We don't see any need to use pressure."

Walesa himself was summoned to Warsaw by Polish Foreign Minister Jozef Czyrek, who presumably laid down the line established during Czyrek's Kremlin meeting with Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev two weeks ago. Walesa discreetly declined to reveal details of his conversation with Czyrek, claiming that it merely concerned the union leader's forthcoming trip to the Vatican. Walesa then spent five hours with Deputy Premier Andrzej Jedynak discussing proposed new labor and censorship laws, Solidarity's right of access to the news media, and the farmers' attempt to form their own union. Emerging from this second official meeting, Walesa declared himself to be "very happy" with the progress of the talks.

There were somber reminders, however, that Poland's workers could not expect to wrest many more concessions from the government and the party. In a front-page editorial, the official party daily Trybuna Ludu warned that "the new year will not greet us with prosperity; the decisions to be made will not be accepted by everyone with equal satisfaction." Even New Year's Eve, in fact, was celebrated with unusual sobriety--and without live music. Demanding overtime, the country's pop musicians refused to perform at state-run restaurants and nightclubs. qed

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