The Spirit Still Glows

TIME Correspondent Richard Hornik was in Gdansk on Dec. 13 when martial law was declared. He has watched General Jaruzelski try to subdue the country and has seen the Poles react and resist. Shortly after leaving Poland last week, Hornik filed this report on what life is like in Warsaw in the wake of the crackdown.

After four weeks of martial law, the initial shock has worn off, but the reality of what has happened is finally sinking in. Warsaw has been transformed from one of the liveliest cities in Europe to one of the dullest and most depressing. The theaters are closed, the cafes usually empty and the streets practically devoid of traffic after dark. But worse than these obvious signs is the apparent death of the spirit. Poland is a nation of individuals. The most ordinary worker wears his cap just so and has his own look. Now, when you walk through Warsaw, the people somehow seem faceless.

It is almost as though each individual were attempting to submerge himself in the rest of society, to lower his or her profile so as not to attract attention: to attract attention today in Poland might mean trouble. And most Poles are having trouble enough just surviving.

Genuine fear pervades the city. People are asking their foreign friends not to drop by any more. The 4 a.m. knock on the door by the secret police is back in practice, although sometimes with the usual Polish twist. In at least two cases, people who were given the option of signing a loyalty oath prepared by the government or going to a detention center managed to persuade the agents who came for them to accept a more innocuously worded statement.

Fear increases the divisions within the society. Severing telephone lines, limiting travel and banning the sale of gasoline to private motorists has served to separate friends and families. The political situation has also driven wedges between people--between workers who wanted to strike and workers who wanted to surrender; between people who signed loyalty oaths and people who refused; between journalists who have decided to go back to work and journalists who feel that they must leave the profession in order to maintain their personal dignity.

This splitting of society has become so pervasive and perverse that some people are angry that they were not detained by the police. One famous actor who thinks that his politics are radical enough to warrant his confinement in an internment center goes out every night after the 11 p.m. curfew in the hope of being arrested. Thus far he has not been picked up, a fact that adds to his anger.

In a very short period, Poland's martial law rulers have managed to create an insidious mistrust in their country. The generals have succeeded in crushing the organization known as Solidarity and damaging the solidarity of the people of Poland. But the deep feeling of being one nation, which was ignited by Pope John Paul II's visit to Poland in 1979 and that kept the authorities at bay for 16 months after August 1980, has not been entirely extinguished.

Through the gloom covering Poland today it is possible to catch an occasional glimpse of spirit that still glows. In one huge housing block in Warsaw, occupants who own dogs have agreed to walk their pets together--15 minutes after the 11 o'clock curfew. They stand in the courtyard chatting, some in bathrobes, defying the police to try to arrest all of them.

Poles know that they cannot successfully challenge martial law directly, but, being Poles, they are bound to start pushing at its edges and testing its limits. The testing is likely to continue--and grow.

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