Waiting for the Spring

By Thomas A. Sancton

After Vatican talks, the archbishops seek dialogue and unity

"I did not go for results. I went to I Rome, came back, and am glad to be here."

With those words, Archbishop Jozef Glemp, the Primate of Poland, dispelled rumors that his seven-day visit with Pope John Paul II might lead to a dramatic new initiative by the Roman Catholic Church to oppose the martial law regime of Polish General Wojciech Jaruzelski. Glemp, who returned to Warsaw last week with Archbishops Franciszek Cardinal Macharski of Cracow and Henryk Gulbinowicz of Wroclaw, seemed genuinely happy to be back on his native soil. Even the usually dour Macharski smiled broadly and told reporters at Okecie Airport: "Let us all be optimists. Things are not all that bad."

That call for springlike optimism was a tall order in a country where two months of wintry martial rule has crushed the independent Solidarity labor movement, put more than 5,000 of its members and sympathizers in detention camps, clamped severe restrictions on personal liberty, and left at least ten dead and hundreds injured. The archbishops were well aware of that unrelieved bleakness. Indeed, they spent much of their week in the Vatican briefing the Polish-born Pontiff on the dim prospects for his homeland's future. As Glemp described it during an emotional sermon at Rome's Church of St. Stanislao: "Our fatherland ... is sick. Poles are overcome by anger. We are enraged one against the other." The church's role, said Glemp, is to contain that anger and channel it into a search for national unity. "Poland must not become an arena for bloody conflict," he warned. "Her internal troubles must be resolved through dialogue and not by force."

John Paul himself spoke out strongly two days later, telling an audience of Western labor leaders and Solidarity exiles that the banned union was "an authentic representative of the workers." He added that the full restoration of Solidarity's rights was "the only road out of this difficult situation." Despite the Pope's intense interest in the Polish question, Vatican sources say that he will leave the forging of church strategy in Glemp's hands.

Glemp, 53, the plain-spoken son of an Inowroclaw salt miner, is well prepared for that task. The holder of doctorates in Roman and canon law, he has a shrewd political sense that belies his squat, jug-eared physical appearance. Glemp apparently intends to pursue a cautious policy under martial law, putting moral pressure on the regime but avoiding inflammatory gestures that might incite violence and provoke a Soviet invasion.

Glemp pins his hopes on a peaceful dialogue between the regime and the outlawed union. Polish authorities have indicated that they are ready to begin serious talks soon. But the key figure in any such negotiations, Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa, has been held virtually incommunicado since martial law was declared on Dec. 13. Walesa, who has reportedly been held at four locations near Warsaw, has managed to smuggle out several messages, although their authenticity cannot be confirmed. The Warsaw branch of Solidarity's underground last week published what it said was a letter that Walesa had scrawled on the back of internment papers served to him on Jan. 26. "I'll not be surprised," the message read, "if they'll start to attribute all kinds of idiocies to me ... This partner [the Communist government] has never been and never will be honest."

The Jaruzelski regime, meanwhile, continued to move against its opponents through its harsh system of military and civil justice. In the longest prison sentence handed out for a martial law violation so far, Ewa Kubasiewicz was given ten years in jail for organizing a strike at a Gdansk merchant marine college where she was a student. A Katowice court gave jail terms of three to four years to four alleged organizers of a strike at the Wujek coal mine, where at least seven civilians were killed in clashes with police on Dec. 16. The provincial prosecutor in Gdansk said that Solidarity's second-ranking leader, Miroslaw Krupinski, would be tried for trying to organize a national strike committee from the Lenin Shipyard after military rule was imposed.

But in Gdansk, the Baltic seaport where Solidarity was born in August 1980, the spirit of resistance still burned. More than 200 students and workers were arrested there after clashes with police on Jan. 30. Foreign journalists visited the area last week on a government-organized tour and found many workers unshaken in their loyalty to Solidarity. "We have to have unions as before," said a hull-assembly worker at Lenin Shipyard. "In this country, with its [Communist] system, it is not possible to have a true union that is not political. If the government will not give it to us, then we will have another August."

For now, a sullen calm seems to hang over Gdansk. But beneath the surface, a dangerous and defiant mood can be seen in underground leaflets, posters and graffiti. Said one message chalked on a metal door in the port of Gdynia, near Gdansk: THE WINTER IS YOURS-- THE SPRING WILL BE OURS. Seeking to dampen Gdansk's rebellious spirit, authorities recently removed an inscription from a wall behind the towering monument to workers killed in the 1970 uprising. It read: "They died so that you could live in dignity." Effacing those words will not destroy the memory of the Gdansk martyrs, or the determination of the survivors to regain their lost dignity. -- By Thomas A. Sancton. Reported by Richard Homik/ Warsaw and Wilton Wynn/Rome

With reporting by Richard Honik/ Warsaw, Wilton Wynn/Rome

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