The three ways of the independence of the countries of the Pact of Warsaw: Poland

If towards the United States the Soviet Union had a very active behavior, it cannot be said the same for that that it concerns the relationships inside the Pact of Warsaw. While for the whole postwar period, every attempt to detach from Moscow had been punished with the military intervention (Czechoslovakia 1948, Hungary 1956, still Czechoslovakia 1968), with the advent of Gorbacev and his perestrojka, there was a general indifference toward the destinies of the allied European nations. In the period between 1987 and 1990 all the states of the Pact of Warsaw had a change of regime and a progressive leaving from the Soviet politics and affairs. The modalities with which these changes were developed varied from country to country, but they can be described in the example given from Poland, that is: a change gotten under the popular pressure. Exceptions to this rule, for different motives, are the Romanian and German-Oriental experiences. To fully understand every tone, it is useful to recapitulate what it happened in the three mentioned nations.

Poland had lived in the first 70's a big economic boom that had let forget the lack of democratic liberty under the Giarek's regime. However, the 1977-78 serious financial crisis put on knees the whole nation that started to open the eyes on the difficulties to which it was forced by a government that maintained the narrowest observance of the directives of Moscow. The first to oppose to the communist Party were the intellectuals that were organized in circles, which were also supported by some exponents of the communist nomenklatura. In a second time, they organized some parallel universities through courses held by important teachers that professed publicly their political faith. They warned the government about the serious crisis of trust that had struck Polish people, but nobody wanted to listen. In 1978, the archbishop of Krakow, Karol Wojtyla was named pope with the name of John Paul II and the event was largely underestimated by the Polish executives, so that it was allowed the pontiff to do a pastoral trip in his homeland in 1979. The exceptional reception reserved to the pope in that occasion gave the first sign of a Polish religious renaissance that was again and guiltily ignored by the government.
1980 opened with a worker crisis without precedents. The shortage of alimentary goods let increase the prices and the malcontent of the population. On July 1 1980 a new preannounce increase of the price of the meat instigated a national protest. A general strike in Lublin was proclaimed that well soon was followed from other workers protests in the shipyards of Danzica and Szczecin. To drive the struggle there was a former electrician, Lech Walesa, dismissed some months before to have tried to create an independent labor union. The yards of Danzica became the center of the Committee of all the Polish strikers, reunited in an only labor union denominated Solidarnosc (Solidarity). The government of Gierek, despite it had had a lot of time to get ready to an answer; it didn't know how to find suitable measures to limit the protest. It was tried to increase the salaries locally in different factories and yards but this solution, adopted with success in 1970 failed in that summer for the extreme cohesion and unity of the new labor union that did not accept any makeshift.

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With no other possibility to let the demonstrators recede, the government decided to sign the accords of Danzica in August 1980. The concession gotten by Solidarnosc reached all the purposes that had established before the beginning of the collective protest. Firstly, its own recognition as labor union independent from the communist on, secondarily an increase of the salaries that were at least partially tied up to the inflation, finally the publication of a magazine as first example of press freedom. It doesn't have to seem strange that there were not in the accord any political claims. Solidarnosc was born with goals limited to the workers' claims, without ulterior pretensions. As shrewdly affirmed by Timothy Garton Ash: “it was the beginning of a worker revolution against a worker state.” The victory in the summer of 1980 could be considered full, but it would have lasted for little time.

Gierek, judged by the vertexes of Moscow too submissive, was replaced by Kania, real man of party that showed immediately his own wish to oppose to Solidarnosc. The negotiations with the independent labor union continued, but it was evident that they had not any future. The popular dissatisfaction started to grow again. The possibility was hypothesized to restart with the general strike but a possible violent answer of Moscow made insecure this road. Kania in the fear to fall in a bath of blood was prudent in the repression of the syndicate motions, giving ample space to the reactionary movement that was created inside Poland. During the night between December 12 and 13 1981 general Jaruzelski who on preceding October 18 gathered in his hands the position of minister of the Defense, secretary of the Communist Party and president of the government, performed a putsch, proclaiming the martial law on the whole Polish territory. In a discourse held on the following morning, he affirmed that the necessity of a military intervention had done impelling in the same moment in which Solidarnosc had transformed itself from popular movement in organization with political finality. The danger of a counterrevolution had been seen imminent.

The transformation of Solidarity had happened for the impossibility of communication with Kania's government and it had not passed unnoticed even in Moscow. Already on December 5 1980, 500.000 soldiers of the Pact of Warsaw garrisoned the Polish frontiers waiting for an order of invasion that never arrived. In fact, that same night was done a Conference, where Kania and Breznev were present, to decide the fates of Poland. The precise reasons are not known for which was definite to entrust the normalization of the Polish situation to the Polish general, but everything was decided in that reunion. It can be seen that Jaruzelski had one whole year to prepare the action, but as in precedence the government of Gierek had done, so Solidarity did not realize anything. Many important exponents of the labor union had been put to the domiciliary arrests and among them Walesa. The proclamation of the martial law allowed the new regime to try an attempt of return to the past.

The following seven years were contradictory. Jaruzelski combined in his own government the greatest personalities of Communist Poland. It can be affirmed with certainty that the Baltic nation didn't have a so prepared and intelligent executive since the times of the World War 2. However, so much talent had voted only and entirely to the cause of the restoration. This was immediately evident to the people that unlike the Czechoslovak one in 1968 didn't accept in silence the will of Moscow. In all the public occasions in which the regime wanted a patient presence of the population, it let feel more openly its own dissent. Solidarnosc, harshly hit in 1981, had not been suppressed and it had entered the secretness. Its leader Walesa had received the prize Nobel for the peace in 1983, transforming the syndicate struggle in resistance to the communism. The industrial backwardness of Poland made the rest. The continuous worsening of the conditions of workers' life brought to new strikes in 1985 and 1986. 1987 started with a situation of maximum tension. The vertexes of Solidarnosc pressed for a new general strike in the 1980 style but Walesa (free since1982 and forced to hold out of the political fight) knew that the answer of the government would have been a hard repression, also with the weapons if necessary. He used his own personality to succeed in avoiding the direct clash.

The Jaruzelski's government reinvigorated by this partial victory, thought that the moment had come for an opening toward the workers. It served a public comparison between the exponents of Solidarnosc and the Communist Labor union. It only owed to choose the independent exponent to put in front of the communist Miodovicz. The moderate position held by Walesa in the events of Danzica was valued as a sign of weakness and therefore, he was selected with extreme safety. The committed error was clear only after the television debate between the two syndicate delegates. In it, Walesa ridiculed his opponent, still showing the same dialectical strength of 1980. The acceptance of the democrat political game through the public dialogue had to have two important consequences: 1) a return to the previous tensions, for the desire of the people of a radical change 2) a certain ambiguity of Solidarnosc that in some moments was seen as a tool of the government to realize that “normalization” that had not succeeded with the strength.

This second point seemed to be confirmed by the signature on April 6 1989 of an accord with the government, where it was foreseen that 35% of Parliament was chosen with universal suffrage and a new branch of the parliament (Senate) was created at brief term. The new gotten concessions were very inferior to the contractual strength that possessed Solidarnosc at that time, therefore it seemed evident to many international observatories that it had been reached a compromise with the communist power. The peasant population thought the same. It had gotten in 1956 to preserve the private ownership of the lands and therefore it had an individualism more accented in comparison with the workers. Thinking to be abandoned by an agreement between a typically worker labor union and the government, the agrarian class started a series of agitation that culminated in a general strike. It was just organized against the exponents of Solidarnosc that had gotten an overwhelming victory in the first free Polish elections.

The motives for the agrarian protest also resided in the decision of Walesa to support the candidacy for president of the republic of Jaruzelski. The reasons for this choice can be found in the fear, still founded, that a too violent separation from the past would have been able to push the Soviet Union to an armed intervention. When, however, it was tried to set to the Presidency of the Government another man of the regime (Czeslaw Kiszczak), the popular indignation forced the deputies of Solidarnosc to modify their own strategy. The Peasants Party till that moment was allied with the communists, but with an extraordinary turnaround it changed the alliance, joining Walesa's squad, promising its own support in the eventuality of a government of coalition. The move toward the Democratic parties of the peasants group can be explained with the fear of the agrarian exponents to be absorbed inside the communist majority, exactly as it had happened in 1945 with the risk to lose the privileges that had so laboriously preserved for all that years. Once excluded by the government, the communist faction shouted that such behavior was a real scandal, not realizing that they had been victims of a normal political game of the democratic parliamentary life.

The charge to form the new government was entrusted to Tadeusz Masowiecki, a faithful adviser of Walesa who started to understand how much life would have been hard at the power just in the moment to get the nomination. In fact, more than two weeks were necessary before the Parliament the confirmed his nomination. The installation of the first Polish democrat government since 1945 also coincided with the disappearance of the Communist Party. Not being more necessary to belong to this formation to get some social advantages, the largest part of the members decided to move on more moderate positions creating the presuppositions for the definitive death of the party. The accords signed directly with Gorbacev allowed definitely systematizing either the role of Poland inside the Pact of Warsaw either the diplomatic relationship with USSR. Gotten this reassurance, the attainment of the democracy was definitive, even if the economic and difficulties inside Solidarnosc were everything else other than next to a solution.