TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/81/81.37

Text File | 1992-09-25 | 24KB | 437 lines

                                                                                December 28, 1981

POLAND

The Darkness Descends


Freedom is extinguished and a nation is held hostage by its own
army


"Polish [is a] nationality [that is] not so much alive as
surviving, which persists in thinking, breathing, speaking,
hoping, and suffering in its grave, railed in by a million
bayonets."

--Joseph Conrad, 1911


The silence of the bayonet fell on Poland last week. To a
degree unprecedented in Europe since the end of World War II,
a modern nation was sealed off from the outside world. In the
icy cold of a savage winter, the country's telephone and telex
lines were cut. What little news reached the West was smuggled
out by travelers, or was broadcast over tightly censored Polish
radio and television.

That news told an alarming story. At least seven people were
killed in clashes with security forces, hundreds more were
injured, as many as 50,000 were under arrest--and an entire
nation of 36 million was being held virtually incommunicado by
its own army. Every private telephone in the country was dead.
Gas stations were closed to private cars. Flights were
canceled. All travel, even within Poland, was banned. A 10
p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew was in effect every night.

In Czechoslovakia 13 years earlier, communications had not been
totally broken, so the world was able to watch and listen in
horror as Soviet tanks rolled in to crush that country's brief
flowering of freedom. This time, as the armed forces seized
power in Poland, the Soviets were not visibly involved, at least
not yet. But the Polish Communist government of General
Wojciech Jaruzelski had taken a lesson from the Prague
experience:  the outside world would be given little chance to
learn details of the takeover.

In the heady days of August 1980, the closed gate of the Lenin
Shipyard in the Baltic port city of Gdansk became a symbol of
the spirit of Solidarity, the newly formed independent trade
union movement. It was here that Lech Walesa, the movement's
leader, first made his demands for economic and social reform.
Months later, when Solidarity swept over the country, a
monument was erected at the gate to commemorate both the birth
of the union in 1980 and the 45 Poles killed in the food riots
of 1970. Last week, shortly after the army and police had
broken a strike by shipworkers protesting martial law and the
arrest of hundreds of Solidarity's leaders, the gate was closed
again. In the shadow of the three soaring steel pillars of the
new monument now stood an armored personnel carrier, a symbol
of the million bayonets that seem forever poised against a
surging nationalism. Jaruzelski had announced that the country
would henceforth be run by a 21-member junta, the "military
council for national salvation."  He declared a "state of war"
(or state of emergency) under which the trade union movement was
suspended and civil liberties were curtailed. His army moved
fast and effectively.

The first to be detained were hundreds of Solidarity activists,
and virtually first among the first was Lech Walesa. Police
knocked at his door at 3 a.m. Sunday. He refused to allow them
in, demanding the presence of Gdansk Party Secretary Tadeusz
Fiszbach, a noted liberal for whom Walesa had respect. As soon
as Fiszbach arrived, Walesa gave himself up. He was then taken
to the airport and flown to Warsaw, where, according to a
government spokesman, "he is being treated with all the respect
due the hear of Solidarity."  Out of his own choice or the
government's, not a word has been heard from him publicly since
he was seized.

The immediate pretext for Jaruzelski's action was Solidarity's
growing support for rash proposals amounting to heresy in a
Communist state, including a call for a national referendum on
whether the government should remain in power. The union had
also set Dec. 17, eleventh anniversary of the Gdansk food riots,
as a day of national protest. But the government's massive
military operation had been in preparation for a long time.
Deployment of troops had begun at least a fortnight earlier.
When authorities published a list of 57 dissidents who had been
"detained," it was plain that the list had been drawn up in
advance; three people on it were out of the country. (Not on the
list but determined to protest the "flagrant and brutal"
crackdown and to express his "solidarity" with Walesa:
Poland's Ambassador to the U.S., Romuald Spasowski, who sought
and was swiftly granted asylum along with his wife, daughter and
son-in-law.)  Last week, after the sudden crackdown, a Gdansk
doctor said he realized at last why so many extra beds had been
placed in the local military hospital the week before.

Many Poles had been fearing a violent reaction to Solidarity's
growing militancy. "Operation Birdcage" is what they called the
anticipated crackdown, in which the union's freer spirits would
presumably be caged. Even Walesa, upon learning the crackdown
had begun, angrily told Solidarity leaders in Gdansk:  "Now
you've got what you've been looking for."

In Jaruzelski's view, there was little choice but to impose
martial law; he had to bring a halt to Solidarity's increasing
demands. If the government failed to do so, he could see not
way to stave off the final collapse of Poland's mismanaged,
strike-hobbled economy. At the same time, he had to reassure
the Soviets, who, no matter how reluctant they might be to
intervene directly in Polish affairs, let it be known that they
would do so if Solidarity was on the verge of seizing control
of the state. Yet, by moving so forcefully against the union,
whose 10 million members represent 28% of the Polish population,
Jaruzelski could only have deepened the resentments that fueled
Solidarity's growth and brought his country to the brink of
civil war. Poland's Catholic bishops declared last week that
"an entire nation" had been "terrorized by military force," and
demanded the release of the Solidarity leaders. The army
appeared loyal, but its ranks include large numbers of draftees
who are sympathetic to Solidarity and sensitive to the country's
problems. Only two months ago, just after Jaruzelski took over
as Communist Party boss, Gdansk Party Secretary Fiszbach
insisted to visiting TIME editors in Warsaw that a declaration
of martial law was too dangerous even to contemplate. "I cannot
imagine the aftereffects of such a course of events," he said.
"Whoever even considers martial law does not take into account
his responsibility for the destiny of the nation and the price
that would have to be paid."  In the weeks that followed, his
colleagues evidently concluded that the price would have to be
paid.

As Poland's week of darkness began, Jaruzelski set out to
reassure his frightened countrymen. He spoke of law and order
as his first objective, and he promised that the process of
renewal that had marked the past 16 months would not be
reversed. He insisted that Solidarity had merely been
suspended, not abolished, and he declared that there would be
"no return to the pre-August 1980 system of rule."  To
underscore that assertion, he ordered the detention of 32
members  of the incompetent and scandal-ridden former regime,
including deposed Communist Party Chief Edward Gierek, state
television was filled with patriotic World War II films and
other uplifting programming, such as an interview with a
bemedaled old general who said he had known Jaruzelski since the
Battle of Monte Cassino in World War II. (The man was mistaken;
Jaruzelski fought in the Soviet army as it marched through
Poland and on to Berlin.)  He sang the leader's praises and
assured viewers that Jaruzelski was an honest soldier who did
not have it in his nature to be a dictator.

Were the Polish people reassured?  On the contrary, they were
in shock and mourning. The queues at food shops, a familiar
sight in contemporary Poland, had resumed. But the shoppers,
their cheeks red form the deep cold ( 5 degrees F in many
places), were sullen. In the countryside, the only visible
evidence of the nation's changed circumstances was the
snow-muffled rumble of tanks and military trucks along the
roads. But inside their houses, people were praying--and--
cursing. "I have lived through two wars," said a farmer north
of Warsaw, "and now I am on my third. Just let them come get
my family or may land!"  One elderly woman in Warsaw observed.
"I thought from the beginning that the Russians would do this.
They hate Poles. They cannot bear to given us a little bit of
freedom, a little bit of what's our own. They will starve us."
Her husband replied, "It's a generational thing. The young
went too far. It had to finish this way. When you're young,
you don't see the dangers. I fought in the Warsaw Uprising, but
I don't know what I would have done if I had been an old man at
the time."

Some Poles went into hiding, moving every night from one place
to another. A university professor who lives with a woman in
Warsaw was hiking six miles back and forth every day to his own
unoccupied house on the outskirts of town to keep the snow
shoveled from his sidewalk. "If I don't do it, they'll think I'm
hiding, and so they will start looking for me."  Intellectuals
have been particularly hard hit, arrested by the thousands.
Some 40 Warsaw scientists narrowly escaped the roundup when one
of them managed to alert a network of taxi drivers known to be
Solidarity members. The cabbies picked up the scientists at
their homes, according to a prearranged plan, and drove them to
hiding places. On the streets, friends talked to one another
while looking over their shoulders for soldiers. In their
homes, people once again began to panic when someone knocked on
the door at night. "We are back to 1951," lamented one Pole.
"It will take us 20 years to rebuild."

The ban on travel and communications imposed special hardships.
Rumors flourished--that Archbishop Jozef Glemp, the Primate of
Poland, had been arrested, that a top Solidarity leader had
committed suicide--and could not be checked. Messages about
sicknesses and funerals could not be sent. "I will die now,"
said a woman in Warsaw matter-of-factly. She had been
scheduled for brain surgery in the U.S. this week, and now could
not leave. At her side, her doctor sadly agreed. Because of the
curfew, nurses and doctors could keep their hospitals open 24
hours a day only by taking up residence inside. Said one
doctor:  "This is worse than the German occupation. At least
then we had telephones."

Partly because of the prevailing uncertainty and partly because
of the communications blackout, public response to the crackdown
seemed muted. The population was depressed and weary from the
crises that had beset the country in recent months. Poles were
also disillusioned by the disunity within Solidarity,
traumatized by the newly imposed military rule, anxious over the
lingering possibility of Soviet intervention and fearful for the
fate of their national hero, Lech Walesa.

The government said that Walesa was not under arrest and was
being well treated. It was widely believed he was in detention
in a government guesthouse in Chylice, just south of Warsaw.
The government spread stories that he was broken psychologically
and weeping uncontrollably; Solidarity passed the word that he
was "psychologically strong."  One reason the government flew
Walesa to Warsaw was to have him discuss the emergency with
government officials. Reportedly, he refused to negotiate, on
the grounds that he could not do so as long as his advisers were
not at his side. On Monday he was visited by a church
representative, Archbishop Bronislaw Dabrowski, who brought him
a change of clothes. According to Solidarity, Walesa told
Dabrowski that workers should avoid strikes, should use only
nonviolent methods of protest and should "not allow the spirit
of the nation to be crushed."  Archbishop Glemp was said to have
refused a request to meet with Jaruzelski unless Walesa was also
present.

From underground, Solidarity called for a general strike. There
was none, though it was known from the beginning that there were
pockets of protest and resistance. As the shock of the
crackdown began to ease, it became apparent that there were
strikes and sit-ins throughout the country and that the
government was determined to stamp them out before they spread.
To the chant of "Fascists! Fascists!" from an angry crowd,
soldiers removed a group of professors and students from the
Polish Institute of Science. Gray-uniformed police entered the
Church of the Holy Cross, where Frederic Chopin's heart is
buried, and confiscated antigovernment posters and leaflets.
As they removed a picture of the late leader of the Polish
church, Stefan Cardinal Wysznsik, the taunts of spectators
appeared to embarrass the soldiers.

On Monday and Tuesday nights, taking advantage of the
prevailing curfew, military authorities broke up strikes at
three big industrial plants in Warsaw. Some 60 armored cars
carrying troops and riot police armed with fixed bayonets and
tear gas entered the grounds of the huge Urus tractor factory,
shooting into the air and quickly ending an occupation of the
plant by workers. The next target was the Huta Warszawa steel
mill, which had been occupied by 7,000 workers. On Tuesday the
assembled throng had issued a statement demanding an end to
martial law. "We are workers," the group declared. "We shall
never be slaves."  The document, signed only by "the strike
committee," ended with the opening words of the national
anthem: "Poland is not yet lost."  That night the steelworkers
got their answer. Troops stormed the plant, arrested a score
of union leaders and told the rest of the hungry and frightened
workers to go home.

A sit-in was also under way at the famous Lenin shipyard in
Gdansk, the birthplace of Solidarity. On Tuesday night a few
friendly soldiers had shared coal fires with some of the
workers, trying to stay warm in the bitter Baltic winter. But
early the next day, special armored units and elite Red Beret
forces arrived to seize the plant. As six helicopters circled
overhead, troops attacked the occupied buildings. They met with
only passive resistance form the workers inside. A crowd of
spectators was kept to a distance of 500 yards and tear gas was
sprayed in the area. At one point leaflets fluttered down from
a window somewhere overhead, declaring:  "If we give up, we
shall bury our hopes for freedom for many years to come. Several
thousand people cannot destroy 10 million."

By Thursday, the anniversary day that Solidarity had set for a
national protest, Warsaw was generally calm, but military forces
were again seen everywhere. Helmeted police using shields and
batons dispersed crowds that gathered in Warsaw's Old Town and
on the steps of the Church of the Holy Cross to talk and to sing
the national anthem. By 7 p.m. the streets were empty. That
night, in its first admission of casualties, Warsaw radio
reported in somber tones that seven Poles had been killed and
hundreds wounded in a clash between miners, fighting with picks
and axes, and troops at a coal mine near Katowice, in southern
Poland. In addition, it acknowledged, 160 militiamen and 164
civilians had been injured during continuing disturbances in
Gdansk.

In the first days after the military takeover, Poles were
surprised to find grocery shelves stocked with certain items,
such as smoked fish and tomato juice, that had scarcely been
seen for six months. "Where has it all been?" asked a woman
shopper in Warsaw. A clue to that mystery was supplied by a
Dutch truck driver, who had taken part in a 150-vehicle convoy
to deliver donated food from Western Europe. He was directed to
a Polish warehouse that he said contained "more butter than I've
seen in my entire life."  Poles generally welcomed the
government's sudden bounty, which disappeared in a flash in
widespread hoarding, but many considered the new supplies a
cynical effort to win support.

In the meantime, Jaruzelski's efforts to impose authority were
welcomed with restrained enthusiasm by the Soviet Union.
According to some Polish government sources, Jaruzelski was
pressed by the Soviets to make the move. About a month ago,
according to these accounts, he was given an ultimatum by the
Kremlin. Soviet representatives told him--and him alone--that
the Polish party was no longer in control, that the Sejm
(parliament) was running wild, and that if he did not act to
restore order, the Warsaw Pact would do it for him. Though
Jaruzelski emphasized last week that Poland remained a sovereign
state, many people regarded the crackdown as a Soviet invasion
by proxy. On Tuesday, some 30 ranking Soviet officers were
observed disembarking form a military plane. Nonetheless,
insofar as Western journalists could tell, the two Soviet
armored divisions based in Poland were nit involved and remained
in their garrisons.

Indeed, some Western diplomats believe Jaruzelski acted strictly
on his own when he declared martial law. The reasoning:
Jaruzelski anticipated a strong Soviet reaction if he did not
move decisively against Solidarity's increasing demands. In
this view, Jaruzelski is essentially a Polish nationalist still
striving to achieve a historic compromise acceptable to the
moderates in Solidarity, the liberals in the Politburo, the
church and the army.

In any case, the declaration of martial law neatly fitted
Moscow's immediate needs. On the one hand, the Soviets have
been alarmed at the dramatic rise of Solidarity and at the
aspirations of freedom that it has encouraged. On the other,
they have no wish to intervene themselves, lest this cause
trouble elsewhere in Eastern Europe, alienate the governments
and Europe, alienate the governments and Communist parties of
Western Europe, break the Soviet-U.S. arms negotiations, and
lead to a cancellation of Western trade. They are well aware,
for example, that the multibillion-dollar natural gas pipeline
deal they signed with West Germany this fall probably could not
survive a Soviet invasion of Poland.

Last week the Soviet government quickly supplied Poland with
badly needed food, though the Kremlin refrained from telling its
own people of the action. Soviet citizens are anticipating
their third disastrous harvest in a row and might respond
ungraciously to news that Poland, which they consider to have
overstepped the bounds of socialism, is almost literally being
given bread from Soviet mouths. As one Soviet worker groused:
"We send them our meat, we send them our oil, and all they want
is more."

In the conventional view, Moscow will intervene in Poland only
in the event of a general breakdown of law-and-order, or of a
direct threat to the Warsaw Pact. If they should ever do so,
in the opinion of Colonel Jonathan Alford of London's Institute
for Strategic Studies, the intervention would be carried out
"with a very great margin of superiority."  His estimate is that
the Soviets would bring in as many as 35 divisions, with around
500,000 men. But Alford believes the Soviet high command has
counseled caution over Poland. One reason: even on so crushing
a scale, the military is rarely able to produce a political
solution.

One of the anomalies of the situation in Poland is that the
crackdown was a purely military operation. Jaruzelski is the
leader of the Polish Communist Party as well as the armed forces
and the government, but in his speech to the nation last week
he chose to call himself "a soldier and chief of government."
There was no mention of the Communist Party. Politburo members
were reportedly not told that martial law was being declared
until two hours before the troops began to move. The Polish
party is deeply demoralized after losing an estimated one-third
of its 3 million members during the past year. It is distressing
to the entire Communist world for a country's armed forces to
become more powerful than its Politburo. That is a
contradiction of Karl Marx's warning to avoid such "bonapartism"
by ensuring that the party be always supreme. Thus the
rebuilding of the party, and how strong he chooses to make it,
is one of the interesting tasks facing Jaruzelski.

Once again, as in previous crises in Eastern Europe, the U.S.
and its allies found that their power to influence events was
sorely limited. President Reagan roundly criticized the Polish
military takeover and declared that Solidarity was being
suppressed with "the full knowledge and support of the Soviet
Union."  The U.S. announced that it would withhold $199 million
of food aid, and refused to consider another $640 million worth
of food requested by Poland unless the Warsaw regime eased its
military rule. But Washington could do little else.

There was no way of estimating how much further the government
planned to carry its crackdown. Late in the week some
foreigners were allowed to fly out of the country, and there was
at least one vague sign that Poles themselves might some day be
permitted to leave:  the government's new currency regulations
introduced a limit ($300) on the amount of money citizens could
take with them on foreign trips. In addition, the sale of
alcoholic beverages was resumed after a week of prohibition.
Many factories remained closed. So did the universities and any
other institutions that might prove troublesome. Even PAX, the
pro-government organization of Catholic laymen, was dissolved.
Observed an American diplomat of Poland's military rulers:
"They have pulled it off with stunning efficiency. But there
is an irony here. What they have succeeded in doing is to shut
Poland down, to bring it to a halt. The real challenge is just
the opposite, to get the country moving again. And, as a result
of what has happened, this will now be harder than ever to
accomplish."

The hopeful view was that the military might yet manage to
restore order without heavy bloodshed and then, after a period
of easing tensions, try to reach a new understanding between the
government and Solidarity. The church, a powerful and respected
force in a nation that is more than 90% Catholic, would have to
server a mediating role. Jaruzelski might succeed with such a
plan if he could somehow convince his countrymen that his real
goal is one of national reconciliation and that his moves staved
off a worse fate, namely a Soviet invasion. The drift last week,
however, was in the direction of rising chaos, and the
government appeared to be deeply concerned. When Warsaw radio
first announced the casualties at Katowice, it described the
killing of Poles by Poles in words of anguish. "Let us lower
our heads in silence to honor the victims of yet another Polish
tragedy," declared the announcer. "Let the bloodshed in Silesia
cause the provocateurs to sober up and make the madmen realize
that the road to confrontation leads nowhere."  Some diplomats
in Warsaw were convinced that those words had been written by
Jaruzelski himself out of an obvious worry that his unseasoned
young army might lose control of the situation. As Poles faced
their bleakest Christmas since World War II, a dreadful
stillness settled across the land. The days seemed colder, the
nights darker, the streets emptier. The quiet was broken only
occasionally, most often by the rumble of armored personnel
carriers. But every so often, as it has for centuries, a
familiar anthem would rise from some church, apartment building
or worker's cottage:  "Poland is not yet lost . . ."

--By William E. Smith. Reported by Roland Flamini/Bonn and
Gregory H. Wierzynski/Warsaw with other bureaus