Needstrat: 1989 real changes

The Polish government, Solidarity Trade Union and Catholic Church start roundtable talks on 6 February 1989 in Warsaw, Poland. Lech Walesa leads Solidarity’s delegation in difficult negotiations and on 5 April reach a break-through agreement to: hold partly free elections, legalize independent trade-unions, have a President of the Republic instead of the General Secretary of the Communist Party, and form a Senate. On the other hand communist leaders and officials will not be prosecuted for crimes they have committed. Some Poles are very dissatisfied with this, as they need justice for painful losses of freedom and life.

Solidarity wins the freely contested Parliament-seats in the 4 June elections. Poland gets a non-communist Prime Minister, the first in Eastern Europe since the late 1940s. The Poles open the path to similar processes in Hungary, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia, and to the peaceful fall of the Berlin wall on 9 November 1989. Violent transitions in Romania where President Ceausescu is executed, the Tiananmen massacre in China, and wars in the break-up of Yugoslavia, remind us that the nonviolent path was not a given one. It could have ended very differently in Poland also. Maybe the Polish roundtable can inspire and give insights for transitions from other authoritarian regimes.

http://85856021.nhd.weebly.com/the-movement.html

The roundtable from 6 February to 5 April 1989 leading to a non-violent transition in Poland and Eastern Europe.

http://www.uws.edu.au/newscentre/news_centre/more_news_stories/open_forum_moving_from_communism_to_capitalism

Participants at the roundtable, Lech Walesa on the left.

Background

Nazi Germany invaded Western Poland on 1 September 1939, and the Soviet Union soon took the Eastern part in agreement between the two countries. Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941 and took all of Poland. The Germans killed millions of Poles and caused extensive damage to infrastructure. In 1944 the Soviets came back and soon put a communist government in charge. The Allies accepted Soviet domination in Eastern Europe to the dismay of the democratic Polish government. Poland’s borders were moved westward to give the Soviets a bigger buffer to Europe. Poland and Germany lost territories and millions of people became refugees. Industry was nationalized, private land expropriated and political control monopolized by the Communist Party.

Continued Soviet influence

Developments in the Soviet Union had huge repercussions in Poland. The death of Stalin in 1953 led to less political terror and end of forced collectivization. The Catholic Church, important to the very religious Poles, also got a bit more room. But Polish troops participated in the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Economic reforms in the 1970s with injections of foreign loans had initial success, but the oil-crisis and mismanagement led to price-increases and popular protests. In 1978 the Polish Cardinal Wojtyla was elected Pope John Paul II. He visited Poland in 1979 and many Poles got new inspiration. Lech Walesa led a strike at the Gdansk shipyard and succeeded in an accord with the government in 1980. The 10-million strong and independent Solidarność (Solidarity) Trade Union got recognition from the government - an unheard of development in Communist countries. But the Communists in Eastern Europe and Moscow felt threatened thinking the same could happen in their countries, and they would lose power. Fearing a Soviet invasion, the Polish leader General Jaruzelski imposed martial law and cracked down on Solidarity in December 1981. Walesa and most leaders were imprisoned. Solidarity was weakened but not broken.

Gorbachev initiates change

Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union in 1985 and initiated economic and political reforms. There were strikes in Poland in 1988 but not nearly as strong as before. Solidarity members have later expressed how they tried to ignite strikes and demonstrations but got little response. A labor activist Wladyslaw Frasniuk said “These final strikes, the strike wave. It sounds so proud and nice, but in fact those pathetic remnants of strikers, they were just nothing. I took part in the first strike then, and running from factory to factory, I got Dolmel plant up with difficulty, by sheer force of my authority. There was no will to fight. People knew it would result in repressions.” Interview on page 10 in “Negotiating Revolution in Poland” Michael Kennedy. The paper was made as a result of a 1999 Conference at the University of Michigan on the 10^th anniversary of the roundtable with many participants from the actual events.

The Polish regime was also weak in 1988, and had lost support and respect of the people, though the leaders didn’t understand just how much. Jaruzelski realized that reforms in Poland were inevitable and opened a controlled roundtable process with Solidarity. The Communists thought they would get many votes in the 4 June elections, but they didn’t. In January 1990 the Communist Party dissolved itself, a new era opened in Eastern Europe. On a study trip in the spring of 1990 with the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration we met Solidarity representatives in Gdansk. They were proud of their achievements and seemed very confident of themselves. I respect their struggle. Later Solidarity would split in internal conflicts, but... that was later, in 1990 thy had just won.