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London Focus on Eastern Europe, Vol. 1 No 4, September–October 1977, pp. 8–9 & 22.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
On 24 July, after a widespread campaign of protests inside Poland and abroad, the Polish authorities released the last remaining workers jailed for participation in the successful strikes and demonstrations against price rises in June 1976. The authorities simultaneously released members and activists of the Workers’ Defence Committee (known hereafter by its Polish initials, KOR) who had been arrested after the death of the Krakow student activist, Stanislaw Pyjas in May.
As the KOR declaration printed below indicates, the amnesty was directly associated with a personal initiative of Edward Gierek, the First Secretary of the Polish Communist Party. There are a number of indications that Gierek wishes it to be known that he has taken a stand against elements within the Party leadership who have wanted to step up repression against the opposition. And at one of his periodic private briefings for leading Polish journalists, Gierek is reported to have said that in the current conditions in Poland the Party had to learn to live with an unofficial opposition.
The Amnesty seems to mark the end of a period after the April Central Committee meeting during which official pressure on oppositionist students and intellectuals mounted (See Labour Focus, No. 3). There seems to have been a concerted effort at that time by at least some sections of the Party leadership to push forward a general attack on the opposition. But resistance within the ruling circles is indicated by the fact that although speakers at the April Plenum publicly threatened strong action against students in Warsaw who had signed protests, and also publicly attacked a critical film called The Man in Marble (see Labour Focus, No. 2), there has been no strong repression at Warsaw University and the film in question is still being shown.
At the same time, the authorities have been able to resist successfully demands for official enquiries into both the police brutality following the June 1976 strikes and the death of Stanislaw Pyjas in the spring. The mystery of Pyjas’ death has still not been cleared up, but some new information suggests that the killing was not carried out in a professional way. It appears that Pyjas was not in fact dead when he was found early on the morning of 7 May. He died later that day in hospital and before his death a friend in Krakow was able to see him in hospital. That friend then left Krakow for Lodz but failed to meet the people expecting him there and has not been seen since. The consensus within the opposition is that Pyjas was killed by extreme right-wing elements with links inside the Party and the police.
Although the Amnesty has created a more relaxed atmosphere, the underlying problems confronting the Polish authorities have not been tackled and these point to a continuing instability within the country. No policy has been put forward for tackling the inter-locking economic problems of heavy debts to the capitalist world, heavily subsidised food prices, and a continuing acute shortage of food supplies, especially meat. It is expected that a Party conference will be held at the end of the year to decide on a set of policies to tackle these problems. In the meantime, the July plenum of the Central Committee concentrated on the theme of house-building and the subsequent barrage of press coverage of house construction suggests that the authorities are attempting to compensate for dissatisfaction on the food front by stressing the government’s achievements in the drive to solve Poland’s acute housing shortage.
Another continuing problem for the Party leadership is that of devising a modus vivendi with the working class. While the authorities are desperately striving to find a way of avoiding any sharp conflict with the working class on the economic front, there is a growing recognition that some new political approach is necessary: hence, the renewed discussion of various forms of increased worker participation at factory level and other such schemes. But as yet no significant initiative has been taken on this front.
In addition there is the problem of relations with the intellectual and student opposition. The Amnesty has not produced any clear policy on the part of the Party leadership for handling relations with these forces. Undoubtedly one wing would like the leadership to adopt a plan for crushing all organised opposition groups. But another possibility might be to try to reach at least a tacit understanding with the KOR, presumably allowing it to continue the production of bulletins but ensuring that it refrains from any attempt to mobilise support for a set of precise political and social demands and that it eschews any effort to establish organised links with working class activists.
The evolution of the balance of forces between the different political groupings within the higher Party organs will have a crucial bearing on the way the Polish authorities attempt to tackle the multiple crisis. The existence of conflicting groupings within the leadership is beyond dispute, but the precise contours of each remain obscure. One theory is that Gierek’s balancing between two distinct groupings, leaning one way, then another according to the pressure of circumstances. Prime Minister Jaroszewicz is generally recognised to be a leading figure in a conservative faction interested in a programme of economic retrenchment, sharp reduction in economic ties with the capitalist West and a political style mixing nationalist and workerist demagogy with stronger action against the intellectual opposition. Another faction, identifying itself with “Eurocommunism” seeks to move into a more independent, middle position between Moscow and the Western Communist Parties, linked to a continued drive for Western credits and trade. This grouping would also encourage further steps towards political liberalisation, or at least, the creation of additional political safety valves within the existing system. The chief spokesman of this current is thought to be Central Committee Secretary and Politburo member Stefan Olszowski the 45 year old former Foreign Minister who master-minded Poland’s turn to the West after Gierek came to power in 1971. The “Eurocommunists” draw their support from younger, technocratic functionaries as well as former liberals of the Gomulka period. They reputedly hope that Poland will be able to follow the international initiatives of the Hungarian Party leadership. In recent months the latter has appeared to be trying to play a role in the Moscow-Eurocommunist split similar to the role played by the Romanian Party leadership in the early phase of the Sino-Soviet dispute: the role of “honest-broker”, gaining diplomatic leverage for itself vis-à-vis Moscow through a refusal to allow ex-communication of Moscow’s opponents. The long Polish silence after Moscow’s New Times attack on Spanish Party leader Santiago Carrillo, indicated the strength of the Eurocommunist trend in the Polish leadership.
But the development of the political struggle within the Polish Party leadership will itself be crucially affected by broader social and political forces in Poland and outside. To the south, in Czechoslovakia, to the West in the German Democratic Republic and to the East in the Soviet Union the leading groups are strongly opposed to any sign of what they consider to be suicidal experiments with liberalisation. While domestically the impulses towards democratisation from the workers and students and intellectuals are certain to grow in the coming period. As the KOR declaration in this issue indicates, those struggling for democratization in Poland regard support from the Labour movement in the West as being of the greatest importance in aiding their activity.
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Last updated: 15 February 2023