[The following interview and accompanying box appeared in the April 30 issue of La Brèche, a revolutionary-socialist fortnightly published in Lausanne, Switzerland. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
Question. Is there a parallel between the Baltic seaport strikes in 1970-71 and the Radom and Ursus revolts in the summer of 1976? Was there a line of development from the earlier movement to the later one?
Answer. In the first place, it is important to recall the historic conditions out of which the Polish working class has emerged.
Prior to 1939, Poland was not very industrialized; therefore, the working class was only a small percentage of the population. By 1938, Stalin had already ordered the execution of many Communist leaders. Under the Nazi occupation, the vast majority of activists were murdered.
It was not until after World War II that large-scale industrialization began, and with it the restructuring of the working class.
Peasants flocked to the cities by the thousands, forming a very unpoliticized working class. They went into the factories without any experience of struggle, with no traditions. Furthermore, one of the main goals adopted by the bureaucratic regime was to atomize the working class, preventing it from gaining consciousness and becoming politicized, blocking its unification and the development of its natural forms of expression. The proletariat represents a threat to these regimes.
This explains why, up until 1970 in Szczecin, Gdynia, and Gdansk, there was never any real working-class upsurge, but only a slow buildup.
The events of December 1970 and January 1971 represented a major victory. They enabled the working class to become conscious of its strength. However, while the government upgraded the workers' living conditions, it did not hesitate to resort to selective repression against the leading activists in the movement—through imprisonment, dismissal, forced exile, and so on—to undercut the hopes these concessions might have aroused. In addition, in the months that followed the shake-up, the government little by little reverted to all of the bureaucratic characteristics of the previous government, particularly by reinforcing the centralization of power.
However, the Polish working class will never willingly accept a bureaucratic regime. The proof of this lies in the events in Radom and Ursus in 1976.
How did Gierek manage to achieve this upgrading of living standards? By taking out loans totaling $9 billion from the capitalist countries. It should be noted here that a sounder investment policy, one not distorted by bureaucratic planning, would have made it possible to avoid the longterm negative effects of these loans on the Polish economy, thereby contributing to economic recovery. The reason why this was not done is that investment policy is tied to the tribute paid to the Soviet bureaucracy by its Polish counterpart. It was the workers who were asked to pay the price of the government's bad management, with the 45 percent increase in food prices in June 1976. It was precisely in 1976 that the first repayments fell due on the Polish bureaucracy's loans!
Nowadays in Poland, the bureaucratic regime is just going through the motions. The workers, intellectuals, and students are on the offensive. The Polish working class knows that an understanding exists between the Brezhnev doctrine and the Western bourgeoisies, and that in case of an uprising in Eastern Europe, these bourgeoisies would lend their support to the bureaucratic regime. Maintaining the status quo is as much of a vital necessity for the bourgeoisie as for the bureaucracy.
In Eastern Europe, the relationship of forces between the working class and the bureaucracy is like a poker game, where the player watches his opponent's facial expressions to try and guess what he might do next.
The working class knows that every bureaucratic regime has Brezhnev behind it, but that it too has an ace up its sleeveunity in action-even before all the cards are on the table. When will the game begin? The working class and parties on the left in the West have an important role to play because of the support they can give. The Polish working class is no longer counting on anything from the capitalist governments. It is counting on the solidarity of the workers movement in the West.
On June 24, 1976, the decree announcing the price increases was published. The Polish workers, with the 1970 experience under their belts, responded forcefully. On June 25, workers in the city of Radom—40,000 of them—stopped work and gathered in front of the party headquarters, setting fire to it. That same day, workers at the Ursus plant-25,000 of them-went on strike. They tore up the railroad tracks, completely halting rail transport in Poland. Among other examples, let me mention the strike by 20,000 workers at Polski Fiat. June 25 was a day of struggle for the entire Polish working class. On the morning of the twenty-sixth, Premier Jaroszewicz canceled the price increases.
Q. What changes in the Eastern European bureaucracies in general have been brought about by the existence of established opposition groups, such as the Committee to Defend the Workers, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, and the Committee to Supervise Compliance With the Helsinki Accords in the USSR?
A. Up until around 1970, the bureaucratic regime held unchecked power over the working class. Workers' revolts were nipped in the bud. In 1976, the workers showed that they were capable of opposing this system in a determined way. Charter 77 represents a similar type of response in Czechoslovakia, the country where opposition has been the most stifled and held in check since August 1968.
In 1970, the Polish workers took to the streets of the Baltic port towns. The students and intellectuals did not respond to their call, saying that in 1968, the workers had not responded to the student rebellion. In this way, no links were forged between the students and the working class.
But in June 1976, for the first time in Poland and in the USSR, a convergence took place between the struggles of the working class, the intellectuals, and the students, who had played an important role.
Q. In view of the significance of this new organized opposition, which enjoys widespread popular support, don't you think that the bureaucracy will cling with redoubled determination to the maintenance of the status quo in Europe? What is your opinion of the upcoming Belgrade conference?
A. As I see it, the Helsinki conference or the Belgrade conference is playing the same role as the Holy Alliance, which united Austria, Prussia, and Russia before 1914. It's nothing but a gang of cops in charge of maintaining law and order.
To be more specific, it should not be forgotten that it was the Brezhnev regime that initiated the Helsinki conference. It is precisely this regime that represses the opposition most harshly. It was trying to give a legitimate veneer to its repression with this maneuver. The reason why the capitalist regimes, headed by the Ford administration in the United States, rushed to respond to this initiative is that they saw in it a way to maintain the status quo in Europe.
Q. What sort of perspective does the Committee to Defend the Workers offer the Polish workers today, in particular in view of the formation of a group to defend democratic rights about which there has been talk recently?
A. First of all, let me explain that the Committee to Defend Human Rights got its start inside the Committee to Defend the Workers, on the initiative of a certain number of its members. The Committee to Defend the Workers was formed to obtain the release and rehabilitation of all the workers arrested in the wake of the June events.
When these goals are achieved, it will have to discontinue its activities. The Committee to Defend Human Rights seeks to carry on this work. In addition, the formation of this group today represents an extension of activity of the grouping of oppositionists that made it possible to found the Committee to Defend the Workers. This new committee only includes a portion of the members of the Committee to Defend the Workers at present.
Q. We feel it is essential to support the struggles of the Polish, Czech, and Russian workers and oppositionists, because the distorted picture of socialism given by these regimes is a millstone around the neck of the entire world working class. What, in your opinion, are the tasks of the workers movement in relation to this?
A. This question sums up the entire interview.
After spending five years in the capitalist countries, I have realized the immense harm done to the working class in general, and to its chances for unity, by the distorted information about the situation in Eastern Europe. The struggle of the working class in the West against the bourgeoisie requires a clear understanding of the nature of the regimes in these countries. Similarly, it is important for workers in the Eastern European countries to be familiar with the current state of struggles in the West.
Our activity—mine as well as yours—should help develop this movement. Each time contact is made, from either direction, it is a step forward. The working class in the capitalist countries must understand that the workers in Eastern Europe are fighting for socialism, because the regime they are living under is not socialism—it's a system based on terror!
It seems to me that a central goal should be for the workers to tear down the iron curtain. This is the only thing that will make possible a free flow of information as well as free travel by individuals. It must be understood that if our work can develop working-class solidarity in the capitalist countries, the repression that workers in Eastern Europe suffer makes work of this type almost impossible in these countries today.
For this reason, everything that can be done here is essential. Any information that can get across the iron curtain is valuable!
An Exiled Leader of Polish Workers Movement
Edmund Baluka, aged forty-five, worked at the Adolf Warski naval shipyard for twelve years, until the end of 1972.
In December 1970, he led the strike committee there. The significance of this strike movement, touched off by an increase in food prices, should be noted. It was the struggles of the Baltic seaport towns-Gdansk, Gdynia, Szczecin, and others-that unseated the government and the Gomulka leadership of the Communist party, both products of the post-1956 "de-Stalinization" period.
In January 1971, Baluka was the main leader of a second strike then confronting the newly appointed Gierek regime. Once again, he played a central role in the strike committee.
In ousting the Gomulka leadership, the "new" party and state leadership made a certain number of concessions, hoping to isolate and co-opt the Baltic port workers battling the bureaucratic regime, so as to make it easier to crush them later on.
Seeing the trap that was laid for them, Baluka and his comrades resumed their strike and occupation of the shipyards, forcing Gierek to negotiate with them on the spot. The strike leaders were also faced with the need to prevent spontaneous reprisals by the workers, who were subjected to numerous provocations.
Conscious of the danger that the movement might burn itself out, Edmund Baluka fought to convert the strike committee into an ongoing committee for workers control over the implementation of the twelve demands raised by the movement.
This body was widely looked to at the time by the workers in Baluka's shipyard and in the entire area. Its authority was so great that the party, state, and union bureaucratic leaderships preferred to try to integrate the movement into the union structures, rather than attempting to crush it.
In September 1972, Baluka was elected president of the regional metalworkers union, with a membership of 250,000 workers. In this capacity, he served as a delegate to the Seventh Congress of Polish Trade Unions, held October 15-18, 1972.
He was then summoned to the office of one of the officials whom he had treated unceremoniously at the Adolf Warski naval shipyard. An attempt was made to bribe him. As a skilled worker, he earned 3,500 zlotys a month; he was offered 10,000 zlotys a month, a bonus of 4,000 zlotys four times a year, and another 50,000 zlotys a year for recreational expenses.
So much for wages; a few privileges would be thrown in also-an apartment, an automobile and chauffeur, female companionship, and so on. As a worker militant, Baluka turned down these offers with revulsion.
The scheduling of the Seventh Congress had been postponed eighteen months because of the Baltic port conflict. The incident cited above sheds light on the current leadership's intentions. What sort of political content is suggested by such intrigues?
At the congress, as a union member, Gierek took the floor. The first secretary of the Polish United Workers party called on the delegates present to vote an amendment to the statutes, explicitly giving the party control over the union.
Of the 2,820 delegates present, only Baluka refused to capitulate. He spoke from the podium, arguing that, having been mandated by the workers to represent them on the basis of a program of struggle, he could not agree to submission to the party, whose antiworking-class policies had touched off the conflict. Elected by his comrades as a union representative, he would not bow to the dictates of the party leadership over their heads.
Baluka was summarily dismissed from the union and from his job, and was left without any means of subsistence. With the help and support of his comrades, he was able to flee the country on February 28, 1973.
Since then, this worker militant has spent his years in exile as a factory worker in various European countries.