Daniel Singer's The Road to Gdansk is perhaps the most widely acclaimed book [on] the background to the Polish crisis. Following publication of the first paperback edition, with a postscript written since martial law, Davy Jones interviewed the author on the strategic lessons of the Polish experience.
The theme of your book is that the Polish events are in many ways a foretaste of and the key to future developments in Eastern Europe. In the light of the events such as the military crackdown since the first draft of the book was written, what do you think was the significance of Solidarnosc and how does it point to the future in Eastern Europe?
One can look at it in different ways. In a gloomy fashion one can recognise a great chance, an opportunity, with a vast social movement and an upheaval which had an effect on the party itself, and yet which led to nothing: that when the party finally had the choice between sharing power with the workers and military dictatorship it chose the latter. But I think there is another more optimistic side to this story and I want to insist on it.
What did the events in Poland show? That in certain circumstances a movement which, due to the stench of Stalinism was not led by people with socialist convictions, in a country where socialism is so often associated with the people in power, with the injustice, exploitation and the corruption that are associated with the regime, nevertheless this movement did develop in what I would consider a progressive direction. In a country where the means of production have been nationalised the problem of who is to be the master in the factories and in the economy as a whole arises very rapidly. Even in the Polish context, despite the prejudices that existed against what people thought was socialism, they were beginning to reach the answer, that it must be run by the workers themselves. That I think is something that was not apparent from the beginning.
So, first there is the extraordinary rise of the workers' movement. What happened in Gdansk in August 1980 has to be one of the highlights in the history of the labour movement throughout the world. I personally claim that seldom have you [seen] the workers representing their own interests as the superior interests of society as a whole as you did in Gdansk, in the sense of Marx's phrase: 'That the working class will represent its own interests as the superior interests of society as a whole'. In that sense it was fantastic, and yet obviously we know that this was not led by revolutionary Marxists, for all sorts of reasons that we also know. That was the first encouraging thing.
The second was that the workers were moved and directed towards the problem of workers' councils and self-management by the objective conditions of the country, not by theory. For example, when I was in Poland immediately after the events of August 1980 I met most of the leaders of what was subsequently to become Solidarnosc and their experts and advisors. It was people like myself who were asking what form of society they envisaged and how great a role did they see for the workers' councils. At that time the answer was rather discouraging. Despite the extraordinary discipline of this movement it had no vision, no projects. It was only when one went back last year that suddenly everyone was talking to you about 'samorzad, samorzad, samorzad', that is self-government or self-management. Here again one has to keep in mind that there were different theories on self-management.
The idea was born, in my semi-cynical opinion, because everybody knew that the workers would have to accept a certain austerity, would have to tighten their belts, and nobody could impose that except the workers themselves. Since then, of course, Jaruzelski has tried to impose it in a different way. Everybody wanted to put into that word self-government something different. Some said since we can't have a market economy, the nearest thing is independent autonomous units, and others saw it as a chance for the workers to really take their destiny into their own hands and to run their own factories.
There was a difference, which would require much longer study, between what was called the 'Network' of the leading enterprises, which was started by graduate engineers with a technocratic conception, and the people of the so-called Lodz and Lublin group on the other hand, who were thinking more in terms of the workers shaping the decisions. But with all these projects the difference with the government and the party turned out very rapidly to be over the nomenklatura, that is the nomination of the directors.
So, I would not exaggerate the optimism of my conclusions for one reason, because I'm not sure whether the next confrontation does not run the risk of being a bloody one. If there was ever a hope of a peaceful, if unstable compromise, and perhaps that was only a very small hope, it may well have disappeared with Jaruzelski's coup. And in that sense there is a certain gloom. The other danger is the risk of explosion. Solidarnosc acted, if anything, as a moderating influence on the rank and file and it's easier to do that when you are a well-organised body with offices and so on. It's much more difficult to do it when you're underground. Certainly there is a large section of the young generation which is spoiling for a fight, and there may be an explosion that would lead to nobody knows what.
I am fundamentally optimistic because the Polish events showed the strategic importance of the working class in our society, the fact that history quickens when the workers come onto the stage and become actors in their own drama, not just for Poland but for the whole of Eastern Europe. The dilemma lies in the fact that the final and decisive battle will be in the Soviet Union, and what do you do in the meantime?
Movements which develop round democratic, social and economic questions have an inbuilt tendency [towards] challenging overall for power. That immediately raises the strategic possibility and inevitability of confrontation between two counterpowers. Could you outline how you think the confrontation might have been avoided or if it could have been avoided at all, and if not how could it have been prepared for?
I don't know whether it could have been avoided. I can just venture what was the glimmer of hope and how it looked at one stage. Everybody was aware of the fact that there was some kind of a Rubicon, a line that it was difficult to define but which you could not cross. Let's take an extreme example, if they had begun hanging the party people on the lamp posts, the Russians would have intervened. But nobody knew exactly where this line was, though one knew that it was there. In fact there was an interesting discussion in July 1981 at the National Commission of Solidarnosc attended by its advisors. It's an interesting text because they let their hair down and everybody was talking about the future. This is the one where Bujak from Warsaw Solidarnosc says we don't want to be a trade union of seamen on a sinking ship. In that discussion it was clear that everybody was aware of this Rubicon. Maybe Rulewski from Bydgoszcz was the least aware, but even he knew that there was a point beyond which there would be a catastrophe and one wasn't ready for that.
The people who maintain that this scenario was not possible have to say that there was a moment when one should have made a bid for power. There was one moment when this did arise, at the time of the Bydgoszcz crisis of spring 1981. The problem was whether after a warning strike there should have been an unlimited general strike, which is in fact a bid for power. A compromise was reached at the last moment, and Walesa and his advisors were criticised on democratic grounds that they reached the agreement without properly consulting the base or even the council that elected them. But officially and even in private nobody has ever said we disagree with them because we should have gone on this general strike. But I'll grant you that for some of the people who talk about that period the glimmer in their eye shows that they felt that then they were so strong that they could have made a bid for power.
People who say there should have been a bid for power have logic on their side, but I think that if that had happened, they would perhaps have won power, but even so there would have been a Soviet intervention. Now if I thought there was any chance of that Soviet intervention precipitating a crisis in the Soviet Union, if I thought that the Soviet army would have begun to disintegrate under the influence of what it was doing in Poland, then I would have understood them making that bid. But unfortunately that was not the case.
I still think that the only hope for the Polish revolution as for other countries is its expansion, but I think one has to take into account the time factor. Some of those who now talk of such a bid for power talk sometimes as if they were dealing with a very organised, very ideologically developed and politically conscious movement which was not the case in Poland. None of the people who talk about it now came to the Solidarnosc congress last September in Gdansk and made a speech about a socialist seizure of power, nobody did. My reproach is that if one had a clear vision then I think it would have been possible to talk in those terms to the workers and say to them: 'Let's consolidate power in the factories, let's see how far we can go,' you could talk like that. The problem was that there were not many people in Solidarnosc who really had a clear picture of what they wanted. The only people who talked about conflict were right wing people, and they were not talking in terms of socialist transformation or consolidation of the workers' movement. They talked about national independence and to hell with it. One climbs on a horse and rides to Moscow.
I'd like to pursue this point, because both within the Solidarnosc activists and among people in the labour movement in the [West] who look at the situation in Poland, there is a real debate without an easy answer, about whether one can make a revolution against the bureaucracy in Poland or another East European state. Is it not also true that one factor in the period up to martial law in Poland was a lack of any real strategic vision other than that of the self-limitation strategy which by then was beginning to wear thin ..?
So the problem was: does one give up? Doesn't one ask for anything? Obviously not. The real problem was whether one could find some way to make that transition of power. When I say gradual process I mean one doesn't seize power in one go, but one has a transitional period in which there is dual power, institutionalised in such a way that under the [pressure] from below one progressively seizes certain corners, combines them, then moves a little further, and so on. In other words I use by analogy what was called the 'creeping May' in Italy, the hot autumn after the French May '68, a sort of creeping revolution rather than an instant, immediate revolution.
In Poland there were in fact suggestions of a certain institutionalised form for this, that is the two chambers of parliament, one of which would represent 'the imperatives of geography', and the other would represent the workers' councils on a national scale. For all economic decisions there would have to have been an agreement between the two. Such an arrangement ensured that because of 'geography' the Communist Party was still kept in power, but it needed the support of Solidarnosc for certain economic reforms, and to retain that it in turn conceded certain other things. I'm saying in the best of cases that it would have been extremely difficult because I can see immediately the objections that can be raised.
The problem of nomenklatura and therefore of power was raised immediately, which would have meant permanent conflict, because in the long run there is no room for compromise between power from above and power from below. But there are special circumstances because of the proximity of the Soviet Union and the risk of Soviet intervention, because everybody knew that even if one won in Poland there was a risk of Soviet intervention.
I'm sorry to interrupt but if we are talking about after November 1981, by then one would have had to be blind not to see that this was a confrontation. Let's not even talk about the seizure of power, but even defensively one should have talked about workers' councils, one should have prepared workers' defence mechanisms in the factories. During that period it was obvious what was developing. At the Radom leadership meeting of Solidarnosc which the other side quote so much, Walesa made a public admission of the bankruptcy of his policy because the other side had let him down. By then the idea of compromise was finished, and a movement with a project and a strategy would have been ready to act. If compromise was not possible one would prepare oneself defensively. I'm not saying one should not have done more work in the army and the police, I'm saying that I don't think personally that there was a possibility for a bid for power. At the risk of appearing moderate I think one would have had a bloodbath and after that it would have been like the French movement after the Commune, or Hungary after 1956. Whereas today you still have a certain stalemate, they have driven the movement underground but not defeated it.
You are right to insist on the point because it will arise again. It is still part of the discussion even now. Kuron, who is interned, now is saying that he is for a popular rising. He is saying prepare for a popular rising to force them to negotiate, because otherwise there will be an explosion. Whereas Bujak, who is still at liberty, says let's not have anything centralised, let's continue with the resistance all round the country. But I think since May it will be going Kuron's way because everybody sees the risk of explosion any minute. So this problem has not disappeared, it depends on what strategy one has, on what one says to the rank and file. The Polish movement was full of democracy, it showed great capacity for mobilisation, a great capacity for self-discipline and so on, but I think that ideologically, and it's not so surprising, didn't invent very much nor did it have a very clear strategy. Maybe it needed more time.
One other aspect is that surely in Poland or any other East European country, even in the context of the strategy you have outlined of an escalating series of compromises trying to eat away the power of the bureaucracy, another vital factor has to be a political appeal from the labour movement both to other labour movements in the East and to the labour movement in the West. This would aim to build a movement which in some way could politically attempt to stay the hand of the Soviet bureaucracy. I ask that also to assess what lessons you think have been drawn by the workers in the rest of Eastern Europe of the Solidarnosc movement, and to what extent the question of internationalising the movement will be understood by the next generation of struggle in Poland or in Eastern Europe?
You raise very important questions and I will be frank and say from the outset that I do not think I have clear answers. I agree with you entirely that it all depends on the capacity to go beyond the national frontier. How to do it? Is it through an appeal, through the attraction of what one is doing? I must say that I was in two minds myself when they launched their appeal to the workers of Eastern Europe at the first round of the Solidarnosc congress, not that I disagreed with anything in the appeal. But it came at the same time as what looked like a bid for free elections, which everyone in Poland knew meant not dual power but a bid for total power. I went back for the second part of the congress and I remember a friend within the Solidarnosc movement who wrote the appeal telling me that it had an educational and pedagogical effect within Solidarnosc and that was a factor I hadn't thought of.
I don't think there has been a great impact immediately in Eastern Europe. On the other hand one hears things occasionally, like from somebody in Hungary who wasn't on the side of the workers, but when asked about the reaction of the Hungarian workers to Poland said: 'They are all on the side of Solidarnosc.' This was a party man. I think that the seeds are sown there but it will take some time. We have to remember how the movement in Poland matured and developed. The students in '68 were on their own and in '70 the workers asked in vain for the students from the Gdansk Polytechnic to come with them. It was only in '76 when one had the beginning of that link between the workers and the intellectuals.
And there was the ripening of the movement. At the start in Gdansk the strikes were not even asking for genuine independent unions. Ten days later the idea proved so powerful that it swept everything aside. That's something which is encouraging. We have to realise how in certain circumstances a movement matures and quickens suddenly.
The problem of relations with the Western labour movement is much more complicated and there are difficulties there for us as well as for them. When I say that we should learn that the enemies of our enemies are not necessarily our friends, that applies both ways. I've had this experience in Poland as I have had it in the United States. Thus people in Poland prefer to see about Reagan only that he's against the Russians. Similarly the Nicaraguans who wouldn't accept a Solidarnosc delegation for the same reason. They are wrong in both cases and it's our duty to say so. This is one of the important things that we can explain to the actors in the drama: the extent to which their battle is a common battle and to show how it is linked. The anti-nuclear movement for instance cannot develop without the progress of some kind of movement from below in the countries of Eastern Europe as well. This is where we can play a part, though obviously not as teachers from the outside.
We don't have to idealise Solidarnosc we don't have to invent things, we have to console ourselves with the thought that considering the previous 35 years of that country the fact that the movement which emerged, whatever its ideology, moved in the direction of the surge for workers councils, for some kind of a self-governing republic is quite progressive. This rebirth of the labour movement is I believe historic.