PANEL SEVEN:
GLOBAL CHANGE AND THE ROUND TABLE

In the second half of the 80's, Eastern Europe was seen, briefly, as one of the most hopeless regions of the world. According to the official US analyses done in the mid-80's, Eastern Europe was seen as the second biggest potential crisis region of the world, just nearly, or a little after, the Middle East...

The Poles played an extremely important role, basically until the end of August ‘89. They signaled, or they created events which signaled for the citizens and rulers of the region, what is possible, how far they can go, what is tolerated and what are the strategies of creating such events...

To enter into compromise negotiations, and as such a type of democratization, presupposed to speak in the name of society. That slowly emerged in Poland, by the end of ‘88, and it didn't come about, the Hungarian opposition was never able, never felt that it can speak in the name of society, even when the negotiations started, they very clearly contrasted their position to the Polish Solidarity. They could afford to enter into compromise; we cannot do that, because we cannot speak, we don't have that type of mandate...

The Polish peaceful negotiations had an impact not only on the Hungarian or the other negotiations, but this compromise had an impact also on regime changes like the Czech or the German, where the mobilization of masses was so high that political leaders of the opposition could have easily led the masses against the party headquarters and started violent regime change. And the reason they didn't do that, the most important reason they didn't do that was that they were led by the same ethos, which led the Polish negotiators and the Polish democratic opposition, that you cannot get, establish rule of law...in an unruly way—that human rights should be respected and the peaceful and non-violent nature of the negotiations is extremely important and a value in itself.

Compared with the Round Table negotiations in Poland, what happened in Beijing ten years ago was not a great democratic movement, as it was widely perceived to have been, but a serious setback for democracy, a tragedy...

There are lots of experiences that Poland can pass on to China, but the first one is that democracy can only come through the reconciliation and agreement between the state and the society. Achieving it can only be gained through an untiring effort, through threats and counter-threats, through competition, dialogue and negotiation.

Michael wanted me to talk about the applicability of the experience of the Polish Round Table to Cuba. And in a certain sense, that would be a very quick talk up here, because I really think it's not applicable. What I'd like to talk about, though, is why I think it's not applicable, looking at maybe some of the political and institutional actors that in the Polish case, from what I have come to understand, were so critical to the Round Table, and why they are different in Cuba...The Cuban government, regardless of what it has become, was a government that emerged out of a popular, radical, nationalist revolution. And as such, still lays certain claims of legitimacy to that particular project. Secondly, the United States, unlike the help that it has given democracy in Poland, has not necessarily been a friend of democracies in Latin America, specifically not Cuba...The Church itself is a very different, very, very different situation in Cuba. They say that Cubans are Catholic on Sundays and that's it, and I would say probably less than that...There's a long history of the Church really being part of the colonial power, and as such was not there when the Cuban nation was formed.

Regardless of what we thought about "them" in Poland, and what "they" thought about us, there was no denying that we were all Poles. Now, we certainly thought that "they" were bad Poles, and they certainly thought that we were bad Poles, but Poles all the same. Phrases were bandied about, "jak Polak z Polakiem," "Pole to Pole," the way of negotiating, of doing business. This was not only rhetoric, what it meant was, that there was a conceivable community to which we all belonged, and a conceivable common project to which we all wanted to contribute...

I just regret that this room isn't packed full with Polish opponents of the Round Table. Those who say it was a crime, or treason, or at least a mistake, so that they could hear María, Dai Qing, telling us how they would love such a crime, treason, mistake to happen in their countries, and many more such mistakes.

Next Panel Eight: The Polish Round Table Revisited — The Art of Negotiation

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