PANEL TWO:
THE POLITICAL CONTEST, 1986-89

...We had found out before that any time we went into the streets and through demonstrations tried to force the other side to do something, each time we actually lost. No matter how many times we tried to overcome the other side by armed struggle, it would turn out, and I'm referring here to the post-war period, it turned out that the party apparatus could easily present the opposition as some sort of criminals, armed assailants. And we kept losing. Therefore we figured out that the idea of fighting without violence was the best, and that was our belief, the most successful or effective tool in the fight for democracy. When this is accepted as a principle that here we are headed towards an agreement ultimately, and it revealed itself during the martial law period, then even while we were calling for street demonstrations and aiming for a general strike, in that very document, we would always refer to the need for coming to terms and agreement, believing that this was the only way to solve the conflict...

I must say that if during martial law someone had contacted me, let's say some general, and said something like, "My division is at your disposal," most likely we would have seriously reflected over this possibility. But nothing of the sort happened...

I would say that we succeeded in maintaining the unity of the Solidarity movement, and, let's say, the overall comprehensibility and unity of the idea that was the guiding light for us. That doesn't mean that there was no diversity in programs. Yes, there were diverse programs, manifold programs. There were new political movements being born and they were formulating their own political programs. And that suited us, because this was what pluralism and democracy in Solidarity were about...

Right now in Poland, there is a debate about the Round Table negotiations, was that necessary, did it make any sense or not? In this conflict, an important argument is the issue of the victims, the issue of whether there is justice, whether justice was served at that time, whether the crimes were punished, whether evil was eliminated. And in a way, those who ask those questions think of the Round Table negotiations as something bad. I'd like to say that this approach, well, shows a lot of deep faith that you can eradicate evil and that justice can prevail one hundred percent. I look at it with detachment, and, well, even with a certain dose of fright, because, well, that's as if someone was trying to correct what God created, to eliminate all evil and achieve one hundred percent justice. That's not the way the world works, and human relations aren't that way, either, and, let me put it this way, within this philosophy, we would like to keep prosecuting and punishing all those who committed various crimes. Within that philosophy, we, the Poles, a religious nation, we go to church and pray for justice. And that's a big part of the Polish Church, the part which you can hear in the media, the part, well, trying to achieve that one hundred percent absolute justice and truth...How should we do that? In order to do that, one obviously needs to answer the question regarding the significance of the victims' suffering. Well, to me, then, it's clear that those people were not fighting for this one hundred-percent justice and eradication of evil. They were fighting for freedom and democracy. And in that sense, when we participated in the Round Table negotiations which led to freedom and democracy in Poland, in a way we are fulfilling the mission, the mission they had been fighting for and gave their lives for. And I have to say that when I listen to the family members of those people, I think they understand, and they say, our father, my husband was killed for freedom and democracy. And within that philosophy, we may say, there is another kind of prayer in church. This one is about thankfulness for their sacrifice, and that's another part of the Polish Church. And in that sense, the difference of opinion regarding the Round Table truly exists and will persist for many more months and perhaps for many long years, and it will define these two trends in Polish socio-economic life, but also the two trends in the Polish Church.

...This is quite a risky thought, but I am going to say it anyway. I believe that allowing such notions as glasnost' and perestroika had its source in the situation in Poland, and in the realization that it was impossible to solve conflicts and ensure growth either through force, like in Poland during martial law, or through the existing methods of running the government. Maybe not as clearly as manifested in Poland, those problems occurred in the whole socialist camp. Maybe this is not modest, but I'm fully convinced, after over six years of living in Moscow and after numerous conversations and inquiries, that it was a necessity to face that challenge, the challenge named Poland that engendered the necessity for leaders of Gorbachev's type.

In response to name-calling, when we were being called "red spiders,"...yes, yes, there were times when we were called "red spiders," I used to say to my partners: "Well, what kind of a spider is it that is no longer able to catch flies?"...

I was being perceived as some kind of a funny monster with two heads, since, well, with my biography I was still the ambassador of the new Poland. And for these people that meant a lot as well, that moving into a new system, they didn't need to lose their heads, and I mean literally...

We knew that it was necessary to change, that radical changes were needed, but we did not quite know what exactly needed to change and how to introduce those changes. So we were looking towards Solidarity for ideas. And the way we saw it, it was all a maze of criticism, of dissatisfaction, of different ideas, proposals, that were not clearly crystallized political and economic concepts. We could still remember well the famous consultations about cigarette prices during the Solidarity Congress in Gdańsk. This sounds completely irrational today but that was the truth. So in our eyes, that was not the proper idea for the new Poland, either. Yes, we agreed on one thing, that we needed a change. And with this frame of mind, we were sitting down at the Round Table. This was not a duel of two clearly defined concepts, some doctrinaire socialism with planned economy against democracy and market economy. This was a search, at the beginning full of distrust and suspicion, and yet together we were looking for new ways of changing Poland...

At some point, the Russians asked all the ambassadors accredited in Moscow to put something symbolic from each nation under the cornerstone of the currently rebuilt great Temple of Christ the Savior. So I went to Warsaw and I brought a thick book of the Round Table agreements. That was, well, a very dangerous time in Moscow, with the possible confrontation, and I figured that they could use our agreements as a symbol of dialogue. But then I read the book, after several years, carefully, and decided not to put it there at the cornerstone of the temple. As I have mentioned, those were beautiful promises, wishes, expectations. It was not the free market, it was not capitalism. It resembled utopian socialism, social romanticism with the indexing of wages. Well, to give such visions to neighbors, who were and actually still are facing the brutal choice of tough economic measures, well...I did not dare do it. Despite all the symbolic value of our Round Table, I did not decide to undermine the walls of their new temple with ideas, which were created at a specific time and under specific conditions in Poland...

Let me remind you that in the Round Table pact we agreed that the next elections would be completely free. This period of four years of systemic transformation, we called that, well, a coupling mechanism or rather, the clutch mechanism. You press the clutch in order to switch gears, not to stick to the same one. I stubbornly insist that the good part of my camp had a sense of far-reaching changes. Not everybody was aware that major fundamental change would really occur, but there were many that had not as much a premonition as an understanding that it would occur. That's why...we pressed that clutch pedal...

We pushed for the elections to finally get to know the real truth. We were all afraid that we would destroy the country by the rapid pace of the transformation. That's the origin of all this resistance, all of those institutions, braking and controlling, including the contractual elections. This whole construction was about this, and not about our hands...,like it's often shown, glued to the trough and turned into stone.

For us in the Embassy in Warsaw, in the period from 1983 until 1990, when I was head of Mission, Poland was an absolute fairyland of political and economic experimentation, and it was a place that achieved, at the end of the Round Table, something that generations of Americans, pundits and experts, declared to be impossible, and that was the peaceful transfer of power in a communist country into the hands of a democratic society...

In my view Solidarity had all the good arguments and had tremendous popular support, from the Church, from society. It couldn't lose, once it got down to the table, and that's exactly the way it worked out. Professor Reykowski will acknowledge, he and Professor Geremek came on television every night, after the sessions of the Round Table, and it was like Thomas Jefferson explaining democracy on television to the American people in 1790. They created the new society, explained that to the people, and by the time they all rose from the table, it was clear that a tremendous moment in Polish history had been achieved, a moment of enormous historical significance...

For the United States, and I think for the whole world, what happened at the Round Table and all of those who participated in it created a situation, which has benefited all mankind. Millions of people may be alive today who would have been dead or suffering if another path had been taken to the end of communism. What was achieved there, although there are those who will now criticize it in retrospect, was at the time unthinkable. In fact, after the Round Table had succeeded, I came back here to talk to analysts in Washington, and half of them didn't believe that it had happened...

The main element that I tried to use to influence the opposition was to persuade them in the period leading up to the Round Table talks that it was in their interest to talk to the government, because I felt that they could get major concessions, that they would get sufficient political concessions, because the final attempt by Premier Rakowski to institute economic reforms in 1988 had failed because of the strikes, that the government was now in a very weak position, and that Solidarity was in a very strong position, and that they were bound to win any negotiation, so...we urged them...

I didn't have instructions from Washington as to what to do. As was often the case, I just did what I thought was best in the interest of the Polish nation.

...From the very start, ladies and gentlemen, the Secretariat of the Episcopate, as some of you may know, whether it had its office still in a small building right next to the cathedral, or whether it was already in the new site at Cardinal Wyszyński Square, the Secretariat of the Episcopate would always constitute some kind of safety oasis, some kind of a guarantee of safety. Since the very beginning of martial law, we were demanding access to Mr. Lech (Wałęsa) and to other places of internment. Lots of priests would go to those places, and I don't think that they've ever committed a crime, and neither have I, when they were smuggling some written messages out. And those situations were sometimes ludicrous, because prisoners would put those encoded messages into the priest's robe pocket, and the priests' clothing is sewn in such a way that one can reach both to the pocket and also to the trousers. So sometimes the notes were being placed not really in the pocket but into the other opening, and the message would fall down the trouser leg. The priests were brave, nonetheless, and got those messages out and passed them to the families. Then, the families, in turn, would request help in many different things, were requesting intervention. And we had many interventions of that kind...

The Secretariat of the Episcopate, where I used to work, would support Solidarity leaders, because the Church alone worked for the same values for many decades before. And here I would just like to mention that from the very beginning of the Polish People's Republic, first Cardinal Hlond and then Cardinal Wyszyński would oppose the sovietization of Poland, the construction of a totalitarian system. Actually, at that time he paid for it with three years of imprisonment; at that point, the Church de facto was a political opposition, although it was never its intention, which it expressed many times in public declarations. But the government of the Polish People's Republic would push the Church into the role of political opposition...

The government of the People's Republic of Poland always looked to the Church to become a partner, whom they could easily treat instrumentally, some kind of partner who would be able to moderate the opposition and to calm the tensions in society. Well, we didn't talk only to them; while there was the principle assumed already by Cardinal Wyszyński that we would always talk whenever the authorities wanted to talk, but we also conducted talks with the leadership of the opposition. We would always encourage talks with the society, through elected representatives.

Next Panel Three: Everyday Life and the Political Contest

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