COMMUNISM'S NEGOTIATED COLLAPSE:
THE POLISH ROUND TABLE TALKS OF 1989,
TEN YEARS LATER
A Conference at the University of Michigan, April 7-10, 1999

THURSDAY, APRIL 8, 1999

II CONDITIONS OF THE ROUND TABLE
9:30 am-12:00 pm     THE POLITICAL CONTEST, 1986-89

Introductory Remarks:
· Padraic Kenney, Assistant Professor of History, University of Colorado

Panelists:
· Zbigniew Bujak, former Member of Parliament, labor organizer, underground Solidarity leader, participant in the Round Table for the opposition
· Ambassador Stanislaw Ciosek, diplomat, Polish Ambassador to Moscow (1989-96), participant in the Round Table for the government
· Ambassador John R. Davis, diplomat, U.S. Ambassador to Poland (1988-90)
· Helen Davis, convener of informal meetings among Round Table participants at the U.S. Ambassador's Residence in Warsaw in the late 1980s
· Bishop Alojzy Orszulik, Bishop of the Diocese of Lowicz, Professor of Canon Law, participant in the Round Table as an observer for the Catholic Church

Discussion Moderators:
· Maciej Wierzynski, Chief of Polish Service, Voice of America
· Grzegorz Ekiert, Professor of Government, Harvard University

(Italicized text is translated from Polish)

Introductory Remarks:
Padraic Kenney, Assistant Professor of History, University of Colorado

Barely seven years elapsed from the declaration of martial law to the beginning of negotiations between communists and opposition-a period thus only slightly longer than World War II, in much easier conditions. Though not a few Solidarity activists sometimes wondered if executions and trains to Siberia were in the offing, nothing of the sort ever happened. The regime instead employed strategies of normalization, seeking to divide and weaken the opposition, and to draw society away from sympathy for Solidarity.

Reading the memoir interviews of participants of both sides of that struggle, one is struck by the assertion that little changed over those seven years. For Generals Czeslaw Kiszczak and Wojciech Jaruzelski, for example, the Round Table appears as a logical outcome of an unswerving effort to help Poland out of its crisis-in the same way as was the declaration of martial law itself.

For Zbigniew Bujak and some other leaders in Solidarity, Solidarity too remained unwavering in its purpose. Though there were frequent and sharp disagreements over tactics, the goal of regaining recognition and of changing how Poland was ruled never altered. This certainty and unity, they argue, eventually brought the regime to the table in 1989.

Yet if we begin not in 1981, but in 1986-the starting date proposed in the title of this panel-things look rather different. The players had changed dramatically, and would undergo even greater change over the difficult road of the next three years.

In the homes and on the streets of Poland, Solidarity in 1986 was all but dead. In Silesia, Kraków, Poznan, and Wroclaw, amnestied activists returned home to find not fear, but something worse-indifference. One of these summarized in a recent interview, the popular reaction as follows: "Why are they bothering? Who asked them to stick their necks out? Aren't there more important things to do?"

Perhaps even more disconcerting was the threat of alienation from the factory workers of Solidarity. Those who had kept the flame of Solidarity alive in some of Poland's largest factories felt they did not require the advice of former colleagues who had been on the run or in jail for the past several years. In fact, contact with the "outed" colleagues might only expose the underground to police investigation. The debate over above-ground or underground tactics was not a theoretical one, but one which seemed to divide Solidarity "on the ground" into two separate worlds. Wroclaw, where two semi-hostile Solidarity committees existed side by side, was only the most obvious example. The road ahead, then, was not so clear in 1986.

This view of the "provinces" suggests another challenge Solidarity faced. From 1976 to 1981, opposition thought and strategy was created or inspired by the same places where demonstrations and strikes occurred. Martial law, I think, helped to break this connection, forcing the stronger provinces to exist on their own. Kraków and Wroclaw, and perhaps a few other cities, developed their own agendas, partly but a necessary fiction, but five years later the fiction no longer existed. The so-called provinces were not rebellious, simply autonomous. The strikes of 1988 were in part a manifestation of this.

Second, there had grown up a new generation of activists for whom a free Solidarity was but an elementary-school memory. Even as they subscribed to the idea that "there is no freedom without Solidarity," that slogan meant for them something different. Above all, it contained a certainty of pluralism. The college students of the Freedom and Peace movement, or the high school kids who fueled the Orange Alternative, allowed for radically different views to exist side-by-side; unity was of the moment.

Solidarity's big tent of 1981 would have to become a city of tents to encompass this diversity. Some would interpret this as its weakness-but I wonder if the lack of unity facing the movement by 1989 was not in fact Solidarity's strength, without which it had no hope of creating a democratic Poland.

I will be brief for addressing the government side. It seems to me the challenge facing the party could be summed up in a slogan popular among the youth opposition following the party tenth congress in 1986: "Program Partii Programem Partii." The program of the party is the program of the party. Well, no one surely believed that the Polish United Workers' Party spoke for the whole nation. The massive indifference, and even ridicule, in this subtle slogan was something else again. How does one respond to, or negotiate with the crowd, which instead screaming "gestapo!," as they did in 1982, chanted instead, "where are the police?," as they did in 1988? Force and institutional structure were, of course, probably enough to rule for some time yet, but to gain the ear of the other side in negotiation, ideas would matter too. Thus, the party needed to convince the opposition and society, and perhaps itself, that it had something to say worth listening to.

That both sides succeeded in this urgent reinvention of themselves and found the more or less common purpose is the more remarkable when one considers the steps along the way. In the years under discussion here, they included the amnesty of September 1986, which I alluded to earlier, the referendum on government policies in November 1987, in which both sides desperately sought evidence of societal support and both could claim victory, and the strikes of 1988. These last were serious threats to Solidarity, as they were, in most cases, instigated by people at the margins of the movement or beyond it, who were deaf to the pleas of union leadership, and also a threat to the regime, as the young activists I mentioned earlier threw themselves into factory activism, turning the Lenin Shipyard, for example, into an outpost of the Orange Alternative.

The success of this reinvention was no small measure, thanks to the essential intermediary role of two forces. First, the Catholic Church; we will be discussing at later panels its role in preliminary discussions between the two sides, but here I would mention some less noticed factors. At the local level, the Church became a training ground for opposition. Today, the City Councils of many Polish cities are filled with young politicians who learned the rote in Student-Worker Ministries in the 1980s. At the national level, Primate Glemp and his archbishops organized comprehensive aid for those in need as a result of repression. This help allowed many to continue their opposition work. It was members of these Assistance Committees, in fact, who often played a role in negotiations within Solidarity in 1988.

Western aid is, I think, even less understood. There were the Western activists, peace activists, environmental activists and so on, who, sometimes with misguided intentions, opened channels to the Polish opposition, through which flooded ever larger amounts of money, books, and sometimes expertise. There were the foundations with grants, such as those to Zbigniew and Zofia Romaszewscy, which kept opposition afloat. And there was American Embassy, which maintained regular contacts with the opposition. Perhaps distracted by politicians' facile claims that the West won the cold war, we have been slow to consider the value of all these efforts.

Well, I hope that this panel will shed light on some of these questions. The invitations to this conference solicited written responses from all invited participants. For this panel, General Czeslaw Kiszczak, unable to attend, sent such response. His letter to the conference will be deposited in the conference archives and I encourage all of you, who would be interested in reading his response, to consult these archives when they are completed. The panelists who are present include the following; I will introduce them in the order in which they will speak. First, Zbigniew Bujak. For years, trained as an electrical technician, Mr. Bujak worked at the Ursus Tractor Factory in Warsaw. He co-organized the strike there in 1980, and, as a result, became one of the leaders of the Solidarity movement. In the underground years, for most of that period, he was the most prominent uncaptured, if that's the right word, member of the Solidarity leadership, headed the Mazowsze region, the largest region, from 1981 to 1989. In 1986, he was awarded the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Award. When Poland was once again free, he first served as President of the Stefan Batory Foundation, and then was a deputy in the Sejm from 1991 to 1997 representing the Democratic Social Movement and the Union of Labor. He is currently a leading member of the Freedom Union party. Second, Ambassador Stanislaw Ciosek. Ambassador Ciosek has held a variety of administrative posts within the party and the state in the 1970s ... 1960s. He was administrator of the Union of Polish Students. In the 1970s and early 1980s, he was a deputy to the Sejm, and from 1975 to 1980, a regional First Secretary in the Polish United Workers' Party. He was on the Central Committee of the party from 1980 to 1981 and from 1986 to 1990, and in the Council of Ministers from 1980 to 1985. He played a key role in negotiations leading up to the Round Table, and was at that time General Secretary of the Central Committee and of the National Council of the Patriotic Movement for National Rebirth, known as PRON. From 1990 to 1996, Ambassador Ciosek was Poland's Ambassador to Moscow. Next, Ambassador John Davis and Helen Davis. Ambassador Davis was the Ambassador to Poland from 1988 to 1990, so during the time of the Round Table negotiations. Before the ... before his position as ambassador, he was the Chargé d'Affaires in the Embassy, and before that the Deputy Chief of Mission, so he's had a very long acquaintance with Poland. When not in Poland, he was the Director of Eastern European and Yugoslav Affairs Office in the Department of State, and was also Ambassador to Romania from 1990 to 1994. And, finally, we are pleased to have with us Bishop Alojzy Orszulik. He has been Bishop of the Diocese of Lowicz since 1982 and was a co-organizer and participator in negotiations for the Round Table, as an observer for the Catholic Church. Over the years, he has held several important positions in the Polish Episcopate, including Director of the Press Department for twenty-five years, and Deputy to the Secretary from 1989 to 1994. He has also served as a member and Secretary of the Joint Commission of the Government and Episcopate of Poland since 1980, and had been a consultant to the Papal Council for Social Media since 1974. Thank you very much, I'm now pleased to introduce Mr. Zbigniew Bujak.

Panelist:
Zbigniew Bujak, former Member of Parliament, labor organizer, underground Solidarity leader, participant in the Round Table for the opposition

Ladies and gentlemen, before I start my presentation, I would like to ask a favor from the other recipient of the Kennedy Award, Mr. Michnik. Adam, here is Kerry Kennedy, please sit down right next to her since I can't. Ladies and gentlemen, talks as a mode for resolving a conflict have been the constitutional principle within Solidarity. We had not talked about any other solutions. It was certainly the result of the strike of August '80, in which, from the very beginning, it was very clear to the strikers that they were not running street demonstrations, they were not to engage in any violent action. It's a strike, it's an occupational strike, and it has to end in talks. Hence, this strong concept, the belief that we could solve, that we are actually allowed to solve every conflict only through talks. Of course, it was the result of our experience, our Polish experience, but also the result of the experience of the previous forty, fifty years or so. Why? Because 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. Were there any other ways, propositions and possibilities? Yes, there were! First of all, of course, in the very first days of martial law, some young people decided to get arms. They tried to take arms away from a policeman, a shot rang, and that policeman was dead. The uniform police was not our opponent and we didn't really fight against them. Our real rival was the secret police. So that was a dramatic and unnecessary death. However, of course, the young people who were active in the underground structures were in fact getting armed. They were simply buying weapons, buying grenades, and at some point I even got actual information about how many they had and what the market prices were. You know, there were Russian troops in Poland and even then it was no problem buying this kind of arms.... Yes, that's true! We did succeed, however, to persuade those young people that that wasn't the right way to follow. If we entered that path, we would lose. Because the other side really wanted this. And we also know that this provocation to push us into the terrorist position had been prepared. But we managed to defend ourselves from this, and I'm going to be honest about it, it took a real effort. These weapons I've mentioned were actually sunk in the Vistula River and it was all thanks to the people who were at the head of those underground structures understood our strategy. But of course, there were also those more serious proposals, suggestions, for example, a concept to target the very centers of power. 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. Let's say that no serious opportunities of finding a way to continue through armed struggle existed at all. Of course, with all those radical calls for struggle from émigré Polish communities, there had not been a single serious offer of personal involvement, you know, the traditional Polish way: "We'll come, organize a legion, we'll buy weapons," no, nothing of the sort. So from this perspective, these other options or strategies quickly lost validity. But, ladies and gentlemen, what were the general conditions ... and after all it was martial law, so what general conditions, fundamental conditions would have to occur to enable us to sit down and talk again? First, it was absolutely natural that political prisoners must be released, and, I think, that was clear for the other side. For us, Solidarity leadership, it was a nonnegotiable condition, an absolutely fundamental condition. Not for everybody, though. There were some politicians who believed that we could negotiate even over this issue, ignore the release of political prisoners. But for us, the Solidarity leadership, including Lech Walesa, there was no doubt on this issue. And within Solidarity, a very decentralized Solidarity in which the leadership of each region was pretty autonomous, because that was the principle of conspiracy, proper conspiracy, in which there was no possibility for direct, central supervision and management, those local leaders also understood our principal, fundamental strategy. Besides, we never permitted any undermining of the authority of Lech Walesa himself, who even when he was in internment was unquestionably our boss, our leader. It was clear that if he said anything, we would do it. We might have disagreed with him, but the principle of unity was fundamental. We would not let ourselves be divided and destroyed! So the leadership imposed the principle that political prisoners had to be released first and only afterwards could we talk about other terms. This condition was met, as a matter of fact. And when I was being released in 1986, after what ... one hundred days in prison, I knew, I was quite convinced, that if that's the case, it would have to end with negotiations. There was no other way out! If they were letting me go, they must have decided to talk. The next dilemma was that there was the underground leadership of Solidarity, that is the people who had been in hiding, and this created problems with these talks. How to conduct these talks, then? We couldn't simply suddenly reveal ourselves, emerge from the underground, and immediately start talking. This just couldn't be! So our natural impulse was to build legal, overt leadership of Solidarity, made up of people who were not in hiding, which would take over the role of managing the entire Solidarity movement. And the condition was, of course, at that time, that those people would not be arrested, they would not go to jail. If such a situation emerged, then yes, this would be the next serious step towards our considering the possibility of negotiations. And within that step, the creation of overt, legal leadership of Solidarity, when its members were not arrested, there was some sort of rebuilding of Solidarity's identity as an organization. Of course, since that moment, it became easier to contact those various centers of local management within Solidarity. We became an entity that could enter the talks. At this point, I have to say that during martial law, there were doubts whether Solidarity was still able to offer the leadership and the idea that could help us win. We had no doubt about that ourselves, but other concepts were being tried. There was an idea, for example, to create a labor union that would function as an affiliate of the Church. And it had a chance; luckily, the Pope was on our side. There were other concepts, too. There was an idea to develop a party, an opposition party composed of various political activists, but that would have been a sort of a party licensed by the authorities. The real idea was to put Solidarity into a coffin and create a new political force, which would take over the management of opposition within Poland. But that would have been a betrayal of Solidarity! Had this happened, had this succeeded, we would have really been divided and crushed. And when asked the question about the role of Solidarity's leadership, about Lech Walesa's role at that time, I would say that at times of crisis, we had to be able to react, to impose other, in our belief, better political solutions. And we managed to do just that! We managed to do just that! 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. Various structures, political structures were emerging, and we were supporting that, also because that's where we saw our own power and efficiency and an element of decentralization. Of course, various methods for further struggle were being applied, and all those methods, which did not bring the menace of entering the armed struggle path, terrorism, and so forth, were getting our support. And in this sense, the Solidarity leadership with Lech Walesa fulfilled what we strongly believed at that time to be its role. And in reality, ladies and gentlemen, this strategy of ours was not working in a vacuum. I had myself studied Fitzgerald Parnell and I was happy to discover the origin of the boycott idea, which is his concept. We had our models, like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. We studied them in order to, among other things, find out where the borderline was between a demonstration and a demonstration that is being transformed into terrorism. Ladies and gentlemen, I claim that perhaps if we had been somewhat incautious at that time and lost control, a completely different situation would have emerged in our country, and I am not sure that it would have been as easy these days to talk about our accession to NATO and the European Union. Luckily, Solidarity won. Thank you.

Panelist:
Ambassador Stanislaw Ciosek, diplomat, Polish Ambassador to Moscow (1989-96), participant in the Round Table for the government

Respected ladies and gentlemen, let me start with two methodological remarks. First, history cannot be divided into pieces. That is against natural tendencies of historians who would like everything in order, would like the maximum number of facts gathered. The situation in Poland, on the other hand, and this topic that we are discussing, cannot be put into the brackets of the period of the two or three years we're focusing on here. Things stem one from the other, and their consequences are of utmost importance, so I am going to mess up our topic a little bit with my speech. And my second remark, the documents that remained from those years, party documents, I mean, but I believe the same is true about the Solidarity documents, those formal documents were not written for history, but only to present some order, but in reality, decisions were made in circles, which ... would leave no trace. Minor notes here and there have perhaps survived but I think that the best proof is the testimony of witnesses, and I think we are lucky that you have invited those witnesses to participate in this conference. And as one of those witnesses, I would like to talk about a few issues. For example, last night Mr. Michnik quoted some documents of the Central Committee and the Politburo. Well, I think that the most interesting would be conversations between Mr. Mieczyslaw Rakowski and General Jaruzelski, between Wojciech Jaruzelski and Jerzy Urban, all those different mini-circles that really had the most impact on the situation. I remember plenary meetings of the Central Committee, but of course, they were mere formalities. The most important were those informal consultations, among the very same people, but those were not recorded, and I think that's where the real battle was going on, where one needed to force one's own opinion in a very unrelenting way. And not a trace has been left of that. I could go on with examples, so I would like to caution you not to take papers as the only evidence, because they won't always tell the truth. That would be all about methodology. And now, breaking the time brackets, let me present in a nutshell, the newest history that led to those events, as I see it. After the Stalinist period, the Polish party tried many times to better the system, to loosen up its doctrine and to reach economic growth. And we got some results, against the backdrop of our more dogmatic surroundings but it did not result in consistent improvement and time after time, Poland was shaken by outbursts of discontent. The year 1980 brought institutional structure for social opposition: there appeared a different, new representation of political and social interests, apart from the party. And some attempts were made to adapt that phenomenon to the existing system. Unfortunately that proved to be impossible, even when we assume good will on both sides, and that good will has been mutually questioned by representatives of both sides of the conflict until today. The situation reached the limits of the political system and the limits of what was then called the self-limiting revolution. I believe that all that happened in spite of those good intentions, and I believe they were indeed good intentions, that were presented by my predecessor, for example, but I'm talking about our view on the situation then, not now. It's worth remembering that Brezhnev's doctrine, and that was the time of Brezhnev, referred to dangers that were coming from the outside as well as from the inside of the system, and the Polish experiment did not stand any chance of succeeding then. I'm talking about the year '81, in spite of today's opinions voiced by some Soviet marshals and generals. Professor Paczkowski, you witnessed and I witnessed, in Jachranka, those beautiful words that were coming from the mouths of Soviet generals and marshals about how they were supposedly watching our experiences with delight. I do not trust those words and I do not believe them. I was bothered by this problem in Moscow, where I was an ambassador for over six years, here a small correction, not from 1990 but from '89, from November, so I witnessed those most dramatic events. So, when I say that we did not have a chance, I'm saying it with deep conviction, after numerous conversations with people who were decision-makers in Moscow then, and they knew really well the mechanisms of Soviet rule. There was one prevailing opinion: the system at that time was not able to accept the Polish experiment without lethal consequences for itself. This was something Mr. Adam Michnik had an opportunity to find out at 6 o'clock in the morning, when he posed this very question to Mikarenin, an academic. And the reply was obvious as well. Even the mere thought of accepting pluralism, and this while still maintaining the leading role of the party, was born in Gorbachev's government, and I'm sure ... well, 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. And yes, there were other options within the Soviet party, and those options were evident and they were dangerous. And I'm not exaggerating when I say this, because I'm speaking from experience. So I'm annoyed by opinions voiced by some politicians that it was not worthwhile for the opposition to sit down at the Round Table because the system was falling apart. It was just enough to wait with an open sack, and without any compromises, all those enemies would fall into it themselves. Yes, it is true, the system was crumbling but, while I generally agree with Prime Minister Rakowski, let me sing a slightly different tune to this music. In response to name-calling, when we were being called "red spiders," ... yes, yes, there were the 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?" But the system could have been crumbling for a long time and in quite a bloody way. It's a cliche, but before something really ends, it can go many different ways. History is not always going forward. Poland was not doomed to compromise. Well, actually in an informal conversation last night, we were saying that everything that happened in Poland was really illogical. It was contrary to conclusions drawn from previous experiences. It really had no right to happen, yet it happened anyway! And I'm looking now at His Excellency, because I would also like to mention the role of the Church. Maybe this was some Divine Providence, Your Excellency, that was watching over our moves. According to common sense, and according to conclusions drawn from the history of the system, this should have led to bloody confrontation. It would have been enough for other options to have won in the Soviet Union and in Poland, and then without excessive imagination, we can assume attempts at reforming the economy without any changes in political system, even including a possibility of passing through this Tian ... an … Tiana Square, you know, the Square of Heavenly Peace in China. And after our experiences of '80-'81 in order to break the resistance of Poles against socially brutal requirements of the market economy, for many Poles the name of that square could have sounded very real. So it wouldn't have been enough, Mr. Bujak, to sink all this Polish war in the Vistula River. We were afraid of that war, then. This was real, this fear of civil war; it really motivated us. So the frequently used examples of crumbling of the Berlin Wall, "the velvet revolutions," or the ones not so "velvet," like in Romania, saying that we also could have waited with folded hands for the system to fall apart ... I don't want to insult anybody, but in my opinion, they are quite ahistorical. All those events in Poland took place earlier, and they evidently accelerated changes that took place elsewhere. It is actually understandable that many commentators and political analysts, I mean in the country and place where we are currently located, used to describing the situation in the world in bi-polar terms, you know the two giants situation, are looking at Poland through reversed binoculars. Then, the Round Table is perceived only as a result of Soviet perestroika and liberalization. However, transformations in Poland, while obviously connected with what was happening in the Soviet Union, followed their own original and unique path. We were ahead of events outside. We can find all this looking at the calendar, but we have to date them back to 1980, and not from '88, '89 when the thread of compromise was being institutionally formalized. Also, looking for their sources, it is worthwhile to look at other dates of Polish political upheavals. I'm looking at Mr. Peter Raina now, and this time period of '88-'89 does not quite fit here, because even earlier various ideas were being born and the thought of the Polish compromise was ripening during conversations with the Church. His Excellency Bishop Orszulik will most likely speak about this. I am challenging him to a duel here! As a diplomatic representative in the Soviet Union and then in Russia, I can competently say, and that is another thesis that only seems risky, that the Polish way of systemic transformation, as civilized and reasonable as it was, had a real and very visible impact on the course of events in the Soviet Union. As a matter of fact, the Soviet Union did not fall apart in '87, '86, '85, the moment when Gorbachev took over. It fell apart later, much later, much later than the Polish Round Table took place. And to the surprise of the world, the transformations in that country, considering the scale, were quite peaceful, although not completely victim-free. It is not such a risky thesis, then, that the lack of guillotines in Poland, and the fact that the crew, and maybe again I am being immodest about myself and the Prime Minister, because the two of us represent that crew here ... oh, I apologize, Mr. Reykowski was there, too, opened the gates to the Bastille, so that the Bastille was not destroyed, which is so often criticized in Poland today, were the incredibly important phenomena that encouraged the Soviet party elites, including the security apparatus and the army, to support Gorbachev's course. But as I have mentioned, the real and very dangerous alternative was there all the time. Yeltsin did not have to win at all. Gaidar did not have to win either. Yeltsin, with his party background, I think he was a deputy to the Central Committee, or the member of the Central Committee, and Gaidar, a commentator, a writer for the Pravda daily, all of them with a long history in the Party, and this is a proof from a witness, that is, from me, they were watching the development of what was happening in Russia, no, I'm sorry, in Poland. And I myself was an example of that. 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. So I am quite surprised at hearing the politicians who say that the Polish events did not leave any mark on these historic developments of the end of this century. And my time is running short, but I'd like to take another minute. The real reason, gradually realized by the authorities, for the choice of this path towards compromise and systemic changes was the inefficiency of all successive attempts at reforming the political and economic system of Poland. (tape switch) ... Various stages of reforming the system, the October "thaw," Gierek's "Will you help," "socialism yes, its deviations, no," (break in taping) ... and, finally, martial law only had short term effects, very limited effects, and they did not result in what was expected. Poland was being left more and more behind the quickly developing world. The Polish worker at that time was manufacturing eight times less in a time unit than his colleague in Germany, not to mention the lower quality of his work. Our awareness of this also had its impact. I'm talking about the way the authorities were approaching the compromise. Why? Our humiliating conviction that we are worse than others was increasing. And we were only partially consoled by knowing that our neighbors from the same camp were still worse off. We had a frustrating sense that misery loves company and that we shared the same rigid limits for change, and all of this with open borders and possibility of unpleasant comparisons. So the cause was withering, the cause that was the guiding light for the leaders of socialist Poland. This system was no longer able to generate enthralling and convincing ideas about the new Poland. 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 Gdansk. 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. And again, I would like to add, I would like to say a few warm words about our side. Because the red light is on, so I am just going to say one thing. I think it was very good that Bishop Orszulik was taking notes on everything he could write notes on, because that was published by Mr. Raina. And not only that, but there are many other notes. And those notes, although we were using quite a specific language and our own specific intellectual apparatus to be understood within our ranks.... And Solidarity was saying the same things, so quoting people's speeches today doesn't make any sense. We used those instruments then, but those notes testify to one thing, that the authorities at that time had other intentions, other than only desperately clinging to power and to their own positions. So I think that it was a good thing that the authors of those notes bestowed a little bit of a human face to the other side, because without that human face, no human solution to the situation would have been possible. Thank you for your attention.

Panelist:
Ambassador John R. Davis, diplomat, U.S. Ambassador to Poland (1988-90)

It was very interesting for me to hear from Ambassador Ciosek the view from Moscow in those crucial years. 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. But how did this all come about? Well, I have spent thirteen years in Poland, Helen and I, and I had seen in the 1960s and the 1970s the gradual decline of ideology, to the point where, with the election of the Polish Pope and the economic disasters of the late 1970s, it was clear that on two tracks the regime was failing, both economic and political, and that the society and the Church had received a huge jolt, a positive jolt in morale, from the election of a Polish Pontiff, what had been declared and seen in Poland as another miracle. Like the Miracle of Czestochowa and the Miracle of the Vistula, the miracle of John Paul II came along to make plain to Polish society that everything, indeed, was possible. The reaction in the United States to martial law was, as you all recall, extreme outrage, tempered in Washington by memories of 1956 and '68. While our support for Solidarity and Polish society was unwavering, we were also anxious not to stimulate physical resistance at a time when the United States, as we all knew, was not prepared to intervene on behalf of rebels in Poland. If armed insurrection had taken place, there would have been undoubtedly a massacre. But we did impose the whole panoply of economic and political sanctions. There was an excitement in Washington at this ... it was the very early years of ... earliest year of the Reagan administration, there was visceral anti-communism and a demand to take some action that would be effective, so there was the enthusiasm for hammering the Polish regime, presumably without harming the Polish people, was almost unlimited, and it was my role, as head of Eastern European Affairs, to try to moderate the more enthusiastic to the point that there would be something left of Poland after this was all over, because the initial impulse was one which would have destroyed Polish society entirely, in my view. But thanks to the Polish-American community, their moderation, their wisdom and their political support, we were able to achieve a balance between punishing the regime, for what we perceived as its sins, and not hurting the Polish people any more than was absolutely necessary. The period from 1981 to '83 was essentially one of almost unremitting hostility between the two countries, resolved ... I have here one of the remaining copies of the rare volume called "the blue book," which was put out by the Polish Foreign Ministry and lists in great detail all the terrible things that the United States did to Poland during ... (tape switch) ... and, as you can see, of unlimited number of sins there. As I say, I got ... we got back in September 1983 to Poland and stayed there through 1990, and from the beginning, our job was to support Solidarity and to talk to the government, and in my view, though it wasn't a view widely shared in Washington, to try to seek some accommodation which would lead Poland toward genuine political pluralism. Our objective in putting on the sanctions had been declared to be the lifting of martial law, the release of political prisoners, and the resumption of a dialogue between Solidarity and the Chur ... the Church, Solidarity and the Government. And once these were achieved, we moved on to insisting on political pluralism and respect for human rights, as embodied in the Helsinki Declaration of 1975. This declaration gave us the right, as foreign diplomats, to interfere in internal affairs of another signatory country, and we used it rather freely to the point where I was very unpopular, when I appeared at the Foreign Ministry to see about getting some of our friends out of jail. We did use these sanctions little by little, step by step, as we called it, and I think quite successfully, to obtain the release of political prisoners and to obtain various gradual increases in human rights respect by the government. The economic ... the economic possibilities for them and economic difficulties were such that they were amenable to discussion and it was my personal opinion that 1980 and '81, and the imposition of martial law marked the end of the effectiveness of the party in Poland. In my view the party never really regained power. The military, all the party people themselves, had their own point of view, their own regard for their popularity and were more susceptible to appeals to their international reputation than the party had ever been. And this proved, over the long run, to be true. Helen will tell you a bit about what we did, tried to do in the Embassy to maintain morale among our many friends in Solidarity. It boiled down to ... well, I'll leave that for her, because she has equal time today, as she well deserves, as I think, all of her friends well realize, but I can only remark that such things as the Kennedy Award to Zbyszek and Adas were ... was presented in our living room in 1968 (sic) in the presence, as I recall, of twenty-one members of the Kennedy family. It was the greatest travelling circus to hit Poland for decades. No one ever knew where they all were ... Mr. Czyrek will probably remember to this day the Kennedy sisters arriving at the meeting one after the other, all having scattered to the four corners of Warsaw, and being introduced by their brother. It's true that in 1985 to '86, after the tragic death of Father Popieluszko, which, I think, finished forever the hopes of the party of restoring its legitimacy, it was, like so many other things, a two-sided ... Granted, it was tragic and it set back international relations with Poland by enormous amount, and, on the other hand, it was the first time that secret police had been tried and imprisoned in a communist country and it was a clear signal to those who were watching carefully that something was very different in Poland. When the Round Table itself approached, ... I told ... there was some debate, as we have heard, whether Lech Walesa should get on television and debate Miodowicz, and grave doubts were being expressed. And I told our friends in Solidarity: "For Heavens' sakes, just let him on there. It doesn't matter what he says! Nobody will remember the next day what was said! All they will remember is that Walesa was there, representing the nation, and Miodowicz was representing nobody but himself," which wasn't specifically true but it was exactly the way it came out. The same thing was true during the Round Table. In the Embassy, we had been urging this accommodation for a long time, because 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. I remember Geremek saying to me: "We're terribly worried about the results of these elections." And my one lifetime effort at political prediction took place and I said: "Bronek, don't worry. You will win everything!" And then I said: "Maybe, except for two, because nothing is perfect in this world." Well, it turned out to be, except for one. I never again attempted to predict a political outcome. But let me say that 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. So, my congratulations and my heartfelt thanks go out to everyone here who participated in making a better world for all of us. Thank you.

Panelist:
Helen Davis, convener of informal meetings among Round Table participants at the U.S. Ambassador's Residence in Warsaw in the late 1980s

Well, I am very much a bit player in this drama, but having been invited, I'm going to talk. When John and I went back to Poland in 1983, we were going back to a country that we knew quite well. We had been there for three years in the '60s and three years in the '70s; we knew a lot of people. We returned to a Poland where martial law had just been lifted. There was nothing but vinegar on the shelves of the shops, and almost every one of our friends was a supporter of Solidarity. The whole society was so polarized that we could not believe it. We kept ... the first few weeks, we kept thinking, well, surely, you know, this can't be true. But literally, we had only a handful of friends, close friends from the '70s, who were not supporters of Solidarity. Needless to say, we didn't see very much of them in the next few years. The society was so ... the lines were drawn so clearly that most of our friends made quite clear to us that they didn't intend to commingle with "them," with anybody who were authorities, or who supported the authorities. And so, I made a determined effort not to invite people of different political opinions to the same dinner party. There were many too many anecdotes about someone walking in and seeing someone he didn't approve of, someone who was the enemy, there and walking out, leaving a very flustered hostess. So, I very carefully divided my attentions. In any case, we were not very popular with the government. As John said, we were probably the least popular people with the authorities, among the diplomatic corps. Certainly, we were in 1983, and when we invited government bureaucrats or media people to our house, they had to ask permission to come. Sometimes they were granted permission, sometimes they weren't. When they did come, they were questioned afterwards about what the topics of conversation were, who else was there, what they said. And the way we know this is, because ... to me it's remarkable ... that they told us ... the government bureaucrats simply told us that they had been questioned afterwards! Because we were there only briefly, at least we thought we were there only briefly ..., John had a six-month mandate ... we were there for seven years in the end, but we thought it was only to be for six months, I had a very sort of carpe diem approach to the whole posting. I decided that since he was not an Ambassador, he was only a Chargé, but we were living in the Ambassador's residence, I could ... I didn't have to be ambassadorial, I didn't have to be elegant, I could, you know, meet as many people as possible, in the shortest possible time, because I didn't think we had very much time to get to know a lot of people. And there were a lot of people that I wanted to meet, so I started having dinner two or three times a month, sometimes four times a month, with a film. The U.S. army in those days supplied the military attaches with films, military attaches behind the iron curtain, with films, for morale purposes. And the military attache shared them with us and we got some wonderful, new films, and the Polish government had no money to buy ..., no hard currency to buy films, so this was the only chance people had to see films, so these evenings were very popular. They were ... they became a salon, almost accidentally, because on the first two or three occasions, friends, some of my friends, would ask if they could bring someone else, whom we didn't know, along, but whom, they thought, we would enjoy meeting, and, of course, I said yes. And then, this increased, because then I would hear about someone else who had written something in the underground press, or who had ... who sounded interesting, and I would ask one of my friends to bring them along, and, of course, they did. And in this way, we met a lot of people. We, we were able to meet people that we ... almost anyone we wanted to meet. There was no ... there was no limit. Our energy and our endurance was ... were really the only limit on our possibilities. We had ... we could get around fifty people on these very uncomfortable gilt chairs in the living room and we filled the living room every single time. We'd have a very simple buffet, usually with lasagna, because the Poles loved lasagna, and it was easy to make a ton of it in the kitchen, and ... and it could be an elastic meal. And in this way, we met all these people, who had not travelled in diplomatic circles in the '70s, or who had been in grade school when we were there in the '70s, or who were newcomers on the scene, the political scene. We had a militiaman in a box, just outside our gate, ... every Ambassador did, and even Chargés, ... who would busily write down all the licence numbers of the cars that came into our driveway, and I couldn't do anything about that, of course, but we did have a side gate, and I opened the door ... unlocked the side gate, because a lot of our guests came by street car. Luckily, Idzikowskiego is at the ... on the Pulawska street car line, so it was easy to reach. And I really tried to confound the authorities and to make it hard for them to know what we were doing, just ... partly ... out of hatefulness, and partly, partly because I just thought it was easier on my conscience if they didn't know all the people that we were seeing. In addition, I didn't use the telephone to issue invitations; I ... after the first two or three times, I would have coffee with a friend and I would say, "We have 'Out of Africa' next Tuesday night, tell ... " so and so and so and so, and they would pass on the invitations, and this meant, of course, that I never knew how many people were coming, but that was OK. Or I would go down to "Czytelnik," where there was a sort of an Algonquin round table manqué, presided over by Tadeusz Konwicki and Irena Szymanska, and I would issue a blanket invitation, and lots of people from there would come, or I would go down to the Primate's Committee. Father ... then Father Dembowski, now Bishop Dembowski, had organized a committee at St. Martin's Church, at Piwna Street, to collect parcels and food for Solidarity families, people who had ..., whose husbands were in prison, whose fathers were in prison, or people who were unable to get a job, because of their connections with Solidarity. And most of my friends were working on the Primate's Committee, and I was able to direct donations to the Committee, and also, as I say, this was one of the places I would go and ask everybody to come and see a film. This way, a lot of people, a lot of the Polish players, met each other as well. Not only did we meet them, but they also met each other. If the authorities wanted to, of course, they could have stopped this. I'm sure that they had many more important things to do, and I don't know why they didn't hamper us, but they didn't. But I could not have stopped it, because after I got going, after about a year, it was clear that this was really important to the people who came. They not only were able to meet other people and hear what was going on, but they could exchange ideas, and they said to me so many times how important it was to them, that I wouldn't have dared to cancel, or to call off these evenings. I remember one evening in 1984, when Father Popieluszko was murdered, well ... when he was kidnapped, before we knew that he had been murdered, we had one of our evenings. It was on the 22nd of October and it was a large buffet dinner followed by a film. As I had noted before, on occasions like this, everybody we invited came and more people, because they all wanted to talk about what had happened and how it was going to affect the political situation. The center of attention was Wanda Falkowska, who was a lawyer and journalist, who had up till martial law been on the staff of Polityka, writing articles on legal affairs. She had already been asked by the Church to go to Torun to be the Church's eyes and ears in Torun, and the Church had provided her with the bodyguard. Of course, on that night, there was no film. We talked and everyone stayed very late, and left in ... with feelings of great uncertainty. We ... for our part, besides wanting to know what was going on, and what people were feeling and what to report back to Washington, we wanted to show our support for Solidarity, so we were very busy. We had on occasion, shortly after we arrived in Poland, when Lech Walesa got the Nobel Prize, when it was announced he won the Nobel Prize, John said, "I think we'd better go to Gdansk and bring President Reagan's congratulations to Walesa." So we went. For whatever reason, we were the only foreigners who were there, but we were welcomed, and because we represented the United States, it was really an important thing to do. It was so obvious that they appreciated our presence that we made a determined effort to be wherever people were, who were representing Solidarity, or who were ... even poets who would read their poetry in a church in ... Wola, we would go to that. We went to plays, we went to people's apartments for discussion groups, and, in general, just try to lend our presence to ... to the movement, to show that we were with them. In 1985, '85-'86, we started to get a lot of congressional delegations and this really sort of changed our life. It became much more structured. We still continued our evenings, but we also started having formal dinner parties. The ... in 1986, Steve Solarz came to Warsaw. He was a former Representative from New York, very well informed and very helpful to Poland, and he ... his arrival coincided with the release from prison of the last of the political prisoners, including Adam Michnik, who came to lunch with us on his first day out of jail. I was very pleased with that. The Solarz visit inaugurated a spate of congressional visits, and over the next three years, one-third of the House of Representatives and two-thirds of the entire U.S. Senate came to Poland. Most of them stayed with us. If they came in large groups, we had to put them in a hotel, thank goodness! But a lot of them stayed with us, and here I have to say one word in favor of our elected representatives. They get a lot of grief, but perhaps because they were coming to Poland and they were interested in what was going on, we had some wonderful help, we really had some fantastic and very impressive members of our Congress in Poland. John doesn't like mornings ... breakfast very much, and I usually got them for breakfast and I found that they were fascinating. They were interested in Poland, they did a lot. Paul Simon wrote the ... (blurred) Act in our ... in our ... in the little room off of our bedroom, on our ancient IBM typewriter. They were engaged, they were informed, before they came. And we were able to introduce them to the people, a lot of them in this room, who changed the face of society in Poland. Deputy Secretary of State Whitehead ... I have the stop sign ... Let me just tell you one more thing. I kept up this custom of not mixing invitation lists until the presidential election of 1988, and then I decided, OK, the stage was set for a dialogue between Solidarity and the governing coalition, the Round Table talks were in the offing, and the presidential election was a perfect occasion on which to invite people of all political persuasions to the same party. This was very brave, because I hadn't done up until then. I invited one hundred fifty people for dinner. I invited them to come for dinner at midnight. I told them we would eat at 1 o'clock in the morning, because of the time difference between the United States and Poland. I told them that I was inviting people who were not of their political persuasions, so if they couldn't deal with that, they could stay home. And we got the waiters, … and we hung up bunting, and we got huge television sets in every one of the downstairs rooms. We had blackboards to keep track of the numbers of votes and got four ... CNN, and World Net, and I don't know what else, but all of the satellite antennae that we could hook up to, and it was an absolutely great party! Everybody showed up, no fist fights; there was ... the last guest left at 6 o'clock in the morning, which I'm sure really freaked out the militia. And everybody was delighted that George Bush had been elected, because he had been in Poland two years before that, and they felt that he understood their problems, and anyway, he was Reagan's Vice-President and they hoped that he was reliably of the Reagan persuasion regarding the Evil Empire, and so, basically, they were all delighted that George Bush was elected. So, in conclusion, the residence was a meeting place. It was ... it was almost accidental, to begin with, but then it became rather a custom. As the representatives of the free world's greatest power, we opened our doors, so that people could talk to each other, meet each other, and they ... Congressional delegations could meet key members of Poland's opposition movement. Thank you very much.

Panelist:
Bishop Alojzy Orszulik, Bishop of the Diocese of Lowicz, Professor of Canon Law, participant in the Round Table as an observer for the Catholic Church

Respected ladies and gentlemen, I've never thought that I would find myself here among such dignified company that is analyzing the transformations that took place in '89 in our country. And all of our conversations, summarized obviously ..., I admire myself, I was a very hard working person, because after each conversation, even a telephone one, I transcribed it into notes. And those notes were passed to not only my superiors, but also to the members of Solidarity, to that team, that team that most often would gather in my apartment, at the Secretariat of the Episcopate. Each event can be perceived from many different angles, and there is always a certain dose of subjectivity in every evaluation. As a representative of the Church, I did not possess the knowledge of what the essence was of the contents of various documents prepared by the party authorities or the party and government authorities. As for the conversations and the contents of those conversations, I was taking them in stride, and in stride I was transcribing them. Yesterday, Prime Minister Rakowski showed us the transformations that took place in the Polish communist party and how they were gradually more and more liberal. Mr. Michnik, on the other hand, conveyed to us how the way of thinking among Solidarity members was evolving. And today we also heard Mr. Ciosek, whom I used to talk to quite frequently, or rather who used to talk to me, since he was the one summoning me to Aleje Ujazowskie Street. Sometimes I would come down as a fire extinguisher would to a fire site, just to listen to what he had to say to me, and I think that what I was conveying then to my superiors in the Church, maybe, wasn't all that fascinating as it was for the Solidarity leadership. And certainly, the mentality among activists in the Solidarity movement was being transformed. Since '80, when I met Solidarity activists, I can say that never has there been any will to turn to violence or to engender any kind of confrontation. I recall one conversation during the Joint Commission meeting, and I think that happened on the 22nd of November '81, and all of us felt that some kind of drama was lurking around the corner. And I asked one of the members of the government delegation whether it was true that arms had been distributed to the party functionaries. The tensions in society were riding high, and also, somebody could have just blown his fuse and decided to use weapons, and then the other side would not really search for weapons, but for other tools, and then, some kind of confrontation would result from that. And obviously those who were unarmed would end up losers. Interpretation of events in '86 until '89, is certainly a very complex issue, and it needs to be perceived from some more distant perspective, from the perspective of the recent ten years. Each child has only one father, but such events as transformations in the political system, in the economy, in social issues, are definitely results of many forces. As representatives of the Church, my superiors and I were taking very seriously all the words that we heard from our interlocutors, whether it was Mr. Stanislaw Ciosek, or General Kiszczak, or any people from the Joint Commission. It was not easy for us to evaluate what their true intentions were. In any case, we were afraid that something could happen to the people, that they could have been persecuted, and we tried to offer help to these people from the very beginning. I remember when in 1980, Mr. Walesa came to the Secretariat, exhausted after having signed the agreement with Mr. Jagielski at the Gdansk Shipyard, we suggested to him a few days' rest. We took him to the woods not far from Warsaw to let him cool down, because it was quite visible how tired he was, but he could only stand one day there. And on the following day, he says to me, "please Father, take me back to Warsaw." Because, 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 Wyszynski Square, the Secretariat of the Episcopate would always constitute some kind of safety oasis, some kind of a guarantee of safety. We need to admit here that neither secret police nor regular police officers ever entered the Secretariat of the Episcopate, although they did know that the opposition people were gathering there. They did install bugs, that's true, but I think that what they managed to eavesdrop didn't help them the whole lot, because one way or another, they had to agree to the solution where Solidarity, practically speaking, took over. And I have a text here that I've written that may, in a more chronological way, show the involvement of the representatives of the Church. Since it'd be hard to speak about the Church in general, I'll talk only about its representatives, why they got involved. In order to understand that, we need to go back to the beginnings of martial law. The Polish People's Republic authorities were absolutely certain that they were done with counterrevolution, which they believed the Solidarity movement was, once and for all. I remember two meetings with Mr. Rakowski at Mr. Marguaritte's in Zalesie Górne. Well, we could not find a common language. The economic crisis was resulting in social unrest and the "concrete" party, as we used to call it, was defending the old system. And there was no talk about dialogue with the interned, let alone imprisoned, leaders of Solidarity; the communist authorities did not even want to hear about it. I'm going to provide you with an example. Right away, on the 13th and the 14th of January, Archbishop Dabrowski, ... and I'm going to mention him here as a man to whom we are highly indebted, and who had this talent to talk even to people who were strong adversaries of the Church and at the same time adversaries of Solidarity; somehow he was able to find some kind of a calm, balanced way of talking to them. So in January '82, as I was saying, I had the privilege of visiting Mr. Walesa at the place where he was interned. And Mr. Walesa first was transported from Gdansk to a place (break in tape), somewhere in Chyliczki. I could probably find it in my notes, but because I moved recently, three times, some of those notes have been difficult to locate. So we were asking to know if Walesa had been interned. No, he hadn't, we heard. Well, then, let us gain access to him. And then, since together with Archbishop Dabrowski, we were talking almost every day to the then Minister for Religious Affairs and one other high functionary of the Politburo, we would demand access. (tape switch) ... Since he's not interned, why can't we get to him? So, after that, a secret police agent took us both to this place of internment. There was a certain incident that happened at that time; Prime Minister Rakowski may remember it better. I only know about it from Mr. Walesa's words. Apparently the Prime Minister wanted to talk in those conditions of imprisonment ... Well, we were led there by an officer who later turned out to be one of the culprits in Father Popieluszko's murder. Before we entered the house, he told us ... and I had nothing in my hands but Archbishop Dabrowski had a briefcase, so he was told to leave the briefcase outside. We entered, and Mr. Walesa was there sort of, you know, sleepy, because it was late at night. And he says, "Well, Prime Minister Rakowski had supposedly been here, but I don't remember much of it because I was half asleep." And that had been blown out of proportion. Walesa had been accused of not being willing to talk. I was being taken there by that agent that I've mentioned, and the way was quite complicated. One team would take me to one spot, and then the teams would change, and the other team would take me to another place. So finally I got annoyed, and I say, "Gentlemen, can't you just switch somewhere on the way, on the street? Do we have to enter a forest, drive into a forest, and then change cars and we keep going?" At that point, Mr. Walesa was ready to talk but only under one condition that the members of the National Coordinating Committee (KKK) would get released. He gave me this text written down on a piece of paper, a napkin actually, for that to be passed to the Poland's authorities, and the opportunity to do so came up soon, because in the first half of January, there was a session of the Joint Committee, so I passed that text. And I was told, you know, this is no longer valid. Yes, those proposals were rejected, and Mr. Walesa was slighted, not considered a serious person. And the Church side, that I also represented, was accused at that time, as well as many times afterwards, that we were needlessly investing in Lech Walesa. Since the very beginning of martial law, we were demanding access to Mr. Lech 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. I think that Peter Raina described it all in his book The Road to the Round Table, including Archbishop Dabrowski's intervention. I am really indebted to Archbishop Dabrowski. I was always a bit afraid and wondered if I should publish those notes that I would take after each conversation. And the Archbishop, when he stopped being the Secretary of the Episcopate, took all those notes with himself, the notes that I wrote down and now they make half of that book, the one published by Peter Raina. But now, let's move to other problems. The leadership of the Polish communist party took the economic sanctions very lightly. And I remember on the first day, in the evening on the 13th, we asked if there were any casualties. And one of the top leaders that we talked to, he said no, only a dog had been shot because he was preventing the officers from entering a house. So the people that we talked to were absolutely convinced, and that is also written down in the documents from the Joint Committee meetings, that business people in the West would force the politicians to withdraw the economic sanctions. That did not happen, however. In the middle of the '80s, the sanctions were more and more visible in the Polish economy. Then we were being addressed and asked to help alleviate those sanctions through our own channels, from the top authority down to those in individual countries. As I have said before, the opposition leaders, after their release from internment camps, did not stop their opposition activity. And they did not stop their contacts with the Secretariat of the Episcopate, either, because, as I have said before, that was a guarantee for them. That's where they would gather, particularly when Lech Walesa would arrive from Gdansk to Warsaw. That's where he would stay, since he was unable to stay in a hotel. 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 Wyszynski 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. And when Wyszynski was released on Gomulka's request, he demanded certain conditions. The idyll under Gomulka would not last long, however, even though at the end of '56, the Primate, who was an expert of communism, since as early as in the '30s, while still a priest, he wrote about fascism and communism, would say: "We should, perhaps, encourage people to participate in these elections." And that's what actually happened but, as I have said, the idyll lasted a short time. The confrontation began. Cardinal Wyszynski fought for national values, and because of that he was preparing the millennium, novena, and also reconciliation with other nations, especially with the Germans. And that resulted in a rage on the part of the political leadership at that time, including Gomulka himself. Then, year '68 arrived. It was in '67, when Cyrankiewicz made a big announcement to the press, where he explained why Cardinal Wyszynski, as an enemy of the political system, would not be allowed to participate in the first Synod of Bishops. And in an expression of solidarity with him, Cardinal ..., or at that time Archbishop I should say, from Kraków, Wojtylla did not attend, either. He became Cardinal in '67, but that was after January of that year. So, '68 arrived, with deportations of Poles of Jewish descent. I remember it, as if it were yesterday. He would not fly to Rome, but he would take a train, and when he got back, he would recount with pain ... and ask how it was possible that this Polish youth, speaking such beautiful Polish, is forced to leave the country and be passed along to the camp in Vienna. In '68, the Episcopate and Znak were the only ones to defend all students who were on strike. In '73, there came this new idea of creating another idyll in villages. Prime Minister Rakowski will know this better, but that was a new attempt at collectivization of Polish countryside. The farmers-workers were supposed to give up their land and only work in factories, and they were not to get involved in agriculture. Here, in this issue, Cardinal Wyszynski protested quite decidedly. He preached wherever he could in defense of Polish villages, claiming that Polish farmers were always the beacon for Polish independence in the centuries past. And then the year '76 arrived, the defense of the prisoners, after the events in Radom, and then finally August, with the help offered to the interned and imprisoned. The turning point in the relationship between the Church and the state, which had been strongly cooled down, happened in '87, when Jaruzelski got a warm welcome at the Vatican. At first, people would say, and I was present at that conversation in the Vatican in the very beginning of January with Father Tucci (? name blurred), and the chief of the Government Protection Office was saying, "This visit cannot take place because," and we're talking '87, "because we have no helicopters. All of them are out of date, they are dangerous, others are armed, so they cannot be used." So Father Tucci would say, "Well, Poland is a safe country, so the Pope can travel by train." This would have been an even worse solution since their point was to shorten rather than extend the visit. But the visit of Mr. Jaruzelski opened the path to the other visit, and Mr. General agreed to allow the visit in Szczecin, Gdynia and Gdansk. We may not all remember the words of the Holy Father in Gdansk, in Zaspa: "I'm speaking to you, for you." All the speeches evoked an instant reaction from the Politburo. And very early in the morning, two emissaries of the Politburo showed up, one of them is sitting right here. I greet them and they say that Moscow has been offended. So we're thinking to ourselves, that's it, the visit is over, we have to return to Warsaw to the airport, and the Holy Father has to fly away. I'm saying: "Gentlemen, why are you wandering around at night. You can't fall asleep, or something? And then, on the way to ... (unclear name) I met the general, who was the chief of the Government Protection Office. He grabbed me and he says, "Father, I don't want to go there any more." And that meant that he was afraid that some kind of intervention on the part of Moscow would happen. And that was '87, so there was really no reason to fear this. The Pope's visit liberated new enthusiasm in the whole society. And later on, the Holy Father invited all the bishops to the Secretariat, and he told them to study the issue of establishing diplomatic relations with Poland, but not with the People's Republic of Poland, and that would irritate the other side. 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 Wyszynski 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. Mr. Chrzanowski yesterday talked about opposition. We would not use the word opposition, because there was practically no parliamentary or political opposition. We would say that this was a social force that needs to talk, is ready to talk to the authorities of Polish People's Republic, but then our interlocutors would get irritated and ask: "What do you mean, aren't we parts of the society? Only they are?" In '88, at the beginning of May, strikes began in Nowa Huta. We saw this movie yesterday, and I have to disagree with one comment that the Church got ..., they say something like "duped." To explain, in agreement with the leadership of Polish People's Republic, we sent a good will mission to Nowa Huta and to Gdansk. Mr. Stelmachowski and Jan Olszewski went to Nowa Huta, and Mr. Mazowiecki and Mr. Wielowieyski went to Gdansk. At three o'clock in the morning I receive a phone call from a very important member of the Politburo, that in Nowa Huta the situation has been resolved by force, but the strike in Gdansk may extend indefinitely. But the strike did not last that long after all and it needed to end, as Mr. Walesa himself was saying, when the workers' involvement in the shipyard diminished. We would meet repeatedly later on, for example about PRON (the Patriotic Movement for National Revival), about turning it into something real. But all that was not very serious, in our belief. And I would like to ... Yes, I'm just about to finish, ... to recall one fragment, or two, that led to the beginning of systemic talks. The first one was the meeting in '88 that was supposed to lead to Round Table, announced by General Kiszczak. About that Round Table we had been talking much earlier, and Mr. Ciosek can confirm this, and that is also confirmed by my notes. This first meeting took place in Magdalenka, on the 16th of September, but it was very absolutely discouraging. It was mostly because of "the concrete part" of the government delegation. I was sitting next to two such prominent delegates and they were saying, "What the heck do they want? What are they demanding? This is impossible!" Later on the contacts broke down. Mr. Selmachowski also withdrew, not to blur the picture any further. Only once, once, did the Church delegation, Archbishop Dabrowski specifically, take the risk of initiating a meeting between the opposition, that is, the people of Solidarity, with the government of Polish People's Republic. It took place on Church property, but not in the presbytery, since the General said that the presbytery was off limits, but Church property was fine. Well, it took place in Wilanów. The discussions took two days but they failed over one tiny issue. Mr. Walesa ... you know, the meeting was among Walesa, Mazowiecki, General Kiszczak and Mr. Ciosek. It was all about the communiqué. I think those talks took six hours or longer and Walesa was just about ready to agree to a three-part communiqué: what the general talked about, what Walesa talked about, that he talked about re-legalization of Solidarity and trade union pluralism, and the third part that they actually met there and at such-and-such time. And they did not agree to that. They only issued a technical communiqué. People were talking here about the great turning point in December. I thought that that was a very inflexible stand, but Mr. Ciosek, either with endorsement or on his own initiative at the end of '88 he says, "Father, we have to do something. We need to call a session of the Joint Commission." And that meeting took place in Gierek's former villa in Klarysewo, and it cleared the path for systematic talks at the Round Table. After maybe six hours of talks, Mr. Ciosek, who is present here, would ask Cardinal Macharski, since that was at the Joint Commission, "When are we going to meet again?" And Cardinal Macharski says, "Well, maybe in the fall?" "But we are facing elections in the spring, right?" Silence. Then, at some point, Cardinal Macharski says, "Well, we have here two members of the Joint Commission, Father Alojzy and Mr. Ciosek; why don't they establish contact with the opposition." And this is when our meetings started, on the 6th of January '89, at Klonowa St., quite ironically in what used to be the villa of Mazowiecki's aunt. And we would meet there every couple of days. Mr. Ciosek would bombard us with different solutions and Mazowiecki ..., those who've met him would know, would say, "Hmmm, maybe, well ... we'll see." In spite of everything, however, all this led to systematic talks and to the other side's final stutter of the word "Solidarity." This word was actually uttered! I do have a lot of other notes here but just for fun I would need to read a little passage that was prepared by PAI (Polish Information Agency), in which they write that Comrade Ciosek was convincing "the concrete" members ... party secretaries that, "We can not proceed.... We are not going to rescind authority but we cannot practice Polish agrarian ways, so the issue is who is going to bury whom? And that we need ..." Well, and this is how he ends this sentence: "We have to take advantage of the favorable international situation. We have to take advantage of the ephemeral constellation of the stars, as it is being described by our partners from the Church." Thank you.

DISCUSSION

Wierzynski:
Can you hear me? As we have agreed before, we are going to collect your questions on those note cards. If someone doesn't have one, then, well, tear one from your notebook and write your question on it. Unfortunately, we have very little time, so let's begin with what we already have here. Well, Gregorz, why don't you start?

Ekiert:
We have a question to Mr. Bujak and Mr. Ciosek: "What is your opinion about the thesis that the basis for the political success, that is the basis for the negotiations, was the fact that in the 1980s, both parties to the conflict accepted a neo-liberal vision of the economic system and that common vision sort of generated the political agreement?" Well, please make it short so we can answer several questions.

Bujak:
I can say that within Solidarity during the underground period there were at least three important centers where the backbone for the economic program was being formulated. These were Kraków, Warsaw, and Gdansk. And Lódz, I'm sorry, so there were actually four. Mr. Balcerowicz himself was from Lódz. In all those centers, the programs that were being formulated were very liberal. Private ownership was supposed to be the basis for the economic system in the future. Well, all the documents, the results of those works, were never published at that time. They were not known to the public; those were our internal studies, but they were financed with the means, the resources that Solidarity had at that time. As far as the position of the other side on these issues was concerned, we just were not aware of it, and as a matter of fact, we weren't even interested. We were only interested in that to the extent that we watched the current effects of the other side's economic policy. But we did not think that the other side was trying to liberalize the economy. That opinion appeared only in the late '80s when Mr. Rakowski was Prime Minister. But that was not the main thing for us at that time, at least not to me.

Ciosek:
Briefly, I will read what I have skipped at the beginning. An anecdote. Well, it may actually be true. 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. The real model of the economic system came together with Prime Minister Mazowiecki's government and it was the so-called Balcerowicz program. To be fair, we have to admit that Mieczyslaw Franciszek Rakowski, with his government, was the one who first tried to demolish the walls of the old economic structure, and not only the economic structure, but other things, too. However, introducing the new rules of the game, where prices are free and the population's earnings are controlled with an iron grip, was above the capabilities of the weakened old regime. Who could possibly resist the pressure of Solidarity and other trade unions, not to mention the multi-million party itself, which would have to defend social benefits and the standard of living? Poland needed a great new beginning. Only a new political power, with new capital of social trust, could ask for a policy of belt-tightening, necessary for the time of reform. Well, it's important to remember that in the period of the greatest sacrifices, after '89 and for the next three years, the situation was relatively calm in Poland. And still, in spite of all the enthusiastic trust, Lech Walesa had to use his famous "bumper tactics." This is the fragment that, in response to the question, I have allowed myself to read from the earlier prepared speech, which I had not time to finish.

Wierzynski:
Mr. Ambassador, you were talking about the effectiveness of sanctions as an instrument to influence the policy of the Polish government. What instruments did the United States use to influence the policy of the opposition, if any? And another question (blurred) ... why did the United States not inform Solidarity about the threat of introducing martial law if Washington knew about that?

J. Davis:
This is a very interesting point. I was head of Eastern European Affairs in 1981, as I said, in Washington, and I spoke to various members of Solidarity (blurred)… Andrzej Celinski and a number of others. On the day martial law was declared, I had never heard the name Colonel Kuklinski, or any hint that the United States' government had information that martial law plans were in existence. And I later checked with my superior at the time, Jack Scanlan, and he swears that he had no hint. Now, Richard Pipes, who was on the National Security Council, has said that he had never heard of that, so somebody had knowledge of it. One can only hope that the information we received did not include a date, but where it went, apart from the President, I have no idea. Nobody seems to be able to this day to tell me. So I plead innocence; I didn't know that martial law was going to be declared. Although we all … I suspected strongly that the Soviets would eventually intervene, if, in fact, Solidarity took over power in Poland … In no circumstances but … and I did warn my Solidarity friends to be careful, so it's … And … I mean, just before martial law was declared, when there was the attack on the Fire Brigade School, it was obvious that something was about to happen, but I think that was obvious to everybody in Solidarity also. That was one … Second question is what did we do to influence. 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. And once I found out what the agreement at the Political Committee was for the division of seats in the Sejm and for the free election of the Senate, and from then on, I urged my friends to forget about the rest of the details, get to the elections as quickly as possible, because you will win everything, and from then on, you will have political power. So that was my personal … 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.

Ekiert:
A question for Bishop Orszulik: "Everybody is under the impression that in the late '80s the Church agreed with the opposition on essentially everything. We'd like to know if the Church agreed on anything with the government. Were there any opinions that you shared with them, against the opposition?

Orszulik:
Well, I cannot recall quite that. Of course, I didn't participate in all the conversations. Well, I have to say frankly that I was very close to the Solidarity people from the very beginning. So I listened very carefully to what Mr. Ciosek was saying, or others from the Joint Commission, or the chief of the Council of Ministers Office, but I understood all that to be an attempt to take advantage of the Church. So I don't think there is a document to that effect, and I was usually the one to formulate the documents of the conference of the Episcopate concerning public affairs, and my wisdom did not come from my own mind but from getting advice, from conversations with the Solidarity people.

Ekiert:
Thank you very much. We have promised our panelists that we would give them an opportunity to say a few more words after everything has been said. So please, three short three-minute evaluations of this meeting and this discussion, if we may. Let us begin with Mr. Bujak.

Bujak:
I would like to mention one more thing. It's not concerning the discussion or the opinions, but another problem which was important at that time, in my opinion, as to whether or not we are going to participate in the negotiations and on what conditions. Well, 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. Well, of course, well, these victims of martial law, since there were victims ... luckily, not many people were killed during martial law. We talk about one hundred or one hundred twenty maximum during that time. At the same time, in a far-away El Salvador, there were one hundred twenty thousand people killed in a six-million nation, and their leaders were saying to me ... that despite that enormous difference, we also had to … we must sit down and talk. 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. Thank you.

Ekiert:
Mr. Ciosek's conclusion, please.

Ciosek:
Let me call again on a spiritual person, His Excellency Orszulik, to be my witness. In many of the talks, we used the term clutch, the coupling theory, in reference to the changes that were to take place. 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, Your Excellency, we pressed that clutch pedal, as you may recall our conversations. The main point of my speech was that the other side, the opposition ... Well, the movie yesterday irritated me; it hurt me. I believe it was unjust. In general, presenting history in such black and white terms is not just and it seems to me that our seminar should lead us to some just and honest assessments. We are here in search of truth. It was true in those days, too, that Solidarity's partner was not the way we were presented at the time. The very day after Poland lost its soccer match in Wembley Stadium, the coach of the British team (tape switch) ... was praising the Poles beyond belief, their high level of play, their great preparation, because he was winning with a good contestant. (break in tape) … I wish our partners that they would be able to notice some of that value on our side and notice that the Polish success is made up of good will on both sides, and not just one. Let me emphasize again the major role the Catholic Church played, but Mr. Mieczyslaw Franciszek Rakowski, the witness of that meeting in Klarisew, can confirm that the Church really admonished about the irresponsible violence of the changes, including the elections. 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. Thank you.

J. Davis:
Two words, if I may. That from the Embassy's point of view, it was interesting, in particular, at the Round Table to perceive it as at least a triangle rather than a round table, because apart from the government negotiators, and the opposition, Solidarity, there was the OPZZ, and the nomenklatura, who had their own positions. And this caused a subtle shift, it seemed to me, as the negotiations proceeded, that the common interest area between the opposition, which remained united at the table, despite its many arguments outside, on the one side, and the government negotiators, on the other, tended to be drawn together to oppose "the cement" of the nomenklatura and OPZZ. As you can recall, Miodowicz almost brought the whole thing to a halt at the very end but it was cleverly finessed. But this was the same.… In Poland there was always the question of who is "my" and who is "oni" (English translation: "us" versus "them"). And as Mr. Onyszkiewicz said the other day, when he was here, that the first Papal visit was the time when in Poland people realized that "my" was a very big group. I wasn't just your family, because when the Pope came, there were suddenly millions of people together for the first time. And this is the spirit that carried through all those years to the triumph of 1989. And for me, as a diplomat, at the end of seven years in Poland, to be able to send the message to Washington saying that the non-communist Premier has just been inaugurated in Warsaw, "I have the honor to report, … and this fulfills my instructions, send more instructions" was a great feeling.

Orszulik:
I would like to make three additional comments. First, when Mr. Ciosek and I began our talks on the 6th of January '89, Mr. Mazowiecki was in close contact with Mr. Walesa and was a very loyal and devoted person to Walesa. I want to testify to this, in front of this audience. The second point is Mr. Rakowski's reforms. Mr. Rakowski recalls the referendum which was conducted by Mr. Sadowski in those days, a referendum that lost. After that lost referendum, Mr. Rakowski and several other members of the Politburo met with the General Council of the Episcopate at the Secretariat of the Episcopate. One of the bishops rose and said, "Mr. ...," I don't know if he was the Prime Minister, or not, "Minister, let's have a heart-to-heart: what kind of obligations do we have towards Moscow? What kind of benefits do we have to deliver to other communist countries? If we don't explain that, no reform can succeed." From the talks that I also have recorded in my notes here, with Mr. ..., whose name I'd rather not mention, also a member of the Politburo, it was clear that that reform could not have succeeded despite the best of wills, because there was no cash in the till, and since society was rebellious, not willing to accept any more pretty words. The third point is whether the Church warned against the elections. Mr. Prime Minister, on the fourth of January, you were at Klarysew then, and you depicted the situation very vividly. Others were listening, and I was the lowest in rank, just a plain priest, while there were archbishops, an archbishop and bishops there. I was the most audacious of them, one could say. I asked you, Mr. Prime Minister, when do you expect free elections. And you nodded, nodded and said, "Well, maybe in four to eight years." And the second question, even more audacious, was: "Don't you think that at some point you could become an opposition?" You did not answer this. Mr. Ciosek, on the other hand, was really mad at me and Mr. Czyrek, who was also there, just screamed at me, how I could pose questions of this sort. I will not conceal that I had met Solidarity leaders prior to that conversation to ask them, "How should I respond to the upcoming free elections if Solidarity is to be a mere fig leaf? "Father, tell them to run those elections on their own." Thank you.

Rakowski:
There were a few strong accusations against my government. I feel a need to explain ... some need for clarity as far as when these things happened, what caused them ... If not now, at some point I would like to have an opportunity to correct, rectify, and clarify.

Ekiert:
Perhaps right now. You're welcome. Please come, but briefly, Mr. Prime Minister.

Unidentified male:
You had forty years to clarify this!

Rakowski:
I simply wanted to clarify one point. I wanted to clarify that two principal economic reforms that had been introduced by my government, the first one about economic activity that abolished all restrictions referring to the size of private property to be held, and the second bill about foreign entities in the economy, have functioned to this day in Poland. They have become the foundation of the economy, which, to a much greater extent, was introduced by Mr. Leszek Balcerowicz. Let me say, however, that first of all, the bill on economic activity was under those circumstances a revolutionary step ahead. Second of all, the bill introduced only four types of areas subject to governmental approval, four categories, so to speak, economic activity that needed approval. Currently, there are over thirty such categories. To avoid misunderstandings, each successive government, from the Solidarity government, to SLD (Alliance of the Democratic Left), to PSL (Polish Peasant Party), has added their own licenses, additional licenses. This is the truth, and please do not confuse those reforms with the referendum. That referendum was not my issue. It occurred in '87 and I was not guided in my activity by the results of the referendum. Perhaps some of the participants of the whole process are forgetting that Polish society in the late 1980s, at the time when I became the government leader, was diversified in its views and its attitudes towards Solidarity as well as towards that political formation I represented. And I do not think that anybody in his right mind can question the credibility of opinion polls at that time. Therefore, I will add that in October '88, my government had seventy-three percent support. Thank you.

Wierzynski:
Thank you ladies and gentlemen, thanks to the panel participants. Aside from the fact that it was an interesting exchange of views, we have succeeded in a major way. We have exceeded our time limit by only six minutes, so thanks again. I would also like to invite you to come and visit the exhibit that's on the other side, on that side, the other direction, the direction I'm pointing, there is the exhibit I invite you to take a look at. Its title is "Making a Space for History." Thanks a lot.

Organizing Committee, Communism's Negotiated Collapse:
The Polish Round Table of 1989, Ten Years Later
Copyright © 1999 The Regents of the University of Michigan

Last updated: December 20, 1999