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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, DECEMBER 25, 1981
PAGE 10
Accelerating demands by the Solidarity leadership were simply too much for
either Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski or the Kremlin to ignore any
longer. Solidarity militants, ignoring their union's charter forbidding
political activity, were steering the union movement onto a clear collision
course with the government.
At the union's meeting in Gdansk in the first week in December, Solidarity
leaders pressed for a new law ensuring democratic elections, as well as
calling for a national referendum on whether or not to abolish Poland's
communist government. "We have reached the climax, and let's face it, we
must seize power," declared one representative.
At about the same time, union delegates meeting in the city of Radom made
the mistake of tape recording one of their more fiery strategy sessions. On
the tape, national union leader Lech Walesa was heard to say: "There will be
confrontation; it is unavoidable."
Walesa's words were mild compared to the recorded demand of Warsaw's hard
line Solidarity firebrand Zbigniew Bujak, a 27-year-old factory worker:
"The government should be finally overthrown, unmasked and deprived of
credibility."
A Solidarity official later verified the authenticity of the recording and
said its leak to the government appeared to be a deliberate attempt on the
part of an unknown union official to discredit the Solidarity leadership.
The government, for its part, made the most of the secret tape in anti-union
propaganda.
In the end, Solidarity could not succeed in the struggle for power with the
government because it had no weapons to fight with, except for the calling
of strikes. One union official said that "our weapon is the paralysis of
the economy." But increasingly, this weapon became self-defeating. In the
public view, Solidarity came to share the blame along with the government
for the collapsed state of the Polish economy, which had been deteriorating
for nearly 16 months, even since Solidarity was born in August 1980.
The Soviet Union is not entirely pleased, however, by the Jaruzelski crack
down, carried out in the name of the "Military Council for National
Salvation."
It's embarrassing for the Kremlin to see a military junta
replace civilian rule by the Communist Party in one of its client states.
The fact is, Poland's Communist Party, many of whose members are new and
sympathetic to Solidarity, crumbled under the weight of the crisis. The
Military Council--consisting of 15 Polish generals, five colonels and an
admiral--practically eliminates the Politburo and the Central Committee in
the running of the country.
Also disturbing to Moscow is the degree of Polishness in the emergency
government. The word "socialist" does not appear in its official title.
And General Jaruzelski, in an impassioned speech proclaiming the imposition
of martial law, stressed his role as "chief of government," omitting -refer
ences to his role as Communist Party First Secretary.
The plea by Jaruzelski's government for calm and order went straight to the
heart of Polish nationalism. Posters slapped up in Warsaw declared: "For