"We Have Come to Win"

By Thomas A. Sancton

So vowed Solidarity's Walesa last week as the food crisis worsened

As it built up slowly, purposefully, the demonstration threatened to become the violent clash that Poland had been dreading--and miraculously avoiding--through a precarious year of labor unrest and political change. About 100 trucks, buses and taxis wound their way through downtown Warsaw early last week. The vehicles in the convoy were draped with red and white national flags and banners proclaiming A HUNGRY NATION CAN EAT ITS BOSSES and GIVE US BREAD. Then, suddenly, traffic policemen halted the lead drivers as they approached the Communist Party's gray stone headquarters on Jerozolimskie Avenue.

Refusing to take an alternate route, the defiant drivers left their vehicles in the street. About three dozen police reinforcements and several antiriot trucks arrived to cordon off the forbidden zone. The resulting traffic jam blocked one of the capital's busiest intersections and set the scene for a two-day standoff that turned into the largest political rally since the country's unprecedented liberalization process began last summer.

It came at an ominous time. The long-awaited party congress had ended without drafting a plan for economic recovery. Strikes were erupting across the country in response to the government's decision last month to raise food prices by over 300% and cut meat rations by 20%. The Soviet press was rumbling again about the dangerous unrest in Poland. And Party Boss Stanislaw Kania was reported to be packing his bags for a possible meeting with Leonid Brezhnev at the Soviet President's Crimean resort. At week's end, the government declared it would not pay workers who had struck, and the trade union Solidarity called for a temporary halt to the protests until its leaders could assess the situation.

When the standoff began in downtown Warsaw, anger started to surge in the crowd. Shouted one militant through a loudspeaker: "We face the threat of bloodshed on the streets." But then, as thousands of workers, housewives, students and children gathered to cheer on the demonstrators, the scene changed unpredictably and took on a carnival-like atmosphere, resembling a California "happening" of the 1960s more than a dangerous political confrontation in one of the Communist world's major capitals.

Supporters brought flowers, bread and drinks to the drivers, some of whom took off their shirts to bask in the August sun. Organizers from the Solidarity labor union handed out leaflets, and comedians entertained the growing crowd. Using a sound system borrowed from a jazz club, Solidarity leaders turned a flatbed truck into an impromptu stage, from which they denounced the government's failure to remedy the food situation.

The crowd held its ground for 50 hours until, as planned, a two-hour strike staged by hundreds of thousands of people closed virtually every office and workshop in the city, with the exception of essential services. Before the trucks and buses finally dispersed to the roar of blaring horns and sirens, Solidarity Spokesman Janusz Onyszkiewicz issued a final taunt to the government: "Those who are afraid of their nation should stay locked up and not disturb us any more."

Although the demonstration in the streets of Warsaw ended peacefully, Poland lurched more deeply into trouble last week. Strikes protesting food shortages took place in at least half a dozen cities. Potentially the most damaging action came on Friday, when about 1 million workers put down their tools for four hours in Silesia, the nation's industrial and coal-mining heartland. These protests may have vented some public anger, but they have also fed a climate of distrust and disorder that makes economic recovery more difficult and leads the Soviets to hint darkly about intervening.

Breaking a long silence on Poland's economic crisis, the Soviet party daily Pravda complained that "the extremists who have entrenched themselves in Solidarity are pushing the country into an abyss." More ominously, the Soviet news agency TASS quoted an article from a Polish army newspaper warning that "those who believe there will be no struggle for socialism make a great mistake." Meanwhile, a large Soviet armada, gathered in the Baltic to carry out amphibious exercises in the vicinity of Poland--a stark reminder of Moscow's potential for military intervention.

As Polish authorities struggled to convince a skeptical public that they were not holding back "secret" food supplies, Premier Wojciech Jaruzelski appointed a special "anticrisis" task force to run the sputtering economy. This Cabinet-level committee will have complete authority--on paper, at least--over production, supply and distribution of both domestic consumer goods and exports. In addition, it will control the allocation of raw materials, energy, investments and labor.

But this latest attempt to impose order on Poland's chaotic economy was met with skepticism by Solidarity leaders. Tired of what it considers official foot dragging, Solidarity has produced its own set of demands for setting the economy straight. Among them: union participation in overseeing the food supply, the restoration of meat rations to their previous levels, and a government pledge to secure full public approval for any price hikes.

Seeking to contain the volatile situation, Deputy Premier Mieczyslaw Rakowski met twice with Solidarity officials. But the talks broke down at week's end, with the government accusing Solidarity of "an unprecedented show of arrogance" and vowing it would not "succumb to a dictatorship." In fact, the government, saddled with a $27 billion foreign debt, had little ground left to give, and the union's conciliatory approach seemed to be yielding to a growing militancy. "We have come to win," boasted Solidarity's Lech Walesa. He later added, "We are masters of the situation and will be for a long time yet."

Such truculent language, coming from a moderate like Walesa, was serious evidence of how bad the situation had become. Not since the first days after World War II, in fact, had the Polish people faced such hardships in their daily lives. While no one was starving, Poles had become prisoners of the maddening regimen of queues, ration coupons and empty shelves. "I couldn't find any products essential for a normal life," complained a woman from Opole, one of thousands of Poles who have emigrated to Western Europe for economic reasons during the past few months. "It is not just food. We had only a pound of detergent for three months."

In an effort to ease the crisis, the French government last week announced plans to send 322,000 tons of food supplies. Premier Pierre Mauroy said that France would put "pressure" on the allies to provide Poland with an additional $500 million in emergency aid.

But no amount of outside assistance will help Poland overcome its present difficulties without decisive action from the government in Warsaw. It has temporized for nearly a year, agreeing to practically all the reforms that Solidarity has demanded without actually putting many of them into practice. What is called for now is no less than a complete overhaul of the country's economic structure. And that, as a Solidarity declaration pointed out last week, requires "essential changes in the centralized bureaucratic system."

Factions within the top leadership of both the government and Solidarity were urging each Side to take tougher action against the other last week. Poland's food crisis--along with the demonstrations, the strikes and the threat of violence--did not disappear when the final driver climbed into the cab of his truck in the center of Warsaw and pulled away.

--By Thomas A. Sancton. Reported by Richard Hornik/Bonn

With reporting by Richard Hornik/Bonn

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