A May Day Show of Defiance

By John Kohan

Jaruzelski eases martial law, but Solidarity stages a protest

As a 24-gun salute boomed across Warsaw to begin the official May Day parade last Saturday, a crowd of some 10,000 Poles gathered in the capital's old town began to clap rhythmically. They were not applauding the regime. Instead, they were rallying under the defiant banner of the independent union Solidarity. Flashing the victory sign and waving placards demanding FREE THE INTERNEES, the demonstrators headed off in the general direction of the authorized parade. They called to bystanders to join the march, and soon more than 20,000 were chanting "Solidarity," "Leszek" (for the interned Lech Walesa) and "Down with the junta."

Passing the residence of Polish Roman Catholic Primate Archbishop Jozef Glemp, the marchers paused, hoping that the church leader might appear, then sang a hymn beginning "Return us our free fatherland." Finally, farther along their route, they encountered opposition: massed militia units with dozens of vehicles armed with water cannons. There was no clash. The protesters turned away, hurling insults at the militia ("Gestapo," "Whom do you serve?") as they walked toward the Vistula River. There the march broke up. Said one young worker triumphantly: "That was exactly what we wanted. There was no violence. It was a real morale booster."

The surprising outbreak of protest, by far the largest demonstration against the regime since martial law was declared last Dec. 13, was hardly a morale booster for Poland's junta leader, General Wojciech Jaruzelski. He and his comrades had hoped to blunt just that sort of anger. Earlier in the week, Poland's Interior Ministry announced that sufficient progress had been made in "the normalization of public life" to justify lifting some of the more onerous martial-law restrictions. The nightly curfew from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. would be suspended (a concession that the protest may well have jeopardized), and Poles could make long-distance telephone calls within the country without going through an operator. The announcement also informed Poles that 1,000 political internees would be released, 200 of them on parole. But if any of them dared to resume "activities aimed against the binding legal order," the statement warned, they would be subject to summary criminal trials without the right of appeal.

Many of the workers, farmers and intellectuals who were freed late last week seemed stunned by their sudden good fortune. Cautious in commenting about prison conditions, they did not claim to have been maltreated by the authorities. Neither Walesa nor any other top leaders of the banned Solidarity union were among those released. In fact, there were reports that some Solidarity advisers, including Historian Adam Michnik, had been moved to Rakowiecka Prison in Warsaw and would be tried for antistate activities. Said a former Communist Party member: "It is possible that the authorities plan to release all but the most active people, who will then be identified as political criminals and kept isolated."

As proof that the military was winning its war against "subversive elements," the TV news offered a second surprise: an interview with Jan Kulaj, 24, former head of Rural Solidarity. Looking haggard after four months in detention, Kulaj told a reporter that he had decided to work with the Communist-dominated United Peasants' Party, "since other organizations are illegal, and it is always good to have a chance of legally voicing one's opinion." Though he did not recant his past activities, Kulaj was clearly the biggest convert so far to "normalization."

That propaganda coup had not exactly made the government confident. To ensure that Jaruzelski would not be marching alone in the May Day parade, Communist Party members were ordered to fill the columns behind him, and factories were even issued a quota of workers that they were required to send in order to swell the crowds. Security officials also nervously waited to see whether the phantom Radio Solidarity would dare to broadcast a second time over state-controlled air waves, as it had promised during a first clandestine transmission on April 12. Indeed, at one minute after 9 on Friday evening, residents of Warsaw picked up the opening bars of a protest song on their FM band, signaling that the station was back on the air. But barely four minutes later, the transmission went dead. Whether the transmitter had been discovered or merely gone off the air to avoid discovery was unclear. The police, who had installed radio-detection antennas on high buildings and dispatched mobile tracking units to patrol the streets, might have been closing in.

The government's efforts to root out opposition seem to have extended even to Poland's powerful Roman Catholic Church, which has found increasingly less room to maneuver, a situation that may have kept Glemp from appearing before the May Day protesters. After a session with Jaruzelski the previous Sunday, the Primate had flown to Rome to brief Pope John Paul II on the developments in his homeland. The Pontiff had planning to make a second pilgrimage to Poland in August, but he voiced fears that a visit then might be interpreted as an endorsement of military rule. Vatican sources described Glemp as "very pessimistic" about the chances of a papal trip this year.

Poland's military leaders seem intent on driving a wedge between the general population and the intellectuals and former Solidarity activists, whom they blame for the present economic crisis. But the government has hardly done better. Even if shops are better supplied, price increases have made it almost impossible for people to buy what is there. Without any substantial improvement in that economic equation, it seems unlikely that loosening martial law will be enough to rally support behind the regime -- a fact that the May Day demonstrators made abundantly clear.

-- By John Kohan.

Reported by Richard Hornik /Warsaw

With reporting by Richard Hornik/Warsaw

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.