In from the Cold

A crackdown snares a fugitive

Poland's campaign for the June 17 nationwide elections had just entered its final tense week. In Gdansk's southern neighborhood of Orunia one night, 200 troops and antiterrorist police swooped down on a four-story apartment house and began a floor-by-floor sweep of the building. Residents who did not respond had their doors broken down. On the roof, police cornered their quarry: Bogdan Lis, 31, a former leader of Solidarity, the outlawed trade union, and the No. 2 man in the antigovernment underground. He had been in hiding since martial law was declared on Dec. 13, 1981.

Though the opposition's top figure, Zbigniew Bujak, 29, remained at large, the capture of Lis depressed efforts to organize a boycott of Sunday's elections for 7,040 regional and 103,388 local posts. Lis had led the campaign, urging Poles to deny the military regime of General Wojciech Jaruzelski the opportunity to claim it had the support of the people.

Polish authorities announced that Lis was captured with several incriminating documents, including a letter from a Solidarity leader in Brussels indicating that the AFL-CIO, the giant U.S. labor organization, had contributed $200,000 to the under ground and suggesting that more money might be forthcoming if the election boy cott was successful. Lis was charged with failing to end his role in Solidarity when the trade union was suspended, founding an illegal organization, entering into agreements with foreign organizations and using false identity documents.

Boycott activity had been consider able in recent weeks.

Underground members in Gdansk turned loose several pigs, painted red and signs that said VOTE FOR US.

In Warsaw, thousands of leaflets urging voters not to "collaborate" in the election fluttered from buildings or were posted in stairwells and elevators.

Voting procedures were designed to assure a thumping Communist victory.

Those who endorsed the government's first choice for candidacies had only to pick up their ballot and deposit it in a box, while those who selected the official second choice or decided to write in a name had to enter a curtained voting booth.

This meant that voters who dissented from the approved candidates could easily be identified. Few Poles were predicting that the boycott would be successful, but almost no one expected the government to get the 99% turnout common in East bloc elections.