Poland Duel of the Deaf

By William R. Doerner

Faced with the most serious outbreak of labor unrest since placing Poland under martial law more than six years ago, the regime of General Wojciech Jaruzelski seemed oddly uncertain about how to respond, whether to make strategic concessions or to lower the boom. For a while, the government tried a little of both. As the strikes spread to other major industrial centers and the country's universities last week, authorities continued to agree to wage increases in a few cases, acceded to mediation attempts by representatives of the Roman Catholic Church in others -- but always with the explicit warning that stronger measures might be used eventually. In the end, they were. Attacking in the dead of night, more than 2,000 riot police and elite commandos routed several hundred occupying strikers at the Nowa Huta steel mill near Cracow, reportedly injuring at least 40 of them. Meanwhile, police surrounded the more recently occupied Gdansk shipyard, isolating a strike force of about 1,000, which included Lech Walesa, legendary founder of the outlawed Solidarity independent trade union.

The move failed to bring an end to the strikes, which persisted in the form of massive absenteeism at Nowa Huta and some other job sites. The onslaught underscored the Jaruzelski regime's utter inability to find a common language with Poland's restive and embittered workers. The attack seemed to doom the government's ambitious plans for economic restructuring, which depend on the labor force's willingness to make temporary sacrifices while the country's centralized industries are gradually exposed to more and more free-market forces. "Everybody knows what is at stake here," said Walesa, following the Nowa Huta attack. "As of today, the reform has failed."

The regime's reaction exposed its deep ambivalence about allowing political pluralism to creep into the reform program, especially any pluralism that might lead to a reborn Solidarity. Actually, Walesa and other union leaders became involved less as an overtly political force, which they ceased to be after the union was banned in 1981, than as elder statesmen. But even that presence was too much for Poland's Communist leadership. Charging that Solidarity sought only to "evoke crisis and a confrontation," Government Spokesman Jerzy Urban vowed that the regime "had not, does not and will not talk" with union leaders.

Outside Poland, last week's unrest and the force used to quell it must have had a profoundly disquieting effect on the Soviet Union and its leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. The economic reform measures at the center of the Polish dispute, after all, are the local version of Gorbachev's campaign of perestroika (restructuring), and early setbacks in a key satellite hardly bode well for the vaster and still more intractable economy of the Soviet Union. The proximate cause of the wave of strikes in Poland was the imposition of price hikes, ranging from 40% for food staples to 100% for utility charges, aimed at bringing price levels roughly into line with market costs. A similar program of reforms is scheduled to take effect in the Soviet Union as early as 1990 and is regarded by Gorbachev as an essential part of perestroika. If the rumblings in Poland persist, they could cause trouble for Gorbachev well before that test. U.S. analysts have long warned that few events would provide the General Secretary's enemies in the leadership with a sharper weapon than instability in Eastern Europe.

Little wonder that the Soviet press, which has been allowed to report politically sensitive news with increasing candor, was slow to discover the Polish unrest and even then used the pre-glasnost device of pinning it on "Western anti-Polish centers." For its part, the Reagan Administration deplored the Warsaw government's use of violence. White House Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said that the unrest in Poland could be a "point for discussion" at the upcoming Moscow summit but that he did not expect it to cause "significant damage."

At midweek the crisis seemed to be abating. The Catholic bishops authorized five prominent laymen to serve as mediators in the dispute, evidently with the government's consent. But by the time the laymen arrived at Nowa Huta and Gdansk, the course of action was about to change drastically.

The assault on Nowa Huta, where about half the work force of 32,000 had joined the ten-day-old strike, began at 2 a.m. Thursday. The West German press agency D.P.A., which had the only Western reporter on the scene, said four buses carried several dozen secret police inside the plant. The commandos stunned the strikers, many of whom were sleeping, with concussion and flash grenades.

Father Tadeusz Zaleski, a pro-Solidarity priest who was at the strike- committee headquarters in the rolling-mill building, the first target of the attackers, described the assault: "They kept shooting off these blinding flash and deafening percussion grenades. People lost their bearings and began fleeing in panic. They were chased all over the hall and beaten with truncheons." Most of the 18 members of the strike committee were taken into custody. Then a force of at least 2,000 riot police swept through the rest of the mill, rounding up strikers and forcing them to kneel or lie down before being taken to police vans.

Six hours after the storming of Nowa Huta, riot police and militia began cordoning off the shipyard in Gdansk, which had been occupied by as many as 3,000 striking workers for the previous three days. The plant management broadcast an announcement warning nonstriking employees, some of whom had continued to report to work, to remain at home until further notice. As the morning wore on, crowds of curious onlookers gathered behind police lines at the main shipyard gate, near the steel monument of three crosses erected by Solidarity in memory of workers killed in antigovernment protests there in 1970. Inside, strikers collected in groups to chant "Solidarnosc."

As the standoff dragged on, the atmosphere grew more tense on all sides. The church hierarchy, charging that its mediation offer had been betrayed, bitterly denounced the use of force as a step that "does not serve the interests of society." Walesa grew more and more disillusioned. "It's as if the authorities are trying to poke their finger into the wheel of history," he declared. "Really, I am beyond fear at this point. They can kill me, but they can't overcome me." The electrician, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1983, vowed that "I will be the last to leave" the shipyard if the police stage an assault.

Initially, Walesa seemed far different from the charismatic union firebrand of eight years ago. Though he spoke of "revolution, and a bloody one" if authorities failed to make concessions, Walesa, 44, sought no leadership role, remaining a subdued, even ambivalent participant. Said he: "It is time for younger people." His reluctance stemmed in part from a conviction that reforms not drastically different from those proposed by the regime are necessary for the rescue of Poland's devastated economy. Walesa believes that such a program must be carried out with far broader popular consultation than $ Jaruzelski is willing to permit. Walesa also felt that the shipyard was not adequately prepared for a strike. But as others' positions hardened, so did Walesa's. He soon seemed to be pushing the Jaruzelski regime toward a showdown.

At week's end strike leaders and shipyard managers in Gdansk entered into church-mediated negotiations. While pay raises and amnesty for strikers were discussed, the effort seemed designed primarily to save face on both sides. Whatever comes of the talks, Poland still faces grave challenges ahead. The government has demonstrated that it can contain major outbreaks of worker dissent, but only by means that are likely to provoke more trouble in the future. The workers have managed to deliver a message of defiance and rage, but they are not able to transform it into political gains. In the empty space between those embittered stances, the prospects for productive dialogue are slim.

With reporting by Kenneth W. Banta/Gdansk, with other bureaus