A celebration of liberty
When most people are asked what event best symbolizes the collapse of communism, most will point to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But although that event was indeed the most spectacular and public illustration that communism was indeed bankrupt, the truth is that it was the effect, rather than the cause, of the liberation of the peoples of Europe from communism and Soviet domination. The source of that collapse was another wall, the wall surrounding the then Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, which in 1980 was not destroyed, but instead jumped over by a young electrician called Lech Walesa. That small leap in mid-August 1980 into a shipyard already seething with resentment at Poland's communist authorities sparked the strike that only a couple of weeks later led to Poland's humiliated government agreeing to the unthinkable: an independent worker's organization, the Solidarity trade union. Solidarity was brutally crushed by the same regime only 15 months later. But the processes that it started both internally and internationally ensured that within a decade, Europe was finally liberated from communism.
Today, Polish politics cannot be fully understood without having a sense of the deep moral symbolism of the Solidarity of 1980. For Solidarity was not merely a trade union representing the interest of its 10 million members, but it was fundamentally a national movement rejecting everything that communism stood for: the suppression of freedom, the subversion of the Roman Catholic Church, and the subordination of Poland to the tutelage of the Soviet Union. To join Solidarity then meant making a statement about oneself and the values that one believed in. That is why there is such deep division within the Polish political scene today, and the level of distrust displayed toward politicians who, although they might profess to be democrats today, 20 years ago remained wedded to the interests of the communist order. Many of those same politicians also sided with the communist authorities when Solidarity was suppressed at the end of 1981, and that double moral failure has given them a stigma that they are unable to shake off even today.
The very fact that the Solidarity of 1980 was so broad is also at the source of why Poland's anticommunist forces have been so disorganized over the last 10 years of democracy. While the communist party was able to smoothly transform itself into today's Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), Poland's non-communist politicians went through a bitter period of falling out with each other following the collapse of communism in 1989, as every politician tried to form his own political party. The fact that the right managed to unite in 1997 under the umbrella of Solidarity Election Action (AWS) was a recognition that divisions lead to defeat. But judging by the infighting within AWS now, it is a lesson that has never been fully learned.
The peculiarity of the anticommunist movement in Poland in that a trade union was at the forefront has meant that for better or worse, the fortunes of the Polish right are for the time wedded to the fortunes of today's Solidarity. Some politicians such as Leszek Balcerowicz, leader of the Freedom Union (UW) have tried to form a right-wing party in opposition to Solidarity, but have largely failed. That in itself is not a huge cause for concern, as Solidarity remains to this day a force working for reform, private property, and a pro-Western foreign policy. The time will come, however, when the Polish right will separate itself from the union, but that will require a new generation of political leaders to emerge and organizational and political strength independent of the union apparatus.
Yet it was only through being a trade union that Solidarity could become the mass movement that it became, just as only an anticommunist trade union could expose the Orwellian sham that communism was in its claim to represent the working class. That is why Solidarity quickly became a symbol for other anticommunist movements in Central Europe, and why the model of united democratic forces in fighting the first free elections was followed in countries as diverse a Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
Communism's collapse in Europe was of course due to more than Solidarity itself in Poland. Apart from the internal economic bankruptcy of the socialist system, its final implosion could not have been possible without such factors as the moral leadership of Pope John Paul II, and the robust policies toward the Soviet Union followed by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. That is why it is no surprise to see last week, at the 20th anniversary celebrations of the 1980 strikes, both Walesa and Marian Krzaklewski together with Lady Thatcher, and to see the latter obtain the honorary citizenship of Gdansk itself. Those who lived under communism know full well the meaning of liberty, and whom to thank for it today.
