JANUSZ ONYSZKIEWICZ works as a professor of mathematics at the University of Warsaw in Poland. He was active in the leadership of Solidarity from the movement's beginnings in 1980. After the declaration of martial law in December 1981, Onyszkiewicz was interned for a year, then released, then rearrested twice. For the past three years, he has served as the designated national spokesperson for Solidarity. He was interviewed in Warsaw by Polly Duncan, associate director of Sojourners Peace Ministry.
--The Editors
Sojourners: Could you discuss Solidarity's situation since martial law ended? What are Solidarity's current achievements, goals, and hopes for the future?
Janusz Onyszkiewicz: I think Solidarity's main achievement thus far is the creation of a civic society with its own institutions, its own leadership, and its own means of communication. After all, we in the opposition still print approximately 700 underground papers, and the printing of an underground paper is really quite a difficult and dangerous business.
One underground weekly newspaper, published in Warsaw, has a circulation of between 50,000 and 80,000 copies. It's the biggest, but these 700 newspapers compose a network of printing and distribution that involves perhaps 70,000 people.
We publish an average of one book a day, which means 300 to 400 titles a year. All of this is done "underground," a situation in which everything must be carried out completely illegally--transportation, buying paper and ink, and running printing machines. And we broadcast our own programs on radio and television wavelengths and produce videocassettes.
So Solidarity is a huge and important element of our life and an important political factor in the country. We have institutions, we have leaders of all sorts, and we have public opinion. I think this is ' something with a lasting effect.
Are your goals for the future to build up these alternative institutions, this civic society, and to continue on this path?
That would be our goal. But, of course, we would like to have this civic society become more institutionalized, not in unrecognized or illegal organizations but in organizations which will be recognized by the state as legally existing. And a very crucial step in this direction would be to enforce the existing laws in our country concerning the trade unions.
Of course we may achieve some things on a smaller scale. But this system is by its nature a totalitarian system. I wouldn't quite say that we have a totalitarian system in Poland. But to the extent that we don't, it is not due to the generosity of the Polish Communist Party but to the result of popular pressure. The system would like to be totalitarian, and that is why it is so strongly opposed to recognizing any independent institutions.
The system's allergic reaction to any independent institutions, much less independent trade unions, is very clearly shown in cases like registering certain associations. Once they realize a certain association cannot be an instrument in their hands, they simply refuse it registration. So the Society of Friends of Warsaw University, the Polish Logic Society, the Society to Help the Handicapped, and many more have been refused.
This also occurs on the level of public demonstrations. For example, in March a group of 160 people from Warsaw, more than two-thirds of them workers, applied to the Warsaw District Council for permission to organize an independent First of May demonstration. I was in this group. In our application we said we would just have a march, without speeches, but with a certain number of very innocent slogans about peace and economic reform.
Probably the most provocative slogan was "We need democracy like air"--a direct quote from Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The authorities really jumped on that. They thought it was provocative. We also wrote in our application that we were prepared to discuss with the authorities any amendments to our plans which they proposed, provided that we be granted permission to organize an independent, peaceful demonstration. But this was out of the question.
As another example, the authorities are supposedly trying to fight alcoholism in Poland. But people from an independent movement against alcoholism, one not recognized by the authorities, started picketing a liquor shop. They had placards saying "Don't buy alcohol," and their most provocative slogan was "Don't drink. They didn't drink in Gdansk." During the Gdansk strike of August 1980 the whole town was dry. This was imposed by the Solidarity strike committee. Anyhow, these people were promptly arrested and given the heaviest possible fine. So this simply shows how allergic the authorities are to any independent activity.
How would you describe the connection now between Solidarity and Freedom and Peace (WiP)?
Let me go back a little in history to give us some perspective. When Solidarity was born, our idea was that it would spearhead a process of democratic reforms in the country and would provide some-muscle behind this process. We thought that Solidarity would soon be accompanied by other movements and organizations, other initiatives which would simply take care of different aspects of our life in the country.
We made a very determined effort, for example, to set up a special committee to fight for political prisoners. We thought that once we kicked it off, this committee would consolidate and start independent action on that issue. But fairly soon this committee was seeking affiliation with Solidarity.
And that happened with everything. Within Solidarity, which wanted to be a trade union, people wanted to create all kinds of associations. Even the Scouts wanted to be a part of Solidarity. Solidarity was supposed to do absolutely everything.
But the emergence of the Freedom and Peace movement is something different. It is something we always wanted to have--a movement that is independent from Solidarity but belongs to it in a certain sense.
You see, when we say "Solidarity" we very often mean two things. One meaning is the trade union Solidarity with its structures, its ways of acting, and so forth. But a second meaning refers to the whole movement toward democratization. This is a movement that has the trade union Solidarity at its core but which should not be reduced to a trade union as such.
And in this more broadly defined Solidarity movement there are many other organizations that are underground in the sense that the identity of their members is not public. They carry on quite a lot of different actions, but they are not trade union Solidarity branches or divisions. They are independent although they collaborate very closely.
Freedom and Peace is probably the only movement that is in the open, that declares itself as belonging to the overall Solidarity movement and professes its loyalty to Solidarity as trade union. So there are no organizational links, but there is a very good understanding between this movement and Solidarity--an understanding based on a mutual system of values and on accepting more or less the same roots.
Would most Solidarity leaders endorse and support the views of Freedom and Peace?
I must admit that all the specific views of Freedom and Peace would not be endorsed by Solidarity. But that does not create any hard feelings. They're entitled to those views. It is partly also due to the fact that Solidarity deliberately does not take positions on some issues.
Are you referring to foreign policy issues?
Yes. Solidarity simply seeks a certain political space in which it can survive as an independent trade union. Solidarity is a movement toward democratization, toward greater pluralism, in our public life. But it doesn't want to tackle purely political, global issues. And for very good reason. Even during our legal existence, we made a determined effort to put certain limitations on our interests and our actions.
We thought that if we could leave certain areas--namely problems of defense, internal security, and foreign policy--completely outside of our involvement, then perhaps Solidarity could survive in this country. The Russians could somehow be assured that the party still controls the Russian strategic and political interests. Once we start challenging this role of the party, then we will find ourselves in a position where we are fighting for everything. And in the present political situation in Europe, we simply can't win.
So Solidarity was a self-limiting revolution, and the limits were very firmly kept. And that's the situation now. Solidarity doesn't want to play a role on the international political scene. We want to play a role as a factor on the Polish political scene. That's why this group Freedom and Peace is breaking new ground.
How do you view the discussion taking place between activists from the East and West about the links between peace and human rights issues?
In Solidarity we've always thought that this is a very vital thing. As I said, we didn't want to raise certain issues concerning foreign policy. But on many occasions we did say that for us peace cannot be the peace of a cemetery, in which our aspirations and our hopes are buried and in which the society is simply under the total control of the government. The mere lack of a military conflict is not the peace we seek. You can have a peace of the cemetery, or you can have a just peace. This is the first observation we made.
The second observation, closely linked with the first one, is that, after all, there must be somebody who pushes the button to fire the rockets or who pulls the trigger. So, in fact, the arms by themselves are of secondary importance What is important is the people who control this button and those in a position to give orders to pull the trigger.
We would make the observation that for almost 70 years, since World War I, there hasn't been a single major war between two democratic countries. We conclude from this that democracy is important for peace.
The third observation is that if you look at the map showing the deployment of missiles and atomic weapons in Europe, you will see that Soviet missiles are deployed in the western part of the Soviet Union, in East Germany, and in Czechoslovakia, but not in Poland. Why so? Because we want a certain degree of independence as a society.
The popular pressure is such that if they tried to put missiles here they would be facing a big problem, and they know that. This is the clearest example of our contribution on this issue because this wide gap in Poland is inexplicable in military and geographic terms. If the situation that we have in Poland existed in Czechoslovakia or in East Germany, the prospects for peace could be entirely different.
What are your views on glasnost and other Gorbachev reforms?
The position of Solidarity on glasnost has not been enshrined in a document, but it could be read from publications and articles. It is quite clear that everybody watches the political scene in the Soviet Union with hopes. But these hopes are on two levels, depending on developments in the Soviet Union.
I think it is fair to say that the Poles still have a very deep mistrust of the Soviet Union, not the people but the Soviet Union as a state. And this is fairly well historically rooted. This mistrust is now expressed in views that Gorbachev is trying to dynamize the Soviet system to make it more efficient, to be able to compete politically with the West, to change the Soviet Union from a purely military power to an industrial and economic power, and to make Soviet culture .a little bit more attractive, because so far it is completely unattractive. And this is done not as the result of some reorientation in their political goals or changes in the basic values or principles of their public policy. It is simply to have a better instrument to carry out that policy.
A good quote on this question comes from the plenary meeting of the central committee of the Soviet Communist Party, where Gorbachev said, "We need democracy like air," and then he added, "because otherwise our policy will choke." If you analyze what he actually said, you see that a greater degree of democracy is only a more efficient instrument to carry out their present imperial policy. If this is the case, then there is not much hope that Gorbachev will somehow change his attitude to the Polish question.
But even that analysis does not necessarily eliminate hopes, because Gorbachev has certainly managed to create an atmosphere of hope in the Soviet Union. It is an atmosphere in which there is a feeling that something must be changed. And this atmosphere is in striking contrast with the atmosphere inside Polish ruling circles, where we have a certain stagnation.
What Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski is trying to do is to sweeten the tea just by stirring it and not adding any sugar. He's trying to reorganize his own power base, but he's not trying to make any opening toward greater democratization in society. So one source of hope is the difference between the atmosphere in the Soviet Union and in Poland.
But there is another possibility regarding glasnost that could also become a source of hope. That possibility is connected not with what Gorbachev intends to do, but with what he may eventually be forced to do. He obviously wants to break these ossified structures. He wants to appeal to younger people who realize that their career advancement is blocked by people appointed by Leonid Brezhnev, especially among the intellectuals. He tries to appeal to them using this glasnost. But, of course, he cannot limit the reception of this message only to those people. And in this process of glasnost, he may awaken some forces in Soviet society which may push him much farther than he currently intends to go. If he does, he may find himself riding a tiger.
How do you think U.S.-Soviet relations affect the human rights situation or issues of democracy in Poland?
You can have quite a spectrum in the temperature of the relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States. On one pole you can have a situation of Cold War as in the late '40s and early '50s. On the other pole, you can have detente as it was in the '70s. I must say that we don't feel very comfortable in either of those situations.
A Cold War atmosphere is not a situation in which we can exploit our claim that Poland can and should be different from the Soviet Union and expand certain freedoms. A Cold War atmosphere tends to create great pressure for uniformity, where the main idea is to close ranks. It's a situation of a besieged fortress.
But, on the other hand, we are also haunted by the specter described by Theo Summer of the West German newspaper Die Welt. He wrote that for the sake of detente and peace in Europe, the Germans should part with their dreams about unification and the Poles should part with their dreams of independence because it will never do. Between these two extremes is a middle ground in which we'd be the most comfortable.
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