Poles mark 20 years
since the end of communism
Twenty years ago, in frozen and snowy Warsaw, communist leaders and the anticommunist opposition, after 50 years of struggle, sat down together around a large conference table to begin negotiations to peacefully establish democratic rule in Poland.On that day all Polish citizens sat by their TV sets to watch this amazing political event, wondering what would become of this. Few realized, not even the politicians themselves, that this day, Feb. 6, 1989, would mark the beginning of the end of communism, not only in Poland, but in all of Eastern Europe.
After half a century the communist era was about to collapse like a house of cards. The first card that teetered was Poland.
At the Polish Round Table sat 57 political leaders: communist party members and anticommunist fighters led by Lech Walesa, leader of the nationwide Solidarity Union.
The Catholic Church played a large role during the weeks of negotiations. After long days of difficult back-and-forths – arguments, sharp discussions, even dramatic threats to break off negotiations – the April 5 Round Table Agreement was signed. And the most incredible result was that Solidarity came out the winners.
The communist government had agreed to share not only the authority but also the responsibility for Poland. “We achieved much more than we ever dared to dream,” Walesa
announced.
Solidarity was relegitimized, freedom of speech and assembly were proclaimed and partially free parliamentary elections were slated for June. Censorship was abolished and the political opposition was allowed to publish its own newspapers and magazines.
That agreement created the office of the president and restored the upper house of Parliament, the Senat. The June 4, 1989, elections brought significant victories for Solidarity. All but one seat in the new Senat went to opposition candidates, communists did not gain even a single Senat place.
During those heady days of the birth of liberty and democracy, Poland looked like a lone, free island surrounded by a sea of communism. Many months later citizens of other communist countries felt strong enough to oust their hated regimes. After the Polish lesson, East Europeans understood: “It is possible. We can also do it”. And after the resulting social demonstrations and mass rallies, communism collapsed in East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Romania.
The Round Table Agreement was the symbol of the fall of communism, but the Poles’ fight for democracy and a free market began at the close of World War II, when Poland’s independence was threatened and it first became a satellite of the Soviet Union. In 1956 in the Polish city of Poznan, workers staged their first mass protest against the communists. Many people lost their lives in the police retaliations against the protests, but those demonstrations remained the first giant step toward freedom and democracy. The yen for freedom surfaced again at the end of 1970 when Poland was again shaken by strikes and street fights between workers on the one hand and the police and the army on the other in several coastal cities.
Again many were killed, but thanks to these events the authority of the communist leaders took a hit. After several years of peace, the next big series of worker protests in 1976 transformed the political situation in Poland.
The Catholic Church played a significant role in supporting it.
Mass general strikes in Gdansk and Szczecin in August 1980 gave birth to the Solidarity Union, led by shipyard worker Lech Walesa. Solidarity quickly expanded into a widespread social movement uniting almost 10 million Poles, an usual phenomenon within the Soviet bloc.
The Catholic Church consistently encouraged the atmosphere of freedom and change. In 1978 Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was elected Pope, when he took the name John Paul II. He took his first pilgrimage to his home country. The millions who came to catch a glimpse of the first Polish Pope in church history, experienced an electric charge to their collective strength and their hoped-for freedom.
The backlash came soon after. Faced with an economic crisis and the growing influence of Solidarity, and under growing pressure from the Soviet Union, the communist leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski decided to invoke martial law Dec. 13, 1981. Several thousands of opposition activists were arrested and strikes were crushed by the might of the army and elite police units. Government efforts to break the resistance movement eventually waned, leading in the end to the Round Table and the historic agreement.
Courtesy of the Embassy of Poland, Jakarta
