The outcome in Poland

Press, 6 September 1980, Page 14

The outcome in Poland

On paper at least, and here and there in practice, the strikers in Poland have won startling concessions from the Government The . right, to form free trade unions has been granted and the strikers have lost no time in exercising their new right. The freedom of expression has yet to be tested fully. The Government has ruled out discussion of the. relationship between the Soviet Union and Poland and a number of other.matters, but even within these limits there will be plenty to be discussed. Yet freedoms are rarely won in a single blow, and it seems unlikely that this year’s round of strikes in Poland will have settled issues as close to the heart of a Communist country as the overriding control of. the country for once and for all. At the most it will have been the right to struggle for power that has been won. That in itself is not negligible. Although the earlier clashes between workers and the Government in Poland had political aspects, the concentration was on social and economic issues: the price of meat, wages, and the release of strikers. This time the strike turned into demands about, the sharing of political power. If the strikers are able, to carry out the terms of the agreement they reached with the Government Poland has the basis for a political opposition with a legal status. Will the Communist Party in Poland be able to survive that? History can offer no answer. It is certain that such an experiment will be watched , with the greatest of interest in the West but even more intently in other Eastern European countries.

The events in Poland over the last few weeks may have changed the lot of Poles. They have certainly changed the relationships in Europe and between Poland and the Soviet Union. It was always possible that the Soviet Union would send its tanks into Poland to make sure that the outcome of the strike was acceptable to the Soviet Union. The possibility still exists. How-

ever, the Soviet Union was probably constrained less by an awareness that the West would protest loudly, especially since- the invasion of Afghanistan, than by the likelihood that the Polish Army—no mean force —would resist such an invasion. The Soviet Union would undoubtedly have found itself deep in the murky waters of Polish nationalism. If it feared that the rot of liberalisation would spread beyond the borders of. Poland, an even greater fear wpuld be that nationalist tendencies would be contagious. Nor is there any guarantee that a nationalist fever would be confined to the countries bordering the Soviet Union. Within the Soviet Union are many peoples, some of whom aspire to greater autonomy. Uprisings against the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe might well have encouraged uprisings in parts of the Soviet Union itself. The circumstances in Poland which led to the success of the strikers may not be paralleled elswhere. The Soviet Union probably has little to fear from its Roman Catholics. The visit of the Pope to Poland .last year and the strength of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland have been significant factors in the present events. In the Soviet Union the dissident movement has largely been concentrated among the artists and other intellectuals, so that the Soviet Union might have made the judgment that it could live with the success of the Polish strikers because that lesson might not be read by Soviet workers. The forces of nationalism, however, are a different matter. The loan that the Soviet Union has granted Poland is something of an attempt to help Poland set its economic house in order in the hope that when it does, the political demands will go away. The main effect of the changes in Poland on relations between the West and the Soviet Union will be that the Soviet Union will be edgy until it sees the outcome of the strikes and decides how to make the best of a bad job.