Poland under martial law

Press, 18 June 1982, Page 13

Poland under martial law

By

NAYLOR HILLARY,

who recently

travelled through Poland while on a train journey from Hong Kong to London.

Birds still sing in the trees round the manor house where Frederic Chopin was born. Stolid draught horses still plod the country lanes of Poland.

In. Warsaw’s Grand Theatre of Opera and Ballet a performance of Chopin’s Les Sylphides on one evening is followed by La Boheme the next evening.

Poland, crippled by debt and ruled under martial law, gives a deceptive appearance of being a country carrying on business — and culture — as usual.

Poland’s special circumstances emerge in unexpected ways. Performances at the theatre begin at 6.30 p.m. so that patrons will have ample time to be home before the curfew — known locally as "police time." Visitors can buy tickets only with hard currency, at a price well above what locals must pay.

Chopin's birthplace at Zelazowa Wola, 30 miles west of Warsaw, sells fine recordings of the composer’s works at $1.50 a disc. A visitor who changed hard currency for zlotys on the

black market could bring that price down to about 40 cents for a new stereo recording. a -measure of Poland's poverty and the people's desperation for hard currency

Visitors may have trouble not accepting black market rates for their dollars. Wherever tourists may be found, eager young men tout openly for the privilege of changing dollars at highly favourable rates.

Yet seen in the late spring. Poland gives the appearance of a country that ought to be wealthy. The countryside is

green and lush. Animals look healthly. Farms are small to New Zealand eyes, but each has a neat, solid house, with barns and sheds grouped round a courtyard.

In the cities, however, the shelves of shops are almost empty. Meat and other basic commodities are rationed. The meat ration is two kilos a month: the soap ration is one bar every two months.

Sometimes surpluses build up and are offered for sale. Long queues suddenly appear in shops to buy unrationed goods. Bags and briefcases

are a standard part of dress, even for senior armv officers, for everyone must be ready to snap up, and conceal, an unexpected windfall.

Poles still manage to look well fed and fashionably dressed, especially when compared with citizens of some of the country's socialist neighbours. An impression is left that substantial black markets in clothes'and foodstuffs must be operating behind the veneer of empty shelves and official shortages.

Some Poles are quick to blame their country’s plight on the Soviet Union, claiming that Poland is obliged to export food and coal, at uneconomic prices. Others blame Western

countries and Western banks which lent too readily to finance the grandiose' development schemes of earlier Polish governments, without. determining first that the country would have the ability to repay its debts. At a time when Poland most needs the foreign currencies that tourists would bring, the number of visitors has dropped to about a fifth of what was normal before the disturbances and the military coup of the last year.

"If more visitors came just now we would have nowhere to put them." said a Polish travel agent. “All the cheap hotels have been taken over by the military to house troops brought into the cities from outlying camps." Visitors cannot quite forget that the military rule Poland under martial law. Police and soldiers, in groups of three or more, patrol Warsaw with shining jackboots and well oiled weapons. They ignore the tourists in the charming old city, provided no cameras are pointed at them. Food in tourist hotels is delicious and varied, with no sign of shortages for guests who are paying in hard currencies.

Poles seem unconcerned by their military rulers. "We haven’t been tear-gassed for a fortnight.’.’ said a supporter of the Solidarity Movement. "Perhaps people are getting tired of taking to the streets. After all, we still have to live our lives. Demonstrations take time.”

Others suggested that having tasted greater freedom than they have known for more than 40 years, Poles will not easily be suMued again, even by their own soldiers. Unemployment is said to be approaching a million, in a population of about 36 million, providing a reservoir of people with time to demonstrate.

Organisation remains a problem. Petrol is severly

rationed. Road blocks check movement on main highways. Telephone calls cannot be made between cities. The media are censored. "In Poland we have a special way of doing things," said an opponent of the military Government. “We call it ‘spontaneous organisation’.” Perhaps more than any people in the world the Poles are conscious of the price of war and civil uprisings. Talk pf the Second World War is still constant. Poles are rightly proud of the way their captial has been .rebuilt to its old splendour after being totally flattened between 1939 and 1945. Not that Poles would be unwilling to fight again for their country. The mood is defiant. Warsaw’s mermaid statue, the Syrenka, is similar to the better known figure in Copenhagen, but in Warsaw she carries a sword.

Towards the Soviet Union feelings are mixed. The Russians are officially acknowledged as the liberators who drove out the Nazis in the Second World War. Unofficially, Poles have not forgotten that Stalin, left the non-communist resistance movement in Warsaw to be destroyed by the Nazis in 1944, at a time when the advancing Russians were close enough to have been able to help. The largest building in Warsaw is the Palace of Culture and Science, a gift from the Russians at the end of the war and the first major building erected amid the ruins of war. Although the ' “palace” towers over the centre of the city in a jumble of “Stalinist Gothic,” Poles act as though it does not exist. Instead, they quickly take visitors to the old city a mile away to

show off the statue of King Sigismund 111 (1587-1632) whose chief claim to fame is that he captured Moscow and, briefly, imposed a Polish king on the Russian throne. The statue figure carries a sword and a cross. A Pole proudly shows off rolling farmlands. “Our country is mostly flat: very good for farming,” he says. “Unfortunately. our neighbours think it is very good for tanks.” He is talking of the present, when the only significant “neighbour" is the supposedly friendly Soviet Union. The importance of the Catholic Church is constantly put before visitors. "Ninety per cent of us are Catholics. Warsaw has 100 churches. The Pope is one of us.”' Links with Western, Chris-, tian Europe are stressed. One of Warsaw's show places is the palalce of Wilanow,

built by John Sobieski in the seventeenth century to be a minature Versailles.

King John, the Poles recall proudly, broke a Turkish seige of Vienna in 1683 and saved Christendom from the heathens. The way Poles tell the story, it might have happened" yesterday and Communist Poland" might still stand ready to defend the Christian West against heathens coming out of Asia.

Any generalisation about Poland can be dangerous. King John’s palace imitates Versailles. Its walls are covered with what, at first glance, seem to be old masters’ paintings. Only a handful are genuine. The rest are passable imitations of works by such artists as Rembrandt, Canaletto and Poussin — a reminder that in Poland things are often not what they seem.