The crisis of Stalinism affected Eastern Europe in a particularly sharp way, because here the impasse of the bureaucratic regime was aggravated by the sense of national oppression. The marvellous revolutionary traditions of the Polish working class were shown again and again – in 1956 and 1970, 1976 and 1980. Above all in 1980-81, the courageous Polish proletariat came close to overthrowing the bureaucratic regime. The powerful Solidarity movement, numbering 10 million, could have taken power. Tragically, this revolutionary movement in Poland was betrayed by the leadership of Solidarity, dominated by Lech Wałesa, the reformist advisers and Catholic intellectuals. This layer sought a compromise with the ruling bureaucracy which was terrified by the movement of the working class, groping in the direction of political revolution. This attempt to reach an accommodation with the Stalinist regime led to the defeat of the movement and the coming to power of General Jaruzelski. Solidarity was banned in 1982. The impasse of the regime and the increase in strikes, however, led Jaruzelski to seek to embroil the reformist leaders of Solidarity. Finally, the CP leaders handed Poland over to the nascent capitalists, with the peculiarity that the old nomenklatura ended up with the lion’s share of the privatised firms.
Increasingly, the regime rested upon Wałesa, drawing his supporters into its orbit, and using them to hold back the workers. Round table talks were first mooted in August 1988 and opened in February 1989 with the aim of reaching agreement on economic stabilisation and political reform. If agreement was reached, stated the interior minister Lieutenant-General Kiszczak, who expected “compromise and loyal co-operation”, then Solidarity would be legalised. During the negotiations, Wałesa called for a moratorium on strikes and was keen to collaborate with the reformist wing of the bureaucracy. Agreement was reached in April over an austerity programme and the move towards a market economy.
The collapse of the old Stalinist regime resulted from intense internal contradictions. The electoral victory of Solidarity in 1989, represented the victory of a bourgeois government which moved in the direction of capitalist restoration in Poland. The election of Wałesa as president was a further move in that direction. Solidarity won a sweeping victory in the 35 per cent of the seats in the Sejm (lower house) they were allowed to contest in July 1989. In the Senate, they won 99 of the 100 seats. 33 members of the government contesting the election on a national list of 35 unopposed candidates failed to win the necessary 50 per cent in the first round and were disqualified. Solidarity was invited by Jaruzelski to join a coalition government. Wałesa told Jaruzelski that Solidarity would accept him as president. He urged the Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP) to carry through further ‘reform’.
Once in government, the Solidarity leadership turned its back on the working class. In the time-honoured tradition, the ex-dissident and one-time supporter of the theory of state capitalism Jacek Kuroń was appointed minister of labour. It was a classic case of ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’. In the words of Kuroń:
For a long time, people couldn’t strike, so someone had to fight for them. That’s what I did. I used to co-operate with strikes. Now I have to extinguish them. (The Wall Street Journal, 10/11/89.)
That month full diplomatic relations were established between Poland and the Vatican after nearly 44 years.
As could be expected, the imperialists were not slow to fish in troubled waters. Jaruzelski was shortly visited by George Bush who welcomed the reforms which Poland was introducing as “indispensable”. Funds were promised, but they remained very low. Bush visited the Gdańsk shipyard where he was greeted by a crowd of 20,000. He then flew on to Hungary to a crowd of 10,000 people. Later he addressed the parliament where he praised Hungary’s free-market reforms, condemned state control and urged more political pluralism. At a speech at the Karl Marx University in Budapest, he announced he would press for international aid to help Hungary’s path to the market.
By August, the Polish National Assembly elected Tadeusz Mazowiecki as prime minister, heading a Solidarity-led coalition, with the United Peasant’s Party and the Democratic Party. By then Solidarity had evolved into an entirely different organisation to that of 1980-81. Its membership had fallen from ten million to 2.2 million. It had split and degenerated politically over the decade. As the participation of the workers dropped off, its leadership became more pro-bourgeois. By 1990, membership had fallen to one million.
On the other hand, the old official union, the All-Poland Trade Union Accord (OPZZ) had five million members and was threatening strikes against privatisation. On the basis of experience, the workers were turning against Wałesa. The OPZZ in reality had not been a genuine trade union at all but an arm of the bureaucracy. However, with the crisis of the regime, it became more independent of the state and began to defend the interests of organised labour. They were pushed into opposition to the austerity measures of the Solidarity-backed Mazowiecki government. The reaction was still sharper among the peasants, threatened with ruin by the market economy.
Wałesa became the enthusiastic champion of capitalist counter-revolution, travelling abroad to encourage foreign investment in Poland. “We seek buyers for 80 per cent of the Polish economy. We can’t find them in Poland, because Poles are too poor,” he told US businessmen. Thus, the standard bearers of Polish nationalism set about their work of selling off Poland to the highest foreign bidder, and at bargain-basement prices. Those who led the mass movement in 1980-81 were now part of the pro-capitalist wing of the bureaucracy. But that was not the only miraculous transformation.
The former Stalinist leaders abandoned their ‘communism’ for the market economy. As The Times (12/9/89) reported:
There has been a flurry of resignations as apparatchiks move hotfoot into private companies, or, in a few cases, buy shares in newly privatised state companies they used to run.
As in the other Stalinist states, there were illusions in capitalism at this time even among sections of the working class. Workers at the 10,000 strong Ursus tractor factory near Warsaw threatened strike action, demanding the privatisation of their plant, “and have declared a vote of no confidence in the management for failing to introduce radical change”. (The Independent, 20/11/89.) This is a devastating comment on the bankruptcy of Stalinism and the impasse into which the bureaucracy had dragged Poland. However, within five years, these illusions would completely evaporate. A similar process unfolded in Hungary with the Hungarian Socialist party.
Gorbachev had urged the PUWP to join the coalition, which it did, taking the Interior and Defence Ministries. The new pro-bourgeois coalition rapidly introduced austerity measures. Balcerowicz, the finance minister, planned to abolish key subsidies, change the indexing of wages, revise social security, abolish price controls, tighten monetary policy, reduce spending, and encourage private enterprise. The Stock exchange was reopened, and the zloty devalued. However, the first five firms to be privatised drew a queue of just 60 people. There was much anxiety and fear over the so-called restructuring which threatened bankruptcies and mass unemployment. According to one report, 40 per cent of those who voted for the maverick opposition candidate Tyminski on the first ballot said it was out of fear of privatisation.
The vicious attacks of the Mazowiecki government, resulting in mass unemployment, falling production, and big price rises, served initially to stun the proletariat. But the underlying discontent revealed itself clearly on the electoral front. The opposition to the austerity programme resulted in Mazowiecki being driven into third place in the presidential elections. Wałesa was forced to distance himself from the way these policies were carried out, declaring they were “insensitive to the common man”. One of the factors which provoked the greatest indignation was the spectacle of former ‘Communist’ bureaucrats transforming themselves into private owners.
Some of the fastest people off the mark in Poland’s efforts to switch back to capitalism are the Communists themselves. One of the first Communist enterprises to go private was the giant ‘Igloopol’ frozen foods company. Among the shareholders are a former deputy prime minister, a leader of the former puppet Peasants’ Party and a couple of Communist institutions. The first director also happened to be the deputy agricultural minister who put fat subsidies its way… The spectacle of the Communist nomenklatura coming out best in the carve up of state firms infuriates other Poles. (The Independent 14/7/90.)
Thus, the movement towards capitalism in Poland, far from introducing a new era of prosperity and contentment, has given rise to even deeper contradictions. In the words of The Guardian:
Those who wish to succeed in turning their economies toward the market must now inflict great pain upon their citizens. The more they wish to succeed, the more pain they must inflict.
Faced with his own deepening crisis, Gorbachev made it known that the Kremlin would not intervene in the affairs of Poland or any other country of Eastern Europe. It could not afford to bail these countries out. The USSR was also facing growing national problems of its own in the Baltic states, Georgia, Azerbaijan and the other Soviet Republics. In fact, Gorbachev leaned upon the ‘reformist’ leaders in Eastern Europe against the Old Guard who opposed his policies. He had opposed Honecker, and on a visit to West Germany in June 1989, when asked about the Berlin Wall, he replied “nothing is eternal”, and that it could disappear “once the conditions that generated the need for it disappear”. In this way, regardless of his intentions, Gorbachev in practice pulled the rug out from under the feet of the Stalinist leaders of Eastern Europe and gave the green light to the West to intervene.
The imperialists were promising loans and credits, and even spoke of a Marshall Plan to assist the restoration of capitalism. However, this remained largely talk and little else. The difference with the Marshall Plan that was implemented after the Second World War and the present situation can be seen at a glance. Between 1948 and 1952 the USA provided $13 billion ($69 billion in 1997), and an extra $2.6 billion ($13.9 billion in 1997) during 1951-53. These grants and credits were intended to underpin the European post-war economy as a bulwark against the threat of revolution. The amounts granted to the former Stalinist states were tiny in comparison. The West is very cautious about the stability of these regimes and is fearful of making massive financial handouts that could easily disappear. As The Wall Street Journal (26/9/89) commented: “It’s complicated: it’s complicated politically, complicated economically, and complicated in human terms.”
The collapse of Stalinism in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania was entirely different. There the masses moved into action and the bureaucratic regimes collapsed like a pack of cards. Within a matter of a few months in November/December 1989, a series of mass demonstrations brought down the regimes in the GDR, Czechoslovakia and Romania. It saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Stalinism. Fearful of the spread of the movement, the Bulgarian CP decided to ‘reform’ itself as a means of holding on to power. After the successful two-hour strike in late December, the Party agreed to begin discussions with the Opposition, the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF).