The Summer of Solidarity

Solidarity’s success was due to the courage, persistence, and sacrifice of the Polish people, and to the discipline of the Solidarity leadership. Despite the regime’s policy of provocations, duplicity, and repression–Poland, remember, was under martial law for much of the 1980s–Solidarity eschewed violence and shunned those who advocated street fighting and sabotage.

The Polish revolution represents a signal achievement for American diplomacy. Indeed, Poland stands as the first and most notable example of what democracy-promotion can help bring about. American policy involved presidential leadership, public diplomacy, and private initiatives by organized labor and the Polish-American community. Although the use of economic sanctions was controversial and many worried about how our Poland policy would affect relations with the Soviets, the United States managed to be patient and consistent, in marked contrast to the confusion and mixed signals that have defined our approach to similar crises.

Of the institutions and individuals responsible for America’s Polish policy, three merit special recognition: organized labor, Radio Free Europe, and Ronald Reagan.

When strikes erupted at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk in August 1980, the first outsider to recognize their potential significance was Lane Kirkland, the new president of the AFL-CIO. American labor had a long tradition of solidarity with freedom movements in the Communist world and had been a stalwart supporter of such leading dissidents as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Vladimir Bukovsky. But Kirkland saw in Solidarity something crucially different from previous stirrings: a movement that had captured the loyalty of the working class, the very class that, under Marxian theory, was destined to play the leading role in society. “For the first time a pluralistic institution has been accepted within a Communist regime,” he presciently noted, “with consequences that could be quite far-reaching.”

Kirkland was Solidarity’s most redoubtable friend in the West. He used the influence of his position, his powers of persuasion, his clout in international circles, and the considerable resources of American labor to promote Solidarity, defend its activists, and punish its adversaries. He clashed with officials from three administrations. When Jimmy Carter’s secretary of state, Edmund Muskie, urged Kirkland to drop plans to establish an aid fund for Polish workers on the grounds that such action might be regarded as provocative by the Soviets, Kirkland demurred. Later, he would chastise the Reagan administration for refusing to wage aggressive economic warfare against the Polish government and the Soviet Union.

Many European political leaders were distinctly unenthusiastic about Solidarity and resistant to any significant action against the Communist regime of General Wojciech Jaruzelski. Kirkland encountered this attitude during an angry meeting with Denis Healey, a leader of the British Labour party. “I think we should all pray for the success of General Jaruzelski,” Healey told a stunned Kirkland shortly after martial law had been imposed in Poland. “The best we can hope for is stability, and General Jaruzelski represents stability.”

But Kirkland held firm. The AFL-CIO developed lines of communication into Poland. The union sent money and, more critically, printing equipment to the underground Solidarity movement. Getting material past the border guards was tricky; sometimes, printing presses were brought in part by part, and then assembled by Solidarity activists. At other times, they were brought in on tour buses carrying elderly Polish emigrés from Western Europe. The result, however, was to make possible an underground press, which Solidarity used to remind Poles that hope was still alive and to spread subversive ideas about freedom. As one Solidarity leader put it, the printing presses were the equivalent of guns and tanks during wartime.

Radio Free Europe was also instrumental during the information blackout under martial law. Established in 1950 as a vehicle to broadcast news and commentary into the satellite countries of Eastern Europe, RFE had by the 1980s become the most important source of news in that region. Where the official press ignored news about Pope John Paul II, RFE reported his every utterance. And where the official media gave distorted coverage of labor unrest, RFE provided the facts, along with commentaries on their significance.

Radio Free Europe’s coverage of Solidarity and martial law was thorough and hard-hitting, but also prudent. Aware of Poland’s sensitive geopolitical position and wary about the American propensity to encourage revolution and then walk away when things didn’t go as planned, broadcasters did not call for uprisings or open rebellion. Still, RFE was relentless in correcting the lies of Polish propaganda and keeping Poles informed about how the rest of the world viewed their plight. The regime regarded RFE as the glue that held the opposition together. The government’s infamous spokesman, Jerzy Urban, once told an American reporter: “If you would close your Radio Free Europe, the underground would completely cease to exist.”

Polish listeners especially enjoyed RFE’s broadcasts of President Reagan’s statements about the impending demise of communism. While critics here and in Western Europe derided references to the “Evil Empire” and his consignment of Marxism to the “ash heap of history,” Poles found such comments a refreshing change from the normal diplomatic discourse that stressed the permanent nature of the East-West divide. For the first time, a Western leader spoke of rolling back the Communist empire. More quietly, Reagan began piecing together a campaign for promoting democracy. He increased the budgets of RFE and the Voice of America and then established an entirely new institution, the National Endowment for Democracy, whose mission was to support democratic opposition in countries like Poland.

The role of American labor in Poland’s struggle reminds us of the great potential of private institutions to influence the course of democratic struggle in societies under duress. But in addition to traditional American self-confidence, humility is needed when it comes to the freedom struggles of other societies. Kirkland made it a cardinal rule that the AFL-CIO would never pressure Solidarity towards a particular course of action, would never second-guess Solidarity’s strategy, and would take its cue from Solidarity on such issues as economic sanctions.

The achievement of RFE reminds us of the virtue of patience. “Freedom radio” had been in existence for thirty years when Solidarity was established, and it was another nine years before the Berlin Wall came down. Today’s policymakers would do well to remember that freedom is not won overnight.

And Reagan reminds us that the language of freedom can be potent when backed by sensible and confident diplomacy.

Finally, it’s worth noting that those Americans who made the greatest contribution to Polish freedom genuinely believed in the appeal of democracy. When, in 1989, the Jaruzelski regime agreed to elections, many journalists and diplomats predicted that Poles would actually vote for the Communists, preferring “stability” to the uncertainty of freedom. Not Kirkland, Reagan, or the editors of RFE. They believed that Poles would choose freedom–and were right. The election was a clean sweep for Solidarity and a stunning defeat for communism. A few months later, East European communism disappeared, swept into history’s dustbin by its own contradictions and by the courage and endurance of freedom’s advocates.

Arch Puddington is director of research at Freedom House and the author of Lane Kirkland: Champion of American Labor.