Why Jaruzelski is pleased to welcome the Pope

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The Pope's visit has allowed Solidarnose to show its continuing strength. The Church reckons it can contain the movement. But can it?

Where we sta The policies we fight for SOLIDARNOSC lives! Eighteen months of martial law have allowed the Polish Stalinist state and the Russian overlords of Poland to smash the open structures of the Polish workers' movement, but Solidarnosc still lives in the underground.

The visit of Pope John Paul II has given it the chance to show its strength in the open. Demonstrations of as many as a million people have greeted the Pope as he moves about Poland from one religious shrine to the next.

Everywhere Solidarnosc banners, placards, badges and hand signs have dominated the gatherings and turned them into tremendous political demonstrations against the regime and for the right of the Polish labour movement to exist.

They also call - in a more muted way - for the right of the Polish nation to control its own destiny free from the overlordship of the USSR. The Polish Pope in Poland symbolises Polish nationalism as well as Catholicism.

Fusion Since the creation of the new Polish labour movement in the strikes of 1980, there has evolved a fusion of Polish nationalism, Catholicism, and trade unionism. The labour movement with its weapon of mass revolutionary general strikes established itself as the most powerful and dynamic force in Poland.

Other forces have attached themselves to it, and in the case of Polish nationalism are natur- ally dissolved by Stalin in 1938 because, he said, it was 'incurally a part of it.

ably infested by Trotskyists and A strange set of historic refascists". Its exiled leaders versals has occurred. In their Russia were slaughtered, and way they are even stranger its membership lists in Poland than the spectacle now before us turned over to the capitalist of the Bishop of Rome, head of one of the richest and most dictatorship there. thoroughly reactionary organisthe Polish people by the old ations in the world, publicly oppressor, Russia/ - this time, championing Solidarnosc agin the name of 'communism' ainst the Polish dictators.

The old Polish labour move- which still fil the Polish peopie, and Solidarnose activists, with ment was anti-religious, and the bitter national and revolutionary Marxist segment ensure that a just and proper of it anti-nationalist. But that national consciousness is a cenlabour movement was pulveris- tral part of the new Polish labed by the military dictatorships in the '20s and '30s. The Polish our movement. Communist Party, heir of Lux- In 1939 Hitler jointly invaded and emburg and Jogiches, was formOUT NOW!

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Poland. Trotsky at the time said that the Poles and others in Stalin's area were being reduced in to 'semi-slavery'. He did not know the full story: of the 13 million people in Stalin's areas, five million were Poles and the rest Ukrainians and White hands of a bureaucratic state. Deeds were then done against Russians. Of the Poles alone, between one and 1½ million were deported to Russian labour feeble state-loyal camps, and not many of them ever got back to Poland. As late as 1956, the demand was still being raised by the Poles for the return of 'exiles' of 1939-40.

Wholesale massacres took place.

During the war which started and 'Stalin in 1941 between Russia and partitioned Germany, a Polish CP was reowner, and was expropriated. no rivals).

no were reached in the mid '50s.

and unchallenged state monopoly through every area and diJoin. Socialist in Poland. The spectacle of JaruIthe Party ORGANISER for Laboun Fightt socialist!

USSR, despite the tyranny of policies!l martial law Stand constituted and put in power as Russia kept the areas annexed its tool by the Russian Army in 1939 from Poland and in rewhen it occupied Poland in 1944. turn gave Poland a big chunk of In the late '40s, Poland was East German territory. Ten milturned into a replica of the USSR lion Germans were expelled. - industry was nationalised and The Polish Catholic Church took agriculture collectivised in the over the Lutheran churches.

Millions of Russian Orthodox The Catholic Church came in- believers had been lost with the to full-scale conflict with that eastern territories. Millions of state. Its leader was jailed, and Polish Jews had been murdered.

Post-war Poland was more or church set up. There were two less monolithically Catholic. sets of reasons for the clash. On To people of Walesa's sort, the side of the Church, there the Catholic Church was the was its traditional anti-socialism alternative to the pidgin-Marxist and natural objection to the new state religion of their oppressstate religion of pidgin-Marxism ors. Catholicism received and worship of Stalin and his tremendous boost. Polish satraps. But there was Today the Catholic church is also a clash of direct interests: one of the most powerful forces the Church was a very big land- in Poland, and a major force for stability under the existing burOn the side of the state, the eaucratic system. That much is motive was the need to also made plain by the Pope's eliminate any social force inde- visit: pendent from itself. (For the If Jaruzelski allows the Pope same reason the Nazi regime to tour Poland making political came into conflict with the Ger. demands and criticisms - callnan churches: it could brook ing on the regime for dialogue with the people, and respect for However, the retreat from the high tide of 11953 led fo Saldied in 1953 led to basic changes in Poland. Collectivisa- AQUESTION tion was abandoned and land returned to the peasants. The OF SOLIDARITY first stages of an agreement to coexist with the Catholic Church Independent Another paradox: the restoration of autonomy to the Church and the recreation of a small farmer class made any return to totalitarianism (that is, absolute mension of society) impossible zelski debating with the Pope before the Polish people shows how far from the of Despite sixteen years Church and state, the Stalinist revolution in Polanc in fact strengthened , the Catholic Church there. After the war Jaruzelski the people's rights and the 1980 Gdansk agreements, while Cardinal Glemp advises civil peace and moderation - it is in recognition of the role of the Casbabc Church in keeping things quet and legal, and in the belief tba the political demonstrasion triggered by the visit can. wit the aid of the Church, be costrolled. The Pope has obbquel! called for an end to fester sanctions. Cardinal Gleep = seen by the more militars Poles as a 'collaborator' for his role in (critically) upholding mera i The idea that the Charch is beavering away with the god! of undermining nationalisec property is wide of the mark. De Catholic Church is ibe sidese bureaucracy in existence. ad has spanned 2000 years during which it has been entwined with different social systems.

Right now it is symbiotically entwined with the Polish Stalinist bureaucracy. It is almost a liberal wing of the bureaucracy, though distinct from it and pursuing its own interests.

If the Church throughout the Stalinist states could get the sort of status and freedom of action that it has in Poland, then it could coexist with the bureaucratic Stalinist system indefinitely: it would probably even find accommodation to stalinist bureaucratism on these terms easier than it found accommodation with rising capitalism.

In any case there is no doubt that the Church in Poland 1s committed to coexistence, and is well into the third decade of it. It is a pillar of the Establishment. For now it is the reforming wing of the Establishment for the reason that, unlike Jaruzelski, it has mass support and believes it can control it.

We will see whether the Church and the martial law authorities between them, each in its different way, car. continue to control the Polish workers.

The Pope's progress through Poland has everywhere allowed Solidarnoac to take a roll-call of its strength. Its strength and popularity is still tremendous. Knowledge of this must reinvigorate the Polish workers' movement and - whatever the Church would like - undermine Jaruzelski.

Published by ¡ Socialist Forum for Southern Africa Solidarity.

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