Solidarity Figure Captured After 4-Year Search

The Polish government Saturday announced the capture of Bogdan Borusewicz, a leading figure in the Solidarity underground who had eluded police since the martial-law crackdown in December, 1981.

The official news agency PAP said that security police in the region of Gdansk, the Baltic port, had arrested Borusewicz, one of only three publicly identified members of underground Solidarity’s Provisional Coordinating Committee, or TKK, as it is called here. The report gave no indication of when he was arrested or the circumstances of his capture.

A brief announcement said that Borusewicz, 37, was arrested under a warrant from the chief military prosecutor, for “carrying out illegal activities aimed against the vital interests of the state.”

Capital Offense

This wording indicated that he would be charged with treason, which carries a potential death penalty. It is considered unthinkable, however, that the government would risk the political repercussions at home and abroad of executing a Solidarity activist.

Borusewicz is the most important underground figure seized since June, when police arrested Tadeusz Jedynak, also a member of the underground coordinating committee, and head of its southern Silesian region. Jedynak is being held for investigation on a treason charge.

Although his name is little known in the West, Borusewicz played a key role in sparking the strike in the Gdansk shipyards on Aug. 14, 1980, that led to the creation of Solidarity, the first free and independent trade union in Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe. For 16 months, Solidarity pressed its demands for democratic reforms in Poland until it was suppressed under martial law on Dec. 13, 1981.

In a statement read to reporters Saturday night, Lech Walesa, the founder of the now-outlawed union, called Borusewicz one of Poland’s “most outstanding and most talented fighters for human rights.”

Borusewicz’s arrest is a serious blow to Solidarity’s underground organization, whose leadership ranks have been depleted over the last four years both by arrests and by a series of government amnesties, under which several leaders have agreed to give up political activity to return to their families.

Besides serving as one of three publicly identified members of the TKK, Borusewicz was head of underground Solidarity in Gdansk, traditionally the most volatile region in Poland. It was the focal point of worker protests in 1970, 1976 and 1980.

The TKK maintains nationwide communications among clandestine factory units of Solidarity, where an estimated 300,000 of the union’s original 10 million members still pay dues to support a wide range of underground activities. These include support for the families of political prisoners and publication of scores of illegal books and newspapers.

The TKK issues periodic calls for strikes and other worker protests, but the response has grown steadily weaker as fewer and fewer workers have been willing to risk their livelihood for what appear to be futile gestures.

Borusewicz had been leader of the Gdansk Solidarity underground and a TKK member since June, 1984, when police captured his predecessor, Bogdan Lis.

Lis was released from prison under a December, 1984, amnesty but was rearrested and sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison last June for publicly advocating a protest strike.

Only 2 Left

In most cases, TKK members who have withdrawn under amnesty or been arrested have been replaced by anonymous activists who are not in hiding. This has left only two fugitive members--Zbigniew Bujak of Warsaw and Marek Muszynski of Wroclaw, in southwestern Poland--able to provide authenticity for the committee’s declarations and protest calls by publicly attaching their names, at the risk of treason charges if caught.

Borusewicz, a history graduate of Catholic University in Lublin, Eastern Europe’s only independent university, has been at the forefront of political opposition groups in Poland since the 1960s.

His first arrest appears to have been in 1968 for distributing leaflets supporting widespread anti-government protests by students. He founded a precursor organization to Solidarity, the Free Trade Union of the Coast, bringing Walesa into the group in 1978.

As the chief editor of an underground workers’ newspaper, Robotnik Wybrzeza (Worker of the Coast), Borusewicz arranged to have 6,000 strike leaflets printed and smuggled into the Gdansk shipyards early on the morning of Aug. 14, 1980. The leaflets helped ignite the worker protests that, in turn, gave rise to Solidarity, with Walesa at the helm.

The announcement of Borusewicz’s arrest coincided with his 37th birthday.