Polish Group Claiming Communist Ties Attacks Jaruzelski Leadership

Just as Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski’s regime has begun to win a measure of acceptance by clearing the jails of political prisoners, a dissident group claiming to represent elements of Poland’s Communist Party has emerged to accuse Jaruzelski of repeatedly squandering chances for achieving national reconciliation over the last four years.

The dissident group, which describes itself as an informal assemblage of Communist Party members expressing the voice of “independent party opinion,” has circulated two scathing critiques of the Jaruzelski leadership in the past three months, warning that Poland is drifting toward a new political crisis.

On the basis of its two statements, which urge a much greater degree of political pluralism than Jaruzelski has been willing to consider, its members appear to be more in sympathy with the outlawed Solidarity leadership than with the Communist Party’s.

Typed on onion-skin paper over the pseudonym “Tadeusz Lech,” the latest statement, now circulating in Warsaw, challenges Jaruzelski to engage in direct talks with people who “represent . . . important trends in Polish society,” including Solidarity leader Lech Walesa and such militant opposition activists as Adam Michnik and Zbigniew Bujak.

Disinformation Charged

The government spokesman, Jerzy Urban, has denied that such a group exists within the party. In addition, a respected official of the party’s Central Committee said the two statements appear to be disinformation produced by radical elements of the Solidarity opposition.

“There really are no such groups in the party who hold such views,” the party official said in an interview. He added that besides the views expressed in the two statements, the wording--especially its lack of Marxist terminology--seems atypical of Communist party members.

However, Polish sources who have proved reliable in the past insist that the group is authentic, although they said it does not extend to upper echelons of the party. And some Western diplomats say that, in private conversations, party officials have indicated that the dissident group does in fact exist, although the identity of its members is not known.

In its two statements, the group accused Jaruzelski of failing at critical junctures over the last four years to seize opportunities that might have led to a restoration of national harmony. The newer statement, which began circulating in Warsaw a few days ago, accused Jaruzelski of lacking the political will to “go beyond the maneuvers and empty gestures of a political gambler.”

Back Independent Organizations

The first statement, circulated in October, called on the party leadership, in keeping with existing laws and the Polish constitution, to let “the nation set up its own varied and independent social organizations that would reflect the real views of the society.”

Such organizations, it said, should be free to “elect representatives for talks with the government.”

In Soviet-style Communist parties, internal factions of any kind that differ from the leadership--let alone those that declare themselves in public--are considered a potential source of instability and thus political heresy. Even in Poland’s fractious Communist Party, which has traditionally encompassed views ranging from neo-Stalinist to Western socialist, there are few precedents for public dissent of this kind.

As an indication of its sensitivity, government spokesman Urban raised the matter at his weekly news conference Dec. 3. He denied reports by Radio Free Europe and the British Broadcasting Corp. that such a group exists.

Informal Group

The first statement, circulated shortly after the release of more than 200 political prisoners under a broad amnesty, described the group as informal and unstructured, composed of “old Communists and socialists” active in politics before the war, as well as younger members of the Communist Party. It gave no indication of the group’s size.

Some members, the six-page statement said, consider themselves “faithful Communists, others, socialists or Marxists or advocates of different ideologies which exist within the workers’ movement.” All, it noted, share a dedication to “anti-dogmatism,” concern for the future of Poland and a belief that entrenched government and party bureaucracies constitute “the real anti-socialist forces in our country” by obstructing serious economic and political reform.

It said some were active in a democratic reform movement that arose in the party in 1980-81 when Solidarity, then a legally recognized independent trade union movement, was suppressed under martial law. Others were said to have been Solidarity members, while still others “supported the state and party authorities, because we were convinced of the honesty of their intentions.”

“We were united by the shock of the general coup d’etat of Dec. 13,” the October statement said, referring to Jaruzelski’s imposition of martial law Dec. 13, 1981.

‘Gang of Careerists’

Martial law, it continued, “disclosed the genuine intentions of a gang of careerists who, to protect their exclusive posts, did not hesitate to push the Polish nation to the brink of an abyss.”

Since then, it said, Jaruzelski has turned Poland into a “nation of unused chances” by wasting three crucial opportunities since 1982 for reconciling the Polish people and their government.

These were described as the lifting of martial law and the release of most political internees at the end of 1982, the “euphoria” that followed Walesa’s Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and the “shock caused by the murder of Rev. Jerzy Popieluszko,” a Solidarity priest kidnaped and murdered by security officers in October, 1984.

Then, “after years of regression and hesitation,” the release of remaining political prisoners last summer “finally created viable political circumstances for overcoming the crisis,” the October statement said. It added, however, that the Jaruzelski leadership still showed no intention of capitalizing on its gesture by engaging in “genuine dialogue among the Poles.”

Council Called a Sham

The second, even more militant statement, dismissed as a sham a widely publicized Consultative Council of 56 prominent citizens set up by Jaruzelski earlier this month as a public platform for discussing Poland’s social and economic problems.

Few of the 56 people who agreed to join the council, however, carry the kind of stature the government had hoped to enlist.

“Unfortunately, an idea meant to create a mountain once again produced a molehill,” the two-page statement declared, adding that the new council provides further “confirmation of the dangerous aspirations of the authorities to polarize and atomize our society, to create new sham institutions.”

“Poland faces a new, even deeper political crisis than the ones we experienced in 1980, 1970, 1956 and 1948,” it concluded. “This, in our opinion, must be prevented.”