Analysis : Walesa May Have Slight Edge in High-Risk Chess Game With Warsaw

Now that the strikes in this country have ended, at least for the moment, government authorities and the leaders of the banned Solidarity trade union are meeting in separate strategy sessions, devising their first moves in the chess game for the future of Poland.

The government’s proposal for “round-table” talks, made Aug. 26 when about 15 major mines, factories and ports had stopped working, has been accepted by Solidarity Analysis

leader Lech Walesa, who told his followers that he agreed to the talks because “there is no other way.”

It was a line of reasoning that, in some ways, seems to be a reflection of the position of the Polish government as well. Authorities had come reluctantly to the conclusion that unless some new effort was undertaken to build a national consensus behind their plans for economic and structural reform, it would only be a matter of time before a new wave of strikes arose. Such a possibility threatened not only the economic situation, already precarious, but also the leadership of the government and the Communist Party.

No timetable has been set for the talks, but the government said Tuesday that they will begin this month.

The risks for both sides are high, and the odds of winning or losing, for both sides, seem no better than even. Both sides, in a sense, have already gained something.

Most Poles, depending on their degree of sympathy with Solidarity, are inclined to give the edge, up to now, to Solidarity, which for most of the time since it was outlawed six years ago has been officially nonexistent in the eyes of the government. The often acid-tongued government spokesman Jerzy Urban once delighted in referring to Walesa as “the former head of a former union.”

Now, since its first preliminary meeting with Walesa last week, the government has acknowledged Solidarity as a force and Walesa as its leader. Also, Walesa was told, the government has agreed to “discuss” the legalization of the trade union. To Solidarity supporters, this is regarded as a major government concession.

On the other hand, the gesture might well be viewed as a positive breakthrough for the government, or at least for the more liberal-minded figures in the party and the state, who hold the belief that the Communist system is in the throes of deep change--a transformation that ultimately must result in at least minimal cooperation from the people governed by that system.

In tangible gains, the government won a halt to the strikes and won some nods of approval from the West for agreeing to talk with the opposition. That Western approval is regarded as vital by the Polish government, which is in sore need of hard-cash credit available only from Western lending agencies.

The risks, for the government, are those familiar to all authoritarian regimes attempting to liberalize and reform--that the reformers, once started, will not be reined in and will continue to press for power until the old order is replaced, or threatened into undertaking new repressions.

Now, before the opening of the discussions, it is difficult to envision the government granting Solidarity the full legal status it enjoyed after the Gdansk accords were signed in 1980.

For the government, what is finally at stake in the talks is the sharing of political power. Just how much it is willing to give up is far from certain. There are many skeptics in Poland who believe the government will attempt to draw the talks out as long as possible, stalling for time and in the end refusing to cede any of its authority to forces that have always opposed it. Such a course would carry its own risk--that of another, and possibly more dangerous, round of strikes and unrest.

For the leaders of Solidarity, this new stage in Polish politics is an equally uncertain gamble.

Walesa, himself, has staked his position as Solidarity’s leader on the chance that the government cannot afford an insincere effort to engage the opposition. Many of his top advisers, while supportive, remain wary and dubious.

Walesa and his old-line aides have been together through the union’s founding, its turbulent year as the Communist world’s first independent trade union as well as its subsequent suspension and final banning under martial law.

In two outbreaks of strikes this year, they have seen a new and more militant generation of Solidarity members in the shipyards and coal mines, a generation that was not working at the time of the union’s birth. Not yet bloodied by the kind of defeat experienced by Walesa and his people, they have taken a hard line. It took Walesa four days to persuade some of them to halt their strikes and let the talks go on.

Thus, if the proposed discussions settle into the kind of open-ended talkfest that often characterizes Polish political discourse, it is possible Walesa’s authority would be undermined seriously.

Perhaps most importantly, a Solidarity role in the governing of Poland could change its status significantly, shifting it from that of an opposition movement to a sort of minority party--to the point of having an allocated share of seats in Parliament.