The Delicate but Worthy Gamble of De-Communizing Poland

The new prime minister of Poland, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, his colleague Lech Walesa have now embarked on one of the most delicate political and economic gambles of our time. The two men have to be mentioned together. Walesa was right not to become head of the government. All his energies and popularity will be needed to keep up the strength of Solidarity (it has only 1 million members, against 9 million in its heyday) and to ensure that Solidarity remains firmly behind the government as it attempts to steer Poland away from totalitarianism.

What the new prime minister has to do has never been attempted before: de-communization. There are no models. No one really knows how to do it, even in theory. Eventually it will involve transforming the entire apparatus of an all-enveloping state. Where to begin? When Lenin was doing it the other way round--communizing society--he had no doubts and he acted with great speed. He went first for the media: Two days after seizing power he ended press freedom. Within two months he had set up the structure of the Soviet state, including its secret police, more or less as we know it. He killed or arrested opponents without hesitation.

These options are not open to Mazowiecki. His power is circumscribed. He heads a coalition government that has no agreed program and in which the Communists will control the security ministries and possibly others. He also has a Communist head of state, with wide powers to frustrate his efforts.

To some degree he can choose his own government, but we do not yet know whether he can replace top state officials, all of whom are (in theory at least) dedicated Marxists. His country is part of a military-economic supranational structure, through the Warsaw Pact and Comecon, which is totally opposed to his aims. His immediate neighbors to the west and the south, the East German and Czech governments, will do everything in their power to ensure that his experiment fails. His eastern neighbor, the Soviet Union, could easily take the same line.

Equally important, he inherits not just a crisis but an economic catastrophe. Inflation is running at 200%, on the brink of uncontrolled hyper-inflation. To bring supply into balance with demand, Mazowiecki must raise the real cost of goods in the shops while both reducing real wages and getting everyone to work harder. He has to raise productivity, which will mean high unemployment. This is the harsh price of returning to the market.

Therein, of course, lies the danger. Up until now, Solidarity has had popular sympathy. That is bound to evaporate when deflationary policies are applied. With some difficulty, no doubt, the rank-and-file of Solidarity will be persuaded to support lower living standards and higher unemployment for a time. The risk is that the Communists, who still control the country’s official unions, will use them to mount strikes and protests. The line that the neighboring Communist parties seem to be taking is that a Solidarity government is a formula for chaos. Within Poland, Communist organizations may well possess the power to make this prediction come true. If there is an Autumn of Discontent, President Wojciech Jaruzelski--who in effect controls the police and armed forces--could use it as an excuse to dismiss the government and replace it with one favored by the party.

Is Mazowiecki’s government then doomed to failure? Not at all. It has the enthusiastic backing of the Roman Catholic Church, the most important force in Polish society. The great majority of Poles want it to succeed. Secret sympathizers include many senior people in the army, police and media. If the government shows that it knows what it is doing and begins to look permanent, there will be mass desertions from the privileged Communist ranks. Every day the government continues to hold office will be a day gained, a step away from Communist “normalcy” toward democratic “normalcy.”

Moreover, Mazowiecki has one important external asset--the possibility of Western economic aid. There is no way that the major capitalist powers, however generous they may be, can make for a painless transition from a command economy to a market one. But we can enormously reduce the political price that Mazowiecki’s government will have to pay. We can also reduce Soviet hostility to what Poland is doing by showing Mikhail S. Gorbachev that he can have the same kind of aid in the right circumstances. We do not necessarily have to attach strings to the money. There is a case for a gentleman’s agreement, under which Warsaw gets the credits only so long as Mazowiecki is permitted a minimum freedom of action.

What should such freedom be? Solidarity already has its own press, but the government must be given full access to the official media, including the all-important state radio and television. Second, though control of the armed forces and security may remain in the hands of Communist ministers, these must be responsible to the cabinet as a whole, and the prime minister must be kept informed of everything the security ministers do, with the right to veto what he does not like. Third, the Communist ministers, and through them the party, must take full responsibility for all the economic actions of the government, however unpopular. This means Communist ministers must be made to sign all economic measures and defend them in parliament. Finally, steady progress must be made toward further constitutional reform, leading to full parliamentary democracy in the foreseeable future.

I think an unspoken bargain on these lines can be struck. The sooner we do so, the sooner will goods flow into Polish shops. The West needs to ensure that Mazowiecki gets enough sugar to sweeten the bitter economic pill that Poland must swallow to become whole again.