THE CURTAIN RISES: EASTERN EUROPE, 1989 : CHAPTER 3 POLAND : At a Round Table, the Party Seals Its Fate : With surprising ease, elections are approved--and the Old Guard is humiliated.

The Polish round-table meetings went with surprising smoothness. The ceremonial furniture itself, a doughnut-shaped table seating about 60, was constructed in September, 1988, dismantled after Rakowski’s confident assumption of the premiership, and then dusted off again for the opening session last Feb. 6. The formal heads of the delegations were Lech Walesa for Solidarity and Kiszczak, the internal affairs minister, for the government. The public watched with fascination but considerable skepticism.

The delegates split into working groups on trade unions, elections, economics, law, the environment and other issues. Over the next two months, predictably, there were charges from each side that the other was bargaining in bad faith.

From the outset, Solidarity proved a tough bargaining partner for the Communists. “We want democracy,” union adviser Geremek declared, “not democratization.”

According to the participants, the hardest issues were hammered out by the leaders from both sides, who met for the first time in an Interior Ministry training facility in the village of Magdalinka, just south of Warsaw. The group became known as the “Magdalinka Group” and was generally headed by Walesa for Solidarity and Kiszczak for the government.

Kiszczak assumed a prominence he had never known in Poland. He is short and trim in build and, in his dealings with Solidarity, was open, direct and businesslike. It was obvious, through the course of the talks, that many of the Solidarity activists found Kiszczak likable, even though several--including Walesa--had been jailed on his orders, for he functioned as the nation’s police chief. However agreeable Kiszczak’s manner, this history would prove hard to forget in the coming weeks.

The kitchen at Magdalinka was well known, at least in the Interior Ministry. “The general fed us well,” one participant remarked later. Meals were a welcome break. At one lunch, Walesa was teased that he harbored ambitions for the presidency of Poland.

“No, no, I don’t want to be president,” Walesa said. “But if I took any job, it would be minister of interior.”

Kiszczak looked up.

“But that’s a terrible job,” Kiszczak said. “You have to deal all the time with crime, with unpleasant things. Why would you want that job?”

“Because then,” Walesa said, “I would be able to read my own files.”

“Ah, Mr. Walesa, you would not want to do that.”

“And why not?”

“Because,” Kiszczak concluded, “you might then be forced to lower the esteem in which you hold some of your closest colleagues.”

To some, Walesa seemed an elemental force, a political intelligence of another order from his colleagues. One member of the Solidarity side said Walesa was gifted with a “natural political instinct,” but added later, “Surely it’s not a deep knowledge.” Another called him a “purebred born politician.”

On April 5, the agreements were signed. They provided that:

* Solidarity was to be legalized.

* Elections were to be held for a new Parliament, with 65% of the seats to go to the Communists and their coalition partners; 35% would be open to Solidarity and other candidates. In addition, a new Senate, or upper house of the Parliament, would be created, with all 100 seats to be freely contested.

* A new office of president was to be filled by a vote of both houses of Parliament. Although it was not written into the agreement, the understanding on both sides was that the Communist coalition, assured a comfortable margin in Parliament, would nominate and elect Jaruzelski to the post.

Suddenly, Solidarity’s banners were on the streets and on jacket lapels. Less than a year earlier, police were attacking the union’s strikers. Those watching the events were struck, as they would be repeatedly in the weeks to come, that what was happening on one day would have been impossible the day before. Walesa met with Jaruzelski for the first time since 1981.

Poles, as they are the first to admit, are a mercurial and emotional people, given equally to the gloomiest visions of the future and the highest optimism. As the talks ended and elections approached, both extremes were visible. Some thought it was another Communist trick; it would come to nothing in the end. Others--and they were easily in the majority--thought it was the best chance the nation had seen in years, and although it might end badly, it was worth their enthusiastic support. A sense of quiet anticipation began to build.

The elections were set for June 4, and in May, the Solidarity campaign took off. Its banner-draped headquarters, in a former coffee house and cafeteria next to one of the busiest bus and tram stops in central Warsaw, were jammed with volunteers and buzzing with energy. Photo displays in the lobby were bright, interesting and professional looking, and they immediately suggested something new and exciting in Poland.

By contrast, the Communist headquarters, no more than a dozen blocks away, was a forlorn place, quite often deserted even at mid-afternoon. Even a quick glance told the story: The Communists were in deep trouble.

Solidarity said its polls indicated it would draw 65% to 70% of the votes. On the eve of the election, Solidarity came up with a new poster, a photo of film star Gary Cooper. “High Noon, June 4,” the legend said. It became an instant collector’s item.

When, 48 hours before the vote, the Communist Party spokesman appealed to Solidarity to call off the last day’s campaigning, it sounded like a plea for mercy. It was declined.

The election results stunned everyone--Solidarity as well as the Communists. Of 161 seats open to it in the Sejm, the lower house of the Parliament, Solidarity won 160 in this, the first round. In the Senate, it took 92 of 100 seats. (In the second round, it would pick up the one remaining seat in the Sejm and all but one in the Senate.)

The greatest shock to the Communists, however, came in the defeat of its candidates on the so-called national list. These 35 candidates were the leading lights, the most prominent reformers, of Jaruzelski’s regime, who had been placed on the ballot with no opposition. All they needed for a free walk to the Sejm was 50% of the vote.

But even the most sophisticated voters in Poland could not resist what one Warsaw woman described as the “almost sensual pleasure” of scratching these prominent Communist names off the list. “I could not help myself,” she confessed.

The pent-up rage of 40 years of Communist rule, of sham elections and sham parties, was too great. This setback triggered an immediate crisis and set in motion a series of events that would reverberate through the politics of Eastern Europe for the rest of the year.

Of the neighboring Warsaw Pact countries, perhaps only Hungary looked on the results of the Polish situation with equanimity, and even there it was a daunting lesson: It showed that even the most reform-minded Communists were doomed in a free election.

Even so, for the Hungarians, the Polish election was comforting in another way. With Budapest on the way to continuing major reforms of its own, it was not always easy playing the role of forward observer for the forces of change. Indeed, Hungary had a history of taking pioneering steps just when attention was focused elsewhere. In 1968, when the Soviets were preoccupied with Czechoslovakia, the Hungarians introduced a set of economic reforms that became known as “Goulash Communism.” In 1981, when the Soviets again had their hands full--this time with Solidarity in Poland--the Hungarians took further steps to liberalize the economic and legal system.

And last May 1, just as everyone was again looking at Poland, Andre Erdos’ prediction after the Vienna talks came true, and the Hungarians began taking down the barbed-wire fence along the Austrian border.

“It makes Hungarians feel much better,” the head of the country’s border guards said, “that we no longer have such an old-fashioned border with the West.”