Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - November 27, 1981, Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg free november 1981 7 by Joseph Sterne Baltimore Sun Poland is the political Miracle of our for the first time since the postwar division of there is a country behind the Iron curtain where free speech where the communist party is open to Challenge and even Public where elements of a pluralistic system of government Are taking is this a permanent or temporary change does it represent a thorough going revolution against the system Moscow imposed or is it merely an adjustment that will make that system More tolerable these Are some of the questions that ought not to be obscured by Poland daily struggle to to keep warm and to maintain its enfeebled Economy Dur ing the hard Winter in Western Poland sympathetic neighbors watch and West German Chancellor Helmut speaking in has words of Praise for Poland saying he wishes them the Best from the Bottom of my he say a word about solidary Poland free Trade lest he make a tense situation irreversible change quite a different reaction comes from Jacques head of the International division of Frances Rul ing socialist what is happening in he is part of an irreversible change sweeping he identifies Solidarity cause with his own party and with the socialist party that has just come to Power in in the foreign lord discusses the Situa Tion strictly in terms of the East West if the soviet Union intervenes in he it will be the end of detente and any kind of arms control at nato military Headquarters in general Bernard supreme Allied thinks the Odds favor an inter Venti Onat Warsaw invitation if economic conditions deteriorate to a certain what is interesting about these out Side reactions is that they Are so Orrele Santto the internal politics of Schmidt might care to align himself with Poland civilian but the real Power in Poland rests with three other institutions the Catholic Church and the Hunt Zinger might want to emphasize what Solidarity has in common with the French but All political at Tention in Poland is focused lord Carrington and Rogers might speculate on the outcome of a soviet but surprisingly few poles give much thought to it or think it will political Miracle Here Are a few glimpses of what is really making Poland the political Miracle of our in Solidarity is moving its National Headquarters from a shabby old apartment building to a Fine who ordains such a change none other than government who know they cannot govern without Solidarity outside the Lenin where the revolution began in a souvenir Booth does a Lively business in Solidarity placards and tote a government interpreter wears a Solidarity pin on her Lee at a Small Community in Northern Wladyslaw Wicki takes time from his farming chores to comment on the local before forty eight hours before he was sworn in As Premier of Ster Ling Lyon called three Deputy ministers into his opposition leaders office and asked for their All three were High profile advocates of the nip policies Lyon had campaigned one of the the Deputy agriculture William red Bill Jans agreed to the other Lionel Orlikov education and Marvin Nordman works forcing the new Premier to fire them after the swearing in Janssens Sam announced that he would not attend Lyons Swearingin because of the treatment the three deputies had re while objecting to what had said Lyon should be Given credit for having the guts to Call in the deputies and Tell them he was Man enough to do he could have had some Lackey do Nordman the firings were a political and Lyon paid a political Price for after they set the pattern for the ruthless Rufus image that helped to defeat Howard Pawley is obviously some one who learns from the mistakes of five Days before he was due to be sworn in As Premier of he had Derek Bedson removed As clerk of the executive the Toronto Miracle is open debate last a tractor Cost zlotys zlotys for the tractor itself and for a required then Rural Solidarity agitated to set up a tripartite commission composed of local Farmers who were remaining politically Independent and Rural Solidarity members acting As moral result no More in scene of a three week strike by women textile local authorities desperately seek negotiations with Solidarity but local unionists want to Deal Only with Central authorities who have the Deputy a communist party sits alone and forlorn in City telling visitors he dares not hire anyone to stand in line for him to get meat and sugar rations for fear of further critic lacking time away from his he says he does so far have Tyr arrows mighty anything you can do in at a meeting of the new Central committee of the polish communist there is much wrangling and fist new act ing like school in the words of a polish try to show they can be tougher than the they Are the products of the multiple list elections held by the party last summer in a show of a reporter goes to Call on the official spokesman for Solidarity and the offi Cial spokesman for the then he goes to see an economist who is a Solidarity sympathizer and an economist who works for the govern what comes out an amazing consensus that the government lacks cred that it needs Solidarity cooperation to get that Solidarity is wary of giving this cooperation for fear it will lose its Credi Bili quite a away with bureaucracy All these poles believe that the econ omy must be freed from the stifling Central that workers should have More say in the manage ment of More Independent that urgent measures must be taken to get food from farms to the Market place and to increase Coal they even agree on the need for higher prices to soak up excess to survive the they Call for a special commission of Solidarity and Church representatives to take command of the that is de Facto so what is the argument All about Why do thunderbolts rumble daily from government and Solidarity Headquarters where is Poland going if economic conditions and soviet immobility permit it one observation Worth keeping in mind is that a genuinely pluralistic system is Messy in most and doubly Messy in fractious the country greatest political achieve ment is that argue Brand debate have become part of the daily the poles know they have to main Tain the the pretence that the communist party still plays the Lead ing but having let the russians hide behind that they Are in the midst of a fairly democratic struggle for real Power in the Solidarity National executive has a Devil of a time trying to control its fir eating local sometimes it the governments civilian Lead having lost their Bona try to use the army As the one instrument of state Power that is trusted by the in the it is widely predict the army will be More solidary sized than it is this marvellous political regeneration of a soviet bloc country has now been going on for 16 a free Trade Union has been officially recon its newspaper circulates More widely than any other publication in the it is treated almost As a separate Sovereign which in Many ways it by its own govern the communist party itself has tried to adapt through sweeping changes in its Central committee in unusually democratic Early in nations first contested elections Are to be held for local government by the year it is even possible there will be secret bal letting for the National All this has happened with hardly any violence and a considerable Mea sure of backroom tolerance among the political those who speak for the for Solidarity and for the Church say the peaceful nature of change is due to the intense National ism of All who know the hard experiences of history and their geopolitical position Between germans and for these reasons it is quite unlikely that the polish revolution will produce the kind of parliamentary democracy we know in the assuming a certain Freedom to the polish political system will contain perhaps a mixture of private agriculture and Public of separate Power structures a developing plural within a nominally on party worrisome question As Winter descends on a nation of empty shops and vanished Coal stockpiles is whether Poland tremendous political gains will be smashed by an economic or by russians taking advantage of an economic russian communists and hardliners in Warsaw Are sorely tempted in pres ent conditions to let the population suffer until it asks for a return of the old but party attempts to blame Solidarity for the nations penury Sim ply have not for its the soviet Union dare not let the second largest Economy in its sphere of influence fall into Complete collapse be cause of foreseeable damage to the bloc As a symbolic of the decline of the polish Economy is the rusting of the steel Monument dedicated Only last Spring in Gdansk to workers martyred in earlier Solidarity workers have erected scaffolding to repair the no doubt they draw Comfort from the one pole who had the most to do with this he is Pope John Paul whose 1979 visit to his native land brought the people into the streets in such vast numbers that they Felt their strength at behind the Monument Are these papal words let the spirit come Down and renew the Faith of this what better message to carry Poland through the Winter with its political gains intact these workers at a state farm holding their strike poster Are part of countrywide stoppages related to food resurrecting skeletons of Katyn by John Best special to the free press Warsaw an entire Genera Tion of the name Katyn was practically a forbidden they Learned to banish it from their conver if not completely from their thoughts and now the word is coming out of the As it were and a lot of Skele tons Are Katyn is a Forest in Western not far from which Early in the second world War was the scene of one of the most infamous crimes that conflict produced the Slaughter of about polish mostly responsibility for the crime has never been finally established or at least no country has owned up to the germans and the who took running one another out of the Region in the blame each but the weight of evidence Points straight at the soviet Joseph and the soviet secret then known As the Stalin is believed to have wanted the polish officers exterminated because of their Bourgeois and because As an elite group they did not fit in with his Long Range plans for a communist regime in thus the silence about Katyn which has prevailed in Poland since the whole country fell under soviet domination after the War i remember once asking a polish official in Warsaw about his govern ments attitude toward and to Ward revealing the truth of what happened it was in the when Stalin was already 12 years dead but when his ghost hovered More inti mid tingly Over Poland and Eastern Europe than it does the official in that the polish government considered it would serve no purpose to reopen the in other let sleeping dogs Why provoke the who Are sensitive about the whole question of War and rightly so they lost 20 million people in the Many of them under the nazi but the russians tend to growl mightily when the Finger is pointed at their position in that respect has not changed in 15 but things in Poland have in the last year or particularly under the Impact of the growth of a free Trade Union move free expression has started Poland is not a West Ern style by any radio and to Are still tightly nevertheless things Are being brought out into the open As never old dogmas Are being Long forbidden words it old taboos unceremoniously cast one such taboo concerns Examina Tion and discussion of the killings at every you can see a Small crowd of people gathered on a stairway Landing at the ramshackle Warsaw Headquarters building of the Independent Trade they Are intently Reading a typewritten Manu enclosed in a Glass about the Katyn also on display is a priceless photo which Speaks volumes about events leading up to it shows soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov signing the 1939 nazi soviet no aggression pact at the Kremlin in watched approvingly by Sta Lin and German foreign minister Joa Chim von that agreement paved the Way for hitlers attack on september 1939 the outbreak of the second world september russian As Sault on Poland from the East which led to the capture of the the two dictatorships divided the with the resulting partition of Poland lasting until Hitler launched his army against Russia in the mostly who stand Reading the account of the Katyn kill Ings show Little occasionally one whispers something to or murmurs to but on the whole the Little congregation is silent and other reminders of those traumatic Early War Days Are increasingly seen on the streets of polish in the form of posters pasted on Walls and telling things that could never have been told a few years All Are potential dynamite in terms of Poland relations with the soviet polish police sometimes take the offending sheets but it is a losing others appear in their As if Laid on by an unseen one poster on a downtown Warsaw Street is simply and wickedly 42nd anniversary of the attack on Poland by her two neighbors on a announces a mass for the Katyn the people who died in Eastern another gives the names of the Mem Bers of a citizens committee which is raising funds for a Monument to Vic Tims of the Katyn such a Monument was erected Here but it was destroyed by unknown Cul prits the night of August an informed Warsaw resident told me that none of the material now being printed about Katyn in some with a Wink from the a and categorically holds to blame for the that would needlessly provoke the the average pole who reads the he has no trouble concluding where the responsibility John Best is an Otta abased free Lance journalist who has been travel Ling in Eastern removal will be controversial Fred Cleverley Glube Ami mail said Bedson had been Saul a member of Hawleys transition team who has been the main source of information about insisted that Bedson had not had not been asked to and had not been fired by the incoming he said Only that Bedson would no longer continue to sit in on Cabinet since his that of clerk of the executive would require such everyone concluded that Bedson had been Cherniack has no official position in the new and is not a Mem Ber of the having chosen run in the last As a agent for the new he would not have the authority to fire Lyons authority to fire in 1977 was front and the actions of the two commanders were the the difference is in the targets and the methods pm Hawleys response has been less i he has been Quick to say Why Bedson would no longer be attending Cabinet on an open line radio show Pawley suggested that Bedson examine carefully his own past and he was quoted in print that he was not convinced that Bedson was politically this would be an understandable statement coming from who has Strong views about mixing civil ser vants and was part of the government that encouraged More political involvement among its civil and passed Laws that let civil servants taste the ultimate political that of running for with no jeopardy to their Bedson is left in the curious position of being fired for what he was suspected of rather than what he actually under present if bed son had run As a conservative candidate in the last he could have used the Law As a reason for there is no doubt that Bedson can be reassigned by a new administration without referral to the civil what is curious about his dismissal is that he was politically Neutral enough for de but not for Howard perhaps Schreyer kept him on be while he knew be sons True Blue tory he needed his ability for his Talent for his fluent and because he was convinced that like most career civil could separate his work from his personal political he had been brought after not to implement but to organize the be sons crime is that he is suspected of having prepared the hit list Lyon used to eliminate employees who disagreed with tory As with most political no evidence is Only a belief by those in Power that the accusation is Back in when he asked to leave his Job As foreign service officer with the Federal department of external of doonesbury fairs to become George Drews private he was described As a historian by an administrator by Choice by his own a professional asked about a Federal civil servant being picked by the Leader of the Bedson said in not part of a they wanted an efficient operation and they thought i could give it to when he left Ottawa to become clerk of the executive a position that had been vacant for several and to work for Duff he said this is the perfect Way to come this is where my roots there Are four or five generations of my people buried along the Banks of the River schreyers decision to keep Bedson on resulted in him being described As the link Between the new order and the old upper cynics said Schreyer was trapped by the impending Royal visits due the year after he took and needed someone to Tell his Cabinet ministers which Fork they should Schreyer kept Bedson Long after the Royal visits came and it seemed then that his Lack of political on a personal belief never got in the Way of his ability to being considered a threat must be new to his Strong views have always been More visible in the Field of protocol than thinking anti would like of Schooltz 70 ask your a work for Pas Sag of Era but times Ken can always finish the first some Omsk i comm no Btl for your Nahpi can seem a Pomano i to stave i in fort Are urfi a6ain5t Anav i i i ;