4 June 1989 – Solidarity's stunning victory
Małgorzata NIEZABITOWSKA
’What we had fought for, what we had believed in, often against all logic and in the face of grim circumstances, had come true, had been achieved, without violence, without bloodshed,’ writes Małgorzata NIEZABITOWSKA.
.The anniversary we are now celebrating is immediately associated in my mind with the night of 31 May to 1 June 1989, when ‘Tygodnik Solidarność’ [Solidarity Weekly] was to be printed, after a gap of more than seven years.
’Tygodnik’, which had been established under the August Agreements as the official magazine of the Solidarity trade union, was closed down under martial law and reinstated at the Round Table by almost the same team as before, with editor-in-chief Tadeusz Mazowiecki.
And that night, Mr Tadeusz and we, a few journalists, went to Dom Słowa Polskiego [Polish Word House], the largest state printing house in Warsaw. There, and this immediately moved us, the entire night shift – text compositors, typesetters, printers – were wearing Solidarity badges on their working clothes, which had been strictly forbidden until recently. We all gathered at the end of a huge rotary press that stretched across the whole hall, and soon it started to move, and the first copies, laid out with the front page on the conveyor belt, began to slide towards us.
But because 'Tysol’, as we called our magazine, was printed in black and white, the title read only 'Tygodnik’, while the space for 'Solidarity’ was empty. And then, slowly, this 'Solidarity’ began to appear, as if it were emerging from non-existence. First, it was grey, then beige, then yellow, orange, more and more intense until it finally appeared in full red. There was an incredible outburst of joy. What we had fought for, what we had believed in, often against all logic and in the face of grim circumstances, had come true, had been achieved, without violence, without bloodshed. We all hugged and kissed each other, then signed these ink-wet copies – we to the printers, they to us. And this, I have no hesitation in saying, a scene of happiness – of workers and intellectuals – has stayed with me as a true symbol of solidarity and reborn freedom.
In the photo taken by my husband, Tomek Tomaszewski, you can see our emotions perfectly. We are standing around the table, laughing from the bottom of our hearts, and if someone had told us who we would be in less than four months’ time, we would have laughed even harder, as if at a completely abstract joke. And yet, from the left – in the near future – the government spokeswoman, the deputy director of the government press office, the Prime Minister of Poland, the President of television, and the head of the office of the Council of Ministers.
A series of unexpected events took place. The elections of 4 June were a disaster for those who had been in power until then and a surprise for our party. Solidarity won practically everything there was to win – 161 seats in the Sejm and 99 in the Senate, while the Communists and their acolytes suffered a humiliating defeat – the national list of leading politicians from the ruling camp fell. Only three MPs were elected in the first round for their seats in the lower house and those were supported by Solidarity.
Soon Adam Michnik wrote the text Your President, Our Prime Minister and the showdown over the formation of a government with the Solidarity Prime Minister began. Our leader did not run for the Sejm, he concentrated on the reborn 'Tygodnik’ and replied to Michnik’s article in the pages of 'Tysol’ that it was a premature idea and that one should be careful and responsible. Then, Mr Tadeusz went to Belgium to visit friends, and things accelerated unbelievably. What was supposed to last for generations, despite repeated liberation uprisings, was deconstructed overnight.
Forming a government was a great challenge for Mr Tadeusz. At the time – it is hard to believe now – hardly anyone wanted to become a minister; those he offered the post to mostly wanted to be advisors. The boss wanted Solidarity to be represented as widely as possible and fought especially for the foreign ministry, which the communists did not want to give up. So, he looked for a person for this ministry who would be acceptable to the other party.
Professor Krzysztof Skubiszewski, an expert in international law, a Harvard graduate, a member of Solidarity and the Primate’s Social Council in the 1980s, as well as of General Jaruzelski’s Consultative Council, seemed the ideal candidate, but he firmly refused. After a long insistence by the Prime Minister, he said he would think about it, returned to Poznan, and disappeared. Time was pressing, the professor’s landline was unanswered and there were no others. Finally, the desperate boss called the police, who found Skubiszewski in the hospital. The professor decided to have his health checked but although the tests came back positive, he continued to flinch, until finally, after the boss declared: 'I must have this ministry, it is essential for Poland’, he wrote his agreement, quoting the Latin maxim that 'words fly away, writing remains’.
The Ministry of Finance was also crucial, but the PZPR was happy to give it away because, as one communist activist said: 'The economy is in clinical death, so we prefer Solidarity to be its gravedigger.’ After a series of refusals, it was Leszek Balcerowicz, who agreed, though not immediately and who, already in government, proposed a shock therapy, painful but necessary. It was a big experiment, no one had rehearsed it before us but the boss knew it from the start and told Leszek that we would not look for a third way but would adapt the Polish economy to proven conditions.
Indeed, the state was taken over in a state of collapse; to make matters worse, Rakowski’s government unleashed food prices as a retreat. In August 1989 alone, the price of some foodstuffs rose tenfold, and galloping inflation turned into hyperinflation. People bought whatever they could. Industry and agriculture collapsed.
.When the government was appointed, we knew that things were very bad, but it was only after the actual seizure of power that it became clear how catastrophic the situation was. At the first meeting of the Council of Ministers, the head of the Ministry of Labour, Jacek Kuroń, said that pensions had to be paid within three days and that the Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) had no funds. We became aware of the enormous tasks ahead of us and that we had to do them quickly. But that is another story.
