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Thank you very much for the invitation to this conference.

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It's been a wonderful conference in this last less than a day,

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but it's been I've learned so much and it's really interesting discussion, so very difficult to follow.

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That last presentation about yachts, it caught on.

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And yes, I'll try to provide some kind of context for understanding the opposition as a whole.

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And in that in that way also talk a little bit is on the as suggested about

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yachts six yachts six home transformations within the within the opposition.

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And what a powerful legacy that opposition had that dissident opposition.

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And we were talking about the the term itself.

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We used the term dissidents in English a lot. Is that really the appropriate term in Eastern Europe and Poland?

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They call themselves an opposition. The idea stalled as yesterday suggested.

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That wasn't supposed to be an opposition in Poland and that, in fact,

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there there was an opposition, he said, only in 1988 when they were no longer arrested as such.

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And yet and yet I think that's somewhat of an exaggeration.

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Right. I mean, there was an opposition Poland was a place where people with views like that,

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with views even I was struck, as you mentioned, in the how to shock.

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Or was it Yaroslavsky who saw him as someone who's going to attack him,

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as someone so threatening and yet someone who was not perpetually in jail during that time?

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Right.

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Which the leaders of other regimes with which would have seen someone as such a threat probably would have sat even much longer, much longer in jail.

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I was struck that one of the ways I got into this subject, I'm from the United States,

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but always well was always interested in Eastern Europe as the the supposed

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other right and growing up to know in order to talk about American politics,

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Western politics and you'd say something critical, I was still a Cold War child.

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And and they would say, well, what about Russia? What about Eastern Europe?

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So I said, Well, I'm going to learn that, learn that world.

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And I could maintain criticisms of both right there.

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And I was went to the Soviet Union and I was interested in learning more about opposition in Eastern Europe.

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And in fact, in the mid seventies I didn't what I was studying in the Soviet Union and then I went to Poland.

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In Poland there was an opposition already emerging, already able to be active in some sort or another starting in the mid 1970s.

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So I so so there was an opposition there.

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It was a new type of opposition, the one that emerged in the 1970s, the one that got to a corner and was a part of the one,

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the opposition that led the way to the roundtable roundtable negotiations.

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So it was a new type of opposition that that said, you can change the state, you can change politics, but not by directly challenging the state,

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not by a frontal assault, a frontal assault or a frontal challenge on its right to control the state.

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I think this was the opposition that was so very different from that that had emerged beforehand.

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And they themselves did distinguish themselves from that revisionist opposition of the post Stalinist period, the immediate post Stalinist period,

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a revisionist opposition that wanted to transform the party, that believed it could transform the party that was having some success,

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it seemed, for a while in the late 1950s and transforming the party.

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And when it did not succeed, and particularly in Poland, when the party became dominated by a nationalist contingent in the 1960s,

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you had this new opposition breaking from that and adopting a very different program altogether,

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one that had a lot of connection with the with activists in the new left in the West.

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A lot of these young activists saw themselves in solidarity with, I think, 1968 activists in the West with, of course, different views on.

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Global. Global politics.

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But the focus that they that they put forth for how to transform politics without directly challenging the state was this focus on initiatives,

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independent initiatives. I called it is Michael cited in the title of my book, The Politics of Anti-politics A Politics where,

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again, the effort was about a free and a free society.

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We're going to create a free, self-governing society without any specific political lie.

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There was a question yesterday I like very much about the vision.

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Right. Someone said that that the polls seem to have had a vision that she thought was lacking elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

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Timothy Garton Ash responded that that there was they did have a vision, a vision of market democracy.

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And yet and yet I was thinking about that. And in some ways and in some ways that might be, you know,

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almost I forget the exact phrase you were using this this fallacy of historical inevitability.

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I mean, yes, they certainly came around to a position of parliamentary democracy.

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And yet in its foundation, certainly in the early 19th and mid 1970s, it wasn't quite market democracy.

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I think that that that was the vision that guided them, that seemed something perhaps desirable but also unobtainable.

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And also this focus on the independent initiatives on people doing things on their own.

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There's not not as much of a focus on representativeness, but rather on encouraging all kinds of social initiatives,

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really to swamp the system with social initiatives or organise on your own, do it yourself.

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Politics. They are famously formed and caught on.

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Was instrumental in this, but not only quote unquote on Mitnick and of course on much at and complete

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other side politically today from that that old opposition group has split up,

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but they were united in this formation of the Committee to Defend the Workers Corps in 1976.

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And again, one that's whole raising that the goal was to encourage independent initiatives

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and participatory democracy to create the kind of society in the future every day,

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to live it now. And again, this was this was a very innovative type of politics.

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It's through them that this whole idea of a civil society re-entered re-enter the the lexicon.

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We had Professor Paul Shinseki here who wrote in and it in wrote a lot of work on this in the late 1970s, talking about the East European experience,

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about this element of independent civil society not connected either to the state, not connected to the market.

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Right. One that's focusing on independence, on autonomy.

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Again, a new conception of politics, where we're not going to where we're going to look at politics as not just about state power.

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That's what was so exciting as well about this opposition.

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Right. And that's its connection to those new tendencies in the West that we understand

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radical change is not being about just conquering the heights of power.

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Right. That political power is not going to transform us, that that's what our parents did.

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That's what the other generation of revolutionaries did, that focusing everything on the state, on having power,

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and yet here understanding that, you know, people in a changed world can only be brought about by changed people.

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Right. That that transformation has to go on all the time.

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And so there was that again, that focus on the initiatives from small clubs and small associations to bigger associations.

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And there was also, of course, a very strong connection with workers.

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Right. The movement itself, the corps with its official name, the Committee to Defend the Workers.

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And what were the links of them to workers?

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Well, I think there are think there are a great many. This this this link of intellectuals and workers that was so crucial.

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To the two to to 1980 and, in fact, to allowing 1989 to come about.

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So on the one hand, there was well, obviously, if it was an acceptable frame, one could say, right, communist ideology officially lauded the workers.

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The system was particularly vulnerable on that score, right into intellect, ideologically vulnerable.

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But that's far from the only the only aspect of this fight was, in fact,

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I think one of the lesser aspects of this this opposition also saw itself as being as a as one that could succeed,

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that needed to succeed with cooperation with with workers.

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They had their own left, left habitus, I would say their own left style right, a style of being together with people they did see a lot.

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Thought highly of that mobilisation in in in the West that brought students and workers together, particularly in France of 1968.

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And they saw that right then, that there was a lot joining them together.

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Of course, East European countries, sometimes we forget this,

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but these were these were countries that were workers countries, workers countries in the sense that communist systems,

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what they did when they came to power in the 1940s in Eastern Europe, was to set about building factories,

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to turning turning peasants into proletarians to have they built giant factories and enterprises.

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People got their social welfare state coverage.

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They dealt with state administration largely through the workplace.

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Right. Workers were citizens. Citizens were workers.

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There was the the system was built around around that.

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So this whole idea of workers even being separate from intellectuals,

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although it has a deep tradition in Polish, in Polish culture, a Polish laughter,

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intellectual tradition that often had a lot of distinctions from workers for for those who grew up during the communist period in all kinds of ways.

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There are these there is this solidarity that emerged, again, from the kind of system that was that was built.

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And then another key aspect of this is that because of the nature of the communist system,

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where the the party state was the employer of everybody, there was also even a structural location.

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It was entirely possible, if not inevitable,

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for workers themselves and for intellectuals themselves to see that their structural position was that like workers,

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they too were working for an employer that was working for the state.

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Ultimately, the state the the party was was the kind of monopolist of of of giving jobs.

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It also made itself what I sometimes call the monopsony, this sort of anger, the one that accumulated all anger,

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the one that any kind of opposition would be focussed on the state, on the party,

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because they claimed that they were responsible for things changing when prices go up in the West,

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of course, as we know and as Poles came to know soon after 1989, you don't know exactly who's responsible.

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Why are you where should we be angry? Where is our frustration against when prices went up in the communist system?

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And of course, this was the immediate cause for changes for protests in Poland.

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You knew exactly who was responsible for this.

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So so this opposition. Right.

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That talked about independent initiatives that focussed on civil society, that brought the notion of independent public sphere.

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And we're going to transform politics not by directly attacking politics, but by transforming society,

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creating an independent society that that that will change the state in an indirect way.

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This was central to its to its well, this was what that opposition what was about and this connection with workers was so central to that as well.

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Now, let's jump ahead a little bit to 1982.

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The workers the workers strike in in Gdansk.

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And there we see this, these connections that had developed during corps being being repaid very quickly.

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That is, there was strikes in Gdansk and as the strikes developed in a week or ten days or so before the accord was signed,

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the workers themselves invited a group of intellectuals up to the shipyard to help to help negotiate with them.

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Key members of the opposition became key advisers to solidarity.

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And you already mentioned about how mechanic and cordon were important.

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And I went to would not have the roundtable negotiations in 1989 without them.

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But also, they played an important role starting starting in 1980.

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And so you had this period during the League of Solidarity, the 16 months of great cooperation on all levels.

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That was something and I had been in Poland for the first time in the mid 1970s, but was there for several months during that legal solidarity period,

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travelling around the country, being at different meetings and factory towns and and seeing this connection,

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seeing this continual presence of intellectuals, as it were, in factories and, and see and, and,

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and coming to the the talks that that intellectuals would give and workers coming to their.

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Was that it? It was a rather special kind of time, but one that was built by the opposition that had focussed so much about that.

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Now let's jump this where so we're commemorating celebrating here the 25th anniversary of the roundtable negotiation.

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So let's let's jump then to that period after martial law.

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Martial law declared in December 1981, and it was talking about cordon and internment and some of his experiences in prison.

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Cordon had been in prison several years before the solidarity period, as well as several years afterwards.

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Now, this is a period after 1981, after December 1981, in which that kind of opposition begins to begins to change.

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The party, of course, changed to in important ways. So the discussion about that yesterday as well.

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But the dissidents or this opposition also changed very much.

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On the one hand, of course. Right. 1981 ended in collapse and then in failure.

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And it was one that the party no doubt was chiefly responsible for in my in my earlier

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my first book in 1990 that I was talking about the the possibility of of a solution,

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a kind of tripartite solution, a kind of roundtable solution in 1981.

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And I think there there were conditions for that, even some conditions within the party.

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But nevertheless, for a number of reasons of people not being prepared internally.

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You still hadn't had a change in the Soviet leadership that didn't come about.

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But afterwards, after 1981, there was a rethinking on the part of the opposition for what what had happened,

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what had what had gone wrong, that it seemed that it hadn't been enough.

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Well, clearly it hadn't been enough. Solidarity movement hadn't been enough to topple the system.

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And what are the what are some of the reasons for this? Alex found out yesterday it was talking about how he in 1989 was a little sceptical about the

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prospects for transformation because of the kind of movement that solidarity was said a little bit,

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perhaps too collectivist, a little bit too socialist.

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This is, in fact, a critique that many of that opposition started putting forth in 1983 or so.

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And is there was some some spec a scepticism now about the possibilities of transforming the system by by participation?

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Yeah. So that's a quote on in an interview he gave soon before the end of the legal solidarity period.

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And yet what he didn't want published at the time was. Published only later, you know, gave me some kind of self-criticism that, you know,

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we thought so much that that we would provide possibilities for people to engage politically and to engage in their own initiatives on their own.

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And yet we perhaps underestimated how much people want to do other things right, how much they they don't care to get involved.

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So much in politics, he didn't quoted.

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But it might remind one of Oscar Wilde's, of course, famous quip that the problem with socialism is that it takes too many evenings.

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Right. And so caught on himself seemed to seem to have some reservations.

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So there was, you know, some scepticism about about their own anti-politics.

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And also right here, we get to market democracy with a focus on market starting to become a real element in the thinking of the opposition.

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Now, when solidarity began in August 1980, you know, there's no there's no new there's no neoliberalism, there's not even any Thatcherism yet.

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Factories in power a few months. There's no Thatcherism that that is widely understood.

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Reagan is not yet in power.

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This is still a time that the social, social democracy, which had been so strong in that post-war period, is still a kind of dominant ideology.

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But of course, as we know, that changes very greatly right around this time.

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Right, right around that time, that solidarity is.

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Yeah, well, that the first solidarity experience goes on and by 1982, 83, 84,

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that's when there's talk of Thatcherism, Reaganism in France, Mitterrand is in power and then makes his about face.

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Right. So then it becomes a new kind of idea and a new kind of focus on markets.

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I remember being present in Poland in 1984 when a lot of opposition are still left, still in jail.

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CORIN is still in jail, but a lot of solidarity.

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Intellectuals are having meetings, having discussions, talking about, talking about things.

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And there is a big fascination with with the market.

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Right. Scarce underground resources are used to publish hijack in a underground version.

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And people who had been among the leaders in focusing on self-management ideas are now promoting the ideas of property rights.

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And so there are. All right. A different kind of interpretation about what is necessary.

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What about some of the flaws of the solidarity period now?

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You know, there's there's a real intellectual rethinking, right.

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Some people, you know, have talked about this as simply as as betrayal.

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And I think that's a false concept. Right. That there's no there's no betrayal here.

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There's a rethinking of the foundations of democracy.

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There's there's a real serious rethinking in the mid 1980s.

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And where is one of the the key aspect of that solidarity period was that claim that there's no democracy without participation,

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without civic participation. Again, that focus on civic ness, I'm creating a new notion for what citizens do,

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that independent activity that was so central by the mid 1980s, so much of the opposition is saying,

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well, really the basis, the foundation of political democracy is property right,

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property rights as having some of right moving in that market direction.

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And in this context as well. Right. So you have a little more distrust of participation, the sense that the 1980, 81,

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that carnival of participation, as it's been called, did not lead to an accord in the sense that we need,

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you know, to move in a more active direction,

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led many in solidarity itself with the Solidarity leadership to kind of deemphasize participation itself.

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The idea, Stella, I think very correctly talked about how results is coming to power and the regime tried to encourage a demobilisation of society.

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But in many ways I think that that new solidarity opposition trying to.

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Do something similar in the nineties in the mid 1980s, that is, they were no longer urging that massive widespread participation,

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particularly by 86, 87 when there is an amnesty and possibilities for negotiation with the authorities.

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Again, negotiations with authorities, which I completely supported, think that was absolutely necessary to get out of that system.

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But there was a sense that this we need to have these negotiations around table negotiations

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and that a mass kind of participation is something that could that could challenge this.

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The immediate impetus, the immediate the last straw, as it were,

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leading to the roundtable negotiations were strikes workers strikes by young workers in 1988, in some in Gdansk, in Kharkov, in Nova Huta.

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And the Solidarity leadership had very little connection with them.

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Some of the said we didn't we didn't know who they were. These were young people,

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some of whom are themselves in critical of the ongoing market reforms and in the market discussion that is happening at that time.

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And the Solidarity leadership didn't really know who they were.

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And that was again, that was that that in an immediate precipitated or the roundtable negotiation because on the one hand,

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you had changes in the party moving right.

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Martial law was not succeeding in solving any problems for them, in solving any any economic problems.

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Solidarity took a very a coherent position that we are not going to help in any kind of

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way to bring about economic reform without real strong political reform and solidarity.

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Leadership could also indeed also point, as it were, that, you know,

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there's this social movement behind us that could get out of control that we're not even in control of.

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But but if there is a negotiation between us solidarity representing the workers, we're still in a position to control that social uprising.

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But there there needs to be there needs to be this these negotiations.

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And on this basis. Right. The roundtable accords are tape.

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About 25 years ago this month on there was discussions, as we saw in the little film yesterday, of all kinds,

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all kinds of discussion about politics, about education, about culture, and, of course, about economics, about mining as well.

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On economic issues, solidarity tended to push, you know, in a market pricing direction.

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Someone said, I think in the film. Yes. Compared to the Bolshevik plan to you, compared to the radical reform that would ensue in the next year,

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it was not much, but but in many key issues they were very sympathetic and calling for these kinds of changes.

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Yanic Lipinski, a good, close friend of Yushchenko and on one of the leaders of that of that opposition, said that during a roundtable in the court,

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he was head of the what the the mining discussion about this discussion about the future of mining and said we really didn't have

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anything anything to propose except marketisation and he would see assumed in power that that itself was too was too little right.

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Even Thatcher could not just propose marketisation a lot of a lot of politics follows from that.

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But that was the sense in which in which this is this would have to happen.

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So after 1989 and you talked about the discussions within Solidarity, the roundtable, of course,

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who is going to go into what sphere, into politics or stayed behind with the trade union?

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Many went into politics. There would be debates about this.

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Many who supported the roundtable negotiation stayed apart from entering politics for whence, of course, did not get into it right away.

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For a seen you boil, heads of the key parts of the solidarity movement stayed away from Parliament and stayed within the trade union.

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And yet also there was a change in terms of what was seen as necessary.

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Now, who were the who? Who were the heroes of this of this time, and who are what kind of cultural.

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Yeah, what kind of cultural figures were? Resented its dominance.

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Whereas in 1981, you had a real focus on and on the worker,

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the proletarian in the factory who engaged in in strikes and could show could revive Polish society.

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1990 there was a focus on the person who could get away from the factory, who could set up their own business.

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The the Solidarity newspaper starts running in 1990.

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You know, business, English. We're going to move in that direction of a market economy.

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Now, I don't mean to say this was all treachery.

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I think they shouldn't have done this. Of course, there is a need for so much of this to go on.

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But at the same time, the problem, of course, was that there was this separation with workers,

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separation with those who had allowed the roundtables to come into into existence.

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There was more of a focus on particular interests, right?

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A category more emblematic of the market society of the capitalist world.

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They were entering into and moving away from that notion of collective interests.

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And over time and this happened pretty quickly of a split within within solidarity.

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There were there were protests going on. 90, 1991.

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By 1992, already the old trade unions and some foes of solidarity were waging very successful strikes.

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And the solidarity government didn't know what to do. It led to a toppling of the Solidarity government and to the shock of so many of 1989.

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Already in 1993, the former communists, many of whom are now presenting themselves as old style social Democrats,

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a kind of transformation that has not really been successful to this day,

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though they always kind of flirt with, on the one hand,

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being claiming themselves as Social Democrats and claiming themselves as as new kinds of pro-market socialists.

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But they were able to come to power in 1993.

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And so you had this distinction. Yushchenko on I was minister of Labour and served till how long?

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Till 93, I guess only twice.

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So to 92. And after 93 for one moment.

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Okay, for okay. For one more. For four more time. Soon after, right by the late 1990, he did move away from that and didn't regret that very much.

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Right. He saw himself as having gone too far.

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He gave a famous quote during that time, you know, when he was first Labour minister and people said, Oh, but you're a leftist.

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And he said, Look, you know, I used to be a leftist, I want to be a leftist, but I'm acting in a way that is not the actions of a leftist.

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I'm trying to promote a market economy, which I think is absolutely central now and kind of my heart is on the left, but I can't be one now.

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And you could already see wrestling within that right is in the this his own

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dilemma which later on he tried he changed more to that side of moving moving.

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Moving away from that and had a lot of disagreements in the latter part of his life with those who had stayed the

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line that he was part of and in the last years of his life became very close to a kind of new father figure,

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to a young generation of anti-globalist. Right.

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Of those young people who had come of age just in the post-communist period post 1989 period, and had returned returned to that.

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So this this changing of the ways really solidified in 1989.

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And, of course, it had strong political consequences as well.

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Right. It created the grounds for the emergence of a a new right nationalist politics within within Poland, within that within that solidarity camp.

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You saw the right. Very quickly, again, I recall being there in 1990, 91, 92,

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and and seeing how the anger and dissatisfaction with these market reforms was being organised by those who start saying,

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well, the problem is that, you know, we don't have we don't have the poles controlling the capitalist industry.

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The problem is that we don't have enough capitalism,

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that we don't have enough we don't have enough polish is here that the liberals with their atheistic views.

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His right are transforming and hurting, hurting the police state in many ways.

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You had the emergence of a lot of class dissatisfaction.

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Right. That that I mean, 1989, when capitalism comes in the formation of beginning formation of different class interests.

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And so it's natural you're going to have that kind of anger and dissatisfaction emerge.

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And yet you had. Right.

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The Solidarity leadership or that all liberal leadership was afraid of organising of of allowing facilitating disagreements along class lines.

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And so the disagreements start becoming more along more along national more along national lines,

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whereas on the one hand, right workers are losing out on the grounds of being workers.

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Now you have a new narrative emerging from that, right,

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that there are more that that that the problem is they're being exploited because they're real traditional poles.

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Right. That cultural narrative which has been very successful in the West as well.

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So, you know, that's the kind of a kind of discussion, of course, that to this day is very prominent.

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And that by no means just in Eastern Europe. Right.

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If you look at while you look at the from the National Front in France to to of course,

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a foetus or Jobbik in Hungary attack in Bulgaria piece plays this line the Kaczynski's party in Poland right very much talking

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about the economic difficulties and proposing nationalist solutions as ones that will make things make things better.

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You know, it's not. It's so. So you had 1989 that turning point in something, I guess I would say that was going on from the mid 1980s on.

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And it leads to a situation in which you don't have those same divisions.

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It's again created a more well of a less solid touristic politics for sure.

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Again, I think the roundtable negotiations itself are what absolutely needed to happen,

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and yet it was a bit too far a withdrawal from their work or base.

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That didn't make sense, even from a position of democratic politics.

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Right. As we know, I mean, I'm from the United States and the Democratic Party has had a loose relationship with Labour always.

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It's always been a catch all party and a very business oriented party.

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And yet every time an elections. Right, they'll come forth and and and try to speak to a long class interest alone workers interest.

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That's something that you had because of the nature of that system and moving away from it,

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that that opposition tended to move away from that allowing allowing these big political transformations to come about in Poland today.

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So with that, I think I'll stop. Thank you very much. 20.