Thank you very much for the invitation to this conference.
It's been a wonderful conference in this last less than a day,
but it's been I've learned so much and it's really interesting discussion, so very difficult to follow.
That last presentation about yachts, it caught on.
And yes, I'll try to provide some kind of context for understanding the opposition as a whole.
And in that in that way also talk a little bit is on the as suggested about
yachts six yachts six home transformations within the within the opposition.
And what a powerful legacy that opposition had that dissident opposition.
And we were talking about the the term itself.
We used the term dissidents in English a lot. Is that really the appropriate term in Eastern Europe and Poland?
They call themselves an opposition. The idea stalled as yesterday suggested.
That wasn't supposed to be an opposition in Poland and that, in fact,
there there was an opposition, he said, only in 1988 when they were no longer arrested as such.
And yet and yet I think that's somewhat of an exaggeration.
Right. I mean, there was an opposition Poland was a place where people with views like that,
with views even I was struck, as you mentioned, in the how to shock.
Or was it Yaroslavsky who saw him as someone who's going to attack him,
as someone so threatening and yet someone who was not perpetually in jail during that time?
Right.
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.
I was struck that one of the ways I got into this subject, I'm from the United States,
but always well was always interested in Eastern Europe as the the supposed
other right and growing up to know in order to talk about American politics,
Western politics and you'd say something critical, I was still a Cold War child.
And and they would say, well, what about Russia? What about Eastern Europe?
So I said, Well, I'm going to learn that, learn that world.
And I could maintain criticisms of both right there.
And I was went to the Soviet Union and I was interested in learning more about opposition in Eastern Europe.
And in fact, in the mid seventies I didn't what I was studying in the Soviet Union and then I went to Poland.
In Poland there was an opposition already emerging, already able to be active in some sort or another starting in the mid 1970s.
So I so so there was an opposition there.
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,
the opposition that led the way to the roundtable roundtable negotiations.
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,
not by a frontal assault, a frontal assault or a frontal challenge on its right to control the state.
I think this was the opposition that was so very different from that that had emerged beforehand.
And they themselves did distinguish themselves from that revisionist opposition of the post Stalinist period, the immediate post Stalinist period,
a revisionist opposition that wanted to transform the party, that believed it could transform the party that was having some success,
it seemed, for a while in the late 1950s and transforming the party.
And when it did not succeed, and particularly in Poland, when the party became dominated by a nationalist contingent in the 1960s,
you had this new opposition breaking from that and adopting a very different program altogether,
one that had a lot of connection with the with activists in the new left in the West.
A lot of these young activists saw themselves in solidarity with, I think, 1968 activists in the West with, of course, different views on.
Global. Global politics.
But the focus that they that they put forth for how to transform politics without directly challenging the state was this focus on initiatives,
independent initiatives. I called it is Michael cited in the title of my book, The Politics of Anti-politics A Politics where,
again, the effort was about a free and a free society.
We're going to create a free, self-governing society without any specific political lie.
There was a question yesterday I like very much about the vision.
Right. Someone said that that the polls seem to have had a vision that she thought was lacking elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
Timothy Garton Ash responded that that there was they did have a vision, a vision of market democracy.
And yet and yet I was thinking about that. And in some ways and in some ways that might be, you know,
almost I forget the exact phrase you were using this this fallacy of historical inevitability.
I mean, yes, they certainly came around to a position of parliamentary democracy.
And yet in its foundation, certainly in the early 19th and mid 1970s, it wasn't quite market democracy.
I think that that that was the vision that guided them, that seemed something perhaps desirable but also unobtainable.
And also this focus on the independent initiatives on people doing things on their own.
There's not not as much of a focus on representativeness, but rather on encouraging all kinds of social initiatives,
really to swamp the system with social initiatives or organise on your own, do it yourself.
Politics. They are famously formed and caught on.
Was instrumental in this, but not only quote unquote on Mitnick and of course on much at and complete
other side politically today from that that old opposition group has split up,
but they were united in this formation of the Committee to Defend the Workers Corps in 1976.
And again, one that's whole raising that the goal was to encourage independent initiatives
and participatory democracy to create the kind of society in the future every day,
to live it now. And again, this was this was a very innovative type of politics.
It's through them that this whole idea of a civil society re-entered re-enter the the lexicon.
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,
about this element of independent civil society not connected either to the state, not connected to the market.
Right. One that's focusing on independence, on autonomy.
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.
That's what was so exciting as well about this opposition.
Right. And that's its connection to those new tendencies in the West that we understand
radical change is not being about just conquering the heights of power.
Right. That political power is not going to transform us, that that's what our parents did.
That's what the other generation of revolutionaries did, that focusing everything on the state, on having power,
and yet here understanding that, you know, people in a changed world can only be brought about by changed people.
Right. That that transformation has to go on all the time.
And so there was that again, that focus on the initiatives from small clubs and small associations to bigger associations.
And there was also, of course, a very strong connection with workers.
Right. The movement itself, the corps with its official name, the Committee to Defend the Workers.
And what were the links of them to workers?
Well, I think there are think there are a great many. This this this link of intellectuals and workers that was so crucial.
To the two to to 1980 and, in fact, to allowing 1989 to come about.
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.
The system was particularly vulnerable on that score, right into intellect, ideologically vulnerable.
But that's far from the only the only aspect of this fight was, in fact,
I think one of the lesser aspects of this this opposition also saw itself as being as a as one that could succeed,
that needed to succeed with cooperation with with workers.
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.
Thought highly of that mobilisation in in in the West that brought students and workers together, particularly in France of 1968.
And they saw that right then, that there was a lot joining them together.
Of course, East European countries, sometimes we forget this,
but these were these were countries that were workers countries, workers countries in the sense that communist systems,
what they did when they came to power in the 1940s in Eastern Europe, was to set about building factories,
to turning turning peasants into proletarians to have they built giant factories and enterprises.
People got their social welfare state coverage.
They dealt with state administration largely through the workplace.
Right. Workers were citizens. Citizens were workers.
There was the the system was built around around that.
So this whole idea of workers even being separate from intellectuals,
although it has a deep tradition in Polish, in Polish culture, a Polish laughter,
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.
There are these there is this solidarity that emerged, again, from the kind of system that was that was built.
And then another key aspect of this is that because of the nature of the communist system,
where the the party state was the employer of everybody, there was also even a structural location.
It was entirely possible, if not inevitable,
for workers themselves and for intellectuals themselves to see that their structural position was that like workers,
they too were working for an employer that was working for the state.
Ultimately, the state the the party was was the kind of monopolist of of of giving jobs.
It also made itself what I sometimes call the monopsony, this sort of anger, the one that accumulated all anger,
the one that any kind of opposition would be focussed on the state, on the party,
because they claimed that they were responsible for things changing when prices go up in the West,
of course, as we know and as Poles came to know soon after 1989, you don't know exactly who's responsible.
Why are you where should we be angry? Where is our frustration against when prices went up in the communist system?
And of course, this was the immediate cause for changes for protests in Poland.
You knew exactly who was responsible for this.
So so this opposition. Right.
That talked about independent initiatives that focussed on civil society, that brought the notion of independent public sphere.
And we're going to transform politics not by directly attacking politics, but by transforming society,
creating an independent society that that that will change the state in an indirect way.
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.
Now, let's jump ahead a little bit to 1982.
The workers the workers strike in in Gdansk.
And there we see this, these connections that had developed during corps being being repaid very quickly.
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,
the workers themselves invited a group of intellectuals up to the shipyard to help to help negotiate with them.
Key members of the opposition became key advisers to solidarity.
And you already mentioned about how mechanic and cordon were important.
And I went to would not have the roundtable negotiations in 1989 without them.
But also, they played an important role starting starting in 1980.
And so you had this period during the League of Solidarity, the 16 months of great cooperation on all levels.
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,
travelling around the country, being at different meetings and factory towns and and seeing this connection,
seeing this continual presence of intellectuals, as it were, in factories and, and see and, and,
and coming to the the talks that that intellectuals would give and workers coming to their.
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.
Now let's jump this where so we're commemorating celebrating here the 25th anniversary of the roundtable negotiation.
So let's let's jump then to that period after martial law.
Martial law declared in December 1981, and it was talking about cordon and internment and some of his experiences in prison.
Cordon had been in prison several years before the solidarity period, as well as several years afterwards.
Now, this is a period after 1981, after December 1981, in which that kind of opposition begins to begins to change.
The party, of course, changed to in important ways. So the discussion about that yesterday as well.
But the dissidents or this opposition also changed very much.
On the one hand, of course. Right. 1981 ended in collapse and then in failure.
And it was one that the party no doubt was chiefly responsible for in my in my earlier
my first book in 1990 that I was talking about the the possibility of of a solution,
a kind of tripartite solution, a kind of roundtable solution in 1981.
And I think there there were conditions for that, even some conditions within the party.
But nevertheless, for a number of reasons of people not being prepared internally.
You still hadn't had a change in the Soviet leadership that didn't come about.
But afterwards, after 1981, there was a rethinking on the part of the opposition for what what had happened,
what had what had gone wrong, that it seemed that it hadn't been enough.
Well, clearly it hadn't been enough. Solidarity movement hadn't been enough to topple the system.
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
prospects for transformation because of the kind of movement that solidarity was said a little bit,
perhaps too collectivist, a little bit too socialist.
This is, in fact, a critique that many of that opposition started putting forth in 1983 or so.
And is there was some some spec a scepticism now about the possibilities of transforming the system by by participation?
Yeah. So that's a quote on in an interview he gave soon before the end of the legal solidarity period.
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,
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.
And yet we perhaps underestimated how much people want to do other things right, how much they they don't care to get involved.
So much in politics, he didn't quoted.
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.
Right. And so caught on himself seemed to seem to have some reservations.
So there was, you know, some scepticism about about their own anti-politics.
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.
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.
Factories in power a few months. There's no Thatcherism that that is widely understood.
Reagan is not yet in power.
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.
But of course, as we know, that changes very greatly right around this time.
Right, right around that time, that solidarity is.
Yeah, well, that the first solidarity experience goes on and by 1982, 83, 84,
that's when there's talk of Thatcherism, Reaganism in France, Mitterrand is in power and then makes his about face.
Right. So then it becomes a new kind of idea and a new kind of focus on markets.
I remember being present in Poland in 1984 when a lot of opposition are still left, still in jail.
CORIN is still in jail, but a lot of solidarity.
Intellectuals are having meetings, having discussions, talking about, talking about things.
And there is a big fascination with with the market.
Right. Scarce underground resources are used to publish hijack in a underground version.
And people who had been among the leaders in focusing on self-management ideas are now promoting the ideas of property rights.
And so there are. All right. A different kind of interpretation about what is necessary.
What about some of the flaws of the solidarity period now?
You know, there's there's a real intellectual rethinking, right.
Some people, you know, have talked about this as simply as as betrayal.
And I think that's a false concept. Right. That there's no there's no betrayal here.
There's a rethinking of the foundations of democracy.
There's there's a real serious rethinking in the mid 1980s.
And where is one of the the key aspect of that solidarity period was that claim that there's no democracy without participation,
without civic participation. Again, that focus on civic ness, I'm creating a new notion for what citizens do,
that independent activity that was so central by the mid 1980s, so much of the opposition is saying,
well, really the basis, the foundation of political democracy is property right,
property rights as having some of right moving in that market direction.
And in this context as well. Right. So you have a little more distrust of participation, the sense that the 1980, 81,
that carnival of participation, as it's been called, did not lead to an accord in the sense that we need,
you know, to move in a more active direction,
led many in solidarity itself with the Solidarity leadership to kind of deemphasize participation itself.
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.
But in many ways I think that that new solidarity opposition trying to.
Do something similar in the nineties in the mid 1980s, that is, they were no longer urging that massive widespread participation,
particularly by 86, 87 when there is an amnesty and possibilities for negotiation with the authorities.
Again, negotiations with authorities, which I completely supported, think that was absolutely necessary to get out of that system.
But there was a sense that this we need to have these negotiations around table negotiations
and that a mass kind of participation is something that could that could challenge this.
The immediate impetus, the immediate the last straw, as it were,
leading to the roundtable negotiations were strikes workers strikes by young workers in 1988, in some in Gdansk, in Kharkov, in Nova Huta.
And the Solidarity leadership had very little connection with them.
Some of the said we didn't we didn't know who they were. These were young people,
some of whom are themselves in critical of the ongoing market reforms and in the market discussion that is happening at that time.
And the Solidarity leadership didn't really know who they were.
And that was again, that was that that in an immediate precipitated or the roundtable negotiation because on the one hand,
you had changes in the party moving right.
Martial law was not succeeding in solving any problems for them, in solving any any economic problems.
Solidarity took a very a coherent position that we are not going to help in any kind of
way to bring about economic reform without real strong political reform and solidarity.
Leadership could also indeed also point, as it were, that, you know,
there's this social movement behind us that could get out of control that we're not even in control of.
But but if there is a negotiation between us solidarity representing the workers, we're still in a position to control that social uprising.
But there there needs to be there needs to be this these negotiations.
And on this basis. Right. The roundtable accords are tape.
About 25 years ago this month on there was discussions, as we saw in the little film yesterday, of all kinds,
all kinds of discussion about politics, about education, about culture, and, of course, about economics, about mining as well.
On economic issues, solidarity tended to push, you know, in a market pricing direction.
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,
it was not much, but but in many key issues they were very sympathetic and calling for these kinds of changes.
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,
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
anything anything to propose except marketisation and he would see assumed in power that that itself was too was too little right.
Even Thatcher could not just propose marketisation a lot of a lot of politics follows from that.
But that was the sense in which in which this is this would have to happen.
So after 1989 and you talked about the discussions within Solidarity, the roundtable, of course,
who is going to go into what sphere, into politics or stayed behind with the trade union?
Many went into politics. There would be debates about this.
Many who supported the roundtable negotiation stayed apart from entering politics for whence, of course, did not get into it right away.
For a seen you boil, heads of the key parts of the solidarity movement stayed away from Parliament and stayed within the trade union.
And yet also there was a change in terms of what was seen as necessary.
Now, who were the who? Who were the heroes of this of this time, and who are what kind of cultural.
Yeah, what kind of cultural figures were? Resented its dominance.
Whereas in 1981, you had a real focus on and on the worker,
the proletarian in the factory who engaged in in strikes and could show could revive Polish society.
1990 there was a focus on the person who could get away from the factory, who could set up their own business.
The the Solidarity newspaper starts running in 1990.
You know, business, English. We're going to move in that direction of a market economy.
Now, I don't mean to say this was all treachery.
I think they shouldn't have done this. Of course, there is a need for so much of this to go on.
But at the same time, the problem, of course, was that there was this separation with workers,
separation with those who had allowed the roundtables to come into into existence.
There was more of a focus on particular interests, right?
A category more emblematic of the market society of the capitalist world.
They were entering into and moving away from that notion of collective interests.
And over time and this happened pretty quickly of a split within within solidarity.
There were there were protests going on. 90, 1991.
By 1992, already the old trade unions and some foes of solidarity were waging very successful strikes.
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.
Already in 1993, the former communists, many of whom are now presenting themselves as old style social Democrats,
a kind of transformation that has not really been successful to this day,
though they always kind of flirt with, on the one hand,
being claiming themselves as Social Democrats and claiming themselves as as new kinds of pro-market socialists.
But they were able to come to power in 1993.
And so you had this distinction. Yushchenko on I was minister of Labour and served till how long?
Till 93, I guess only twice.
So to 92. And after 93 for one moment.
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.
Right. He saw himself as having gone too far.
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.
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.
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.
And you could already see wrestling within that right is in the this his own
dilemma which later on he tried he changed more to that side of moving moving.
Moving away from that and had a lot of disagreements in the latter part of his life with those who had stayed the
line that he was part of and in the last years of his life became very close to a kind of new father figure,
to a young generation of anti-globalist. Right.
Of those young people who had come of age just in the post-communist period post 1989 period, and had returned returned to that.
So this this changing of the ways really solidified in 1989.
And, of course, it had strong political consequences as well.
Right. It created the grounds for the emergence of a a new right nationalist politics within within Poland, within that within that solidarity camp.
You saw the right. Very quickly, again, I recall being there in 1990, 91, 92,
and and seeing how the anger and dissatisfaction with these market reforms was being organised by those who start saying,
well, the problem is that, you know, we don't have we don't have the poles controlling the capitalist industry.
The problem is that we don't have enough capitalism,
that we don't have enough we don't have enough polish is here that the liberals with their atheistic views.
His right are transforming and hurting, hurting the police state in many ways.
You had the emergence of a lot of class dissatisfaction.
Right. That that I mean, 1989, when capitalism comes in the formation of beginning formation of different class interests.
And so it's natural you're going to have that kind of anger and dissatisfaction emerge.
And yet you had. Right.
The Solidarity leadership or that all liberal leadership was afraid of organising of of allowing facilitating disagreements along class lines.
And so the disagreements start becoming more along more along national more along national lines,
whereas on the one hand, right workers are losing out on the grounds of being workers.
Now you have a new narrative emerging from that, right,
that there are more that that that the problem is they're being exploited because they're real traditional poles.
Right. That cultural narrative which has been very successful in the West as well.
So, you know, that's the kind of a kind of discussion, of course, that to this day is very prominent.
And that by no means just in Eastern Europe. Right.
If you look at while you look at the from the National Front in France to to of course,
a foetus or Jobbik in Hungary attack in Bulgaria piece plays this line the Kaczynski's party in Poland right very much talking
about the economic difficulties and proposing nationalist solutions as ones that will make things make things better.
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.
And it leads to a situation in which you don't have those same divisions.
It's again created a more well of a less solid touristic politics for sure.
Again, I think the roundtable negotiations itself are what absolutely needed to happen,
and yet it was a bit too far a withdrawal from their work or base.
That didn't make sense, even from a position of democratic politics.
Right. As we know, I mean, I'm from the United States and the Democratic Party has had a loose relationship with Labour always.
It's always been a catch all party and a very business oriented party.
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.
That's something that you had because of the nature of that system and moving away from it,
that that opposition tended to move away from that allowing allowing these big political transformations to come about in Poland today.
So with that, I think I'll stop. Thank you very much. 20.