254, Poland Questions

Czechoslovakia/Poland comparison

In Poland, the revolution took ten years…perhaps in Czechoslovakia it will take ten days!” (Timothy Garton Ash). In Poland, we saw an immediate mass mobilization against the regime. There was a clear opposition party (Solidarity), a clear leader (Walesa) and clear demands that the Poles wanted to be met. Yet, it took ten years for them to completely achieve them. On the other hand, in the Czechoslovak chapter, there were a multitude of groups (artists, musicians, scholars) that acted out against the regime sometimes overtly and, at most times, subtly. When it came time to finally have the regime meet their demands, the Czechoslovaks did end up accomplishing their revolution in ten days. Is this to say that dissent is stronger at the pre-political level and at its infancy, is powerful enough to actually create the change we want instead of skipping to the last step and simply going out on the streets yelling our demands? Were the Czechoslovaks’ pens mightier than the Poles’ swords? I’ll use this question as a representative one on the Czechoslovakia/Poland comparison, and I’ll try to sum up succinctly how the situation in Czechoslovakia differed from the situation in Poland. We know that the culture of dissent in the former country was characterized by a small elite of intellectual dissidents while in the latter country we see a mass mobilization, and so we want to identify sociocultural factors that might explain the difference. These factors include: economic conditions; worker protests; the 1968 invasion; the Catholic Church; and differences between cultural spaces. In terms of the first two, I’d reiterate what nearly all of our Poland speakers have said in one way or another: the Polish economy was in dire straits for much of this period. The same is not true, as far as I know, of Czechoslovakia, which had a vibrant economy in the post-war period and is generally considered to have had the best economy of all of the Soviet Bloc countries (with an even better quality of life for its inhabitants than in the Soviet Union, the heart of the empire). Poland also experienced occasional worker unrest from 1956 onward, and as we know, this intensified in the 1970s. So we might say that in Poland there was fertile ground for a mass, anti-regime coalition that included workers as well as other “ordinary” people. In Czechoslovakia, we see a more limited movement simply because there were fewer material, everyday reasons to be disgruntled with the regime. One major difference is also the 1968 invasion, which happened to Czechoslovakia (Polish troops were part of the invading force) but not to Poland. We know that this triggered the imposition of a “normalized” regime in Czechoslovakia, which made mass mobilization against the regime much less likely. There was also an implicit deal struck between the Czechoslovak regime and the “normalized” populace: the regime would provide the populace with a higher standard of living if the populace agreed to stay out of politics. No such deal was struck in Poland, and we might even say that the deal that was eventually struck happened slightly over a decade later when Solidarity emerged as an independent trade union. Then there is the question of cultural space. After World War II, the Polish population was remarkably homogeneous: the great majority considered themselves both Poles and Catholic Poles. As we have learned, the Poles have a strong spirit of

1 nationhood that includes a history of (sometimes quixotic) resistance and sacrifice to outside oppressors who are attempting to crush the Polish nation and its Catholic faith. The Polish cultural space is, much like the American one, a hero-space. Without going into details and to simplify things, I’d add that the Czechs have none of these sociocultural factors in play. These considerations make it easier to understand why a mass movement was much more likely in Poland than in Czechoslovakia. Having highlighted some key differences, we should also emphasize that the two cultures shared a lot in common. Intellectuals understood what was happening – what the nature of the regime was and how to confront it without, ideally, overly antagonizing the Soviets – the same way. There was considerable intellectual agreement, and we also learned that there was an exchange of ideas. The differing cultural, economic, and political circumstances in each country, however, allowed for two very different kinds of movements to emerge.

In both the Czechoslovakian and Polish parts of the course, we’ve talked about how Havel’s essays impacted the Polish resistance movement and Solidarity. Was the reverse also true? Did Solidarity – and in particular its visible successes in unionizing workers and creating a mass movement – have an effect on the Charter 77 group and how they carried out their dissent? We know from Matynia’s lecture that the Czechoslovak and Polish dissidents were in contact with each other and that there were channels of communication that made it possible for them to send materials back and forth as well as occasionally meet in person. Matynia’s book An Uncanny Era speaks to your question somewhat and answers in the affirmative, but without going into details of how exactly the Poles influenced the Czechoslovaks. I imagine it would be hard to tease out who influenced whom and how, but we can definitely say there was dialogue and interplay.

Does Kieslowski’s use of the three different stories within Blind Chance and his participation within the so-called Cinema of Moral Anxiety echo Havel’s Theater of the Appeal that places a large emphasis on prodding the audience to come to their own interpretation? We might say that art “of the appeal” – art that didn’t just entertain, but that also provoked people to think deeply about its meaning and its relationship to their own lives – predominated in both Czechoslovakia and Poland during the culture of dissent. We might go further and say good art in general contains a strong appeal component, although how this appeal component is manifested varies greatly. We have become used to understanding the category of “art” in rather different terms: we primarily have a consumerist orientation to art in the sense that it’s something we buy (and artists sell) that we use to decorate our homes or give as gifts or, in the case of film and theatre, something that we watch to enjoy and relax, usually with friends. In an authoritarian society, however, art often becomes the main vehicle for dissent, and often dissent that is not overt but needs to be read “between the lines”: it’s not by accident, for example, that Russian poets in the Soviet Union could fill whole stadiums of people when they’d give poetry readings (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/books/03poets.html). In that sense, then, we shouldn’t be surprised to see similar kinds of art represented in Kieslowski’s film and the Czechoslovak cultural artifacts that we’ve looked at. Art of the appeal is not

2 necessarily a kind of art that we are strongly familiar with in modern America, but it is, in the grand scheme of things, not an unusual artistic approach.

Lech Walesa

Lech Walesa seemed to be the ringleader within the solidarity movement. This leadership was exemplified in the movie Walesa: A Man of Hope. Although there were others who had powerful positions in Solidarity, it seemed that Walesa was the key to leading the group to gain power within Poland. I was wondering if you thought Solidarity would have been just as successful without the leadership of Lech Walesa? This is an interesting – but hypothetical – question that is rather challenging to answer. We do know that there was a strong history of worker unrest in the Polish context, and we might surmise that repeated unrest laid the ground for a potential movement that would eventually need a (charismatic) leader. Whether Walesa was the right person at the right time in the right place or whether he himself was absolutely instrumental to the movement that became known as Solidarity – that’s a difficult question to answer easily and definitively.

To what extent did Walesa’s self-described “dictatorial,” and rebellious, personality play an essential role in the progression of the Solidarity movement? Would all of the reform that he helped bring to Poland have been possible if he had a less outrageous personality and had been more sensitive to communist oppression? An honest question, but also a hypothetical one that is difficult to answer definitively. The film Man of Hope tries to navigate the tricky territory of this question, suggesting that, on one hand, Walesa’s personality was key to Solidarity’s success but also, on the other, that he wasn’t always easy to deal with because of it. Some have suggested that this personality served Walesa well prior to 1989, but then became a liability after 1989 in newly democratic circumstances that favored compromise and negotiation over authoritarianism.

Hearing stories from my family, I know that not everyone liked Lech Walesa, even though he is viewed (and not wrongly) as the hero of Solidarity. Given that Walesa was controversial (and we know this from Man of Hope), I’m wondering if there are commonalities among those who didn’t like him? Did he have support from specific geographical areas or other demographic segments? As noted above, Walesa wasn’t uncontroversial. He had a strong personality, and not everyone was able to work well with him. His leadership style is often contrasted with Havel’s, who was self-deprecating and sometimes full of doubt and whose style was aimed at negotiation and consensus. I’m not aware of any studies that have indicated whether Walesa had varying levels of support from different demographic groups, but on the other hand he wasn’t a conventional political figure prior to 1989 and there weren’t polls conducted to measure his support. He did lose the presidential election in 1995 in a close contest with Aleksander Kwasniewski, and perhaps more data could be looked at from this contest and we could better determine why the post-1989 Walesa fell in popularity and among which groups.

3

Women’s rights / Women in Solidarity

With the intense suppression of basic freedoms imposed upon Polish citizens by the communist government, it’s no surprise that women’s rights efforts were incredibly hindered. Since the government controlled all forms of media, feminist documents were all produced in accordance with the state’s views, most feminist issues were silenced. Women must have had something like the samizdat publications and some sort of network for which they met and spoke on issues. What were some of the challenges that they faced, from gaining ground in a “western feminist” sense to the inequalities that they faced during the communist era? The go-to study of women in Solidarity is Shana Penn’s book Solidarity’s Secret, which we’ve listed as a resource for Poland essay projects. Halina Filipowicz also interviewed Anna Bojarska, one of the Solidarity activists that Penn writes about, and I’ve posted pdfs of these interviews (there are two installments) to Learn under the submodule Marginalization of Women. The reception of Western-style feminism in East Central Europe is a complex topic, and if you’re interested in it, I’d suggest starting with these sources and then consulting Prof. Filipowicz for further sources – although I’d imagine that a thorough study of this topic would require reading knowledge of Polish (if not also other languages of the region).

The in-class lecture by Malgorzata Fidelis attempted to bridge the boundaries between dissent, accommodation, and gender through the lens of youth culture magazines— referred to as “windows to the world”—that became popular in Poland during the 1950s. The magazines featured life beyond the Eastern bloc in areas of gossip, humor, fashion, entertainment and even glimpses of idealized men and women. To what extent did youth culture magazines affect the social construction of gender roles among the youth population? Professor Fidelis also stated that in the late 1950s, the Polish government attempted to incentivize support for the communist regime by placing more policy emphasis on material wellbeing and standard of living, advocated citizens to join the workforce in order to fully embrace socialism, and encouraged women to transition from producers to consumers as women were seen as equal workers to men under socialism. Despite these claims, were women actually seen as economic, political, and cultural equals to men in socialist Poland? How did gender-based sentiments in Poland evolve throughout the dissident movement and the presidential elections of 1990? An excellent (series of related) question(s) that suggests to me an ambitious research project – a project that I’m sure Prof. Fidelis could help you with, but one that would also require knowledge of Polish.

What happened to the women whose husbands were imprisoned for dissident activities? Were they also required by the regime to work, or were they left without a way to support themselves or their families? I don’t know the full details here, but this is partly what KOR (and then Solidarity) were established for. If families were short of money or needed legal aid or other forms of support when someone was arrested, then KOR (and later Solidarity)

4 stepped in to help them. Something similar was set up in Czechoslovakia, but on a (necessarily) much less ambitious scale. In Poland, this represented an alternative or second society on a grand scale: it was truly like a state within a state. Much has been written about KOR, and finding out more details about its activities would make for a great essay project (consult a reference librarian to get some good article-based sources). For more on women in Solidarity, see Shana Penn’s book Solidarity’s Secret.

We read a book excerpt that detailed how women got away with a lot of secret activity during the Solidarity movement because no one expected women to be involved. When you have a public figure like Anna Walentynowicz, a woman whose firing resulted in mass strikes, why wouldn’t the regime and officials ever look to women as being in Solidarity? In her book Solidarity’s Secret, Shana Penn goes into much more detail about women’s roles in Solidarity and about perceptions of women in Polish culture at the time than I could in trying to provide a brief answer to your question. I’d recommend reading it!

The Catholic Church

As we’ve continued to study the environment in which dissent occurred in Poland, the breakdown of groups into opposition/dissenters, gray-zone inhabitants, and Party members reveals a fundamental clash of imagined spaces. Jan Miernowski’s explanation of an absurd argument between the Party and an individual who had been accused of being a camel exemplifies this struggle of imagined spaces. Adam Michnik’s The Church and the Left tries to bring together two such spaces for a common goal. Other than the major event of the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1979, how did religion factor into the crafting of an imagined space through dissent? In what ways did organized religion interact with the flexibility of imagined spaces? I’ll use this question to answer a number of questions related to the role of the Catholic Church in Poland’s culture of dissent. In previous semesters, we’ve had guest speakers who’ve talked specifically about the Church (Brian Porter-Szucs from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and Neal Pease from the University of Milwaukee), and more targeted questions and answers based on their lectures are below in this document. Prof. Porter-Szucs’s 2011 book Father and Fatherland: Catholicism, Modernity, and Poland, which we’ve put on the resource list for the Poland essay, is also a great read on this topic. Poland is definitely a special case in East Central Europe in that the Church – especially through the election of Pope John Paul II and his subsequent visit to Poland in June 1979 – played an enormous role in the downfall of the regime. Catholicism and Polish identity, moreover, go hand-in-hand. Poland is currently one of the most homogeneously Catholic nations in the world (around 98% Catholic). Catholicism and the Church represent a key part of the Polish cultural space, and we can recall here that even Adam Michnik, an atheist Jew, was deeply affected by the pope’s visit to Poland and wrote eloquently of John Paul II’s call to live a “life in dignity.” We could add that many members of the Communist Party were Catholic, at least in cultural terms (or in

5 terms of their family heritage). Identification with the Church was – and still is – strong. Historically speaking and for many Poles, Catholicism was the authentic locus of Polish nationhood: it was, in short the center of a “life in truth,” and the Soviet-imposed regime was, by contrast, representative of a “life in lies.” In the early 1950s, the regime did, however, attempt to control (if not crush) the influence of the Church. In 1953, it demanded the right to approve all clerical appointments and that priests swear a loyalty oath to the state. The Church refused to cooperate in this, and threatened to excommunicate all priests who took the oath. Priests were put on trial, and the then-head of the Church, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, was placed under house arrest for several years. The regime’s attempts to crush the Church failed, and from 1956 onward the regime switches tactics to a policy of coexistence with the Church. In that year, Wyszynski is released from house arrest, and bishops are given authority over Church appoints (they are just required to notify the state). A new loyalty oath, much watered- down, is instituted that the Church agrees to. The regime also allows the Church to publish a weekly newspaper (Tygodnik powszechny), which was censored but relatively free and unique in Soviet-Bloc countries. The Church is also allowed to run a university, the Catholic University of Lublin, without interference from the state. From 1956 to 1989, the Church and state exist, in Porter-Szucs’s words, “in an uncomfortable dance with each other”: hostility, but coexistence and mutual respect. Neither side wants to escalate the tension. During these years, it is probably too strong to say that the Church was oppressed. It thrived, in fact, in terms of numbers. But it was harassed. Most dissidents were at the start leftists and secular; many were former Party members themselves who had become disillusioned. There was historical enmity between conservative members of the Church hierarchy and leftist intellectuals. Conservative members of the Church called the Party “reds” and the leftists “pinks,” and did not think there was all that much of a distinction between the two. But this begins to change in the 1970s when a new generation of clergy without that baggage begins to populate the upper hierarchy of the Church. Michnik’s 1976 book urging dialogue between the Church and the Left also helps create a common ground. A loose coalition is formed, and the Church begins to work together with KOR and later Solidarity. The rest we know: Karol Wojtyla is elected pope and makes a historic 8-day visit to Poland in the summer of 1979. Tensions between Church and state still run high in the 1980s, and there is the tragic case of one priest, Jerzy Popieluszko, who was openly critical of the regime and who was murdered by regime agents in 1984. Popieluszko was recognized by Rome as a martyr and beatified in 2010.

Throughout the course we have discussed how dissidents were not always political and that they seem to have been living their lives the way they saw fit. Using this line of thinking, I was wondering if Pope John Paul II could be considered a Polish dissident for speaking against the regime and communism during his homily in 1979 even though he never took action specifically against the communists? Yes, he could be considered a dissident in the way that you suggest. This goes back to a major theme of this course: that defining what “dissent” is (and, by extension, who “dissidents” are) isn’t always easy. Dissidents often come into being against a

6 certain background that they do not necessarily have much personal control over. They are “dissidents” by saying or doing something that, from another perspective, doesn’t seem all that dramatic or shocking. Jan Miernowski suggested that what John Paul II did was simply speak the truth in public, and that this was the first time in Jan’s life that he had experienced something like that in his country. The Pope didn’t engage in overtly political discourse, but that really wasn’t the point. The point was that to make an impact – to be a “dissident” – he didn’t have to be “political.”

When considering the timeline of events and the cultural artifacts that we studied with regard to Poland, it becomes apparent that religious identity, more specifically Catholic identity, played a major role in the lives of much of the Polish population under communism. We saw how religious identity could be tied to activity against the regime and also how Pope John Paul II’s presentation of religious messages interwoven with simple truths could appeal to a wide audience, including believers and non-believers alike. Why was the Catholic Church able to maintain such a strong influence in Poland while religious institutions, and indeed religion itself, were successfully suppressed in other Soviet Bloc countries? In other words, what prevented the regime from effectively eliminating the influence of the Catholic Church in Poland? The Polish regime did try to limit Church influence in the 1950s, but these aggressive attempts were unsuccessful, and eventually the regime realized it needed to co-exist with the Church. The Church’s role in the culture of dissent – as simultaneously both a partner of the regime and eventually also a partner of movements like KOR and Solidarity – was complex, and Brian Porter-Szucs’s 2011 book Father and Fatherland: Catholicism, Modernity, and Poland is a great starting point for understanding it.

In both Poland and Czechoslovakia there has been an institution that was the backbone of the movement and uprising against communism. Would it be accurate to compare the Czechoslovakian theater and the Catholic Church of Poland as backbones to the movement and places where people can essentially “live in the truth”? Yes and no. Yes in the sense that these where “public spaces” in each country where one could “live in truth,” but no because they’re not really comparable. This was true of Czech theater only until August 1968, then after the invasion even this space became largely closed. In Poland, the Catholic Church had enormous influence throughout the whole totalitarian period: its existence facilitated the development of a mass movement of spiritual/moral dissent, the likes of which never occurred in Czechoslovakia. We might also point out that Poland also had a vibrant alternative theater scene that was a locus of dissent (in particular, the Theatre of the Eighth Day, which was unofficially considered Solidarity’s theatrical group). In other words, while I think the comparison isn’t completely off target, the situation is much more complex.

The major difference between dissent in Czechoslovakia and Poland was the influence of the Catholic Church. Although the dissident movement began with strikes in shipyards staged by workers, the Church ended up playing an important role as a safe house for underground activity such as meetings and alternative theater, contributing to a sense of togetherness through Pope John Paul II’s homecoming, as well as providing the moral backbone for over ninety percent of the population. Could the dissident movement have

7 been successful without the strong influence of the Catholic Church in Poland? Can an institution that is not inherently political be the most important factor in a political revolution? [Prof. Porter-Szucs responds] It is an overstatement to suggest that the Church "provided the moral backbone for over ninety percent of the population." As I said in my talk in Madison, the Church's role in the anticommunist resistance has been vastly overstated in many popular accounts of that time. To be sure, a large number of priests provided meeting spaces for dissidents in the late 1970s and 1980s, but this has to be set aside the appeals from the hierarchy for calm and nonresistance. Also, church buildings did not work well as safe houses for dissidents in hiding, because they were under surveillance by the security services and because they were far too public. The size of the Polish anticommunist movement had as much or more to do with the deep traditions of trade unionism and of political activism in Poland, traditions that were much weaker in Czechoslovakia. What the Church did contribute was a message of nonviolence and compromise, so it is probably fair to say that Catholicism helped create the conditions for the Round Table negotiations of 1989, ensuring that communism's fall would not be accompanied by violence (as, for example, in the case of Romania).

In 1947, the first president of communist Poland, Boleslaw Bierut, ended his inaugural speech with the words, “so help me God.” Beirut was a communist, which made his statement controversial due to the extreme separation of church and state at that time. On a social level, this opened the door slightly to begin smoothing out relations between the party and the church. However, how did this statement affect Bierut on a personal level? What were the implications in his own life that he faced after releasing this statement as a communist party member? Less than a decade later, Bierut mysteriously died during a political visit to Moscow. Could his mysterious death, which occurred in such a symbolic communist city, be connected to his acknowledgment of God in his presidential speech? [Prof. Porter-Szucs responds] There's nothing to suggest that Bierut's invocation of "so help me God" was anything more than a rhetorical tactic (or perhaps just a slip of the tongue). That line is the standard way people conclude any sort of oath in Poland, so it is believable that he simply slipped up. It also happened at a time when the communists were still struggling against political opponents in Poland -- mainly socialists and agrarian populists -- so it makes sense that he wanted to momentarily pacify the Catholics with this small gesture. Later, Bierut was in charge of the worst period of anti-Catholic oppression in Polish history in the early 1950s, so no one would have accused him of any softness towards the Church. It is most probably that Bierut really did just die of an illness, but even if he was killed, the ones responsible would have been the reformists who wanted to move away from Bierut's style of hard-line Stalinism.

One speaker mentioned that after the communists were gone and the new government was in place, they passed legislation to appease the church and turn the church’s views into legislation. It got me thinking; if the new government had been unwilling to pass a policy suggested (or supported by) the Catholic church, would the people have sided with the church or the government? In other words, had the momentum of Solidarity and the liberation been enough to overshadow the church’s strong grasp on society or were the people still more enamored with the church?

8 I don’t actually think it’s best to view this from an either/or perspective, and this is what both Prof. Pease and Prof. Filipowicz suggested in their respective talks. Catholicism was and is, for better or for worse, bound up in the Polish national psyche, and the Catholic Church was and is, for better or for worse, the primary embodiment of Catholicism in Poland. Prof. Filipowicz was clearly lamenting the fact that Solidarity was a “liberation” movement limited only to certain aspects of liberation – so women’s rights (abortion rights and gender-equity issues, and we could also mention LGBT rights) were left out of the movement. But I think it’s impossible to set this up as a Church-versus- Solidarity or a Church-versus-people or even a Church-versus-women dichotomy. Catholicism is woven deeply into the Polish social fabric, it’s not just a thread in that fabric that can be unproblematically disentangled from the weave.

“What is more, it became clear to all that the Church is a force against which power cannot be exercised against in Poland.” How did the Catholic Church (a prominent and long-standing organization in direct opposition to the communist principle of atheism) manage to survive the collapse of institutions independent of communist control in Poland? Can a people’s identity as a nation-state and pride in tradition ever be completely displaced in favor of adopting an ideology such as Communism? Prof. Pease suggested that in the beginning of the communist take-over in the late forties and early fifties, the regime did try to crush the influence of the Church: it arrested and otherwise persecuted priests and even put the most influential Cardinal under house arrest for several years. But it didn’t work. We all know that sometimes the more taboo that things are, the more popular they become, and particularly since we know that the whole question of Polish nationhood was wrapped up in Catholicism. So eventually the regime had to release the Cardinal from house arrest and adopt a policy aimed more at co-existence than confrontation, although no doubt the ultimate hope was that with time the Church’s influence would fade, and it would be possible to stamp it out. The second question here, which is more philosophical, is something worth thinking about. And maybe to even restate it more broadly: can rigidly ideological thinking ever succeed in the long run? We are again back to one of the major concerns of this course: that is, the role of existential dissent in modern society and how the intellectual dissidents in C/E Europe conceived of what they were doing not as a political opposition, but as a kind of spiritual or moral assertion of their identities. And we’re also back to Orwell’s 1984: Big Brother ultimately doesn’t win.

What kind of things were the Polish regime and the Vatican negotiating prior to the Pope's visit in 1979? How were these negotiations constructed or carried out? [Guest lecturer Prof. Pease responds] I assume the point of the question is: how did the Vatican and the Polish government negotiate the terms of the papal visit in 1979, not negotiations of matters of mutual interest carried on before the election of the Polish pope? They were tricky. The first question was: would the regime allow the pope to come at all, as he quickly requested immediately after his election? This was not necessarily a given: Poland had denied permission for Pope Paul VI to visit, and the USSR strongly recommended to Warsaw that John Paul not be admitted into the country; but in the end, the regime felt it had no choice but to agree, however reluctantly, hoping that it might be able to gain propaganda advantage.

9 With that settled, the next issue was the timing and extent of the visit. John Paul first proposed a brief journey in may 1979, on the anniversary of the martyrdom of St. Stanislaus, a potent symbol of Catholic principled opposition to unjust government; because this was unpalatable to the polish regime, they settled on a longer, nine day journey in June – inadvertently magnifying the effect of the papal visit on the national consciousness. The other important thing to settle was: how would the trip be organized? In the end, the state more or less left it to the church to handle the details, security, etc.-- which, it is said, had the effect of giving an enormous number of "ordinary" Poles lessons in organization, self confidence, what have you, that carried over into the development and maturation of civil society and the rise of Solidarity.

The Polish clergy was decidedly conservative in its political views; many members shared the opinion that the Church, the nation, and the state must be closely linked. This violates what most Western democracies, in theory, uphold as one of the most important principles of democratic governance—the separation of church and state. Therefore, the Polish Catholic Church’s role in the culture of dissent in Poland can be seen, in some ways, as contradictory. How closely intertwined was the dissident movement (which ostensibly aimed to realize democracy) with the Church and what benefits did the Church gain from such a relationship? Was this a natural alliance of two societal forces that had both experienced persecution at the hands of the communists? Or, considering the “Dictatorship of the Black” that developed not long after the collapse of communism, was this something more like a political power grab perpetrated by the Church? [Prof. Pease responds] This is a complex matter, and it must be said that not all in Poland would agree with the premises of the question, e.g. whether the views of the Polish Church could be considered “conservative” in any meaningful sense, or whether a “dictatorship of the black” emerged after communism. That said, at the risk of oversimplification: 1) By the later 1970s there was a mutual recognition by both Polish dissident intellectuals and the Polish Church that they were natural and necessary allies in the struggle against dictatorship, notwithstanding a certain discomfort in each other’s company, but… 2) After the “victory” over communism, relations have been testier (not surprisingly, if you think about it, and duplicated in other similar circumstances: it’s easy to find, in Poland and elsewhere, a fragmentation of the broad “pro-democracy” coalitions into partisan groupings.

We’ve heard Catholicism described as the unifier of Poland, and in Blind Chance we see how a belief in God plays a part in how each of Witek’s three scenarios play out. Do you think there were other catalysts in Polish culture that could satisfy the same role that Catholicism did for the dissident movement, such as the arts did in Czechoslovakia? If so, what are they? If not, what prevents other mediums of dissent from being as effective as Catholicism in Poland? Beware the fallacy of the single cause! Alternative theater played an important role as well: see, for example, Kathleen Cioffi’s book on alternative theory and dissent. In the Polish context, however, Catholicism is the elephant in the room for reasons that Prof. Pease made quite clear.

10 After reading Halina Filipowicz’s interviews with Anna Bojarska, I was very interested in her references to the “black censorship” and how the Church’s role transitioned from an outlet of freedom to a form of oppression. Comparing this to other history classes I’ve taken, I find it interesting that this reversal of the Church paralleled other nations’ struggle for freedom. A majority of African countries have gone through a similar pattern, and Arab Spring, actually, is a perfectly relevant comparison. Dictators like Gaddafi, for example, fought to free Libya from British and Italian imperialism, but then became a new form of repression. In the second interview with Bojarska, she states how people in Poland feel powerless, making it sound as if the Church’s negative influence had increased within the three years. Has this Church censorship continued and/or strengthened within Poland until today? If so, is this censorship something recognized by everyone in Poland, or are only targeted groups, like women, more receptive to it? [Prof. Filipowicz responds] This is another very rich question about a complex issue. There are different kinds of censorship that the Catholic Church has used in Poland. Outright bans by the Church on secular publications have been rare, but there have been other forms of censorship (and self-censorship), e.g., refusal to address sensitive topics, informal pressure on others not to discuss or write about certain topics (e.g., sexual abuse of children by priests; antisemitism), or stigmatizing writers, who do not conform and take up taboo topics, as being anti-Polish and anti-Catholic. These forms of censorship continue, as exemplified by some priests' and bishops' vehement reactions to Jan Gross's recent books on antisemitism in Poland during and after the war. Also, I would like to reiterate one of my points during my April lecture: there are several groups within the Catholic Church in Poland, especially: (1) more conservative priests and bishops, openly blaming feminism, gay/lesbian rights activists, and secularism for the problems in the modern world and regarding attempts at constructive criticism of the Church as an attack on Catholicism itself; these priests and bishops reject the reforms that were introduced by the Vatican Council in the 1960s (the so-called Vatican II); and (2) more open-minded priests and bishops who argue that first the Church should confront problems within its own ranks; also, these priests and bishops try to continue the reforms introduced by the Vatican Council in the 1960s.

If the Catholic Church was seen as a free-spirited, faithful institution, and also as somewhere one could ultimately escape from the Communistic authority during the 1980’s, then why did Solidarity essentially team up with them, knowing that in the future, Catholicism brought with it very conservative views on issues such as abortion and women’s basic rights in society? Why would a universal institution, which practices equality, forgiveness, and makes aware that every human commits sins at some point in his or her lifetime, act in unforgiving ways towards their main ally, to illegalize abortion? Solidarity, as a mass movement, was a political movement. The Catholic Church is also a political institution. The alliance between them was a political alliance, and politics is a messy business.

Was the importance of Catholicism in Poland, along with the much of the world view at the time, the reason that Pope John Paul II was allowed to leave the communist country

11 and become pope? In other words, was the regime afraid of the backlash that would occur, both internally and externally, had they not allowed Karol Wojtyla to leave? Yes.

Besides being extremely well liked and well qualified, did the Church maybe select Pope John Paul II at the time they did (1979) because they wanted to help the Polish nation as a whole? And perhaps by selecting a Polish Pope they thought it would motivate the Polish people to work for change because they knew how strongly the Catholic faith was connected to Polish Nationalism? We can’t know. As Prof. Pease said, these conclaves where they elect popes are secret, and there are only rumors about what happens and why one person is selected over another.

In Michnik’s essay on Pope John Paul II’s visit, he describes the Catholic Church as a voice for the voiceless under Communism. Even as an atheist, he discusses how the Church’s message was not merely religious, but a universal message of individualism. However, since the fall of Communism, the Catholic Church has exercised its power to influence government in regard to abortion and religious education. Given the current position of the Catholic Church in Poland, how do the non-Catholic minorities view this institution? [Prof. Pease responds] This is a contentious issue. It is safe to say that, since the fall of communism, many Poles – including lots of Catholics – fear that the church has overplayed its hand in insisting on the enshrinement of Catholic teachings in law, public education, and the like. The position of Catholicism, and the church as an institution, in Poland still is enviable in comparison with almost all other countries, but still, to generalize, the church as a "political" actor in contemporary Poland is far more controversial than in the communist period, when it enjoyed nearly universal respect as the authentic guardian and articulator of national ideals.

Theoretical

We have learned that most dissidents are simply living in ways that parallel their own morals and in that way they perform small acts of dissidence. My question is, who are the overtly political dissidents? Are there overtly political dissidents? If so, did they make a big impact? What does being a political dissident even mean? I understand that many of these “not overtly political” dissenters did oppose the regime, but I wonder if there are any examples of people who oppose the regime and act politically… Where do you draw the line? I think it helps here to consider the trajectory of dissent that we talked about in the first part of the course. We can use the word “dissent” in relation to various points on the trajectory. Conventional usage invokes dissent only at the overtly political level, so dissent can become, as bumper-stickers sometimes inform us, “the highest form of patriotism.” But dissent doesn’t begin there. It is born at a much earlier point on the trajectory. You can “dissent” against a system – a ritualized way of doing things – but not do so overtly – I imagine that this is, all things considered, the most frequent kind of

12 “dissent,” but also a form of it that doesn’t register its existence beyond a narrow circle of people (or maybe never even gets out of your own head). As we move along the trajectory and as dissent becomes interpersonal and maybe also cultural – as communities of dissenters are created and as movements are born – then we begin to approach the “overtly political.” As we emphasized, however, it’s hard to say when dissent becomes overtly political: where indeed do we draw the line between culture and politics? Should we even expect that there is a black-and-white line that separates the cultural from the political? To put it in more concrete terms: when does two girls (or two boys) falling in love with each other become an “overtly political” phenomenon? American feminists had (and still have) a motto – namely, “the personal is political” – that encapsulates our dilemma in trying to determine where the “overtly political” begins. For some people, even just being who they are is already political, and this through no fault of their own. Looking at things this way may problematize our understanding of what “political” means and what “politics” is: if we return to the original meaning of “polis,” then “political” is anything that concerns the community. It’s not a special sphere of activity that only certain people – career politicians – engage in, just like Havel argued that “dissidence” was not a sociocultural space isolated from everyday life where “dissidents” forged a career.

Blind Chance

Does Kieslowski’s use of the three different stories within Blind Chance and his participation within the so-called Cinema of Moral Anxiety echo Havel’s Theater of the Appeal that places a large emphasis on prodding the audience to come to their own interpretation? We might say that art “of the appeal” – art that didn’t just entertain, but that also provoked people to think deeply about its meaning and its relationship to their own lives – predominated in both Czechoslovakia and Poland during the culture of dissent. We might go further and say good art in general contains a strong appeal component, although how this appeal component is manifested varies greatly. We have become used to understanding the category of “art” in rather different terms: we primarily have a consumerist orientation to art in the sense that it’s something we buy (and artists sell) that we use to decorate our homes or give as gifts or, in the case of film and theatre, something that we watch to enjoy and relax, usually with friends. In an authoritarian society, however, art often becomes the main vehicle for dissent, and often dissent that is not overt but needs to be read “between the lines”: it’s not by accident, for example, that Russian poets in the Soviet Union could fill whole stadiums of people when they’d give poetry readings (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/books/03poets.html). In that sense, then we shouldn’t be surprised to see similar kinds of art represented in Kieslowski’s film and the Czechoslovak cultural artifacts that we’ve looked at. Art of the appeal is not necessarily a kind of art that we are strongly familiar with in modern America, but it is, in the grand scheme of things, not an unusual artistic approach.

The film Blind Chance was thought-provoking in the way it portrayed Witek living very different lives. In the Czechoslovakia unit, we learned about narratives of dissent that

13 could place a person in one of three categories based on where they fell along the lines of dissidence that included: the Parallel Polis Narrative, Ordinary People Narrative, and Helsinki Narrative. Are there any terms specific to the Poland dissident movement in describing a Pole’s involvement or lack involvement? Or are the narratives of dissent universal and can be used and applied in categorizing individuals in Poland? I think that the narratives of dissent are meant to be broadly applicable, and it is interesting to think of the film in these terms. We shouldn’t forget, however, how nuanced these kinds of narratives can be: they’re never black and white. Our categories help us think about things systematically, but they are imperfect models and can’t capture the richness and complexity of real human experience.

Blind Chance portrays a pessimistic viewpoint of Witek's/Poland's future. No matter what path Witek follows, he is led to the fatal plane ride to Paris. Was Kieslowski suggesting that an individual's decisions could not or would not make a difference in changing the fate of the Communist Poland? Was the film supposed to be more of a political statement, or one of human character and destiny? How was this film received among dissidents in Poland? [Prof. Inglot responds] As far as I remember – the plane crash was part of this “third scenario” in Witek’s life – he found himself in a situation which pushes him to pursue a career as a medical doctor and he gets a chance to travel abroad (like some Poles managed at the time to do, if they did not get involved in politics…). Kieslowski was a very spiritual man who believed in metaphysical connections between people and events and history… Destiny was a big thing for this film director – this in the Polish context often involves tragedy and historical irony – going West from Poland means freedom but it can also mean leaving behind what is dearest for you, escaping the responsibilities to stand together with your friends…. Witek pays the price but maybe also he is redeemed by this in a curious way… it was not an easy decision for him and he dies at the end in a sort of sacrifice, pays the ultimate price for choosing himself over the community. I was already living in the US when the film was released in Poland for the first time. I believe it could have been received differently in 1981 – when it was originally made. I was very moved when I saw it first years later. As I remember many people at the time had a similar, maybe romantic feeling about the fate and destiny, but today I see it differently and notice more complex explanations for why people made the decisions the did and why some persons joined the opposition and others did not.

In Blind Chance, the film and the storyline about Witek as a member of the gray zone ends with him dying in a plane explosion. Is the fact that Witek dies on the plane only as a gray zone person indicative of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s opinion about the gray zone people, or is it solely for some cinematic/ philosophical purpose? This is a great question and one that I also struggled with after watching the film. It’s tempting to conclude that because Witek was apolitical in the third storyline Kieslowski “punishes” him by putting him on a plane that will explode. I would argue that although this is a possible interpretation, we could find other, less cynical, ways of explaining Witek’s death. For example: the plane crash relates not just to Witek but to all Poles leaving their country. The price of leaving Poland is quite high – you lose more

14 than just citizenship. Polish literature has a long and rich tradition of poets and novelists addressing this very theme, especially because Poland – as you remember – was partitioned and was not a country for more than a century. Even when Poland did reclaim its nationhood, this problem of identity continued. Look at Jan and Anka in Hunting Cockroaches for just such an example. Keeping this in mind, Witek’s tragic death is much more about the loss of one’s homeland, language, culture, literature, etc. This is one possible interpretation. It might also be that Kieslowski keeps the tragedy until the very end of the film as a cinematic choice – that he saves the most powerful and disturbing image for the end to shock the audience. This is another way to make sense of Witek’s death and connects Kieslowski’s choice with some common tendencies of the Cinema of Moral Anxiety.

I think the idea for Kieslowski’s Blind Chance is great, but it seems kind of puzzling at the same time. I understand that the movie depicts the interplay between how chance and self-efficacy (or one’s own actions themselves) affect fate and destiny, but that almost seems counterintuitive to me. I would assume that Kieslowski’s point in creating the film would be to make people reconsider their own lives and life-choices, yet the film still has a strong focus on simple chance. At one point Witek even states that he thinks some things are just chance. While it is ultimately up to the viewer to decide on whether chance or self-directed action leads to outcomes, I feel like this movie has the capability to take away from some of the important aspects of Polish history (or perhaps my mind is twisting it that way…?). For example, I feel like it is safe to say that Pope John Paul II was not chosen by chance. The College of Cardinals did not randomly choose him nor were they unaware of the significance of choosing him. One could argue that it was chance that Catholicism would be the main unifying feature of Poland that other Communist countries did not have or that two popes would die within a short time frame, but nothing after that was, to me, by chance. That is, the Communists did not just “happen” to let Pope John Paul II visit. He did not just “happen” to give a subtly political speech and help unite and inspire people. The Flying University, Solidarity, and underground texts were all deliberate actions. Furthermore, it was not by chance that the fall of communist Poland triggered the fall of other communist states in the East. Though the movie is entertaining, it irks me that he places such an emphasis on chance and it makes me feel like I am missing something in that picture. The Poles accomplished a lot through purposeful action and it seems like this movie detracts from their merits. What then is the underlying meaning of chance in this movie (aside from being a part of the cinema of moral anxiety)? In other words, why would he even plant the seed in his viewers’ minds that their fate may be controlled by chance rather than simply urging them to take control of their fate (unless that is the point and I am just failing to see it portrayed that way?) and/or which way was it interpreted by Poles at the time? On the one hand, the film’s point is to get people thinking about the role that chance and fate play in their lives: how much of our life is really under our practical and conscious control? In the modern world, we may tend to overplay the degree to which we are in control of our lives and downplay the role that chance and accident does play. So it’s like when Vanek comes back (he comes back in order to get us to ask ourselves why he comes back!), and a lot of art and literature is focused on this gambit.

15 With this in mind, I would question whether some of your examples of non- chance and non-accident are really good ones. Prof. Pease, for example, emphasized that Wojtyla’s election as the first non-Italian pope in almost five centuries was, in fact, somewhat random and due at least a little bit to chance: he said that there were apparently two strong and diametrically opposed Italian candidates in contention, and this may have resulted in Wojtyla’s election as a compromise candidate – which, while not totally random, is also not a bold and conscious choice either! And while your other examples are conscious acts that had as their intention to shape a movement, still there was no guarantee that they would work as such and have their intended effect. As Havel once said about dissident activities in his own context, the dissidents didn’t really know if what they were doing would actually have an effect, and often it didn’t – or had the opposite effect than the one intended. But it was still important to do things that you felt were right, whether or not they would result, at the political level, in change. And perhaps this is the lesson: we don’t just live in order to make grand gestures. We hopefully live a certain way because we feel that it is the right way to live. Kieslowski’s film problematizes this and makes of it a “morally anxious” question.

Blind Chance has three different scenarios that lead to three dramatically different paths. In discussion it was brought up that this suggests that there are greater forces than the regime that dictate the outcome of our lives. Yet, in every scenario the regime affected him in one way or another. In the first two it ruins his relationships, and in the last one it prevents his friend from being able to leave the country, which leads to him getting on the plane that kills him. These are somewhat contradictory, so, what the final message is about the regime and its influence on our daily lives in Blind Chance? Yes, Kieslowski does show how Witek’s future is influenced by his relationship with the regime and how it influences his life. But in each of the three storylines, Witek’s personality remains more or less the same: he’s a passionate lover, a light- hearted yet empathetic person, a man who feels guilt at not being there for his father’s death. Despite Witek’s seemingly unchanging personality, his position on Communism and on dissent changes. So the film poses a larger question about how we form our relationship with power structures and whether or not that changes who we are as individuals. I understand the sense of frustration that this question expresses. But I would tell you that if we want a straight answer from this film on what it’s final message is, then we’ll be disappointed. The film questions to what degree we are active agents in the world or if life is decided by chance events. There aren’t really answers to these questions. Kieslowski doesn’t have them and neither do I! Keeping this conflict between choice, fate, and chance in mind, I would question the assertion that the regime ruins Witek’s relationships. At the end of the first storyline, Czuszka wants nothing to do with Witek. Who’s at fault? Does the government ruin this love affair or does Witek do a good job of that on his own? Isn’t one of Witek’s weaknesses (and strengths) that he’s a bit naïve about people? In the second storyline his friends wrongfully accuse him of betraying the cause, but his love affair with Daniel’s sister, Werka, hasn’t come to an end. In the third storyline, the Dean will most likely be fired, but we could assume that Witek would come back from his trip and be promoted – maybe even take over the Dean’s responsibilities. Yet the plane explodes. What does it

16 mean? Is the regime at fault for Witek’s death? Again, the message might be that life is a delicate balance between choice and chance with a little bit of fate in the mix.

Solidarity and underground activities

How closely did the regime keep track of the informers and arrested workers who signed forms to be released and what kind of things did they force them to do? I noticed in the film Walesa: Man of Hope that the regime gave him an apartment, so I’m curious what he had to do to get that and how the relationship worked between the regime and informers that were involved in Solidarity. I don’t know a definitive answer to this except to say that the relationship was quite complicated. We saw a hint of this complexity in the Czechoslovakia part of the course, and Havel tries to get at this in the two plays (Audience and Unveiling) that we read. Maybe one way of thinking about it is that the regime was staffed by real people, and the opposition consisted of real people. The relationship between regime and opposition figures was in large part ideological, but also in large part human: an accommodation between these two factors had to be reached. The films Man of Hope and Blind Chance really bring this out well as does “Power of the Powerless” and many of the individual stories of dissent that we’ve looked at. In a particularly brutal regime (a truly totalitarian one), it is possible to treat “dissenters” without mercy and relate to them only in ideological terms. But in a “post-totalitarian” situation, this dynamic changes, and it opens up a possible weakness in the system itself that can be exploited by people who are willing to risk their safety in order to confront agents of the regime at a non-ideological and human level (eg, students protesters giving flowers to riot police). This doesn’t answer your question directly, but it does maybe help us understand how that dynamic could be fluid. I imagine that to properly answer your question would require us to look at many different cases of regime/informant interactions and then try to generalize across these individual cases. I don’t know of any book-length study that does this, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there are article-length studies that help us get at this dynamic in more concrete terms.

Poland post-1989

When Solidarity was finally successful and in power under Lech Walesa’s presidency in 1990, they shifted the Polish economy into a capitalist economy like the West. The problems with capitalism would have been clear to both the Poles and Czechoslovaks through observation and literature such as Hunting Cockroaches and “Power of the Powerless.” What factors caused Solidarity to make this change as opposed to a “Socialism with a human face” that was proposed and attempted by the Czechoslovaks during Prague Spring? Were their parts of Solidarity and the Civic Forum that attempted to create a reformed Socialist government post 1989? This is a terrific question that was partly answered in Prof. Ciancia’s last lecture (which was given after the question assignment was due). She discussed in some detail

17 the Balcerowicz Plan for transition from socialism to capitalism, which has also come to be known as “Shock Therapy” since it occurred literally overnight. She also suggested that there were tremendous pressures on Poland – and, indeed, on all East Central European countries engaging in this transition – to conform to Western models of capitalism as well as democracy. To make these complicated transitions and to do so as efficiently and smoothly as possible, East Central Europeans were simply forced to rely on Western experts – and Western aid in material forms. Western European countries and the US had a strong interest in creating economies that could also serve as business and investment opportunities for Western companies, and putting in place (economic, legal, political) structures that would accommodate investment was a high priority. At the same time, there was certainly resistance to this model of copying existing systems from the West – Havel, for example, argued that East Central Europeans should go their own way and establish a model society that could serve as an inspiration to the world, including the West, which is an echo of what the late-1960s “socialists with a human face” wanted to do in their attempts to reform Czechoslovak socialist society – but those who proposed a different model didn’t have either economic expertise or practical suggestions for how exactly to implement a sociopolitical and socioeconomic “third way.” The result was that Czechoslovakia and Poland integrated into existing Western European structures and eventually merged into the EU.

There seemed to be a pretty sizeable disconnect in the public’s expectations vs. reality for post-1989 Czechoslovakia. Was this disparity greater or lesser in the case of post-1989 Poland? And to what extent was this affected by the much greater involvement of the working class in the Polish movement (compared to the greater involvement of intellectuals in the Czechoslovak movement)? Prof. Ciancia partly addressed this question (with regard to Poland) in her last lecture. Czechoslovakia underwent a more gradual transition to the market economy – not the Polish “shock therapy” – and so conditions there weren’t exactly the same. The general question of how the whole region transitioned from socialism to capitalism and from post-totalitarianism to democracy is a complex one that would deserve its own course (or courses).

Is communist nostalgia helping to fuel the conservative rhetoric that consumes Polish politics today? Though most Poles today seem to have no lost love for Communism, what is apparent in Polish politics is that certain aspects of the old regime remain popular. On issues such as gay marriage and immigration, most of the European Union governments take a progressive stance. However, in Poland and other Eastern European countries, a strong conservative movement is taking place. Many Poles feel that the Western European states are trying to tell Poland how to run their country. Some Poles feel that a return to the old days would mean that Poland could once again have control over their borders and over their own actions. They feel that integration with the rest of Europe is killing traditional values within the country. Now the ruling party in Polish politics is beginning to disregard the Polish Supreme Court’s rulings, which is incredibly undemocratic. As Poland moves towards a more totalitarian state that goes against much of the rest of Europe’s beliefs, one begins to ask if Poles yearn to return to a time when their government had more say over what is allowed within the country as a whole.

18 Poland is following Hungary’s example, and a return of right-wing, nationalist politics is evident also in “Western” Europe. It also goes to show what Prof. Ciancia meant when she scoffed at Francis Fukuyama’s predictions of the “end of history” with the revolutions of 1989. But this is an excellent question, and if you have a definitive answer to it, then please share it – because it’s a burning question for European society as a whole that also affects, given Europe’s influence, the whole world.

Jan Miernowski expressed during his lecture how his generation learned the skills they needed to dissent from their parents, who did the same during World War II – in his family’s case, in helping save the lives of a Jewish family. Although Poland is now a free country, it is interesting to think about whether or not that learned dissidence has been passed down to Miernowski’s children (my generation). Does today’s Poland’s youth culture have a reason to dissent, and if so, would they do so in the same way that past generations have done? Would it make sense for them to do so? We did hear from a number of speakers, including Prof. Miernowski, that young people have started protesting the current Polish government’s return to authoritarianism with at least some of the techniques that we saw prior to 1989 (eg, street happenings and performance art to mock the government and the people supporting authoritarianism as well as the establishment of a KOR-like organization). Prof. Ciancia also made clear that what’s happening in Poland now – and, indeed, across Europe – is happening live, and we can/should follow developments on the front pages of newspapers.

I'm curious how Polish dissidents and Solidarity members view the political situation in Poland in the years since 1989. Are they disappointed with the struggles Poland has faced since 1989? Are they pleased with the democratic progress Poland has made? Do dissidents believe their goals have been achieved? [Prof. Inglot responds] Unfortunately many people became disappointed. Many opposition leaders who joined political parties and became important officials lost credibility. Others went into business. Many became bitter political enemies. A lot of union activists lost their jobs. Overall people felt perhaps more free as individuals but not as members of the larger collective – they felt more and more alienated from the Poland they believed in or struggled for. It was particularly hard to come to realization that democracy means conflict and sometimes bitter competition – this contradicts the very idea of “solidarity” that many believed in, and perhaps idealized too much. As a result election participation declined and many people, including former activists simply gave up on any public activity, but of course not all. Some, for example went into publishing, cultural activism, or became involved in different social causes – helping the poor, disadvantaged etc. Only at the time of national tragedy – five years ago when the Pope, John Paul II died, and perhaps now, in the aftermath of the tragedy in Western Russia – one can notice some sort of national re-awakening that reminds people of the old dreams and hopes for a better Poland – it brings bitterly divided people together again.

1960s youth culture and alternative culture

19 In the Czechoslovak dissident movement, the musical underground played an important role in their revolution and the entire process of dissent. During our very first Poland Lecture, Professor Ciancia informed us very briefly about one dissident musical group, Republika, but we did not have any sort of musical mentioning afterwards. Most of our discussion about dissident groups have been directed towards KOR and Solidarity. I would like to know, did dissent through music play an important role, if any role at all, in the Polish revolution? There was a thriving artistic underground culture in Poland, and our speakers only made references to it – eg, the street performance art of the Orange Alternative in Wroclaw, a tradition that has apparently been revived in current opposition to the newly authoritarian Polish government. Kathleen Cioffi’s 1997 book Alternative Theatre in Poland 1954-1989 is the go-to resource for theatre (and she was a guest speaker in an earlier incarnation of this course, and in this regard I’d particularly mention the Theatre of the Eighth Day, which became known as “Solidarity’s theatre”). I don’t know of any book-length studies of the musical underground in Poland, and certainly the Plastics in the Czechoslovak context bask in the limelight because their show-trial served as a catalyst for the creation of Charter 77. More generally we might say that an alternative musical culture is usually present in circumstances that allow for one, and a post-1989 equivalent in the US would be Indie music. You are correct, however, in suggesting that the focus of scholarly interest in the Polish culture of dissent does not fall on the musical underground, but there was so much else going on in Poland at the time that perhaps the music seems less important than it was in the Czechoslovak context.

During guest speaker Malgorzata Fidelis’s lecture, she spoke about magazines in Poland, as well as how they influenced youth culture. She made points about the role of socialism and consumption in the press. I am confused, because consumption suggests capitalism and wanting to stray from a socialist regime. Thus, saying that consumption and socialism were both at play in the magazines is rather contradictory and does not seem possible, due to their differing messages and ideologies. What is the correlation between socialism and consumption in the Polish magazines, and what is the take-away message that the youth is supposed to learn from this correlation? I think this was a major point of Fidelis’s talk: that the “global sixties” in Poland resulted in a fundamental contradiction that blurred the line between socialist ideals and a consumer-oriented, capitalist worldview. Fidelis suggested that the regime thought it could walk that line by developing a new kind of socialist youth culture – one that was “modernized” and participated in the developments in quality of life and leisure activity that were happening all over the world (and that Poles were aware of) but also one that didn’t stray too far from the ideological ends of a socialist society. Your question, however, makes it clear that this was a difficult exercise, one that contained an internal contradiction. I might suggest that we see similar kinds of contradictions in our contemporary globalized world – for example, can a world society that is basically oriented toward consumer consumption adequately confront climate change? – and that these kinds of tension are present in every society. We might see this tension between culture and ideology – Havel called it the “needs of life” versus the “needs of the system” – as one of the main drivers of sociopolitical change.

20 One feature of dissent that was mentioned earlier in the semester is that “dissent is not self-focused or selfish as much as it is a way of understanding the self within a larger social context.” Considering this definition, can we better understand Professor Fidelis’s suggestion that Polish youth magazines in the Global Sixties were an expression of dissent within the Polish Communist state structure? After all, these magazines were “windows into the world,” featuring positive material from the West as well as education and entertainment, all of which influenced Polish youth behavior and identity. More so, these magazines did not encourage teenagers to take part in the building of socialism as much as in the construction of their own new culture. Considering these points, how does the popular publication of such magazines under censorship, therefore approved by the State, challenge their nature of dissent and perhaps instead suggest a new relationship between the State and society in Poland after the war? I’m not sure I’d classify the reimagining of youth magazines after Stalin’s death as a form of “insider dissent” as much as it was, as Prof. Fidelis suggested, a response by the regime to the new post-Stalinist reality and the changing nature of the Soviet Bloc’s relationship to post-war modernity and the rest of the world. On the other hand, the very nature of the “Global Sixties” evokes the concept of existential-level dissent: we certainly associate this period with both rapid change in world society as well as (toward the end of the period) massive and worldwide sociocultural unrest. But I do think your question echoes the key point that Fidelis was trying to make: freed from the prison of one-size- fits-all Stalinism, the Polish regime did indeed want to rewrite the rules of engagement with the Polish people. The regime wanted to establish genuine popular legitimacy, in much the same way that the mid-to-late1960s socialist reformers in Czechoslovakia wanted to do. There was an obvious recognition that Stalinism hadn’t worked, and that a new social contract had to be written. For Poland, that also meant being receptive to Western influences, although in ways that could be (or so the regime thought) controlled and filtered through the lens of socialism.

Adam Michnik

Michnik often wrote about the value of non-violence and how it was important to not push boundaries. In his essay titled “New Evolutionism” (written in 1976), he preaches the need for people to work within the regime and the only thing civilians can do is go about living their life as if they are free. However, unlike the revolution in Czechoslovakia, where many were too afraid to openly oppose the government and sign Charter 77, the Polish Solidarity movement had an astounding 10 million at its peak. With such high numbers it would have been very hard for the government to suppress a proactive movement if everyone participated, especially considering a majority of Solidarity members were employed in the workforce. Do you think that it may have been more beneficial for the KOR/Solidarity movement to have taken a more aggressive opposition than Michnik preached and in doing so possibly achieved a faster revolution? It’s hard to answer a hypothetical question, and we should remember in doing so that hindsight is everything, and that trying to figure things out on the ground and in the midst of the action, as Michnik and others tried to do, is much more difficult. All I can say is that Michnik and others thought that, given their circumstances and prospects, a “self-limiting revolution” was the best course of action. Did the imposition of Martial

21 Law in December of 1981 prove them right, or did it prove them wrong? That’s also a difficult question that no one can really know the answer to.

Adam Michnik was a major intellectual figure during the solidarity movement, and even imprisoned for his actions several times. Why then did Michnik choose to defend General Jaruzelski by agreeing that the General should not be put on trial? It seems strange considering the extensive effort Michnik put into founding KOR, etc. We’d need to do research on this, although Drakulic in her fable about Gorby the cat suggests some good moral reasons against wanting to try Jaruzelski. A good research topic for the essay!

Questions suggesting another research project

In this course, we looked at how dissent manifested itself in Czechoslovakia and Poland and how that in turn, influenced the fall of communism in those countries. In Czechoslovakia, it was a relatively small group of intellectuals who dissented but in Poland, dissent was characterized by strikes of working class people. However, we also saw how both countries shared themes of dissent (such has Havel and Michnik’s similar ideas of living in the truth) and learned from the other country (in the case Jarulzelski’s declaration of Martial Law, perhaps to avoid a situation similar to the one in Czechoslovakia in ’68). Now, I am curious about other countries in the Soviet Bloc and how the fall of communism in those places differed, or was similar to, the situation in Czechoslovakia and Poland. Was the term “dissent” applied there as well? If so, what characterized the dissent and the dissidents? We’ve limited our study of the culture of dissent in East Central Europe to two countries. We certainly could look at other countries of the region through the same lens, and we’d find similarities to what we’ve already seen as well as major differences (for example, Romania’s revolution was a violent one, largely for reasons related to the dictatorial cult of personality surrounding Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife; Norman Manea is a Romanian writer who emigrated, eventually, to the US, many of whose writings offer a sophisticated literary document of the abuses of the Ceausescu regime). Yugoslavia is a particularly interesting case study in that it was a multi-ethnic state that “dissented” from the Soviet Bloc early on and managed to maintain independence from Soviet influence. But you’re absolutely correct: the focus of our course has been limited, in part due to time constraints and also due to the limits of teaching resources that we have at UW-Madison (we are strong in Czechoslovakia and Poland).

Solidarity and underground activism

During Solidarity, did any other social movements (e.g. minority groups) seek media attention or try to branch off from the mainstream movement? Were there different factions of the movement, and did they have different goals for social change? [Prof. Inglot responds] Solidarity was a large “umbrella” under which all kinds of social initiatives were started. No part of society was left untouched. Even the official

22 police attempted to start its own independent trade union (with several hundred members) – this effort was quickly suppressed. Another group that did this consisted of some provincial communist party members who created the so-called “vertical structures” within the Polish United Workers’ Party itself (PZPR) – calling for free elections and inner party democracy. Poland has a sizeable Ukrainian, Belarusian and German minorities. All these groups tried to revive their ossified communist-controlled organizations, but usually it was not easy. I do not know the details but they definitely were affected. As concerns the media coverage – even though the official media became more open – it was not free. The government still remained in firm control of the main newspapers, TV and radio. Some local TV and radio stations were freer to report on things like that but they had limited scope and reached fewer people. Solidarity had one major weekly and many locally produced newsletters – just like the ones we, the students, printed. These publications suffered from the permanent shortage of paper – it was centrally distributed. The situation eased somewhat later in 1981 when foreign donors brought some more paper and printing equipment to Poland but Solidarity could never compete on an equal footing with the government. Thus, in short, the few free Solidarity media outlets on the national level focused on the big political issues and the economy – other things appeared locally and had much less of an audience.

How much stock were you able to place in the quality or accuracy of information that was circulating by way of underground newspapers and samizdat type publishing? [Prof. Inglot responds] At that time the official government media outlets were so much discredited that people gave any opposition newspapers and samizdat publications a lot of trust. You need to keep in mind that in 1980-81 these publications were not really “underground” but circulated freely, more or less. Many great journalists became now Solidarity reporters and the quality of the publications increased dramatically. Only before August 1980 and after the declaration of the martial law on December 13, 1981 – it was all happening “underground.” You could verify what was written by reading many different sources – and also listening to Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, or BBC Polish service on the radio. Generally – people trusted their distributors to deliver credible news and if mistakes were made they were often corrected later.

Mrozek: “The Elephant”, “The Canary”

The Elephant and The Canary were wonderful pieces of reading that we had, and they both capture a cultural response from a talented writer living under the regime in Poland. My question is, how were the writings received, and more importantly, who read Mrozek, and how was it dissipated? How does the metaphorical absurdism Mrozek employed in those writings inform feelings of dissent at the existential level (or not)? (Another speculative question is, how do these writings of Mrozek’s compare to his plays?) Great question. Unfortunately I cannot give extensive data on reader response of Mrozek’s works at the time of their publication. But this would be an excellent topic to research! I know much of his writing was circulated via samizdat in the 70s and 80s,

23 although his plays were performed at Polish theaters during Communism. His plays are very much in the same vein as his stories. Mrozek’s biography might answer part of your question. Although Mrozek’s early dramas avoided explicit political or historical allusions, his absurdist writings were not well received under Socialist Realism, as you can imagine. Referring to the communist party and regime, Mrozek once said: "The monster kept me imprisoned, but it fascinated me a lot at the same time." So he was both inspired and horrified by what he saw and experienced. Mrozek left Poland in 1963 and has lived abroad for nearly forty years (he did visit Poland in 1997). That doesn’t mean he wasn’t asked to return to Poland. After Mrozek denounced his country's part in the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, he was immediately called home. However, Mrozek decided to stay in Paris. Authorities in Poland responded by banning his plays and stories for some time, and his books were withdrawn from libraries. In terms of popularity, many of Mrozek’s plays have been staged in Western theaters and by prominent directors (including Tom Stoppard in 1966). He’s also a wonderful cartoonist and his drawings are well known. Mrozek’s stories get at the heart of dissent at the existential level. Mrozek is considered a playwright of the absurd because of his non-naturalist style, his focus on alienation, and depiction of the meaningless nature of life. Mrozek asks: how can we find meaning in a meaningless world? Mrozek also reveals the conflict between the individual and power, especially when that power takes on a mutated form like totalitarianism. Mrozek often uses surrealistic humor and grotesque situations to reveal the distorted beliefs of his characters. After you read one of his plays you’re sure to ask yourself, what just happened to me? How is my logic like that of this absurd character? And his writings demand a kind of “existential encounter” that Havel called for. In other words, Mrozek makes us beings in question! For more information on Mrozek: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mrozek.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sławomir_Mrożek

Women’s rights / Women in Solidarity

In her lecture on women in Solidarity, Halina Filipowicz showed a contrast between the US and Poland when she said that at the turn of the 19th century, the US was gaining its independence from England when, at the same time, Poland was losing its independence. She said that this, along with the rest of history up to the present, might be part of the reason that Poland is not as progressive as the US in terms of women's rights and women's place in society. It seemed to me that she was implying that perhaps Poland is simply behind. As in: it will follow a natural progression to catch up in terms of equal rights for women. Also, we have read and talked about the concept of Communism leaving the Eastern Block countries “behind” the western world. Is a future state of equal rights for women in Poland inevitable? [Prof. Filipowicz responds] Yes, this is one way of looking at the issue of

24 women's rights and women's place in Polish society. There is also another way of looking at it. (By the way, I don't think I used the term "progressive" in my guest lecture in April. And I would hesitate to say that "Poland is simply behind.") To suggest a different perspective, I would like to offer the following questions for your consideration: Is the issue of women's rights more progressive than the issue of political independence for a whole country, or are both of them progressive issues, but each in a different way? What are the meanings of the word "progressive"? The point I was making was that since the late 18th c. the political histories of the US and Poland followed entirely different trajectories. The Polish political trajectory has affected the issue of women's rights because most Polish women and men regarded cross- gender solidarity as being vital to the struggle for Poland's political independence from foreign domination and control. In this context, demands for women's rights were perceived as particularist, divisive, and even selfish. To put these points differently, I was arguing for sensitivity to time- and place- specific historical contexts in which the women's movements in different countries have evolved, rather than lumping all women's movements together. To put these points yet another way, I would like to quote Linda Nicholson's book, Identity before Identity Politics (2008). She addresses similar issues in the American multicultural context of the 1960s.

In her interview, Anna Bojarska noted that she left Gazeta Wyborcza due to “increasing dishonesty.” She also explained that editors always abbreviated, rewrote, and even changed the title of the articles she wrote without her permission. What was the main purpose behind such mysterious actions? [Prof. Filipowicz responds] Anna Bojarska addresses this issue in more detail in her new book, Zastrzelony jadlospis czyli troche mitologii polskiej (An Assassinated Menu, or a Little about Polish Mythology, 2004). Initially, Adam Michnik, Editor-in-Chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, loved her political essays (e.g., her essay on the 1922 assassination of Gabriel Narutowicz, Poland's first president after World War I, by Eligiusz Niewiadomski, a talented artist and art historian as well as a fiercely chauvinistic nationalist). After Solidarity won the parliamentary election on 4 June 1989 and Tadeusz Mazowiecki became the first non-communist prime minister, Michnik wanted Bojarska to write a series of essays criticizing society at large for its (supposed) ingratitude for everything that the Solidarity leadership did for Poland (e.g., the Round Table negotiations and the appointment of Solidarity politicians to the new government). He also wanted her to draw parallels between interwar Poland and post-1988 Poland -– something to the effect that if society at large continues its ingratitude, this will create a climate conducive to political repressions of the Solidarity leadership and possibly even conducive to political assassinations. Bojarska refused to write such essays. She refused to glamorize the Solidarity leadership and to demonize the population. She also reminded Michnik of the reasons why many Poles in the 1920s and 1930s were critical of the government: corruption, arrogance, and ostentatious luxury that was in stark contrast to widespread poverty in society at large. She said that in post-1988 Poland many Poles are critical of the Solidarity leadership for the same reasons. Here, I want to quote a fragment of her discussion with Michnik:

25

"Bojarska: Have you ever been hungry? Michnik: No, not really. Yes, we staged a couple of hunger strikes, but I never chose to be hungry on my own. Bojarska: I was hungry. And I see more and more people who are hungry. Maybe that's the way it ought to be, but your [i.e., the Solidarity leadership's] ostentatiousness, your luxury lifestyle, your corruption, your arrogance..." (p. 27, An Assassinated Menu).

She leaves her sentence unfinished, but the context makes it clear what she means: a warning that sooner or later the "ostentatiousness, luxury lifestyle, corruption, arrogance" will drive a wedge between the Solidarity leadership and the population at large, therefore Solidarity will lose its broad base of support. After this discussion, Bojarska was blacklisted in Gazeta Wyborcza. Michnik refused even to publish an obituary of her mother, even though the obituary was paid for by Bojarska's family. Follow-up to corruption in Solidarity movement: The students may be puzzled by the references to corruption within the Solidarity leadership. I'd like to clarify that this has to do with financial accountability (or a lack of it): Solidarity has never accounted for the money that it received from various Western organizations (such as labor unions in the United States) during the martial law period. 23 years after Solidarity's victory, we still don't know where this money went and how it was spent. This has generated a lost of suspicion and resentment. I also thought that with regard to the lack of democracy within the Solidarity leadership the students may be interested in my recent article: HF, "Re-Envisioning Solidarity: History, Agency, and the Politics of Performance." Theatre and Performance in Russia and Eastern Europe: Today and Yesterday. Ed. Catherine A. Schuler. Special issue of Theatre Journal 62.3 (October 2010): 333-47.

Women and their crucial roles have always been downplayed in history, and Poland is no different. Even though women were pivotal in Solidarity and its strikes, their contributions and efforts were not seen and portrayed as great as a man’s. What legal rights did women have/or not have and how were they and their roles seen in society during the time surrounding Solidarity that must have factored into their downplaying? This question implies a lengthy study of women’s rights issues in Poland (perhaps a future dissertation?). One of the things that Prof. Filipowicz did say was that abortion was legalized in 1956, and it was only after the fall of the regime in 1993 – and under the insistence of the Church – that it was made illegal. She also strongly implied that it is the conservative nature of the Catholic Church, and not only in Poland, that played the largest role in downplaying women’s-rights issues in Solidarity.

In her discussion on Hunting Cockroaches, Professor Filipowicz introduced her topic with some background information about the treatment of women in Poland. Does she believe that the status of women has declined during the transition from communism to a free-market economy? Several articles posted on the class blog also discuss severe restrictions on abortions; has the leadership change led to a greater influence of the Catholic Church on limiting the rights of women?

26 Yes, the status of women has declined. As you suggest, this has largely to do with a greater influence of the Catholic Church. Under communist rule, the Catholic Church supported the opposition movement. When the opposition movement came to power in 1989, the Catholic Church asked to be reimbursed, so to speak, for its support. The opposition movement complied by reimbursing the Catholic Church in the form of several decrees and laws, such as the introduction (by governmental decree) of religious instruction in public schools and the ban (written into a law adopted by the Parliament) on abortion. But there are also other reasons: Polish society has historically been a traditionalist, strongly patriarchal, male-centered society, and this legacy is still very strong. I write more about these issues in one of my articles:

Halina Filipowicz, "Taboo Topics in Polish and Polish/Jewish Cultural Studies." /The Journal of the International Institute/ [University of Michigan] 9.1 (Fall 2001): 3-8. http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/journal/vol9no1/halina.html http://www.umich.edu/%7Eiinet/journal/vol9no1/halina.html

Samizdat

After looking back at the material from Czechoslovakia, I noticed that samizdat played a major role in the fall of Communism in 1989. Samizdat had great success even though there were harsh penalties for producing the literature and also for distributing it. Ever since we have begun the Poland material, there has not been very much discussion about underground printing except for when one of the guest speakers mentioned it in one of his lectures. The importance of the Catholic Church seems to overshadow the importance of a lot of things. So, was underground printing and distribution as important to the fall of Communism in Poland as it was in Czechoslovakia, or did it basically take a back seat, in importance, to the Catholic Church? Of course it did. Samizdat was much more widespread in Poland, in fact. Its importance was discussed or even profiled in more than just one lecture: Prof. Miernowski brought a lot of examples of it in (newspapers, poetry, literature) and discussed his personal role in its distribution, Prof. Filipowicz discussed it in that many women were involved in underground printing and one, Helena Luczywo, was the editor of the newspaper The Worker and eventually became editor of Gazeta Wyborcza, and it figured prominently in the film “Blind Chance.” In Poland, dissent was actualized in a mass grass-roots movement whereas in Czechoslovakia, it was largely confined to an intellectual elite. So I would say that because of this, samizdat publication was much more of a factor in Poland than in Czechoslovakia.

P. Kenney, Carnival of Revolution

When reading the excerpt from Padraic Kenney’s book A Carnival of Revolution, I could not help but compare konkretny to Havel’s “living within the truth.” Konkretny referred to exposing and attempting to find solutions to everyday problems, which meant utilizing the media and demonstrations. On the other hand, “living within the truth” did not have

27 to be strictly political in nature because, as Kenney said, “any independent activity, no matter how apolitical it seemed, weakened the regime’s hold on power” (for example, the story of the Greengrocer). Kenney said that the time of the “truth tellers” had passed by the mid-1980s, and the konkretny generation was born. Can the “truth tellers” be compared to those who “lived within the truth” but were not as outwardly political and solution-oriented as the konkretny activists? More importantly, what caused this shift from the “truth-teller” to the activist who focused on ideas that most people could agree on? Was this simply a change in tactics to gain the regime’s attention, or possibly something more? Excellent question. We haven’t and won’t study Kenney’s book in detail, but it is certainly one of the best studies of the Polish revolution. My sense is that in Kenney’s larger argument in the book, he notes that the tactics needed to change in the 1980s when Solidarity went underground. The time of the generation of those who pushed “living in truth” had passed, and a new approach was called for. I can’t do his full argument justice here, but urge those who are interested in the question to read the whole book.

Katyn

Why did the Russian officials decide to release the documents on Katyn so many years later (1990s)? How did this information affect Polish-Soviet relations? [Prof. Pease responds] One reason was that after the fall of the Polish communist regime in 1989, the USSR no longer could count on an allied and pliant Polish government that would not ask embarrassing questions, and would collude in the "conspiracy of silence" to deny and suppress the truth about Katyn. So Gorbachev admitted Soviet guilt in 1990, and post-communist Russia made public the documentary proof in 1992. This has had a mixed impact on Polish/Russian relations: on the one hand, the truth is now out, and Poland gives Russia some credit for that; but at the same time, Putin's government has been seen as less apologetic, and less willing to make amends, than Yeltsin's, so it has continued to be a cause of tension.

Philosophical and theoretical

Interestingly, the Catholic Church, an ideological force, was a mechanism that pushed Poland toward the end of communism. Havel warned to steer clear of ideology, yet the Church’s ideology actually pushed Poland toward “living in the truth.” To what extent can ideology benefit a people, and when does it become detrimental? Be careful of what we mean by “ideology.” Was it the Church’s ideology that benefited people or did Catholicism become a mythical space for Polish nationhood? I don’t think this is saying the same thing: one is about dogma and the other is about faith and (at least potentially) a positive sense of belonging to something that transcends you as an individual. Not every transcendent entity – organization, party, faith, institution, club – is ideologically detrimental (in Havel’s understanding of the concept). But still this doesn’t quite answer the question, and the question encapsulates a major – and

28 unresolved – theme of the course: when does a form of transcendence cease to serve us and we become instead slaves to it?

Which revolution – Czechoslovakian or Polish – demonstrated the most successful form of dissent? Is dissent even measurable in the regard? Maybe to rephrase this question: is it best to judge dissent in terms of success? I suppose you can develop a certain model of “successful” dissent that is historical or political, but in terms that we have been using, success or failure is less amenable to measuring. Or rather: success or failure is maybe irrelevant to existential dissent. Dissent is something that we all face in our everyday lives. It’s a feature of modern life. Modern bureaucratic society militates against dissent at this existential level, but that doesn’t make it any less real of a phenomenon. It’s like those legislators in certain parts of the US who want(ed) to make gayness disappear by passing a law that says you can’t talk about being gay in the state school system. We can pretend that this works, but at the same time we know, or ought to know, how ridiculous it is. Isn’t this what George Orwell was trying to say in 1984 or at least to the extent that we read 1984 as a hopeful novel (and it is!)?

While Poland's story of dissent features examples of institutions that provided an alternative to official, Party-dominated society like Solidarity, and earlier, KOR, there seems to have been less of a “parallel polis” or “second culture” that emerged in Poland than in Czechoslovakia. Why did we not see the same types or levels of underground culture or general artistic expression in Poland? On the other hand, alternatives like KOR and Solidarity and the Church are the parallel polis – and in Poland, this second culture was so massive that it rivaled the main polis or “first culture.” There were artistic movements in Poland as well, and we just didn’t happen to talk much about these. Some lecturers mentioned the “Orange Alternative,” which is profiled in Padraic Kenney’s book Carnival of Revolution, and there was also the Theatre of the Eighth Day, which one lecturer talked about.

How should a new government – such as Poland’s after the 1989 revolution – go about the process of deciding whether or not to prosecute former political or military leaders? More specifically, does one judge Generals Jaruzelski’s decision to implement martial law based solely on the outcomes for the Polish people or should his motivations for such a drastic measure be taken into account as well? This is a difficult question. South Africa had its “Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” which some judge to have been a success and others not so much. It’s a question that Poland, not surprisingly, had difficulty resolving.

As Havel believes it is very important to live in the truth, Michnik explains the importance of “living in dignity.” In my discussion section there was a discussion about whether or not Havel and Michnik mean the same thing by these two ideals. My personal opinion is that to live a dignified life, you have to be a truthful and honest person. What would you argue? I don’t think that these concepts differ fundamentally – not at least in the way that Michnik and Havel intended them. They are two sides of the same coin, and they

29 represent perhaps different emphases. In Havel’s case, we have an evocation of the Czech national slogan “Truth shall be victorious,” and in Michnik’s there is a spiritual or religious overtone in the word “dignity.” Some of us might react strongly to one or the other – “truth” is abstract and intellectual while “dignity” is more personal – but in the historical context in which they were coined, I don’t see much of a difference.

Questions for Jan Miernowski

Do you ever miss the dissident struggles in Poland, or reminisce for the Solidarity period at all? Was there a sense of togetherness through oppression, or common need for revolt that is missing today? No, I do not miss the political struggles of Poland at all. My country was not free at that time, now it is. There is nothing better than being free, so how could I miss something which was so much worse?

In 1981, the regime declared Martial Law. Of all the restrictions, which one was the hardest for you to live with on a daily basis? In a sense, the declaration of Martial Law was a relief in comparison with the “normal” life under the regime. We had less to lose, so it was easier to take risks. The worst thing was to be afraid – because I am not a very courageous person.

Professor Miernowski gave a brief look into his life during Solidarity and was involved in dissident activities. Looking back, does he believe he played a significant role and is there anything he would’ve liked to have done different during the solidarity movement (i.e. more involvement, less involvement, etc.)? I certainly did not play a significant role. There were hundreds, thousands of people like myself. I am quite content with the degree of involvement I had: I did not do it out of a passion for politics (I am passionate about my scholarly work), but out of necessity since I knew that I had to take care of politics. If I didn’t, politics would have taken care of me – and that might have been painful.

Several of our speakers spoke about the decision to emigrate as the situation in Poland became more difficult. What were some of the reasons you decided not to leave Poland? What were some of the reasons your friends may have left? If you had to do it again knowing what you know now, would you still stay? Some people were forced into emigration. I was not, so I did not emigrate. I did not because I loved my city and my country, and I felt a moral obligation toward Poland. I still do.

As someone who took part in anti-Communist activities in Poland prior to 1989, could you comment on the aftermath of the political events that took place in 1989? Did Solidarity follow through on the promises it made during its anti-Communist campaign? Was it as good at leading the whole country as it was at rallying up support? Solidarity did not make any promises because it was not a political party campaigning in a normal election. The ’89 semi-free elections represented a peaceful

30 take-over of power and an end to the totalitarian structure. Immediately after ’89, the Solidarity movement split up into different parties that competed for political leadership, and these were responsible for the next stages of political and economic development. With many reservations, I would say that it went well: we joined NATO and the EU.

Food for thought: questions without answers

Obviously, Pope John Paul II had a tremendous impact on Poland during his 1979 visit. However, how did his visit to Poland impact the Roman Catholic Church? More specifically, what was the inner circle of the church doing during his visit, considering that they were aware of the political implications?

If Blind Chance would have been originally shown in 1981, would it have had an impact on the dissident movement as a whole? Would more people be more compelled to join the Party as a safety net? Would more people want to risk their livelihood for a cause greater than themselves? Would more people have enjoyed prosperity but not be tied to any cause? Obviously some people were never going to change their minds, but it is possible that Blind Chance could have been a major influence on those people that were on the fence.

In the article we had to read about Krzysztof Kieslowski and his film Blind Chance, the author says, "it might seem counter intuitive but within the communist system film makers actually had more freedom than their capitalist counterparts; at least during production." This quote has led me to ask the following question: how has the Polish film industry (for the lack of a better word) changed in its substance, production and priority with the emergence of both Western democracy and capitalism?

We have learned about the solidarity movement in Poland and the role of women in solidarity, and that the Catholic Church was in support of solidarity. My question is did Pope John Paul II have any major influence in the Solidarity party’s decisions besides the church wanting abortion illegalized?

Why has a country that used ideas of human rights, democracy, and Western values as part of its argument against the Soviet regime, remained so unequal in regards to women? Has the role of the Catholic Church, that was previously a voice in dissident culture, led to a voice that is now repressive towards part of the population? Despite Poland’s signing different international agreements on women’s rights, the country still has an extreme gender gap in employment and education. Is it possible for Poland to tighten this gap and still keep its rich Catholic roots?

We saw in Hunting Cockroaches that there were different levels of dissent among the citizens of Poland. We also saw, in historical lectures, differing levels of governmental regulation, for example Martial Law. Did strength of dissent coincide with the tightening

31 of governmental regulation in Poland? And does this mean that Martial Law was political suicide?

Enduring a long, hard battle with the Soviet Union, Dissidents often believed that democracy would be able to cure the ills communism left in its wake. They looked at the US as the model for democracy and saw that Americans were happy. Then why after the Solidarity movement ended, were many people disappointed with democracy in the post- Soviet period? They had a tremendous amount of freedom and human rights, or is that all democracy can really offer? Was democracy lifted up onto a pedestal by dissidents only to realize that it was not democratic freedoms that made people truly happy?

4Being a dissident takes a lot of courage and personal strength, so I am curious about the internal decision making process. There are obvious consequences for being a part of the culture of dissent, what other specific factors come into play and which have the most influence in that process?

The issue of the Polish “identity” is very interesting. In Hunting Cockroaches, Jan and Anka face the prospect of losing their identities as part of the Polish dissident intellectual elite when they become American immigrants. Yet the homogenous, “Catholic” Poland label only came about shortly after World War II. Furthermore, it seems important to note that there was a suppression of Polish identity during the communist rule. We’re also read a lot about alternative and student theater, which gives us some idea of the nature of the literature. I guess what I am asking is, despite the population being so homogenous statistically, how exactly would you classify “identity,” for instance, in the way that you would classify a general American outlook or identity as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?”

In contrast to the conflict between the Communist regime and the Catholic Church in Poland, the theater community was much more outspoken and openly at odds with the government. In any dissident community, the arts are a braver medium than any established state institution and seem to pose a greater threat to the status quo. Do people put more faith in art or religion in times of crisis and change? Does passion for change manifest itself best by submitting yourself to a higher power or becoming part of a tangible expression of hope for the future?

Michnik was adamant, largely like Havel and other Czechoslovak dissident leaders, to not promote outright overhaul of the communist system within Poland. This position was taken ostensibly out of fear that any such movement would be repressed and any momentum gained would be lost due to such suppression or violence thus stirred. But was this concept that too much force should not be applied against the government really valid in Poland? Unlike in Czechoslovakia, the Polish dissident movement was vastly expansive and bridged socio-economic classes and religious convictions. In fact, because unity was so great, it seems that Michnik and others might have misjudged the potential of the dissident movement to wrest control from the communists. Michnik himself argues in “A New Evolutionism” that the government is not rational, and therefore cannot be cooperated with. Yet while he does encourage mental

32 modes of dissent, he stops at physical methods (outside of the potential to stage strikes) and real examples of anti-government disorder. It is not for me to promote a dissident movement in Poland characterized by greater visibility and rage, but due to Michnik’s massive popularity, as well as the popularity of Pope John Paul II, any calls by such leaders to cease complying with the government altogether may have been feasible. Indeed, with a dissident community in late 1970’s and the first two years of the 80’s tightly knit and collaborative, and with the government already making concessions, why did leaders not call for an escalation of disobedience to back the regime further into a corner, breaking down its defensive and siphoning its strength? Why did they not pull out all the stops when they had the chance? Obviously, the rational against this course is a potential rash of violence spread by the regime and/or by protesters. But such tragedies had already occurred, and with each public opinion had only aligned closer and closer with the dissidents. And it was not as if the government of Poland had a vested interest in abusing its citizens: they were in fact still trying to propagate the notion that their government was kind and observant to citizens’ needs, however mendacious that claim may have been. Furthermore, according the articles we looked at in class, the USSR was most likely extremely reluctant to actually invade or interfere militarily in Poland, extended as they were in Afghanistan and with their arms buildup against the west taking up vast military funds. Polish dissident leaders must have realized at least part of this reality, yet why were they still so timid about removing the regime’s strength by whatever (humane) means that they could muster? Certainly theirs was the democratic and humanist position, but was it really the best for bringing a swift end to an already sapped polish communist government? Perhaps if their action was more drastic, if they had risked the beast’s bite by forcing it into a corner, the tenuous years between martial law and freedom could have been truncated or eliminated. Essentially, why did the leaders of Solidarity, intellectuals, and religious institutions not risk more disobedience for swifter reconciliation?

Polish dissidents were considered sell-outs if they accepted some form of gift in return for complying with government, like Jan’s struggle to refuse the tickets back to Poland in Hunting Cockroaches. At what point do dissidents lose their “dissident” status in terms of actions? Dissent involves both oppositional sentiments and actions. If Jan accepted the plane tickets but continued to disagree with the Polish government and write anti- communist works, is he a true dissident?

Do you think dissidence within the Soviet bloc was inevitable? In our studies, we’ve seen dissent take multiple forms, in Czechoslovakia it seemed to come from authors and playwrights, and in Poland it seemed to take a shape in the underground theatre and the church. The variety of forms that dissidence took in just these two countries alone makes it seem like dissidence was inevitable and the people living in these nations took part in it in whichever way was the most accessible to them.

In totalitarian Czechoslovakia, one would go to the theater to find or live in truth. In totalitarian Poland, one would go to the Church or become active in KOR or Solidarity. Where do we go to live in the truth in modern-day America? To what do we turn?

33 “In Poland, the revolution took ten years…perhaps in Czechoslovakia it will take ten days!” - Timothy Garton Ash. Were the Czechoslovaks’ pens mightier than the Poles’ swords?

Just as in Czechoslovakia, many Polish citizens can be seen to either live a life in truth or live in a lie. To me, this phenomenon is represented in each of the three scenarios in Kieslowski’s Blind Chance. Does the way in which Witek dies – in a plane crash at the end of the third scenario in which he leads a uncommitted, self-focused life – convey to the audience that believing in something, even if that something is Communism, brings one closer to living a life in truth, rather than refusing to believe in anything at all?

In Małgorzata Fidelis’s lecture on Polish youth culture and magazines, she discussed the transformation of the view of women from equal human workers to more sexual objects, e.g., in advertisements for motorcycle trips. Can this transformation be classified as progress in the sense that Poland was mimicking capitalist countries by adopting their gender roles, or was this change regressive in that society became more sexist?

When we had the lecture on personal accounts of dissent, it really made me wonder if I would have the integrity to dissent in this way and what brought these people to the necessity of dissent. Were these dissidents following their truth like the dissidents of Czechoslovakia or were they drawn to dissent by the conditions of Soviet Poland and the culture of the Polish underground?

Solidarity in a way was a performative democracy that convinced Poles to join in its activities. Under situations of collective public movements, is it morally right to join in such performative democracy when one’s beliefs are not yet crystallized?

Is it productive for American civil resistance movements to use Solidarity for inspiration, or is the story of Poland too dependent on a totalitarian context (against the background of the Cold War) that is not present in modern society?

34