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When Reality Fails: Science Fiction and the Fall Of Kociatkiewicz, Jerzy and Monika Kostera (2002) “When reality fails: Science fiction and the fall of communism in Poland.” In: Mihaela Kelemen and Monika Kostera (eds.) Managing the Transition: Critical Management Research in Eastern Europe. Palgrave, 217-238. When Reality Fails: Science fiction and the fall of Communism in Poland Jerzy Kociatkiewicz Graduate School for Social Research Institute of Philosophy and Sociology Polish Academy of Sciences [email protected] Monika Kostera Academy of Entrepreneurship and Management And Warsaw University [email protected] When the walls fell When the Martial Law was enforced on December 13th, 1981 in Poland, after the Solidarity rebellion that lasted for almost one and a half year, it felt like all hope was being buried forever. The system, once again, proved that it was invincible. The massive popular movement, which had reached 10 millions of members at its peak, was shattered during the following years; the leaders were, once again, imprisoned, censorship tightened anew, and the people subjected to a new wave of unbearably self-righteous propaganda. Its main rhetorical style was named panswinism by Michal Głowiński (1992): „we are all swine,” no one is honest, Party people are swine, but so are the heroes of the Solidarity rebellion. There is no hope. Communism was here to stay and most people tended to believe that is was permanent; some voiced the belief that it might perhaps end in 100 years. And then, in 1989, the state TV started to show glimpses of a remarkable event: the so-called „round-table talks”. Representatives of the opposition and Party officials 1 met and discussed possible scenarios for the future. Suddenly, people all over Poland could see famous dissidents: Adam Michnik, Jacek Kuroń and other, up to then, totally „forbidden” faces. On June 4th, 1989, the first free elections after the World War II were held. The Solidarity candidates celebrated a remarkable victory, gaining more mandates than the limited quotas of the elections deal assigned them. Soon thereafter, a Polish actress and member of the opposition, Joanna Szczepkowska, declared on the state TV: „On the 4th of June, 1989, communism fell in Poland.” A lot of other extraordinary events followed: the Berlin Wall fell, more and more countries of the former communist block declared the return of democracy. We were facing the impossible — the immortal institutions imprisoning individual initiative and belief died before our eyes. But before we come back to that momentous occasion, let us consider the images of the reality before and after its metamorphosis. The reality: press accounts Under the communist regime, organization in all the dimensions of social life was hypocritical. The social reality as perceived by the actors was one thing, and the Power, as it was called in Poland, i.e. the largely anonymous voice of the ruling forces, through its various media, said something entirely different. We would like to quote a few examples of how the press and other popular written texts defined various aspects of the organization of social reality before 1989 in Poland. Such a review will help us to show what kind of meta-narratives was constraining the small stories of the individual people. The meta-narratives were responded with anger, protest, faked faith, genuine belief, consent, and on many occasions with indifference. A popular joke circulating among the Polish society in the 60-ties reflects that general 2 atmosphere of deception: „Are there more bright or good people in the Party? — There are more good people — that’s easier to fake.” The society was depicted as being based on the highest of humanist ideals: [...] at the foundations of socialism and the struggle for socialism there lies the concern for man, a great trust in man, based, however, on a realist approach to him, depending on his real transformations — and not on a mythical-falsified one. And so that man of the new type will have the full possibility of development, he has to make himself free from the ropes of false individual liberty, [traditional Polish] sovereignty and seeking in another man and nation the elements motivating his distrust (Roman, 1990: 44, after Borejsza, 1949)1. Culture was finally liberated from the „decadent aesthetics of capitalist societies:” Socialist culture, being objectively the necessary, and in our times, the highest phase in the development of world culture, erasing the contradictions characteristic of the spiritual creation in the class society, eradicates the one sidedness and constrictions imposed on culture by the relationships of private ownership, creates the conditions favoring the rapid progress of culture and versatile development of human personality (Roman, 1990: 113; after Baller, 1975). The logic of the new economy was based on statements such as this one, intended to popularize communist economics among the common reader: The existence of too many retail shows increases the costs, because every new merchant decreases the turnover — of the already established; every one of them serves in effect a smaller number of clients, and has to increase the prices of the sold articles, because the general costs comprise a smaller quantity of turnover (Roman, 1990: 13, after Kalendarz Warszawski, 1947). The new economic order would solve all such problems. Communism was heaven on Earth: The abundance of goods and the way of their distribution will create conditions, under which it will be possible to take on the managerial and 1 Andrzej Roman (1990) collected press clippings and other texts from the communist era, mainly Polish, and published them with short ironic comments to expose their utter absurdity and malignancy in his book Paranoja: Zapis choroby — Paranoia: The inscription of the disease. 3 subordinate functions successively by everyone - in theory, and in practice — by the majority of the employees of the enterprise (Roman, 1990: 23; after Sawicki, 1962). The communist enterprise was officially introduced as the most democratic of social realities. Lenin thought that accounting and control were to be handled by the manager only in the first phase of communism. Later, the working class itself would take over these duties (Kiezun, 1991). Early Russian management theorists such as Gastyev and Jermanski repeated many of the Taylorist principles (such as discipline, order, self- control, functional control, etc.), but under new labels, as a "truly scientific system of work organization" based on Marx's concept of the disalienation of the working class under communism (Jermanski, 1972; Kiezun, 1991 after Gastyev, 1924). However, empirical research (Kostera and Wicha, 1996; Oblój, 1986) shows that the communist organization was rigid, hierarchic, highly bureaucratic and oppressive for the participants. The communist manager was to be of working class origin (Gomulka, 1945), a defender of the people. The new society was to be reminiscent of a united, uniform, unanimous organization, or "a single office and a single factory with equality of work and equality of pay" (Lenin, 1981:96) and with absolute equality in living and working conditions. In such a society the manager's role was to embody the ultimate interests of the working class, to be its "avant-garde", knowing what is "really" good for the masses. A good director is a real treasure for the Party organization. Such a director does nor prompt the Party to intervene directly; he guarantees the proper execution of Party and government directives; he takes an active part in Party work and is able to make use of advice from below (of criticism of the working masses); and he can correct his mistakes of 'self criticism'. One can say without hesitation that a good enterprise director and good divisional director solve half the problems of the Party in the factory. (Najduchowska, 1976, after Szyr, 1951). 4 The Polish president of the 50-ties, Boleslaw Bierut declared that: The supervisor should consider the worker, his working conditions, his pay conditions, his security; the supervisor should be friendly to the worker, just as in our people's army the officer is friendly to the soldier. Secondly, the supervisor should be demanding, should strictly espouse all the regulations... (Bierut, 1953: 1). Bierut briefly mentioned that the "supervisor," a term that contextually turned out to refer to the manager, should be skilled (the context implied it was technical skill that Bierut meant), and continued: The supervisor has to guard his/her authority, his/her dignity as a commander, because those who do not see that all their commands are strictly and well followed, are not worthy of the name of commander (Bierut: 1). Bierut reminded the managers, that ... Lenin and Stalin pointed out many times that the task of management is not only to foster, to organize the masses, but to learn from them, to take their voice into account (Bierut: 1). Field research (Czarniawska-Joerges, 1986; Czarniawska-Joerges, 1988; Kostera and Wicha, 1996) points out that managers under communism had more responsibility than freedom to act and make decisions, they felt restricted, limited and constantly harassed by the secret police and party aparatchiks. The dissidents, such as Adam Michnik and Jacek Kuroń were not only harassed by the police and imprisoned, but both they and their relatives had trouble at work, their children were pestered at school (and thrown out for some more or less vague excuse). They were also depicted as demoralized demons, hateful radicals, and ungrateful paranoiacs. The accusations were, of course, absurd and sick. For example, Jacek Kuroń, the current symbol of personal warmth is depicted as a person „from whom a great cold emanates” (Roman, 1990: 165; after Roszewski, 1981). The dissidents were 5 often listed in plural: „the Kurons and Michniks,” a rhetorical trick meant to further degrade, depersonalize and dishonor them. The general atmosphere we remember of these times was that of futility.
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