The Solidarity Movement and Perspectives on the Last Decade of the Cold War

The Solidarity Movement and Perspectives on the Last Decade of the Cold War The Solidarity Movement and Perspectives on the Last Decade of the Cold War Edited by Lee Trepanier, Spasimir Domaradzki and Jaclyn Stanke Editorial Council Klemens Budzowski, Maria Kapiszewska, Zbigniew Maciąg, Jacek Majchrowski Reviewer Łukasz Wordliczek Ph.D. Copyright© by Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Krakow University Krakow 2010 Cover design Joanna Sroka ISBN: 978-83-7571-136-3 All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication or its entirety may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any manner that allows repeated use in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, copying, recording or other without the express written permission of copyright owners. Commissioned by Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Krakow University www.ka.edu.pl Publisher Krakow Society for Education: AFM Publishing House (Krakowskie Towarzystwo Edukacyjne sp. z o.o. - Oficyna Wydawnicza AFM; e-mail: [email protected]) Kraków 2010 Print Eikon Plus The publication of this volume was finacially supported by the U.S. Consulate General in Krakow and the Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Krakow University Table of Contents Jaclyn Stanke Introduction......................................................................................................................7 Spasimir Domaradzki The Paradox of Solidarity from a Thirty Years Perspective...................................... 13 Mark Kramer The Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact, and the Polish Crisis of 1980-1981............27 Maryna Bessonova Soviet Attitudes Towards Poland’s Solidarity Movement........................................67 Kostadin Grozev Bulgarian Perspectives of the Solidarity Movement................................................. 79 Rob Verhofstad The Polish Crisis of1981 as seen from the Netherlands..........................................89 Lee Trepanier The U.S. Foreign Policy Establishment’s Perception of Poland (1980-1981) .... 107 Jaclyn Stanke The United States and the Solidarity Movement of 1980-81: A Popular Perspective from American Political Cartoons.....................................119 Appendix A ...................................................................................................................133 Appendix B ...................................................................................................................137 About the Authors....................................................................................................... 141 Jaclyn Stanke Introduction The origins of this volume are rooted in the many discussions and meetings that took place between Maryna Bessonova, Spasimir Domaradzki, and Rob Verhofstad over the past several years. In the summer of 2004, Bessonova and Verhofstad met as Fulbright scholars studying American foreign policy in the United States. In the course of that summer, the two discussed the many different and varying views that existed within Europe concerning America’s foreign policy past and present. Their conversations continued when they returned home and began visiting each other’s universities in Ukraine and the Netherlands as guest lecturers. In the process, they discovered how little their students knew about the Cold War period, not having lived through it or having experienced it themselves. Consequently, their students had a difficult time grasping just what the Cold War was, why it was one of the most significant phenomenons of the twentieth century, and how it affected the daily lives of individuals around the world, including those from their own countries. In the summer of 2005, Domaradzki met Bessonova and Verhofstad at a con ference in Croatia. He shared their concern regarding students’ difficulty in com prehending the Cold War, and as a result a project to explore the Cold War from comparative national perspectives officially began. Over the course of the next few years, the three traveled to each other’s universities to deliver lectures on the Soviet, Dutch, and Polish perspectives. In 2009, Jaclyn Stanke and Lee Trepanier joined the endeavor, providing American perspectives at the conference, “Multilateral Com parison of Cold War Perspectives,” organized by Verhofstad at his home institu tion, Radboud University. The proceedings from the conference were published as Comparative Perspectives on the Cold War: National and Sub-National Approaches (Krakow Society for Education: AFM Publishing House, 2010). Given the success of the Radboud conference, the group agreed to meet again in March 2010 at Domaradzki’s institution, Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Krakow м Jaclyn Stanke ► University, in Poland. The selection of the location for the next conference was not accidental. Thirty years prior, the independent trade union, Solidarity, emerged in Poland to challenge the communist authorities. A conference dedicated to exam ining the Polish crisis of 1980-81 from multiple perspectives seemed appropriate given the fact that not only was it one of the last major events of the Cold War, but because today many consider the events of 1980-81 as instrumental in the eventual fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Though Solidarity was outlawed following the declaration of martial law in December 1981, it reemerged in 1988 to participate in the Round Table talks which helped bring an end to com munism in Poland. In part, then, the conference, “The Solidarity Movement and International Perspectives on the last Decade of the Cold War,” for which the articles in this volume were initially produced, was designed to commemorate the thirtieth anni versary of Solidarity’s birth. Indeed, Tadeusz Syryjczyk, a co-founder of Solidarity in Krakow (and former Minister of Industry, 1989-90, and Minister of Transpor tation, 1998-2000) as well as Allen S. Greenberg, Consul General of the United States in Krakow, helped open the conference. Conference participants also vis ited the Krakow branch office of the Institute of National Remembrance where many records and files from the communist period are kept. Among the other highlights of the conference were Mark Kramer’s lecture on European Security and the Polish-U.S.-Russian Triangle and the group presentations by Domar- adzki’s students. The presentations illustrated the students’ findings on the events of 1980-81, which were gathered from period news items (print, visual, and aural, including both official sources of information as well as unofficial samizdat) and oral history interviews they conducted with individuals who lived through the events. In this way, the project’s objective to educate students more fully about the Cold War was advanced. The students who participated learned about the Cold War in general as well as about particular events from a very specific point in time that took place in their own country. The series of scholarly papers presented at the conference (now printed here in revised form) was another way in which the project worked towards its objectives. Overall, the purpose of the papers was to explore Solidarity and the events of the 1980s, but especially the Polish crisis of 1980-81, from multiple perspectives - including several national perspectives as well as official and unofficial perspectives. The volume’s opening chapter by Domaradzki provides an overview of Solidari ty’s history, detailing its transition from an opposition movement to an integral part of the political system after 1989 and its continuing legacy for Polish politics today. In the course of the article, he raises the question of what exactly is/was Solidarity and is/was there only one Solidarity or many? Mark Kramer then examines the roles that the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact played in the events of 1980-81. In par ticular, he focuses on the threat Solidarity posed to the alliance as well as the intense 8 m Introduction ► pressure the Soviet Union placed upon Polish authorities to crush Solidarity with the eventual imposition of martial law. The next two articles further explore official and unofficial views from behind the Iron Curtain. Bessonova details the official Soviet position on Solidarity and its impact on domestic life in the Soviet Union, especially that of the Ukrainian republic. She notes that while the Soviet authorities viewed Solidarity as an anti socialist organization bent on counterrevolution, many Soviet citizens in Ukraine, particularly those already involved in opposition movements, saw the trade union as not only an example in the struggle against communism but also one for national liberation. Kostadin Grozev, a new addition to the project, provides information on the Bulgarian perspective. Like Bessonova, he makes a distinction between official and unofficial views of the Polish events. Likewise, he highlights the actions taken by Bulgarian officials to control information coming into the nation about what was happening in Poland. However, he also notes that the situation in Bulgaria was very different from that of Poland in 1980. While Poland was suffering under severe economic strain, Bulgarians were enjoying their highest standard of living to date and the nation was considered the closest ally of Moscow. By 1989, however, things had changed and Bulgarians established their own independent trade union a la Solidarity of 1980. The next set of articles explores the Polish crisis from the Western angle. Ex amining the Dutch perspective, Verhofstad locates a response, both officially and unofficially, that was perhaps representative of other NATO members at

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