30th Anniversary of “Solidarity” – searching for its philosophical foundations
By MAGDALENA MODRZEJEWSKA
Lech Walesa at Gdańsk Shipyard.
“Solidarity” (Solidarność) was a unique phenomenon on the world scale. Established in September 1980, it was the first independent labor union in the Soviet bloc. The Solidarity movement developed slowly, in a spontaneous way. When the growing wave of strikes started in 1980 in Gdańsk, no one anticipated that it would become a major source of resistance to the communist government. Workers at the Lenin Shipyard staged a strike, and electrician Lech Walesa emerged as one of the workers’ leaders. In mid-August 1980 an Inter-factory Strike Committee was established in Gdańsk to coordinate rapidly spreading strikes there and elsewhere. The workers presented the Polish government with a list of 21 demands. Negotiations on August 31, 1980 led to an agreement between the government and the Gda?sk strikers that sanctioned free and independent unions with the right to strike, together with greater freedom of religious and political expression.
Adam Michnik and Józef Tischner.
When in September 1980 delegates of regional trade
unions met in Gdańsk, they united under the name Solidarity. A separate agricultural union composed
of private farmers, named Rural Solidarity (Wiejska Solidarność), was founded in Warsaw in
December 1980. It was one of the rare moments of unity in Polish society, with an intellectual and
emotional confederation of the different social groups: peasants, workers and intelligentsia. The
Marxist dream of designing a worker-peasant alliance ironically was fulfilled in the Solidarity movement,
a movement dedicated to fighting Marxist ideology.
By early 1981 Solidarity had a membership of about 10 million people (including many Party activists)
and represented most of the work force of Poland. Bringing together people from different professions,
social classes and social backgrounds, Solidarity is often described as an eclectic and heterogeneous
coalition. Therefore, the effort to find a common philosophical thread in the Solidarity movement
may seem to be hopeless. Still, I would claim that behind the Solidarity movement was solid philosophy,
which was more sophisticated that simple resistance to the communist regime.
To prove this hypothesis I refer to the writings of thinkers that were closely connected with
the Solidarity movement, Father Józef Tischner and Adam Michnik. Father Tischner, A prolific author
of philosophical, literary, religious and popular writings, the first chaplain of the "Solidarity"
movement and a Roman Catholic priest, seems to be an advocate of Christian philosophy. However,
Tischner perceived himself in a quite surprising way. As he said in one of his interviews: "Firstly I
am human being, then philosopher, then for a long, long time nothing, nothing, and then at the end, I am
a priest". His writings are deeply rooted in the tradition of humanism, and appreciation of the value of
particular human beings, but at the same time, he avoids atomism by focusing on interpersonal relationships.
In 1981 Tischner published a significant book, "Spirit of Solidarity," which was a collection of essays. The first essay, entitled "Solidarity of Consciousness," was a sermon delivered at the Wawel castle in Krakow on October 19, 1980 during the annual pilgrimage of workers. The last essay was also a sermon delivered at Wawel on May 3, 1981. In his book, Tischner puts the notion of
Solidarity in a biblical context: "... solidarity does not need to be imposed from the outside by force. This virtue is born of itself, spontaneously, from the heart. Did anybody force the Good Samaritan to bend over the wounded man who lay by the roadside? The Good Samaritan helped his fellow man because such was his goodwill. The virtue of solidarity is an expression of human goodwill. In essence we all are
in solidarity, because in the depth of our souls we are people of goodwill. Solidarity is born out of goodwill and awakens the goodwill in human beings". At the same time, he elevated Solidarity above a mere opposition movement. As he said, "solidarity, (...) does not need an enemy or opponent to strengthen itself and to grow. It turns toward all and not against anyone. The foundation and the source of solidarity lie in whatever constitutes a true goal in the life of each person."
The writings of Adam Michnik, in a superficial analysis, seem to be quite opposite. Michnik - historian, democrat, and self-declared atheist, often wrote under a pseudonym, and his texts were widely disseminated in underground newspapers. He was interned in December 1981 when martial law was declared. When he refused to sign a "loyalty oath" and refused to voluntarily leave the country, he was accused of an "attempt to overthrow socialism" and jailed without a verdict until 1984 because the prosecutor's office prolonged the trial. In 1983 he wrote his most powerful text, an official letter to the Minister of Internal Affairs, General Czeslaw Kiszczak, who was responsible for his imprisonment. In this letter, Michnik wrote: "(1) To admit one's disregard for the law so openly, one would have to be a fool. (2) To offer to a man, who has been held in prison for two years, the Cote d'Azur in exchange for his moral suicide, one would have to be a swine. (3) To believe that I could accept such a proposal is to imagine that everyone is a police collaborator".
Standing firmly for his beliefs, and imprisoned, Michnik was nevertheless free of hatred. The letter ends with a defiant declaration of his intentions to help his oppressors: "As for myself, I hope that when your life is in danger, I will be able to appear in time to help you as I did in Otwock when I helped save the lives of those few of your subordinates, that I will be able to place myself once again on the side of the victims and not that of the victimizers. Even if, afterward, you should once more wonder at my incorrigible stupidity and decide to lock me back in prison all over again."
When you compare these two samples of thinking, Józef Tischner represents Christian philosophy and Adam Michnik represents an atheist or agnostic position, but both of thoee thinkers, rooted in different traditions, use the same terms and tools to show how to fight with a totalitarian regime in a peaceful way. Both proved that Solidarity was fighting for something, not only against something. It was a movement fighting for the dignity of each individual and for personal freedoms, and was never a movement of hatred.
Dr. Modrzejewska was visiting professor in the Skalny Center in Spring 2010. She is assistant professor in the Institute of American Studies and Polish Diaspora, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.