One Step at a Time

News media in the Soviet Union, reporting on the political and economic reforms that have been agreed to by Poland’s government and the once-outlawed Solidarity trade union, have not gone out of their way to explain that the accord will allow the first free parliamentary elections in Eastern Europe since the Communists seized power there after World War II. No doubt the Soviets will eventually get around to telling the fuller story. After all, it was only the other day--33 years after the event--that the official press finally broke its silence about Nikita Khrushchev’s famous “secret speech” on the crimes of the Stalin era. Glasnost or not, Soviet officials still think there are some things Soviet citizens are better off not knowing. The prospect of a genuinely democratic election in neighboring Poland is apparently one.

There are good reasons for the Soviets to be attentive to and maybe even uneasy about what is happening in Poland, for the scheduled changes promise to be historic and quite possibly exemplary. On the political front Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski’s regime has accepted a power-sharing arrangement under which 35% of the seats in the policy-initiating lower house are to go to non-Communists, while all seats in a newly resurrected upper house will be open to competitive elections. The Communist Party and the tame smaller parties that it long ago co-opted will remain firmly in control under this plan, with Jaruzelski becoming president and wielding broad powers. But independent non-Communists are expected to gain a recognized and substantial voice in Poland’s affairs, not least in a senate that will function for the first time since 1946. No less significantly, Solidarity has been reinstated as a legal entity and given permission to publish its own newspapers.

On the economic front the accord provides for partial indexing of workers’ wages, for removal of restrictions on the private acquisition and ownership of farmland and for local control over rural development projects. In addition, there was general agreement between Solidarity and the government on the need to move Poland toward a less centralized, more market-oriented economy, though details of how that might be accomplished are lacking.

The Jaruzelski regime was driven to these sweeping concessions by the engine of desperate necessity. Poland’s economy is in a state of crisis, sagging under a $38-billion foreign debt, enervated by an inflation rate as high as 80%, unable to produce or import many of the goods Poles need and want, incapable of securing popular cooperation either by inspiration or intimidation. And so what in any authoritarian state is the ultimate compromise will now be tried. The opposition has been invited to lend a hand in trying to steer the country through its troubles. People are to be given a say--greater than at any time since 1945, although still very limited--in shaping their own futures.

The Polish reforms go well beyond anything the Soviets are thinking of, and astute Polish reformers understand the uncertainty and anxiety all this could arouse in the Kremlin. Lech Walesa, the Solidarity leader, says he wants to go to Moscow to offer assurances that what is happening in Poland is for Poland alone, and is not aimed at stirring things up elsewhere in Eastern Europe or undercutting the economic restructuring planned in the Soviet Union. “We would like to resolve our problems and not disturb anyone . . . above all, don’t disturb.”

Those words seem clearly aimed not just at calming Soviet apprehensions but, at least as important, at cooling the ardor of more militant Polish reformers. Walesa appreciates that Poles must be content for now with the achievements that have just been nailed down after long and arduous negotiations. To press for more too soon would almost certainly jeopardize the fragile gains that have been made. In the circumstances the cautious approach clearly seems to be the right one. The test now will be whether skeptical conservatives inside the Jaruzelski regime and impatient reformers outside it will give the more liberal approach a chance to prove itself.