Solidarity’s Message to the Workers of Eastern Europe

Solidarity, Message to the Working People of Eastern Europe. September 9, 1981

 

Original Source: Warsaw Radio, 9 September 1981 and 18 September 1981.

Message to the Working People of Eastern Europe

Delegates assembled in Gdansk at the first … Solidarity congress send workers of Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, GDR, Romania, Hungary and all nations of the Soviet Union greetings and expressions of support. As the first independent trade union in our postwar history, we are profoundly aware of the fact that we share the same fate. We assure you that despite lies disseminated in your countries, we are an authentic representative organ of workers with 10 million members, an organ that was created as a result of workers’ strikes.

Our goal is to struggle to improve the lives of all working people. We support those of you who have decided to embark on the difficult path of struggle for a free union movement. We believe that it will not be long now before our representatives will be able to meet your representatives in order to exchange their experiences as unionists.

The Soviet Response

Stanislaw Kania, first secretary of the PUWP Central Committee and Wojciech Jaruzelski, chairman of the Council of Ministers, received Soviet Ambassador Boris Aristov, who on behalf of the highest party and state leadership of the USSR said that the CPSU Central Committee and the Soviet Government are forced to draw the attention of the PUWP Central Committee and the Government of the Polish People’s Republic to the growth of anti-Sovietism in Poland, which has increased to such an extent that it has reached dangerous limits.

The facts testify that an acute and unbridled campaign against the Soviet Union and its foreign and domestic policy is … being extensively waged in the country and that it is going unpunished. These are not isolated, irresponsible attacks but the coordinated action of enemies of socialism with a precisely determined political thrust. Their main goal is to smear and slander the first socialist state in the world and the very idea of socialism, to arouse enmity and hatred among the Poles toward the Soviet Union and Soviet people, to break the bonds of fraternal friendship linking our peoples and as a result to tear Poland from the socialist community and to liquidate socialism in Poland.

The anti-Soviet campaign is penetrating increasingly deeply into different spheres of the country’s social life, including ideology, culture, and the system of education… The history of relations between our countries is being sharply distorted. Fierce propaganda against the Soviet Union is to be discerned on the pages of various publications, on cinema screens and on theatrical stages… It is to be heard openly in public speeches to mass audiences by the ringleaders of KSS-KOR, the Confederation for an Independent Poland and Solidarity.

The first round of the Solidarity trade union congress in essence became a platform from which slanders and insults were directed at our state. An outrageous provocation was the so-called message to the working people of Eastern Europe, adopted in Gdansk. Anti-Soviet forces continue to sully the memory of Soviet soldiers who in the hundreds of thousands gave their lives for the freedom and independence of the Polish nation. These forces are defiling their graves. Threats are appearing against soldiers of Soviet Army units, which are standing guard over the western boundaries of the socialist community, of which the Polish People’s Republic is also a part.

The antisocialist forces are … evoking an atmosphere of extreme nationalism in Poland, giving it a distinctly anti-Soviet character, while the scale of intensity and degree of hostility of the current anti-Soviet campaign in Poland is taking on anti-Soviet characteristics which are kindled in some imperialist states.

This cannot but give rise to this question in our country: Why, on the part of official authorities in Poland, have no decisive steps been taken up to now to put an end to the hostile campaign against the USSR, with which People’s Poland is linked by friendly relations and alliance obligations? This stand even contradicts the Constitution of the Polish People’s Republic, where the principle of strengthening friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union is written.

We do not know of one single case of instigators of anti-Soviet provocations meeting with a sharp reaction from the authorities and being punished.

What is more, they are being given access to hold meetings … ; the mass media are being made available; and technical means are allocated, al though it is known in advance for what purposes they will be used. More than once we drew the attention of the leadership of the PUWP and the Government of the Polish People’s Republic to the rising tide of anti-Sovietism in Poland. We spoke about this during the meeting in Moscow in March, and in April in Warsaw. We wrote about this with complete openness in the letter of the CPSU Central Committee on 5 June. We also talked about it during the meeting in the Crimea in August of this year..

The Soviet people, who made enormous sacrifices in the name of the liberation of Poland from fascist bondage and who unselfishly helped and are helping your country, have a full moral right to demand that an end be put to the anti-Soviet impudence in the Polish People’s Republic.

The CPSU Central Committee and the Soviet Government consider that further tolerance of any … anti-Sovietism causes tremendous damage to Polish-Soviet relations and is in direct contradiction with the commitments … taken on by Poland, and to the vital interests of the Polish people. We expect that the leadership of the PUWP and the Government of the Polish People’s Republic will without delay take resolute and radical steps in order to stop the malicious anti-Soviet propaganda and acts which are hostile to the Soviet Union.

Source: Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report (10 September 1981), G1, and 18 September 1981), F1-F2.

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