Word: gdansk
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Meanwhile, in Gdansk, Solidarity's national commission held an emergency session on how to deal with the government. For three days, union leaders angrily debated the question of just how far they could push the beleaguered officials under the threat of possible Soviet intervention. Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa later described their dilemma: "Should we behave as a typical trade union that makes demands or should we attempt, as Poles and citizens, to go in a slightly different direction...
...Walesa seems to have shepherded the union once again down the path of moderation. The final Gdansk communique called for a halt to further food protests until the second half of Solidarity's national congress ends in mid-October. Citing the country's "serious economic and social situation," the resolution also urged workers to give up eight free Saturdays this year to boost production of coal, food and exports. Tensions eased following the publication of the Gdansk communiqué, which the official party daily Trybuna Ludu called "a partial return to realistic thinking...
With the deepening food crisis, the public mood has shifted from resignation to anger. "Waiting in line is a national sickness," complained a Gdansk woman, who takes turns in the queues with her husband and two teen-age children. Snapped an unmarried Lodz textile worker: "We have been making sacrifices for years, but nothing has changed for the better. They need to improve our working conditions and give us some more food before they start talking of sacrifices...
...extraordinary gathering was dominated by new faces, new ideas and new expectations. The members came from all over Poland: brawny shipyard workers from Gdansk, deeply tanned farmers from Poznan, professors from Cracow. Their average age was only 40. They had been chosen by secret ballots in elections at their local party units; 91% had never before taken part in such a referendum. But when the 1,955 delegates converged last week on Warsaw's Palace of Culture and Science, a towering marble-and-granite edifice given to the Polish people by Joseph Stalin in the 1950s, they seemed determined...
...shelves emptier - than they were a year ago. Unless the workers scale back their demands, there seems to be little chance for national recovery. "If this continues, those who applauded us in August 1980 will be throwing stones at us," Walesa admonished at a Solidarity meeting in Gdansk last week. That would be a rude awakening indeed from the dream of odnowa...