Word: rakowsky
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...breakthrough came at a seven-hour meeting between Deputy Premier Mieczyslaw Rakowski and Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa on the eve of the threatened strike. There was little optimism when those talks got under way at noon in Warsaw's 17th century Koniecpolski Palace. Three previous meetings had failed to defuse the crisis that erupted last month when police in the northwestern city of Bydgoszcz brutally evicted 26 union members from a provincial assembly hall. Indeed, a massive warning strike to protest the beatings had halted the country for four hours on March 27. With Solidarity brandishing a list...
...Rakowski pulled no punches. He opened the talks by telling Walesa bluntly that the government would declare a state of emergency and possibly call in the army if the general strike took place. As Solidarity Spokesman Janusz Onyszkiewicz later recounted, the government side threatened a "total confrontation including some bloodshed. This time it looked like it was not a bluff." With that grim threat waving over them, the Solidarity delegates dropped their unyielding stance and began working toward a compromise agreement. They were apparently also prompted by some behind-the-scenes mediation from Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, the Primate of Poland...
Hope of averting a catastrophe seemed to depend on Walesa's continuing talks with Rakowski. When the Solidarity leader arrived at Warsaw's Council of Ministers building for Wednesday's meeting, supporters hoisted him on their shoulders and chanted his nickname: "Leszek! Leszek!" Barely 85 minutes later, when Walesa emerged, there was nothing to cheer about: there had been no progress. "The government," he explained, "had no proposal in relation to our demands...
...their own demands, regardless of the cost to the nation, or whether they will, like West German unions, moderate their demands so as not to harm the overall economy." Poles at large were generally aware of that danger. The country's economy, as Communist Party Official Mieczyslaw Rakowski describes it, "already resembles a punching bag hanging from a thin thread...
Describing the quandary facing the leadership, Central Commitee Member Mieczyslaw Rakowski told TIME: "For the party, this was a huge shock. These changes should be carried out by the party. But you can't do this under shock." Despite the confusion sown by the strike experience, Rakowski felt that the promised reforms could be "a very positive step toward a socialist system that will be accepted by the people...