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Persecution of KOR's members by the authorities

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KOR monitors the strikes
Jan Józef Lipski Social activist
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It didn't happen as fast as we'd thought but from 1 July there wasn't a single day when there wasn't a strike happening somewhere in Poland. We noted all of this and tried to keep the public informed of where the strikes were, who was striking, which places were on strike, what demands were being made by the strikers, had a strike committee been elected or not, were negotiations with the management or with the authorities underway. We tried to make sure that everyone knew about this, and each day was the same: in the morning, the news would reach KOR [Komitet Obrony Robotników (Workers' Defence Committee)] generally via Jacek Kuroń's phone but also through other phone lines that somewhere, usually in some provincial towns here and there, there were strikes. Who was calling us? The people who had at one time or another got hold of a KOR newspaper and had made a note of the phone numbers of KOR members, and they felt it was their duty to inform KOR about the various strikes. Sometimes, we received calls from people who were more organised, meaning people who made up the small groups that distributed our publication Robotnik. They knew that if a strike was about to start, the details of the strike had to be passed on to KOR. The next thing we had to do was to check every bit of information because we were afraid that the secret police try to make fools of us and that we'd start passing on false information which would make people lose confidence in KOR and then they'd stop believing us. Because of this, we had to organise a way of checking this information but the strikes were spreading across the whole of Poland. It was a massive job and I have to say that the editorial team at Robotnik and Jacek Kuroń were the main organisers. Jacek Kuroń in particular focused on the job of disseminating information. A kind of office was set up for Jacek Kuroń where information was received and passed on. Once the information had been checked, it was passed on without any reservations or misgivings to foreign correspondents. We believed that this was the only way in which the information would get back to society in Poland, and if something as significant as a wave of strikes was occurring, people in Poland had a right to know about it and we had a duty to participate in the spreading of the news. In the evenings, when we'd tune into one or another radio station broadcasting in Polish – although you didn't have to listen in Polish as broadcasts were transmitted in English or in French depending on which language people were best able to listen to in – we'd learn of new strikes in Poland, the ones that had begun that morning. I have to say, this was one thing that KOR managed particularly well, and when later during the Solidarity period we recorded everything, it turned out that at most, we'd missed 5% of the strikes, sometimes we were a few days late reporting them but I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of strikes that we missed.

Przebiegało to dużo...nie tak szybko jak nam się zdawało, ale od 1 lipca nie było w Polsce dnia bez strajku. Myśmy to wszystko rejestrowali i starali się, żeby opinia publiczna wiedziała: gdzie strajkuje, kto strajkuje, jakie zakłady, z jakich...jakie postulaty strajkujący zgłaszają, czy wybrali komitet strajkowy czy nie, czy odbywają się jakieś pertraktacje z dyrekcją albo z jakimiś władzami. Staraliśmy się, żeby każdy o tym wiedział i scenariusz był tutaj każdego dnia ten sam: rano przychodziły do KOR-u wiadomości, głównie na telefon Jacka Kuronia, ale również i na niektóre inne telefony, że gdzieś z jakichś miast prowincjonalnych przeważnie, że tu i tam jest strajk. Kto telefonował? Telefonowali ludzie, którzy mieli kiedyś prasę KOR-owską i sobie pozapisywali telefony członków KOR-u i mieli to poczucie obowiązku, że jeżeli gdzieś się strajkuje, to KOR powinien wiedzieć. Czasami telefonowali ludzie bardziej zorganizowani, to znaczy akurat członkowie tych paroosobowych grup kolportujących nasze czasopismo „Robotnik”. Ci wiedzieli dobrze, że jeżeli zaczną się strajki to KOR musi być dokładnie o tym informowany. Następnym ruchem było to, że myśmy musieli każdą informację sprawdzać, bo baliśmy się, że bezpieka będzie nas robiła w konia i że my zaczniemy podawać wiadomości fałszywe, które spowodują spadek zaufania do KOR-u i że nie będą nam ludzie wierzyć. W związku z tym trzeba było organizować sprawdzanie tego, a fala strajkowa szła przez całą Polskę, to tu, to tam wybuchały strajki. Była to ogromna robota i trzeba powiedzieć, że redakcja „Robotnika” i Jacek Kuroń byli głównymi organizatorami tego. Jacek Kuroń przede wszystkim skoncentrował się na akcji informacyjnej. Powstało coś w rodzaju biura takiego u Jacka Kuronia, gdzie przyjmowano i nadawano jednocześnie informacje. W momencie, kiedy już informacja była sprawdzona, podawało się ją bez żadnych hamulców, bez żadnych tam niepokojów w duszy, że czy tak można, korespondentom zagranicznym. Byliśmy zdania, że tylko tą drogą to wróci do społeczeństwa polskiego, a że jeżeli się dzieje taka rzecz jak... ważna jak ruch strajkowy to społeczeństwo polskie ma prawo być informowane, a my mamy obowiązek się do tego przyczynić. Wieczorem, kiedy się otwierało to czy inne radio nadające w języku polskim, a również można było niekoniecznie w języku polskim, po angielsku, po francusku to usłyszeć, zależnie kto w jakim języku jest w stanie radia słuchać, dowiadywaliśmy się o nowych strajkach w Polsce, tych, które rano właśnie wybuchły. Była to jedna z rzeczy, które się KOR-owi szczególnie udały. Muszę powiedzieć, jak potem rejestrowaliśmy już w czasach „Solidarności”, to się okazało, że maksimum 5% strajków przeoczyliśmy, czasami się spóźnialiśmy o parę dni, ale żeby przeoczyć to... to niemal na palcach ręki można policzyć takie wypadki.

Jan Józef Lipski (1926-1991) was one of Poland's best known political activists. He was also a writer and a literary critic. As a soldier in the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), he fought in the Warsaw Uprising. In 1976, following worker protests, he co-founded the Workers' Defence Committee (KOR). His active opposition to Poland's communist authorities led to his arrest and imprisonment on several occasions. In 1987, he re-established and headed the Polish Socialist Party. Two years later, he was elected to the Polish Senate. He died in 1991 while still in office. For his significant work, Lipski was honoured with the Cross of the Valorous (Krzyż Walecznych), posthumously with the Grand Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1991) and with the highest Polish decoration, the Order of the White Eagle (2006).

Listeners: Marcel Łoziński Jacek Petrycki

Film director Marcel Łoziński was born in Paris in 1940. He graduated from the Film Directing Department of the National School of Film, Television and Theatre in Łódź in 1971. In 1994, he was nominated for an American Academy Award and a European Film Academy Award for the documentary, 89 mm from Europe. Since 1995, he has been a member of the American Academy of Motion Picture Art and Science awarding Oscars. He lectured at the FEMIS film school and the School of Polish Culture of Warsaw University. He ran documentary film workshops in Marseilles. Marcel Łoziński currently lectures at Andrzej Wajda’s Master School for Film Directors. He also runs the Dragon Forum, a European documentary film workshop.

Cinematographer Jacek Petrycki was born in Poznań, Poland in 1948. He has worked extensively in Poland and throughout the world. His credits include, for Agniezka Holland, Provincial Actors (1979), Europe, Europe (1990), Shot in the Heart (2001) and Julie Walking Home (2002), for Krysztof Kieslowski numerous short films including Camera Buff (1980) and No End (1985). Other credits include Journey to the Sun (1998), directed by Jesim Ustaoglu, which won the Golden Camera 300 award at the International Film Camera Festival, Shooters (2000) and The Valley (1999), both directed by Dan Reed, Unforgiving (1993) and Betrayed (1995) by Clive Gordon both of which won the BAFTA for best factual photography. Jacek Petrycki is also a teacher and a filmmaker.

Tags: Poland, KOR, Workers Defence Committee, Robotnik, Jacek Kuroń

Duration: 3 minutes, 24 seconds

Date story recorded: October 1989

Date story went live: 14 March 2011