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NEXT STORY

Intelligentsia fails to support the workers

RELATED STORIES

Workers' protest of 1976
Jan Józef Lipski Social activist
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Po rozgromieniu środowisk studenckich, intelektualnych w tych... w tych wypadkach marcowych, no, nastąpiła jakaś w ogóle przerwa, luka tutaj w życiu opozycji politycznej. I to tak dotrwało...ot, to... było to jeszcze dłużej niż wydarzenia roku ’70 na Wybrzeżu, ale to wprowadziło nową sytuację, mianowicie tak jak to prawie zawsze tutaj w Polsce się zdarzało, wybuch robotniczy, bunt robotniczy był spowodowany przyczynami po pierwsze ekonomicznymi, a po drugie nawet można powiedzieć, że... które miały pewno... trochę błahymi nawet. I zawsze to się tak wydarza, że ludzie tacy mniej dociekliwie myślący o tych sprawach niż należy, to dziwią się i czasami nawet ujmują to w ten sposób, że tak o kiełbasę to oni mogą się zbuntować, a o nic innego. No jest to oczywiście błąd perspektywy, polegający na tym, że motywów jest wiele i motywy są... polegają na ogólnym niezadowoleniu z sytuacji w której człowiek żyje i się znajduje, również i z sytuacji politycznej, i społecznej i tak dalej. Natomiast sytuacja ekonomiczna, która jest również ważnym tutaj motywem, ale jednym z motywów powoduje, że działa nagle zapalnik, który jednocześnie tego samego dnia i o tej samej godzinie działa na tysiące ludzi. Jednocześnie otrzymują ten sam bodziec. I w życiu społecznym tak jest, że bodziec w tej samej minucie otrzymany przez tysiące może coś spowodować, a tym bodźcem jest nagle ogłoszenie przez radio, że coś jest droższe, że coś podrożało czy... czy jakiś inny tego rodzaju moment, prawda, ale który ma tę właśnie właściwość, że to nagle na wszystkich oddziaływuje. Bo nie wierzę, żeby wypadki tego rodzaju jak na Wybrzeżu, to znaczy kiedy wychodzą ogromne... kiedy dziesiątki tysięcy ludzi z wielkim gniewem wychodzą na ulice, podpalają komitety partyjne, narażają się zresztą na to, na co człowiek się zwykle naraża, kiedy w takich... takie rzeczy robi i kiedy naprzeciw widzi uzbrojone czy milicję, czy wojsko, to sama podwyżka takich czy innych cen nigdy nie wydaje mi się dostatecznym motywem tłumaczącym.

No i doszło do tego. I dosyć szybko okazało się, że to przekroczyło rozmiary czegokolwiek dotychczas w Polsce znanego, nie tylko dlatego, że płonęły komitety, ale dlatego, że zaczęła się lać obficie krew. I to... z tym że do dzisiejszego dnia wiele okoliczności z tym związanych nie jest wyjaśnionych, jak to się... staje, że już w pewnym momencie, kiedy już zdaje się, że sytuacja... jakoś się nieco uspakaja, nieco przynajmniej, wzywa się ludzi do powrotu do pracy po to, żeby ustawić naprzeciw wracającym do pracy dobrze ustawione karabiny maszynowe, które strzelają akurat po tym jedynym przejściu, które ci ludzie mają, tak jakby postawił no, fachowy oficer, który wie, jak ckm ma strzelać w czasie akcji bojowych z tym że to strzelano do bezbronnych.

After the defeat of the student intellectuals in the March events, there followed a break, a lull in the life of the political opposition, and it carried on like this, it went on for longer than the events of ‘70 in the coastal towns, but it introduced a new situation. Namely, as was almost always the case here in Poland, a rebellion by the workers, a revolt was sparked off firstly by economic factors and secondly, you could even say that they were trivial reasons, and this is always the case, that people who don't pay these matters the attention they deserve are surprised and sometimes see things in terms of well, yes, they rebel over the price of sausages but nothing else moves them. This, of course, is the wrong way of looking at it because there are many reasons which are… which come from a general dissatisfaction with the situation a person is living in and in which they find themselves, as well their political and social situation, and so on. Whereas the economic situation, which is an equally important motive in this case, but only one motive, acts as a fuse which suddenly affects thousands of people on the same day at the same time. They are all motivated by the same thing at the same moment, and that's how things are in the life of a society, that a prompt felt at the same moment by thousands of people can cause a reaction, and this prompt can be an announcement on the radio that the price of something has gone up, that it's dearer, or something similar which is capable of suddenly affecting everyone at the same time. I don't believe in events like the one that happened in the coastal towns meaning when vast crowds, sometimes several thousand strong, of very angry people take to the streets, setting fire to party committee buildings exposing themselves to the dangers that people usually expose themselves to when they do that kind of thing and then see armed police or soldiers coming towards them. Under those circumstances, just a price rise by itself never seems to be an adequate reason for this. So it came to this, and fairly early on it became clear that this had gone beyond anything that had ever been seen in Poland before, not only because party buildings were set alight but also because a great deal of blood came to be spilled in the streets, and to this day many of the circumstances surrounding this have never been explained. How is it that, just as it seems that the situation is calming down, at least a bit, people were being summoned to return to work, only for the returning workers to be faced with strategically positioned machine guns shooting at the only crossing these people can take, as if the guns had been positioned by, well, by a professional officer who knows how the CKM guns operate in an engagement except that this time, they were shooting at unarmed workers.

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: Jacek Petrycki Marcel Łoziński

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.

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.

Tags: intellectuals, rebellion, economy

Duration: 4 minutes, 17 seconds

Date story recorded: October 1989

Date story went live: 11 March 2011