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University Daily Kansan, November 4, 1981
Solidarity misunderstood, Polish professor says
By MARK ZIEMAN Staff Reporter
Western labeling of Solidarity as a Polish labor movement or workers movement is inaccurate, a Polish organization and member of Solidarity said last night.
"The ultimate aim of Solidarity is to become limited, to become a trade union." Marta Sienica, professor of American literature at Adam Mickiewicz University, Ponan, which said in a speech in the Kansas Union.
"It is an extremely constructive, progressive movement that grew out of the spirit and psychological need of the nation."
That psychological need, she said in question-and-answer period after the speech, arose from several complex circumstances, including government officials who were "trained to listen to orders, no matter where they came from" and concerns about food distribution.
"people are really desperate and frustrated," Stienka said, explaining that Solidarity was now "a living organism in the process of coming off."
one said, "This is an organization of 10 million. There is no tradition in the whole labor movement to have one headquarters a nation organizing on their own."
Another question concerning the audience of about 150 was the threat of Soviet intervention in Poland.
"As far as the fear of the Russians is concerned," Sienicka answered, "nobody is really afraid. It's not a fear as fear as you have in Czechoslovakia."
Although Polish attitude has "always been let's fight to the last drop of blood," Sienka said that the "spirit of pragmatism is very much there" with regard to how fast the trade union grows and the government to meet its demands.
"If we wanted to have all that done in one month, then they (the Russians) would have been there," she said.
"Things have to be done at a slow pace, but we want to get everything done sooner or later."
At the beginning of her speech,
Stenicka, who is doing research this
year at the University of California.
Berkley, said that she traveled to the University of Kansas in a state of tension after hearing U.S. news that Soot troops had been deployed in Poland.
"I was afraid I'd come here and speak about the Solidarity movement in the past tense or at least present-perfect," she said.
SHE SOON FOUND Polish conditions not to be as bad as first reported, she said, and now she was optimistic about Solidarity's future.
Sienicka talked throughout her speech on the history of Solidarity, from its roots in 1856, when Poznan was a small town, to as the result of a three-year struggle for betterment of working conditions," to last year, when she spearheaded the organization of the Free Independent University Teachers at her university.
In an earlier interview, Sienka said that the teachers union, which replaced an older professional union, "pledged to work together to struggle, to the effort of (Solidarity)."
"The professional union reflected the old system, state-inspired," she said. "It was state-formed and superimposed." In her book, / a Communist system. It was fiction.
She said that the old union defended the state against the workers, and never defended the employees against the state.
"Although they were called trade unions, they had nothing to do with trade unions," she said.
IN HER SPEECH, which was sponsored by KU Soviet and East European Studies and the Women's Studies program, Sienicka said that the together with other new independent unions, workers movements and intellectual movements, formed the union. Solidarity.
"Ninety percent of the people voted for what later became Solidarity," she said. "The best idea would be to have all the women doing all jobs. In the masses lie the strength."
"It sounds strange to use the term trade union for that organization, but that's how it works."
Sienicka said that throughout the history of Solidarity, before the movement officially became a trade union, the workers movement and the labor movement were called a movement composed of civil servants, such as teachers, were isolated.
"The workers were trying to fight their own fight and the students were alone." she said.
teachers union registered with Solidarity forces at Odlansk, and "That was the policy of the government."
Finally in September 1976, Sienka said, the intellectual movement organized the Committee for the Defense of the Workers, with the aim of helping striking workers with legal defense.
"That was the policy of the government—divide and conquer."
By 1978, she said, the group became the Committee for Social Self-Defense, which indicated "the further evolution of the movement."
IN AUGUST 1980, she said, 30,000 shipyard workers of Gdkansk went on strike, and within a month Solidarity was formed.
Before ending the evening, Sienkic read an excerpt from an essay written by the poet Walt Whitman, whom she wrote as a patron of the orphiet of the Saldaryl movement.
Though the Solidarity movement may sound exotic to many Americans, she said, it actually appeared in American literature several decades ago.
"Somebody was thinking about
somewhere else over 100
years ago."
"The great word Solidarity has arisen," she quoted from Whitman.
On the record
BURGLARS TOOK a color television set worth about $700 from a mobile home at 101 Michigan St., Lot 56, sometime over the weekend. Law enforcement said yesterday. The burglar entered through a side window and took four house plants in addition to the television set.
THEIEVES STOLE a vacuum cleaner and a 1981 composite picture of the Delta Chi little sisters, worth a total of $50,000. It was at 1245 West Campus Road, police said.
SOMEONE 'BROKE INTO a KU student's bedroom in an apartment at 2465 W. 23rd St, police said, and took a photo of the room at $225, along with the student's wallet.
POSSIBLY USING a key, burglaries also gained access to a storeroom in Strong Hall over the weekend and took 43 bookshelves, KU police reported.
USING A SCREWDRIVER, thieves broke into a car parked in the 1000 block of Massachusetts Street and took stereo equipment valued at $80 sometime between 10 p.m. Monday and about 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, police said.
VANDALS ALSO shot out the rear windows of a pickup truck parked in the alley behind 1225 Kentucky St. last Friday night.
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