Jacek Kuroń - The demise of the Polish October (57/150)

To listen to more of Jacek Kuroń’s stories, go to the playlist:    • Jacek Kuroń (Social activist)   Polish activist Jacek Kuroń (1934-2004) helped to transform the political landscape of Poland. He was expelled from the communist party, arrested and incarcerated. He was also instrumental in setting up Workers' Defence Committee (KOR) and became a Minister of Labour and Social Policy. [Listeners: Jacek Petrycki, Marcel Łoziński; date recorded: 1987] TRANSCRIPT: We would collect supplements from 'Życie Warszawy' and 'Trybuna' from Dom Słowa Polskiego, special supplements which we distributed by night across town where we had our new office staff. The following day, Kliszko and Starewicz came to see us. They'd come on account of the artists across the way from us because they'd suddenly become active. Altogether around that time, when it was already too late, lots of people suddenly became very active. They made this huge banner saying, 'Rokossowski go to Russia', and were handing out leaflets which they lithographed with pictures. This unnerved the Party leaders so Kliszko came down with Starewicz and asked us if we were behind this, and we said no, it's the artists from the art school across the way. Can we take them there? We can, so Jędrek Garlicki and I went there with them. We told them that this was Kliszko and Starewicz and we'd listened to what they had to say and I'm not going to repeat it again. What was important was that as we were leaving, we both said to one another: well, the new ones are coming back. We sat down and drew up a leadership straight away for that university organisation, and we decided, I keep saying university organisation committee but ZMP had broken up completely, there were about 500 of us gathered there. Oh, those were the days when you had to keep your people on standby in the university courtyard in the plenary rooms so they would always be ready to walk out. Staszewski was gripped by the idea that this session could be forced to compromise by demonstrations. At the same time, we had to make sure no one was going to lead the people out on the streets because that would have been a pretext for the army to move in. Say what you like, but Staszewski risked everything at that point, there's no doubt about it. We called the governing body together and said, 'You have to be prepared to take up determined, oppositional action.' This was around eleven, twelve o'clock. I don't remember what time it was - twelve? one? There was a huge meeting of the residents of Warsaw in the courtyard, in Parade Square. We'd all marched down there from all over the city, there was a huge crowd and Gomułka said, 'Go home.' We were all saying, well, he's not much of a revolutionary leader, he'd like to hide us in his pocket now; we were still in a fighting mood. Soon after this, something started which I'm now convinced was simply an expression of enthusiasm and of joy on the part of the people who wanted to do something, to take to the streets, to march, so now that's what they did, they took to the streets. We decided this was provocation, this was going to give the army an excuse to get involved. We tried to guide these protests away from any sensitive points that they could attack like the prison, the Soviet embassy. Our people were leading the crowd and were shouting out slogans. Everyone laughed when Modzelewski was walking at the head of the crowd shouting, 'Rokossowski go to Russia!' They had liasion people who were around calling the university committee where there were three people studying a map and telling them which way to go or where not to go or whether to turn back and to go by a different route. Later, the following day, the comrades from security told us, 'We had no idea what was going on with that protest march.' Everyone had lost their marbles - they were going forward then they were backing up. I was standing in front of the Central Committee and the KBW was there, too, with a massive crowd coming to see Gomułka. It was pressing forward but behind there was the KBW and they were armed with guns. We were explaining to them that between the KBW and these people, that they can't. But they were shouting, 'When Wiesław shows up we'll go away.' Wiesław came out, said something, nodded his head: people, go home. Exactly. This wasn't Gomułka. [...] Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/jac... to read the remaining part of the transcript.