textfiles/politics/SPUNK/sp000203.txt

The following comes from Winter 1988 "Across Frontiers" pp 11-12
Individual Subscrpt. $10/yr to Across Frontiers, POB 2382, Berkeley,CA 94702

                   Poland - Anarchism And Youth In Poland

                              Franek Michalski

   Ask about anarchism in Poland and you might get a noncommital shrug or a 
lecture about the pre-WWII cooperative movement and the libertarian socialist
philoshopy of Edward Abramowski.
   Or, perhaps, you'll be told about "those crazies" in Gdansk, the RSA. The
Movement for an Alternative Society (RSA) gained national noteriety by leading
a youth contingent which fought the police in the May Day demonstration in 
1985. Fleeing cops were pelted with rocks, and local residents found them-
selves sheltering policemen in their homes to protect them from demonstrators.
   Street militance, especially in the period after martial law, is not in 
itself unusual. What make RSA unique is its explicit anarchism. Its newspaper
"Homek" which published 28 issues from 1983 to 1986, has carried articles con-
demning the authority of the state, the army, and even the Church and the more
traditional, Solidarity-identified opposition groups. "Our philosophy," said
one Homek contributor, "is that it is forbidden to forbid."
   On the army: "We do not regard alternative service as a final goal, but as
a means of getting rid of the army altogether. The struggle against the army 
is part of the program, whose goal is to abolish state authority over the 
individual - more broadly, the elimination of violence in public life, the 
elimination of censorship and the death penalty. We fight for the right to 
associate freely, for the right to independant culture and education. We fight
to protect the natural environment (we are opposed to Russian-styled nuclear
power plants in Poland). This cannot be achieved instantaneously (either by
miracle or by revolution) -- it should be approached in stages -- today's 
stage is the army!" [RSA leaflet "Schweik", July 1986]
   On work: "The problem [of routine, meaningless work] will never be solved 
by idealogues. When they come to power all they care about is production...The
worker has to [humanize work] himself...He cannot depend on representatives 
and on politicians' negotiations. Only group representation, with frequent
rotation and without chairmen, will prevent the question of work from being
drowned in discussions. We cannot let this mistake made by Solidarity repeat
itself....The problem of the relation between superior and subordinate...will
continue to exist until all authority and property is abolished." [Dmytro 
Lewycki in Homek, October 1986.]
   On the "self-limiting revolution": "Our leaders and their advisers first
gave up on the general strike, then on strikes of any kind, on demonstrations,
and lately -- at least in Gdansk -- they've given up on doing anything at 
all....If everybody sat around wondering "is it time yet?" in August 1980, 
nothing would have happened. Our passivity and self-limitation in struggle 
encourages the Reds to step up 'normalization,' that is, the total enslavement
of the nation." [Piotr Lubik, Homek, November 1985.
   Many people in Poland, from all segments of the political spectrum, would 
dismiss the RSA philosophy as "a naive and anachronistic rehash of leftism....
based on an impetuous attack on the state and the law from a position of the
"state of nature" (hence the name 'Homek'), which provoke only "laughter, 
pity, and....outrage at the trampling of Church and the insults to Walesa...."
[M.K. in the introduction to an interview with RSA activists in 'Przeglad
Politycsny', No. 6, Gdnask 1985.]
   But this same commentator went on to say that even RSA's critics have a 
certain respect for RSA's practical good sense in concrete actions such as the
campaign against mailitary service and the May Day demos.
   The influence of explicit anarchist philosophy along with the less tangible
anarchistic attitude toward society has made itself felt in the new forms of 
political activism of which WiP (Freedom and Peace) is the most visible 
example. RSA has taken an active part in the antimilitarism campaign led by
WiP, though the groups are quiet different from each other. WiP is national, 
RSA is primarily a Gdansk group; WiP maintains close contacts with the 
Solidarity opposition and has a public profile in which people act in their 
own names; Homek's contributors all use pseudonyms. (And WiP has had a far 
greater impact on the contry, the opposition, and young people generally.) Yet
both of these groups share a libertarian "youth culture" elan. This is 
especially true of the WiP group in Gdansk, which publishes a journal called
'A Capella', with the A always circled.
   From 'A Capella': "Wolnosc i Pokoj (WiP) is a generational movement. It 
brings together young people who are not apathetic about the world, who 
believe that 'something' can be accomplished. We are differnt kinds of people:
anarchists and church activists, politiacls and moralists, hippies and punks.
We don't have a unifying ideology, a standard uniform, or identical haircuts.
What we have in common are the problems that we want to solve, and our 
opposition to the violence that pervades our world.
   "We believe that militarism threatens humanity. We believe that a human
being is more important than the collectivity in which s/he lives. We believe
that everyone has a right to one's own life and to order it according to one's
own ideas. No authority can violate this right. WE DEMAND THE ABOLITION OF 
COMPULSORY MILITARY SERVICE and military education in the school system. WE
WANT TO BREATHE CLEAN AIR, DRINK CLEAN WATER, EAT HEALTHY FOOD. WE DEMAND A
HALT TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT, A HALT TO BUILDING NUCLEAR
POWER PLANTS.
  "We example to accomplish these goals by non-violent struggle, for example,
by individual acts of refusing military service or the army oath, refusing to
pay court fines, demonstrations, collecting signatures on petitions, hunger 
strikes, and, of course, throught the widest possible repression against us.
We cooperate with many pacifist and anarchist groups around the world. This 
includes Amnesty International, the international organization for defending
human rights. Along with AI we demand THE ABOLITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY and a
halt to persecution of people because of their views, their religion, 
nationality, skin color, etc." ['Di-da', a supplement to A Cappela. Summer 
1987.]
   Anarchism, youth culture, a "green" sensibility (ecology, anti-militarism,
direct action politics) intermingle and reinforce each other in Poland. This 
is despite the fact -- and because of the fact -- that all these groups take
pride in their autonomy. Sometimes "mainstream" underground papers accuse 
their "younger" brethern of "bad influences." Warsaw's KOS, in objecting to 
an A Capella piece critical of the Solidarity leadership, complained that it
was prepared by RSA. No, came the reply, C C is not edited by RSA but by the
WiP group in Gdansk, and there is no direct connection. The article in 
question was simply a way of "saying what is obvious but not often stated out
loud: Solidarity is not a monolith and dissenting voices ought to be heard."
[A Capella April 1987]
   The publications of the new groups are full of iconoclastic cartoons and
graphics, provocative poetry ("The Pope's a Superstar" -- we've made him a
celebrity, a prisoner of the admiring throng) and punk-rock lyrics ("I want to
be a deserter that's got a chance of surviving"). Alongside these are state-
ments of conscience by draft refusers, articles on the dangers of nuclear
power plants, and descriptions of demonstrations, arrests, and protest 
actions. 
   Significantly, there has arisen a discussion of youth culture itself. One
article note with alarm the self-destructive aspects of the varied subcultures
in Poland. A punk is as likely to be attacked on the street by another young
person as by the police. Even though this can be attributed to the general
represive atmosphere. says the author, this does not make it easier to accept
the fact that "the streets today are ruled by satanists and skin-heads...whose
Soviet version are the Lubercy." [Andrzej Blewski in Szczecin WiP Magazine, 
June 1987]
   A different perspectuve comes in "Destroy the cage," an article which ex-
amines the political implications of essentially apolitical punk music. "Its
instinctual mockery of conventional lifestyle, politicians, and high culture,
along with the necessity of living on the margins of society, makes punk 
culture either a means of escaping an incomfortable reality -- or the seeds of
struggle against it. (And it cannot be denied that the relative freedom for
alternative culture to grow in Poland is due to the political conscious oppo-
sition movement." [Franek Skandal in A Cappela February 1987]
   All of this adds up to a new generation of activism, diverse, iconoclatic,
idealistic....whose philosophy is perhaps best expressed by the motto on the 
A Cappella title page: "Live and let others live."