5
Constructing the foundations: factory organizations. Conflicts in Lower Silesia and Mazowsze: "extremists" on the attack. The beginnings of regional structures: history, specifics, organization. The ICC: a centralized structure or a federation?

Lis I.6

From the bottom up, not the top down: this was the demand of the ubiquitous "wall art," and it was this organizational principle that won the most adherents. Yet "the bottom" was conceived of in many different ways. One region saw the workplaces as the basis of the new structures; another region thought that activity should be organized by independent groups based on common interests, neighborhoods, or generational ties. All other bodies, from regional committees up to an eventual national leadership, would come only later. Opinion was divided as to the potential usefulness of these last .

As a result, therefore, the organizational shape of the underground in a given region stemmed from the vision of that region's leading activists. Bujak and Kulerski, opting for the old conceptions of the democratic opposition, chose the broad-based "societal" model of resistance. Frasyniuk, however, insofar as he was preparing Lower Silesia for a general strike, had no choice but to focus on organizing resistance in the factories. It was the same in Gdansk .

In our region, large enterprises account for only ten percent of the

total workforce, while medium- and small-sized enterprises make up ninety percent. Yet because the large enterprises play such a key role, we decided to devote most of our energies to them—all the more so since they were definitely not the best organized. On the contrary, it was the medium-sized plants that took the lead and still do, maybe because there the people know each other better, have more confidence in each other. In the "middle" enterprises you also don't have the problem with interdepartmental contacts that you do in the large plants, where they have special people supervising these contacts, people usually connected with the Security Service. The best enterprises in the Tri-city area are the Port of Gdansk, the "Nauta" Ship Repair Yards in Gdynia, and the refinery. The weakest, without doubt, is the Paris Commune Shipyard where, after the first crushing round of arrests, the workers just couldn't get it together for a long time.

From the very beginning, conspiratorial work in the factories consisted chiefly in printing leaflets. In order to help the middle-level activists, we worked out special instructions for the formation of clandestine factory commissions. We stressed that the most important tasks were collecting dues, protecting the persecuted, and printing and distributing newsletters. It was this last matter that seemed absolutely crucial to us, for a factory newsletter is the most visible sign that something's going on, and it can inspire others to action.

By April we had contacts with thirty enterprises, which in turn had contacts with others. And we didn't communicate just by letter. I personally met with people from the Lenin Shipyard, "Nauta," the Marine Radio Service, and others. Meetings of this kind were necessary, because things our intermediaries couldn't work out were usually settled easily in direct conversation.

Frasyniuk I.5

The organization of Wroclaw enterprises was planned on a very broad scale, and it is probably for that very reason that there were complications. March brought a series of painful arrests of people working closely with the Regional Strike Committee. They arrested the new editorial board, several couriers, and, most painfully, the person responsible for conspiratorial work in the factories. They also seized several people whose address books were filled with names and addresses. In January, not all conspirators had made up their own secret codes yet,

but even those who had, didn't use them everyday. That carefree attitude cost us dearly .

Luckily, the arrest of this one person who did such great work for us didn't lead to a break in contacts with the factories. This guy had been relying almost exclusively on the old Solidarity activists. His followers, however, approached matters more "scientifically": they delivered the underground press to the factories by one channel while using a different channel to consult with the factory commissions, which were usually led by new people, still unknown to the police. Each channel was fully independent of the other. This duplicate factory network enabled us to organize direct meetings between the RSC's contact person and the people making the decisions in the enterprises. At these meetings we'd discuss tactics and strategy, and coordinate our basic affairs. After careful verification of these channels of communication, members of the regional leadership also began to take part in the meetings. This was a major turning point, as the factory commissions now became considerably more active. Another consequence was the flood of correspondence that now began flowing to the Regional Committee. We started receiving up to twenty letters a day. These would usually describe the situation in the respective factories or emphasize the workers' high level of organization (something we looked at very cautiously, because we knew we were getting some letters from wishful thinkers). Or people might write to ask questions like, "Can we start our own factory newsletter?" Or they'd ask if we could set up drop-off points where they could pick up materials, or whether we could send them some experienced printers. We also got letters from outside Wroclaw. I once read with great satisfaction a letter from Olawa, where residents had begun to reprint and distribute a reproduction of the Wroclaw paper Z Dnia na Dzien , without asking for assistance from anybody.

From the beginning we mainly sought access to the large factories. But when our network began to get along, it became clear to us that there were just too many factories for us to work with. So we chose six to focus on, all of them concentrated in one industrial district: Pafawag, Dolmel, Elwro, Hutmen, FAT, and Fadroma. We began by working out forms of collaboration with the first three. The factory commissions got their own direct drop-off points for contacts with the Regional Committee and began receiving all our materials, documents, analyses, and program proposals. They made use of them in various ways, publishing some of the material, commenting on others.

Elwro, for example, would systematically assess the activities of the Regional Committee. These evaluations were full and honest, and they were drawn up not by professional activists from former Solidarity commissions but by regular workers.

In April we were planning to expand the size of the Regional Committee to include representatives of all six factories. But at that very moment the police made a direct hit on our organization at Pafawag (certainly due to an informer) and succeeded in almost completely destroying it. We were warned at the very last minute, just as we were going to a meeting there. We were practically already at the gate, when a group of workers from a different plant called out to us that there was a "sting" at Pafawag, and that lots of people had already been arrested.

The first conflicts within the underground began at about the same time. Many organizers were calling for long strikes and street demonstrations. (There were personal ambitions at work here, too.) But when we called a meeting to explain our strategy, it became clear that the authentic factory representatives had completely different ideas from those of the factional "organizers." Unfortunately, the conflict was reflected in Z Dnia na Dzien , which drifted along without any clear line, representing neither the views of the RSC nor those of the faction that wanted to take to the streets. Kornel Morawiecki, writing under the pseudonym "Andrzej," spoke out rather sharply in favor of taking to the streets, but the rest of the editorial board tried to stay loyal to the Regional Committee. "Andrzej" also impeded us somewhat in our contacts with the factories, and this helped delay organizing the RSC according to the new formula.

Bujak I.7

There were differences of opinions, sometimes radical differences, in other regions, too. In the period between the publication of the first issue of Tygodnik Mazowsze in January 1982 and the end of April, there was a sharp conflict in the Warsaw underground: Bujak and Kulerski on one side, and Zofia and Zbigniew Romaszewski on the other .

I deeply regretted the clash with the Romaszewskis because, thanks to their work with KOR, both had earned a great deal of au-

thority. Nevertheless, I do believe that the Regional Executive Committee would have been formed much earlier if it hadn't been for their radical program. Why? Simple: Zbigniew Romaszewski, as an elected member of the Warsaw Solidarity Presidium who was now in hiding, would have had to be part of the Committee, and, in that case, his wife, too. So if by any chance both Wiktor and I were knocked off, the Romaszewskis could have become the leaders of the Regional Committee—and it was precisely this that I was afraid of. At that time, the spring of 1982, I thought that if I, and only I, were directly responsible for our resistance strategy, I would put off all the more aggressive actions until 1985. I was convinced that that year would be a turning point in the military, and therefore political, balance of power in the world. I thought it would come either to war, or to the weakening of Russia to such an extent that it would be possible to present it with an ultimatum. And if the Poles then stepped out onto the international scene, the superpowers would have to take account of this. Later, however, it turned out that things were much more complicated than that.

After the conflict with Bujak, the Romaszewskis joined up with the Interfactory Workers Committee of Solidarity, which was formed at the end of April. The Committee brought together sixty-three Warsaw enterprises and published two significant journals; CDN (To Be Continued) and Glos Wolnego Robotnika (The Free Worker's Voice). Romaszewski now proclaimed publicly his own program of resistance. The Interfactory Committee regarded itself as an advisory body to the long-awaited Regional Executive Committee to be headed by Bujak and only later agreed to subordinate itself to some extent to the Executive Committee. It organized several spectacular actions—most notably, the successful attempt to free Jan Narozniak from the hospital where he was recuperating after being shot by the police. The organization was short-lived, nevertheless. August saw the arrest of virtually all of its activists, including Zbigniew Romaszewski. His wife had already been arrested. For Warsaw, this was a great loss .

Apart from the conflict with the Romaszewskis, Bujak had yet another reason for his initial opposition to the creation of a regional underground structure .

Warsaw very quickly decided on a long-term perspective—at

least a couple of years—for the underground. And for this reason neither Wiktor nor I was prepared for the immediate formation of a central leadership. We first needed to work out a means for formulating and transmitting directives, not to mention a system for executing them, and all this required time. The Warsaw Regional Committee was formed only after we had a whole network of interregional and interfactory contacts, after we'd worked out agreements with various social and professional groups and independent cultural circles, and after there were a number of different newsletters: then we had something to base ourselves on. That structural mosaic filled us with optimism. Because there's this law of nature, you see, that says that structures rich in form last the longest. The Brazilian jungle can survive anything, but the taiga is more vulnerable. And this rule holds true for everything. A democratic society, with abundant forms of social life and activity, can defend itself against various defeats, while a totalitarian society is very frail, and every setback threatens its viability.

Frasyniuk I.6

The Wroclaw Regional Strike Committee already had a pretty solid base, but its further expansion was accompanied, to Frasyniuk's chagrin, by some rather impassioned discussion .

At a meeting between the original Regional Committee (still made up of Bednarz, Pinior, and me) and the leaders of the Committee's various departments, half of them pressed hard to be admitted to the Committee itself, hoping in this way to obtain a dominating influence. The other half, together with the three of us, argued that such a decision could be made only after the representatives from the six largest factories had been admitted. At the next meeting, the six were added to the Committee without any problem, but the "factionalists" from the departments were admitted only after a big fight. The factory representatives, already fed up with the discussions, finally just asked whether it was really so important to the "factionalists" that they be part of the leadership, and when the latter answered yes, the factory reps went along for the sake of peace and quiet. In the end, a new Regional Committee was elected, consisting of the original three (using our own names), the six factory representatives, and leaders of the five most important departments.

In fact, there are more than five departments. Starting from the center, there's the administrative office, through which all contacts are supposed to be handled. Then there's a department for coordinating work with the factories, one for coordinating work with the region, an information bureau (a sort of counterintelligence), a propaganda department (for press, publishing, and leaflets), a printing department, a bureau for interregional communication, an organizational section, a financial council, and others.

This high level of organization applied chiefly to Wroclaw. The other areas of Lower Silesia were still groping around. We brought them newsletters and printing equipment, but the situation was pretty bad there when it came to rebuilding union locals. Of course one shouldn't treat all these other cities the same. It's one thing to organize factory commissions in Walbrzych or Legnica, but something very different to do so in a place like Wolów, where the largest enterprise is the local prison. In order to stimulate activity outside of Wroclaw, we organized meetings with representatives from these other areas. People came not only from Legnica, Walbrzych, Lubin, Glogów, and Dzierzoniów, but even from Kalisz, Opole, and Gorzów.

Lis I.7

In late April and early May, a Regional Coordinating Committee wasformed in Gdansk. Its members were Bogdan Lis, Bogdan Borusewicz, Aleksander Hall, Stanislaw Jarosz, and Marian Switek .

In drawing up the list of names we took two things into account: the fact that we were already working together, and the need for mutual trust. The five of us made the decision on our own, not worrying about whether anybody liked it or not. And it was accepted by many people who were working with us but who, for various reasons, didn't want their names to be known. Of course, there were also some people who were hoping very much to sign their own names to Regional Committee documents, but these people we didn't particularly want.

The effectiveness of underground activities largely depends on the existence of specialized departments. Because many of these are still active today, I'll discuss the Committee's internal structure only in very general terms, so as not to make the work of the Security Service any easier.

In the first place, there's a network for communication between

Committee members. This department relies on couriers who know our actual hiding places and meet with us directly. Next, there's a department for contacts with the outside world. This consists of a group of people who can represent us in meetings either with Gdansk enterprises or with representatives from other regions. (One Committee member in particular is responsible for contacts with local enterprises.) Every region must also possess its own "line" to the West, though in actual fact this department is pretty much centralized.

Next comes the publishing department. This is a rather extensive structure consisting of three sections: editorial, printing, and distribution. In Gdansk this department has never been very well developed, and Warsaw often makes fun of us: "You people in Gdansk can mobilize a strike but you can't produce any books!"

The next unit we call the "legalization" department. It's responsible for providing us with bogus documents and authorizations of all kinds.

The finance department, and the economic branch connected with it, get half their operating funds from the West. (I'm counting here the printing, radio, and other equipment that we get, all of which is necessary for our underground work.) The other half we get from domestic sources. Dues, however, we leave to the disposition of the factory commissions. The dues are used mostly to help persecuted workers and their families. As to our economic activities, well, given the recent arrest of the two greenhouse owners who were working with the underground in Wroclaw, it wouldn't be too wise to talk about this at all.

Two other teams we have are the radio group and the technical shop. The latter produces broadcasting equipment, automatic leaflet dispensers, and other items of this kind—part of the technical expertise unique to the underground.

Each one of these departments should in principle have its own security unit, but in reality that's not possible: there's just never enough experts in that field. So we have a security unit only at the regional level, which serves all. It's the Regional Committee, however, which decides what information gets sent where. We have to consider the organization's security on the one hand (the Security Service is never far away), and the relative importance of the information on the other.

And that would be all. Of course, many Security functionaries are going to be reading this book only because . . .^[1]

Bujak I.8

The formation of the Regional Committee in Warsaw did not in any way limit the hundreds of underground initiatives already underway there. On the contrary, it facilitated more of them. This was the case also for those structures—or, as Bujak calls them, "teams"—most closely affiliated with the Committee .

We have a lot of teams in the capital, and so I'll only name the most important. The first one, very crucial, is the apartment team, functioning since the very beginning of the "war." At first this consisted of only one trusted person, but later it became a specialized group (and so it remains today) providing safe locations for all needs. Of course there's still one main coordinator, whose job it is to check out each apartment before we use it. Naturally, there's a periodic turnover of the apartment team: after someone's exhausted the homes of all his or her friends and finding new ones becomes risky, the person simply moves on to some other work. In this way, at least, we're not condemned to move forever within the same circle.

At the start of the "war" the apartment team had it easy, since there were plenty of "untainted" apartments. Now people have to look hard to find some place where nothing's happened so far. Then there's the problem that sometimes an apartment may be "clean" but it turns out that half the occupants of the building are in the underground, which makes it easy to be caught by accident.

One of the greatest dangers for someone in hiding is indiscretion on the part of the host. We've had cases, although not many, where we had to evacuate suddenly an apartment because one woman has whispered something to another—"in absolute confidence." On the other hand, most of the younger kids have been just great. They don't want to know too much and in general are very discrete.

The next team is the so-called financial council, which monitors the underground's expenses making sure everything is properly accounted for. (After the "war," this council will go public and present our accounts for open inspection.) A treasurer keeps track of expenditures in the region, monitors cash flow and savings, etc. Actually, our bookkeeping is extremely simple: a cell receives money according to a budget estimate and disposes of the money according to its needs. Later, the cell leader provides a verbal account of the group's expenditures for the financial controllers. All notes and receipts are then destroyed. Only a few general statements are drawn up: for example,

something stating that such and such a sum was spent on transportation. Actually, even papers like this shouldn't be preserved, since they provide information on the frequency with which we use cars.

During the first six months of the state of war we distributed in Warsaw about 700,000 zloties a month. Later, these sums rose considerably, as there were more things to finance, more people to help, more initiatives, and more underground groupings. Interregional contacts alone cost us about 80,000 a month, and besides that there's the press, publications, special actions, and so forth. We subsidize Tygodnik Mazowsze , including the editors' salaries, although they do raise a lot of money on their own (with the greatest amounts coming from private-sector people). Besides this, we finance the Regional Committee's bureau, the leafleting teams, the supplies department, and the broadcasting department. People pressure us: "Do some spectacular actions!" But they don't seem to realize that all this stuff costs a hell of a lot of money. We once installed a giant speaker at a cemetery. It broadcast loudly for a while, and that was that—end of action. Our expenditures, when you count everything, are extraordinarily high. In the courts after August 31, 1982, we paid out over a half-million zloties in fines for people arrested, and that's just about how much it costs us for one well-organized action. Of course, we also get some much-needed financial help from abroad, but we take from this kitty rather rarely.

Printing. Here we've relied mostly on NOWa and other independent publishers. But their machines often break down, so, when we get hold of an offset or copier, we often hand it over to them as compensation for worn-out equipment.

Our problems, however, are not so much with printing the material as with distributing it. Every so often a large group of distributors gets caught. The head of the distribution network, who had contacts with the majority of drop-off points, was arrested just a few months into the "war." They had been observing him for a while, checking out his routes, and then they grabbed him and a few others. A group arrest of distributors is always a big blow, since rebuilding such a network requires long and tedious work. Moreover, while at the beginning of martial law we literally had crowds of people clamoring to be distributors, over time this began to come to a halt. If you put something in someone's hands, they'd still pass it along, but people stopped coming to us on their own. The optimal solution was to cut back the

numbers of Tygodnik Mazowsze we printed at the center, while at the same time producing stencils that local union groups could use to make their own copies of the journal.

Besides printing presses, we have a studio where we produce cassettes and radio shows. At first, "Radio Solidarity" was run by Zbyszek Romaszewski, but after he was arrested others took it over. Zbyszek, after all, was rather impatient. After our first broadcast he seemed to get a bit carried away by success, and he neglected to follow our original plan, according to which our programs were to be broadcast in segments from several different transmitters. After setting up the first transmitter he just kept on using it, not waiting for any others. Meanwhile, out came the homing devices as military spotters went into action looking for the source of the broadcast. They found it pretty easily, and the cops were overjoyed. Zbyszek's successors took the matter more seriously and didn't begin any action until after they had set up a whole network of synchronized transmitters.

I've mentioned our publishing work, our radio and distribution work, but I almost forgot about our press team. This consists of the editors of Tygodnik Mazowsze , most importantly, and then an entire network of local correspondents, informants, and couriers.

One of our most important units is the bureau organized and conceptualized by—well, the name's not important. It's the job of this bureau to know, at every time of day and night, exactly where Wiktor Kulerski and I are, where the editorial board is, how to get in touch with our printers and distributors. Contacts between the different teams, or between the teams and Wiktor and me—all of that is arranged through this bureau. It collects money and distributes it to the various groups, organizes meetings with various people, and takes care of all our administrative activities. Two individuals, with a set number of assistants, supervise the bureau, making sure it's functioning effectively.

The department of interregional contacts—everything that we have to send outside of Warsaw is directed to this unit first. It's here, also, that we check out our contacts from elsewhere in Poland. That is, trustworthy people simply travel to the different areas and check out who's who. In other words, this group does the necessary intelligence work before we establish contacts. At the beginning of the "war" many union activists wrote to me presenting their view of the situation and requesting a reply. Sometimes I wrote back, but it often

happened that the person didn't have the slightest idea what was going on or what to do, and my letter served only as a kind of screen, protecting him from the charge that he was just an incompetent self-promoter. People from the department called my attention to this and told me that I should first check with them as to what the situation was, then I'd know how to respond.

Alongside the department of interregional contacts we set up a special radio and telecommunications team, responsible for working out a communications system (wireless or not) between the regions, and in particular between regions with representatives in the ICC. Our goal is a system allowing the transmission of any type of information to any part of the country within ten to twelve hours maximum. This information network, organized with great effort, should be effective in times of the greatest political tension, especially in the face of a general strike. Shutting off the telephones and telexes shouldn't really bother us then. Our press team is actually just a kind of annex to this communications team, one working chiefly for the use of our journal.

Then there's the "legalization" department, whose chief task is to provide us with fake official stamps.^[2] Right after martial law was declared one guy came to us with this giant suitcase that he'd been keeping since the end of the Occupation. "I got this from my friend," he told us. "I always felt it might come in handy one day!" And inside the suitcase we find this complete set-up for forging stamps and erasing signatures. But that was just one valuable find. Actually, this department got hold of many other technical curiosities besides that one.

Aside from forging stamps, the legalization team also makes bogus documents. This is terribly laborious work. For example, every page of an official pass, or of any number of various ID cards, must first be hand copied on an enlarged scale, then photographed, then reduced, then made into a stencil. Only then can you make an "original." It's the same with some of the more complicated stamps, which are projected on a screen, copied precisely, and so forth. On the other hand, making false internal passports is a completely different matter. It's extremely difficult to produce the counterfeit paper, particularly because of the watermarks. Therefore we usually only reconstruct "lost" passports. By now our people already know that in such and such a year the documents had such and such a characteristic. For example, the photos done in a certain year might have regularly been retouched by the photographers, or they might have been printed on a

special type of paper. The legalization team tries to take care of all this.

The information team is a separate group, extremely secret but with wide-reaching contacts. Its job is selecting and preserving all kinds of information that may be useful to the underground. For example, someone comes to us with an idea on how we can set up a wireless communication network that can't be jammed. Someone else says they've got a tapedeck for duplicating cassette tapes that they're willing to give to us. Or somebody tells us of a place where the police have installed equipment tracing radio transmitters. Or someone has an apartment we can use, or can supply us with fifteen gallons of gas a month, or gives us the name of a police agent, or says they've got access to the Council of Ministers' telecommunications studio, or can give us the names of reliable people in television. We get so much information of this kind, too much to store it all on notecards. And so, in a certain place, all this information is written into a computer, with the disks programmed in such a way that if any unauthorized person touches it, everything is erased.

A control team works very closely with the information team, checking out both the information and the people who supply it to us. The control team has direct access to a whole group of experts from very diverse fields. Suppose somebody says they can help us build electronic transmitters. The control people will go to an expert, get him to specify some kind of electronic assignment as a test, and give it to the first person to carry out. The results are then taken back to the expert to evaluate. If the specialist tells us, say, that the transmitter the candidate put together is a piece of junk, we tell the guy, he's not needed—and that's the end of it.

But the control team has other responsibilities, too. For example, a certain group of people might tell us that they have good contacts with several cities. If they really do, then the team has to check everything in detail, often working together with the department for interregional contacts. We've got to check out what kind of circles these contacts are in, to what extent they might be infiltrated, whether they can run a distribution network or gather information. Then, as a test, we give them a consignment of Tygodnik and we watch. We watch how they're doing the distribution, who's gossiping, who's being careless, etc. After a few weeks we sum it up for them, "OK, people, this and that guy you've got to get rid of, the rest of you are OK."

We also have a department of supplies that takes care of orders

from the Warsaw underground. For example, a leafleting squad may send us an order for a hundred smoke bombs to use as cover, and we've got to take care of it. The task is passed on to some reliable chemists who do some quick experiments, asking only if the smoke is to float along the ground or gush up into the sky as if from a fire. Sometimes the supply department receives typical organizational tasks, too, such as working out a distribution schedule for sending our press to a certain city, although then it works together with the control, communications, and interregional contacts teams.

Besides all these groups I've mentioned, we also have a few other structures. But these I either know little about or would prefer not to talk about.

The safety of all these teams is intrinsically connected with the question of "good conspiracy." This is a very broad topic, so I can only say that our most carefully hidden asset is our technical equipment, particularly our printing presses. Next comes us, members of the Regional Executive Committee. Although we try to stay deep underground in the most imaginative way, we do have to maintain contact with people, and rather broad contact at that. We have no personal protection, except what's offered through our disguises and the anonymity of the crowd. (Luckily for me, I've got a rather ordinary face, don't you think?) Of course, there are certain safety precautions which we're absolutely strict about following, but, as I've said, all it takes is one stupid accident.

Except for the capture of Zbyszek Romaszewski, who managed to get away the first time they came to get him, our other serious arrests were due to coincidence. Wiktor Kulerski once had a dangerous adventure. He noticed that the police were blocking off the whole housing project where he was staying, so he took his host's dog out on a leash and walked her for seven long hours! During that time he kept meeting the same people out on normal dog walks, two or three times! And while their dogs were peacefully running around and pissing, Wiktor kept his on a short leash, and the poor mutt began to get terribly hungry and started forcing his way home. Meanwhile, the ZOMO were searching all the buildings one at a time, and seeing Wiktor so frequently, by now they treated him as one of their own people. Finally they left, and Kulerski could go back to the apartment. But the poor dog, who had actually liked him a lot up till then, never wanted Wiktor to take him out for a walk anymore.

I had a similar thing happen to me. I was staying in a building that the police suddenly started searching early in the morning. I wasn't caught only because my host opened the door right away, thinking it was a friend. When he saw the police, he froze, but they just checked his ID and moved on. Later we learned that people who hesitated before opening the door had their apartments searched in full.

But even if they caught me, nothing would change. The regional underground committees have gotten stronger, and they all have two or even three substitute leaderships. If I'm arrested, Kulerski would probably take the helm, and after him Janas or Bielinski. Names don't matter, after all. What's important are the structures and the mechanisms. And thanks to them, we can appoint a responsible person to any function at any time.

Borusewicz I.10

The regional structure of the underground was determined not only by the perceived need for resistance at the local level, but also by the long dispute as to whether or not any sort of center was even necessary. This dispute essentially began as soon as the "war" did, and opinions were so divided that several months had to pass before any kind of position could be agreed upon .

Bogdan Borusewicz perceived the need for a national structure at once, to provide direction for popular resistance as well as a reference point for the West. The significance of this structure would depend on the degree to which it was accepted, meaning, in other words, that it would depend on the authority of the people who belonged to it .

I wrote to Bujak as early as January [1982], saying it was necessary to form a national body. He was very much opposed. "Maybe it is necessary," he wrote back, "but without me." By the end of March, Lis and I already knew that Frasyniuk and Hardek supported our position. Together we put pressure on Bujak. An additional argument we used in order to bring Warsaw to reason was the OKO affair. We explained to Bujak that if we didn't set up something serious, other people would keep setting up not-so-serious organizations, and that finally convinced him.^[3]

We in Gdansk sought to avoid a situation where the absence of a national organization meant that our Gdansk organization began de

facto to act like one. This would have created a situation analogous to the origins of Solidarity, when Gdansk became the trade-union capital of Poland. This most certainly would not have been fortuitous.

Bujak I.9

Having long resisted the creation even of a regional structure, we also felt for a long time that interregional cooperation could be carried out without creating an Interim Coordinating Commission. We argued that any kind of centralization meant, above all, the centralization of arrests. We were afraid that a possible mass arrest of the ICC would mean the dissolution of the underground, in the same way that the December 13 [1981] arrest of the National Commission was such a crushing blow to Solidarity. Our way of thinking proved to be quite fruitful as the underground grew strong, chiefly because the ICC that was finally created functioned only as a general programmatic body, setting out the general direction of the movement.

Lis I.8

At the first meeting between Lis, Bujak, Hardek, and Frasyniuk, the main topic of discussion was whether the underground's national structure should take the form of a federation that left a large margin of autonomy for the different regions, or of a central organization controlling all forms of social resistance. Like Bujak, Bogdan Lis also feared that a hierarchical organization could be too easily destroyed .

We based this belief on the experience of WiN.^[4] And the future proved us right. For despite the frequent arrests of activists in Wroclaw, Poznan, Kraków, and Gdansk, underground Solidarity still managed to survive. The arrest of small circles doesn't carry great consequences precisely because the different regions are connected very loosely—for all practical purposes, only through the members of the ICC. There is, for example, no separate distribution and informational network embracing the entire country.

In January 1982, I admit, I thought otherwise. I then felt that the government was going to try to create some kind of "quasi-Solidarity" out of "softened-up" leaders from the National Commission. For that reason, I was then in favor of creating a single nationwide organiza-

tion to symbolize the continuity of the union. In this I was wrong, however. For it turned out that the Communists couldn't find any takers, and so we no longer needed to hurry. I therefore changed my mind, and by the beginning of March I was a supporter of the federation model, where the leaders would possess moral authority but not run any grand organizational apparatus. In the second half of April, Bujak, who was from the beginning opposed to the creation of anything, came around to my position. Hardek, meanwhile, and later also Szumiejko, were adherents of the centralist model. Frasyniuk essentially stood in the middle—that is, he recognized the advantages of what Bujak and I were proposing, but at the same time he pointed to the disadvantages, such as the difficulties connected with the achievement of any concrete aims. Later, however, he supported our position.^[5]

In forming the ICC, we were concerned with a few key matters. First of all, it was important to us that the Commission articulate the main course of action for all those organizations that had undertaken the struggle with the dictatorship. Agreeing that there were bounds of acceptable social resistance, we wanted to prevent the rise of terrorist organizations, which the authorities might use for various kinds of provocations. In fact, the Security Service had already taken the initiative in this respect, at least in Gdansk, where someone named Igor Kuren was trying to form an armed group. This guy had a few pistols and rifles—all, of course, defective and probably supplied to him by the police—and was running around looking for contacts. He requested a meeting with me, and even sent me an outline of his organization. The whole thing smelled from the start, and later I learned that Kuren really was an agent.

An equally important matter, which we took up at the founding meeting of the ICC, was the question of Solidarity representation abroad. I sent Milewski a letter informing him that OKO had ceased to exist and therefore he should stop representing them. I presented him our proposals, and at the same time notified Western trade union organizations that the ICC alone would appoint and recall foreign representatives of Solidarity. Such a move seemed absolutely necessary to me, since there were already several different policy groups in the West all claiming the mandate of Solidarity, and with no coordination between them. Moreover, all kinds of quarrels began to emerge between them, based on personal ambitions. That we had to stop right away, and it seemed that the easiest way to do so was to appoint for-

eign representatives, emphasizing that if others wanted to do something under the banner of "Solidarity," they could do so only through our representatives.

As for the practical functioning of the ICC, we adopted at the very beginning a series of principles that are still in effect today. We agreed, for example, that the ICC could consist of no more than seven people. I won't say how we choose new people, however, since the Security Service might yet infiltrate some region that, in the future, may send its own representative to the ICC. If I say more, they might learn how to smuggle in one of their own!

Bujak I.10

I'll only add that the composition of the ICC is not automatic. That is, it's not necessarily the case that people are in it because of their status in the underground. Essentially, ICC members are simply recruited. Of course, we remember that people in Solidarity were elected, and so if there are active, democratically elected leaders not in jail who want to get involved in the underground, we try to consider them before we consider anyone else, even someone better and smarter. On the other hand, Hardek from Kraków, who was not a member of Solidarity's National Commission, was brought onto the ICC ahead of several available Commission members. Personal considerations, it's clear, do play a large role.

Frasyniuk I.7

News of the formation of the ICC was greeted in Lower Silesia with great satisfaction. Opinion in the factories was along the line of the following: "A great step forward." "Now we've got a committee that can coordinate things and prepare the country for a general strike." "Now it won't be just Wroclaw or Gdansk that moves, now all of Poland will be fighting." In a word, there was massive support—not just for the idea of the ICC but also for its personnel. Frasyniuk was greatly pleased with the reaction .

It proved the correctness of our line. Ever since January, when we first made contacts with other regions, we'd been firmly pressing for the formation of a national structure. We felt that the formation of a

national committee, one that would embrace the entire country, would galvanize into action those areas where nothing much had been happening so far. The ICC would formulate a general line of action and disseminate an organizational model tested first in a given locale. And finally it seemed to us that the ICC, with the authority it had, could prevent the authorities from provoking uncontrolled resistance in specific enterprises, not to mention in entire regions.