Bujak II.7

In the autumn of 1982, the myth cherished by so many evaporated—the myth of the ICC as the commander, laying down a strategy that is carried out by the disciplined ranks of union members. The nation protested when it wanted to and not when we told it to. That, according to Bujak, is the lesson these events taught the underground .

We weren't equal to the task, and this led to the demobilization of the broader population. In addition, various groups—for example, the Inter-Regional Committee of Resistance led by Konarski—proclaimed that the ICC had lost all authority and that they were now taking over.

We drew a number of ideological and organizational conclusions from the disaster. Nevertheless, some problems can't be eliminated immediately. The ICC doesn't have a horde of activists ready to do its bidding. The machinery seizes up. It's no use at all drawing conclusions, no matter how wise, if the groups responsible for communication between regions are arrested one after the other. Some arrests resuited in the elimination of entire structures, and there were few alternative emergency channels. The whole system depends on people. You may or may not be able to count on finding them, because they go out shopping, to work, to birthday parties. If a courier doesn't work regularly, he eventually loses his contacts. Some people naively imag-

ine that it's enough to set up an operative, give him a password and a telephone number, and everything works like clockwork. But people aren't capable of sitting in the same place for two months at a time (and that's frequently what their work amounts to) waiting for something to do over the next six months. A structure that doesn't function continuously simply doesn't function at all. Only now, in 1984, have we succeeded in forming some kind of emergency communication network.

After all these disasters we had a difficult period. A lot of people left (although many of them came back after a time), especially those who thought you only had to give the military authorities a good kick and they'd fly apart. The myth of the general strike as a magical weapon also lost some of its force. We had to formulate a program that would help us regain our bearings in a new situation. A program of resistance over a long, a very long, time.