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London Focus on Eastern Europe, Vol. 1 No. 3, July–August 1977, pp. 2–5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
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In Labour Focus No. 2 Oliver MacDonald forecast a turn to repression by the Party authorities, against the Workers’ Defence Committee (henceforth known by its Polish initials, KOR). Since then, the Krakow supporter of the KOR, Stanislaw Pyjas, has been killed and 9 KOR members have been arrested. At the same time, open protests against the new repression have been made in most of the major cities in Poland and student opposition has developed qualitatively with the creation of the Student Solidarity Committee. Reports have also reached the West about 60 Ursus workers being arrested. We print, below a detailed account of the course of events since the Central Committee Plenum which heralded the regime’s new turn to repression. The information printed below comes partly from KOR, Communique No. 10, partly from the Paris revolutionary Marxist daily Rouge, partly from official Polish press sources and partly from the Western press. |
April 14: At the Central Committee plenum Gierek indicates a new hardening of the Party leadership’s attitude. He declares: “We cannot accept infringement of the law and the misuse of socialist democracy and civil liberties for activity stemming from alien class positions and directed against our socialist state. Such activity must be unmasked and will be opposed by all necessary means.”
April 15: Jacek Kuron and other members of KOR are arrested and held by the police for 48 hours.
April 25: At a national conference of regional and local Party secretaries – the first such conference held since Gierek to power in 1970 – Gierek refers to the “increased activity of the forces hostile to Poland and socialism”
April 27: Kuron and Lipski (both KOR members) officially informed by the public prosecutor’s office that they are being investigated for maintaining illegal contacts with foreign organisations damaging to the interests of the Polish state. Adam Michnik was also named in the charge. The organisations named were Radio Free Europe and Kultura, the main right-wing Polish emigre journal and publishing house.
End of April: At both Warsaw and Lodz Universities, the authorities threaten reprisals against members and sympathisers of KOR. Miroslaw Chojecki and Antoni Macierewicz (both KOR members) are sacked from their university posts along with 5 supporters of the Committee.
April 26: Stanislaw Pyjas and 5 other students complain to the public prosecutor’s office in Krakow about anonymous threatening letters which they have received, including one accusing Pyjas of being a police informer. (See letter below.)
May 6: Pyjas is last seen at a meeting with other students drawing up a protest document about police repression in Krakow, Pyjas leaves with a copy of the document at 4:30 in the afternoon.
May 7: At 7.20 in the morning the body of Stanislaw Pyjas is found in the entrance hall of a block of flats by a waitress passing through the block on her way to work.
May 9: Pyjas’s friends are called to police headquarters for interviews and while absent their flats are entered and anonymous letters they had received are removed.
May 11: Pyjas’s body is buried in Krakow.
May 12: Students at the Department of Polish Studies at Jagiellon University in Krakow as well as people from other parts of the university call upon the students to make 15 May a day of mourning for Pyjas.
May 14: The student militia, acting on behalf of the official student organisation, arrest A. Macierewicz, P. Naimski and W. Ostrowski (all members of KOR) who have come from Warsaw to attend the day of mourning.
May 15: Between 8 and 9 in the morning some students draping black flags outside the Dominican Church where a mass is to be held for Stanislaw Pyjas are arrested by the security police. At 9 the mass is held with a crowd of about 5,000 people assembling outside the church. A delegation of workers from the hugh Nowa Huta steel complex near Krakow takes part in the gathering. After the ceremony the 5,000 people march with black flags of mourning to the house of Pyjas’s parents where a declaration issued by KOR on 9 May is read to the crowd. A declaration by people from Warsaw, Lublin and other towns who have been arrested on their way to the mourning ceremonies is also read out. All those present are then invited to participate in a demonstration of mourning at Wawel castle in the centre of Krakow.
At 9 p.m. thousands of people come to the Castle. The annual student festival, due to have been held that weekend in Krakow has effectively come to an end despite the refusal of the official student organisation to cancel it. Attempts by the security police to divide the demonstration in two fail and a declaration is read forming a Student Committee of Solidarity (SKS). (See the text of the declaration below.)
May 16: 2 members of KOR who have attended the demonstrations in Krakow, Wojciech Onyszkiewicz and Krzysztof Lazar ski, are involved in a serious road accident while driving back from Krakow to Warsaw. A lorry forces them off the road and then drives on. Both men are taken to hospital critically ill.
May 12: A student assembly in the Department of Polish Studies at Lodz University observes a minute’s silence in memory of Stanislaw Pyjas.
May 16: J. Serniawski, a KOR activist, is arrested for 48 hours and beaten during interrogation. That evening 500 people take part in a mass commemorating Pyjas. The declarations of KOR and the Student Solidarity Committee are read out. Then Amsterdamski, a student from Lodz, reads a letter of solidarity with the students of Krakow signed by 150 people in Lodz.
May 17: The security police arrest Amsterdamski, a second year physics student and Lewinska, a first year sociology student and hold them for 50 hours.
May 19: A meeting of the regional council of the SZSP is held in the presence of about 200 people. The SZSP council guarantees to the students that there will be no arrests, interrogations or house searches.
May 20: Bezel, a student of law is interrogated by the security police for 17 hours continuously, without food. A search is made at the house of Pogronkiewicz, a first year sociology student.
May 22: Three students, arrested for helping to organise the Lodz memorial service for Pyjas, are released by the police on the condition that they will face a disciplinary trial to be held by the local SZSP executive. When the disciplinary hearing meets the people present decide not to consider the matter at the meeting and instead agree to send an open letter to the Mayor of Lodz demanding an end to the repression of students and workers, and a public enquiry into Pyjas’s death.
Lublin, May 14: 8 people travelling from Lublin to Krakow for the memorial ceremonies for Stanislaw Pyjas are arrested on the train.
Lublin, May 19: A memorial mass is held for Pyjas and a telegram is received from the Student Solidarity Committee in Krakow thanking the students of Lublin for their solidarity.
Wroclaw, May 25: A memorial mass is held in the cathedral, after which one thousand people hear a declaration from the Student Solidarity Committee read out.
Warsaw, May 15–20: Posters are visible throughout the university saying “Pyjas is dead because he thought freely”.
Warsaw, May 20: A memorial mass is held for Stanislaw Pyjas at St. Martin’s church. Large crowds assemble outside the church for the ceremony.
May 3: At a press conference, spokespersons for the KOR state that during the previous 5 weeks the number of active sympathisers of the KOR has more than doubled.
May 9: KOR issues a declaration on the death of Stanislaw Pyjas.
May 10: Adam Michnik, recently returned from the West, Jacek Kuron and Jan Lipski are formally charged with maintaining illegal contacts with foreign organisations. A statement in response to these charges by Michnik published in Le Monde appeals “to Western public opinion, particularly to the Left ... They accuse us, and indirectly hundreds of our friends, of having our own opinions, and of not respecting the state’s monopoly of speech and action”.
May 11: KOR issues a statement saying that the “growing offensive of acts of illegality” had made the Committee decide to expand its activity beyond the original basis of defending workers repressed after the price protests of June 1976. The statement announced the formation of an “Intervention Bureau” to collect and publish information about official violations of civil rights and it also announced the formation of a “Social Defence Fund” to support those who have lost their jobs because of their connections with KOR.
May 14–16: Under a three month investigative detention order, the police arrest Jacek Kuron, Miroslaw Chojecki, Antoni Macierewicz, Adam Michnik, Piotr Naimski and Wojciech Ostrowski – all members or sympathisers of KOR.
May 19: Jan Lipski, his two children, Marion Pylka and Seweryn Blumstein are arrested under the same order. These arrests take place the day before the memorial mass in Warsaw for Pyjas.
May 20: 17 of the most prominent writers and artists in Poland send an appeal to the authorities in Poland demanding the release of the arrested members of KOR. The appeal is also addressed to “workers, intellectuals, trade unionists, journalists and all people of good will" abroad. In response to the official press attacks on KOR members as criminals, the appeal calls them “people who are disinterested and ready to sacrifice themselves to achieve social justice”.
May 24: 8 people begin a hunger strike in St. Martin’s church to protest against the arrest of 9 members and supporters of KOR and the continued detention of 5 workers jailed after last year’s protests against price increases.
May 25: 2 more people join the hunger strike. The hunger strikers call for the release of “all victims of the events of June 1976 and those who later defended them”. Their statement also refers to the tradition of hunger strikes in churches in the struggle for civil rights on the part of black people in the USA and on the part of those struggling against dictatorship in Spain. The hunger strikers include the wife and sister of one of the workers in jail, Czeslaw Chomicki, the editor of the Catholic monthly Znak, five members of KOR and the fathers of the jailed Adam Michnik and Jacek Kuron.
May 25: 60 workers are arrested by the police in Ursus. (This information has been published only in Rouge and no further news has been received from Ursus.)
May 27: Zycie Warszawy, the daily of the Warsaw Party Committee, carries an editorial denouncing the hunger strikers and in particular attacking what it calls “a double exploitation on their part: of the church and of world public opinion”. It adds that “half of them entered a church certainly for the first time” when/ they engaged in the hunger strike.
June 1: The hunger strike ends, as planned. Zycie Warszawy stepped up its verbal campaign by calling them ‘terrorists’.
June 6: Jan Lipski is released from prison after having a heart attack.
June 9: Professor Lipinski, a member of KOR sends a letter appealing to the leaders of the French, Spanish and Italian Communist Parties for them to demand the release of arrested KOR members and sympathisers.
June 9: A letter signed by 125 Warsaw intellectuals, students, employees and workers in Warsaw is sent to the Party leadership demanding the release of the KOR members in jail. By June 20 another 300 people have signed their names to this letter.
June 12: A letter signed by 33 intellectuals in Wroclaw is sent to the President of the Polish Parliament demanding the release of the KOR members in jail.
June 14: A letter signed by 99 Students from Lodz University demands the release of the jailed KOR members.
June 15: 3 students at Gdansk Polytechnic -- Z. Pietrun, Z. Wysocki and B. Wyskowski – stage a hunger strike against the arrests.
June 20: 349 inhabitants of Zbroza Duza, a village 50 kilometres south of Warsaw sign a letter to the Polish government calling for the release of all those arrested as a result of, the protests against price increases last June.
June 23: Police raid the homes of 3 Krakow student oppositionists, seizing an appeal to the authorities and other documents.
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Last updated: 15 February 2023