Jacek Kuroń - The truth about the strikes in 1981 (124/150) скачать в хорошем качестве

Jacek Kuroń - The truth about the strikes in 1981 (124/150)

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: You can imagine that they were certain the union management wouldn't be able to stop the people from coming out in a general strike. It was only by a miracle that a general strike was prevented which was a clear sign that Solidarność wants peace, that Solidarność wants to rebuild the country. Averting the general strike cost us a great deal because a lot of people became discouraged. It gave rise to lots of conflicts, objections and bad feeling among the union activists and this affected the union's continued activities very badly. You could tell by watching the TV programmes that they wanted to provoke us. They were showing reports from around the country which made it look like there were strikes everywhere when there were no strikes. If there were any, they were warning strikes which lasted an hour. The only really dangerous, large-scale strikes were the ones in Bielsko-Biała, Zielona Góra, and those strikes, definitely, the one in Zielona Góra, were provoked by the authorities. I'd even say it had been initiated by the authorities. A strike committee had been set up outside of the regional management and it had forced the regional management to declare this strike. In Bielsko-Biała there's a lot of secrecy surrounding this issue but the truth is that the material proving how much theft there was by the local dignitaries was planted by the security of the regional management which was made up of young, inexperienced, excitable lads. The call went out to go on strike, and that strike actually lasted close on two weeks. We didn't conduct any other strikes like that, but from the TV reports it looked like there was one strike after another.