500 SOLIDARNOSC
political collapse, it firmly planted the idea of such an eventuality in its readers'
minds. The principal strategy of the Underground was to familiarize the public
with authors living abroad or banned by censorship. The award of the Nobel
Prize in 1980 to the Californian-based Czeslaw Milosz had given him hero's sta-
tus. His verses contained the exquisite taste of forbidden fruit, whilst his devas-
tating study of The Captive Mind (1953) totally discredited the cultural and
psychological machinery of Communism. A similar role was played by Milosz's
fellow exiles Leszek Kolakowski and Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski. All of them
were in the censorship category of non-persons who could not even be men-
tioned in order to be denounced. Kolakowski's three-volume Glowne nurty
marksizmu (The Main Trends of Marxism, 1976-8) demolished Communist
claims to a monopoly of virtue in socialist thought. Herling-Grudzinski, who
had survived Siberia, was the political writer who most effectively destroyed all
prevailing illusions about Soviet history. One of the few works designed to
encourage dialogue with the Jaruzelski regime was Adam Michnik's Lewica,
Kosciol, Dialog (The Left and the Church, first published 1976).
In the second half of the 1980s, the Jaruzelski regime abandoned ideological
considerations almost completely and adopted a purely pragmatic stance. A
member of the Politburo confronted in 1986 by an American student with the
naive question 'Are you a Communist or are you not?' was incapable of answer-
ing 'Yes' or 'No'. (He said that he was a 'pragmatisit'.) Yet hopes of reaching a
political consensus through economic success — an old Marxist illusion — were
constantly dashed. The existing system was unable to deliver economic success,
and the illegal opposition was unwilling to consider political participation on
the terms available. The Chernobyl disaster left a cloud of nuclear pollution not
just over Poland's eastern neighbours, but over the whole Soviet system. As
from 1985, Solidarity leaders like Adam Michnik in his List z Kurkowej (Letter
from Chickenville) were floating the idea of dialogue. But they could not do so
effectively whilst their individual and collective rights remained unrecognized.
The Opposition was too weak to overthrow the regime, but it was still strong
enough to prevent the regime from making any general progress. As a result, ini-
tiative after initiative bit the dust. In May 1987, for example, a law was passed
to encourage social consultation. An obligatory referendum then posed the
question 'Are you in favour of the Polish model of deep democratization ... the
strengthening of self-government... and the widening of civil rights ... ?' It was
like asking for a popular view of apple pie. But even that could not command a
majority. Also in 1987, a Spokesperson for Citizens' Rights, an ombudsman,
was appointed. But there were no citizens' rights worth speaking of. What is
more, the official, Communist-run trade union organization, the OPZZ,* which
had been set up in 1984 to fill the gap left by the banning of Solidarity, was grow-
ing restless. Strikes were threatened. The regime was rapidly reapproaching the
point where the whole crisis had started in August 1980. The leading politicians
were desperate to push through reforms. But they had no popular support to do
so.