504 SOLIDARNOSCphotograph taken with Lech Walesa for his electoral poster.) Solidarity com-
pletely dominated the Senate. On 19 July, General Jaruzelski scraped through to
be elected State President by a single vote.
In the summer of 1989, feverish political manoeuvrings continued. Prior to
Jaruzelski's appointment as State President, the new editor of Gazeta
Wyborcza, Adam Michnik, had launched the astounding slogan of 'Your
President, Our Prime Minister'. Solidarity was moving from the acceptance of
token influence in the Assembly towards real power in government, and several
factors were helping. First, Jaruzelski's move to the presidency, and his replace-
ment as First Secretary of the PZPR by Mieczyslaw Rakowski, suggested that
the chief post in the country no longer lay with the Communist Party. Secondly,
Walesa found that the PZPR's satellite parties, the Peasant ZSL and the SD,
were no longer willing to follow Communist orders blindly. The prospect sud-
denly dawned of a Solidarity-led 'Coalition of National Responsibility' that
could command more votes in the Sejm than the PZPR could. The Communist
monopoly was under threat. Finally, on 16 August, a spokesman of the Soviet
Foreign Office made an announcement without parallel. 'We do not interfere,'
he said, 'in the internal internal affairs of Poland. The Poles must solve their
problems themselves.' Gorbachev had spoken. The shock could not have been
greater if the Vatican had announced that it did not interfere in the internal
affairs of the Polish Church. The Communist Premier of the day, General
Kiszczak, resigned immediately. On 24 August, the Assembly confirmed
Tadeusz Mazowiecki's appointment as Prime Minister. A Catholic country had
a Catholic premier for the first time in exactly fifty years.
Given the avalanche that was brewing elsewhere in the Soviet Bloc, it is
important to be precise about the situation in Poland during Mazowiecki's pre-
miership. If properly understood, it goes a long way to explain the extraordin-
ary — and one might say uncharacteristic restraint which distinguished
developments in Poland from those in the neighbouring countries.
Commentators abroad were apt to say that SOLIDARITY had 'won', or that
Communism had collapsed. They were wrong. They failed to grasp - as most
Western observers of Soviet-type regimes had always failed to grasp - that the
dual Party-State system bore little resemblance to Western forms of government
and that the state premiership was still a subordinate position. Despite their
huge disrepute, the Communists were still at the controls. The constitution had
not been amended to abolish the leading role of the PZPR or the obligatory
alliance with the USSR. President Jaruzelski, who was still a Party dignitary,
commanded the armed forces, could dissolve the Sejm, and could dismiss the
premier. Most of the key ministries, including Foreign Affairs, Defence, and the
Interior, which controlled the various internal security forces, were still in
Communist hands. The country was still occupied by the Soviet Army.
Censorship was still in operation. The secret police were still on the prowl, hav-
ing murdered yet another priest, Father Sylwester Zych, only a month earlier.
So Mazowiecki was a political hostage strapped into an invisible straitjacket.