Poland

  When Soviet soldiers were sent to fetch Buk from his fields, Biruta ran to the official in charge, crying: ‘Everyone here knows he was a patriot in the forest,’ but the Russian said: ‘This is the new Poland now. We identify who are patriots.’

  ‘New Poland, old Poland,’ Biruta cried in despair. ‘Will it never just be Poland as we knew it?’

  ‘Everything’s going to be better now,’ the Russian said. ‘Everything in order.’

  ‘Five years ago the Germans made the same promise.’ She had more to say, but now the soldiers dragged her confused husband into the square and lined him up against a wall with the other enemies of the state, where the official harangued them: ‘You are enemies of the Polish people who now own this country and of the Soviet government which has given you your freedom. You will be taken to camp until your reeducation is completed.’

  The prisoners were not allowed to say goodbye to their families or to take with them any personal possessions, and when Biruta realized that she was going to lose her husband again, she tried to stand with him, but the Russian soldiers pushed her away so violently that she stumbled and fell. Jan moved to help her up, but was stopped by bayonets.

  A military truck now wheeled up, and when it halted before the wall, three young Soviet soldiers in brown uniforms leaped out, formed a cordon, and loaded the Poles into the back of their truck. The prisoners were moved eastward toward Siberia, and were never heard from again.

  X

  Bukowski versus Buk

  The four weeks during which the Bukowo talks on the possibility of establishing a farmers’ union were in recess were a time of unprecedented excitement for Janko Buk, the farmers’ spokesman. Japan television invited him to Tokyo for a pair of broadcasts; with some reluctance the Warsaw government issued him a passport and the Kremlin allowed him to fly across Siberia to the Orient.

  He was awed by the immensity of Russia, for as he told the Intourist man who accompanied him from Moscow to Tokyo: ‘You can fly across Poland in minutes. To cross Russia takes days.’

  ‘You Poles should keep that in mind,’ the Intourist man said.

  Tokyo was an astonishment. The number of people was staggering, but it was the amount of goods in the stores, the rich variety, the abundance of food and the fact that the Japanese people seemed to have money to buy whatever they wanted that impressed him most deeply. The official from the Polish Embassy who met the plane explained: ‘They’re living on borrowed time. This is all going to collapse. Capitalism at its exploitative worst.’

  Polish officials coached Buk carefully on what he could and could not say on television, but he listened and forgot. On the screen, with a beautiful Japanese girl beside him interpreting his simple sentences, he made an agreeable impression: ‘I’m a farmer like your rice farmers I saw yesterday. We were damaged by floods last year and are doing our best to recuperate. We do have shortages, yes, and we’ve been hit as hard as you by the rise in petrol prices. My wife can seldom find the goods she needs, and we’re all damned worried.’

  The Japanese television producers were so pleased with him, they asked if he would fly to Osaka for an additional two performances, and the embassy people were so relieved that he hadn’t upset the turnip cart that they encouraged the detour. From there an American television network invited him to fly to New York, offering him two days’ rest in Hawaii, where once more he was staggered by the amount of goods in the stores, by the freedom of action he saw everywhere, but especially by the stores that conducted their business in Japanese standing side by side with American ones.

  Suspecting that this was some sort of trick, he asked if he could enter one of the Japanese shops, and his impromptu visit became something of a sensation when a local reporter heard about it, drummed up someone who could speak Polish, and conducted an interview right in the store: ‘I am amazed that the Japanese are free to come here and sell their goods so openly.’ Outside, the man pointed to twenty passing automobiles, and eleven were Japanese. ‘This is a miracle.’

  When the reporter asked if they didn’t have Japanese goods in Poland, he replied: ‘We have scarcely any goods from foreign countries. Not even from our good neighbor Russia.’

  The network arranged for him to stop over with the Polish community in Detroit, where he received several shocks. First, he found himself in an area as large as some Polish cities, populated mostly by Poles, with excellent Polish restaurants and many sights that reminded him of Krakow. Second, he was invited to listen to a Polish-language program on radio and then to see one on television, but they distressed him so sharply that he had to complain: ‘I spend three years in Poland and never hear a polka. I spend two days in Polish America and hear nothing else. What happened to Chopin and Penderecki?’ Third, he found the Poles in Detroit almost bursting with enthusiasm for a Polish-Russian war, and he had to tell them: ‘Nobody in Poland or Russia wants such a thing. You hear none of that talk over there.’ When he was asked if Poland was afraid, he replied: ‘We are. We can field an army of how many? Twenty thousand? And the heaviest gun our soldiers have is a deer rifle. Russia has eight hundred thousand men on our borders, with tanks, flame throwers, heavy artillery and dive bombers. We are very afraid.’ Fourth, and perhaps most important, he discovered that about half the Polish families he met had two cars, and in some cases, three. Even boys sixteen had their own cars. ‘How do you pay for them?’ he asked, and they spread before him the figures on wages, income and the cost of second-hand cars, and he realized that if a Warsaw worker set aside only the same proportion of his salary as the American worker did, he could buy not even a bicycle.

  He asked if there were any Polish farmers, and his hosts took him out to a farm near the Canadian border, where he methodically listed the description, cost, and cost of operating every piece of machinery, with the price of gasoline factored in. He could not believe his results. Then he went to four different machines and indicated peculiar parts which might break, and he wanted to know how long it would take to get a replacement and at what cost, so the farmer, a man named Dabrowski, drove him right in to the nearest town, where there was a John Deere representative and an International Harvester dealer, and in these shops Janko saw bin after bin of spare parts. Some of the prices seemed high, but as Dabrowski said: ‘That’s how they make their money. Sell you the big machine cheap and then keep selling you parts for the next twenty years at a stiff price.’ But there the parts were. Every item Buk had specified could be obtained within an hour, except one, and as the John Deere man said to Dabrowski: ‘We’ve never had a single call for a thing like that. It never breaks.’

  ‘But let’s suppose it does break,’ Buk said to Dabrowski, who interpreted.

  ‘But it never does,’ the man insisted.

  ‘Mine did,’ Buk said, staring right at the man, who brought down a large catalogue in which every component of the machine was listed, and there the part was, drawn in beautiful detail and numbered: 31-XZ-493-8271. Janko wanted to know specifically whether he could get that part, how much and how soon, and the manager said: ‘I’ll have to call Chicago.’

  During the phone conversation Dabrowski told Buk that the manager was making apologies, saying that he had never before heard of such a part breaking, and then apparently the man in Chicago said the same thing, for the manager placed his hand over the phone and said: ‘He tells me he’s never heard of that part breaking.’

  ‘So you have no spare?’ Buk said triumphantly, but the manager returned to the phone and after a while said: ‘The company keeps six in stock, just in case. They’ll fly one here by the afternoon plane.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Thirty-two dollars, forty-seven cents.’

  ‘Who pays the air freight?’

  ‘On a remarkable case like this, we do.’

  Then Janko Buk smiled, the gap between his teeth making him look like a naughty boy. ‘Tell him, Dabrowski, why I asked so many questions,’ and when Buk’s visit was explained, the manager called
several of his clerks and they stood admiring the plucky Pole: ‘Give the Russkies hell. We’re with you all the way.’ And one woman asked: ‘Are you really going to be on television? What station? When?’

  When they were back in Dabrowski’s car the American warned: ‘Don’t take what he said too seriously. These equipment dealers always promise you they’ll get the spare part by this afternoon. Usually arrives three days later.’

  ‘Do you think they really did have six spares?’ Buk asked.

  ‘Probably. That’s how they stay in business. But if they don’t … to keep you happy, they’d take a part from one of their other tractors,’ and Buk said: ‘That’s exactly what we do in Poland.’

  His visit to New York was a delight, with a charming young woman as interpreter always at his side. The network men asked if he’d like to visit a Polish restaurant, and he said: ‘Anything but.’ To their amazement he selected an Argentine one on the grounds, as he explained: ‘I’ll never have another chance.’ The beef was so delicious that the network men thanked him for his daring. When they took him to a store where he could purchase gifts for his children, he stood dumfounded at the variety and at the fact that at least half of them came from foreign countries. He never rested easy with this concept of almost free movement of goods between nations.

  His two appearances on national television were so self-controlled, and so clearly the performance of a man suddenly projected into a position far beyond his normal capacities but who was struggling to catch up, that three unexpected opportunities resulted.

  The leaders of American labor wanted to talk with him and give him good advice, but as he listened to these tired and frightened old men he kept thinking that they had little right to advise Lech Walesa or him: We Poles are fighting on the frontier of entirely new situations and we’re doing it with some courage. These Americans, with nothing to risk, weren’t even clever enough to handle that air controllers’ strike properly. That’s not what I call solidarity. But out of politeness, he did listen.

  He was startled one morning when the Polish ambassador himself appeared at his room in the big hotel on Sixth Avenue. ‘President Reagan invites you for lunch at the White House.’

  ‘What could I say to the President of the United States?’

  ‘I’ll be there to interpret.’

  ‘I mean, why me?’

  ‘Because you’ve become an important man in the world, Janko. You represent something exciting and new. And I must say, Janko, you handle yourself well. All Poland’s proud of their farm boy.’

  He flew with the ambassador to Washington and had an enjoyable, amusing and relaxing meal with the President, who was better versed on farm matters than anyone he had so far met in Honolulu, Detroit or New York. Also, everyone at table told funny stories, the prize being taken by Janko Buk himself, who relayed a story which Szymon Bukowski had told during their meeting at Bukowo:

  ‘Leonid Brezhnev needed a haircut, so he went down to the ground floor of the Kremlin and plopped into the chair. It was understood that at such times the barber was to say not a word, just cut hair. But this morning, after a few snips, he said: “Comrade Brezhnev, what are you going to do about Poland?” No reply. Some minutes later: “Comrade Brezhnev, what about Poland?” Again no reply. Then, pretty soon: “Comrade Brezhnev, you’ve got to do something about Poland.”

  ‘At this Brezhnev jumps out of the chair and tears away the cloth: “What’s all this about Poland?” and the barber says: “It makes my job so much easier,” and Brezhnev screams: “What do you mean?” and the barber says: “Every time I mention Poland your hair stands straight up on end.” ’

  He liked Reagan and was photographed several hundred times with him, but he doubted that Reagan would last very long in either Warsaw or Moscow, where the competition was brutal.

  It was the third unexpected opportunity which left the deepest impression. Back in New York, on the night prior to his return to Europe, he was invited to meet with a group of serious scholars, diplomats and businessmen, all of whom had visited Poland and studied its problems. They dined in an exclusive club atop a soaring skyscraper, with the beauty of a New York night spread out below them.

  ‘What’s going to happen in Poland?’ the men wanted to know, but the first two hours were spent in their offering their guesses. A young man from Krakow teaching at New York University whispered interpretations as the various men spoke, and he relayed a portrait of disaster.

  ‘The world banks are simply not going to extend any further credits,’ an international banker predicted. ‘Poland owes … how much? Twenty-five billion? Not a chance of any more.’

  ‘And that means no replacement parts … for anything,’ an industrialist said.

  ‘They can still get some from East Germany. With blocked currency.’

  ‘East Germany,’ said a man well versed in the area, ‘will drag its feet. On orders from Moscow.’

  Now the ugliest question of the evening was broached: ‘Do you think that Moscow is orchestrating the disaster in Poland?’ The questioner was a sophisticated reporter from Time.

  ‘Well, they’re certainly not making it any easier.’

  A labor-union expert on international affairs said: ‘The critical point came a few weeks ago when Solidarity sent that message to workers in the other Iron Curtain countries.’ Some of the men did not know about this, so he elaborated: ‘Solidarity leap-frogged over the heads of the government in Poland and over the heads of government in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania and East Germany. They spoke directly to the workers of those countries, intimating that what Solidarity had accomplished in Poland, they could accomplish in their countries.’

  One man, who heard this news for the first time, whistled. ‘That’s incitement to counterrevolution if I ever heard any.’

  ‘It is,’ the labor-union man said. ‘So we shouldn’t be surprised if Russia does everything possible to frustrate Poland. To prove to the other countries that if they go the Solidarity route, they can expect bread lines and confusion and perhaps even troops in the street.’

  ‘No!’ several experts cried in unison, and one by one they explained that Russia had by no means a free hand in Poland: ‘They have to worry about Afghanistan, and believe me they’re bleeding there. Just as we did in Vietnam. And they have to worry about China, which remains their major danger. And two new factors must be taken into account. The election of Karol Wojtyla to the papacy has changed a lot of things. You know, he said that if Russian troops invaded, he’d fly to Warsaw. He represents considerable force, shot in the belly or not. And another funny thing. Our election of Ronald Reagan poses the same kind of problem for them. They don’t exactly know how to estimate Reagan. They’re not sure what he might do if they go too far.’

  They then turned to Poland itself, and these men whose job it was to calculate the real position of nations agreed that Poland was in just about the sickest condition of any that they had seen in a long, long time. ‘If it was only food,’ said one man who knew the country well, ‘they could correct that in one growing season. Rationing. Giving the farmers priority in things they need. Cleaning out the channels of supply. But it’s so infinitely more than food. It’s the whole damned stew. It’s turned sour, and maybe the only corrective is to throw it all out and start with fresh ingredients in a fresh pot.’

  One man asked how long it would require, if everything went well, to make the corrections.

  ‘Most hopeful scenario, if all goes well, three years.’

  ‘Can Poland endure the mess for three years?’

  ‘It has to,’ the Pole teaching at NYU said. ‘It has in the past. It will now.’

  The men turned to Buk, seeking his estimate of the situation, and he said softly: ‘I am amazed that in New York City, I should find so many men who know my country so intimately. You speak of things we don’t even speak of among ourselves. And I suppose there are in Moscow tonight men just like yourselves who know as much as you do.’

&
nbsp; ‘Well …’ a German diplomat said cautiously.

  ‘So what does a farmer on the scene think? He thinks that things are terrible. And he sees no signals from Warsaw that they’re going to get any better.’

  The men plied him with questions, and every one of his answers hung together cohesively with every other, leading to the unmistakable conclusion that the system itself had begun to show signs of fatal strain. Nothing was working properly, but even Buk did not place his finger on the terrible weakness that underlay everything else. A Hungarian scientist now working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was the first to voice the problem.

  ‘The fatal weakness that I observed when I was there last year and again this spring is that practically no one in Poland does a full day’s work, except maybe a few farmers who are selling their surplus on the black market. For one conspicuous thing, most factories are shut down two or three days a week because of strikes or shortages. But more important, those who do work put in only four or five honest hours a day, and even in those four hours their performance is apt to be inadequate.

  ‘One of my colleagues filmed a television show in Poland. Where he would have used four men in America, five in England, he was forced by the government to use eighteen in Poland, and not a damned one of them did anything. It was disgraceful. He even had to carry his own umbrella and chair. It’s that way with everything.

  ‘Some of us have been working on an index of what percentage of an eight-hour day people really work in various countries, modified by how much they do accomplish in any given hour in which they do work. Combined figures like this can’t be too accurate, but you may be interested in our provisional estimates using 100 as top norm.

  ‘Singapore 92.6; Taiwan 89.7; Korea 83.3; Japan 82.1; West Germany 78.8; France 72.7; United States 70.3; Great Britain 40.4; Poland 33.3; Zaire 29.6; Chad 19.9. I have the others, but that’s a sampling.’