News from Zengakuren

 

 

ZENGAKUREN, the All-Japan Federation of Autonomous Student Bodies is a mass revolutionary organisation, with a militant tradition of struggle against American Imperialism and the Japanese ruling class. In 1960, it organised strikes and continuous demonstrations, in which many were wounded, outside the Tokyo Diet, against the Ratification of the Japanese – US Security Treaty. These reached such an intensity that the US Government thought it advisable to cancel a proposed Eisenhower visit to Japan.

The Zengakuren have recently called for the establishment of an anti-war International. They are supported in this by the Committee of 100, the Student Peace Union in the US, the Socialist Students Organization of West Germany and many other organizations opposed to both American and Russian tests. On August 17, 1962, representatives of the Zengakuren, including Nemoto, their President, attended the Leningrad Conference of the International Union of Students. On their way, they had demonstrated in Red Square against all nuclear tests. They had been arrested, then released and `closely watched during the remainder of their stay`.

We publish below an extract from Zengakuren Information Bulletin No.3, describing their discussions with representatives of the Soviet Student Council (SSC):

Soviet Student Council (SSC): Are you fighting against the nuclear testing of any nation other than the USSR? Do you realize that the Soviet Union is not the first country to engage in nuclear tests?

Zengakuren: We are engaged in a militant mass struggle against American nuclear tests. Our slogan in this struggle is, `Against tests of USA and USSR`. We oppose any nuclear activity by any country, be it England, France or China. Of course, we are fighting against the nuclear armament of Japan. You who sponsor the I.U.S. Congress should have known such a well-known fact.

SSC: Granted, but what country began the first nuclear tests and how many times were such tests carried out before the Soviet Union began?

Zengakuren: That is of no consequence. We accuse all countries engaged in testing of promoting the arms race and of suppressing the working class and people.

SSC: We are glad to hear that you oppose the American nuclear tests and can appreciate your stand against these tests. We lost millions of lives in World War II. This tragedy was due to the fact that our military forces were weaker than those of the Fascists. We do not want to be the second Hiroshima. If during the war Japan had had nuclear weapons at their disposal, the tragedy of Hiroshima would not have occurred.

Zengakuren: We oppose your dangerous view. According to your logic, you encourage the Japanese Imperialists to arm themselves with nuclear weapons. Do you really think that this is an effective way to stop the nuclear race and to prevent nuclear war?

SSC: The best way to prevent war is obviously total disarmament, but the next best procedure is to continue Soviet nuclear tests.

Zengakuren: Your policy, based on such a philosophy, wields an immeasurably harmful influence on the anti-war struggle of the working class. Do you know the slogan that is being used in Tokyo, New York and London to fight N-tests? `Against tests by the US and USSR`. These students and workers attempt to obtain peace not with nuclear weapons but by their own struggles.

SSC: You believe that if the Soviet Union stopped its tests, the working class movement would increase in strength and the imperialists’ tests would stop. We cannot be sure of such an outcome.

Zengakuren: Are you suggesting that the workers of the world stop their struggles and support Soviet testing? By holding such a view, you cause dissension among the workers of the world and make them oppose each other. The workers must unite. Soviet nuclear testing does not support peace. It provides America with an excuse to continue their tests and intensify the arms race. Any nuclear testing suppresses the workers of the world and subjects them to the domination of the ruling class. Aren’t you yourselves the slaves of nuclear weapons?

SSC: We can appreciate your point of view, but we are of totally different opinions.

Zengakuren: The justice of our views will be borne out by the continuation of the world-wide struggle against N-tests.

SSC: Your opinion sounds quite sincere; continue your work as you like, but don’t forget that you are in the USSR now.

Catastrophic Gradualism by George Orwell

 

The following is a commentary by George Orwell on the intellectual backing for dictatorship and oppression. It is in reaction to the 1945 publication of Arthur Koestler's book The Yogi and the Cossack, which is a collection of essays.

  It first appeared in the September 1946 issue of Politics.

THERE is a theory which has not yet been accurately
formulated or given a name, but which is very widely
accepted and is brought forward whenever it is necessary
to justify some action which conflicts with the sense of
decency of the average human being. It might be called,
until some better name is found, the Theory of Catastrophic
Gradualism. According to this theory, nothing is ever
achieved without bloodshed, lies, tyranny and injustice, but
on the other hand no considerable change for the better is
to be expected as the result of even the greatest upheaval.
History necessarily proceeds by calamities, but each succeeding
age will be as bad, or nearly as bad, as the last.

One must not protest against purges, deportations, secret
police forces and so forth because this is the price that
has to be paid for progress: but on the other hand “human
nature” will always see to it that progress is slow or even
imperceptible. If you object to dictatorship you are a reactionary,
but if you expect dictatorship to produce good results you are a sentimentalist.


At present this theory is most often used to justify the
Stalin régime in the USSR, but it obviously could be— and,
given appropriate circumstances, would be— used to justify
other forms of totalitarianism. It has gained ground as
a result of the failure of the Russian Revolution— failure,
that is, in the sense that the Revolution has not fulfilled
the hopes that it aroused twenty-five years ago. In the name
of Socialism the Russian régime has committed almost every
crime that can be imagined, but at the same time its evolution is away from Socialism, unless one re-defines that word in terms that no Socialist of 1917 would have accepted. To
those who admit these facts, only two courses are open.
One is simply to repudiate the whole theory of totalitarian
ism, which few English intellectuals have the courage to do;
the other is to fall back on Catastrophic Gradualism. The
formula usually employed is “You can’t make an omelette
without breaking eggs.” And if one replies, “Yes, but
where is the omelette?”, the answer is likely to be: “Oh
well, you can’t expect everything to happen all in a
moment.”


Naturally this argument is pushed backward into history,
the design being to show that every advance was achieved
at the cost of atrocious crimes, and could not have been
achieved otherwise. The instance generally used is the over
throw of feudalism by the bourgeoisie, which is supposed
to foreshadow the overthrow of Capitalism by Socialism in
our own age. Capitalism, it is argued, was once a progressive force, and therefore its crimes were justified, or at least were unimportant. Thus, in a recent number of the New
Statesman, Mr. Kingsley Martin, reproaching Arthur Koestler for not possessing a true “historical perspective,” compared Stalin with Henry VIII. Stalin, he admitted, had
done terrible things, but on balance he had served the cause
of progress, and a few million “liquidations” must not be
allowed to obscure this fact. Similarly, Henry VIII’s
character left much to be desired, but after all he had made
possible the rise of Capitalism, and therefore on balance
could be regarded as a friend of humanity.

Now, Henry VIII has not a very close resemblance to
Stalin; Cromwell would provide a better analogy; but,
granting Henry VIII the importance given to him by Mr.
Martin, where does this argument lead? Henry VIII made
possible the rise of Capitalism, which led to the horrors of
the Industrial Revolution and thence to a cycle of enormous
wars, the next of which may well destroy civilization altogether. So, telescoping the process, we can put it like this:
“Everything is to be forgiven to Henry VIII, because it was
ultimately he who enabled us to blow ourselves to pieces
with atomic bombs.” You are led into similar absurdities
if you make Stalin responsible for our present condition
and the future which appears to lie before us, and at the
same time insist that his policies must be supported. The
motives of those English intellectuals who support the Russian dictatorship are, T think, different from what they publicly admit, but it is logical to condone tyranny and massacre if one assumes that progress is inevitable. If each
epoch is as a matter of course better than the last, then any
crime or any folly that pushes the historical process for
ward can be justified. Between, roughly, 1750 and 1930
one could be forgiven for imagining that progress of a
solid, measurable kind was taking place. Latterly, this has
become more and more difficult, whence the theory of Catastrophic Gradualism. Crime follows crime, one ruling class
replaces another, the Tower of Babel rises and falls, but
one mustn’t resist the process— indeed, one must be ready
to applaud any piece of scoundrelism that comes off— be
cause in some mystical way, in the sight of God, or perhaps
in the sight of Marx, this is Progress. The alternative would
be to stop and consider (a) to what extent as history pre
determined? and, (b) what is meant by progress? At this
point one has to call in the Yogi to correct the Commissar.

In his much-discussed essay, Koestler is generally assumed to have come down heavily on the side of the Yogi. Actually, if one assumes the Yogi and the Commissar to be
at opposite points of the scale, Koestler is somewhat nearer
to the Commissar’s end. He believes in action, in violence
where necessary, in government, and consequently in the
shifts and compromises that are inseparable from government. He supported the war, and the Popular Front before it. Since the appearance of Fascism he has struggled against
it to the best of his ability, and for many years he was
a member of the Communist Party. The long chapter in
his book in which he criticises the USSR is even vitiated by
a lingering loyalty to his old party and by a resulting tendency to make all bad developments date from the rise of Stalin: whereas one ought, I believe, to admit that all the
seeds of evil were there from the start and that things would
not have been substantially different if Lenin or Trotsky
had remained in control. No one is less likely than Koestler
to claim that we can put everything right by watching our
navels in California. Nor is he claiming, as religious
thinkers usually do, that a “change of heart” must come
before any genuine political improvement. To quote his
own words:

“Neither the saint nor the revolutionary can save us;
only the synthesis of the two. Whether we are capable
of achieving it I do not know. But if the answer is in
the negative, there seems to- be no reasonable hope of
preventing the destruction of European civilization, either
by total war’s successor Absolute War, or by Byzantine
conquest— within the next few decades.”

That is to say, the “change of heart” must happen, but
it is not really happening unless at each step it issues in
action. On the other hand, no change in the structure of
society can by itself effect a real improvement. Socialism
used to be defined as “common ownership of the means of
production,” but it is now seen that if common ownership
means no more than centralised control, it merely paves the
way for a new form of oligarchy. Centralised control is a
necessary pre-condition of Socialism, but it no more produces Socialism than my typewriter would of itself produce this article I am writing. Throughout history, one revolution after another— although usually producing a temporary relief, such as a sick man gets by turning over in bed—has
simply led to a change of masters, because no serious effort
has been made to eliminate the power instinct: or if such an effort has been made, it has been made only by the saint, the Yogi, the man who saves his own soul at the expense of
ignoring the community. In the minds of active revolutionaries, at any rate the ones who “got there,” the longing for a just society has always been fatally mixed up with the
intention to secure power for themselves.


Koestler says that we must learn once again the technique
of contemplation, which “remains the only source of guidance in ethical dilemmas where the rule-of-thumb criteria of social utility fail.” By “contemplation” he means “the
will not to will,” the conquest of the desire for power. The
practical men have led us to the edge of the abyss, and the
intellectuals in whom acceptance of power politics has killed
first the moral sense, and then the sense of reality, are urging us to march rapidly forward without changing direction.
Koestler maintains that history is not at all moments pre
determined, but that there are turning-points at which humanity is free to choose the better or the worse road. One such turning-point (which had not appeared when he wrote
the book), is the Atomic Bomb. Either we renounce it, or
it destroys us. But renouncing it is both a moral effort and
a political effort. Koestler calls for “a new fraternity in a
new spiritual climate, whose leaders are tied by a vow of
poverty to share the life of the masses, and debarred by
the laws of the fraternity from attaining unchecked power”;
he adds, “if this seems utopian, then Socialism is a utopia.”
It may not even be a utopia— its very name may in a couple
of generations have ceased to be a memory— unless we can
escape from the folly of “realism.” But that will not hap
pen without a change in the individual heart. To that ex
tent, though no further, the Yogi is right as against the
Commissar.

AGAINST ALL BOMBS by Ken Weller

 

Text of a leaflet distributed in Moscow by supporters of the Committee of 100

AGAINST ALL BOMBS

The campaign in Britain against nuclear weapons is beginning to turn towards the working class. As it does so, it will create an increasing challenge to the capitalist state.

This marks a development both in the activities and in the consciousness of the Campaign. It is a genuine turn to the masses of ordinary workers, not the bureaucracies of the Labour and Trade Union movements. Already, as a result of this emphasis, we have seen the beginnings of industrial action against the bomb. Workers directly involved have refused to handle nuclear cargoes. Others have held token strikes.

THE BOMB IN CLASS SOCIETY

More and more people in the campaign are seeing the deeper implications of working class action against the bomb. The class which dominates production controls society. It decides policy and, despite the democratic facade, enforces it through its state apparatus. Until the ordinary people are free in production, they cannot have any effective say in the decisions of war and peace, life and death. Only a society with inhuman relations in production could produce these monstrous weapons.

But the USSR has the same monstrous weapons. Should this not be different if your society is fundamentally different from ours? We know the means of production are nationalised. But Marx himself insisted that it is the `relations of production` (the relations between men and men at work) which determine the class nature of society¹. The property relations might reflect these relations of production or might serve to mask them.

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

What has happened to your Revolution that your leaders should threaten the workers of other lands with these weapons? What has happened to the internationalist ideals of October?

The Revolution made sweeping changes in the property relations. But it did not solve the central contradiction of class society, that between rulers and ruled in production.

It was never the policy of the Bolsheviks to allow the workers to take over power in production itself. In 1921 Lenin wrote: `It is absolutely essential that all authority in the factories should be concentrated in the hands of management. Under these circumstances, any direct intervention by trade unions in the management of enterprises should be regarded as positively harmful and impermissible`. This typifies the whole ideology and practice of the Party in this period. Here were the roots of Stalinism.

From this viewpoint, the USSR has essentially the same relations of production as Britain or America. The Russian worker has to get up in the morning when the alarm clock rings. The time is not of his choosing. Someone else has decided what he shall produce, how much, and at what cost to himself. Has he chosen to have Sputniks rather than butter?

Both and East and West management makes all the plans, and seeks to reduce the worker to a standard unit in them. It consciously removes variety and decision making from his job, and subjects him to the ruthless tempo of machines. In Marxist terms, he is alienated. And any opposition to this system brings him up against the forces of the State, which, again, are beyond his control.

Is this a State that is `beginning to whither away from the moment of Revolution`? Or is it a kernel of the Socialist programme that has withered away?

INTERNATIONAL ACTION

In Britain our protests bring us up against our State forces too. When a mass demonstration tried to immobilise a NATO base at Wethersfield last December, six of our members were gaoled for long periods. Many others have been arrested on similar demonstrations.

We have also protested against the Russian H-tests, which threaten workers all over the world with `socialist` leukaemia. Our bourgeois police have protected your Embassy against us, and arrested hundreds of demonstrators.

Our struggle is the struggle for new relationships in production and in society. Both East and West, privileged protected by their State machines manage production and parcel out the social product. They try to protect these privileges against their greedy neighbours.

That is what the H-bomb defends. But workers gain nothing by assisting in protecting their own rulers against others. We must have faith only in ourselves, in our ability to transform society. We extend our hands in solidarity with the working people of Russia, over the heads of our rulers and yours. We have already taken up this struggle: it is yours too. Together we must ACT – OR WE SHALL PERISH TOGETHER.

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!

The Committee of 100 exists to organise mass civil disobedience and resistance against the production, testing and threatened use of nuclear weapons. Its basis is in rank-and-file action, not in politicians’ manoeuvres.

Its Industrial Sub-Committee seeks to develop these ideas among ordinary workers. Its first leaflet stated: `Workers make the weapons of mass destruction, transport them, handle them, install them. They supply and equip those who use them. When they no longer accept to do so, the politicians will have to fight their own wars`.

The Sub-Committee is composed of workers in the Docks, in road and rail transport, and in the Engineering, Building and Printing industries.

Published on behalf of the Industrial Sub-Committee of the London Committee of 100, by Ken Weller (Engineering Shop Steward), 37, Queens Mansions, North Road, London N.7

THAT LEAFLET

`Solidarity` feels the full text of the leaflet distributed (in Russian) at the recent World Disarmament Congress in Moscow, should go on record, in view of the widespread repercussions (and deliberate lies) it has evoked.

The following notes are based on a report by Dave Picton, one of the members of the London Committee of 100, who took the leaflets to Moscow.

On July 10, two of us gave out the first batch of leaflets in Gorky Street. They were taken eagerly and folded away in inside pockets…. Because of the litter laws. After we had distributed quite a number we were stopped by three `volunteer auxiliary militia`, who only became friendly after a passer-by that we were Congress delegates. The first (administrative) reflex had been to arrest us. The second (equally administrative) reflex had been to be friendly to an official foreign delegation. Obviously a dialectical contradiction. Neither reflex was related to the content of what we were distributing. That kind of response only took place later, at a higher level.

We also distributed the leaflet at a factory gate. It was an engineering works, in the suburbs. We distributed as the workers were returning from dinner break. The leaflets were again all taken and pocketed.

We also distributed the leaflet through letter boxes in a nearby block of workers’ flats. A second `block of flats` we entered turned out to be a police station. We decided not to stay.

Certain members of the British delegation became quite hostile after reading the leaflet. Late one night, one of the delegates found a woman in his room. His opinion of the Conference Arrangements Committee soared… till he found she was English – and that she was tearing up his leaflets. `Any method is justified against you people!`, she claimed. Unfortunately for her she had found the wrong leaflet.

The Chairman of the Soviet Peace Committee (Mr. Korneichuk) at one point asked for an assurance that the leaflets would no longer be distributed, despite an earlier agreement that we could put our case by any means we chose.

`The Guardian` gave the best coverage. A front-page article titled `Heresy in Moscow` by Victor Zorza (12.7.62) quoted nearly all of the text which it called `the most direct challenge to official Soviet policies and ideas to have been presented to the Soviet man in the street since freedom of speech died under Stalin`. The article referred with glee to the `blasphemy of blaming Lenin, the best refuge of the reformed Khruschevites, for ideas Stalin put into practice`.

In general the Press reports on the leafleting and on the demonstration in Red Square were remarkably sympathetic. Only Peter Simple, in the `Daily Telegraph` (13.7.62) objected to a `direct incitement to revolution in the Communist world`. He believed that `a campaign of illegal opposition to one government, on one issue, was being exploited by those who want to organise illegal opposition to all governments, on all issues. The anarchist face of the CND is beginning to show`.

This enthusiasm for the Committee’s activities in Moscow was only matched by the same newspapers’ hostility to the Committee’s activities in England. This discrepency was quickly pointed out by `The Daily Worker` (16.7.62), by Arnold Kettle in a letter to `The Guardian`(20.7.62), etc.,etc. There was however another side to this particular coin. Committee of 100 demonstrations in this country have been praised to the skies by the Soviet Press and Radio. The `The Daily Worker` had also offered encouragements, from a safe distance. But now `Pravda` (18.7.62) screamed at the `people who act like thieves`, the `smart Alecks` who discussed `offensive subjects` and `thrust provocative, slanderous, leaflets` at passers-by. And the `Daily Worker` had hysterics about the `insulting, anti-socialist diatribe` and `the distribution of such outrageous lies` by an `irresponsible group`. Readers of both papers had to contain their curiosity about the nature of the lies so violently denounced. Not a line, not a single word of the leaflet was quoted.

During the Congress the text of the leaflet was beamed into Russia in twelve different Soviet languages. Many journals of the socialist and peace movement quoted it extensively. The full text has been republished and circulated by various organisations, including an (intendedly!) private employers’ information service. It has been translated and distributed in France and circulated in Japanese by members of the Zengakuren². Copies have gone to Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy and other countries. At least 3 batches have been used in different parts of Yugoslavia. In Helsinki, at the `World Youth Congress`, there was a punch-up on the distributors of the leaflets by members of the Rumanian delegation. Zengakuren representatives, including their President, Itoshi Nemoto, later demonstrated in Red Square, on August 6. Their bulletin No.3 (September ‘62) states this was `inspired by the activities of the Committee 100` and was `our first attempt to appeal to and unite with the workers and people of the USSR`. They attempted to distribute leaflets and were `beaten and dragged behind the Lenin mausoleum, and detained there for an hour`.

1`The sum total of the relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which arise legal and political superstructures`. K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, vol.13, p. 6-7, Moscow 1959.

2All-Japan Federation of Autonomous Student Bodies.

Letter to President Carter on Aid to Military in El Salvador, February 17, 1980

 Here is the text of the letter written by Archbishop Oscar Romero to then US President Jimmy Carter urging him to cease supporting military and police death squads in El Salvador and to reaffirm his stated commitments to human rights. A month after writing this letter, Oscar Romero was gunned down by agents of the Junta on the 24th of March 1980.

In the last few days, news has appeared in the national press that worries me greatly. According to the reports your government is studying the possibility of economic and military support and assistance to the present junta government.

Because you are a Christian and because you have shown that you want to defend human rights, I venture to set forth for you my pastoral point of view concerning this news and to make a request.

I am very worried by the news that the government of the United States is studying a form of abetting the arming of EI Salvador by sending military teams and advisors to "train three Salvadoran batallions in logistics, communications and intelligence." If this information from the newspapers is correct, the contribution of your government, instead of promoting greater justice and peace in EI Salvador, will without doubt sharpen the injustice and repression against the organizations of the people who repeatedly have been struggling to gain respect for their most fundamental human rights.

The present junta government and above all the armed forces and security forces unfortunately have not demonstrated their capacity to resolve, in political and structural practice, the grave national problems. In general they have only reverted to repressive violence, producing a total of deaths and injuries much greater than in the recent military regimes whose systematic violation of human rights was denounced by the Inter-American Committee on Human Rights.

The brutal form in which the security forces recently attacked and assassinated the occupiers of the headquarters of the Christian Democratic party in spite of what appears to be the lack of authorization for this operation from the junta government and the party is an indication that the junta and the party do not govern the country, but that political power is in the hands of the unscrupulous military who only know how to repress the people and promote the interests of the Salvadoran oligarchy.

"As archbishop of the Archdiocese of San Salvador I have an obligation to see that faith and justice reign in my country, (so) I ask you, if you truly want to defend human rights, to prohibit the giving of this military aid to the Salvadoran government."

If it is true that last November "a group of six Americans were in EI Salvador...providing$200,000 in gasmasks and flak jackets and instructing about their use against demonstrators," you yourself should be informed that it is evident since then that the security forces, with better personal protection and efficiency, have repressed the people even more violently using lethal weapons.

For this reason, given that as a Salvadoran and as archbishop of the Archdiocese of San Salvador I have an obligation to see that faith and justice reign in my country, I ask you, if you truly want to defend human rights, to prohibit the giving of this military aid to the Salvadoran government Guarantee that your government will not intervene directly or indirectly with military, economic, diplomatic or other pressures to determine the destiny of the Salvadoran people.

In these moments we are living through a grave economic and political crisis in our country, but it is certain that it is increasingly the people who are awakening and organizing and have begun to prepare themselves to manage and be responsible for the future of EI Salvador. Only they are capable of overcoming the crisis.

It would be unjust and deplorable if the intrusion of foreign powers were to frustrate the Salvadoran people, were to repress them and block their autonomous decisions about the economic and political path that our country ought to follow. It would violate a right which we Latin American bishops meeting in Puebla publicly recognized when we said: "The legitimate self-determination of our people that permits them to organize according to their own genius and the march of their history and to cooperate in a new international order." I hope that your religious sentiments and your feelings for the defense of human rights will move you to accept my petition, avoiding by this action worse bloodshed in this suffering country.

1984: Miners Picket of Polish Consulate

 

SOLIDARNOSC (Solidarity)

PICKET OF POLISH CONSULATE:
(BUCKINGHAM TERRACE; CORNER OF GREAT WESTERN ROAD AND QUEEN MARGARET DRIVE)
(NEAREST UNDERGROUND: HILLHEAD)

 

END THE STRIKE-BREAKING POLISH COAL EXPORTS!

END THE SUPPRESSION OF FREE TRADE UNIONISM IN POLAND!

WEDNESDAY,  24TH OCTOBER, 5.30PM - 6.30 PM

SPONSORED BY (to date) 

Glasgow Polish Solidarity Committee; Castlemilk Miners Support Committee; Glasgow University Miners Support Committee; Glasgow University (Students) Miners Support Committee; Muirkirk Strike Committee (Ayrshire); Pollock Constituency Labour Party; Cathcart Constituency Labour Party; Stirling Constituency Labour Party; Queen's Park/Crosshill Labour Party; Glasgow University Labour Club; Glasgow District Labour Councillors; Jim Craigen MP; John Maxton MP; Denis Canavan MP; `Critique` Editorial Board; Stuart McLennan (CPSA National Executive Committee); Carol Thomson (Society of Civil and Public Servants, DHSS West of Scotland branch editor); Davey Graham (TGWU branch secretary, Newlands Bus Garage); Rowland Sheret (Chairperson, Stirling Trades Council); Alan Pow (Secretary, Stirling Trades Council); Hamilton CLP.

(All individuals in personal capacity)

At a time when the entire Labour and trade union movement is rallying to the support of the miners, exports of coal from Poland to this country have rocketed and are now running at 316% of their normal level. This is a major boost for the Tories' strike-breaking efforts. 

Solidarnosc, on the other hand, the free trade union banned by the Polish government in the name of `socialism`, has repeatedly expressed its support for the striking miners in its underground radio broadcasts and official statements.

Show your opposition to the Polish strike-breaking coal exports and the continuing oppression of Solidarnosc by supporting this picket. Bring placards and your union/Labour Party banner. 

A statement signed by the above bodies calling on the Polish government to "declare a moratorium on coal exports during the present sufferings of the British miners" will be handed in to the consulate at the picket.

Lord Sugar

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher meeting key economic ally General Jaruzelski dictator of the People's Republic of Poland

 I saw one of those strange "Why I left the left" type posts on Twitter the other day, one of those that go "In my rebellious youth I used to be X, but now I'm older and wiser" type messages that go onto to establish that they probably never were X and its coin flip whether they were never really committed to it or just making it up as a cheap rhetorical device. In this particular case, it was a twitter stalinist explaining how they were once an anarchist and are now, thanks to Historical Materialism, ™ seen the sterile light of Marxism-Leninism-whateverism.

It got me thinking of my dear stepdad and his life. I knew him as a sweet and mild man with a doddy sense of humour, but in his youth in the 70s and early 80s he was a punk rocker with a bright blue Mohawk and went on demos and protests to ban the bomb and end unemployment. One day I asked what had changed and explained. It started with getting a regular job, nothing like the monotony of wage labour to eat a way at your vitality and free expression!

This job was with British Sugar, he worked at a depot loading freight and then unloading them. The job was not great, if you've done manual work in factories or in logistics you'll know, it's monotonous and tiring, but it was steady employment, and he cracked on, he always had a reputation for being a grafter. No, the reason this job lead to a complete change in outlook and attitude for him was because one day he noticed something odd, the sugar he was unloading was the same sugar he had been loading for hours on end. The sugar was untouched the only difference was that it was covered in customs marks from the Soviet Union, the USSR was an importer of British Beet sugar as trade between Western and Eastern Europe was extensive and grew throughout the period.

You might be wondering why this would be a source of epiphany, well for shipments in Tons to cross international borders and work in a cycle as regularly as it did had to be a corruption scheme. And what made it worse was for millions of Tons of goods to be used in this manner required the active participation of officials on both sides, at least that's how he saw it. Keep in mind this was the Cold War where people walked around with the threat of Nuclear annihilation, and yet both the Thatcher's Britain and the Soviet Union, supposedly irreconcilable enemies and totally alien societies were wasting hours of labour and millions of Pounds/Rubles lining the pockets of minor officials.

 In effect, he was given direct, first-hand proof that the world he lived in and believed was a con. And he wasn't wrong, it goes beyond sugar, contrary to popular myths that North American Neo-Stalinists and Regan mourners keep a live the powers that be were willing to make money out of the international working class (this part editorialising here, he never used this kind of language) and so all this talk of revolution was nothing but hot air.

I've chosen the image above for an important reason, that is Margaret Thatcher and General Jaruzelski, apart from a photo-op the connections ran so deep that in 1984-5 when Thatcher was fighting to destroy the Miners and then the wider British Workers Movement she turned to Apartheid South Africa and "Communist Poland" for help. Coal Mining was the backbone of the Polish economy for many years, and they could deliver.

“UK imports of Polish house coal have been running at almost double their usual rate since the beginning of the year.  If the strike had not taken place about 130,000 tonnes of Polish house coal would have been imported this year.  But traders say that   so far 100,000 tonnes have been landed, and the final total for the year to likely to be 200.000 tonnes.  Cawoods, part of the Redland Group, based at Cheltenham, confirmed yesterday that it had placed an order for 30,000 tonnes of domestic coal.  It had purchased individual cargoes of Polish coal previously but this is its first long term contract.” (17^th May 1984)
Financial Times, sourced from https://ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org/2015/04/12/how-stalinism-helped-defeat-the-great-miners-strike-in-1984-85/

 It couldn't be more clear, the Actual Existing Record of Actually Existing Socialism is one of scabbing on and international scale, during the Miners Strike the arch Cold Warrior Thatcher was vulnerable like never before, and yet the vanguard of world socialism just took advantage to double their pre-existing contracts. 

My step-dad held several jobs learning the trades before jacking it all in to become a self-employed Handyman, he ended his work life as a window cleaner enjoying the lack of a boss and the freedom to tell abusive customers where to stick it. Not a viable path to emancipation for the dispossessed but it was he own personal victory on a system that took him and the rest of us for a mug.

 

The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia

 

This short sequence says more about early 90s Eastern Europe than entire forests of books.

I'm reading a book on the history of censorship in animation. The book covers many well known examples and also documents some lesser known ones. It also covers the filmography of Jan Švankmajer, a Czech director and animator who serves as an example of what it was like to work in the film industry in the Warsaw Pact. To get a film or program funded, scripts had to be approved by the responsible bureaucrats, Jan Švankmajer had some success for a time getting projects off the ground, but it eventually he got a reputation for making films that were pessimistic and individualistic, in short, bad art in the opinion of the Communist Party.

Jan Švankmajer is a committed Surrealist. In the popular parlance, surrealism is just an adjective to describe work that's odd. A painting that doesn't look much like something or a play that plays with the fourth wall or a film that has a sequence that breaks the rules of conventional cinema will be described as surrealist. However, the original Surrealists were a group of political radicals closely associated with Anarchism and libertarian socialism. It's this political Surrealism that Švankmajer was inspired by.

The opposition force Švankmajer to find new work as a puppet maker and painter. Fortunately for Jan Švankmajer he was noticed by the West German film industry who introduced his work to the rest of Western Europe. Several financiers including the UK's Channel Four and the BBC made overtures to fund some of his projects, which meant the Czechoslovak film authorities reluctantly allow him to return, though opposition continued. Jan Švankmajer's film Alice, an adaption of Alice in Wonderland, was made while he was supposed to be working on a different film and was only allowed to be completed after a bitter dispute in which the foreign funders threatened to withdraw if Alice wasn't completed. 

So, with all those headaches, it's not surprising that once the regime collapsed in 1989 that Švankmajer would take the opportunity to comment on its demise. In 1990, with assistance from the BBC, he released a ten-minute animated short titled The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia. I've wanted to see this film for some time after seeing clips of his Alice. And now thanks to a YouTube channel I got my chance. It's simply excellent, the imagery is striking, the claymation animation is not only interesting to watch on its own, but it makes many of the film's points in itself. There's a sequence where clay workers in flat caps and overalls, the men who populated every Soviet poster from 1918-91 created via moulds, going through an assembly line and then hanged, after which their bodies fall into a bucket and turn back into clay which is then moulded back into workers which go back on the line and so on and so on, meanwhile the film juxtaposes imagery from Czechoslovakia's Five-Year plans with the production targets getting higher and higher. 

Practically every sequence is like this, the imagery and transitions and movements work together to make the point crystal clear even if you can't read Czech. I could describe the entire ten-minute run time, the crumpling up of posters of old Czechoslovak/Soviet leaders followed by uncrumpling those posters to reveal their replacements, meet the new boss, mostly the same as the old, as a quick example. But I'll restrain myself and just discuss what for me is the most important sequence, the film has a bookend sequence, it starts with a creaky old Stalin bust having surgery, his skull is cut open to reveal his brain, the surgeon plunges both hands into the gory matter and pulls out a smaller bust of Klement Gottwald, ardent Czech Stalinist and leader of the 1948 coup that established the Communist party dictatorship. After cleaning up the blood and tying off the umbilical cord, the Gottwald bust comes to life, the birth of Stalinism in Bohemia. At the end of the film the chronology has entered the late 80s and the soundtrack is full of jubilant crowds and photographs of mass demonstrations in the streets. While this is going on, the hands that have been controlling everything throughout the film start painting everything with the Czech national flag. A new coat of paint on rusty equipment, including an old and dirty Stalin bust. This Czech national flag Stalin bust undergoes the same surgery and those hands plunge back into the brain matter, but the film ends before we can see what emerges from it. 

The film is open about its existence as a form of Agitprop, agitational propaganda and Švankmajer has stated that he thought the film would age very quickly because it's a direct commentary upon current events  "Despite the fact that this film emerged along the same path of imagination as all my other films, I never pretended that it was anything more than propaganda. Therefore, I think it is a film which will age more quickly than any of the others." To call a film Agitprop or propaganda is to insult in conventional circles. Art is supposed to rise above petty political statements, this film is the best rebuttal to that assumption I've come across so far. Removing the politics from this film is to leave it an empty husk, its politics is its art.

Most political film animated or otherwise are frankly quite blunt and simplistic, there's a bad guy who demonstrates all the qualities the makers criticize, the good people eventually triumph etc. Here the villain is a system, it isn't the death of Stalin in Bohemia, it's the Death of Stalinism in Bohemia with a question mark. Stalin died in 1953 just days before Klement Gottwald died oddly enough. And even Stalin is manipulated by the hands of the unseen operator of the system, who is still around in 1990 and working hard to mutate into a more politically acceptable Czechoslovak national form to continue its work.

The scepticism wasn't some paranoia from an artist who thinks too much, either. The book I'm reading that reminded me to look up Švankmajer's work was published in the middle of the 1990s several years after The Death of Stalinism, was released. It includes comments by Czech filmmakers that things haven't changed completely, many of the old Communist party bureaucrats were still in positions of power in the industry and not all of them had adapted to the changing times. Which is what the Stalin bust with the flag paint was about, the collapse of the old regimes removed some of the most high profile and infamous personalities, but left thousands of lower level authorities in place, and it was an open question just how far these authorities would be willing to change. 

And of course, the reason much of the imagery is obvious despite cultural distance is that much of what is odious about the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe can be found in Western European capitalism. I've worked in factories with grimy walls covered in propaganda posters while sweating and aching to fill ridiculous quotas. The secret police are gone, but the regular police are quite capable of repression, the governing institutions are just as invested in keeping the population passive through a combination of restrictions and distractions.

 I've been to Czechia and Slovakia, so I'm under no illusion that these two things are the same, there are differences, just not as much as the propagandists of both systems would like us to believe.

A review of Esperanto Kaj Socialismo [Esperanto and Socialism] by Detlev Blanke

 

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Esperanto kaj Socialismo? pri la movado sur la "alia flanko"(1), is a short piece of historical information about the Esperanto movement in the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War period. The author Detlev Blanke grew up in East Germany and was an active promoter of Esperanto at the time so the work is largely autobiographical. I won't pretend this isn't a text written for a small niche, but if you're interested in Esperanto enough to read works written in the language there is some value and interest to be found in these pages even if you had no interest in socialism or Eastern Europe.

I of course, am interested in both subjects, so I had a lot to digest. I would say an sperta komencanto, or a beginner with some experience should find the text readable with maybe a few pauses to consult a dictionary. A passage from the introduction struck me as interesting, most of the text was taken from a lecture and expanded with more detail. The subject of the lecture was about ideology and its relationship to Esperanto, and focused on what is commonly referred to as the "socialismaj landoj" socialist countries. Meaning of course nations controlled by Communist parties such as the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of Poland. But the extent to which these nations were socialist has been contested. Detlev Blanke has since come to the conclusion that these nations including the one he grew up didn't live up to those titles. He thinks that a more accurate description would be "soclandoj" a word I have a hard time translating into English. I suppose Socialette countries would be the most accurate way to do it. What he's done is reduced socialism to its root or germ, these nations didn't build a socialist society but Blanke believes the intention and aspiration to do so was genuine and had things developed differently they might have succeeded. 

Its a bit like how a novelette isn't just a short story, but a short story that has the potential to become a full novel. For example Stephen King's Cycle of the Werewolf, it has a full story structure and could be expanded into a longer work, and was though for film with the novelette being the foundation of the script for Silver Bullet. 

Esperanto and Socialism's main thrust is a history of the development of the officially approved Esperanto movement in East Germany and its connections with the wider "socialist" or more accurately pro-Soviet Union nations and their approved Esperanto movements. The text is acronym heavy and many names are called up but the layout limits the potential confusion. While the details of the benefits of working with the government will make some Esperantists envious, multiple school courses, subsidised travel, funding for diverse publications, conferences attended by important people etc. Blanke makes clear that these came at costs. The Esperantists of Eastern Europe had to conform to the limits of accepted behaviour and discussion. The Soviet Union was a major obstacle in this regard. Stalin's brutal repressions targeted the Soviet Esperantist movement, and while many of them were posthumously "rehabilitated" it was still a sore subject to give publicity to criticism of Stalin's rule in Brezhnev's Soviet Union. Another issue was language imperialism. This is a subject familiar to most Esperantists, and it wasn't much different on the other side of the Berlin Wall. The main difference was instead of having to contend with the popularity of English or French they had to deal with the pre-eminence of Russian. In addition to competing with Russian for space in international communications criticism of linguistic domination of Russian was also a contentious topic.

The limits on what could be discussed and obstinacy on behalf of the bureaucracy that controlled East Germany were issues that couldn't be tackled without direct opposition to the government, which given that these were all dictatorial societies with extensive police powers wasn't advisable. Still, the Esperantists of Eastern Europe were able to rebuild movements shattered by the Nazis and Stalin, and later Nicolae Ceaușescu who cracked down on Esperanto in the 1980s, and were able to make some space for international discussion, culture and debate and promotion of peace in international affairs.

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1: Esperanto and Socialism? information on the movement on the "other side" is how I translate the title into English

 

 

Studenta movado en la ombro de la ŝtato - The student movement in the Shadow of the State

The Student Movement in the Shadow of the State

During the post war years the Esperanto movement was strong in several nations within the Soviet Bloc, especially Poland. Esperanto gave people a chance for international contacts, even beyond the Iron Curtain. But at the same time the Esperanto movement was used by their ruling regimes for propaganda, observation and control by the state. Jarek Parzyszek tells us of his experiences within the Polish student movemnt.

Władysław Gomułka, speaking to the masses in Warsaw in 1956. During the early days of his rule he was quite popular. However, by the end of the 1960s he had launched anti-Jewish campaigns to silence critics, he was deposed as party leader following popular protests in 1970.

Founded in 1972 in Zakopane South Poland, the Polish Student Esperanto Committee was a successful attempt to co-ordinate the activities of several independent - educational, scientific, cultural and tourist - groups and clubs which were operating in many Polish university cities. The organisational and financial base for the majority of these clubs was the Association of Polish Students (APS).

Polish student Esperanto clubs started appearing in Universities after the fall of the Bierut regime, (so after 1956). For Poles, after the death of Bierut, it seemed that together with Właysław Gomułka  we would have a new and better era. New magazines appeared, a few authors who had been banned before were allowed to publish their books or put on shows, the role of the National (Underground) Army could be publicly remembered for a few years, a few intellectuals were allowed to travel beyond Eastern Europe- but this freedom soon disappeared.

The majority of the Esperanto clubs collaborated with, or were entirely dependent upon the APS. In the 1960s and 70s the vast majority of students belonged to the APS, which in fact monopolised the organisational activity of Polish students so that almost all interest groups had to establish some kind of official relationship with the APS. It should be noted that there were no other official youth organisations. The state "took care" to ensure that youth organisations did not drift in the "wrong" direction.

In addition to the department for youth attached to the Central Committee of the communist party (Polish United Workers Party)  which was led by a special secretary on the "right" path for youth activities, there were responsibilities for the division of finances, approval of passports ("lending passports") for travel, censorship officers, central office in Warsaw and others in the provinces, police (called militia) and secret state services, with thousands of secret collaborators who reported on various fields of social activity.

The control was also maintained officially, through inspections of the individual organisations on a local and national level. 

From my almost 10 years of Esperanto Activism in the People's Republic of Poland, I knew from direct experience that the Polish Esperanto movement, and the student movement in particular was monitored and controlled by the state. 

Of course, it was not just the Polish Esperanto students who were monitored and controlled, quite the contrary. During the 1980s (and apparently also in the 1970s) Poland was the "Least free" of all the Socialist nations. During and after the "state of war" our friends from the DDR, Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, were frightened to or could not visit us except as part of a limited number of groups that were organised by the Komsomol, FDJ etc.

The Polish Student Esperanto Committee was never an independent organisation, in fact it was not even an organisation from a legal point of view. It was a central representation of Polish student-Esperantists, consisting of one representative from each functioning student circle / club. As most Esperanto student circles and clubs had the word "scientific" in their name, PSEK served on the Scientific Committee of the Main Council of the Polish Students' Association.

Edward Gierek (with an unknown interpreter) together with Nicolae Ceausescu, was the communist party leader of Poland from 1970-1980. 

In fact, this "scientific" character was often just an official "cover", a pretext for receiving state grants for "scientific and educational" events on various topics such as peace, the cosmos, Lenin's legacy, etc., for publications and research visits. Although a number of student circles have actually succeeded in researching Esperanto, interlinguistics and international language communication: for example, the University of Warsaw, led by Ryszard Rokicki (second PSEK president), Barbara Jędrzejczyk (later Rokicka) and Jerzy Leyk.

Warsawians were holding Scientific Interlinguistic Seminars (later: Symposia) in the early 1970s. Successful SISs in the 1980s were organized by the PSEK Academic Center, which operated at the PSEK, bringing together PSEK activists who published post-symposium materials and separate interlinguistic notebooks. ACI's main drivers were Barbara and Ryszard Rokicki.

The second centre was the student scientific circle in the city of Łódź, which, in collaboration with APS, organized international conferences on international language communication at the University of Łódź,, publishing rich bilingual post-conference materials. The main driving force behind these conferences was the fourth PSEK president, Tadeusz Ejsmont, who received his doctorate in Esperanto from the University of Łódź, in 1982. The first PSEK president (Władysław Stec) came from Łódź, and served for two terms.

PSEK has been active not only in science but also in culture. Already before the PSEK era, with the help of the Polish Students' Association, Marek Pietrzak founded the Polish Esperanto Youth in 1958, and he edited for a long time the cultural-educational magazine TAMEN (However), published first in Toruń (1959-60), then in Wrocław (1960-64) and finally in Warsaw (1965-67). A Student Gazette was published in the late 1980s and early 1990s by PSEK, edited by Jarosław Miklasz from Bydgoszcz and co-edited by the editorial team i.a. Krzysztof Łobacz, Elżbieta Malik and Jarosław Parzyszek.

Successes in the cultural field were cultivated by PSEK sons: the Esperanto Cultural Society in Poznań (founded by Paweł Janowczyk, Zbigniew Kornicki, Andrzej Naglak, Alicja Lech and continued by Leszek Lewandowski) and in Zielona Góra until 1992 at the Green Mountain Cooperative, led by Jerzy Rządzki who earlier founded and directed Student Esperanto Theatre and held theatre and cultural festivals in and around Zielona Góra. The theatre stars Dorota Świerstok (now Polaczek), Mira Rządzka, Leszek Lewandowski and Anna Szumska (now Hanna Szczęsna).

For several years, the Esperanto Cultural Society had collaborated with the APS Cultural Commission by publishing some interesting volumes, such as the collection of poems I am Only a Woman by Anna Świrszczyńska translated by Tomasz Chmielik, Doktryna Zamenhofa by Jarosław Parzyszek and Esperanto i nauka by Dr. Leszek Kordylewski .

PSEK's main inspiration, however, was neither science nor culture, but travel. Thanks to the APS umbrella, PSEK delegates traveled en masse to international Esperanto events, mainly in Europe but not only, for example in 1981 to Brazil and in 1986 to the Israeli IJK in Neurim traveled 4 PSEK representatives. Such trips abroad were much more complicated and financially unaffordable for PEJ members, which is why PSEK members often represented Poland on the TEJO Committee and were sometimes even TEJO board members (Jan Koszmaluk, Jarosław Parzyszek).

Passport of the Polish People's Republic, photo Jerzy Kuśmider

In the People's Republic of Poland there were three categories of passports, which were then not the property of the citizens but of the state, and the state could kindly allow its citizens to borrow a passport to travel abroad. At the APS Central Office, at 9 Ordynacka Street in Warsaw, there was a passport depot with direct contact with the Ministry of the Interior.

For a formal trip, a semi-private passport (with the letter "B") was issued, which made it possible to travel only to socialist countries, or with a special stamp allowed to travel to all states of the world. The APS Passport Deposit also helped get visas to capitalist countries.

The local (regional) passport offices also "lent" passports to student-Esperantists, based on the official invitation letters with additional letters of recommendation on the official paper of the Polish Students' Association. One could and sometimes did get a passport without such a letter, but that route was usually longer and more uncertain.

The PSEK delegates had to write and quickly deliver official reports to APS after the official visits. Some of the reports, possibly all of them, were forwarded to the Ministry of the Interior and / or its local offices. Sometimes, in addition to the "official" (formally public) report, delegates were asked for separate, secret reports.

For example, in 1986 I was invited by the then PSEK President and TEJO Board Member to attend a TEJO / KER Seminar at the European Youth Center in Strasbourg. Then, fearing the aftermath, I refused to prepare such a report and in the end did not travel to the seminar, but Poland was represented by two other people.

The International Youth Congress in Krakow, 1987, photo: Mediateko CLZ

However, I had to have contacts with this service before and during the 43rd IJK in Krakow: I, as PSEK president and LKK vice-president, was responsible for the official invitations of the foreigners and delivered the lists of the guests to the ministry, reported on the program and the congressional publications. Some certainly remember the panic before the IJK inauguration, when the secret agent demanded that I add to the list of participants a 6-person list of the "citizens" of West Berlin who, according to official doctrine, were not citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), but of a separate "state".

Then together with some LKK members we collected the anti-regime leaflets which, during the excursion day of the Krakow IJK, were scattered by one of the Polish IJK participants.

We, me and some other LKK members, knew that in the IJK congress hall (Wisła sports hall) in Krakow the congress from above, was constantly observed by some secret officials. One of these officials also contacted me during the 72nd World Congress in Warsaw, where I was in charge of the youth program. He was not interested in the World Congress program but in the informal talks.

The biggest secret of PSEK's international activity and success was the so-called day-to-day, non-foreign exchange communications which meant that the participation of one foreigner during one day of a PSEK event was equal to the participation of one PSEK member in a foreign event. We have had many partners from such exchanges. The most important and most frequently used was the PSEK / GEJ contract, but we had separate contracts with: TEJO, JEFO, JES, JEB, ĈEJ, BEJ, HEJ, NEJ and KCE in Switzerland.

The international history of the PSEK ended after the fall of the People's Republic of Poland. Firstly, due to the economic crisis, the non-communist government of Mazowiecki / Balcerowicz almost completely cancelled state subsidies, secondly the citizens were given the right to travel freely and finally became holders of passports for the whole world, thirdly our Esperanto partners cancelled the contracts of currency exchange.

In 1992 in Gdańsk took place the 14th Student Summer Esperanto Meeting (the first 12 SER took place in Toruń) and the jubilee seminar and ball of PSEK, organized by the last PSEK president, Adam Cholewiński, and attended by among others the first PSEK- President Władysław Stec and I. To my knowledge this was the last arrangement and the end of PSEK history.

PSEK survives somewhat through ARKONES - Art Confrontations in Esperanto, which first took place in 1979 in Poznań.

Jarek Parzyszek

 

el la Libera Folio English follows Esperanto

La Esperanto-movado dum kelkaj postmilitaj jardekoj estis forta en kelkaj landoj de la tiama sovetia bloko, kaj precipe en Pollando. Esperanto donis ŝancon pri internaciaj kontaktoj eĉ trans la fera kurteno. Samtempe la Esperanto-movado estis uzata de la regantoj por propagando, observata kaj kontrolata de la ŝtato. Jarek Parzyszek rakontas pri siaj spertoj en la pola studenta movado.

Władysław Gomułka parolas al popolamaso en Varsovio en oktobro 1956. Dum la komenca periodo de sia regado li estis tre populara. Fine de la 1960-aj jaroj li iniciatis kontraŭjudan kampanjon por silentigi kritikajn voĉojn. Li perdis sian partiestran postenon lige kun popolaj protestoj en 1970.

Fondita en Zakopane, suda Pollando, en 1972, Pola Studenta Esperanto-Komitato estis sukcesa provo kunordigi la agadon de sendependaj studentaj – edukaj, sciencaj, kulturaj kaj turismaj Esperanto-rondoj kaj kluboj, kiuj funkciadis en multaj polaj universitataj urboj. La organiza kaj financa bazo por la plimulto de la rondoj estis Asocio de Polaj Studentoj (APS).

Studentaj polaj esperantistaj kluboj kaj rondoj ekaperis en la polaj universitatoj post la falo de Bierut-reĝimo (do post 1956). Por poloj, post la morto de Bierut, ŝajnis ke kune kun Właysław Gomułka venis nova, pli bona epoko: aperis novaj revuoj, kelkaj pli frue malpermesitaj autoroj rajtis aperigi siajn librojn aŭ prezenti spektaklojn, oni povis dum kelkaj jaroj publike rememori la rolon de la Landa (subtera) Armeo, multaj intelektuloj rajtis vojaĝi ne nur al Orienta Europo – sed tiu ”libereco” rapide finiĝis.

La plej multaj el la esperantistaj rondoj kunlaboris kun aŭ eĉ fakte funkciis nur danke al APS. En la 60-aj kaj en la 70-aj jaroj granda plimulto de polaj studentoj apartenis al APS, kiu fakte monopoligis la organizan aktivadon de polaj studentoj tiel ke preskaŭ ĉiuj interesgrupoj devis elekti formon de oficiala kunlaboro kun APS. Substrekendas, ke oficiale ne ekzistis aliaj junularaj organizaĵoj. La ŝtato ”zorgis”, ke la junularaj organizaĵoj ne fordrivu en ”malĝusta” direkto.

Krom la departemento pri junularo en la Centra Komitato de la komunista partio (Pola Ununiĝinta Laborista Partio), gvidata de aparta sekretario pri la “ĝusta” direkto de junulara aktivado, zorgis financaj ŝtatoservoj dividantaj subvenciojn, pasportoservoj donantaj permesojn (“pruntantaj” pasportojn) por vojaĝi, cenzur-oficejoj: centra en Varsovio kaj vojevodiaj, polico (nomata milicja) kaj sekretaj ŝtataj servoj, kun miloj da sekretaj kunlaborantoj, kiuj raportadis pri diversaj kampoj de socia aktivado.

La kontrolado okazadis ankaŭ oficiale, interne de la unuopaj organizaĵoj lok- kaj landnivele.

El mia preskaŭ 10-jara sperto de Esperanto-aktivado en Pola Popola Respubliko mi praktike scias ke la pola Esperanto-movado, precipe la studenta, estis observata kaj kontrolata de la ŝtato.

Kompreneble ne nur polaj studentoj-esperantistoj estis observataj kaj kontrolataj ‒ tute kontraŭe. Dum la 1980-aj (kaj ŝajne ankau dum la 1970-aj) jaroj Pollando estis ”la plej libera” inter la socialismaj landoj. Dum kaj post la ”milita stato” (1981-84) niaj amikoj el GDR, Sovetunio, Bulgario, Rumanio, Ĉeĥoslovakio, timis aŭ ne povis viziti Pollandon, escepte de nombre limigitaj grupoj, organizitaj de Komsomol, FDJ kaj tiel plu.

Pola Studenta Esperanto-Komitato neniam estis sendependa organizaĵo, ĝi fakte eĉ ne estis organizaĵo laŭ jura vidpunkto. Ĝi estis centra reprezentantaro de polaj studentoj-esperantistoj, konsistanta el po unu reprezentanto de ĉiu funkcianta studenta rondo/klubo. Ĉar la plej multaj studentaj Esperanto-rondoj kaj kluboj havis en sia nomo la vorton ”scienca”, PSEK funkciis ĉe la Scienca Komisiono de la Ĉefa Konsilio de Asocio de Polaj Studentoj.

Fakte tiu ”scienca” karaktero estis plej ofte nur oficiala ”nomkovraĵo”, preteksto por ricevadi ŝtatajn subvenciojn por ”sciencaj kaj edukaj” aranĝoj pri diversaj temoj kiel paco, Kosmo, Lenin-heredaĵo ktp., por eldonaĵoj kaj esplorvizitoj. Fakte kelkaj studentaj rondoj efektive sukcesis sciencigi la esploradon pri Esperanto, interlingvistiko kaj internacia lingva komunikado: ekzemple tiu de la varsovia universitato, gvidata interalie de Ryszard Rokicki (la dua PSEK-prezidanto), Barbara Jędrzejczyk (poste Rokicka) kaj Jerzy Leyk.

Edward Gierek (ĉi tie kune kun nekonata interpretisto kaj Nicolae Ceauşescu) estis la partiestro en Pollando ekde 1970 ĝis 1980.

La varsovianoj jam komence de la 70-aj jaroj okazigadis Sciencajn Interlingvistikajn Seminariojn (poste: Simpoziojn). Grandsukcesaj SIS-oj en la 80-aj jaroj estis aranĝitaj de Akademia Centro Interlingvistika, funkcianta ĉe PSEK, ariganta PSEK-eksaktivulojn, kiu eldonadis postsimpoziajn materialojn kaj apartajn interlingvistikajn kajerojn. La ĉefmotoroj de ACI estis Barbara kaj Ryszard Rokicki.

Dua centro estis la studenta scienca rondo en la urbo Łódź, kiu, kunlabore kun APS, organizis ĉe la Lodza Universitato internaciajn konferencojn pri internacia lingva komunikado, eldonante riĉenhavajn postkonferencajn materialojn dulingve. La ĉefa motoro de tiuj konferencoj estis la kvara PSEK-prezidanto Tadeusz Ejsmont, kiu en 1982 doktoriĝis pri Esperanto ĉe la Lodza Universitato. El Lodzo venis kaj tie vivas la unua PSEK-prezidanto (dum du oficperiodoj), Władysław Stec.

PSEK aktivadis ne nur sciencterene, sed ankaŭ kulture. Jam antaŭ la PSEK-epoko, helpe de Asocio de Polaj Studentoj, Marek Pietrzak fondis en 1958 Polan Esperanto-Junularon, kaj li longe redaktis la kulturan-edukan revuon TAMEN, eldonatan unue en Toruń (1959-60), poste en Vroclavo (1960-64) kaj fine en Varsovio (1965-67). Fine de la 80-aj kaj komence de la 90-aj jaroj de PSEK estis eldonata Studenta Gazeto, kiun ĉefredaktis Jarosław Miklasz el Bydgoszcz kaj en la redaktoteamo kunlaboris i.a. Krzysztof Łobacz, Elżbieta Malik kaj Jarosław Parzyszek.

Sukcesojn kulturkampe kultivis PSEK-filoj: Esperanta Kultura Societo en Poznań (fondita de Paweł Janowczyk, Zbigniew Kornicki, Andrzej Naglak, Alicja Lech kaj daŭrigata de Leszek Lewandowski) kaj en Zielona Góra ĝis 1992 Kooperativo Verda Monto, gvidata de Jerzy Rządzki, kiu pli frue fondis kaj gvidis Studentan Esperanto-Teatron kaj okazigadis en kaj apud Zielona Góra teatro- kaj kulturfestivalojn. En tiu teatro la ĉefrolojn plenumis interalie Dorota Świerstok (nun Polaczek), Mira Rządzka, Leszek Lewandowski kaj Anna Szumska (nun Hanna Szczęsna).

Esperanto-Kultura Societo dum kelkaj jaroj kunlaboris kun la Kultura Komisiono de APS eldonante kelkajn interesajn volumetojn, ekzemple la poemkolekton Mi estas nur virino de Anna Świrszczyńska en traduko de Tomasz Chmielik, Doktryna Zamenhofa de Jarosław Parzyszek kaj Esperanto i nauka de d-ro Leszek Kordylewski.

La ĉefa inspiro de PSEK tamen estis nek scienco nek kulturo, sed vojaĝoj. Dank’ al la APS-ombrelo PSEK-delegitoj amase vojaĝadis al internaciaj Esperanto-aranĝoj, ĉefe en Eŭropo sed ne nur, ekzemple en 1981 al Brazilo kaj en 1986 al la israela IJK en Neurim veturis 4 PSEK-reprezentantoj. Tiaj eksterlandaj vojaĝoj estis multe pli komplikaj kaj finance nepageblaj por PEJ-anoj, pro tio ofte PSEK-anoj reprezentis Pollandon en TEJO-Komitato kaj foje eĉ estis TEJO-estraranoj (Jan Koszmaluk, Jarosław Parzyszek).

Pasporto de Pola Popola Respubliko. Foto: Jerzy Kuśmider

En la Pola Popola Respubliko ekzistis tri kategorioj de pasportoj, kiuj tiam ne estis propraĵo de la civitanoj sed de la ŝtato, kaj la ŝtato povis afable permesi al siaj civitanoj pruntepreni pasporton por vojaĝi eksterlanden. En la Centra Oficejo de APS, ĉe la strato Ordynacka 9 en Varsovio, funkciis pasporto-deponejo kun rekta kontakto kun la Ministerio pri Internaj Aferoj.

Por oficala vojaĝo oni ricevis duonprivatan pasporton (kun la litero ”B”), kiu ebligis vojaĝi nur al socialismaj landoj, aŭ kun speciala stampo rajtigis vojaĝi al ĉiuj ŝtatoj de la mondo. La Pasporta Deponejo de APS helpis ankaŭ ricevi vizojn al t.n. kapitalismaj landoj.

Ankaŭ la lokaj (vojevodiaj) pasportoficejoj “pruntis” pasportojn al studentoj-esperantistoj, surbaze de la oficialaj invitleteroj kun aldonaj rekomendoleteroj sur la oficiala papero de Asocio de Polaj Studentoj. Oni povis kaj foje sukcesis ricevi pasporton sen tia letero, sed tiu vojo kutime estis pli longdaŭra kaj necerta.

La PSEK-delegitoj devis post la oficialaj vizitoj verki kaj rapide liveri al APS oficialajn raportojn. Parto de la raportoj, eble eĉ ĉiuj, estis plusendataj al la ministerio pri internaj aferoj aŭ/kaj ties lokaj oficejoj. Foje, krom la ”oficiala” (formale publika) raporto la delegitoj estis petataj pri apartaj, sekretaj raportoj.

Ekzemple en 1986 de mi, tiama prezidanto de PSEK kaj estrarano de TEJO, invitita partopreni TEJO/KER Seminarion en la Eŭropa Junulara Centro en Strasburgo, oni ‒ funkciulo de sekreta servo ‒ postulis apartan raporton pri la neoficialaj okazaĵoj kaj interparoloj en Strasburgo. Tiam, timante la postsekvojn, mi rifuzis prepari tian raporton kaj finfine ne veturis al la seminario, sed Pollandon reprezentis du aliaj homoj.

La IJK en Krakovo 1987. Foto: Mediateko CLZ

Kun tiu servo mi tamen devis havi kontaktojn antaŭ kaj dum la 43-a IJK en Krakovo: mi, kiel PSEK-prezidanto kaj LKK-vicprezidanto respondecis pri la oficialaj invitoj de la eksterlandanoj kaj liveradis la listojn de la invititoj al la ministerio, krome mi raportis pri la programo kaj la kongresaj eldonaĵoj. Kelkaj certe memoras la panikon antaŭ la IJK-inaŭguro, kiam la sekreta agento postulis de mi aldoni al la kongreslibra listo de la partoprenantoj 6-personan liston de la “civitanoj” de Okcidenta Berlino, kiuj laŭ la oficiala doktrino ne estis civitanoj de la Federacia Respubliko Germanio, sed de aparta “ŝtato”.

Poste kune kun kelkaj LKK-anoj ni kolektis la kontraŭreĝimajn foliojn kiujn, dum la ekskursotago de la Krakova IJK, disĵetis unu el la polaj IJK-partoprenantoj.

Ni, mi kaj kelkaj aliaj LKK-anoj, sciis ke en la IJK-kongresejo (la sporthalo de Wisła) en Krakovo la kongreson de supre, senĉese observadis kelkaj sekretaj funkciuloj. Unu el tiuj funkciuloj kontaktis min ankaǔ dum la 72-a UK en Varsovio, kie mi respondecis pri la junualara programo. Lin interesis ne la UK-programo sed la neoficialaj interparoloj.

La plej granda sekreto de la internacia aktivado kaj sukcesoj de PSEK estis la t.n. persontaga, sendeviza interŝanĝo, kio signifis ke partopreno de unu eksterlandano dum unu tago de PSEK-aranĝo egalis al la partopreno de unu PSEK-ano en eksterlanda aranĝo. Ni havis multajn partnerojn de tiaj interŝanĝoj. La plej grava kaj la plej ofte uzata estis la PSEK/GEJ kontrakto, sed ni havis apartajn kontraktojn kun: TEJO, JEFO, JES, JEB, ĈEJ, BEJ, HEJ, NEJ kaj KCE en Svislando.

La internacia historio de PSEK finiĝis post la falo de la Pola Popola Respubliko. Unue, pro la ekonomia krizo, la nekomunista registaro de Mazowiecki/Balcerowicz preskaŭ komplete nuligis la ŝtatajn subvenciojn, due la civitanoj ricevis la rajton libere vojaĝi kaj finfine fariĝis posedantoj de pasportoj por la tuta mondo, trie niaj Esperanto-partneroj nuligis la kontraktojn pri la sendeviza interŝanĝo.

En 1992 en Gdańsk okazis la 14-a Studenta Somera Esperanto-Renkonto (la unuaj 12 SER okazadis en Toruń) kaj la jubilea seminario kaj balo de PSEK, kiun organizis la lasta PSEK-prezidanto, Adam Cholewiński, kaj partoprenis interalie la unua PSEK-prezidanto Władysław Stec kaj mi. Laŭ mia scio tiu estis la lasta aranĝo kaj la fino de la PSEK-historio.

Iom postvivas PSEK pere de ARKONES – Artaj Konfrontoj en Esperanto, kiu unafoje okazis en 1979 en Poznań.

Jarek Parzyszek