And at the same time, I received a passport [in 1980]. I had never ever held a passport, I had never traveled to the West, and now all of a sudden the authorities had given me a passport. In the meanwhile, the authorities granted it of their own accord. I mean, I had applied much earlier and was refused, but here all of a sudden after 1980, I get this passport.
And the fact that I received a passport I think was contrary to any legal standards of the time, of communist Poland, because at the time I had a pending criminal case with them. I had been released from prison but in formal terms I was still a defendant and I should have been sitting waiting for my trial in prison.
Up until then I ought not have been granted any possibility to leave the country.
At any rate, things really accelerated owing to an accident. What happened was an accidental scuffle with the police.
So I used this passport, to go to Austria, because it was possible to travel to Austria without a visa. I began traveling throughout the West, trying to obtain certain things for Solidarity [a labor union formed by Gdansk ship builders that transformed into a nationwide resistance movement], but at the same time, working there and trying to support myself, doing undocumented work.
This was a fascinating adventure for me, because it was the first time I traveled to the West. And at the same time my friends were taking care of my case resulting from the scuffle with the police – after all, it was the police who had provoked this scuffle. Ultimately, it was possible to resolve it. And I was getting ready to travel again, but at the same time the world over there was kind of holding onto me; this was a fascinating world of Western Europe which held me in thrall, and then on the other hand I was actually doing something useful as well, I was establishing contacts, I had people in Poland asking me to find out about this or get that in the West. So paradoxically, I made my decision, and I actually started returning home by hitchhiking in the month of December.
This was really my only way of traveling in Europe, seeing as I had no money. And so the news about martial law was what held me back in Holland [The Netherlands]. I came to Germany because I had a German visa. And there I began to be active in Polish issues, activities; I was invited to the universities where discussions were being held about what was happening in Poland, mainly at universities – but not exclusively at universities. But at the same time I began to make contact with friends who were living in the West.
And with one of my friends from KOR [The Workers’ Defense Committee, an anticommunist underground civil society organization in the 1970s, formed to provide assistance to laborers and others persecuted by the government. Many of Solidarity’s leaders were also active in KOR.], Miroslaw Chojecki, we thought that it would be a worthwhile idea to start a periodical which could be a focal point for the post-Solidarity immigration. So in the spring, early spring, I came to Paris, actually it was in the winter, I came in February to Paris, and in April was when we started putting out the periodical – this was a monthly named Contact [a Solidarity weekly publication that commented on the political situation in Poland].
But it is difficult to imagine how great the impact of Radio Free Europe was on the Polish people. Everybody listened to Radio Free Europe, it was jammed, yet everyone was sitting with their ears pointed to the radios. Even those who said that, well, you know, this is also propaganda but coming from the West, they also listen to it. We have to realize that of course the movement that we were creating, the opposition at the end of the 1970s, had its own publications, some books, but the scale distribution was after all, quite limited. On the other hand Radio Free Europe was accessible to pretty much everyone – and everyone could in one way or another hear this or that from it. For myself, I simply cannot imagine what the situation would look like without Radio Free Europe – and I am sure would be very different.
Bronislaw Wildstein was born on June 11, 1952 in Olsztyn, Poland. His father was a military physician and his mother was a member of the anticommunist Home Army, a group created to oppose the Nazi occupation of Poland. Wildstein studied at Jagiellonian University from 1971 to 1980. In the early 1970s, Wildstein joined the Socialist Union of Polish Students, which began his career in the opposition movement. Joining with other students, he printed and distributed anticommunist leaflets, collected money for imprisoned workers, and drafted an appeal to release workers arrested in the antigovernment protests of 1976.
In 1977, Wildstein cofounded the Student Committee of Solidarity, an opposition group formed in response to the unsolved death of student activist Stanislaw Pyjas. Many students suspected Pyjas’ death was orchestrated by government agents. The Student Committee of Solidarity began printing and distributing anticommunist literature in secret. Wildstein’s clandestine printing even landed him in prison for a short time.
In 1980, Wildstein became involved in the Lenin Shipyard strike in Gdansk, a demonstration by workers that attracted national, popular support and forced the communists to the negotiate with the strikers. The Lenin Shipyard strike also resulted in the formation of Solidarity, the first independent labor union in the communist world that transformed into a nationwide freedom movement.
Prior to the Polish government’s declaration of martial law in 1981, which was a means to crackdown on political opposition, Wildstein had secured a passport and left Poland for Western Europe. During his time in the West, he served as an advocate for the freedom movement in Poland and established foreign contacts for Solidarity. While abroad, Wildstein also cofounded Kontakt, an anticommunist periodical, and worked for Radio Free Europe.
After the fall of communism in Poland, Wildstein returned to his country and worked as a journalist for several daily papers, including Zycie Warszawy and Rzeczpospolita. In 2005, Wildstein became entangled in the issue of transitional justice when he obtained and distributed a list (often referred to as “Wildstein’s List”) to fellow journalists containing both the names of collaborators and victims of the communist-era secret police.
Wildstein continues his work as a journalist in Poland.
Poland is a central European country bordered by the Baltic Sea, Belarus, Ukraine, Germany, Russia, Lithuania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Poland has a population of 38 million people; nearly 90 percent are Roman Catholic.
Poles struggled against foreign dominance from the 14th century and the modern Polish state is less than one hundred years old. Polish borders expanded and contracted through a series of partitions in the 18th century. After a brief period of independence and parliamentary democracy from 1918 to 1939, World War II brought occupation by Nazi Germany and the near annihilation of the Jewish population. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Poland’s Jewish population went from over 3 million in 1933 to 45,000 in 1950.
After the war, Poland became a Soviet satellite state and a communist system was imposed. Farms were collectivized, basic freedoms curtailed, and a culture of fear developed under a Stalinist regime. The 1960s brought greater prosperity and some liberalization. Labor protests in the early 1970s tested the communist government’s resolve and prompted modest reforms.
In 1978, Polish Archbishop and Cardinal Karol Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian to hold the position since the 16th century. The pope’s triumphant return to Poland in 1979 saw massive outpourings of public support, shaking the foundations of the government and inspiring the opposition to press for peaceful change.
In 1980, shipbuilders in the seaport city of Gdansk united to confront the government. Their calls for greater political liberties and improved working conditions developed into the Solidarity movement. Solidarity’s leader, Lech Walesa, became the movement’s voice. Protests and unrest spread throughout the country and the communists replaced their leadership. General Wojciech Jaruzelski became prime minister and declared martial law on December 13, 1981. Solidarity was outlawed and Walesa and other Solidarity leaders were imprisoned.
While martial law was lifted in 1983, Poland continued to stagnate. Mikhail Gorbachev’s elevation to leadership of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985 brought new pressures for reform in Poland. A failing economy and continued repression incited workers to a new wave of strikes in 1988. A desperate regime agreed to legalize Solidarity and conduct semi-free elections. In the 1989 parliamentary elections, Solidarity won 99 of the 100 Senate seats and 160 of the 161 lower house seats they were allowed to contest. Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a Solidarity leader, became Poland’s first non-communist prime minister in over four decades. In 1990, Lech Walesa was elected president with 74 percent of the vote. While Solidarity splintered as Poland democratized, a coalition government of anti-communist parties won fully free parliamentary elections in 1991.
Poland transitioned to a market economy and applied for integration into western institutions. Economic dislocation returned the former communists, now social democrats, to power in 1993. Free elections and peaceful transitions in the following decades solidified Poland’s multi-party democratic system. Reforms eventually led to a more robust economy and Poland joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1999 and the European Union in 2004.
In Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2013, Poland earned the status “Free,” (as it has since 1990) receiving the best possible rankings in the categories Political Rights and Civil Liberties.
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