1We give our attention to memory because we assume – not without good reason – that it acts as the scaffolding for both individual and collective identity. Memory does not merely concern the past, but it intertwines with present experiences, imposing patterns that are sourced from the past upon the world as it is seen and experienced. It interferes with the way we perceive the world, influencing our participation in life and the planned future. To investigate memory is to reach deep into the matrices of meaning, which codetermine the range of questions that can be directed at the actual world, it is to search for those images and narratives that still exert influence. Memory is therefore not so much a depository of history, but more of a co-creator of each and every present.

2Contrary to how it may seem, memory is not an easy object to study. On the face of it, access to its archives is sparsely defended, as it permeates almost every aspect of everyday experience – testimonies and letters, works of art and daily routines, monuments and street names, collective acts of foundation and destruction. But even though one cannot utter anything that would not be in some way indebted to memory and cannot perform any act that would not be bound to it, there is an endless capacity to occlude or distort each and every memory. The memory recounted through the verbal testimony of the witness – with which this paper is concerned – does not add up to any neat whole, it is composed rather from matters that are important than from ones that are true, it is nothing like a static archive but is in constant flux, it is a form of action, of incessant renegotiation of meaning conducted by the subject with the self and with the community of which it is a part. Memory is therefore not a storage of some comprehensive version of the past, it is not objective and it is not settled. These three defining traits present with striking force at pivotal moments of public life. At such times society clashes over memory not in order to establish how things really were, but to strengthen partisan positions in the struggle to define the present. The disagreements about the past are not about objective truth but about myth – about the story which will lend sense and structure to the present moment.

3The fight over memory, even if it extends to the farthest reaches of the past, is always about arranging the present. The one who determines memory – that is, the direction which memory has set for the present – is the one defining the current situation.

The Point of Contention

4The paper “‘Im się zdaje, że zapomnimy. O nie!’ Rodowody rewolucji” [“They think we’ll forget. No way!” Origins of the revolution] by Marcin Zaremba deserves praise for its unhurried archaeological work as well as – or, maybe, especially – for the vastness of presented sources. In it, the author introduced letters censored or confiscated by state functionaries, which were probably never analyzed before. On this basis, further strengthened by an interesting reappraisal of the mass culture of that era, the author posits that the year 1980 accumulated within itself the memory of all previous rebellions against Communism and that, in addition to this, it activated the blueprint for insurrections known from previous epochs.

5The assertion that the memory of insurrections shined through the actions of the “Solidarity” years is indisputably truthful. Together with this truth we also need to acknowledge the veracity of the belief that the memory of insurrections could become intertwined with the “Solidarity” movement only through subsequent juxtapositions and reductions. The differences between the November, January, or Warsaw Insurrections and the “Solidarity” movement needed to disappear in a chain of substitutions, if the events of the years 1980–1981 were to become another link in the tradition of the struggle for independence. Stacking up members of a workers union against insurgents could only be done at the cost of simplifications and radical omissions. The axis of similitude has in this case taken over the axis of equivalence.

6Taking all this into account, the assertion that the memory of insurrections appeared at the time of “Solidarity” is at the same time self-evident and inadequate. It is self-evident, if we only recall the sheer number of references to the insurrectionist traditions made at the time. It will prove inadequate, if we claim the insurrectionist memory to be the social, political, and historical dominant of the “Solidarity” era. I am ready to go as far as to claim that if the memory of insurrections was to be the principal factor in the origin of “Solidarity,” then the independent trade union would never have been created.

The Heroic Dominant

7When we research the memory of the participants of the “Solidarity” movement from the early 1980s, we attempt to learn what people remembered because we assume that it had some bearing on individual and collective action. Analyzing documents in search of metaphors, associations, analogies, and comparisons should aid in the reconstruction of a modelling framework – that is, a quasi-system responsible for structuring reality on both the individual and collective plane, and therefore shaping the actions and the perception of reality at the time.

10The methodological construct defined in such a way is highly inspiring and, at the same time, very treacherous. The author analyzed the collective memory of the participants of the “Solidarity” movement, extracting from it the memories of national insurrections, with the visible prominence of the Warsaw Insurrection. This was accompanied by an assertion that collective memory is – exactly as Halbwachs claimed – selective and one-sidedly accumulative: such memory radically and unceremoniously edits out anything that is not deemed essential, retaining only that which will help nurture collective identity. This assertion helps the scholar corroborate another presupposition, which claims that societies differ in their collective behavior: Polish society is rebellious, while other communities are rather prone to negotiation or obedience. According to Marcin Zaremba, the source of behaviors that dominate Polish culture is the insurrectionist framework, which through the elimination of a more nuanced view of the past shapes the message about the collective heroic position. This gives rise to a distinct feedback loop: the insurrectionist message upheld by the community forms individual memory, which sources and retains from the entirety of experience those fragments which fit with the heroic whole. That is how Zaremba explains the conditions that made “Solidarity” possible – the memory of past insurrections recalled by the society of the 1970s provided the kindling for igniting another one in the year 1980. Meanwhile, the history of the 1980s – that culminated in the Polish Round Table Talks – seems to prove that not every act of resistance turns into an insurrection, and that not every insurrection liberates all of its participants and, furthermore, that there is no such tradition which could not be constructed anew by a given society.

Revolt against Insurrection

12Without this wave of protest there would be no “Solidarity,” though the hasty signing of agreements with the crews did not bode well for its continuation. The worker’s demands were twofold – economic and political – and, therefore, this would indicate that the strikes did not originate in the insurrectionist memory but rather were rooted in working class consciousness. In response to the experience of poverty, hopelessness, and disorder, this consciousness gave rise to a desperate need for change:

• 7 Ireneusz Krzemiński, Solidarność. Projekt polskiej demokracji [Solidarity. The project of Polish de (...)

During a later conversation a friend recalled that she also spoke with other colleagues, and we will not work, to put things simply, there can no longer be such disorganization as there is now.7

• 8 Ibid., 53.

We’ve had enough.8

• 9 Ibid.

In the early phase it […] was a purely emotional approach, that something has to change, that someone finally started to do something about it, and maybe it will be better. Though, nobody yet knew why it would be better, or who would be the one to do it. All in all, it was a feeling of the kind that something should finally change in the country.9

14This expression aptly describes the sudden advancement in self-comprehension. Furthermore, it also reveals its processual nature: the more efficient the organizational processes became, the greater was the growth in self-understanding, the deeper the understanding of accompanying conditions, the more efficient the results of undertaken actions. And in the course of actions, and through them, it was gradually revealed that nothing is given as a complete whole – starting with language and ending with ever shifting goals. Therefore, the self-knowledge of the rebellion’s participants was only minimally indebted to memory because there was nothing in memory that resembled a “solidary strike” or an “independent labor union.” The key difference between the events of the year 1970 and those of 1980 was therefore not derived from memory, but it appeared somewhat in opposition to it – as a result of comprehending the insufficiency of preceding experiences. It was no accidental choice of words on the part of Dariusz Kobzdej – a physician and activist of the Młoda Polska [Young Poland] movement – when in 1979 he called out to others to join the activities commemorating the events of December 1970:

• 12 Zaremba, “Rodowody rewolucji.”

Remember that the lack of self-organization of society against the government diminishes the efficacy of our demands, diminishes the possibility of realizing our individual rights as well as the rights of the nation, that it entails sacrifices that could be avoided even if we did not demand them here, underneath the shipyard gates, but in burning committees.12

15“Self-organization,” “efficacy,” “realization of rights,” “sacrifices that could be avoided” – this is not the vocabulary of an uprising but an ethical plea to engage in pragmatic action. From this vantage point, September 1980 – even if it was a successor of December 1970 – was more of a grand experiment, which progressed by going beyond the frames of memory.

16Memory appeared very sparsely – whether in implied or thematized form – in the interviews conducted in January 1981 by Ireneusz Krzemiński with the founders of independent labor movements. Insufficient knowledge, imagination, improvisation, haste – these were the key factors in establishing the unions:

• 13 Krzemiński, Solidarność, 47.

On September 1 we went to the director and told him that we are establishing independent labor unions. On September 5, we showed him the statute of “Mazowsze.”13

• 14 Ibid.

What it essentially came down to was that from the very start it wasn’t clear whether the agreements signed in Gdańsk were limited only to Gdańsk itself, to the whole coastal region, or were they valid in the whole country. […] everything [i.e. the creation of an independent labor union at the Polish Academy of Science – P. C.] developed at breakneck speed, because on the 1 [September – P. C.] the agreement was signed and already on the 4 […] the first meeting took place.14

• 15 Ibid., 48.

Everything sprang to life in a bafflingly spontaneous manner.15

18Participants in the movement were therefore well-aware of the significant difference between these two types of democracy: they had independently developed a practice that minimized the alienating effects of delegating power to others and that obliged delegates to consult both the councils and the collective. Neither the memory of the uprisings nor the imperative of rebellion dictated these solutions. Bronisław Świderski – the author of one of the most important analyses of “Solidarity” – is correct when he says that:

• 17 Bronisław Świderski, Gdańsk i Ateny. O demokracji bezpośredniej w Polsce [Bronisław Świderski, Gdań (...)

The way this union was organized and operated was the first non-insurrectionist – that is, non-romantic – effort on the part of Polish society conducted on such a grand scale during the last two hundred years. “Solidarity” was a democratic organization because it managed to simultaneously abide by the current constitution, which guaranteed citizens freedom of “conscience and religion” (article 82), freedom of “speech, print, assembly” (article 83), and the right of association (article 84) and recognized these rights as natural rights, ones that are independent from the interests of the state. “Solidarity” was also a democratic organization because it programmatically did not resort to violence, treating the tradition of the romantic uprising as a political metaphor, not as a strategic instruction.17

19Only in official statements, formulated with the awareness of the difference that had been won and with the uncertainty of the future in mind, did social remembrance turn to earlier rebellions and uprisings:

• 18 Introduction to the “Uchwała Programowa delegatów na Krajowy Zjazd Delegatów” [Program Resolution o (...)

social and moral protest [of 1980 – P. C.] was not born overnight. It contained the bloody legacy of the workers from Poznań of 1956 and those from the coast of December 1970, of the students’ revolt in 1968, of the June in Radom and Ursus in 1976. It encompasses the heritage of the independent workers’ movements, the actions of intelligentsia and the youth, the efforts of the Catholic Church to preserve values, the legacy of all the struggles for human dignity in our country. Our union grew out of these struggles and it will remain faithful to them.18

22The crucial point for the current argument is exactly this “surpassing of previous boundaries,” that results from the ongoing discovery that neither the uprising nor any other past formula is sufficient for solving present-day contradictions. Collective memory offered skeletal guidelines and at the same time proved inadequate, as the problems at hand “surpassed the boundaries” of the past. Therefore the participants of the social movement tried to act in a manner that would prevent memory from dominating over the present, and the imperative of rebellion would not overpower realism.

23It was not about equality of fighting, dying, suffering, or killing, but about equal participation in creating a different living order. It was about regaining the feeling of being at home. Perhaps – and in this respect Marcin Zaremba is right – if it were not for the insurrectionist memory, the activists of “Solidarity” would not have struggled for impractical “dignity” and would not have shown such steadfastness. At the same time – and this is where our paths diverge – if the collective memory leading to the birth of the “S” movement had been dominated by insurrectionary clichés, then there would have been no talks in Gdańsk, no dialogue between the protesters and the authorities, no signing of agreements, and, finally, no free trade union. The key concepts of that time – dialogue, consultations, understanding, settlement – emerged from traditions other than the insurrectionist one, or were even hostile towards it. The extraordinary tension that pervaded the entire social life of that period resulted, as one might assume, from the fact that social invention drew various suggestions from memory, limiting their applicability and adequacy. Revolutionary thinking inhibited insurrectionary associations, and thinking in terms of a trade union countered the desire to create a political party. What was at stake at the time was not defeating the enemy, but inventing a new model of collective life.

Insurrection against Revolt

25The two extreme categories – revolution and insurrection – are closely related, because the events to which they point are elemental, mass movements, which are very hard to control. The middle categories – trade union and political party – share common traits because they both denote forms of organization (though ones with different goals and methods of action). Nonetheless, they were listed here in this particular order for a reason, as in the course of the “Solidarity” revolution paved the way towards a trade union and insurrection led to the formation of a political party. The strength that comes from such an ordering is that it allows to explain the peculiar trajectory of a movement that needed to develop a unionized organizational structure, and which – after the failure of attempts to change the structure of power – turned into an underground conspiratorial network that reverted to the model of a political party. To state things differently: the first period of “Solidarity,” encompassing the years 1980–1981, was rather revolutionary, and the second, which followed the introduction of martial law in Poland (on December 13, 1981), was rather insurrectionist.

26The analyses referring to the revolutionary nature of the first period clearly underscore that this category cannot be applied here in its strictest sense. This is highlighted by the use of oxymoronic expressions, such as, “slouching revolution,” “self-limiting revolution,” “revolution without violence,” or “ceremonial revolution.” From the point of view of Marxist tradition all these characteristics contain an internal contradiction: a revolution cannot limit itself, slouch, or do away with violence. But it is exactly these paradoxes which offer a deeper insight into the first period of “Solidarity,” when the union, party, or insurrectionist goals slowed down the revolution and endowed it with its slouching quality.

28Social communication changed after the introduction of martial law – and this change was so significant that it transformed a revolutionary movement into an insurrectionist one. The above statement seems to make me switch sides and join Marcin Zaremba. Nonetheless, even if I do agree with him, it is only temporarily, as I see the influence of insurrectionist thinking in different spheres than he does, and, moreover, I do not perceive that influence to be positive.

31Insurrection – seen as Marcin Zaremba would have it, as Polish cultural tradition – appears here not as an “act,” but primarily as an intellectual structure that orders reality. It holds a decisive role in the way that social relations are shaped and perceived. In the 1980s, these relations were shaped in such manner that the social structure began to closely resemble the military structure – with a distant command centre, clandestine flow of orders from the top to the lower ranks, irrelevance of dialog, and the commonness of unexpressed but agreed upon belonging to particular units. Within the framework of this division – into elite decision-making units and the egalitarian activist masses – the “command” issued appeals to the masses for them to turn out in the streets in order to pressure the government, which will in consequence concede and either agree to ease some particular law or, as the ultimate goal, will enter into negotiations with the opposition. This is how the insurrectionist logic of the 1980s paved the way for the Round Table talks and for the representative democracy, that is, that form of governance wherein citizens express themselves in four-year voting cycles, transferring the decision-making to their delegates.

32Throughout the entire decade – from the introduction of martial law until the contract election of 1989 – society simulated insurrection, therefore forcing the government to make further concessions. All the while, within the confines of that simulation, the fundamental questions were not asked – such as those related to the ownership of the means of production, participation in the exercise of power and its control. The more successful was the performance of that insurrection, which was never meant to break out, the lesser the chances for joint negotiations of a new social contract became. If there was an insurrection underway in the 1980s, then certainly the masses were not victorious.

• 29 Shana Penn, Podziemie kobiet, trans. Hanna Jankowska (Warszawa: Rosner & Wspólnicy, 2003), 160–161. (...)

There would be no advisors of TKK, no Tygodnik Mazowsze, the region, the Poznan Radio, nor the network of social contacts. There would be no runners, typists, safe houses, there would be no one to run errands for the activists in hiding. Women either continued doing that what they did before, or they initiated completely novel forms of resistance. They organized ephemeral publishing houses and informal groups, they managed them, and worked in them. Until 1988 two women became representatives of their regional commissions – Ewa Kulik and Barbara Labuda. […] Nonetheless, the value system adopted by the movement did not undergo change and did not correct for the transformation that was already underway. Actions were speedy and the development of theory could not keep up. Therefore, the system of values did not evolve in a way that would recognize the substantial input of women.29

The Fifth Element

36In early January 1982 the inscription “Zima wasza, wiosna nasza” [Your winter, our spring] appeared on the wall of a Poznan tenement. A simple and ingenious phrase: rhythmical, logical, and suggestive. The prediction of victory was associated here with the seasons, directing the associations of its readers to the cyclicality of nature’s calendar. Insurrection will break out just as blossom in springtime; society will take spring into its possession and will overpower those who have imprisoned Poland in cahoots with winter. Prediction, prophecy, and threat in one, greatly strengthened the clear distinction between “we” and “you.” State power is on the side of winter, of dormancy, downtime; it succeeds not through its own strength but through the alliance with frost, which confines people to their dwellings. “We” is backed by the rationale of life, standing on the side of light, development, and growth; therefore this “we,” temporarily absent from the public sphere, will emerge from homes and will triumph, just as germination and growth triumph over frozen soil.

38Making allowance for the substantial brevity, this addendum can be viewed as the pinnacle of public communication in the 1980s. The solidified dichotomy of “us–them” was suddenly enriched here, as the last part of the inscription came neither from the authorities nor from the “Solidarity” movement. Its sender was someone else – someone who did not fit into the binary logic that dominated thinking and speaking after the introduction of martial law. This third party did not introduce a distinct language and did not speak for a clearly identifiable social group. This was the clearest communicational dissimilarity from the two other entities present in this exchange. The capacious “them” referred to the authorities – the regime, Moscow, Asia, the commies, traitors, Gestapo members, or the Soviets. The even broader “us” meant “almost anyone” – society, Poles, “Solidarity,” the nation. But this Third belonged to no one and came from nowhere. Still, this unexpected appearance in the public sphere signalled something more than a mere tripling: it shattered the belief in the completeness of the “them–us” division, in that it encompasses the whole social map, and that it had exhausted the list of possible identifications.

39The playful addition was also a signal that this Third party has no distinctive language. Unlike the ideologically loaded language of power – a narrow idiom of lies and cynicism – and also unlike the rich language of “us” – full of sublime slogans, phrases, moral reasons, wise theories, and rich traditions – the language of the Third existed only in the abstract, as a tradition lacking apparent public respect. “The Moomins,” although widely known, did not belong to the archives of legitimate culture from which one could draw the tools needed for a moral and reasoned fight with the regime. It took some courage to put oneself between the opposing sides alongside the Moomins. The tactics of a wide-eyed simpleton signalled a debunking of the linguistic struggle: martial law was framed by its supporters as the only salvation from civil war, and by its critics as a “war waged upon the nation” – as partition, gulag, or occupation. A “Moomin summer” added to the “spring (of the people)” unmasked both the language of the dispute and the fictitious nature of the entities behind it. A ludic postscript changed the meaning of the whole. The joke was wielded as a shield against despair, but it also dispelled the faith in the magical power of words.

40When the summer of 1982 drew to an end, the inscription on the wall was enriched with a fourth phrase. This time it read: “Zima wasza, wiosna nasza, lato muminków, jesień średniowiecza” [Your winter, our spring, Moomin summer, autumn of the Middle Ages]. The game went on – finding its own momentum, disengaged from the rhetorical struggle of state power with the “Solidarity” movement. Subsequent persons and groups positioned themselves ever further from the centre of the dispute.

41Did the new participants of public communication enter the stage only after the introduction of martial law? It does not seem likely. The Third party added another voice to the dichotomised debate and, through this single action, opened it up to the possibility of accommodating an uncountable multitude of speakers. A quip drew awareness to the fact that the history of Communism is also the history of humour, which existed in its myriad of forms – street, graphic, print, song, or cabaret – even in the considerably darker times of Hitlerism and Stalinism. And through its sheer existence it subverted any and all notions of unification, irrespective of whom should they concern – society, history, or state power.

42Humour acted as a fifth element. It did not belong to any existing order, because even though it borrows something from each of them, it feels indebted to none. It responds to both dread and common officialdom, it takes aim at people and situations, it arises from stilted idioms and rituals. It respects nothing, speaking on behalf of the dispossessed, which happen to be the silent majority. It wants more life, therefore it celebrates casualness; it praises ease, so it sneers at practicality; it favours serendipity, therefore it frowns upon plans and order. It is active, arising from within itself, and reactive – vulgar in response to forced pleasantry, feral in the face of superficial refinement, ribald and lewd in the company of high society. It knows no rules but for the principle of verbal insubordination.

48The gnomish jest did not disarm the weaponized state apparatus but it did incapacitate its discourse and it neutralized the division into the “brave society” and the “immoral regime.” The happenings – during which toilet paper or sanitary pads were handled out, the gathered chanted “No freedom without gnomes!” or ran around the main square of the old city to illustrate the term “galloping inflation” – sucked everyone into a vortex of ridiculousness: their participants adorned with red gnome hats, state power that sent intimidating militiamen to suppress the gnomes, as well as the insurrectionist masses readying themselves for another march under the slogan “Away with Communism!” Within the space reclaimed by the Orange Alternative – as much communal as not regulated by normal rules, as much threated by the intervention of state militia as it was exterritorial – a community of truly equal individuals emerged, if only for a brief moment.

49The first phase of “Solidarity” proposed a revolutionary equality of worthy people, aiming to create conditions for egalitarian participation in decision-making processes. The second phase, occurring after the revolution’s defeat, limited itself to achieving independence; it offered equality on a national basis but failed to acknowledge exclusion affecting women, non-heterosexual individuals, or members of the lower classes. The Orange Alternative, like a pataphysical culmination of Hegelian historical dialectics, proclaimed equality in ridiculousness. The gnome rebellion grounded its protest in everyday life, restoring people’s memory of their ordinariness. It was neither an alternative to revolutionary imagination, nor to insurgent imagination, but rather a momentary victory of carnival, which suspended history for a few hours.

“Solidarity,” Power, Remembering

50After 1989, successive governments implemented their own memory policies, using the experience of “Solidarity” to legitimize pluralistic democracy, neoliberal transformation, and the healing of the decommunized Third Polish Republic. Simultaneously, various labour union authorities delved into their own archives, fighting under the banner of “Solidarity” for further restriction of abortion law or the inclusion of a religious confession in the preamble to the constitution. As a result, the memory of “Solidarity” – in case of both its original participants and subsequent interpreters – is always at risk of being instrumentalized by mainstream culture, media discourse, or governments supported by church–party alliances. The best evidence of this is that “Solidarity,” a movement that fought for direct democracy, local autonomy, social ownership, and decentralization, can now be remembered as a right-wing Catholic national uprising.

52From what was said above a rather straightforward question arises in the context of discussions about “Solidarity,” namely: how do we examine that memory in a way that would avoid transforming the multitude of voices from the past – those advocating for greater equality in decision-making – into a single, dominant voice? As long as we keep in mind that multiplicity, we hinder the instrumental use of the past by those in power. Furthermore, by remaining loyal to the myriad ideas of a fairer life embedded in the history of “Solidarity,” we extract from the past the conditions necessary for understanding ourselves today. Perhaps, that is exactly what is at stake here: not merely the short- or long-term memory, but another opportunity for achieving self-awareness.