Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

Folha de S. Paulo on April 11, 1981

I have no idea who makes up the hard core of Solidarity. Neither do I know what this hard core thinks about. But when I see how the Polish situation is presented, how inclined I am to sympathize with them! Again, here and there I see people who unreservedly trust in Walesa, and who oppose the concerns I manifested in my last article with a single but triumphant argument: "Walesa will not allow the hecatomb which you fear to come about." Any disagreement with the temporizing policy of Walesa toward the communists of the Polish government sounds to them like blasphemy, and almost heresy.

I think this unconditionality has a deficiency of motivation, analysis, and penetration which disturbs me.

It's true that this union boss has the most universal, continuous, and enthusiastic symphony of publicity, but this is no reason to confide in anyone. On the contrary ...

What does he have to justify the unconditionality with which some follow him? To these questions his most ardent enthusiasts give no substantial answer. They restrict themselves to closing their ears, as if they heard blasphemies.

I don't know what he has said or done in the past, and neither does the general public. If he were a puppet of demagoguery things wouldn't be much different for him. Figures like that don't seem to need a past.

His great day of glory came when John Paul II received him with honors, very similar a comparison of the Roman press to those which the Pontiffs formerly gave to monarchs of the Holy Roman Empire on their visits to Rome.

For purposes of public opinion, such a solemn papal blessing amounts to the bestowal of a staff of grand marshal or constable, for him to guide the people. A good strategist would prefer this a thousand times to the support of a great newspaper. Walesa didn't even have the embarrassment of choosing: even though it knew that he is the man of confidence of Vatican diplomacy, the Polish government permitted the circulation of a monthly Polish edition of the Holy See's L'Osservatore Romano (90 thousand copies). It was clear that the Vatican's hopes in Walesa were falteringly reflected in the paper.

How much ground was Walesa able to gain from Polish communism with all this? None. He merely suffered a failure that severely compromises the prestige of the Vatican in Poland. That is, up to now Solidarity has grown and reached its peak without heeding the conciliating harangues of Walesa. Neither has the movement allowed itself to be intimidated by the possible hecatomb of a Russian invasion. And so it advances gloriously, because in History nothing of crowning greatness was ever accomplished without risking hecatombs of one kind or another.

The fact is that Solidarity is challenging Moscow, stimulated by a hard core whom no one in the West   or almost no one   knows, but whose deeds we anticommunists are beginning to admire.

The "constable" pointed his baton to one side, and the people went to the other. No, until now Walesa hasn't upset the communist strategy a bit.

Something else. As if to break the spirit of Solidarity's hard core, the major Western governments have made it clear that they won't intervene militarily in case Russia decides to reenact in Poland the sad adventures of the "Prague spring."

But, with its hard core, Solidarity advances.

And in fact as we saw in a previous article, it appears that the current communist game in Poland is to separate the movement's hard core from its periphery. And to do this, start negotiations between the "softliners" of both the communists and Solidarity. That is, between the cunning smooth tongued communists and the boobish wing of Solidarity.

Very, very probably favored by all kinds of deviators inside Solidarity, how much success will this latest maneuver have? I don't know. But either Moscow is no longer Moscow, or that is what's happening inside Solidarity as well as at the round table discussions between the "soft" communists and the soft Poles.

Moscow's objective must be that Solidarity, devastated by arguments and vacillations between hard and soft, become divided, discouraged, and end up by ingloriously running out of wind. And what's more, without any bloodshed, though perhaps some skirmishes. So, the smallest failure could lead to such prestige within Solidarity for the softliners that the hardliners would lose the leadership.

What could happen then? Talks between "softliners" and softliners, from which an "intermediary" formula will result between regimes on both sides of the Iron Curtain. That is, the so called "Polish model," a kind of "extended hand" communism with a human face, a kind of "eurocommunism" which practically all the West's mass media is being prepared to frantically applaud as the solution for the 21st century.

What will happen to Walcsa? "Softliners" and softlincrs will bear him up in triumph. He will have been the man who foresaw everything, whom the stupid ingratitude of the masses momentarily pushed aside and whom the events will have at last proved right. Walesa the genius, Walesa the constable, Walesa. the guru will then look with disdain on all men of heart and courage, on the hard core, defeated, isolated, discredited.

In one of the salons of the Kremlin, Brezhnev, with a glass of vodka in his hand, will look at his Foreign Minister and say with a sinister smile (is anything not sinister about him?): "Comrade, though it took a little work, everything came out all right in Poland."

Both are silent, discreet, and deeply euphoric.

A few seconds later, Gromyko will say to Brezhnev: "Comrade, something minor has just came up. The new nuncio in Moscow wants to present you his credentials. Do you have a minute? Or do you prefer that I take care of it in the same way we made Holland, Switzerland, and some small republics of the Antilles accept?"

Pause. "Tell the nuncio that you will receive his credentials. When you have time."