The following comes from Winter 1988 "Across Frontiers" pp 11-12 Individual Subscrpt. $10/yr to Across Frontiers, POB 2382, Berkeley,CA 94702 Poland - Anarchism And Youth In Poland Franek Michalski Ask about anarchism in Poland and you might get a noncommital shrug or a lecture about the pre-WWII cooperative movement and the libertarian socialist philoshopy of Edward Abramowski. Or, perhaps, you'll be told about "those crazies" in Gdansk, the RSA. The Movement for an Alternative Society (RSA) gained national noteriety by leading a youth contingent which fought the police in the May Day demonstration in 1985. Fleeing cops were pelted with rocks, and local residents found them- selves sheltering policemen in their homes to protect them from demonstrators. Street militance, especially in the period after martial law, is not in itself unusual. What make RSA unique is its explicit anarchism. Its newspaper "Homek" which published 28 issues from 1983 to 1986, has carried articles con- demning the authority of the state, the army, and even the Church and the more traditional, Solidarity-identified opposition groups. "Our philosophy," said one Homek contributor, "is that it is forbidden to forbid." On the army: "We do not regard alternative service as a final goal, but as a means of getting rid of the army altogether. The struggle against the army is part of the program, whose goal is to abolish state authority over the individual - more broadly, the elimination of violence in public life, the elimination of censorship and the death penalty. We fight for the right to associate freely, for the right to independant culture and education. We fight to protect the natural environment (we are opposed to Russian-styled nuclear power plants in Poland). This cannot be achieved instantaneously (either by miracle or by revolution) -- it should be approached in stages -- today's stage is the army!" [RSA leaflet "Schweik", July 1986] On work: "The problem [of routine, meaningless work] will never be solved by idealogues. When they come to power all they care about is production...The worker has to [humanize work] himself...He cannot depend on representatives and on politicians' negotiations. Only group representation, with frequent rotation and without chairmen, will prevent the question of work from being drowned in discussions. We cannot let this mistake made by Solidarity repeat itself....The problem of the relation between superior and subordinate...will continue to exist until all authority and property is abolished." [Dmytro Lewycki in Homek, October 1986.] On the "self-limiting revolution": "Our leaders and their advisers first gave up on the general strike, then on strikes of any kind, on demonstrations, and lately -- at least in Gdansk -- they've given up on doing anything at all....If everybody sat around wondering "is it time yet?" in August 1980, nothing would have happened. Our passivity and self-limitation in struggle encourages the Reds to step up 'normalization,' that is, the total enslavement of the nation." [Piotr Lubik, Homek, November 1985. Many people in Poland, from all segments of the political spectrum, would dismiss the RSA philosophy as "a naive and anachronistic rehash of leftism.... based on an impetuous attack on the state and the law from a position of the "state of nature" (hence the name 'Homek'), which provoke only "laughter, pity, and....outrage at the trampling of Church and the insults to Walesa...." [M.K. in the introduction to an interview with RSA activists in 'Przeglad Politycsny', No. 6, Gdnask 1985.] But this same commentator went on to say that even RSA's critics have a certain respect for RSA's practical good sense in concrete actions such as the campaign against mailitary service and the May Day demos. The influence of explicit anarchist philosophy along with the less tangible anarchistic attitude toward society has made itself felt in the new forms of political activism of which WiP (Freedom and Peace) is the most visible example. RSA has taken an active part in the antimilitarism campaign led by WiP, though the groups are quiet different from each other. WiP is national, RSA is primarily a Gdansk group; WiP maintains close contacts with the Solidarity opposition and has a public profile in which people act in their own names; Homek's contributors all use pseudonyms. (And WiP has had a far greater impact on the contry, the opposition, and young people generally.) Yet both of these groups share a libertarian "youth culture" elan. This is especially true of the WiP group in Gdansk, which publishes a journal called 'A Capella', with the A always circled. From 'A Capella': "Wolnosc i Pokoj (WiP) is a generational movement. It brings together young people who are not apathetic about the world, who believe that 'something' can be accomplished. We are differnt kinds of people: anarchists and church activists, politiacls and moralists, hippies and punks. We don't have a unifying ideology, a standard uniform, or identical haircuts. What we have in common are the problems that we want to solve, and our opposition to the violence that pervades our world. "We believe that militarism threatens humanity. We believe that a human being is more important than the collectivity in which s/he lives. We believe that everyone has a right to one's own life and to order it according to one's own ideas. No authority can violate this right. WE DEMAND THE ABOLITION OF COMPULSORY MILITARY SERVICE and military education in the school system. WE WANT TO BREATHE CLEAN AIR, DRINK CLEAN WATER, EAT HEALTHY FOOD. WE DEMAND A HALT TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT, A HALT TO BUILDING NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS. "We example to accomplish these goals by non-violent struggle, for example, by individual acts of refusing military service or the army oath, refusing to pay court fines, demonstrations, collecting signatures on petitions, hunger strikes, and, of course, throught the widest possible repression against us. We cooperate with many pacifist and anarchist groups around the world. This includes Amnesty International, the international organization for defending human rights. Along with AI we demand THE ABOLITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY and a halt to persecution of people because of their views, their religion, nationality, skin color, etc." ['Di-da', a supplement to A Cappela. Summer 1987.] Anarchism, youth culture, a "green" sensibility (ecology, anti-militarism, direct action politics) intermingle and reinforce each other in Poland. This is despite the fact -- and because of the fact -- that all these groups take pride in their autonomy. Sometimes "mainstream" underground papers accuse their "younger" brethern of "bad influences." Warsaw's KOS, in objecting to an A Capella piece critical of the Solidarity leadership, complained that it was prepared by RSA. No, came the reply, C C is not edited by RSA but by the WiP group in Gdansk, and there is no direct connection. The article in question was simply a way of "saying what is obvious but not often stated out loud: Solidarity is not a monolith and dissenting voices ought to be heard." [A Capella April 1987] The publications of the new groups are full of iconoclastic cartoons and graphics, provocative poetry ("The Pope's a Superstar" -- we've made him a celebrity, a prisoner of the admiring throng) and punk-rock lyrics ("I want to be a deserter that's got a chance of surviving"). Alongside these are state- ments of conscience by draft refusers, articles on the dangers of nuclear power plants, and descriptions of demonstrations, arrests, and protest actions. Significantly, there has arisen a discussion of youth culture itself. One article note with alarm the self-destructive aspects of the varied subcultures in Poland. A punk is as likely to be attacked on the street by another young person as by the police. Even though this can be attributed to the general represive atmosphere. says the author, this does not make it easier to accept the fact that "the streets today are ruled by satanists and skin-heads...whose Soviet version are the Lubercy." [Andrzej Blewski in Szczecin WiP Magazine, June 1987] A different perspectuve comes in "Destroy the cage," an article which ex- amines the political implications of essentially apolitical punk music. "Its instinctual mockery of conventional lifestyle, politicians, and high culture, along with the necessity of living on the margins of society, makes punk culture either a means of escaping an incomfortable reality -- or the seeds of struggle against it. (And it cannot be denied that the relative freedom for alternative culture to grow in Poland is due to the political conscious oppo- sition movement." [Franek Skandal in A Cappela February 1987] All of this adds up to a new generation of activism, diverse, iconoclatic, idealistic....whose philosophy is perhaps best expressed by the motto on the A Cappella title page: "Live and let others live."