by Tom Stoppard
(SZCZEPANSKI switches the television set back to GIEREK.)
GIEREK: (On television) … errors, inconsistencies, delays and hesitations. We owe an apology to those comrades who pointed out irregularities, who tried to do something about them …
(The office door opens, increasing the sound of the party music. A party guest, a GIRL, enters.)
GIRL: Come on, Maciej – the party’s started without you.
SZCZEPANSKI: No. It’s over.
23. INT. TELEVISION STUDIO
For the moment we don’t know if we are in the television studio or Gierek’s actual office. GIEREK sits at his desk, the bookcase behind him. He has evidently just finished addressing the camera. He looks shattered. Abruptly he moves his chair back. It hits the bookcase, which topples over.
24. INT. GIEREK’S OFFICE. NIGHT
Now GIEREK is at his ‘real’ desk with the ‘real’ bookcase behind him.
GIEREK, evidently at the end of his tether, mutters …
GIEREK: What will the Russians do?
NARRATOR: (Voice over) The single most important factor underlying Poland’s independence was, needless to say –
WITNESS: (Voice over) The Church.
(Behind GIEREK the bookcase door opens. The SECRETARY is showing in CARDINAL WYSZYNSKI.)
25. INT. CAFE. NIGHT
The NARRATOR and the WITNESS are sitting at a café table.
NARRATOR: (To WITNESS) The Church?
WITNESS: The Church. Lech Walesa wears the Black Madonna of Czȩstochowa on his coat. The King of Poland consecrated the nation to her as recently as 1656 and just the day before yesterday, when for the whole of the nineteenth century there was no such place, the Poles called their country the Christ among nations, and in the Church they kept alive the promise of resurrection. As with the Tsars so with Stalin. The years of terror discredited the political guardians of the nation state, and so the moral leadership fell to the Church. For the last thirty-two years that has meant to Cardinal Wyszynski.
26. INT. GIEREK’S OFFICE. NIGHT
We pick up the shot as WYSZYNSKI is being shown into the room.
NARRATOR: (Voice over) Imprisoned and conciliated, from the first years of Stalinist terror to the last years of Gierek’s ramshackle version of the consumer society, Cardinal Wyszynski had been the spiritual leader of a people who, by the irony of history, constituted the most vital Catholic nation in Europe.
(Door shuts.)
GIEREK: Father, there will be blood. They won’t listen. They will lose everything. You must talk to them before it’s too late.
WYSZYNSKI: The Politburo?
GIEREK: The workers! The strikers! They demand things which cannot be given.
WYSZYNSKI: They demand nothing which is not their right. It is you who must listen. Or there will be blood. You will lose everything.
GIEREK: No – no. The Russians will intervene if we don’t go back. You must save us. Save the Church.
WYSZYNSKI: The Church needs to be defended sometimes but it does not need to be saved.
GIEREK: (Weeping) Then save Poland …
(WYSZYNSKI gets up and leaves the room.)
27. INT. ANTE-ROOM. CONTINUATION
KANIA is waiting outside.
KANIA: (To WYSZYNSKI) How is he?
WYSZYNSKI: Better than I have seen him for a long time.
KANIA: His nerve has gone.
WYSZYNSKI: If you like.
KANIA: Can you help?
WYSZYNSKI: The Church does not resist an appeal. I will preach on Tuesday. It is the Feast of the Black Madonna of Czȩstochowa. I will speak as I must for the rights of workers.
KANIA: These strikes harm the nation. We can’t fulfil every demand at once.
WYSZYNSKI: I will speak the whole truth.
KANIA: How many will hear you?
WYSZYNSKI: My voice carries.
KANIA: With your permission I will assist it with television cameras.
WYSZYNSKI: Not with my permission.
28. INT. PARTY HEADQUARTERS (POLITBURO). DAY
The Politburo is meeting. GIEREK sits in his usual place. BABIUCH and SZYDLAK have gone. (Two other Politburo members, anonymous ones as far as we are concerned, have also been sacked, and there are three new faces round the table.)
KANIA: We are no longer talking about the Baltic ports. There are strikes in Wroclaw, in Warsaw, in the steel works, in the mines of Silesia.
(The door opens as KANIA is speaking to admit a latecomer, STEFAN OLSZOWSKI. OLSZOWSKI without ceremony responds to KANIA.)
OLSZOWSKI: What about the army?
KANIA: Welcome, Comrade Olszowski.
JARUZELSKI: Welcome back, Comrade Olszowski.
(The MEMBERS get up generally and shake OLSZOWSKI’s hand and welcome him back. OLSZOWSKI sits down.)
KANIA: Congratulations on your re-election. How was Berlin?
OLSZOWSKI: (Sitting down) The Germans think we’re soft. If we don’t act now, with troops if necessary, we deserve what we get.
(He looks directly at JARUZELSKI.)
JARUZELSKI: Yes. But not yet.
OLSZOWSKI: When?
JARUZELSKI: When there is no alternative.
OLSZOWSKI: When is that?
JARUZELSKI: I don’t know. I’ll tell you.
OLSZOWSKI: Next week? Next year?
JARUZELSKI: It depends on them.
OLSZOWSKI: On them?
JARUZELSKI: Oh yes. We must give them what they demand and then it depends on them. They will bring us to it, slowly or quickly, but we’ll get there, you have my guarantee.
OLSZOWSKI: (To GIEREK) Comrade First Secretary …
GIEREK: (To JAGIELSKI) Comrade Jagieiski … go back to Gdansk and sign.
29. EXT. GDANSK SHIPYARD. DAY
There is a large crowd of noisy, celebrating DOCK WORKERS and one man elevated above them on the shoulders of his fellow workers – WALESA.
WITNESS: (Voice over) Jagielski and Lech Walesa signed the Gdansk Agreement on August 31st. The impossible had taken sixteen days. The inevitable was going to take sixteen months.
2
Solidarity
30. EXT. PRISON. DAY
JACEK KURON is released from a prison cell by two GUARDS.
NARRATOR: (Voice over) The piece of paper signed in Gdansk guaranteed much more than an independent trade union. It spelled out the right to strike, freedom of expression, the broadcasting of Mass, economic reforms, medical, housing and welfare benefits, pensions and …
(The POLICEMAN leads KURON along the catwalk.)
… the freeing of political prisoners.
(KURON and his ESCORT walk along a corridor lined with cells. From one of these a PRISONER shouts at him.)
PRISONER: Hey, Kuron! – is it just the bloody intelligentsia who are being let out? I’ve redistributed more property than you’ll ever see!
NARRATOR: (Voice over) Kuron went straight to Gdansk. For two decades the drama of his intellectual life had been the attempt to square the Communist circle inside the cornerstones of democratic socialism, and now the show had started without him.
31. EXT. STREET (GDANSK). DAY
WALESA is coming down the street in a scrum of people, mostly JOURNALISTS, some with notebooks and some with tape recorders and microphones. Passers-by and general public are also drawn to the scrum, which is quite a large crowd of people altogether, thirty or forty. It is a travelling press conference, with the questions distributed among the JOURNALISTS, sometimes shouted from the fringe of the scrum.
QUESTION: Lech, what are you going to do next?
WALESA: Eat dinner.
QUESTION: What is your dream?
WALESA: For Poland to be Poland.
QUESTION: What does that take?
WALESA: To eat dinner. To speak what we think. To come and go as we please.
QUESTION: Are you a Marxist?
WALESA: How do I know? I never read a book.
QUESTION: What is your badge?
; WALESA: (Touching the badge on his lapel) The Black Madonna of Czȩstochowa, the holiest shrine in Poland. Here I have a picture of her –
(He has small photographs of the Madonna, which he hands out as he walks.)
QUESTION: What is your main task?
WALESA: To keep the movement together.
QUESTION: Why are you the leader?
WALESA: I’m the chairman. I’m not a dictator. Maybe a democratic dictator.
QUESTION: What do you want to be?
WALESA: When I was an electrician I wanted to be the best.
QUESTION: What is the first thing the union has to do?
WALESA: Survive.
QUESTION: Who is the greater danger, Russia or the Party?
WALESA: Neither. Our greatest danger is ourselves. We must learn restraint and patience or we’ll tear ourselves apart.
QUESTION: Do you want to overthrow the Party?
WALESA: No – I want the Party to be strong and to be just. A weak party would be disastrous. I would have to join it.
QUESTION: Isn’t the union a challenge to the Party?
WALESA: The workers challenge themselves. They let themselves down.
QUESTION: Do you want to go to America?
WALESA: I want to go everywhere and with Mother Mary on my coat I will. But now I want to go home. As a husband and father I also want to be the best. Also as a lover. I have six children and my wife won’t forgive me for getting mixed up in this. I will have to give her a seventh.
(He is extricating himself from the crowd.)
QUESTION: Lech – are you scared?
WALESA: I am scared of nothing and nobody, only of God.
(He has arrived at the doorway to the block of flats where he lives. He disappears inside.)
32. INT. FLATS. DAY
WALESA comes up the staircase. On a landing there is a small CHILD (one of Walesa’s children).
WALESA: What have you been doing?
CHILD: Having my picture taken.
(WALESA takes the CHILD by the hand and continues up the stairs and then enters his own flat.)
33. INT. WALESA FLAT. DAY
There are several PHOTOGRAPHERS in the flat taking photograph of the other CHILDREN and of DANUTA (Mrs Walesa). She gives him a rueful look. He smiles and shrugs.
The PHOTOGRAPHERS turn their attention to WALESA. He sees that the phone is off the hook. He replaces it.
JOURNALIST: Here, Lech …
(A journalist gives WALESA a carton of American [Marlboro] cigarettes, WALESA nods and smiles. The phone rings.)
34. INT. BATHROOM (THE FLAT). DAY
WALESA is in the bath, pouring water over his head.
PHOTOGRAPHER: (Off-screen) This way, Lech.
(We see that there is a PHOTOGRAPHER in the bathroom with him. The PHOTOGRAPHER takes several photographs using a motordrive camera.)
NARRATOR: (Voice over) Everyone knew that Lech was special. Pretty soon the outside world learned not to call him Walesser or Valesser but Vawensa.
35. INT. SOLIDARITY MEETING ROOM. DAY
The meeting room is crowded. SOLIDARITY MEMBERS are meeting each other, shaking hands. The crowd includes Solidarity’s ‘ADVISERS’. There is a good deal of self-introduction going on as the Narrator’s speech identifies several of the individuals we are going to be concerned with.
NARRATOR: (Voice over) The names and faces multiply, and there were many more than these. But it sorts itself out like this …
The intellectuals who formed themselves around the union as unofficial advisers included … Kuron … Geremek, the historian … Mazowiecki, a radical Catholic journalist … and Modzelewski, who had gone to gaol with Kuron in 1967 when the two of them, both radical Communists and lecturers at Warsaw University, had written an open letter attacking Party rule. Maszowiecki became Solidarity’s press spokesman. Jurczyk, a storeman, led the strikers at Szczecin … Gwiazda was the man perhaps closest to Walesa. Allowing for simple demarcations, Gwiazda … and Rulewski, who led one of the regional branches of the union, were radicals who were to come into conflict with Walesa’s more moderate line … Lis personified one of the paradoxes of the situation, for he was a member of the Communist Party … Bujak was the union’s leader in Warsaw … and there were others like these whose names the outside world never did get right, because –
36. EXT. SHIPYARD. DAY
NARRATOR: (Voice over) – the personality cult grew – sensationally – around a thirty-seven-year-old electrician whose combative, streetwise style had marked him out long before he climbed over the steel fence of the Lenin shipyard and found himself famous.
(WALESA has been walking through the shipyard, carrying a yard-high model of the Gdansk Memorial. He is greeted on all sides by WORKERS, and greetings are shouted at him from distant perches on cranes and gantries. WALESA acknowledges the treatment like a star.)
He liked the attention. In months to come he would be on scores of magazine covers and travel as far as Japan, meeting the great. It caused resentment inside Solidarity, but that was later.
37. INT. SOLIDARITY MEETING ROOM. CONTINUATION
WALESA, carrying the model of the memorial, enters the room. He sees
KURON there and shouts towards him.
WALESA: Jacek … they let you out … do you want to make a speech?
KURON: It’s your revolution. You tell us what you want us to do.
(The meeting settles down around WALESA. WALESA puts the model of the memorial on the table.)
WALESA: We have to make an organization. Suddenly everyone has a free union. All over the country they’re saying, we’ll have the same as Gdansk, thank you very much. I don’t know. Maybe there should be no centralization; just separate unions.
MAZOWIECKI: No. You have to be national, otherwise the Party will pick you off piece by piece –
GEREMEK: – or break down into chaos trying to deal with you separately. You have to have dialogue, not a general racket going on. Stability. Discipline.
WALESA: So a national commission representing all the regions?
MAZOWIECKI: Right.
WALESA: Yes – yes – you’re right – we have to act as one.
BUJAK: You mean if we want to strike in Warsaw we have to come to Gdansk for permission?
WALESA: Yes – definitely –
GWIAZDA: What are we going to be? An alternative bureaucracy? A Politburo?
WALESA: How we use our authority is up to us. If we are fair we will use it fairly. For the good of all.
GWIAZDA: That’s Party language, Lech.
WALESA: No, it’s the language of democracy, stolen by the Party. We’re a workers’ movement, not a mob. Local strikes must have a majority at factory level first, and then they must be ratified by a majority at the National Commission in Gdansk.
JURCZYK: What is this Gdansk – Gdansk – Gdansk? We had a strike at Szczecin. We also had a member of the Politburo on his knees. We also signed an agreement. We had everything you had except foreign journalists, and you should have told them to mind their own business like we did.
WALESA: I don’t care if the National Commission meets in Szczecin or Katowice. It can meet in different places. It can meet in a hot air balloon for all I care.
MAZOWIECKI: Don’t say that – the damn thing would never come down.
WALESA: All right. We don’t even exist yet, legally. All we have is a name. (To KURON) We’re taking the name of the strike bulletin we published in the yard.
(He gives KURON a copy of the bulletin. KURON looks at it.)
KURON: Solidarity.
WALESA: We’ll have legal registration in a few weeks. The statutes are being drafted now by our legal experts. You see, intellectuals have their uses – though we had trouble with them at first. They kept putting the word socialist into the manifestos, and the workers kept taking it out.
KURON: Well, we didn’t know you were thinking of changing the political system.
WALESA: We aren’t. We don’t want
to govern. We don’t want to be a threat.
GWIAZDA: What are you talking about? We are a threat. And we are dealing with gangsters.
WALESA: We’re a union, that’s all.
GWIAZDA: Do you believe that?
WALESA: If we don’t believe it, how can they? Look, it’s like this. The workers want bread. A decent wage. And a proper machinery to represent them, to take their side, and also a proper influence on the way things are managed at work. We’re not political.
GWIAZDA: Most of our demands are political. What’s the most important thing we’ve gained?
JURCZYK: The broadcasting of Mass.
GWIAZDA: Jesus God.
JURCZYK: Please don’t blaspheme.
GWIAZDA: Abolition of censorship – the right to strike – free elections for the union – no more Party hacks holding down jobs they don’t know how to do – free trade unions are political.
MAZOWIECKI: He’s right.
GWIAZDA: We’re going to have to fight just to keep what we’ve won – even to get what we’ve won. You’ll see when they start breaking their promises.
WALESA: (To KURON) Is he right?
KURON: I said it was a revolution. The trick is to make it a self-limiting revolution. The Party must keep the leading role.
LIS: I’m still a Party member. Lenin said the unions were the connection between the Party and the workers.
KURON: And with a union controlled by the Party there’s no problem. But an uncontrolled union reverses the current of power. The Party won’t forgive. It will give up ground and take its time, but in the end they still have the police and the security forces. So go slowly. You can win little by little, but remember, if you lose you will lose overnight. (Snaps his fingers.) Like that.