Poland is a state run on Communist lines, subject to the dictates of Russia. But it is a nation more religious, probably, than any other in Europe, Spain not excluded. It is innately anti-Communist, fiercely patriotic and independent, historically hostile towards the Russians and attached spiritually and socially to the West. Unfashionable though it is nowadays to look to national characteristics for underlying explanations of a country’s behaviour, I do not think that one can escape doing so here. No geographical, political or constitutional definition is adequate to describe the essence and life-force of the 53 million Polish people.
Certain questions keep cropping up if you live for any length of time amongst the Poles under their present regime: have living conditions improved here since the war more than elsewhere in Europe; if not, is this due to the system; and, if so, is the system capable of improvement? I hope that answers to these questions will emerge in the course of the following very personal account which makes no pretensions to completeness.
Improvements in Daily life
I am not here talking about conditions for the former upper or middle classes, or for members of the professions, or about artists or intellectuals – for all of whom Communism has brought degradation, dreariness and despair. I am discussing the daily life of the majority of the population.
For a Pole, to have the necessities of life is not something that can be taken for granted. Nowadays they are assured of essentials: employment; enough to eat; cheap accommodation; pensions; children’s education; and health services …
The people are not deprived of their time-honoured right to make jokes, even in public, about living conditions and the system. The main political weekly, with the remarkably high circulation of a quarter of a million, has just published the following: ‘They say there are three degrees of luxury in Poland: I. A car. II. A Villa (it does not exclude the first). III. Having your own opinion (it excludes the first and second).’
The system provides for paid holidays, special camps for children and, most vaunted of all, for extensive opportunities for higher education (according to published figures here 25% more students in relation to the population are undergoing higher education than in the UK).
How far the above material improvements could or would have occurred under another system is debatable. Certainly, much greater progress has been made in Western Europe since the war. But I think that there is little doubt that egalitarianism has been applied more sweepingly under Communism than elsewhere, and that the people of Poland themselves welcome what they consider to be their exceptional educational opportunities and the guarantee they have of work and a minimum wage. But having made this generalisation, I must qualify it by saying that the majority of Poles nevertheless rightly believe that living conditions are very much better in Western Europe than here, and that the economic system in the West seems capable of producing a bigger and better cake to be divided up.
Areas of Indifference
There are certain things that belong to the system, e.g. the lack of Press freedom, that most Poles probably do not mind about very much, largely because they have never known anything else; the same applies to the drabness inherent in Communism, as much of a blight today as 10 or 20 years ago, despite the improvement in material conditions (although to set against this it is necessary to mention the trouble taken by the State to restore and safeguard works of art). Perhaps for the same reason, nearly all Poles under 50, who constitute 78% of the population, seem resigned to the verbosity and priggishness of all public pronouncements, something that stuns the visitor from the West …
There is little doubt that nearly all Poles resent bitterly the country’s subjection to Moscow, even though it is discreetly conducted and Soviet troops are kept well out of sight. I do not think that it is always realised in the West how little is the rapport between the Poles and the Russians. This applies at all levels, except presumably at the summit of the Party, although even here there is little of the bonhomie that many people outside may think exists in the Soviet bloc. For instance I asked the ex-wife of the former Polish Prime Minister, who had been with him for 25 years when he held that office, whether, either here in Warsaw or in Moscow on visits, they and others in the higher ranks of the Party had seen much of the Russians socially and in private. Her answer was to laugh at the absurdity of the question and to ask me whether I knew that when she and the Prime Minister had been on visits to Moscow, they had always been subject to surveillance, and it had not been for their protection …
Corruption, Demoralisation and Boorishness
Not only does the system fail to deliver the goods but it is corrupt and the people are demoralised. The heavy sentence just passed on the former Deputy Minister of the Interior for participation in a racket in gold bars that is said to have utilised a car competing in the Monte Carlo Rally, is only the tip – a very Polish one – of a large iceberg. Despite the customary high moral tone of public announcements everyone knows the widespread wheeler-dealing that goes on. In the absence of either faith or incentive there is a go-slow on a national scale. A Polish weekly has described the malaise: ‘Just as bad work is not a bad mark against anyone, so to carry out a job well does not earn a good mark. Promotion and dismissal are decided according to other criteria.’ There are continual complaints from on high against the ‘parasitism’ and ‘hooliganism’ of the young. According to WHO statistics, Poland leads the world in alcoholism, and their own figures acknowledge that half a million Poles are absent from work each day due to drunkenness. Ten per cent of the population of productive age are estimated to be habitual alcoholics. Prostitution is also admitted to be a serious social problem.
Nor can I refrain from mentioning the boorishness that appears to be de rigueur whenever a Pole is set in a position of authority. There was a time when the Poles had a reputation for courtesy. But this is no longer so, partly, I think, because of the recent enormous influx of peasants to the towns where they appear quickly to adapt themselves to the lowest and commonest denominator of behaviour. It is also as though, according to some new biological law, Communism was breeding a special race of people with an acquired contempt for each other. The Poles remain, to be sure, half as boorish as the Russians, but this may be because they have been under Communism only half as long.
No visitor to the Polish People’s Republic should enter a shop, restaurant or any public place, without expecting to meet discourtesy, or at best, almost theatrical indifference. I mention this here because I believe it illustrates one of the fundamental flaws of Communism as a philosophy for practical application. It presupposes man to be better than he is; more benign, less grasping. It assumes that he will live in harmony with and serve the community unselfishly regardless of personal gain, and that he will abjure all desire for personal property whilst treating public property as if it were his own …
As I suggested at the beginning of this despatch, I believe that the governing fact here is the contradiction inherent in Polish life. Discontent, already widespread, will not necessarily be reduced merely because conditions improve. Counter-revolution, like revolution, is the product of hope rather than despair. The Polish people are tough. They are determined to make a dynamic state out of their nation. One day, they are likely to succeed. But on the way there may well be further violent upheavals and there will certainly be long periods of torpor and frustration. There will not be stability.
China
‘This is a country to which one should devote one’s life or go away’
SIR JOHN ADDIS, HM AMBASSADOR TO CHINA, JUNE 1974
(CONFIDENTIAL) Peking,
14 June, 1974.
Sir,
My first year in China, 1948, I wrote home in anguish ‘This is a country to which one should devote one’s life or go away.’ I have done neither but kept on coming back and became that most unsatisfactory of things, a semi-specialist. But even semi-specialists on Communist China were rare in the 1950s and 1960s and were therefore of some use.
During the cold war years there were so many adverse preconceptions about Communist China that those who knew a little were always on the defensive. Communism in China was held to be an alien system imposed by force on an unwilling population and therefore to be a state of affairs that could not endure. Chinese Communism was moreover widely believed to be necessarily expansive and aggressive, even to the extent of being likely to send regular armed forces across frontiers, and it was held that this was proved by a succession of demonstrative acts: Tibet, Korea, the Taiwan Straits, the Indian frontier. Arguments to the contrary were discounted as special pleading, and those who put them forward were viewed askance as ‘pro-Chinese’.
This climate of opinion added to the difficulties, already enormous, of trying to reach an objective assessment of the meaning and progress of the Chinese revolution under the leadership of Mao and the Communist Party. Everything here is so different from anything that we are used to in the West. All the values are different. The collective, both horizontally (qua membership of a group) and vertically (in the concatenation of generations) has always mattered more than the individual. It would not be true to say that ideology has taken the place of religion, because the Chinese in general have no need for religion. Individual salvation is an alien idea: the only hereafter is communal. Thus Communist doctrine has in many respects fitted easily on to the pre-existing thought processes and social structure. The guidance from the Centre passes down through the pyramidal structure of the Party and has a binding force on the individual. The Chinese traditionally have a talent for conforming to whatever is required of them by the established authority, while retaining an inner integrity. To anyone living in China for any length of time the most astonishing feature of the regime is that it works, in a country so vast, so populous and so disparate.
The achievements of a quarter century of Communist rule in China are very substantial. Out of chaos order has been established, and there is a sufficiency for all. Perhaps the greatest benefit has been the achievement of social security. Never before in China, certainly not since the 18th century, have so many people been able to look with so much confidence and with so little fear to the future. Everyone has a job and a wage and a place in society, women as well as men. Nurseries, kindergartens, universal education, a co-operative medical service, pensions, and old people’s homes are being introduced. There is a rising standard of living, in housing and consumer goods; and over the years I have observed with amusement the escalation of status symbols – first fountain pens, then leather shoes, followed by bicycles, wrist watches, transistor radios and now cameras, with television round the corner. The improvement is for the general public at large. It is one of the many features of the system that marks the difference from our own that there is no incentive for individual advancement: on the contrary, it is safer for the individual to stay with the mass. The total achievement must be greeted with wonder and respect by Western society: stable prices, a fixed currency, expanding production, rising living standards, total employment, freedom from organised crime, no drug problem and sexual activity for the most part confined to the marital bond.
Of course a heavy price has been paid. The achievement has cost unremitting toil. There has been a never ceasing pressure through the collective on the individual and a heavy subordination of the individual will and judgment to the collective. The strain on the intellectuals is severe and constant. The principle of democratic centralism, while permitting and even encouraging some debate before decisions are taken, requires acceptance as doctrine of the line laid down at the higher level. For us it would be an impossible sacrifice of liberty. For China, in its misery and despair, it has been an acceptable price to pay for livelihood and security for the family and for future generations.
‘In the socialist state it is the past that is unpredictable’
SIR PERCY CRADOCK, HM AMBASSADOR TO CHINA, DECEMBER 1983
See also p. 323.
I shall be leaving Peking in a few days’ time after five and a half years here. Not a cycle of Cathay perhaps; nevertheless, a good stretch … It is a truism, but a necessary one to begin with, that China has changed immensely since I came here in the summer of 1978. Mao was then already dead and embalmed it is true, but his shadow still hung heavily over the land. His successor, that undistinguished and slightly sinister figure, Hua Guofeng, propped his position on a probably apocryphal conversation with Mao in which the latter was supposed to have said ‘With you in charge I am at ease’; and pictures representing the occasion, with Mao in his study resting his hand benevolently on Hua’s knee as he conferred the dubious credentials, were at one time universally displayed. Now Hua, though still a Central Committee member, is no longer seen. Deng Xiaoping, whose second return to power came at the Party plenum in December 1978, has ruled China ever since. Mao has been cut down to size; responsibility for the national catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution has been formally laid at his door. Mao’s victims have been rehabilitated, headed by Liu Shaoqi, the former President, and Liu’s widow, Wang Guangmei, whom I remember paraded in obloquy and derision before Red Guard rallies in 1967, adorned with a necklace of ping-pong balls to represent her bourgeois pearls, is now a great lady, anxiously deferred to wherever she appears. So time brings in its revenges. In the socialist state it is the past that is unpredictable.
‘They hawk and spit, and their lavatories are horrendous’
SIR ALAN DONALD, HM AMBASSADOR TO CHINA, APRIL 1991
Donald’s diplomatic career saw him three times posted to Beijing, returning finally in 1988 as ambassador. Anglo-Chinese relations were dominated at the time by the issue of Hong Kong. Donald accompanied Margaret Thatcher on her historic visit to China in 1982, but the talks that followed soon foundered, with China rejecting British demands for a continued role in the administration of Hong Kong after the handover. After the British government eventually conceded the point the negotiations made headway, culminating in the 1984 Joint Declaration which, crucially, spared Hong Kong from socialism. Under the slogan ‘one country, two systems’, China promised to allow Hong Kong’s market economy and basic way of life to continue for another 50 years after handover.
Relations continued to be tense however, particularly after what Donald refers to here as the ‘horror of June 1989’. Several hundred Chinese died in what became known in the West as the Tiananmen Square massacre. On Hong Kong Island, the crackdown seemed to confirm the worst fears of the population, already edgy about absorption into their giant neighbour, and many decided to emigrate. But Britain had slammed the door shut, except to a few. Hong Kongers were British subjects but had no right to citizenship. One morning a few weeks later, after Singapore relaxed its residency requirements, 10,000 people queued in Hong Kong for application forms. By the time Britain surrendered the colony in July 1997 shortly before its 99-year lease expired, one million Hong Kong residents had emigrated.
BRITISH EMBASSY
PEKING
30 April 1991
The Rt Hon Douglas Hurd CBE MP
Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
London
Sir,
CHINA: VALEDICTORY DESPATCH
On the eve of retirement, I confess I am not psychologically ready to leave China. Much of my career has been involved with this complicated country. One does not ‘enjoy’ China in the way that I enjoyed Hong Kong, Indonesia or Paris. It can be frustratingly hard work here. The Chinese are xenophobic. Officialdom is stubborn and doltish. Since in China, the individual has no rights, his life being State property, the Chinese are often indifferent to each other, and sometimes downright cruel. I doubt if the mainland Chinese will ever learn to make a basin plug that fits, or maintain a car properly. They hawk and spit, and their lavatories are horrendous. Yet China intrigues and in the end holds you like no other country. Its archaeology and art treasures are incomparable. There is a never ending fascination in the way its political processes operate. The stoicism and good
humour of its long suffering people fill me with admiration. But it is not easy for us in the West to understand China. It is, from our Atlantic viewpoint, distant in time and culture. In the British case, our past historical involvement arouses Chinese suspicions and colours our own interpretation of Chinese motives. On both sides, it does not take much for old animosities to surface, as we found in 1989. It is against this background, therefore, that I would like to make some personal observations as I leave China for the last time as a member of the Diplomatic Service …
When I arrived as Ambassador in May 1988, it was a time of great hope. Deng Xiaoping’s decision to open to the outside world was ten years old. Sino-British relations in the wake of the 1984 Joint Declaration and The Queen’s visit in 1986, were excellent. The ‘hundred flowers’ at last seemed to be about to bloom. The horror of June 1989 was all the greater as a result. Like many others, I had expected the Communist Party to reassert control, but not with the violence used on 4 June. That shocked many in the West, who watched on their TV screens the destruction of what the media called the ‘pro-democracy’ movement. But the movement was far less deep-rooted than the Western media imagined. In the cities, especially Peking, intellectuals, students and some workers showed their frustration with the old men who created ‘New China’, with corruption within the Party and with the appalling conditions in which many still have to live and work. The vast majority of the people of China remained unaffected. China in 1989 was not Eastern Europe …
Parting Shots Page 17