A friendship that bore fruit

Śnieżka Mountain in the Karkonosze - a place where Polish and Czech dissidents had met. Photo: Derbeth (CC) commons.wikimedia.org

What did these ordinances look like?

Let’s take Wrocław. Here, we had occurrences of the ordaining of nuns from the Jadwiga order, which was illegal in Czechoslovakia at that time, but we could only operate there in a clandestine way. Thus, future nuns would come to Wrocław on an organised tourist trip and get separated from their group. They would spend a few days in the Wrocław monastery, become ordained, and then return to Czechoslovakia where they worked as nurses.

What impact did these contacts have on such important initiatives as the creation of the Polish Committee of Defence of Workers in 1976 and the Czechoslovak Charter 77 one year later?

At that time our contacts became more vivid. There were two meetings near the Śnieżka Mountain in the Karkonosze. During one of the meetings, the idea that Václav Havel would write an essay called The Power of the Powerless was born. This essay was foreseen as an exit point for a collection of texts about freedom that would be written by Polish and Czechoslovak intellectuals. Their co-operation was not yet institutionalised. It was based mainly on personal contacts, and there was an ongoing exchange of information and correspondences. Also, translators played an important role. Because of their profession, they were in frequent contact and would often meet during conferences and got to know each other quite well. What surely was a huge blow to our co-operation was what happened with the Czechoslovak opposition in 1981 when it became a victim of repressions instituted by the authorities in reaction to the situation in Poland. As a result, many oppositionists emigrated from Prague.

This co-operation became institutionalised in 1981 upon the initiative of the Polish Lower Silesian division of Solidarity when the Polish-Czech Solidarity (later Polish-Czechoslovak Solidarity) was established. 

Yes, however two months later Martial Law was introduced in Poland and until the mid-1980s our co-operation was slowed to a snail’s pace. It was limited to sending each other VHS cassettes and literature. There were occasional messenger trips between Poland and Prague.

Where was the literature kept?

In the buildings of Wrocław’s Ossolineum (The National Ossoliński Institute). There, hidden among millions of books, it could not be found by the Secret Police.

Were the messengers smuggling materials in their backpacks through the mountains?

On a few occasions, yes. But for two or three years we had problems with regular contact.

Why?

It only became clear in 1986 when, miraculously, I got a passport allowing me to travel to socialist countries. I went to Prague and there we found out why our contacts had failed. It turned out that on both the Polish and Czechoslovak maps, the Borówkowa Mountain, which was a meeting place, was marked in different spots. Thus, our messengers would show up in two different spots, while in their letters to each other, both sides were convincingly writing that their people had made it to the agreed location.   

How many oppositionists, on both sides, were then engaged in this co-operation?

Initially, there were just a few of us. But since the mid-1980s there were dozens of activists. Thus, we could assign tasks to each other as well as sections of the border through which we smuggled objects. We operated in a few centres: Warsaw, Wrocław, Brno and Prague. After 1987 we were operating on a large scale. The number of initiatives and ideas was constantly increasing and new centres were being established. We developed a code system which allowed messengers to set up meetings even when their phones were bugged. At a certain moment we were able to arrange smuggling trips every two weeks.  

Were you expanding these activities?

Yes, for example to include social activities. Let me give an example. We were co-publishing a bulletin and in one of the issues we published a list of all Czechoslovak political prisoners with detailed information about them; the cause of their imprisonment, their prison location, home address, etc. Not long afterwards, Polish parishes and organisations became involved in helping these individuals – they would send letters to prisons and care packages to their families. This was real help.

And where did the idea to organise opposition meetings in the Kłodzko Valley come from?

In 1987 Petr Pospíchal (one of the signatories of Charter 77 – editor’s note) was arrested for publishing samizdat and maintaining relations with Polish Solidarity. We organised a huge campaign to have him released. We prepared flyers and organised demonstrations, and it succeeded. After that we realised that we wanted to better co-ordinate all of our activities and thus came to the conclusion that it would be a good idea to meet in person. We decided that the best place to meet would be Borówkowa Mountain – a place where a few decades earlier dissidents from both of our countries had been meeting. We played a game with the Secret Police, leading them to believe that our meetings and exchanges were to take place at a different location – in the Karkonosze Mountains.  

I remember that Jacek Kuroń brought some whiskey and the Czechs brought nothing. To excuse them, Vašek Havel said that August was a month of abstinence and that we would not be drinking. We were climbing to the peak in smaller groups. One of them ran into a Border Control solider who checked their IDs. He wrote down their names, but seemingly did not connect them with the opposition. Even though it was hard not to make such a connection, as the people whose names he wrote down included Jacek Kuroń, Józef Pinior and Zbigniew Bujak. After his return from duty to the precinct, he handed his notebook to the supervisors who were indeed alarmed when they saw who was spending time in the mountains that were under their control. They started a chase.

I also remember seeing Havel in Prague when he was writing the proclamation in defence of Pospíchal. After that, together with Peter Uhle and Hanka Sabatova, we went to Karlštejn and from there we sent Pospíchal (who was still in prison) a card with a wonderful stamp which was made underground to commemorate the ten years of the signing Charter 77. 

And a postcard with such a stamp could make it to a prison?

Yes, it did. There were tens of thousands of such stamps. We were making them in Poland, based on a Czechoslovak design, and then delivering them to Czechoslovakia. We wanted our colleagues to start making money with their printing activity (we ourselves were still learning how to do it); as in Poland, at that time, there was already an underground publishing industry. Our initiative became so popular that in the spring of 1987 the Czechoslovak minister of postal services sent an alarming message to all Czechoslovak postal offices stating that illegal stamps, with references to Charter 77, were in circulation and instructing them that once they were encountered, they needed to be sent back to the return address. We were surprised by this ourselves as we would never have come up with such a wonderful promotion of our activity –  indeed through his message, the ministry even informed the smallest post offices about Charter 77.

What were the results of the co-operation between Polish and Czechoslovak opposition circles in the 1980s?

The fact that the Soviet troops left Poland.

In what ways? Could you be more specific?

In 1990 both countries were governed by people who, not that much earlier, had been involved in the anti-communist opposition. These politicians knew each other and had good relations. Many initiatives were also born at that time. For example, the Visegrad Group was created in 1991. The Polish government, led by Tadeusz Mazowiecki, started negotiations to ensure the departure of the Soviet Army from Poland. That happened by the end of 1990. At that moment, the response from the Russian side was “no”. However, the Soviet Army was already obliged to leave the German territory. Also, in the summer of 1991, it left Hungary and Czechoslovakia, which were nonetheless considered “side fronts”. In Poland, conversely, we had much stronger forces stationed. Even more, the Soviet Army that had left Germany and was trying to return home had to transfer through Poland and was doing it without any consultations with Warsaw. Therefore, Jan Krzysztof Bielecki, who was Poland’s prime minister after Mazowiecki, made a decision for the Polish military to halt the Russian column and allow those who had already crossed the Vistula River to continue, while those who had not were turned back and forced to return to Germany.

Clearly it was impossible to transfer Russian equipment and vehicles by sea but the Germans offered eight billion German marks (German currency at that time – editor’s note) to the Czechoslovaks in exchange for allowing a transfer through their territory. This was a very generous offer but the Czechoslovaks decided to show their solidarity with the Poles and rejected it. The Soviets were thus trapped in Germany and a few days later had to engage in serious talks with us, which enabled Poland to negotiate the departure of the Soviet Army.

This was the first large solidarity-based activity of the governments that later formed the Visegrad Group, and an event that was extremely important for the functioning of democracy in Poland. All in all, the Polish-Czechoslovak contacts from before 1989 had borne their fruit.     

Translated by Iwona Reichardt

Mirosław Jasiński is a film director, art historian and expert on Polish-Czech relations. He was a member of the democratic opposition in communist Poland and one of the leading activists of the underground Polish-Czechoslovak Solidarity.

Zbigniew Rokita is the managing editor of the Polish bimonthly magazine Nowa Europa Wschodnia.

Czech Republic, Mirosław Jasiński, Poland, Polish-Czech relations