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Late last week the Warsaw branch of Solidarity released a clandestine news bulletin calling on workers to maintain their campaign of resistance. Referring to the talks under way between the church and the military government, the union bulletin declared that the campaign would "strengthen the position of representatives of the church" during the discussions. "If we display our intention to fight against the regime," it continued, "these negotiations can make possible a way out of the blind alley in which the Polish state finds itself." The bulletin also congratulated the workers at Warsaw's giant Ursus tractor plant who, it said, had been so successful in their passive protest campaign that they managed to produce only one tractor during the first week of martial law.
What happens next? In Warsaw, an adviser to Jaruzelski, Captain Wieslaw Gornicki, outlined to a TIME correspondent the aims of the military government. Soon, he said, "there will be a gradual lifting of the state of martial law. Already there are signs of an easing of the regulations. Martial law is not a situation that can last very long in any country, and in Poland less than any other. There is no place in Poland for a military dictatorship." He stressed that the ruling military council believes "in the long run, not a single Polish problem can be solved by means of compulsion." But he added, "This was not a playground exercise. The threat was serious, and so was the answer. We were forced to choose between two evils," one of which was "quasi anarchy."
Referring to the large number of people employed by Solidarity, Gornicki continued: "We cannot afford to have 42,000 little kings and princes, each with his own prescription for how to save Poland. They were unwilling to compromise, not only with the government but even within their own ranks." He insisted that the existence of "independent and autonomous trade unions" is a "basic issue that cannot be retracted." But trade unions will merely serve to defend the interests of workers in enterprises managed by the state, and workers will not choose their managers: "Solidarity was as partial in choosing directors as the party was. Political qualities were more important than managerial skills. There will be no return to central bureaucratic overplanning. We are seeking a marriage between a market economy and the original intent of socialist planning. This marriage works pretty well in Hungary." But the first step was to reimpose order on Polish life, and that step, said Gornicki, had been just about completed.