From Czarnobyl to Żarnobyl: The impact of Chernobyl on the Polish green opposition until 1989 (and beyond) more

Kacper Szulecki ‘From Czarnobyl to Żarnobyl’ 1 From Czarnobyl to Żarnobyl: The impact of Chernobyl on the Polish green opposition until 1989 (and beyond)1 Kacper Szulecki University of Konstanz “Are you crazy? You wanna protest for the damn white mice, is that what you want?” – the prominent opposition leader Jacek Kuroń supposedly exclaimed in 1981, when approached by some young activists with the idea of the “Solidarity” trade union actions for environmental protection. One of the youngsters, since then and until this day an activist in Warsaw, Jarosław “Jarema” Dubiel, explains that “it was not yet the time for environmental concerns”.2 That time had come only after the Chernobyl catastrophe, and in Poland too, it was largely, although not exclusively, about nuclear energy and its dangers. The attitudes soon changed so that several thousand protesters were gathered at a march condemning the state’s notorious information policy on Chernobyl’s fallout risks in June of 1986. With time methods too changed and green activism became an example of the best and most spectacular non-violent actions that Polish dissent had to offer in the second half of the 1980s. To give a hint of the direction the protests took – in October 1987, in a manner as unbelievable as the spelling of the place where it took place – Gdańsk district of Wrzeszcz – four followers of the “Freedom and Peace” (Wolność i Pokój – WiP) Movement, climbed the rooftop of a local pharmacy dressed up as animals (a fox, a hare, a hedgehog and a fish). Following one of the key principles of the Movement’s non-violent strategy: “it takes only a single cop to arrest a standing protester, but up to four to arrest a sitting one” (and a whole platoon if you climb a rooftop and pull the ladder up), they remained atop the pharmacy for some time, displaying their banners and scattering fliers. Their colleagues on the same day in different points of the city distributed some ten thousand leaflets altogether. The human-animals were arrested eventually, but only once they stumbled down from the roof after peaceful negotiations and a long “performance” for quite a large audience of sympathetic bystanders. That was the style of the young Polish opposition movements, which Padraic Kenney, drawing at the same time one of the famous oppositionists Władysław Frasyniuk and the literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin, terms the “carnival of revolution”.3 My focus in this paper is on the role of the Chernobyl catastrophe on the emergence and evolution of “green” opposition in Poland, especially the public protests of the “Freedom and Peace”.4 The Chernobyl meltdown is widely acknowledged as a “catalyst” of civil This is a draft chapter for the anthology edited by Melanie Arndt (ZZF Potsdam) under the working title “After Chernobyl”, forthcoming in German with Böhlau Verlag, 2012. 2 Interview with J. Dubiel, 11 June 2010, Szczecin. 3 Padraic Kenney, A Carnival of Revolution. Central Europe 1989 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). 4 “Freedom and Peace” emerged in 1985 as a loose network of predominantly young activists protesting against the text of the People’s Army military oath as well as the military service in general. It later grew in size and scope, so that it encompassed a wide range of issues – demilitarization of the society, peace in broader terms, human rights, minority rights and environmentalism. It developed lively contacts with the Western social movements, such as the peace movement or the German “Greens”. The movement 1 Kacper Szulecki ‘From Czarnobyl to Żarnobyl’ 2 mobilization in Eastern Europe. I try to specify what exactly that event catalyzed, showing both a change in protest methods and the issues taken up.5 Chernobyl’s impact on the domestic debate nuclear power is traced on the cases of the construction of the nuclear power plant (NPP) in Żarnowiec on the Baltic coast, as well as the proposed establishment of nuclear waste storage facilities in Międzyrzecz in western Poland. While green ideas and anti-nuclear protests initiatives occurred even before the Chernobyl meltdown, and greatly intensified as its result. However, this did not have a direct societal impact on the perception of nuclear power, and after the communist regime was ousted in 1989, some very desperate measures and a large dose of transnational campaigning were needed to actually force the new “Solidarity” government to resign from the idea of the “Polish atom”. The Żarnowiec case shows that the “magic of 1989” does not seem to work in environmental politics. I conclude with the present day paradox, where former colleagues from the opposition stand at two different sides of the barricade as the idea of launching the Żarnowiec NPP is again pushed through. “And then Chernobyl burst” The day the accident in Chernobyl occurred Trybuna Ludu, the official newspaper of the Polish communists, boasted about the “moral purity of the party as the condition for its strength and authority”, as well as called (elsewhere) for a “general clean-up of the entire country” to which all should join, in care of the “right sanitary state of the land”. 6 On April 28, two days after the meltdown, it informed anxiously about the French nuclear tests on the Pacific. The next day, after the Poles were first officially informed about the “problem” on the evening news the night before, did the newspaper finally mention the “accident in Czernobylsk” [spelling in the original – KS] which was apparently “already discussed in the press”.7 The readers were also informed that a special commission, furnished with cutting-edge equipment, is monitoring the situation and that although a radioactive cloud is in fact moving over north-eastern Poland, it is already almost gone, and was never a threat to human health.8 Aware of the fact that the society might not be was ideologically varied, different municipal branches displayed different shades – from the conservativenational centers in Krakow and Gorzów, through “centrist” but politically active Warsaw, to largely alternative Wroclaw and Szczecin and anarchist-dominated Gdańsk. On the whole, it was the largest East European peace initiative, an opposition movement of a new type, which managed to accomplish most of its goals. As Adam Michnik once remarked – it was the most successful phenomenon in the history of Polish opposition, comparable only with the legendary Workers Defense Committee (KOR). For more about the movement see: Gareth Davies, „Conscientious Objection and the Freedom and Peace Movement in Poland“ Religion in Communist Lands 16, Nr. 1 (1988): 4–20; Gillian Wylie, „Challenging the State-socialist Order: a New Social Movement in Poland.“ East European Politics and Societies 15, Nr. 3 (2001): 698–721; Padraic Kenney, „Framing, Political Opportunities, and Civic Mobilization in the Eastern European Revolutions: A Case Study of Poland’s Freedom and Peace Movement“ Mobilization: An International Journal 6, Nr. 2 (2001): 193–210. 5 Some information about the sources: the paper is part of a doctoral research project conducted at the Excellenzcluster “Cultural Foundations of Integration” of the University of Konstanz. Thanks to its research grant I was able to conduct archival research as well as interviews and informal talks with the participants of the described events on several occasions. I am also heavily indebted to the early historical works by Maciej Śliwa and Anna Smółka (cited later), as well as the convincingly narrated research of Padraic Kenney, and most importantly on the groundbreaking meticulous research of Janusz Waluszko on the Żarnowiec protests. Apart from my own interviews, I am also relying on those conducted by Kenney, Smółka and Waluszko. 6 Trybuna Ludu 26-27. 04. 1986, 1. 7 „Awaria elektrowni atomowej na Ukrainie”, Trybuna Ludu 30. 04 – 1.05. 1986, 1. 8 „Komunikat Polskiej Komisji Rządowej” Trybuna Ludu 30. 04 – 1.05. 1986, 1-2. Kacper Szulecki ‘From Czarnobyl to Żarnobyl’ 3 inclined to trust its own experts, the paper also quoted “Swedish scientists” who claimed, that the radiation is so low, that no special measures need to be taken.9 Over the next few weeks the topic was widely discussed, but voices of reassurance (“the radiation is absolutely not harmful for pregnant women and children”), expert panels (one of which finally admitted when the accident occurred and when the cloud reached Poland), bashing the Western governments and the United States for spreading “ridiculous information”, informing about seventeen historic nuclear accidents (in the US, West German, Japan, UK and Canada). Finally, on May 15, major Polish papers reprinted (in full) the text of the fatherly television address by Mikhail Gorbachev, who assured that the Soviet (and allied) citizens were informed “as soon as we got the full picture of the situation”, sniped on the US and NATO for their “unworthy lies” and claimed that “the worst is already behind us”.10 He was gravely mistaken, as for the leadership of the Soviet bloc states the worst was still to come. One of the “Freedom and Peace” participant recalls that the scariest part of the entire situation was the disinformation. “People were wondering what they should really do, what they should give to their children . . . Should they give them milk, or not? Or powdered milk? Feed them lettuce, or not? For political reasons we were cut off from sincere information.”11 That is why the situation had both an environmental and a directly political edge. And indeed, the anger at the authorities was most visible among women, especially mothers. Figure 1 - "Freedom and Peace" after Chernobyl: The May 2 sit-in in Wroclaw “And only on that Wednesday [April 27] did they begin to speak. Not in the newspaper, not at rallies, but in line, they loudly spat out phrases no worse than those on [underground] leaflets: a boycott of the communist parade [May 1], and refusing to support a regime which takes care only of itself and its militia. . . They sounded like a threat. Little 9 10 11 „Opinie ekspertów skandynawskich” Trybuna Ludu 30. 04 – 1.05. 1986, 2. Życie Warszawy, 15. 05. 1986, 1-passim. Interview with A. Koczut in: Padraic Kenney, Wrocławskie zadymy (Wrocław: ATUT, 2007), 154. Kacper Szulecki ‘From Czarnobyl to Żarnobyl’ groups of women – strangers to one another – in front of stores, on the sidewalks, all talking about one thing.”12 4 That spontaneous anger was quickly channeled through some early opposition actions. The first took place on May Day in Krakow, organized by the WiP affiliates there.13 The next day, on May 2, a more thought-through event was organized in Wroclaw. A dozen or so people from the city’s WiP “core”, reinforced by some guests from Warsaw,14 gathered on the stairs of a restaurant in the busy pedestrian Świdnicka street during the afternoon rush hours. They organized a sit-in,15 with placards saying for example “Is nuclear death from the East any different?”, “We demand full access to information” and “Żarnowiec will be next”.16 This protest was a novelty in terms of its form and, perhaps more importantly, its course. It was non-violent, building on a rich tradition of civil disobedience previously known in Poland mostly from television. It was open, spontaneous and bold – street actions were rarely taken up by the opposition after the Martial Law, and if they were, more often than not ended in riots. Although the protesters were joined by some passersby, and were surrounded by several hundred mostly sympathetic or indifferent onlookers, the police did not intervene. No one was arrested, no one was beaten up. One of the organizers, Marek Krukowski, recalls: “It was amazing that nothing happened. It was the first public independent action. Before that everything was organized through informal channels – someone can be told and invited, or someone can’t. What we [WiP] were doing prior to that was only echoed by the mass media, you could hear something about it on Radio Free Europe. This was the first brawl (zadyma), where people could touch us.”17 A week later, on May 9, also on Świdnicka Street, the movement held another, larger protest. This time, understanding the moral power of the message that it is the health of the children that is at stake, the WiP-ists gathered several dozen people, among them many mothers with strollers. The crowd, joined by onlookers, walked down the street to the city’s historic marketplace and back, holding placards such as “Why were we informed so late?” and “We demand powdered milk for all the children”. Numerous policemen watched the demo, but no one was detained. This gave a totally new meaning to the opposition’s slogan “Come with us, they are not beating today”. WiP adopted the chant as one of its trademarks, because, in the case of the movement, this was indeed true. One of WiP’s key figures, Leszek Budrewicz, described the movement as benefiting Quoted in: Kenney, Carnival, 72. Some historians, including Kenney, suggest that the first spontaneous demo took place in Warsaw already on April 28 1986, where the members of a semi-official youth ecological group “I prefer to be” took part. Waluszko questions the possibility of that demo taking place in the form described elsewhere (a march with placards formed right after a regime sponsored meeting), as it was not very likely that the young eco-activists where informed about the accident earlier than the general public and that they were able to organize a demo, paint placards etc. so quickly. See: ebd., 86. 14 Incidentally, at that time several active WiP-ists from Warsaw (Dubiel, Roland Kruk and the writer Andrzej Stasiuk) were temporarily based in Wroclaw, earning money through one of the opposition’s “favorite” jobs – industrial alpinist services. 15 Usually called a sitting by the Polish oppositionists. 16 See: Jarosław Podsiadło, Krótki kurs historii Ruchu Wolność i Pokój (Gdańsk: Maszoperia Literacka, 2010), 31. 17 Quoted in Anna Smółka, „Między wolnością a pokojem.“ (MA Thesis, Warsaw University, 1994)., 52. The term “zadyma” normally indicates a brawl or a riot, but in the case of the opposition it is used to describe any street action. It does, however, carry the meaning of a revolt and a confrontation. 12 13 Kacper Szulecki ‘From Czarnobyl to Żarnobyl’ 5 from the “luxury of small disobediences”.18 The visibly positive and impressive results of the protest popularized the movement in Wroclaw and opened many doors within the “older” opposition. Before establishing its own samizdat network, WiP used the union’s channels, and just days after the sit-in issued an appeal for “gathering all possible information on the Chernobyl threat” through the high-circulation “Solidarity” weekly Tygodnik Mazowsze. Using the momentum and the occasion of Children’s Day (June 1), the branch of WiP in Krakow (much more conservative in its overall profile), held a mass in the city’s historic main church – intended to the health of the children growing up in a polluted environment. Outside the church the participants formed a large circle, while other WiP activists distributed informative leaflets. Finally, the entire group marched through the Old Town to Wawel hill, chanting slogans like “We do not want iodine from the East” and holding much more provocative posters (i.e. “I’ll swap a 3 bedroom Krakow flat for a sleeping bag in New York” or “We demand that USSR pay us damages”). The protest, which according to some sources gathered several thousand people, was again uninterrupted.19 These experiences had an impact of the actions organized by the movement from then on, gradually changing the protest portfolio of the entire Polish opposition and, as Kenney argues, through different kinds of transnational diffusion, on the entire Central European independent scene.20 That was indeed the “Chernobyl effect” in terms of protest methods. But the Chernobyl catastrophe did not initiate the green strands in the Polish opposition. As this essay’s opening quote from Kuroń shows, those ideas came up already in the early 1980s. They were the result of the clearly visible degradation of the environment but were also, partly, inspired by the example of Western green movements. Budrewicz explains: “Environmentalism entered the scene . . . because it was an obvious idea, popular among the youth, close to the heart of many, who formed WiP, shown on television . . . those great big western protests, where everyone came with their kids, that simply looked like a picnic, and here, in this weary, gray communist reality, we longed for something so great.”21 This green activism was based on local issues. One of them, for the opposition community in Gdansk, was the planned construction of the Żarnowiec NPP (first steps were made already in the 1970s). Initial modest protest actions were conducted by the punkanarchist milieu of the Alternative Society Movement (Ruch Społeczeństwa Alternatywnego – RSA) in 1984. RSA quickly made a link between Chernobyl and the potential threat of Żarnowiec, and discussed these questions in a special issue of their samizdat magazine Homek soon after the accident. They were not the ones, however, who coined the brilliantly appealing term Żarnobyl. Whoever the author was, the word immediately gained nation-wide fame. Environmental issues, because of their seemingly non-political Helene Konstantin, „Luxus zu kleinen Unverantwortlichkeiten: Interview mit Leszek Budrewicz.“ Die Tageszeitung, 1987. Available at: http://tezeusz.pl/galeria/images/wip/publikacje_o_wipie_w_prasie_zagranicznej/1987_unkraut_in_jaruzelskis_garten_part_ii.jpg (last accessed 28.11.2011). 19 Smółka, op.cit, 53. 20 Padraic Kenney, „Opposition Networks and Transnational Diffusion in the Revolutions of 1989“ in Transnational moments of change: Europe 1945, 1968, 1989, hrsg. von Gerd-Rainer Horn und Padraic Kenney, 207–223 (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004). 21 Interview with L. Budrewicz in: Kenney, Wrocławskie zadymy, 122. 18 Kacper Szulecki ‘From Czarnobyl to Żarnobyl’ 6 character, were a domain of semi-official and official organizations. Apart from the longestablished League for Nature Conservation (LOP), the independent but official Polish Ecological Club (PKE) was established during the open “Solidarity” period. There was also the youth network, linked with official scouting, under the murky name “I prefer to be” (Wolę być).22 All these played an ambiguous role – on the one hand, providing a forum for some critique of the regime, but on the other – a safety vent for political tensions.23 The attitudes of WiP affiliates towards the latter were therefore also ambivalent. Some, like the eco-activist from Wroclaw Radosław Gawlik, saw the network as an extension of “Freedom and Peace” to towns and villages where open opposition could never occur, and so he attended its gatherings. Others, more radical, saw it as a façade and a “communist society for those interested in the environment”.24 The “Freedom and Peace” was not at first envisaged as an environmental movement – as the name indicates its focus was on human rights and demilitarization.25 Already at the foundational “hunger seminar” in March 1985 some initiators of the movement raised the idea of including green issues, and this was widely accepted – also because of their subversive potential. But environmentalism was not mentioned in the “Founding Declaration” (April 1985), only in the later developed “Declaration of Ideas” (November 1985). Why only then? Apart from pragmatic reasons, Maciej Śliwa argues that this was due to the influx of new affiliates, especially from Gdansk (former RSA members) and Wrocław (it was Leszek Budrewicz, Marek Krukowski and Małgorzata Krukowska who drafted the Declaration). Additionally, he notes that on 30 March 1985 the cornerstone for the first reactor was ceremonially laid at Żarnowiec, and nuclear threat became more tangible.26 While those issues were clearly signaled, nuclear power was not yet seen as a pressing problem at the time: “Poland is not threatened by a dynamic development of nuclear energy, although the attempts to transplant it into the Polish context – in the light of the experiences of other countries – cause suspicion.”27 The Chernobyl catastrophe and the early protests that followed made the mobilizing potential of environmental protests obvious – and as was already stated, showed how awkward the situation of the police and the authorities was to intervene. Budrewicz remarks jokingly: “If I am an anti-communist and I want to overthrow the government, then they beat me up. Perhaps that is unsound, but everyone will say: he had it coming. But when I start taking care of a neighboring park, leaves etc. then they ask ‘Damn, why are they beating him, isn’t it just about the leaves?’ . . . we would get to a point where the subliminal limits of absurdity are surpassed.”28 See: Piotr Gliński und Małgorzata Koziarek, „Nature protection NGOS in Poland: between tradition, professionalism and environmentalism.“ in Protecting nature: Organizations and networks in Europe and the USA, hrsg. von C. S. A. van Koppen und William T. Markham, 187–212 (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2007)., p. 192-3. For a contemporary account of the emergence of ecological movements see: Piotr Topiński, „Ekolog w Polsce Ludowej“ Aneks 31 (1983): 148–155. 23 Cf. Kenney, Carnival, 84-passim. Such official initiatives could also play an important dissident role, as the example of the semi-official report “Nahlas” from Bratislava shows. 24 FA, „Rozmowa z Wojtkiem Jaroniem.“ FA - Kwartalnik Ruchu Wolność i Pokój, Region Śląski, Nr. 1 (1988): 48–51. 25 On the movement from human rights to peace and environmentalism in Central European opposition see: Kacper Szulecki, „Hijacked Ideas: Human Rights, Peace and Environmentalism in Czechoslovak and Polish Dissident Discourses“ East European Politics and Societies 25, Nr. 2 (2011): 272–295. 26 Maciej Śliwa, „Ruch "Wolność i Pokój" 1985-1989“ (MA Thesis, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, 1992), 57. 27 „Deklaracja ideowa”, available at: http://tezeusz.pl/cms/tz/index.php?id=1856, last accessed 24.11.2011. 28 Interview with L. Budrewicz in: Kenney, Wrocławskie zadymy, 122. 22 Kacper Szulecki ‘From Czarnobyl to Żarnobyl’ 7 Think locally, act mockingly: Environmental protests 1987-1989 After the success of the Chernobyl demonstrations, “Freedom and Peace” searched for different local environmental “cases” around which protest could be organized. These were not hard to find. The most spectacular examples of largely successful environmental advocacy include the nuclear waste storage facility in the Nazi-built bunker complex near Międzyrzecz (western Poland), the pollutant industrial complexes in Siechnice (metal works near Wroclaw), Police (chemical works near Szczecin) and Nowa Huta (steelworks in Krakow), Klempicz (a proposed NPP location near Poznan) as well as Żarnowiec – the only real nation-wide green campaign of the movement. The growing portfolio of WiP’s samizdat periodicals was used to spread the information on local actions across the country, as well as raising the awareness of environmental problems and the risks of nuclear energy. I will discuss only WiP’s most spectacular successes on the environmental arena – Międzyrzecz, Siechnice and Żarnowiec – emphasizing in particular the evolution of tactics, changing levels of repression and the degree of public support. The protests against the proposed nuclear waste storage facility in Międzyrzecz began in May 1987, after the local WiP branch in nearby Gorzów learned about the plans.29 They were able to quickly gather independent expert reports, which suggested that the site (bunkers) absolutely unfit and the project is highly dangerous for the local population, as well as a very important bat habitat.30 The first actions were taken in Gorzów, where five WiP affiliates climbed onto the ledge of the city’s major department store, displayed large sheets informing about the danger of nuclear waste, scattered leaflets and pasted posters on the building’s windows. This novel method – dubbed ruszting (from the Polish word for scaffold and the “-ing” as in “sitting”). The idea was to climb a scaffold or a roof, and sit there – for increased visibility of the activists and extended the length of the protest, as the police needed equipment and reinforcements to take the protester off their “nest”. In the case of the Gorzów ruszting, the firefighters called were not able to convince the activists to get down; the riot police was summoned and dragged them down by force. The technique was soon mastered by WiP, as the already given example of the demo with animals atop a pharmacy shows. But actions in Gorzów, although easier to organize and perhaps safer, were not enough. The movement needed to go micro-local, and mobilize the locals in the town of Międzyrzecz itself. After a ruszting held there, several informative actions, the level of mobilization achieved was very impressive. The final protest march held on October 4, concluding a hunger strike in the local church, gathered four thousand people – twenty percent of the town’s entire population.31 But that came at a cost now. The police was already prepared to detain, arrest and at rest heavily fine the movement’s affiliates. Very high fines became a weapon much more painful, even despite international financial assistance, than short arrests. And about the time the Międzyrzecz protests were launched, WiP-ists protesting against the Police chemical works in Szczecin were also severely beaten. “Freedom and Peace” was noticed, and greater repression was evidence of the fact that the regime also understood the subversive power of environmentalism. The protests in Międzyrzecz were, all in all, WiP’s first major success – the local campaign worked, and the municipal council (communist!) voted against the nuclear waste storage. For a contemporary account see: Marek Kossakowski, „Leave the bunkers to the rats“, available at: http://tezeusz.pl/cms/tz/index.php?id=2087 (last accessed 30.11.2011). 30 Śliwa, op.cit., 60. 31 ` Smółka, op.cit., 58; Śliwa, op.cit., 60. 29 Kacper Szulecki ‘From Czarnobyl to Żarnobyl’ 8 Budrewicz learned about the issue of the Siechnice metal works (producing waste that polluted Wroclaw’s water sources with heavy metals) from the official trade unions (OPZZ) weekly Związkowiec (The Teamster) – and was appalled. “I had no idea there was such a plant. . . I checked on the map . . . the site was just 10km away from Wroclaw, the water coming from there was for our city. Of course there was the problem of the workers, what happens to them if we close the place down. . . But the idea turned out to be great for two reasons – firstly, that it was so obvious, and secondly, that it touched the entire city.”32 Krukowski further explained: “The opinion of independent scientists was unison: shut [Siechnice] down. It leads to such a degree of heavy metal pollution that in some time the water will be completely unfit for drinking, it will not be cleaned by any filter.”33 The protest actions that followed deserve attention because of their intensity, scale and the successful finale. They began in November 1986 with an information sit-in in the opposition’s favorite spot – at Świdnicka Street. Two dozen activists sat by posters and sheets informing about the chromium danger, others distributed fliers informing about a protest march to be held in some weeks later. No one was arrested.34 In the spirit of micro-local activity seen already in Międzyrzecz, the movement approached the workers of Siechnice with a letter, suggesting universal medical tests for all employees, which could become the basis of a large trial over financial compensation. The march itself (postponed for January), was widely publicized and gained the vocal support of prominent oppositionists. However, due to large scale preventive action on the part of the secret police (SB) it gathered only some 30 WiP-ists, but since they managed to convince an American TV crew to come down and film it, they were doing their best to look impressive (“broader, broader” – shouted some when the group holding signs was turning the corner from a side-alley and emerging into the open space of the marketplace).35 That shows a high degree of PR awareness that the movement displayed – aware of their limited resources they used the Western media and RFE rather cunningly. This time, however, the presence of Western journalists did not have a protective effect (especially since they were warming up in a nearby eatery and missed all the action). The activists were surrounded by tens of riot-policemen, and despite an improvised sit-in, dragged one by one to police vans and driven to a local police station (where the merry protest continued, with songs and jokes that almost drove the police insane).36 The participants received high fines, but – and that was a novelty – openly refused to pay them, arguing that they are demonstrating against a problem of societal importance. When pressured on the telephone by a WiP-ist from Warsaw, the minister of the environment claimed, however, that the January march was not an environmental protest, but an attempt to Interview with L. Budrewicz in: Kenney, Wrocławskie zadymy, 123. Quoted in: Smółka, op.cit., 54. 34 Podsiadło, op.cit., 35. 35 The major banner read: “Article 71 of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of Poland – the citizens of the People’s Republic have the right to benefit from the values of the natural environment and the duty to protect it”. That indicates the legalistic edge of the protest that was known already from human rights advocacy. See also: Interview with L. Budrewicz in: Kenney, Wrocławskie zadymy, 124-5. 36 Smółka, op.cit., 55. Throughout the police intervention the protesters were shouting “the police is drinking the same water” – an important element of all environmental protests including that after Chernobyl, was that the security apparatus and the regime bureaucracy were usually as much harmed by the pollution as were the protesters and bystanders. This added to the awkwardness of the situation in which the intervening police were – and influenced the (on the whole) light treatment of the green opposition. 32 33 Kacper Szulecki ‘From Czarnobyl to Żarnobyl’ 9 “create unhealthy noise around Poland internationally”.37 That was indeed the case, although it was more of a consequence than the organizers sole intention. And despite the police crackdown, the protest seemed to have had initial effects – some weeks later the regional authorities decided to shut Siechnice down (or rather – to stop its expansion and shut it down until 1992). This, however, did not eliminate the problem of the pollution. Further protests were limited by the severe backlash against “Freedom and Peace” that occurred in the second half of 1987, when many activists received long prison sentences – for different crimes and offences. Both in its anti-militarist, environmental and transnational activities the movement was becoming visibly dangerous for the regime.38 But the actions against Siechnice continued, for a time in a smaller scale. The new “survival” protest technique were the “human sandwiches” – pairs of activists wearing cardboard placards with slogans on their front and back, appearing in different public places and distributing fliers. For weeks they played hide-and-seek with the police, who arrested them whenever they were spotted – although on several occasions the sympathetic crowd of onlookers gathered around the “sandwiches” would not allow the police to detain the protesters. Protests went massive again in 1988, when the first Black March was held – several hundred people (invited by WiP) showed up in the city center dressed in black and holding mourning flags. These marches were held regularly, and gradually grew in size, so that the final one on September 17 1988 gathered ten thousand protesters, and became the largest street demonstration in Wroclaw since the “Solidarity” May Day demo and riots in 1982. This one was, however, peaceful. The authorities gave in to the societal pressure and decided that the plant would be closed down – however, little was done apart from that, and Siechnice continued to pollute Wroclaw’s water. The controversy was resolved only after the democratic transition, when the WiP activist Radosław Gawlik, then already a member of parliament, pressured the Mazowiecki government to monitor the closure and clean-up of the site.39 By contrast, another WiP environmental issue in Wroclaw – the protests against asbestos thermal isolation of housing estates – gathered little momentum and the toxic substance continues to haunt large parts of the city’s populace.40 Tomasz Burek throws the boomerang: the defeat (?) of Żarnobyl The protests against the Żarnowiec NPP began earlier, had a wider scale, but even despite those factors – the rod to the final (or not entirely so) success was longer and more dramatic. A major point raised against Żarnowiec was the low engineering culture of Polish construction, and thus lack of any safety guarantees. Jacek Czaputowicz asked: “Can we believe that a system incapable of producing a decent car or even a decent bolt, a country where everyday trains, buses, and trams collide, will have a nuclear industry that is safe?”41 Other points WiP raised against Żarnowiec were its costs, the risk of furebd., p. 55. Compare some analyses submitted in secret police academies at the time, as well as a synthetic article by one of WiP’s leaders J. Czaputowicz: Jarosław Głuciński, „Ruch "Wolność i Pokój" jako zagrożenie bezpieczeństwa wewnętrznego państwa.“ (Master thesis, Wyższa Szkoła Oficerska MSW, 1987); Jacek Czaputowicz, „Działania Służby Bezpieczeństwa i kontrwywiadu wojskowego wobec Ruchu "Wolność i Pokój".“ in Jesteście naszą wielką szansą. Młodzież na rozstaju Komunizmu 1944 - 1989, hrsg. von Paweł Ceranka und Sławomir Stępień, 286–300 (Warszawa: IPN, 2009).. 39 Śliwa, op.cit., 63. 40 Interview with R. Gawlik in: Kenney, Wrocławskie zadymy, 165. 41 Kossakowski, op.cit. 37 38 Kacper Szulecki ‘From Czarnobyl to Żarnobyl’ 10 ther economic dependency on the USSR, which was the sole provider of fuel, the inadequate plans for nuclear waste storage (especially that a second NPP was already planned in Klempicz, western Poland); and finally – the threat of a nuclear meltdown, all the more horrific in a plant located only 40km from the Tri-city (Gdansk, Gdynia and Sopot) with over 700 thousand inhabitants. Figure 2 and 3 - Anti-Żarnowiec and anti-nuclear spray molds The campaign against Żarnowiec intensified in 1987, when in July a petition against the NPP began to circulate in Gdansk, and when the four local WiP activists protested on the Wrzeszcz pharmacy. The protests, however, had a rather low intensity despite the nation-wide support from the movement. The climax of the campaign occurred in the years 1989-90, when “Freedom and Peace” – torn apart by internal ideational and political differences – was in its state of agony. Despite large public events, such as the WiP ecological seminars in Gliwice (February 1988), attended by over two hundred guests from different organizations (including Czechoslovak independents) and Darłowo (May 1989), with a thousand participants, and in spite of the foundational declaration of the “Federation of Greens” (Federacja Zielonych) from December 1988, the environmental movement was losing momentum in Poland. As the regime began collapsing, many WiP affiliates either looked to continue their public engagement in politics, civil service or in private business. A new generation of radical activists took over what was left of WiP and the wider environmental protest movement. The key figure in the climax of the Żarnowiec campaign was Tomasz Burek, formerly a WiP-ist, but, as the movement lost interest in the issue, dissolved and failed to mobilize even for the most important demos – “so I didn’t want to say that I was from WiP” – he explains – “I was there as a private individual”.42 Interview with T. Burek in: Janusz Waluszko, „Wspomnienia Tomasza Burka, współorganizatora kampanii przeciw budowie Elektrowni Jądrowej Żarnowiec: Spisane i opracowane przez Janusza Waluszko“. Available at: http://www.tezeusz.pl/cms/tz/index.php?id=6441 (last accessed 29.11.2011). 42 Kacper Szulecki ‘From Czarnobyl to Żarnobyl’ 11 Chernobyl was a catalyst in his case too, but in a peculiar way, as when the meltdown occurred, Burek was doing time in a Gdansk jail, locked up with three murderers in an isolated blockhouse where no TV or press was allowed. He learned about the catastrophe only after he left prison. This explained why at the beginning of May 1986 the inmates suddenly began to receive much better and more diverse food. Food products that were taken off the market as too contaminated were simply fed to the criminals (and prisoners of conscience alike). “It pissed me off that I was not informed, that something was hidden from me” – says Burek, adding that at the time his partner was pregnant. That was his private path to anti-nuclear protests – he learned more about the threat of Żarnobyl at WiP’s “peace festival” (a large anarchist gathering in Białogóra near Żarnowiec) in August 1988. He made an internal pledge that he would protest against the plant until its construction is stopped. And that was what he did over the next two years.43 Large scale protests started in February 1989, using a similar pattern as in Wroclaw some months earlier – weekly marches proposed by WiP’s “Jacob” Jankowski would take place on Gdansk’s main street Długi Targ, led by several dozen (seventy or so) activists, and joined by 200-1000 sympathizers. Then, following the tradition of “politics of irony” mastered by WiP and the performance-opposition group “Orange Alternative”, the protesters started organizing events such as “mutant football match” or the construction of a cardboard nuclear reactor by a group of people wearing Lenin’s masks, singing Stalinist songs (“The atom boomed amongst the rocks…”).44 After some negotiations with the authorities, they were granted their own “agora” – a public space in the city center the official and semi-official environmental groups could use for their gatherings. The various groups involved in the protest included the youth movements “I prefer to be” and the newly formed “Twe-Twa” as well as the League for Nature Conservation, the Federation of Greens, Franciscan Ecological Club, Polish Ecological Club, Federation of Militant Youth (FMW), Movement for an Engaged Society, RSA and WiP. In the meantime, nuclear energy was discussed at the Round Table, but was the single one out of 28 environmental issues that could not be agreed upon. The regime change did not change the situation – the plans for constructing the NPP were upheld, and while police surveillance lessened, the scale and radical edge of the protests strengthened. The protesters used a wide range of methods to advocate their cause. They interrupted local “Solidarity” meetings, marched to the Gdansk city hall, blocked the main streets. Burek along with several other activists went to Warsaw, set up a tent in front of the Government’s building, and picketed it for over a week in early November 1989. Later on, however, the protests acquired a more dramatic turn. In November the activists held a first, ten-day-long hunger strike, and tried to influence the press by taking over the Press House in Gdansk. In December, the protesters embarked on an open ended hunger strike (it lasted for 44 days), and began a “siege” of the port terminal in Gdynia where the elements of the first reactor were shipped. When the elements were moved towards Żarnowiec, the protesters were throwing themselves under the wheels of the 300 tone transporter, and were attacked by the Żarnowiec staff.45 The environmental opposition pressured for a referendum to be held on the issue, using the opportunity created by first democratic local elections in May 1990. The government, trying to avoid a public confrontation, declined. But a referendum was held nevertheless – a “social referendum” in the Gdansk administrative region, perhaps the 43 44 45 Ibidem. Waluszko, „Przyczyny “; Idem, „Wspomnienia”. Idem, „Przyczyny“. Kacper Szulecki ‘From Czarnobyl to Żarnobyl’ 12 largest independently organized popular vote in the world (over one million people cast their vote). Improvised ballot offices were set up in schools, on busses and even in private car trunks. A quick grassroots campaign was organized, involving the visits of activists and scouts in every small village of the region, with the help of the Gdansk University Psychology Department staff, who designed the public relations message of the antiŻarnowiec campaign.46 The result was telling: 86% of those who turned up (44% of those eligible, despite a large scale officially inspired campaign of disinformation) voted against the construction of the nuclear plant. The vote was organized in one week, through a loose and informal network of sympathizers and local NGOs (also nonenvironmental ones, such as the representation of the local ethnic minority, the Kashubians ). But the government pointed out that the results of the vote were not binding, as the 50% turn-out threshold was not met.47 That is when Tomasz Burek threw the metaphorical boomerang – decided to call upon the international environmental community to pressure the government from the outside.48 Burek explains: “The petitions, the protests, the referendum – all that had rocked Poland a bit, made Żarnowiec a public issue. But this did not cause a qualitative change. The relationship was still ‘us’ and ‘them’ – the government, be it red or Mazowiecki’s.”49 Domestic protest reached its limit. Burek contacted a “Federation of Greens” activist from Krakow, who provided him with a reference letter and some links to Western environmental groups.50 And so, in July he hitch-hiked all the way from Gdansk to Vienna, “speaking no foreign language, having no other contacts and only five dollars in my pocket” he knocked on the door of the Austrian Green Party. He brought two backpacks – one with bootleg rock music he intended to sell to gather some funds, and the other – with materials on Żarnowiec. He got the materials translated to English, emphasizing the case of the referendum, as its scale and grassroots organization was unprecedented not only in the still Eastern Europe. He underlined the nexus of nuclear energy and undemocratic governmental practices. Vienna turned out to be a good place for such a message. “These guys were professionals, they organized many campaigns” – he admits. Through their transnational network, the Austrian Greens approached other European green parties as well as Greenpeace and agreed that a coordinated action would be held on the same day against Żarnowiec. Polish embassies and consulates in different European capitals were picketed, but occupations also occurred. Most importantly, in Stockholm the local Greenpeace entered the Polish embassy and thus prevented the ambassador from leaving for Ronneby, where he was expected by premier Mazowiecki at the summit discussing the Baltic See Declaration. When approached by foreign diplomats about Poland’s policy towards nuclear energy and the Żarnowiec question, Mazowiecki replied that the plant would be closed down. The statement was Idem, „Wspomnienia“. Idem, „Przyczyny “. 48 The idea of the metaphorical ‘boomerang throw’ comes from: Margaret E. Keck und Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond borders: Advocacy networks in international politics (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1998). 49 Interview with T. Burek in: Waluszko, „Wspomnienia“. 50 „Freedom and Peace” remained in contact with the West German Die Gruenen, however, those transnational contacts were part of the network on peace and human rights. See: WiP/Die Gruenen, „The Common Declaration of the Freedom and Peace Movement and die Gruenen from West Germany“. http://www.tezeusz.pl/cms/tz/index.php?id=2088 (letzter Zugriff: 6. September 2011). 46 47 Kacper Szulecki ‘From Czarnobyl to Żarnobyl’ 13 not something that could easily be denied, and indeed on September 4 1990 the construction of the plant was cancelled.51 Conclusions: the “Chernobyl effect” and a nuclear déjà vu Did the Chernobyl accident oust the Polish communists from power? Definitely not directly, and it is always risky to look for single causes of such complex processes. But there are traces of something that one can call a “Chernobyl effect”. When on the first anniversary of the catastrophe the Wrocław WiP blocked one of the main streets with a 14-meter-long banner that read simply “Chernobyl” the real message was clear: They knew, but didn’t tell you. This was an additional element of the regime’s de-legitimization in the eyes of the society. It had a certain “othering” component – as the regime and its security apparatus (informed and protected from the radioactive danger) became “them” even more clearly than before. Even being a loyal and conforming citizen did not guarantee anything anymore. Additionally, non-violent, often funny and colorful street protests helped the harassed society overcome fear of police repression – as evidenced by the growing scale of protests, with the 10 000 strong Black March as its culminating point. Kenney also observes that the “carnival of revolution” helped to mobilize the people, bring them out to the streets and demand change.52 But the momentum soon faded away. The environmental protest actions initiated by the young opposition movements in Poland in the aftermath of the Chernobyl catastrophe were colorful, often large scale, bold, visible and involved a high degree of public participation and support. Much of that support, however, was short-term, not well rooted and to a great extent aimed at “the reds” rather than resulting from actual environmental awareness. “Chernobyl” became a symbol of risk but it was from the start associated with the communist regime. In other words, the conclusion was rather that “the Commies and the Russkies can’t do anything right” than “nuclear power – no thanks”. When former WiP affiliates recently tried to gather up support for a new antiŻarnowiec protest (see below), they were often confronted with the statement: “sorry, we were against nuclear energy then, under communism, but now that is a totally different thing.”53 In short, the “Chernobyl effect” in Poland was about social upheaval rather than about the environment and nuclear danger. After the regime transition many people concluded that in an open society functioning along the prescriptions of liberal democracy environmental issues will somehow fix themselves automatically and rationally. However, as the cases of Siechnice, where specific pressure by the then parliamentarian Gawlik was needed, and Żarnowiec, where a dramatic domestic campaign by Burek and numerous other devoted activists, reinforced by a transnational advocacy network was required – that was not as straightforward as many expected. With time, Polish environmental NGOs went through a continuous process of professionalization,54 and became growingly dependent on external funding (moving from bottom-up to outside-in).55 One could risk saying that on the whole Waluszko, „Wspomnienia“. In fact, the development of Polish nuclear energy was halted for 15 years, until 2005. 52 Kenney, Carnival. 53 One of the WiP-ists personal communication with the author, at the conference „Security and Identity. The ‘Freedom and Peace’ Movement in international relations 1985-90”, Warsaw, October 8 2011. 54 Cf. Gliński und Koziarek, „Nature protection NGOs”. 55 Michael Waller, „The environmental issue in the East of Europe: top–down, bottom–up and outside–in.” Environmental Politics 15, Nr. 5 (2010): 831–849. 51 Kacper Szulecki ‘From Czarnobyl to Żarnobyl’ 14 environmentalism did not take root in the Polish society. This is evidenced by spectacular failures of different green campaigns throughout the 1990s (e.g. the protests against the dam in Czorsztyn). The first major success was the nation-wide campaign in defense of the Rospuda river valley in 2006-2007.56 Politically, the environmental movement has proven to be even weaker, although two green parties (Partia Zielonych and Zieloni 2004) remained in the background for some time (both noted some limited successes in local level elections).57 Finally, the anti-nuclear campaigns – remaining at the heart of WiP’s activity in both Chernobyl and Żarnobyl variants – did not have long lasting awareness raising effects. In recent years, the plans to construct an NPP are advanced once again, and the proposed localization is Żarnowiec.58 The pressure comes from a powerful pro-nuclear lobby, backed by the semi-private energy provider PGE, with strong support from the ruling Civic Platform (PO). The process is again conducted in a similar, centralized manner, without societal consultations and against the will of the local population (as a recent survey has shown, 53% of respondents nation-wide are against the construction of any NPP). Ironically, the contemporary political elites are related to the “Solidarity”, the Independent Student Association (NSZ) and to some extent WiP. What we can expect in the years to come is an escalation of the conflict in which, this time, former colleagues from the opposition will find themselves on two different sides of the barricade – the government and NGOs. Julia Szulecka und Kacper Szulecki, „The River that Divided a Nation: Rhetoric, Activism and the Political Controversy over the Rospuda River Valley in Poland“ ESPRi Working Paper 1 (2010). 57 Kacper Szulecki, „Konsensus jest możliwy. Do pewnego stopnia.“ Kultura Liberalna, 13. Juli 2010. 58 “Żarnowiec, Choczewo, Gąski - kto wygra elektrownię?”, Gazeta Wyborcza – Trójmiasto, 25.11. 2011. 56