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spheres, only one of which has a right to enjoy freedom and dem–
ocracy. The problem is more serious. The question of whether
Solidarity went too far reflects a very basic difference between
Western and Eastern ways of political thinking. Assuming that it
was possible to stop half way, the West simply doesn't understand
that there was
no
half way-there was no established point before
which the process of liberation was safe and beyond which it was
dangerous. In other words, the very fact of Solidarity 's l=oming
into existence was unacceptable to the Communist rulers. And
from this point of view everything Solidarity did afterwards had
almost no significance whatsoever.
Here, of course, another question arises: Was the creation of
Solidarity necessary? Perhaps it would have been better for
Poland to reconcile itself to its totalitarian destiny? My answer
to these questions is very simple. Yes, the creation of Solidarity
was
necessary. To be more exact, it was at the same time necessary
and impossible, as one of Solidarity'S leaders put it. Everybody in
Poland, despite some superficial optimism, was aware of the risk
involved. But everybody was equally aware that people couldn' t
live under water any longer, that something had to be done in or–
der to reverse Poland's heading toward a catastrophe. Whoever
asks whether it was really necessary to create Solidarity should
realize that without Solidarity, today's Poland would be a total–
ly Sovietized country, ruled by corrupt and incompetent officers
and inhabited by thoughtless slaves. And its hopes for the future,
including an economic recovery, wouldn ' t be any better than they
are now.
As it is, Poland is a country under occupation, but it's a
country of free people who know exactly what they want and who
most certainly will continue their struggle to achieve it. It's a
country in which, paradoxically, the only people who sit apart
and still try to breathe under water, the only people who still be–
have abnormally and who constitute the minority-in other
words, the only real dissidents in today 's Poland-are its Com–
munist rulers.
VICTOR ERLICH: Our next speaker is Professor Erazim Kohak,
who has been teaching philosophy at Boston University. He left
his native country after the 1948 coup. He was at the time a
member of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovakian Social
Democratic Party.
