If Warsaw Wants Normal Relations

"If Warsaw Wants Normal Relations" is an article by Vonnegut and Rose Styron, a poet, journalist, translator, founding member of Amnesty International USA, and wife of the author William Styron. It was published in the New York Times on July 7, 1986, after the two had visited Poland the previous year on behalf of American P.E.N.

Summary

Zbigniew Bujak, 1991

During a four-hour speech to the Communist Party congress, Polish leader Wojciech Jaruzelski offered partial amnesty to some political prisoners and toleration of dissent. The amnesty was the fourth since 1983, which have resulted in the lifting of most sanctions imposed by the United States after martial law was declared in December 1981. While this is a welcome development, Polish leaders must also be pressed to hold to their promises. Past amnesties have been followed by further arrests, and many of the "pardons" were granted to people never tried for a crime or found guilty.

Among the more than 300 political prisoners, the fate of Zbigniew Bujak, a leader of the Solidarity movement and public symbol of resistance who was arrested on May 31 after five years living underground, was left undetermined. The United States should make a particular effort to secure his freedom. At the age of 25, he helped organize a strike at the tractor plant where was an electrician, and he soon rose up the ranks of Solidarity's national leadership. A year early, Styron and Vonnegut had met him and were impressed by his humility, knowledge, and interest in events in the West. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev made it clear at the Polish Party congress, before which arrests and censorship were markedly increased, that no open revolt like that of the Solidarity movement five years earlier would be tolerated. However, Bujak's only crime—along with mathematician Konrad Bielinski and editor Ewa Kulik, who were arrested the same day—was to express an opinion held "by a vast number of their countrymen". Despite lifting its sanctions, the United States can still influence Polish policy through the International Monetary Fund, which Poland joined in May, and it should use this power to push for the release of Bujak and other activists and coerce Poland to refrain from further arrests.