For these three reasons, things really did become very difficult.
And this situation where on principle violence was not used against an enemy who on principle did use it,
and the crippling exhaustion of the people meant that this operation was carried out quickly
as far as what we can call the military objectives were concerned.
However, they didn't destroy the movement and not only did they not solve any of the problems that were confronting the country,
they made them virtually insurmountable.
So now these authorities came up with the lesson
that any social unrest can be pacified using violence but it can't be manipulated,
and so they didn't go through the motions of dialoguing with the people,
there were no concessions or rather a very limited range of concessions.
A strike can be used to gain a wage increase in one factory,
but nothing that would create the elements for society to be subjective because society is organised.
And this is from the point of the authorities.
This is what makes this situation bad because like this, it is already unreformable.
It is unreformable because the authorities had already decided
it would not permit any kind of reforms yet reforms were necessary.
They were essential and they knew it and they were squaring the circle and always managing to solve the issue,
dealing with what had presented itself on the day, because they were thinking in terms of next week,
next summer, the summer, the winter, the spring, nothing further
thanks to which they were functioning and the only thing they were protecting was their authority.
And that was the difference seen from the point of view of the authorities.
The difference from society's point of view was also fundamental.
If earlier we'd had 10 or 15 of our people in a factory we felt we really had a presence there, that we were secure.
Now when people... a while ago I was talking with some Solidarność activists in Southern Poland from some big factories,
and I said, 'If only we had five activists in each workshop.'
To which they replied, 'Not five but 50 except that wouldn't be enough!'
But this is everything. What was it that happened during the time of Solidarność?
The massing of the elite.
We have this situation which I think has happened for the first time in the history of Poland
and is probably unique in the entire world where the social leaders, the political activists,
those who are involved
are intellectuals just as much as workers, and farmers, and craftsmen,
office workers, shopkeepers, taxi drivers - it is a mass phenomenon.
Social organisation always depends on elite groups.
When there is a massing of the elite, meaning an organising of society,
if we add to this an expanded activity of book publication, newspapers, radio, television and do that now -
the mass range of media means information, the mass range of social education, national education
and a vast process of a united creation of only spiritual culture.
Culture is both a spiritual and a material entity.
Because there's such a breakdown in the material sphere, there is a massive regression in civilisation
and a destruction of culture which means that the culture can no longer function.
To put it plainly, today we have such strong bonds in the workplace
like never before because Solidarność is building these bonds.
But at the same time, a growing battle for pay is beginning to be fought in these workplaces, for the food on the table,
and so people are pitted against one another at the same workstation, in the same factory hall,
department against department, team against team, intellectuals against physical workers,
and so on, and the conflict grows and so these bonds begin to fall apart.
This is the dichotomy of the Polish situation.
And so, a society which has achieved something which had never so far been achieved in the communist camp -
organised itself, rebuilt its bonds, and knows how to create a spiritual culture in these circumstances,
and yet at the same time, there is an encroaching destruction of civilization which has to destroy all of the rest.