Tadeusz Mazowiecki
Tadeusz Mazowiecki was the Catholic intellectual and Solidarity advisor who became Poland's first non-communist Prime Minister in August 1989 - the first such government in the Eastern Bloc - ending forty-four years of communist rule.
Tadeusz Mazowiecki was born on April 18, 1927, in Płock, Poland. A Catholic intellectual, editor, and politician, he served as an advisor to NSZZ Solidarność from its founding and became Prime Minister of Poland on August 24, 1989 - the first non-communist to hold that office since the communist consolidation of 1945. He died in Warsaw on October 28, 2013.1
Catholic Intellectual and Solidarity Advisor
Mazowiecki was associated with the lay Catholic political and cultural milieu that had maintained an independent existence within communist Poland. He edited the Catholic newspaper Więź (Bond) for decades and was a member of the Sejm (parliament) from the Catholic intellectual group Znak in the 1960s. His combination of Catholic identity, democratic values, and political experience made him a natural bridge between the Church, the intelligentsia, and the Solidarity movement.
When Lech Wałęsa led the August 1980 strikes at the Gdańsk Lenin Shipyard that produced the Solidarność trade union, Mazowiecki was among the intellectual advisors who participated in the negotiations with the communist government and helped draft the Gdańsk Agreement signed on August 31, 1980. His role was that of a formulator of demands and a negotiator within the framework established by the workers.1
Internment and the Underground
When Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law on December 13, 1981, Mazowiecki was among the Solidarity activists and advisors interned at the Białołęka detention facility. He was held until 1982 and continued his work in Solidarity's underground publishing and organizing networks through the mid-1980s.2
Prime Ministership
The roundtable negotiations of 1989, which Mazowiecki participated in as a Solidarity representative, produced the agreement for partially free elections in June 1989. Solidarity's overwhelming victory in those elections - 99 of 100 Senate seats and all freely contested Sejm seats - created the political conditions for a non-communist government. After initial discussions about other candidates, Wałęsa proposed Mazowiecki as Prime Minister.
Mazowiecki was confirmed by the Sejm on August 24, 1989, forming a government that included members of the communist PZPR in the defense and interior ministries (an arrangement demanded as a transition guarantee by General Jaruzelski and the Soviets) but was otherwise composed of Solidarity representatives and allied figures. His government launched the "shock therapy" economic transition, designed by Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz, which rapidly converted Poland from a centrally planned to a market economy.
His government served until October 1990, when Wałęsa ran against him in Poland's first direct presidential election and defeated him, with Wałęsa winning after a runoff. The break between Mazowiecki and Wałęsa over the pace of decommunization and economic policy was the first significant division within the post-communist leadership.1
Later Career
Mazowiecki remained in Polish public life, serving in parliament and as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the former Yugoslavia (1992-1995), a position he resigned in protest when the UN failed to prevent the Srebrenica massacre. He remained a prominent figure in the center-left Democratic Union and its successors until his death in 2013.2
Sources
- Ash, Timothy Garton. The Polish Revolution: Solidarity. Granta Books, 1991. Paczkowski, Andrzej. The Spring Will Be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003. ↩
- Bernhard, Michael. The Origins of Democratization in Poland. Columbia University Press, 1993. ↩
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