Down with Big Brother by Michael Dobbs Read Free Book Online Page A

received in silence.
    Outside the conference hall, life was continuing normally. Thick snow lay on the ground. At the shipyard’s number two gate, made famous in news pictures all over the world, a brisk trade was going on in Solidarity mementos. There were Solidarity wall calendars for 1982, posters, emblems of the pre-Communist eagle with the crown on the head, and dozens of lapel badges, including the cheeky new slogan, “I Love the Soviet Union.” A banner had been strung across the shipyard entrance, calling for the establishment of a people’s tribunal to punish “the murderers and thieves of the Polish people.”
    By early evening disquieting news began to arrive at the shipyard. A Solidarity representative in the town of Olsztyn, a hundred miles southeast of Gdańsk, phoned to say that ZOMO units had left their barracks in full battle gear. Telex messages reported army movements to the south and west of the city. Phone calls were made to the local militia chief, who told Solidarityleaders “not to worry.” A large-scale police operation was under way to crack down on crime in the Gdańsk region.
    Just before midnight, an aide handed Wałęsa a piece of paper with the news: “All communications by telephone and telex have been cut.”
    The Solidarity leader rose to his feet. His face, lit up by the television lights, appeared even more swollen than before. He had what he later described as a “subconscious premonition” of what was about to happen but decided that resistance was pointless. 167
    “Ladies and gentlemen, we have no communications with the outside world. Perhaps they will be restored tomorrow, perhaps not. In connection with this, I wish you good night.”
    He stood up, threw his hands up in the air, as if to say, “There’s nothing more I can do,” and strode out of the room.
    B Y THE TIME W AŁĘSA REACHED his apartment on the outskirts of Gdańsk, ZOMO squads were knocking on the doors of known Solidarity supporters all over Poland. If there was no response, they simply smashed the door down. Those detained in Operation X included some of the best-known people in the country: writers, actors, historians, film producers, and academicians, in addition to straightforward union activists. In an attempt to make the roundup seem a little more evenhanded, a handful of former Communist leaders, including Gierek, were also detained. Some of the would-be internees were already dead, an indication that the lists had been drawn up many months previously.
    At 2:00 a.m. ZOMO in pale blue battle dress surrounded the Monopol Hotel in Gdańsk, where members of the Solidarity National Commission were staying. All exits were blocked. The police went from room to room, handcuffing Solidarity officials and leading them out into waiting police trucks. Members of the antiterrorist squad in tightly fitting nylon jackets guarded the roof. The twenty-seven-year-old leader of the Warsaw branch of Solidarity, Zbigniew Bujak, observed the scene from across the street. He could not believe his eyes. His first thought was that the government had gone crazy. The whole of Poland would go on strike. 168
    The doorbell rang in Wałęsa’s apartment building in Zaspa at around 3:00 a.m. 169 The Solidarity leader had gone to bed. His wife, Danuta, looked through the peephole to see the local Communist Party chief, Tadeusz Fiszbach, in the company of the provincial governor and half a dozen policemen with crowbars. A reputed liberal, Fiszbach had been woken a shorttime before and ordered to put Wałęsa on a plane to Warsaw for “talks with Jaruzelski.” He seemed upset. At first Wałęsa refused to go. After the governor told him that the ZOMO were ready to take him to Warsaw by force, he packed a few clothes and left. (Wałęsa never did meet with Jaruzelski. After a few weeks in a government villa outside Warsaw, he was taken to a hunting lodge near the Soviet border that had once been the playground of Poland’s “red