“Baluka I am....” said strike leader at the Szczecin Shipyard Adolf Warski in January 1971, reaching out his hand to welcome Edward Gierek. This was the first case in the times of the Polish People's Republic erstwhile the leader of the communist organization appeared at the call of workers at the workplace, alternatively than sending troops and militia to “talk”.
And so nearly a 40-year-old individual in a crab shirt and denim, with a “TRAICK COMITET” band on his left forearm, went to, forgotten today, the legend of the Szczecin Revolution. A individual who, until his death on January 8, 2015, thought that “socialism was nothing wrong”.
Baluka may have been naive, but in the early 1970s he believed that it was possible to change the system, the power of workers and free trade unions. 10 years later, during the carnival of “Solidarity”, he inactive claimed that real socialism was possible in a state, mistakenly called socialistism. During the gathering in Starachowice in July 1981, a question came out of the area “But what is this country expected to be?” Edmund Baluka replied, "Of course, sir, socialist." Baluka then drove around Poland and promoted the Polish Socialist Labour Party, which he founded on emigration in March 1980, with companions centered around the magazine “Szerszeń”. erstwhile he was detained in December 1981 after the martial law was introduced, he had already seen the end of communist power and said, “K**a wonderful! It's gonna fucking blow up! They're gonna crash like banana peels. Just watch the full country stand on Monday.”
Nothing's fucked up. The country didn't stop. Thousands of people, including Baluk, were interned. He was released in August 1984 under amnesty. In the spring of 1985, he left for France. In fact, he returned to her due to the fact that he lived there earlier, after the folk power led him to leave in the spring of 1973.
His legend began on Sunday 24 January 1971, on the 3rd day of the strike that Edmund Baluka began with the roof of a food kiosk on the yard's grounds on Friday, 2 days earlier. The protest was to proceed until the arrival of the PRL authorities, with the elected little than 2 weeks earlier, the fresh I Central Committee Secretary, Edward Gierk at the head. The spark was the manipulation of the communist authorities and the publication of the text in the body of KW PZPR “The Szczecin Voice” that shipbuilders declared additional work on Sunday. The annoyance of the workers reinforced the fresh memory of the bloody balance of street fights of December 17, 1970 in which fourteen people were killed and many were injured. There was besides a memory of the victims' funerals at night, of the sufferings of their loved ones, of the failure to account for the tragedies.
The strike a period after December was very risky. erstwhile the power began to environment the plant with cordon of troops and police, it cut off supplies and electricity. There were flyers in the city accusing shipbuilders of treason and attack on the folk homeland. People who supported the strike were detained and even talked about it. Baluka headed the 40-man strike committee, but as each of them said himself was his deputy. The shipyards demanded, among others, the correction of a lying article, the settlement of the guilty December massacre, the abolition of price increases from December 12, 1970, greater working self-government, free elections to the Works Council and free trade unions, and safety guarantees for the participants of the strike.
Gierek arrived in Szczecin on Saturday, appeared at the shipyard on Sunday. A nine-hour conversation with organization and country authorities took place in the smoke-smoking shipyard. About 300 workers listened to this, the full thing was secretly recorded on a reel-like tape recorder. Many copies of the evidence were made, it went to the people of the opposition then and was exported west. Its fragments were broadcast on Radio Free Europe, shorthands published in the Parisian “Kultura”.
The shipyards and Baluk were able to feel that they had won on Monday after the talks. The authority agreed to implement their demands, but for one, to reverse the price increase of 12 December 1970. In time, however, it turned out that Gierek and his people had agreed to many things, but at the same time they did not want to almost accomplish anything and did everything to break the unity of the workers. It is adequate that the guilty of December massacre were not punished, that various harassments were met by any participants of the January protest. For example, 1 of the workers from the nearest vicinity of the Baluka was killed by unknown perpetrators, and his deputy in the KS and friend was assaulted at home, tied, put to sleep by chloroform and left with the gas on. Fortunately, he was released, but after any time he went to prison, for alleged rape of the disabled daughter of the caretaker of the home where he lived. quite a few people on the strike committee lost their jobs at the shipyard. By mid-1972, the erstwhile KS had already been pacified. SB besides installed informants in the vicinity of the Baluka and worked on it.
After the strike ended, Baluk became a Szczecin “celebrity”. People recognized him on the street, thanked him, hugged him. He was invited to the intelligent salons, as the 1 who subdued the communist power, Parallel SB gradually implemented the plan of his discredit. The promotion to the president of the Regional Board of the metallic Association in September 1971, Baluka saw as a chance to spread his ideas of working self-government, as a consequence he turned out to be an intrigue of SB. All this to show that the strike leader has lost contact with the naval base, due to the fact that he is earning not 3 but 11,000, and at a union convention alternatively of representing them, he gets drunk at the hotel. The esbecision plan was successful “an angry rabble and troublemaker”, as it was called in the esbek reports, lost support among the workers, work at the shipyard and union position in November 1972. The last simple plan was an operation to get him to leave the country. SB did so with the hands of his friend, who allegedly “for bribe” got him a sailing book, which in PRL was a pass to leave. Years later, it turned out that a helpful friend was a co-worker of SB and was implementing a plan approved at the Ministry of Interior. Unaware and under Baluk's wall in March 1973, he fortified “M/S axers” belonging to Polish Maritime Shipping, a week later he landed in the Spanish Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. erstwhile he left the ship he was after 2 export “Ococim” beers, he had $15 and a image of his wife. This was briefly Edmund Baluka's way to the point where he became expelled from Poland, an uncomfortable labour leader and began a fresh life of 40 years.
Baluka was born on 4 June 1933 in the village of Machnówka, Podkarpacie, from which he escaped to Gdynia erstwhile he was 15. He dreamed of learning the world, traveling and having adventures. And so it happened after, as a 17-year-old boy, he became a motorist on ships of the Polish merchant navy. He traveled around the world, saw the West, Africa, India, China. erstwhile he was on land, he lived in Szczecin. The Sielanka continued until he was called into the army in the fall of 1954. After 2 years of service, as he celebrated with his army colleagues the transition to the reserve, in 1 of the Toruń restaurants, an incidental occurred between him and Captain LWP and a militiaman. From the word to the word, there was a struggle, and later a fight, during which both uniformed “caps fell off their heads.” Baluka was given 9 months in prison and lost his chance to return to the sea after receiving the sailing book. erstwhile he was released, it was after the Poznań June 1956 and the workers' revolt, that Władysław Gomulka was preparing to change power. The day after he became I Secretary of the KC, Baluk and his 2 colleagues tried to flee to the West. He crossed the green border in the Tatras, reached the Danube close Bratislava. During his effort to swim the river into the river, he was caught by the Czechoslovakian borderers. He was transferred to the country, he went to court, who sentenced him to 14 months in prison, and he did most of the punishments working in the mines. After serving time, he worked and lived in Gdynia, in Silesia. In 1962 he became an worker of the Szczecin Shipyard named Adolf Warski. He was a locksmith, a crane, worked in a painting shop, advanced to a foreman. Until the turn of 1970/71, he did not deal with union or political activities, he was only distinguished by, for example, making rationalization proposals at the shipyard and by having charisma and listening to his colleagues. He lived like most PRL citizens and considered this country his own. The oppositionist's way began joining the Strike Committee in December 1970, and he built his designation and position in January 1971. As a consequence of his post-traumatic intrigue, he went west.
The stay on emigration began in Spain inactive governed by Gen. Franco. He initially got aid from the police, including pocket money, food, hotel. But erstwhile he found out that he was a socialist and a worker, he heard that he was better off in another country. First he left for France, then Belgium, yet found himself in the UK, where he collaborated with the emigration structures of the Polish Socialist Party, but could not agree with the old activists. He felt that they inactive lived pre-war affairs and old ideological disputes, that they did not realize the workmen's affairs behind the iron curtain. That's why he went his own way.
In 1976, he went to Paris and stayed there for respective years. Initially, he was enthusiastically accepted by the right-wing and godly emigration there, but it shortly began to hold his left-wing views. As an authentic working leader, he received assistance from French Trotskyists from the Organization Communist Internationaliste, who have influence in the trade union Force Ouvrière. With this support, he could print the letter “The Hornet”, which was the motto of “the conflict for the power of the working class masses, can only be done by the working class. It was a revision of the words of Charles Marx, whose works Baluk knew well and believed that it was possible to have specified a planet as the German philosopher had designed a 100 years earlier, but it was not possible in the USSR or in the countries of their minions, as he called the alleged countries of folk democracy. The scripture was smuggled into the country and struck communist power, attacked russian despot Leonid Brezhniev, criticized US imperialist president Jimmy Carter, but besides trampled Polish holiness, posting caricatures of John Paul II.
On the basis of “Shear” in March 1980, Baluka organized the Polish Socialist Labour Party. The party's programme included, among others, demands for freedom of the country, the demolition of the PZPR monopoly, the evacuation of Kremlin troops from Poland, independent trade unions without any political party, the appointment of Labour Councils in all workplaces, the right to strike guaranteed constitutionally, freedom of assembly, association, press, tv and abolition of censorship. Its national structures have tried to build since April 1981, erstwhile he returned to Poland on French left papers and disguised as artist artist Pierre Henri Francoise Baron.
In martial law, he was interned and subsequently sentenced to 5 years in prison, from which he left under amnesty in August 1984. After he left, he was banned from the shipyard. His political imagination for Poland had no supporters either on the side of communist power or in the underground “Solidarity”, so in the spring of 1985 he left again for France, where he dealt with more household life and where he kindly watched the revival in the PPS country in November 1987. After the divided into extremist PPS RD by Piotr Ikonowicz and Józef Pinior, and the more balanced PPS by Jan Józef Lipski, he did not intend to enter the dispute, remembering the unsuccessful late integration of the London PPS in the 1970s. He was skeptical of the circular Table's deliberations and after his own experience with the authority of Gamek and PRL in the 1980s, he felt that it was absolutely forbidden to sit with the communists for talks.
He returned to Poland in the fall of 1990 and moved to Warsaw. His belief in the left-wing task was small, but 1 was sure. He could not have the word “social” in his name, due to the fact that he knew how his Polish Socialist Labour organization ended up and for people in Poland and not only the word “S” worked, as he spoke in an interview in 2009: “When I started building it, inactive on emigration, I sent invitations to all Western countries, they came. And everything fit – but for this 1 “S”. Why the Socialist labour Party? I was guided by my uncles fighting for socialism. Socialism is nothing wrong! (...) They said that there was socialism in Poland, but there was no socialism in Poland. A large part of the delegates for the PSPP convention came out of it and did not return anymore. My colleagues said to me, ‘Edmund, after you return to Poland, no 1 will want to talk to you about socialism due to the fact that they have had adequate of it’. “How should the Polish Labour organization be?”. I was wrong, you should've given me that name, it might have caught on. Yes, I had no more than 30 members in Poland. What organization is this?”
Even in the early 1990s he tried to operate in the Labour Union, Solidarity 80 or another initiatives. Without success and practically retired from public life,
In the 1990s, he arrived for the celebration of December ’70 in Szczecin to lay flowers under the board at the shipyard. The beginning of the ceremony was delayed, everyone was waiting in the conference area of the chief executive, a large group of people were present. After an hr Baluk asked what they were waiting for and heard that the bishops who were late were having breakfast... The strike leader in January 1971 and the protest associate in December 1970 did not have a good opinion of the church hierarchy, and in his surroundings he frequently said that it was amazing that church dignitaries were present at the December celebrations, due to the fact that at the turn of 1970/71 there were no hierarchs of the church with shipbuilders, they did not condemn communist power for crimes.
In August 2007, Baluka refused to accept the Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta at the hands of president Lech Kaczyński. He died on January 8, 2015. The urn with its ashes was laid on the Central Cemetery in Szczecin, among the graves of the victims of December ’70.
In writing we utilized the book “Baluka I am...” by Adam Zadworny, Ksiąznica Pomeranian 2021, co-financed by the Marshal of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship.
It is not available for open sale.
