Jack Bloom. Seeing through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution: Solidarity and the Struggle Against Communism in Poland. Leiden: Brill, 2013. 440 pp. $167.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-90-04-23180-1.
Reviewed by Raymond Patton
Published on H-Poland (April, 2015)
Commissioned by Paul Brykczynski
A New Perspective on Solidarity?
The title, Seeing Through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution, says it all. Jack M. Bloom's account of the Solidarity movement in communist Poland weaves together oral history collected from workers, activists, journalists, party elites, and even employees in the security apparatus. In eighteen chapters tracing the origins of dissent in the immediate post-World War Two era, Solidarity’s rise in 1980, its suppression and underground existence, its near death, and its rebirth at the Roundtable agreements in 1989, Seeing Through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution offers an overview of Solidarity that is compelling and rich in detail despite a few shortcomings.
Solidarity is the most thoroughly researched topic of Polish history in the English language. After a smattering of journalistic accounts and sociological studies in the mid-1980s, a wave of social histories considered the movement’s dramatic, unexpected (and stereotypically Polish) rebirth and triumph at the end of the decade.[1] Starting in the mid-1990s, a decade of critical reassessments followed, inspired especially by gender studies and cultural history.[2] Scholarly interest in Solidarity has lessened in the past several years, however, as scholars have turned their attention to other areas of study. One might justifiably ask whether we need another account of Solidarity, and what Seeing Through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution offers that has not already been done.
To be sure, Bloom’s account, operating at the juncture of sociology and history, has much in common with the social histories of the 1980s and early 1990s. It examines Solidarity as a working-class movement, drawing on interviews with the participants. Bloom allows his sources to speak in their own words whenever possible; perhaps half of the text consists of block quotations from interviewees. The book makes a few modest contributions to historiographical debates and scholarship on social movements. It portrays Solidarity as a solidly working-class movement (rather than a pawn of intellectuals or the church), defined in opposition to the communist nomenklatura, which serves as a surrogate “red” bourgeoisie. Applying class-based analysis to an allegedly classless society is a provocative idea, but it serves more as a description than an analytical device. More fruitful is Bloom’s application of the concept of a “turning point” in a social movement to the events in Bydgoszcz in 1981, after which Solidarity’s momentum reversed and the movement divided into two camps.
The book’s most significant contribution, however, is its consideration of the opportunity structures faced by Solidarity and--less conventionally--the Communist Party. Each institution faced possibilities and limitations as its relative position and context changed. Bloom highlights in chapters 11 and 12 the division that developed within each organization as it fractured between moderate and hardliner factions. Similarly, chapter 13 acknowledges a widening gap between Polish society and Solidarity in 1981, leaving a portion of the population resigned to the necessity of martial law. The divisions in Solidarity and the party return in chapter 17 and especially 18, which portrays 1989 in the context of a deeply demoralized and fractured Communist Party. While not all of this information is new (in fact, much is based on earlier English-language accounts), Bloom gives these internal fractures in Solidarity and the party due prominence in his narrative, offering a critical twist on the typical bipolar "people versus the state" framework for understanding the fall of communism.
Seeing history through the eyes of Solidarity has some costs, however. Internal divisions aside, Seeing Through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution largely reproduces the framework through which Solidarity saw the People’s Republic of Poland--as a clash between the noble, authentic, Polish Solidarity and the perfidious, inauthentic, foreign Communist Party. This dichotomy is particularly apparent in the book’s first section, on the roots of opposition in Poland: while useful in providing historical context, it also reduces postwar Polish history to a struggle between state and society, making the rise of Solidarity a teleological inevitability. Even so, at the book's best moments, Bloom questions this bipolar framework, adding distance to the first-person perspective of his sources. For instance, he notes that Solidarity activists frequently mistakenly saw the party as monolithic and failed to find common ground with its potent reform movement--ultimately, to the peril of both (p. 256).
Seeing Through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution also leaves some opportunities untaken. As the author of Class, Race and the Civil Rights Movement (1987), Bloom was poised to offer a sorely needed comparative account connecting Solidarity and East European history to the rest of the world. Instead, Solidarity remains isolated to a strictly Polish national context. Perhaps it is a matter of Bloom’s faithfulness to his sources; even so, it is a shame Bloom did not offer at least one chapter pulling the Polish struggle for rights into a broader international context. Additionally, Bloom’s story abruptly ends in 1989, leaving out the contentious developments after the fall of communism. While Solidarity’s path after 1989 has been ably addressed elsewhere, Bloom nonetheless missed an opportunity to examine how the fractures of the movement during the 1980s played out in the post-communist era.[3]
Ultimately, the book's strength lies less in its innovations or interventions than in its gripping story of ordinary heroism, its eyewitness detail, and its lucid, broad overview of the Solidarity movement. Bloom shows tremendous respect for his sources, but also great skill in choosing which details to include and how to frame them, weaving the accounts together into a coherent, exciting story while still calling attention to differences of perspective. He also supplements his interviews with secondary source material, drawing on nearly everything available in the English language, including some lesser known sources that bear revisiting. Even with some shortcomings, the book is a worthwhile source of oral history set to an engaging narrative.
Notes
[1]. Alain Touraine, Solidarity: Poland 1980-81 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Timothy Garton Ash, The Polish Revolution: Solidarity (New York: Scribner, 1984); David Ost, Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-Politics: Opposition and Reform in Poland since 1968 (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1990); Lawrence Goodwyn, Breaking the Barrier: The Rise of Solidarity in Poland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Roman Laba, The Roots of Solidarity: A Political Sociology of Poland’s Working-Class Democratization (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991); Michael H. Bernhard, The Origins of Democratization in Poland: Workers, Intellectuals, and Oppositional Politics, 1976-1980 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
[2]. Jan Kubik, The Power of Symbols against the Symbols of Power: The Rise of Solidarity and the Fall of State Socialism in Poland (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994); Kristi Long, We All Fought For Freedom: Women in Poland's Solidarity Movement (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996); Marjorie Castle Triggering Communism’s Collapse: Perceptions and Power in Poland’s Transition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Padraic Kenney, A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe, 1989 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Maryjane Osa, Solidarity and Contention: Networks of Polish Opposition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003); Shana Penn, Solidarity’s Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005).
[3]. David Ost, The Defeat of Solidarity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005).
A New Perspective on Solidarity? Review of Seeing Through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution by Jack M. Bloom
Review by Raymond Patton
The title, Seeing Through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution, says it all. Jack M. Bloom's account of the Solidarity movement in communist Poland weaves together oral history collected from workers, activists, journalists, party elites, and even employees in the security apparatus. In eighteen chapters tracing the origins of dissent in the immediate post World War Two era, Solidarity’s rise in 1980, its suppression and underground existence, its near death, and its rebirth at the Roundtable agreements in 1989, Seeing Through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution offers an overview of Solidarity that is compelling and rich in detail despite a few shortcomings.
Solidarity is the most thoroughly researched topic of Polish history in the English language. After a smattering of journalistic accounts and sociological studies in the mid-1980s, a wave of social histories considered the movement’s dramatic, unexpected (and stereotypically Polish) rebirth and triumph at the end of the decade.[1] Starting in the mid-1990s, a decade of critical reassessments followed, inspired especially by gender studies and cultural history.[2] Scholarly interest in Solidarity has lessened in the past several years, however, as scholars have turned their attention to other areas of study. One might justifiably ask whether we need another account of Solidarity, and what Seeing Through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution offers that has not already been done.
To be sure, Bloom’s account, operating at the juncture of sociology and history, has much in common with the social histories of the 1980s and early1990s. It examines Solidarity as a working class movement, drawing on interviews with the participants. Bloom allows his sources to speak in their own words whenever possible; perhaps half of the text consists of block quotations from interviewees. The book makes a few modest contributions to historiographical debates and scholarship on social movements. It portrays Solidarity as a solidly working class movement (rather than a pawn of intellectuals or the church), defined in opposition to the communist nomenklatura, which serves as a surrogate “red” bourgeoisie. Applying class-based analysis to an allegedly classless society is a provocative idea, but it serves more as a description than an analytical device. More fruitful is Bloom’s application of the concept of a “turning point” in a social movement to the events in Bydgoszcz in 1981, after which Solidarity’s momentum reversed and the movement divided into two camps.
The book’s most significant contribution, however, is its consideration of the opportunity structures faced by Solidarity and – less conventionally – the Communist Party. Each institution faced possibilities and limitations as its relative position and context changed. Bloom highlights in chapters 11 and 12 the division that developed within each organization as it fractured between moderate and hardliner factions. Similarly, chapter 13 acknowledges a widening gap between Polish society and Solidarity in 1981, leaving a portion of the population resigned to the necessity of martial law. The divisions in Solidarity and the Party return in chapter 17 and especially 18, which portrays 1989 in the context of a deeply demoralized and fractured communist party. While not all of this information is new (in fact, much is based on earlier English language accounts), Bloom gives these internal fractures in Solidarity and the Party due prominence in his narrative, offering a critical twist on the typical bipolar "people versus the state" framework for understanding the fall of communism.
Seeing history through the eyes of Solidarity has some costs, however. Internal divisions aside, Seeing Through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution largely reproduces the framework through which Solidarity saw the People’s Republic of Poland – as a clash between the noble, authentic, Polish Solidarity and the perfidious, inauthentic, foreign communist Party. This dichotomy is particularly apparent in the book’s first section, on the roots of opposition in Poland: while useful in providing historical context, it also reduces postwar Polish history to a struggle between state and society, making the rise of Solidarity a teleological inevitability. Even so, at the book's best moments, Bloom questions this bipolar framework, adding distance to the first person perspective of his sources. For instance, he notes that Solidarity activists frequently mistakenly saw the Party as monolithic and failed to find common ground with its potent reform movement – ultimately, to the peril of both (p. 256).
Seeing Through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution also leaves some opportunities untaken. As the author of Class, Race and the Civil Rights Movement (Indiana University Press, 1987), Bloom was poised to offer a sorely needed comparative account connecting Solidarity and East European history to the rest of the world. Instead, Solidarity remains isolated to a strictly Polish national context. Perhaps it's a matter of Bloom’s faithfulness to his sources; even so, it's a shame Bloom did not offer at least one chapter pulling the Polish struggle for rights into a broader international context. Additionally, Bloom’s story abruptly ends in 1989, leaving out the contentious developments after the fall of communism. While Solidarity’s path after 1989 has been ably addressed elsewhere, it is nonetheless a missed opportunity to see how the fractures of the movement during the 1980s played out in the post-communist era.[3]
Ultimately, the book's strength lies less in its innovations or interventions than in its gripping story of ordinary heroism, its eyewitness detail, and its lucid, broad overview of the Solidarity movement. Bloom shows tremendous respect for his sources, but also great skill in choosing which details to include and how to frame them, weaving the accounts together into a coherent, exciting story while still calling attention to differences of perspective. He also supplements his interviews with secondary source material, drawing on nearly everything available in the English language, including some less known sources that bear revisiting. Even with some shortcomings, the book is a worthwhile source of oral history set to an engaging narrative.
Notes
[1] Alain Touraine, Solidarity: Poland 1980-81 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Timothy Garton Ash, The Polish Revolution: Solidarity (New York: Scribner, 1984); David Ost, Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-Politics: Opposition and Reform in Poland since 1968 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990); Lawrence Goodwyn, Breaking the Barrier: The Rise of Solidarity in Poland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Roman Laba, The Roots of Solidarity: A Political Sociology of Poland’s Working-Class Democratization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Michael H. Bernhard, The Origins of Democratization in Poland: Workers, Intellectuals, and Oppositional Politics, 1976-1980 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
[2] Jan Kubik, The Power of Symbols against the Symbols of Power: The Rise of Solidarity and the Fall of State Socialism in Poland (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994); Kristi Long, We All Fought For Freedom: Women in Poland's Solidarity Movement (Boulder: Westview, 1996); Marjorie Castle Triggering Communism’s Collapse: Perceptions and Power in Poland’s Transition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); Padraic Kenney, A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe, 1989 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002); Maryjane Osa, Solidarity and Contention: Networks of Polish Opposition (University of Minnesota Press, 2003); Shana Penn, Solidarity’s Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005).
[3] David Ost, The Defeat of Solidarity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005).
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Citation:
Raymond Patton. Review of Bloom, Jack, Seeing through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution: Solidarity and the Struggle Against Communism in Poland.
H-Poland, H-Net Reviews.
April, 2015.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=42476
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