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Jacek Kuroń - Why KOR was formed (87/150)

2,102 views · Published 19 October 2017 · 4:26 · Indexed 22 September 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · News & Politics

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Polish activist Jacek Kuroń (1934-2004) helped to transform the political landscape of Poland. He was expelled from the communist party, arrested and incarcerated. He was also instrumental in setting up Workers' Defence Committee (KOR) and became a Minister of Labour and Social Policy. [Listeners: Jacek Petrycki, Marcel Łoziński; date recorded: 1987]

TRANSCRIPT: This idea was born despite the fact that as I've already mentioned, we had wanted this very much and it had seemed to us to be necessary as the next stage in our activity. It came from the people who were travelling to Ursus because some had already begun going there, Mirek Chojecki had mobilised an operation in Radom because he'd been given an address by Ursus and he'd gone to Radom. Bogdan Borusewicz from Gdańsk had his own contacts there and that's where they met. In Radom, in Radom where it was much worse than in Ursus, the terror was dreadful, it was a completely occupied town. Normally, straight after the riots, the houses would be searched one after the other, and only the homes of notables would be left alone, where they had their own activists. The searches were conducted storey by storey. If someone had some object and couldn't produce a receipt for it to show he'd bought it, he'd be taken away along with the item. There were mass arrests, mass arrests. When I listened to accounts from Radom following June '76, they reminded me exactly of what my father told me happened after Kozak's funeral in Lwów. It was done in the same way. So when they came to people's houses and said, 'Your husband has been arrested, we've brought some money, perhaps you'd like a solicitor, perhaps a food parcel?' So then she'd ask us, 'Who are you?' They'd answer, 'Students.' That was no answer so there was this idea that the Worker's Defence Committee would be their firm, the hat they'd wear. I thought this was essential, except that initially, they wanted the oldies. I carried out the work, which is what I'm talking about, I had a few more conversations, attended an initial meeting of the 'Biuletyn Informacyjny'. This was an idea I came up with because it's a chronicle of current Soviet events. But at that time, when all those debates were taking place about what to do next, I had this idea that we need to start a chronicle of current events - ours, and it would be a newspaper and an organiser. So I went to the meeting of the committee where all of this was being set up and where they were having a very lively debate on whether this should be typed or copied. Antek, Piotrek were saying, and Wojtek Onyszkiewicz, too, that this should be copied because the workers wouldn't be typing this up. We were saying that they needed a network of people to distribute the paper. Typing up the material, the operation of copying it draws people in and builds up a distribution network. It's only later that you can think about using copiers. Both one side and the other were right, of course, saying that we didn't understand the requirements of the workers, but I have to say that at first, despite the copier, not many of the workers were interested in our underground publication and it was mainly distributed among the intelligentsia thanks to the operation of mass copying. So as I said, both sides were right. I returned to barracks and began to wait for this KOR with terrible apprehension because people were telling us this is what'll happen, this is what'll happen, that now there are 12,000 people jailed in Poland, but after that, there'll be 12,000 and 12 members of the Committee. That's all that your work will come to. But even that would be good. I didn't know, however, if we were still giving witness in accordance with what I've said here, that this was a time for giving witness, or whether we had already passed to politics. I didn't know the answer to this, and I won't pretend that I wasn't terrified of prison, I was always terrified of prison, even before the open letter I was terrified of prison, and after my first sentence, I was even more terrified, and then after my second sentence I was still more terrified, and now I'm more scared than ever although I've already spent nine years inside. So then I went. Gajka came to see me and she brought the founding declaration of KOR and the 'Biuletyn Informacyjny' and 'Komunikat' which floored me completely because did this mean there was going to be a bulletin and a pamphlet? Well, never mind, and it turned out that this was a good idea even though initially the bulletin was only reprinting the pamphlet. In fact, there wasn't much difference between the two.

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