Baranczak Recalls Days With KOR

Five years ago, Stanislaw Baranczak, associate professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and 13 other Polish scholars banded together to form what would become Poland's best-known dissident organization, the Workers' Self-Defense Committee (KOR).

Since then, KOR has supported various Polish labor movements and has offered legal protection for persecuted workers.

During the last year, however, as Poland's independent labor union, Solidarity, came to the forefront as that country's strongest labor force, KOR's role in the movement was greatly diminished, and the committee assumed a mainly advisory, background position.

So it came as little surprise when 93-year-old Edward Lipinski, one of KOR's founders, announced at Solidarity's national congress meeting Monday that the committee had officially decided to disband.

Baranczak said yesterday that KOR-members had felt for several months that the group should be dissolved and added that "all the goals we had are now being fulfilled by Solidarity."

The 34-year-old poet and essayist said he has remained in close contact with the other KOR members since he came to Harvard last spring and added that he supported the decision to disband.

Yet even though he believes that Solidarity will continue to provide the same services that KOR did, Baranczak added, "It's a sad feeling, of course, to see the committee end. They were the best five years of my life--we all really felt as though we were doing something useful."

Baranczak said that while several of the KOR members have already or will assume positions with Solidarity now that KOR has folded, he himself will take no official post with the union. He added, however, that he has "very strong contacts with a branch of Solidarity" in his hometown of Poznan and will continue to communicate with members of the union.

KOR formed in the fall of 1976 in the wake of food riots which had rocked the country that summer.

"Our original purpose was to help workers who were being persecuted by police during the riots--we tried to set up legal and medical aid."

During the early days of the committee, "we were always under suspicion of the police," he said, adding, however, that "what we were doing was completely legal, and we notified the authorities about everything we did, so what the police were doing was basically harrassment."

Concerning his own involvement with the committee, Baranczak said he is perhaps most proud of the role he played in helping start up several publishing firms, the largest of which is the Independent Publishing House (NOWA).

"NOWA went from very modest beginnings five years ago to the very large publishing operation it is today," he said.

KOR itself experienced similar growth, raising its membership from its original membership of 14 to 32 at the time it dissolved, boasting another thousand staunch supporters within and outside the country.