1In the mid-1970s, Poland found itself at a crossroads. The first half of the decade was characterized by a careful rapprochement with the West, which resulted in greater access to financial credits and licences and a substantial increase in the import of consumer goods. However, while Portuguese society was placing significant hope in left-wing politics during and after the Carnation Revolution, the Polish socialist regime under liberal-minded Edward Gierek, who replaced Władysław Gomułka as the First Secretary of the PZPR in 1970, started to experience severe economic problems. The Portuguese Revolution happened at the very time when Poland was de facto distancing itself from many economic tenets of the Soviet version of Marxism. Simultaneously, in the political sphere, enhanced democratization was rejected, and another wave of workers’ mobilizations in 1976 was brutally crushed. These events mobilized certain pro-democratic circles, which consolidated into the Workers’ Defence Committee. Several years later, they joined the working-class movement and formed ‘Solidarity’. In many respects, the democratic aspirations of both Portuguese and Polish societies in the mid-1970s were similar, as were the forms of backlash they faced.
- 1 Polish authorities were also interested in the role of the Church in post-revolutionary Portugal, a (...)
2Edward Gierek became the first state leader from the socialist camp to visit post-revolutionary Portugal. Soon after, the President of Portugal, Francisco da Costa Gomes, paid a return visit to Poland. These official diplomatic exchanges were followed by a series of study visits from representatives of Portuguese democratic organizations. The Portuguese attended training sessions on a variety of topics from the economy of socialist Poland and socialist enterprise management techniques to the state policy towards the Catholic Church.1
3In this article, we focus on the analysis of press dispatches and classified PZPR documents. One should note that the following text is not a historiographical endeavour aimed at producing a chronological analysis of archival sources. Its goal is to explore the general political attitude towards revolutionary Portugal in the phase of throwing off its fascist, colonial, and imperialist legacy.
4Regarding the existing Polish-language literature on the subject of the Portuguese Revolution, it should be noted that it became a subject of interest for Polish historians immediately after the events of April 1974. An insightful overview of Portuguese colonialism was presented by Iwiński (1975), who emphasized the role of the multi-front colonial war at the expense of the backward economy and impoverished society.
5Several analyses of the revolution, its root causes, and its consequences were produced by Polish academics and journalists in the second half of the 1970s and early 1980s, although most tended to repeat certain political theses aligned with the official stance of the government at the time (Bernatowicz-Bierut 1978, 1982). After 1989, shifts in the historiography of international affairs and in the approach to certain topics by representatives of other disciplines changed the image of many right-wing dictatorships promoted by numerous professional researchers in Poland. Already on the margins of Polish historians’ interest, 20th-century Portugal’s political experiences have been much more frequently addressed by people with rather favourable opinions of the Salazarist regime or who at least perceive it as a form of benevolent dictatorship.
6Among the sources demonstrating Polish attitudes towards the revolutionary changes in Portugal as they happened, the dispatches of the Polish Press Agency (PAP) are particularly interesting and illustrative. Most of them were written by Mirosław Ikonowicz, a famous correspondent and author of books whose career in the PAP spanned over 60 years. From 1973 to 1980, Ikonowicz covered the Iberian countries for the PAP and was stationed in Madrid and Lisbon. His dispatches were published in the PAP’s ‘Special Bulletin’, of which he later became the editor-in-chief. Ikonowicz was close to the political elites of the regime while also enjoying a certain level of independence. This allowed him to publish content that did not always adhere to the official political line of the PZPR. The Special Bulletin, in which the most interesting and in-depth analyses of the events in Portugal were published, was not available to every reader. The bulletin was not destined for news-stand sales. It had various editions and was distributed among licensed institutions and higher echelons of power. As such, it was not a mass medium directly influencing the general public. Nevertheless, the bulletin conveyed information and opinions that impacted the official information channels and therefore played an important role in shaping discourses on international issues. However, the dispatches published therein were not meant to be republished unchanged by other media outlets. The censorship apparatus was usually vigilant and highly sensitive to politically complex issues, disciplining editors to comply with official directives.
7Ikonowicz started to report on the imminence of major political changes caused by a multilayered crisis in Portugal in March 1974 (Ikonowicz 1974a). He followed the developments quite meticulously, publishing dispatches regularly, at least on a monthly basis, while during certain periods his reports appeared in almost every edition of the Special Bulletin. His general approach to the revolutionary process was more than enthusiastic. Despite his clear pro-communist bias, Ikonowicz examined the political relations inside Portugal carefully and avoided a dull propagandistic tone.
- 2 He was one of the first correspondents from the Eastern bloc to move to Lisbon after 25 April, alth (...)
8In one of his dispatches written early after the military coup d’état2 on 25 April, which toppled the Estado Novo regime, Ikonowicz characterized the unfolding political process in the following manner:
The specificity of the Portuguese revolutionary process is shaped by the fact that the hatred of the thieving regime and its bloody police, the fatigue caused by the 13-year-long colonial war, and the highest inflation in Europe is a feeling shared by the peasantry, the workers, a very large Portuguese middle class, and the army. A significant part of the middle bourgeoisie also had its reasons to want change […]. Because of all these factors, 1 May was celebrated under the Chilean slogan “the people united will never be defeated” by almost the entirety of society: the workers whose starvation wages are consumed 40–50% by housing rents, public servants who are only slightly better off, car owners, soldiers. The people of Lisbon chanted the same slogan that the people of Santiago de Chile chanted after Salvador Allende’s electoral victory. This was not a coincidence. In Portugal, just like in Chile, everything will be decided by three elements: the political attitudes in the army, the political evolution of the middle classes, nearly as numerous as in Chile, and the issue of the united front. There are profound differences between the two “revolutionary processes” which encourage optimism. Firstly, the radicalization of the armed forces dominated by the “captains’ movement” is deepening thanks to the enthusiasm among the masses caused by the downfall of the fascist government. There is, however, an even more important crucial difference between the Chilean and the Portuguese cases, primarily that, in Chile, the attempts to build unity were directed towards diverging existing parties, whereas in Portugal parties are being created under circumstances where a partial unity among antifascist forces already exists. However, the only organized, well-functioning party is the communist one (Ikonowicz 1974b: 9).
9To reduce Ikonowicz’s perception of the revolutionary dynamic to the short fragment quoted above would be an obvious mistake; still, it is somewhat representative of the wider discourse repeated in various internal party documents and its institutional surroundings. Ikonowicz seemed to pin his hope on the unity of the progressive classes based on a wide antifascist alliance. He welcomed the emergence of new left-wing forces, yet apparently was compelled to stress that the only truly ‘organized’ current were the communists. Given the fact that the Portuguese Communist Party had been the leading opposition force under Salazar and Caetano and had managed to survive the constant persecution of its activists, Ikonowicz’s words were not very far from the truth. Nevertheless, in May 1974 the communists were at least as well organized as the MFA. While the fast-rising Socialist Party led by Mário Soares or the Portuguese Democratic Movement/Democratic Electoral Commissions might have been lagging in terms of the quality of their internal procedures and their general organizational experience, the extremely dynamic situation in the spring and summer of 1974 demonstrated that the communists’ capabilities should not be confused with an undisputedly leading role in popular mobilization. That last sentence in the quote from Ikonowicz’s dispatch seems like an addition motivated by a certain notion of ‘political correctness’, perhaps even an act of (auto)censorship.
10In his dispatches written shortly after 25 April, Ikonowicz emphasizes certain analogies with the situation in Chile after Salvador Allende’s victory in the presidential election in 1970 and the following resistance of the ruling classes and reactionary military elites. For example, by the end of May 1974, he proposes the following explanation for the strengthening of the strike wave:
The intensification of strikes in Portugal is accompanied by certain phenomena which prove rather clearly that many reactionary entrepreneurs, apparently making use of the experiences of the Chilean counter-revolution, intercept this weapon of the working classes for their own economic and political benefit. […] Many strikes that are currently being held in Portugal were organized against the will of the majority of the newly elected union boards and union members (Ikonowicz 1974c: 11-12).
11Although the Chilean-type counterstrike by local capitalists was indeed part of the political process, attributing the disturbances in workplace routines solely to the obstruction incited by the owners is not accurate. Ikonowicz, willingly or not, decided once again to adhere to the stance favoured by both the ruling party in Poland and the PCP: by gaining control over major unions, the Portuguese communists fulfilled their immediate ‘revolutionary’ task, and every move against such developments must have been an act of class hostility performed by the capital. Such a narrative completely ignores the significant bottom-up push towards workplace self-management and worker control, in which independent revolutionary forces took part. We will broach this issue in subsequent parts of the text by referring to the works of Raquel Varela and Phil Mailer.
12In 2022, Poland and Portugal celebrated the 100th anniversary of establishing diplomatic relations. This time span is somewhat misleading as, for a period of almost 30 years (1945-1974), the official relationship between the far-right Estado Novo regime and Soviet-allied Poland was non-existent. Portugal was not among the countries of core significance for Polish authorities. Geographical distance and the lack of a large Polish diaspora in Portugal or a Portuguese one in Poland did not produce fertile ground for a noteworthy mutual interest. The downfall of the Salazarist regime in 1974 changed everything in this respect. In the eyes of an Eastern Bloc regime, the country that had been a backward redoubt of fascism and colonialism swiftly moved to the position of a potential ally, with a strong communist party as one of the leading political forces. Being a NATO member, Portugal became the very first Western country in which a social revolution was successful, threatening, at least on paper, the composition of the Cold War politico-military polarization.
13The foreign policy of the People’s Republic of Poland in the 1970s was characterized by contradictions. Edward Gierek’s own experiences as an economic migrant in France and Belgium where he performed various blue-collar jobs, mainly in the mining industry, are often indicated as the reason for his slightly pro-Western stance. Although it is true that Gierek and his collaborators wanted to strengthen Poland’s connection to Western markets and win popular support by widening access to imported consumer goods and certain features of Western lifestyles, one would be critically wrong to assume that it was a sign of their will to weaken the relationship with the Soviet Union. Polish authorities wanted to cooperate with the West in the economic sphere, while excluding any potential changes to the very nature of the political system. As a result, the Carnation Revolution had to be officially celebrated in the government-controlled media as the final blow to the last bastion of fascism and the last colonial dictatorship in Europe. At the same time, more radical social demands were frowned upon. Poland hoped that the Portuguese Revolution would become a careful introduction to a peaceful coexistence and trade exchange, not an attempt to reshape social relations beyond what was accepted within the democratic standard of the time.
14The Portuguese colonial question which played a decisive role in the outburst of the 1974-1975 revolution influenced Polish foreign policy. However, sub-Saharan Africa was not as important for the Polish government as for its East German or Cuban counterparts. In fact, aside from voicing support for anticolonial struggles, Poland did little in terms of direct involvement in this part of the world. The Polish government maintained much closer relations with North African countries, often regardless of ideological differences and political alignments. This was the case for Poland’s well-developed cooperation with Morocco, which remained unaffected by its political and economic ties with socialist-leaning Algeria, despite the fierce rivalry between the Saharan kingdom and Algeria. Gasztold presents a detailed account of Polish involvement in Africa, underlining a certain shift in both the quality and quantity of these policies at the turn of the 1970s. According to him:
In November 1971, Kwiryn Grela, the general secretary of the Polish Committee of Solidarity with Asian and African Nations, sent to the International Department of the Central Committee of the PUWP a confidential report about the Warsaw Pact’s support for African national-liberation movements. He stated that in comparison with other Eastern European countries, Poland’s involvement in economic and military assistance was perceived as unworthy of its position and capabilities, particularly when it came to backing anti-Portuguese resistance movements in Angola and Mozambique. In particular, he referred to a case in which the leaders of the national-liberation movements criticized Warsaw for selling Polish ships to Lisbon. Such occurrences undermined Poland’s image as a state that supported the anti-colonial struggle. The national-liberation movements had good access to publishing houses; they printed many bulletins, journals, and leaflets; and took part in international conferences. They could therefore, argued Grela, influence the news, constructing an image of Polish-Portuguese collusion. Warsaw’s reputation as an anti-colonial state was poor in the 1960s. In 1969, the leader of the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), Eduardo Mondlane, complained that Poland was the only country among socialist states that did not support his movement. Moreover, in June 1970, António Alberto Neto, a member of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), met with representatives of the Polish Solidarity Committee and complained that Polish ships were used to transport Portugal’s troops from Europe to its colonies (Gasztold 2018: 208-209).
15Poland provided arms, medical care, education, and shelter for members of liberation movements from different parts of the world. Nevertheless, Polish policy was characterized by pragmatism, favouring countries that had already gained their independence and had natural resources to offer within the ‘aid through trade’ framework.
16In the official discourse of the Polish government, the PCP was presented as a leading force in the revolutionary process. Its ties to the MFA were perceived as crucial to preserving the democratic character of political changes. The First Secretary of the PCP, Álvaro Cunhal, was an object of particular attention. It is important to note that a significant portion of the material published on Cunhal from the mid-1970s consists of translations of texts that first appeared in the Western left-leaning press. Some were written with particularly effusive exaltation, as in the following excerpt from a text originally published in the Swiss newspaper Die Weltwoche, which was selected by the Polish Press Agency for inclusion in a biographical volume aimed at introducing Cunhal to the Polish public:
His long face and fiery eyes make him photogenic but he does not think about it at all, he does not give in to the temptation of popularity, the party’s will and its ideas are everything to him. Thirteen years of imprisonment, including eight in solitary confinement, toughened his rigidity and the pertinence of the choices to which he had been inclined since his youth (Smyth 1976: 11).
17He was described as a heroic fighter for democracy and a man of indisputable personal valour. PCP was labelled the proper working-class party, while the Socialist Party was regarded as a bourgeois-democratic force prone to chaos and manipulation and unable to face the challenges of the time. However, the role of the democratic forces’ alliance was clearly emphasized as indispensable in preventing Portugal from falling under the thumb of right-wing reaction all over again.
18Álvaro Cunhal was widely known both in the Eastern Bloc and elsewhere for his relentlessly pro-Soviet stance, including support for the USSR’s military intervention in Hungary in 1956 and the Warsaw Pact’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The Polish army played a major role in crushing the democratic process alongside the Red Army. Since the 1950s, Czechoslovakia had been home to a small but politically significant diaspora of Portuguese communist exiles. Both individuals with staunchly pro-Moscow opinions and those critical of it could be found among its members. According to Szobi (2017: 673), Cunhal might have had a secret apartment in Prague, making the Czech capital an important location for his political operations. The party’s affiliates in Prague were, however, divided in their opinions on the Dubček government’s attempts at democratizing the political system in Czechoslovakia. Mutual distrust, along with the shock of certain members of the Portuguese diaspora at political developments in the country, led to its disintegration. This process was preceded by a forced expression of support for the Warsaw Pact’s invasion. Szobi remarks:
Cunhal’s good relationship with the Soviets meant the PCP Central Committee decided to support the invasion and justified it with the official claim that it was necessary to preserve authentic Marxism-Leninism in Czechoslovakia. After CCP officials were forced to sign the Moscow Protocol on the temporary stay of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia on 27 August 1968, the PCP Central Committee expressed in a communiqué that the ‘normalisation’ process after the invasion meant ‘a real fragmentation of the anti-socialist counter-revolutionary forces’ (Szobi 2017: 674).
19During the tumultuous events of 1968 in Czechoslovakia, Poland was undergoing its own political upheaval. In addition to participating in the assault on its southern neighbour, factional infighting led Władysław Gomułka, the First Secretary of the PZPR, to buckle under the pressure of a hardline nationalist faction associated with Mieczysław Moczar, a member of the party’s Central Committee and the Minister of Internal Affairs. As a result, a rampant anti-Semitic campaign under the pretext of solidarity with the Arabs in the context of the 1967 Six Day War began. Its peak in March 1968 coincided with a brutal attack on the democratic student movement and caused the expulsion of up to 30,000 Polish citizens of Jewish origin. The political fervour surrounding local events in Poland hardened Gomułka’s outlook on the democratic movement unfolding in Czechoslovakia at the time. In the summer of 1968, he had become a leading advocate for military action against it.
20Although the Czechoslovak rebellion was defeated, Gomułka’s opposition to it, combined with his internal policies, made him highly unpopular. He was eventually toppled in 1970 after another assault on social mobilization – this time a wave of workers’ protests in the industrial towns along the Baltic coast. Edward Gierek became Gomułka’s successor. In the eyes of the exiled Portuguese communists, he might have embodied hope that Eastern Bloc socialism could renew and democratize itself.
21Gierek visited Portugal in January 1975 on his way back from Cuba. A report from the visit was sent to the members of the Political Bureau of the party’s Central Committee. Talks were held by members of the Polish delegation and their Portuguese hosts – nine members of the Portuguese government including Prime Minister Vasco Gonçalves, Álvaro Cunhal, and other communist leaders. According to this document, the Portuguese communists described the situation in their homeland as one where the structure of the fascist dictatorship had already been abolished without harming its socioeconomic base formed by international monopolies, the capital of powerful families, and latifundia (Unknown 1975a: 80). According to the same document, Portuguese society had already won its democratic freedoms and was eagerly awaiting an improvement of living conditions. Therefore, the Portuguese interlocutors expressed their interest in learning more about the management techniques used in Polish industry.
22The aforementioned report hardly contains any mention of a revolutionary intervention in social relations. The Portuguese communists mentioned a need to increase the level of public sector investment in the national economy but did not broach the issue of controlling the means of production. ‘Land reform’ is mentioned without specifying how it should be carried out.
- 3 In Polish: Front Jedności Narodu. It was an electoral coalition formed by the Polish United Workers (...)
23The Portuguese President General Francisco da Costa Gomes, came to Poland on an official state visit in October 1975. He was accompanied by numerous officials from political and economic institutions in Portugal. At that time, the so-called Ongoing Revolutionary Process was coming to its end–the latter being usually associated with the failed attempt by left-wing factions within the revolutionary forces to seize power in November 1975. By that time, it was becoming clear that the Portuguese Revolution was not heading in a clearly anti-capitalist direction, although its ideological colours remained more socialist than any other. Still, little difference in terms of political vision can be found in the report summarizing Costa Gomes’ visit to Poland. The document confirms that the initial plans made several months after the Carnation Revolution were at least partially realized – the cooperation between the new partners, Poland and Portugal, was widened and focused on technical and managerial issues. The report mentions the absence of Melo Antunes, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was forced to withdraw from the delegation due to rising tensions in Portugal (Unknown 1975b: 84). According to the document, Costa Gomes’ most lively interest in political matters related to the functioning of the National Unity Front.3 This comes as a surprise because the Front, established in 1952, was of Stalinist origin and served to consolidate power in the hands of the ruling party and reinforce its control over all forms of official political life, rather than promote democratization. If the information included in the report is true, however, it is understandable that Costa Gomes’ intention might have been rooted in his will to find solutions to the ever-growing fragmentation of the post-revolutionary political scene in Portugal. Moreover, Costa Gomes’ political choices were often dictated by what appears to be a rather spontaneous interpretation of certain situations, rather than a strong affinity with any particular party.
- 4 The Polish word lewacka was used in the document. This pejorative term, rooted in the Stalinist pol (...)
24The same document mentions that Costa Gomes presented an overview of the Portuguese political scene to the Polish authorities. He identified a radical left tendency within the revolutionary forces, alongside the reactionaries, as the main threat to the democratic process in his country. In his opinion, there were three major currents within the Armed Forces Movement: ‘radical leftist,4 […] moderate and a conservative one’ (Unknown 1975b: 88). He did not specify exactly which forces belonged to each camp. However, the authors of the report reached an interesting conclusion of their own:
Our expression of solidarity with the democratic changes in Portugal and appreciation of its policy of decolonization during a politically difficult period was at the same time a statement of support for the direction of those changes, the President himself, his role in the Armed Forces Movement as well as a declaration of sympathy towards the tendency which currently occupies the dominant position in the Revolutionary Council and the MFA and is personified by the President and both Revolutionary Council members [present at the meeting]. We perceive it as being slightly to the left of the Socialist Party’s political position whereas the latter belongs to the left-wing of Western European social democracy (ibid.).
25The Polish government’s aim was to support the moderates within the revolutionary movement in Portugal. Such an unequivocal declaration demonstrates that, at this particular stage, the Polish communists were much less preoccupied with the perspective of a Soviet-style socialism being built in Portugal and were open to cooperation with more liberal-minded Portuguese officers. Preserving stability seemed to be a crucial objective for both delegations.
26According to a widespread perspective, the Eastern Bloc was at least more inclined towards the revolutionary values than the mainstream political forces in the West. Although the USSR and its allies provided assistance and material support to numerous movements during the era of the dismantling of ‘classic’ colonial imperialisms, their willingness to become leading actors in certain revolutionary processes was very limited, if not non-existent, in a considerable number of cases. The Portuguese Revolution ranks among the latter.
27Lowering the temperature of the social dimension of the revolutionary process in Portugal was apparently desired by both the PCP and its Eastern Bloc allies. Phil Mailer approached this issue from an anarcho-syndicalist stance in his compelling eyewitness account of the revolution. Although there was hardly any explicit brand of anarchism present among the organized political actors of the Carnation Revolution, Mailer’s observations remain important to understanding the tensions between the grassroots workers’ movement, the revolution’s governing bodies, and their military arms such as COPCON (Continental Operational Command). The Polish authorities supported the efforts to strengthen the PCP-controlled labour unions and establish stable democratic rule. Wildcat strikes, left-wing mobilizations independent of the mainstream political forces, were seen as threatening the newly born democracy. Mailer gives several examples of workers’ initiatives, such as factory occupations, bottom-up decision-making processes that resulted in the toppling of the management of certain enterprises, attempts at installing workers’ control mechanisms, and even hunger strikes thwarted by forces controlled by the MFA or at least dismissed by the government (Mailer 1977: 244-247). In her groundbreaking study, Raquel Varela describes the heated atmosphere of industrial conflicts in the immediate aftermath of the Carnation Revolution. She also highlights important factors that often obscure the background of the lead-up to the April 1974 events:
The construction of a political-institutional narrative, which almost disregarded economic factors, means that even today the global crisis of 1973 is absent from most of the works about the Portuguese Revolution, forgetting that it is the recessionary measures in response to the crisis that closed the businesses, and that workers occupied the factories in response to this, and not the other way around (Varela 2019: 83-84).
28According to Varela, the economic dimension of the multilayered crisis that struck Portugal played a crucial – not a secondary – role in the failures experienced by many companies where measures of workers’ self-management had been flourishing:
The fall in productivity in 1974-1975 was much more tied to the actual lack of orders than to any decline in the quality of management, according to the 1976 report by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, commissioned by the Banco de Portugal. It seems that most of the firms which were taken over fell into the hands of workers like ‘rotten fruit from an old tree’. The task was enormous. Workers had to take on all the difficulties faced by any company in the middle of an economic crisis with the aggravating factor of having to learn to manage production (Varela 2019: 91).
29Varela’s remarks serve as a reminder that, in spite of the obvious and ever-present internal contradictions and challenges that grassroots workers’ power brings, the tendency to associate it with chaos, irresponsibility, and a lack of managerial skills is more often a question of political interpretation than fact-based research. Maintaining such a democratic management framework in a capitalist environment is extremely challenging, as it was under the monopoly of the state in the form of an Eastern Bloc republic. After World War II, Poland experienced several waves of revolutionary mobilizations against the ‘people’s’ power located in the Central Committee of the PZPR. Apart from several significant strike waves that lacked a nationwide, coordinated political background (Kenney 1997), the events of October 1956 particularly demonstrated the communist apparatus’ hostility towards attempts to improve workplace democracy. The independent political initiatives of the working class, which incorporated solutions such as establishing committees and taking over the production process, posed a major threat to the very core of state power, which had been entirely captured by the bureaucratic ‘parasitic stratum’ (Kowalewski 2011). The party state was hostile to any countercurrents that declared adherence to working-class interests.
30The events of October 1956 included numerous factory occupations and attempts at taking over industrial production and the possibility of a military confrontation between Polish Internal Security Corps and Soviet army units based in Poland, which were advancing towards Warsaw (Persak 2006). Although the circumstances in Portugal during the post-revolutionary developments between April 1974 and November 1975 did not involve the direct risk of military intervention by a foreign power, the often dramatic tensions within the body of the army influenced political changes and class movements in a similar way. As in Portugal, the working-class reaction to the deepening economic crisis in the People’s Republic of Poland took the form of grassroots organizing, to which the PCP was, in most cases, vehemently opposed. As Varela observes about industrial relations in Portugal during the spring and summer of 1974:
Communist Party statements at the time accused the workers’ commissions of being ‘ultra-left’, of ‘playing the game of the right’, and of being ‘lackeys of the bosses’. This position of the Communist Party was inseparable from the policy of alliances that advocated participation in a national unity government with sectors of the Portuguese bourgeoisie. Consequently, many leading activists in the workers’ commissions left the Communist Party. Swamped by the spontaneous militancy of the rank and file, the Communist Party for a time lost much of its influence in the workers’ struggles. Those places where the party had influence were characteristically less militant (Varela 2019: 71).
31Although the PCP was not a party of power at that time, its main goal was to participate in a democratic government with its centre-left and centre allies. Nevertheless, being a loyal follower of the Soviet model, the party demonstrated a strong commitment to combating more radical competition on the Left – not only militant groups such as the Maoist PCTP/MRPP or various Trotskyist, Christian-leftist, and other currents, but also those willing to introduce workers’ self-management while operating independently of established political entities. In other words, the political establishment of post-revolutionary Portugal and nominally socialist Poland demonstrated analogous levels of opposition to, and promptness in reacting against, the revolutionary impulses of the working class. Despite the political differences between the two countries, the ideological influence of Soviet policies played a significant role in both cases.
32By the end of 1975, it became clear that the economic policies of Gierek’s government were collapsing. The economic output from credit-based investment in heavy industries was far from satisfactory, forcing the authorities to increase the prices of numerous basic consumer goods in order to limit the overall losses. While people in Poland were becoming disillusioned with the failed economic liberalization under Gierek’s rule and appalled by his government’s decision to quash the wave of protests, the revolutionary process in Portugal was nearing its end as more centrist elements among the new elites took control. This was followed by the consolidation of liberal democracy and the successful sidelining of more radical currents that had played an important role in earlier phases of the revolutionary process. Thus, stabilization was achieved by two very different regimes, both of which found a common denominator in one particular task: extinguishing the flame of social revolt.
33By the end of the summer of 1975, Polish authorities were concerned about the possibility of a major breakdown of the revolutionary camp in Portugal. A classified document with political guidelines was issued by the PZPR’s Central Committee, instructing party functionaries on how to educate the public about the Portuguese issue. It was combined with similar instructions on the Chilean question. Written in a dry, propagandistic tone, the document nevertheless attributed significant importance to the issue of garnering public support for the Portuguese Revolution.
The basic element of granting support to the democratic forces in Portugal is to make the party activists acquainted with the essence of the current stage of the popular-democratic revolution, the political and economic situation in this country, and the internal and external factors worsening it. Therefore, in September [of 1975], lectures will be held in regional committees, crucial workplaces, and scientific and cultural environments […] (Unknown 1975c: 104).
34This general guideline was followed by a set of more detailed directives. Among the most important topics were the leading role of the PCP and the need to expose the harmful actions of the ‘Portuguese reactionaries and their international patrons’ (ibid.: 106). However, the instructions extended beyond such typical propagandistic issues. PZPR activists were recommended to ‘refrain from criticizing the developments within the Movement of the Armed Forces or ad personam critiques of its leaders’ (ibid.: 158). They should however ‘criticize the role of the right-wing of the Socialist Party in inciting the crisis but without attacking this organization as a whole or its leader Mário Soares’. Party activists were also encouraged to strengthen internationalist solidarity by supporting ‘the unity of the left-wing forces around the world as a means of combating the reactionary and imperialist forces and to counter the Maoist propaganda on Portugal’.
35In October 1974, Warsaw hosted the first preparatory meeting for the Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties of Europe, which was to be held in East Berlin in 1976. At this point, important debates were brewing within the international communist movement, with the issue of Eurocommunism being the most pressing ideological problem. As the divide between Western European and Eastern Bloc communists became apparent, it seemed important for both currents to draw the Portuguese party to their cause. Although the East-West disagreement on strategic and theoretical matters was evident, it was the French and Italian communist parties that clashed most over the Portuguese Revolution. The French were sympathetic to the strategy adopted by the PCP, while the Italians openly criticized it. The PCF’s approach was similar to the Soviet attitude, although the French party, despite its general hostility towards Eurocommunism, was experiencing its own turn towards broader political alignments (Bracke 2007: 347). The Soviets urged the PCP towards dynamic ‘vanguardism’, which in practice meant taking over union and institutional bureaucracies. Despite the PCP’s firm loyalty to the Soviets, it was well aware of the major political challenges of the moment and their inevitable influence on the development of communist praxis. Attracting more elements of the middle class to the party programme was a clear objective, although it ‘has not been translated into a coherent political strategy like the Italian Communist party’s “historical compromise”’ (Bruneau & MacLeod 1986: 55).
36However, the PCF’s ‘union of the people of France’, which included the PZPR, remained loyal to the USSR and was therefore willing to keep Álvaro Cunhal’s party within its faction in the international communist camp. From the summer of 1974 to the autumn of 1975, several initiatives were undertaken in order to strengthen the partnership. A group of PCP activists was invited for a two-week holiday in Poland, and health and spa services were also offered to PCP members. The PCP asked the Polish side to send a similar invitation to the Portuguese Democratic Movement (MDP) (Gorajewski 1975).
37Official relations were established between trade unions and youth organizations. Throughout the second half of the 1970s and the 1980s, various working groups were sent to Poland. They attended educational sessions on issues such as industrial management, the vocational training system, and local governance. Schedules and detailed programmes of these visits can be found in Polish archives. Some of the Portuguese side’s interest in the Polish economic system apparently lasted at least through the first half of the 1980s, even though Portugal’s aspirations to join the European Economic Community were clearly at odds with the inefficiencies of Polish socialism.
- 5 The debate took place on 25 November 2011 as part of the conference entitled ‘From Dictatorship to (...)
38In a debate between Mário Soares and Adam Michnik,5 the latter noted that the Portuguese Revolution was a prominent topic in the early days of the democratic opposition of the 1970s. According to Michnik, a discussion on the Portuguese Revolution was held in his apartment in 1975. It was wiretapped by the secret police, and the recording is preserved in the archives. Michnik noted that:
We were afraid that, after the overthrow of Salazar’s dictatorship in Portugal, power might be seized by the forces of the totalitarian Left – a sort of coalition between Álvaro Cunhal’s Communist Party and the military faction led by Otelo de Carvalho. […] Regarding the Carnation Revolution, there was a fear that the former dictatorship might be replaced by a new one, possibly equally oppressive. We were afraid of a possible repetition of the historical experience where those who destroy the Bastilles immediately start to ponder how to build new ones. The road from the destruction of the Bastille to the Jacobin terror was an ever-present element in our thinking about the future (Michnik 2012: 17-18).
39Michnik was a leading figure of both the 1968 political generation and the democratic opposition of the 1970s and 1980s. Later, he became a liberal democrat and a media mogul. It is remarkable that his dominant emotion regarding the Carnation Revolution, expressed publicly, was fear – more specifically, fear of communism. While, for the Polish authorities in the mid-1970s, the Portuguese Communist Party symbolized hope for re-extinguishing social revolt and making Portugal a reliable, liberal-democratic trade partner, for some democratically minded activists, the revolution was not only a promise but also a severe threat. Mário Soares, who shared Michnik’s path from an anti-authoritarian left-wing radical to a mainstream political figure of the free-market democracy era, responded in a very different tone:
Adam Michnik talked about Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho – an important figure who had an impact on the Revolution’s peaceful and victorious outcome. He lacked political experience, some of his statements were devoid of context but he is a man with a good heart, one of those thanks to whom we now live in freedom. I have a lot of sympathy for him and I treat him as a friend, although sometimes I do not agree with his views and words (he knows about it and does not seem to care much) (Soares 2012: 17-18).
40This short dialogue illustrates the most fundamental difference between the mainstream political memory of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal and Poland. For Soares, a figure openly condemned by many former heroes of the revolution, Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, his past political adversary, remained a likeable individual and a praiseworthy freedom fighter. On the contrary, Michnik automatically mentioned his name as synonymous with communist peril.
41The influence of the Carnation Revolution on political debates in Poland remains an underestimated issue. Although it may be downplayed today due to its infusion with left-wing ideas – a political heritage despised by many contemporary political figures in Poland, where staunchly anti-leftist attitudes prevail – the Portuguese path from an anachronistic far-right colonial dictatorship to democracy was closely monitored not only by the Polish authorities but also by the forerunners of the ‘Solidarity’ movement in the early 1980s. Although these Portuguese inspirations may be hard to uncover today – and were most surely not at the forefront of that movement – certain political parallels exist between the revolutionary process in Portugal in 1974-1975 and the Polish democratic opposition during its heyday. This subject deserves further academic scrutiny and a separate publication, an effort which is planned as a follow-up to this article.